Global Research

Russia will not be the only country to use the Crimean Bridge which President Putin is opening today, on May 15. Ukraine and European countries will be able to use the bridge for profitable transit to Asia, Senator Sergei Tsekov of the Republic of Crimea said.

On May 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the opening ceremony of the automotive section of the Crimean Bridge – a super 19-kilometre-long construction from mainland Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

The state contract for the construction of the bridge provided for the launch of the automotive section in December 2018, but the first stage of the project has been delivered six months ahead of the deadline. For motorists, car traffic on the bridge will be opened on May 16 at 05:30 MSK. Local residents – Crimeans and Kuban residents – will be the first to drive through it.

Sergei Tsekov, Senator from the Republic of Crimea, a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, told Pravda.Ru that the bridge has established direct connection with Russia.

“Crimea has now been linked to Russia. This gives us additional opportunities in economy, social sphere, logistics,” the official said.

Indeed, the construction of the bridge to the Crimea removes the transport blockade of the Crimea, which will be broken completely when the railway section of the bridge is launched in 2019.

“This is a major event for the country after Russia’s reunification with the Crimea,” Sergei Tsekov said in an interview with Pravda.Ru.

According to the senator, Russia has showed itself as a highly developed technological country having built the bridge. Russia used state-of-the-art technologies for the construction of support structures installed deep into the seafloor. This bridge is not only the longest one in Russia, but also in Europe.

Sergei Tsekov is convinced that the bridge will be protected accordingly from saboteurs. A special service will be established to protect both the surface and the underwater elements of the bridge.

“The bridge is important for both the Crimea and Russia. It is important for Ukraine, it is important for Europe, and I am confident that over time the bridge will be used by various economic structures of Ukraine to transport products to the territory of the Crimea. When the relationship between  Ukraine and Russia becomes normal – and it will become normal –  both the territory of the Crimea and the bridge itself will be used for the transit of goods from Ukraine and Europe to Asia. Therefore, the opening of the Crimean Bridge is a landmark event in the life of the European community,” the official told Pravda.Ru.

This report confirms Pyongyang’s response to recent U.S. foreign policy statements, not to mention conduct of US-ROK war games directed against North Korea. 

North Korea will “reconsider” a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump if Washington forces the country to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons, the DPRK’s first Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan said on Wednesday.

In a Korean-language report carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim said the Trump administration had issued “ludicrous statements which are extremely provoking” ahead of the DPRK-U.S. summit – scheduled to be held on June 12 in Singapore.

The vice foreign minister denounced several senior officials at the White House and the U.S. State Department, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, for raising, among other things, the potential for a “Libyan model” for denuclearization.

Kim condemned comments calling for “Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Denuclearization (CVID)” and “complete discarding of nuclear arsenals and chemical and biological weapons.”

“If the Trump administration comes forward to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive the deserved response,” Kim said in the written statement.

“But if it forces the abandonment of our nuclear arsenal unilaterally while driving us into the corner, we won’t have any interest in such dialogue, we can’t help but reconsidering if we acceded to the DPRK-U.S. summit.”

The DPRK vice foreign minister said the comments showed the U.S.’s “impure intention” to push the DPRK into a Libya or Iraq-style situation instead of resolving the  issue through dialogue.

The statement particularly singles out John Bolton.

“We’ve explicitly clarified who Bolton is, and we don’t hide the repulsion toward him now,” it reads.

“I can’t hold my violent anger over the U.S. behavior, and I doubt if the U.S. sincerely hopes for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations through wholesome dialogue and negotiation,” he said.

Kim said it was “stupid” to compare the DPRK  – a nuclear weapons state – to Libya, which was at the early stages of developing nuclear weapons.

In his statement, the DPRK diplomat also reiterated Pyongyang’s stance that Washington had downplayed the North’s “generosity and bold measures” in pursuing dialogue, instead citing it as the result of a maximum pressure campaign.

“We’ve expressed the intention of the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, we’ve clarified several times that the prerequisite is to terminate the U.S. hostile policy against the DPRK and nuclear blackmail,” he said.

Kim also, notably, dismissed claims economic incentives could be given in return for North Korean denuclearization.

“The U.S. is clamoring that they will offer economic rewards and benefits if we abandon nuclear arsenals,” he said. “But we’ve never built our economy while having expectations on the U.S, and we will never make such deal.”

The comments are likely a response to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comments earlier in the week that “private sector Americans coming in” could be allowed to go to the North to improve its energy, infrastructure, and agriculture sectors in the event of a nuclear deal.

Wednesday’s statement also saw the DPRK vice foreign minister warn the Trump administration not to repeat the mistake of his predecessors, and that bilateral ties will suffer should Washington follow the opinion of “pseudo-patriots.”

In a marked shift from the diplomatic niceties of the past few weeks, Wednesday also saw the North cancel a planned high-level inter-Korean meeting, citing the ongoing joint ROK-U.S. Max Thunder military exercise.

An accompanying statement also warned that the North might withdraw from the upcoming summit.

“The U.S. will have to think twice about the fate of the DPRK-U.S. summit now on high agenda before a provocative military racket against the DPRK in league with the south Korean authorities,” it said.

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Featured image is from KCNA.

On May 15, President Vladimir Putin took part in the opening ceremony of the Crimean Bridge – “a super 19-kilometre-long construction” linking Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region.

This bridge is strategic. The following article first published by Global Research in March 2014 examines the broader economic and geopolitical implications.

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The decision of  Crimea to join the Russian Federation has strategic and geopolitical implications.

The union of Crimea with Russia redefines both the geography as well as the geopolitical chessboard in the Black Sea basin. 

It constitutes a major setback for US-NATO, whose longstanding objective has been to integrate Ukraine into NATO with a view to undermining Russia, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea basin.

With the March 18, 2014 Treaty signed between Russia and Crimea, the Russian Federation will extend its control over the Black Sea as well over the Sea of Azov, the West coastline of which borders on Eastern Ukraine and the Donesk region. (see map below)

Under the agreement between Russia and Crimea announced by president Putin, two “constituent regions” of Crimea will join the Russian Federation: the “Republic of Crimea” and the “City of Sevastopol”. Both will have the status of “autonomous regions”.

The status of Sevastopol as an autonomous entity separate from Crimea is related to the location of Russia’s Naval base in Sevastopol.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia retained its naval base in Sevastopol under a bilateral agreement with Ukraine. With the signing of the March 18th Treaty, that agreement is null and void. Sevastopol including the Russian naval base become part of an autonomous region within the Russian Federation. The naval base is no within Ukraine under a lease agreement. Moreover, Crimea’s territorial waters now belong to the Russian Federation.

Strategic Waterway: The Kerch Straits

Russia now formally controls a much larger portion of the Black Sea, which includes the entire coastline of the Crimean peninsula. The Eastern part of Crimea –including the Kerch straits– are now under Russia’s jurisdiction control.  On the Eastern side of the Kerch straits is Russia’s Krasnodar region and extending  southwards are the port cities of Novorossiysk and Sochi.

Novorossiysk is also strategic. It is Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, at the cross-roads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and Caspian sea.

Historically, the Kerch straits have played a strategic role. They constitute a gateway from the Black Sea to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga.

During World War II, the Kerch peninsula occupied by Nazi Germany (taken back by the Red Army) was an important point of transit by land and water. In the coldest months of Winter, it became an ice bridge linking Crimea to the Krasnodar region.

The Kerch straits are about 5 kilometers in length and 4.5 km. wide at the narrowest point between the tip of Eastern Crimea and the peninsula of Taman. Kerch is a major commercial port linked to railway, ferry and river routes.

[image right: Kerch straits, photo taken from Crimean side, narrow width, below aerial view of straits]

The Sea of Azov: New Geopolitical Hub

Of significance, the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation means that Moscow is now in full control of the Kerch Straits linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian authorities are no longer in control of the port of Kerch. The bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine governing the maritime route through the Kerch straights has been scrapped.

The straits constitute an entry point into Russia’s major river waterways. The Sea of Azov connects with the Don River and the Volga, through the Volga Don Canal. In turn, the Volga flows into the Caspian sea.

The Kerch straits are strategic.  The Kerch-Yenikalskiy Canal allows large (ocean) vessels to transit from the Black sea to the Sea of Azov.

Moreoever, the Kerch Straits link the Black Sea to the Volga which in turn connects to the Moscow river through the Volga-Moskva canal.

Full control of the narrow Kerch straits by Russia ensures unimpeded maritime transit from the Black Sea to Russia’s capital as well as the maritime route to the Caspian Sea. (Black Sea- Sea of Azov -Don- Volga Don Canal -Volga -Caspian Sea)

In December 2013 Moscow signed a bilateral agreement with the Yanukovych government in Kiev pertaining to the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Straits, connecting Eastern Crimea (which was part of Ukraine) with Russia’s Krasnodar region. This agreement was a followup to an initial agreement signed in April 2010 between the two governments.

The Russia-Ukraine 2013 agreement pertaining to the construction of the bridge had, for all purposes already been scrapped before March 16. Crimea’s union to Russia was already in the pipeline prior to the referendum, it was a fait accompli. Less than two weeks before the March 16 Referendum, at the height of the crisis in Ukraine, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the state-road building corporation Avtodor, or “Russian Highways” “to create a subsidiary company that will oversee the building of a bridge across the Kerch Strait”.

This bridge would largely be geared towards train transport routes linking Western and Eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea basin, Kazakhstan and China. It is therefore an integral part of Eurasian Project.

Needless to say, the Kerchen bridge project will be fully under Russian ownership and control. The Kerchen straits are within Russian territorial waters on both sides of the straits.

The Sea of Azov, Eastern Ukraine and the Donbas Region

The Eastern Ukraine and the densely populated Donetz basin (Donbas region) of Ukraine -in which the Russian population constitutes a majority– borders on the Western coastline of the Sea of Azov, which is now in large part under Russian control.

“Ripple Effect” of the Crimean Referendum. How will the Crisis Evolve?

Will the referendum in Crimea set the stage for the integration of part of Eastern and Southern Ukraine into the Russian Federation?

Will it backlash on the illegitimate government in Kiev?

The geographic and geopolitical changes pertaining to Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have a direct bearing on unfolding events in Eastern Ukraine. (see map above)

Throughout Eastern Ukraine as well as in Odessa in southern Ukraine, the legitimacy of the interim neo-Nazi government in Kiev has been questioned.  Municipal and local levels citizens’ committees are challenging the authority of Kiev appointed officials.

In the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, a protest movement demanding a referendum has unfolded. The referendum, however, does not focus on a union with Russia. It is to unseat the US-EU sponsored government in Kiev, which is considered illegal. It also challenges the adoption by the new government of the neoliberal economic reforms, which are slated to be adopted under the helm of the IMF.

Thousands held a Pro-Russian rally in support of Crimea’s referendum in Odessa, despite calls from the city’s authorities not to participate in meetings. Organizers claim more than 5,000 people joined the demonstration.

“Odessa is against the coup in Kiev, paid for by the West and Ukrainian oligarchs who remained in power with the help deceitful extremists and militants. We are tired of living in poverty and we are no longer going to tolerate the tyranny of oligarchs and officials,” ….

The people were chanting “Ukraine and Russia – one country,” and “Odessa, be bold, drive the fascists out,” as they gathered in the center of the city. (RT, March 16, 2014)

Reported by RT, protests have developed in Kharkov and Donetsk demanding the holding of a referendum on the federalization of Ukraine:

Protesters, on behalf of Kharkov’s assembly, asked Putin to “guarantee their rights and freedoms” and pass to the United Nations their demands regarding a referendum on the federalization, which they plan for April 27, reported Ukrainian National News (UNN) website. Additionally, activists asked to deploy Russian peacekeepers to Kharkov region, adding that they fear for their lives and property.

The demonstrators then marched to the nearby consulate of Poland, protesting against Western interference into Ukrainian affairs.

Kharkov protesters also looted the building housing offices of radical-nationalist organizations, including the Right Sector group, reported Interfax-Ukraine. The activists broke into the building, took out books and nationalist symbols and burnt them.

In Donetsk, pro-Russian protesters questioned the legitimacy of the interim coalition government:

Meanwhile, Kiev sent heavy military hardware to the borders with Russia. Activists in eastern Ukraine regions, including Donetsk and Lugansk, were reportedly blocking trains delivering military equipment from the central and western parts of Ukraine.

Similar rallies were held in Dnepropetrovsk and Lugansk.

In Lugansk the campaign focused on a ‘people’s referendum’ directed against the Kiev interim government:

In Lugansk, several thousand anti-coup activists were conducting a public poll by handing out “ballot papers” of “people’s referendum” of Lugansk region. The poll raised questions of trust in the authorities in Kiev, the possibility of joining the Customs Union following the federalization of Ukraine.

One of the questions was about the international bailout: “Do you support reduction of social benefits and cancellation of benefits at the request of the IMF?”

“This is for all an opportunity to officially announce their choice. Now we have run out of 5,000 forms, we are rushing to print more,” organizer Irina Gotman told UNIAN. (RT, op cit)

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher and political activist

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national good by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We, the middling classes, are not so fortunate.

We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private phone and email conversations by the NSA; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies inflicted on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace that occasionally nudge a weary public out of their numb indifference and into a state of outrage.

Consider, for example, that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

A current case before the Supreme Court, Niang v. Tomblinson strikes at the heart of this bureaucratic exercise in absurdity that has pushed overregulation and overcriminalization to outrageous limits. This particular case is about whether one needs a government license in order to braid hair.

Missouri, like many states across the country, has increasingly adopted as its governing style the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

In Missouri, anyone wanting to braid African-style hair and charge for it must first acquire a government license, which at a minimum requires the applicant to undertake at least 1500 hours of cosmetology classes costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Tennessee has fined residents nearly $100,000 just for violating its laws against braiding hair without a government license.

In Oregon, the law is so broad that you need a license even if you’re planning to braid hair for free. The mere act of touching someone’s hair can render you a cosmetologist operating without a license and in violation of the law.

In Iowa, you can be sentenced with up to a year in prison for braiding hair without having attended a year of cosmetology school.

It’s not just hair braiding that has become grist for the overregulation mill.

Almost every aspect of American life today—especially if it is work-related—is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control, whether you’re talking about aspiring “bakers, braiders, casket makers, florists, veterinary masseuses, tour guides, taxi drivers, eyebrow threaders, teeth whiteners, and more.”

For instance, whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 3 American occupations requires a license.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

This is the mindset that tried to penalize a fisherman with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water.

John Yates (image on the right), a commercial fisherman, was written up in 2007 by a state fish and wildlife officer who noticed that among Yates’ haul of red grouper, 72 were apparently under the 20-inch minimum legal minimum. Yates, ordered to bring the fish to shore as evidence of his violation of the federal statute on undersized catches, returned to shore with only 69 grouper in the crate designated for evidence.

A crew member later confessed that, on orders from Yates, the crew had thrown the undersized grouper overboard and replaced them with larger fish. Unfortunately, they were three fish short.

Sensing a bait-and-switch, prosecutors refused to let Yates off the hook quite so easily. Unfortunately, in prosecuting him for the undersized fish under a law aimed at financial crimes, government officials opened up a can of worms. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court in a rare (and narrow) flash of reason, sided with Yates, ruling that the government had overreached.

That same overcriminalization mindset reared its ugly head again when police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public.

Arnold Abbott (center) (Source: Change.org)

Arnold Abbott, 90 years old and the founder of a nonprofit that feeds the homeless, faced a fine of $1000 and up to four months in jail for violating a city ordinance that makes it a crime to feed the homeless in public.

Under the city’s ordinance, clearly aimed at discouraging the feeding of the homeless in public, organizations seeking to do so must provide portable toilets, be 500 feet away from each other, 500 feet from residential properties, and are limited to having only one group carry out such a function per city block.

Abbott had been feeding the homeless on a public beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl., every Wednesday evening for 23 years. On November 2, 2014, moments after handing out his third meal of the day, police reportedly approached the nonagenarian and ordered him to “‘drop that plate right now,’ as if I were carrying a weapon,” recalls Abbott. Abbott was arrested and fined. Three days later, Abbott was at it again, and arrested again.

It’s no coincidence that both of these incidents—the fishing debacle and the homeless feeding arrest—happened in Florida.

This is also the state that arrested Nicole Gainey for free-range parenting when she let her 7-year-old son walk to the park alone, even though it was just a few blocks from their house. If convicted, Gainey could have been made to serve up to five years in jail.

Despite its pristine beaches and balmy temperatures, Florida is no less immune to the problems plaguing the rest of the nation in terms of overcriminalization, incarceration rates, bureaucracy, corruption, and police misconduct.

In fact, the Sunshine State has become a poster child for how a seemingly idyllic place can be transformed into a police state with very little effort. As such, it is representative of what is happening in every state across the nation, where a steady diet of bread and circuses has given rise to an oblivious, inactive citizenry content to be ruled over by an inflexible and highly bureaucratic regime.

Just a few years back, in fact, Florida officials authorized police raids on barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.

As if criminalizing fishing, charity, parenting decisions, and haircuts wasn’t bad enough, you could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

This transformation of the United States from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation illustrates perfectly what songwriter Joni Mitchell was referring to when she wrote:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all—the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”

In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

A special report by CNBC breaks down the national numbers:

One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

Justice Department figures indicate that as much as $4.3 billion was seized in asset forfeiture cases in 2012, with the profits split between federal agencies and local police. According to the Washington Post, these funds have been used to buy guns, armored cars, electronic surveillance gear, “luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.” Police seminars advise officers to use their “department wish list when deciding which assets to seize” and, in particular, go after flat screen TVs, cash and nice cars.

In Florida, where police are no strangers to asset forfeiture, Florida police have been carrying out “reverse” sting operations, where they pose as drug dealers to lure buyers with promises of cheap cocaine, then bust them, and seize their cash and cars. Over the course of a year, police in one small Florida town seized close to $6 million using these entrapment schemes.

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras—used in 24 states and Washington, DC—are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash.

One small Florida town, population 8,000, generates a million dollars a year in fines from these cameras. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in heft fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

Yet when all is said and done, who is really to blame when the wool gets pulled over your eyes: you, for believing the con man, or the con man for being true to his nature?

It’s time for a bracing dose of reality, America.

Wake up and take a good, hard look around you, and ask yourself if the gussied-up version of America being sold to you—crime free, worry free and devoid of responsibility—is really worth the ticket price: nothing less than your freedoms.

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

On April 18, Skandinavisk frihet site published an interview titled “Exclusive interview: Scandinavians that fight against ISIS”. According to an interviewed volunteer, his sub-unit “was acting in Syria during winter, spring and summer in 2017.”

Skandinavisk frihet is a body of the right-wing organization Skandinaviska Förbundet in Sweden, founded in February 2018.

The volunteer being presented as a Norwegian said that the sub-unit named “Scandinavian” had been receiving orders from the Russian Armed Forces and had been included in the operational structure of pro-government forces operating in Syria.

The interviewee described the sub-unit as a section of a mounted infantry, which had possessed the access to battle tanks and heavy weaponry. The main goals were the collecting of surveillance information, exploration of enemy’s deployment and number of ISIS’ forces. Most of the members were from Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

According to the volunteer, the Scandinavian sub-unit also received Russia’s artillery support during actions against ISIS.

On May 11, Norwegian media outlet AldriMer.no published an article “Norwegians combatted in Syria on the Russian side” quoting the interview of Skandinavisk frihet site. According to AldriMer.no, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) replied that the Norway citizens’ participation in the foreign military actions could be under Criminal Rule.

AldriMer.no analyzed the photos featuring Norwegian and Scandinavian soldiers published by Skandinavisk frihet. The results showed that some of those photos had been taken in April and May of 2017, proving the soldier’s allegations. However, other photos were clear from metadata.

More photos released by Skandinaviskfrihet:

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All images in this article are from Skandinavisk.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who provided the world’s people with the truth about US war crimes in the Middle East and many of Washington’s coups and regime-change intrigues around the globe, is in escalating danger.

Moves are afoot to force Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum close to six years ago and has been forced to live as an effective prisoner. If he is taken into custody by British authorities, he faces being handed over to the US government, which has long sought to place him on trial on espionage charges that potentially carry the death sentence.

The British newspaper, the Guardian, originally published some of WikiLeaks’ devastating exposures in 2010. It then turned viciously against him, along with other international news outlets. Now, it has instigated a foul campaign, clearly acting in league with various intelligence agencies, to justify Ecuador reneging on Assange’s asylum.

The fresh offensive against Assange comes seven weeks after the Ecuadorian government, under pressure from the US, Britain and other powers, cut off Assange’s entire Internet and phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from visiting him.

The Guardian has published unsubstantiated allegations that Assange “violated” the embassy’s communications system and “apparently” read “confidential diplomatic traffic.” In a tweet, WikiLeaks emphatically denied the accusation and pointed to its source, saying:

“That’s an anonymous libel aligned with the current UK-US government onslaught against Mr Assange’s asylum—while he can’t respond.”

There is no doubt about the intent of the latest allegations. Guardian opinion writer James Ball was blunt. The WikiLeaks’ founder, Ball asserted, “should hold his hands up and leave the embassy.”

The Guardian’s lead article declared:

“If he walks out of the embassy, he can expect arrest and could spend up to a year in prison for breaking his bail conditions. The US might then seek to extradite him. He would contest any attempt, and might win, but would face a long, uncomfortable spell behind bars while his case is decided.”

Earlier this year, Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno (image on the right), who took office last May, stated that Assange was a costly “inherited problem” and a “hacker,” and made it clear that he viewed Assange as an obstacle to better relations with the US.

Ecuador’s government gave Assange political asylum in June 2012, when his legal appeals ran out against extradition to Sweden to answer questions over fabricated allegations of sexual assault, and likely rendition to the United States. Swedish authorities finally dropped their trumped-up investigation in May 2017, but Prime Minister Theresa May’s British government still refused to cancel an arrest warrant against him, nominally for skipping bail when he sought asylum.

Rafael Correa, Moreno’s predecessor, recently told journalists in Madrid that Assange’s “days were numbered” because Moreno, his former protégé, would “throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the United States.”

Since his election, Moreno has carried out a sharp turn to the right, with tax cuts for big business, cuts in social spending and attempts to reduce Ecuador’s dependence on loans and investment from China in favour of closer relations with US imperialism.

Ecuador’s government cut off Assange’s communications just one day after it welcomed a delegation from the US Southern Command (Southcom), the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America and the Caribbean, headed by General Joseph DiSalvo. Southcom said discussions were held to strengthen “security cooperation.”

There is no doubt that the US intelligence apparatus and political establishment are driving the conspiracy against Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began publishing more incriminating files about the CIA’s global operations. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, declared that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

Last month, in a further bid to silence WikiLeaks, the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched a law suit, naming WikiLeaks and Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in a supposed criminal effort to steal the 2016 US presidential election.

In reality, the documents published by WikiLeaks laid bare the DNC’s intrigues to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign in the 2016 presidential primary elections, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s intimate relations with Wall Street banks and companies.

Journalist and documentary film-maker John Pilger yesterday spoke out against Ecuador’s “betrayal” of Assange.

“The vindictive pursuit of Assange [is happening] for one reason only: he told the truth,” Pilger told Sputnik International.

“He revealed through Chelsea Manning… the war crimes of the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq; and of course, last year, revealing the machinations of the Democratic National Committee in trying to gerrymander the result [of the primary vote] in that country, which it successfully did.”

Pilger condemned the Moreno government’s move to revoke Assange’s political asylum.

“Political refuge is something that is internationally recognised,” he said. “It’s not something you can then water down. Well, that’s what Moreno’s government has done. He’s negotiated with the British government over the head of Julian, at times not even involving him and his lawyers.”

Pilger pointed to the accommodation that Moreno was seeking with Washington, which has been aggressively moving against any government in Latin America regarded as an obstacle to US hegemony over the continent.

“It’s quite clear that this government has deferred to the United States because it cut off Julian’s contacts—all Internet, all phone, all visitors apart from food and lawyers on the day that US Southcom deputy commander General Joseph DiSalvo arrived in Quito, Ecuador to renegotiate a US base that Correa had shut down.”

The Guardian based its unverified accusations against Assange on “secret records” it had “seen,” together with Focus Ecuador, a right-wing website. It charged that Ecuador’s intelligence agency “bankrolled a multi-million-dollar spy operation” to “protect” Assange in the embassy. Over six years, this activity had cost $5 million.

A closer examination of the story, however, indicates that the surveillance was conducted primarily against Assange and WikiLeaks. A security firm watched Assange around the clock and installed CCTV cameras throughout the embassy.

“Operation Guest” logged every visitor that Assange had for six years, and spied on his every movement in the tiny embassy, monitoring his mood, habits and sleeping patterns, the Guardian reported. Agents recorded each visitor’s purpose of visit, their passport information and arrival and departure times.

“Every month, the security company sent a confidential list of Assange’s visitors to the Ecuadorian president,” the newspaper stated. “Sometimes, the company included stills from secret video footage of interesting guests, plus profiles and analysis.”

According to the Guardian, this possibly offered “clues as to who gave him the trove of hacked documents that helped to bring down Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.” It ominously stated that such a “visitor” would “interest” US special counsel Robert Mueller, who heads an investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged links to Russia.

According to the newspaper, the FBI has already interviewed “at least one source close to Operation Guest,” indicating that Ecuador has handed over all its records to the US intelligence agencies. As a result, every person who has visited or communicated with Assange while he has been in the embassy is at risk of persecution and, potentially, frame-up charges of complicity in espionage or seeking to manipulate the 2016 US election.

The plot against Assange is bound up with an intensifying campaign by the American government and its allies to impose far-reaching Internet censorship and suppress freedom of speech and broader democratic rights. Unsubstantiated allegations of “fake news” and “Russian meddling” are being used by Google, Facebook and other conglomerates to restrict access to websites—including WikiLeaks and the World Socialist Web Site—that provide critical commentary and exposures of the capitalist class and its agencies.

We urge workers and young people everywhere to come to Assange’s defence and demand his immediate freedom.

The Socialist Equality Party (UK) and IYSSE are holding public meetings against War, Internet censorship and the persecution of Julian Assange, beginning May 17 in Glasgow, May 19 in Bradford, and May 20 in London, followed by meetings in Manchester, Sheffield, Oxford, Liverpool, Cambridge and Dublin, Ireland. We urge WSWS readers and supporters of democratic rights to attend.

The Socialist Equality Party in Australia is holding a meeting in Brisbane, Queensland, on May 20, following meetings in Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle.

I have been a student of both WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust for most of my adult life.  I believe it was 1988 or 89 and I was home watching the made for television movie ‘Murderers Among Us- The Simon Wiesenthal Story’. A scene from the film caused me great consternation. 

In the scene, Wiesenthal, played by Ben Kingsley, is searching for his mother by the railroad station. He had heard that she was going to be ‘deported’ and he knew what that really meant. She was obviously in one of the crowded ‘cattle cars’ ready to depart the station. He was on the platform yelling out her name. There was a German guard off in the near distance. 

Wiesenthal was desperate. Who wouldn’t be, knowing your mother, the woman who nurtured you and loved you unconditionally, was being sent to most likely her death. Suddenly, he heard a cry from one of the cattle cars: “Simon!” He looked in the direction of the car that the cry came from. The train began to pull away, and the guard was between Wiesenthal and his mother’s cattle car. He fell to his knees and silently wept, so as not to startle the German soldier.

I quickly wiped my own eyes and grabbed a pen and notepad. This is what I wrote within a few minutes:

My poem was laser engraved onto a plaque and sent to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where it remains today as part of the holocaust museum’s archives. This is just how affected I was by my study of that horrific era in the history of the 20th Century.

Well, sadly I must state that many of my Jewish friends have failed to understand what the holocaust really meant. To forcefully remove perhaps as many as 750,000 Palestinians from THEIR HOMES in 1948 to finalize the Jewish state of Israel makes one recall similar such actions by the Germans in the 1930s. Is the ghetto that Gaza has become that much different than the  ghettos created in Warsaw and Krakow?

The Germans allowed for their citizens to move into areas in Poland and other Eastern countries, after displacing the natives of those areas (many being Jewish) under the guise of Lebensraum or ‘Living space’. How is that any different from many of my Jewish fellow citizens from Borough Park Brooklyn and other places moving to Israel and forming settlements in former Palestinian areas? How in the hell does a Jewish person from another country have such living rights over a Palestinian whose family has lived there for countless generations?

The new film “Killing Gaza” by Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen (both proud Jewish men) has just been released. Every American Jew, especially our Jewish American politicians, should watch it. I would imagine that even Israelis would have to acknowledge that Gaza is a ghetto. Of course, most Israelis who support the settler movement etc will blame it on the victims, and not on Israeli policy. This kind of inane justification of horrific treatment has always been used by the conqueror.  You shut off a man’s water supply and then call him a ‘dirty slob’ when he cannot wash properly. The bottom line is what the truth reveals, and nothing more. Finally, one anecdote from this writer seems to sum it all up. In 1988 I was travelling from NYC to Arizona by plane one night. It was a long 5 hour flight, and we were on a jumbo jet. I was standing alongside this man, late 40s perhaps, who said he was an Israeli engineer. During our conversation, I asked him about his feelings on the Palestinian situation, and now remember that this was 1988. He began explaining things as he saw it, and then said the following, with no emotion at all:

“You have to understand that we Israelis see the Palestinians as you in the USA see your blacks. Quite honestly, they breed like rabbits, and if this continues they will outnumber us with their excess population. As much as I hate to admit it, the only recourse we have is to push them into the sea before  they totally overwhelm us!” 

*

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

It was NBC’s Cal Parry who summed up the obscenity of Donald Trump’s ignorant and igniting decision to move the US Embassy to West Jerusalem, then to celebrate the inauguration on Monday, 14^th May: “Well dressed American and Israeli officials on one side of the screen: desperation, death and fires on the other.”

In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians began their flight from the city and the region trying to escape the massacres by Jewish militias on that date, seventy years ago. Commemorated ever since as the day of “Nakba” – disaster, catastrophe, cataclysm – following them to this day as land is stolen, families expelled and “settlements” encroach, and Palestinian history is bulldozed.

‘ “When the massacre started the (paramilitaries) took a kid and strapped him on an army jeep and drove him around different neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, saying ‘the same will happen to you if you don’t leave,’ ” Abu Kaya said, retelling his grandfather’s story to Middle East Eye.’ (1)

“ … not a single country currently has its embassy in Jerusalem because such a move is widely considered to violate international law.”

Further:

‘Under United Nations Resolution 181, which in 1947 set out the conditions for the partition of Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”, Jerusalem was to be administered by the UN under a “special international regime.”

‘The 1949 armistice agreement that formally ended the first Arab-Israeli war divided the city along the “Green Line” into Israeli-controlled western areas, and Jordanian-held East Jerusalem, which included the Old City.’

“Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is widely recognised as illegal and violates further United Nations resolutions.

“For Palestinians then, sovereignty over the city is not something for leaders of other countries to determine, as US President Donald Trump did when he announced the embassy move in December.”

In the few minutes it took to jot down notes for this piece, the Palestinian death toll of those demonstrating rose from twenty eight dead, shot by Israeli soldiers, to forty three. The injured rose from 1,693 to “near two thousand.”

Fadi Abo Salah, 30, who lost both legs in a bombing by Israeli aircraft, was one who lost his life, in his wheel chair – targeted by an Israeli sniper – in front of his wife and three small children. (Palestine Live group.)

Israel, frequently declaring itself “the only democracy in the Middle East”, carried out a very democratic slaughter and target practice. Young, old, disabled, male, female, all were equally entitled to be shot, sniped at, tear gassed.

Tiny Laila al-Ghandour who died from teargas inhalation was just eight months old. (Guardian, 15^th May 2018.)

Journalist Sharif Kouddos recorded:

“Wails of grief inside family home of Laila al-Ghandour, 8-month old who died of gas inhalation yesterday. Her aunt says the gas came from everywhere, including drones.”

By Monday’s end he Tweeted:

Casualty toll from today in Gaza now stands at 55 dead, including 6 minors. 2,770 wounded, including 225 children. Of the wounded over 1,350 were hit with live ammunition, according to Ministry of Health.

— Sharif Kouddous (@sharifkouddous) May 14, 2018

“It is unbearable to witness such a massive number of unarmed people being shot in such a short time,” stated Médecins Sans Frontières.

As the Embassy partied and visitors “clapped and cheered”, Gaza’s hospitals, already teetering on collapse resulting from restrictions on all coming in to the besieged Strip – including electricity, with water contaminated – had surgeons operating day and night, with the injured being treated in the hospital car parks even, due to the overwhelming influx of those targeted.

In another world, just sixty miles away: ‘Washington’s Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, stood on a stage painted with the US flag and said:

“Today’s historic event is attributed to the vision, courage and moral clarity of one person to whom we owe an enormous and eternal debt of gratitude: President Donald J Trump.”

The crowd cheered and gave a standing ovation.’ (Guardian, 15^th May 2018.)

Deaths had risen to fifty nine.

Of the eighty six Ambassadors to Israel, only thirty two attended the ceremony, with fifty four boycotting and only four EU Member countries attending. (2)

Moreover:

“The Haaretz newspaper reported that most EU member States did not participate in the ceremony because they have a firm policy towards the transfer of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It said that the ambassadors of Russia, Egypt, India, Japan and Mexico also did not attend the celebration.”

Fallout has been swift. French President Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to Jordan’s King Abdullah condemned the “violence of the Israeli armed forces …” and again criticized the moving of the Embassy.

King Abdullah, of course, has custodianship of all Jerusalem’s Holy Sites and: ‘has the right to exert all legal efforts to safeguard them, especially Al Aqsa Mosque, which is defined as “The Entirety of Al Haram Al Sharif.” ‘ (3) As far as can be ascertained thus far, it seems that this important, indeed unique, historic custodianship was neither discussed with the King or his representatives, nor even a consideration of the Trump Administration as they bulldozed their way through diplomacy, history and all norms in their Jerusalem settlement.

NATO ally President Erdogan of Turkey has recalled his Ambassadors to Israel and the US.

South Africa recalled their Ambassador to Israel, with immediate effect, as the Embassy celebrations were ongoing.

Ireland has summoned Israel’s Ambassador to protest Israeli violence.

Kuwait moved for an emergency meeting of the UN, which was blocked by the US. A ‘draft statement included language expressing “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest.” ‘

‘It also reaffirmed UN resolutions on the status of Jerusalem, saying that recent events had “no legal effect” under international law. The statement was withdrawn once the US indicate that it would block it, a UN diplomat said.’ (CNN, 15^th May 2018.)

Qatar condemned “a massacre” and “savage killings.”

Germany, somewhat weakly, expressed concern at the massacre saying:

“The right to peaceful protest must also apply in Gaza”, via a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman

In the UK, the Labour Party’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry in an unusually unequivocal statement said:

“We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal, lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved ones have been lied or injured as a result.

“These actions are made all the worse because they come not as the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day’s protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.

“Throughout that six-week period, the UN’s Secretary General has been calling for an independent investigation into these incidents, one that should urgently determine whether international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.

“These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. No longer can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the situation.”

Chile, with the largest population of Palestinians outside the Arab world, raised Palestinian flags outside the main entrance of the Presidential Palace of La Moneda.

Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz, Bolivia’s UN Ambassador, read the names of the Gaza massacre victims at the UN session, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.

The mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau has demanded an arms embargo on Israel, demanding backing of Amnesty International’s call for a global arms embargo on Israel. Amnesty has condemned:

“ … an abhorrent violation of International Law and human rights. “

Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated:

“Those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account.”

Writer, broadcaster and academic, Kenan Malik Tweeted:

Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, considers the shooting dead of 58 Palestinians and the wounding of 2700 as 'measured' and 'surgical'. I'd hate to know what is his definition of 'unmeasured' or 'non-surgical'.

— Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) May 15, 2018

The death toll became sixty.

From the Trumposphere, Donald Trump input:

Big day for Israel. Congratulations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018

However, on this day of diplomatic vandalism – which the US State Department flagged as a “historic move” – the five times Draft Dodger in Chief it seems reverted to type. The man to whom limelight is seemingly indispensible, stayed in Washington and addressed the Embassy gathering by video, from a safe 5,897 miles away, dodging any potential conflict, demonstrations, dissent. Trump of course, pulled out of a visit to London in February, to open the new US Embassy, which has also relocated, reportedly for fear of the massive protests planned at his stay.

The man who can menace Iran, threaten North Korea with: “ … fire and fury and frankly the power the likes of which like this world has never seen”, cowers from peaceful protesters with placards. No wonder he had no intention of showing up in Jerusalem, even as guest of honour, surrounded by steel rings of security, in a region destabilized by the US and “allies” for decades, with the unarmed, indigenous population simply demanding some justice sixty miles away.

Donald Trump, it seems, talks the talk but can’t walk the walk. Perhaps someone also told him Armageddon is in Israel (site now named Megiddo.)

*

Veteran War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Associate Editor of Global Research.

Notes

1. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/our-land-us-embassy-move-riles-palestinian-refugees-west-jerusalem-2027680826

2. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180515-54-ambassadors-boycott-israeli-american-embassy-celebration/

3. https://kingabdullah.jo/en/page/the-hashemites/custodianship-over-holy-sites

Food and agriculture across the world is in crisis. Food is becoming denutrified and unhealthy and diets less diverse. There is a loss of biodiversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water sources polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming. 

A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food insecurity has become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful global agribusiness corporations.

Over the last 60 years, agriculture has become increasingly industrialised, globalised and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF/World Bank).

This has resulted in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food deficits in the Global South mirror food surpluses in the North, based on a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy.

Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes related to debt repayment as occurred in Africa (as a continent Africa has been transformed from a net exporter to a net importer of food), bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture.

Integral to all of this has been the imposition of the ‘Green Revolution’. Farmers were encouraged to purchase hybrid seeds from corporations that were dependent on chemical fertilisers and pesticides to boost yields. They required loans to purchase these corporate inputs and governments borrowed to finance irrigation and dam building projects for what was a water-intensive model.

While the Green Revolution was sold to governments and farmers on the basis it would increase productivity and earnings and would be more efficient, we now have nations and farmers incorporated into a system of international capitalism based on dependency, deregulated and manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity.

As part of a wider ‘development’ plan for the Global South, millions of farmers have been forced out of agriculture to become cheap factory labour (for outsourced units from the West) or, as is increasingly the case, unemployed or underemployed slum dwellers.

In India, under the banner of a bogus notion of ‘development’, farmers are being whipped into subservience on behalf of global capital: they find themselves steadily squeezed out as farming due to falling incomes, the impact of cheap imports and policies deliberately designed to run down smallholder agriculture for the benefit of global agribusiness corporations.

Aside from the geopolitical shift in favour of the Western nations resulting from the programmed destruction of traditional agriculture across the world, the Green Revolution has adversely impacted the nature of food, soil, human health and the environment.

Sold on the premise of increased yields, improved food security and better farm incomes, the benefits of the Green Revolution have been overstated. And the often stated ‘humanitarian’ intent and outcome (‘millions of lives saved’) has had more to do with PR and cold commercial interest.

However, even when the Green Revolution did increase yields (or similarly, if claims about GMO agriculture – the second coming of the Green Revolution – improving output are to be accepted at face value), Canadian environmentalist Jodi Koberinski says pertinent questions need to be asked: what has been the cost of any increased yield of commodities in terms of local food security and local caloric production, nutrition per acre, water tables, soil structure and new pests and disease pressures?

We may also ask what the effects on rural communities and economies have been; on birds, insects and biodiversity in general; on the climate as a result of new technologies, inputs or changes to farming practices; and what have been the effects of shifting towards globalised production chains, not least in terms of transportation and fossil fuel consumption.

Moreover, if the Green Revolution found farmers in the Global South increasingly at the mercy of a US-centric system of trade and agriculture, at home they were also having to fit in with development policies that pushed for urbanisation and had to cater to the needs of a distant and expanding urban population whose food requirements were different to local rural-based communities. In addition to a focus on export-oriented farming, crops were also being grown for the urban market, regardless of farmers’ needs or the dietary requirements of local rural markets.

Destroying indigenous systems

In an open letter written in 2006 to policy makers in India, farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save (image on the right) offered answers to some of these questions. He argued that the actual reason for pushing the Green Revolution was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government and a few industries at the expense of a more diverse and nutrient-sufficient agriculture, which rural folk – who make up the bulk of India’s population – had long benefited from.

Before, Indian farmers had been largely self-sufficient and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so, the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.

Tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains, but these very replaced with dwarf varieties, which led to more vigorous growth of weeds and were able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight.

As a result, the farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides. Furthermore, straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell and much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals and soil degradation and erosion set in.

The exotic varieties, grown with chemical fertilisers, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’, leading to yet more chemicals being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and controlled their populations were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like the earthworms and bees.

Save noted that India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, the soil is alive and porous and at least half of the rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata.

A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers or groundwater tables. The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs. Half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all year round, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry.

While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago.

More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. For example, one acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities.

From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs two to three tonnes of water. Save argued this could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets).

If Bhaskar Save helped open people’s eyes to what has happened on the farm, to farmers and to ecology in India, a 2015 report by GRAIN provides an overview of how US agribusiness has hijacked an entire nation’s food and agriculture under the banner of ‘free trade’ to the detriment of the environment, health and farmers.

In 2012, Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25% to 35% and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9% to 37%.

Some 29% of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35% of youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in 10 school age children suffered from anemia. The Mexican Diabetes Federation says that more than 7% of the Mexican population has diabetes. Diabetes is now the third most common cause of death in Mexico, directly or indirectly.

The various free trade agreements that Mexico has signed over the past two decades have had a profound impact on the country’s food system and people’s health. After his mission to Mexico in 2012, the then Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concluded that the trade policies in place favour greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables.

He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico is facing could have been avoided, or largely mitigated, if the health concerns linked to shifting diets had been integrated into the design of those policies.

The North America Free Trade Agreement led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in the retail structure (notably the advent of supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in Mexico.

The country has witnessed an explosive growth of chain supermarkets, discounters and convenience stores. Local small-scale vendors have been replaced by corporate retailers that offer the processed food companies greater opportunities for sales and profits. Oxxo (owned by Coca-cola subsidiary Femsa) tripled its stores to 3,500 between 1999 and 2004. It was scheduled to open its 14,000th store sometime during 2015.

In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty has induced catastrophic changes in the nation’s diet and has had dire consequences for agricultural workers who lost their jobs and for the nation in general. Those who have benefited include US food and agribusiness interests, drug cartels and US banks and arms manufacturers.

More of the same: a bogus ‘solution’

Transnational agribusiness has lobbied for, directed and profited from the very policies that have caused much of the above. And what we now see is these corporations (and their supporters) espousing cynical and fake concern for the plight of the poor and hungry.

GMO patented seeds represent the final stranglehold of transnational agribusiness over the control of agriculture and food. The misrepresentation of the plight of the indigenous edible oils sector in India indicates encapsulates the duplicity at work surrounding the GM project.

After trade rules and cheap imports conspired to destroy farmers and the jobs of people involved in local food processing activities for the benefit of global agribusiness, including commodity trading and food processor companies ADM and Cargill, there is now a campaign to force GM into India on the basis that Indian agriculture is unproductive and thus the country has to rely on imports. This conveniently ignores the fact that prior to neoliberal trade rules in the mid-1990s, India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils.

In collusion with the Gates Foundation, corporate interests are also seeking to secure full spectrum dominance throughout much of Africa as well. Western seed, fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers and dealers and food processing companies are in the process of securing changes to legislation and are building up logistics and infrastructure to allow them to recast food and farming in their own images.

Today, governments continue to collude with big agribusiness corporations. These companies are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations and are increasingly framing the policy/knowledge agenda by funding and determining the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes.

As Bhaskar Save wrote about India:

“This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation. In all the six years a student spends for an M.Sc. in agriculture, the only goal is short-term – and narrowly perceived – ‘productivity’. For this, the farmer is urged to do and buy a hundred things. But not a thought is spared to what a farmer must never do so that the land remains unharmed for future generations and other creatures. It is time our people and government wake up to the realisation that this industry-driven way of farming – promoted by our institutions – is inherently criminal and suicidal!”

Save is referring to the 300,000-plus farmer suicides that have taken place in India over the past two decades due to economic distress resulting from debt, a shift to (GM)cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (see this report about a peer-reviewed study, which directly links suicides to GM cotton).

The current global system of chemical-industrial agriculture, World Trade Organisation rules and bilateral trade agreements that agritech companies helped draw up are a major cause of food insecurity and environmental destruction. The system is not set up to ‘feed the world’ despite the proclamations of its supporters.

However, this model has become central to the dominant notion of ‘development’ in the Global South: unnecessary urbanisation, the commercialisation and emptying out of the countryside at the behest of the World Bank, the displacement of existing systems of food and agricultural production with one dominated by Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and the like and a one-dimensional pursuit of GDP growth as a measure of ‘progress’ with little concern for the costs and implications – mirroring the narrow, reductionist ‘output-yield’ paradigm of industrial agriculture itself.

Agroecology offers a genuine solution

Across the world, we are seeing farmers and communities pushing back and resisting the corporate takeover of seeds, soils, land, water and food. And we are also witnessing inspiring stories about the successes of agroecology.

Reflecting what Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm in Gujarat, agroecology combines sound ecological management, including minimising the use of toxic inputs, by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging natural solutions to manage pests and disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods.

Agroecology is based on scientific research grounded in the natural sciences but marries this with farmer-generated knowledge and grassroots participation that challenges top-down approaches to research and policy making. However, it can also involve moving beyond the dynamics of the farm itself to become part of a wider agenda, which addresses the broader political and economic issues that impact farmers and agriculture (see this description of the various modes of thought that underpin agroecolgy).

Jodi Koberisnki’s nod to ‘systems thinking’ lends credence to agroecology, which recognises the potential of agriculture to properly address concerns about local food security and sovereignty as well as social, ecological and health issues. In this respect, agroecology is a refreshing point of departure from the reductionist approach to farming which emphasises securing maximum yield and corporate profit to the detriment of all else.

Wei Zhang – an economist focusing on ecosystem services, agriculture and the environment – says that

‘worldview’ is important “to how you conceptualise issues and develop or choose tools to address those issues. Using systems thinking requires a shift in fundamental beliefs and assumptions that constitute our worldviews. These are the intellectual and moral foundations for the way we view and interpret reality, as well as our beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the processes of knowing. Systems thinking can help by changing the dominant mindset and by addressing resistance to more integrated approaches.”

Agroecology requires that shift in fundamental beliefs.

A few years ago, the Oakland Institute released a report on 33 case studies which highlighted the success of agroecological agriculture across Africa in the face of climate change, hunger and poverty. The studies provide facts and figures on how agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment.

The research highlights the multiple benefits of agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and crop resilience.

The report described how agroecology uses a wide variety of techniques and practices, including plant diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management structures.

There are many other examples of successful agroecology and of farmers abandoning Green Revolution thought and practices to embrace it (see this report about El Salvador and this interview from South India).

In a recent interview appearing on the Farming Matters website, Million Belay sheds light on how agroecological agriculture is the best model of agriculture for Africa. Belay explains that one of the greatest agroecological initiatives started in 1995 in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, and continues today. It began with four villages and after good results, it was scaled up to 83 villages and finally to the whole Tigray Region. It was recommended to the Ministry of Agriculture to be scaled up at the national level. The project has now expanded to six regions of Ethiopia.

The fact that it was supported with research by the Ethiopian University at Mekele has proved to be critical in convincing decision makers that these practices work and are better for both the farmers and the land.

Bellay describes another agroecological practice that spread widely across East Africa – ‘push-pull’. This method manages pests through selective intercropping with important fodder species and wild grass relatives, in which pests are simultaneously repelled – or pushed – from the system by one or more plants and are attracted to – or pulled – toward ‘decoy’ plants, thereby protecting the crop from infestation. Push-pull has proved to be very effective at biologically controlling pest populations in fields, reducing significantly the need for pesticides, increasing production, especially for maize, increasing income to farmers, increasing fodder for animals and, due to that, increasing milk production, and improving soil fertility.

By 2015, the number of farmers using this practice increased to 95,000. One of the bedrocks of success is the incorporation of cutting edge science through the collaboration of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and the Rothamsted Research Station (UK) who have worked in East Africa for the last 15 years on an effective ecologically-based pest management solution for stem borers and striga.

But agroecology should not just be regarded something for the Global South. Food First Executive Director Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that it offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics and the outright plunder of neoliberalism.

The scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs.

Thick legitimacy

Various official reports have argued that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies (see this report on the right to food and this (IAASTD) peer-reviewed report).

Olivier De Schutter says:

“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live, especially in unfavorable environments.”

De Schutter indicates that small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in critical regions by using ecological methods. Based on an extensive review of scientific literature, the study he was involved in calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production and improve the situation of the poorest. The report calls on states to implement a fundamental shift towards agroecology.

The success stories of agroecology indicate what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. The expansion of agroecological practices can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be sustained for future generations. This model entails policies and activities that come from the bottom-up and which the state can then invest in and facilitate.

A decentralised system of food production with access to local markets supported by proper roads, storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of exploitative international markets dominated and designed to serve the needs of global capital.

It has long been established that Small farms are per area more productive than large-scale industrial farms and create a more resilient, diverse food system. If policy makers were to prioritise this sector and promote agroecology to the extent Green Revolution practices and technology have been pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment and urban migration could be solved.

However, the biggest challenge for upscaling agroecology lies in the push by big business for commercial agriculture and attempts to marginalise agroecology. Unfortunately, global agribusiness concerns have secured the status of ‘thick legitimacy’ based on an intricate web of processes successfully spun in the scientific, policy and political arenas. This allows its model to persist and appear normal and necessary. This perceived legitimacy derives from the lobbying, financial clout and political power of agribusiness conglomerates which set out to capture or shape government departments, public institutions, the agricultural research paradigm, international trade and the cultural narrative concerning food and agriculture.

Critics of this system are immediately attacked for being anti-science, for forwarding unrealistic alternatives, for endangering the lives of billions who would starve to death and for being driven by ideology and emotion. Strategically placed industry mouthpieces like Jon Entine, Owen Paterson and Henry Miller perpetuate such messages in the media and influential industry-backed bodies like the Science Media Centre feed journalists with agribusiness spin.

When some people hurl such accusations, it might not just simply be spin: it may be the case that some actually believe critics are guilty of such things. If that is so, it is a result of their failure to think along the lines Zhang outlines: they are limited by their own reductionist logic and worldview.

The worrying thing is that too many policy makers may also be blinded by such a view because so many governments are working hand-in-glove with the industry to promote its technology over the heads of the public. A network of scientific bodies and regulatory agencies that supposedly serve the public interest have been subverted by the presence of key figures with industry links, while the powerful industry lobby hold sway over bureaucrats and politicians.

The World Bank is pushing a corporate-led industrial model of agriculture via its ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ strategy and corporations are given free rein to write policies. Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies and the global food processing industry had a leading role in shaping the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (see this). From Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture to the currently on-hold US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its model of agriculture prevails.

The ultimate coup d’etat by the transnational agribusiness conglomerates is that government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven Fortune 500 corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. These corporations have convinced so many that they have the ultimate legitimacy to own and control what is essentially humanity’s common wealth. There is the premise that water, food, soil, land and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Corporations which promote industrial agriculture have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agribusiness has secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse.

It gets to the point whereby if you – as a key figure in a public body – believe that your institution and society’s main institutions and the influence of corporations on them are basically sound, then you are probably not going to challenge or question the overall status quo. Once you have indicated an allegiance to these institutions and corporate power, it is ‘irrational’ to oppose their policies, the very ones you are there to promote. And it becomes quite ‘natural’ to oppose any research findings, analyses or questions which question the system and by implication your role in it.

But how long can the ‘legitimacy’ of a system persist given that it merely produces bad food, creates food deficit regions globally, destroys health, impoverishes small farms, leads to less diverse diets and less nutritious food, is less productive than small farms, creates water scarcity, destroys soil and fuels/benefits from World Bank/WTO policies that create dependency and debt.

The more that agroecology is seen to work, the more policy makers see the failings of the current system and the more they become open to holistic approaches to agriculture – as practitioners and supporters of agroecology create their own thick legitimacy –  they more willing officials might be to give space to a model that has great potential to help deal with some of the world’s most pressing problems. It has happened to a certain extent in Ethiopia, for example. That is hopeful.

Of course, global agribusiness nor the system of capitalism it helps to uphold and benefits from are not going to disappear overnight and politicians (even governments) who oppose or challenge private capital tend to be replaced or subverted.

Powerful agribusiness corporations can only operate as they do because of a framework designed to allow them to capture governments and regulatory bodies, to use the WTO and bilateral trade deals to lever global influence, to profit on the back of US militarism (Iraq) and destabilisations (Ukraine), to exert undue influence over science and politics and to rake in enormous profits.

The World Bank’s ongoing commitment to global agribusiness and a wholly corrupt and rigged model of globalisation is a further recipe for plunder. Whether it involves Monsanto, Cargill or the type of corporate power grab of African agriculture that Bill Gates is helping to spearhead, private capital will continue to ensure this happens while hiding behind platitudes about ‘free trade’ and ‘development’.

Brazil and Indonesia are subsidising private corporations to effectively destroy the environment through their practices. Canada and the UK are working with the GMO biotech sector to facilitate its needs. And India is facilitating the destruction of its agrarian base according to World Bank directives for the benefit of the likes of Monsanto, Bayer and Cargill.

If myths about the necessity for perpetuating the stranglehold of capitalism go unchallenged and real alternatives are not supported by mass movements across continents, agroecology will remain on the periphery.

*

Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

It has the makings of another Intifada: appalling timing in terms of commemoration (the founding of the state of Israel; the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem in all-Trumpistan affair); popular protest with all its untidy trimmings; then a massacre clinically inflicted by forces with superior fire power.

On Monday, the use of force by Israeli forces supposedly designed to quell riots and prevent an incursion by Palestinians from Gaza initially resulted in 58 deaths. The numbers duly grew, and it did not take long for a packaged, ribboned narrative to appear.

For one thing, who were the dead?  Hamas official Salah Al-Bardawil offered a morsel to the Israeli forces by telling the Palestinian Baladna news outlet that of the 62 who perished over Monday and Tuesday, “fifty of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.” This made the moral computation for the Times of Israel simple: the bulk of deaths were “known members of terror groups”. 

The Israel Defence Forces, in an attempt at wholesale unmasking, were quick to release selected footage of the interview with Al-Bardawil turning his words against him and emptying them of moral suasion:

“Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil,” came one tweet “is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots.” 

Since then, the IDF has been busy constructing an oasis of certitude with one central point: Hamas did it, and the deaths were less from Israel’s weapons than Hamas’ remorseless calculation, much of it centred on attempts to breach the fence in the northern Gaza strip.

“Hamas,” went another statement, “is solely responsible for the events transpiring in and out of Gaza, and is accountable for all terrorist activity emanating from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians and Israeli sovereignty.”   

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was even more colourful in his description of these barbarians at the border. The leaders of Hamas were “a bunch of cannibals who also treat their own children as ammunition”.

The Israeli position, stated by Danny Danon as UN envoy, is to refocus attention on Hamas as wicked instigator and hostage taker.  Israel thereby becomes legitimate defender, a force of security facing agents of a barbarian project led by Lieberman’s cannibals. 

“They incite people to violence, place as many civilians as possible in the line of fire to maximise civilian casualties, then they blame Israel and come to the UN to complain. It is a deadly game they play at the expense of innocent children.”

Positions are stated as absolutes, with compromise being seen as an enemy of promise.  Terminology here is everything: a “right of return” is turned on its head as redemptive cause and a righting of wrongs that could only mean the destruction of the Jewish state.  Danon, again, emphasises these extremes with ideological certitude:

“When [Hamas] say day of rage they mean day of terrorism; right of return means the destruction of Israel; peaceful protest means incitement and violence.”

Violence, restraint, calm – all variables of relative worth where cruelty and brutality reign, and where humanitarian shocks sanctioned by Israel and Egypt function with ritual consistency. Gaza is a picture of enforced debility; options to behave decently are not to be found. But this is not a context that finds its way into assessments of IDF conduct. To the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, Israel was a paragon of propriety, its operations on Monday and Tuesday compelling.

“No country in this chamber could act with more restraint than Israel has.” 

Those outside the traditional US-Israel compass resort to the desk clerk’s alternative, a clip-board response with pen at the ready. Establish, goes this line of thinking, a committee, an investigation, an inquiry with findings that are bound to be shelved and ignored, redundancies even before the first question is asked.  

UK ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce took issue with the ammunition being used.

“The volume of live fire used in Gaza [on Monday] and the consequent number of deaths is distressing and cannot be ignored by the council”.

Activists are considering how to bolster the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, though the recent massacre is bound to provide ample grist.  The Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s Mustafa Barghouti used Monday’s violence to tell the BBC’s Newshour that BDS and popular nonviolent resistance are by far “the best two instruments to force Israel to change its policies.” 

On one level this is unsurprising: Palestinian leaders, wrangling, divided and weak, have had to rely on other high profile movements to do their work.  BDS has certainly developed enough momentum to draw calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deem the movement anti-Semitic.

“The boycotters,” he claimed in justification to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2014, “should be boycotted.”

Central to the denunciation of Palestinian protest, and specifically Hamas in its violent visage, is the notion that such behaviour is not only futile but indecent.  Stay at home, simper and whimper; forget the realm of the political, the value of the activist enraged by historical wrongs.  That the catastrophe – the annual nightmare or revisitation known as the Nakba – be a point of reminder drives Israel’s forces to further insist upon acceptance and subjugation. 

To dare counter such forces of suffocation is to not abide by a fictional code of etiquette that never took root in those blood soaked soils.  As long as this is sold to powerful sponsors, Israel will remain condemned in some circles but praised in others as survivor and defender.  The Palestinians will simply be the remaindered peoples of a cause sliding into amnesiac sunset, steered by leaders of very mixed blessings buttressed by token support.

*

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

This article originally appeared on VICE Austria.

Excerpts are provided below

On Saturday, May 12, around 10,000 Croatians—including neo-Nazis and Catholic officials—gathered in a field in the southern Austrian town of Bleiburg to commemorate the defeat of the Ustaše army in May 1945.

This former Nazi-affiliated fascist movement was responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews, Romas, Serbs, and Muslims in World War II, many in the organization’s Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, which was the only concentration camp run without any German involvement.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel’s nomination today, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role of CIA director.

Next the full Senate will make a final decision on Haspel’s nomination in a vote that is expected to take place next week but could occur as early as tomorrow.

In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.

Haspel was chief of base at the secret CIA black site in Thailand when al-Qaeda suspects, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were waterboarded and brutalized in 2002. Ten years later, Sondra Crosby said al-Nashiri was “one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Waterboarding involves pouring water into prisoners’ noses and mouths to make them feel like they’re drowning.

The Bush administration claimed it only waterboarded three individuals: al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But a footnote in a memo written by Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Steven Bradbury says waterboarding was utilized “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than small quantities, as required by the CIA’s rules.

Waterboarding is illegal under all circumstances.

The Bush Torture Program Was Unlawful

US law has long considered waterboarding to be torture, which constitutes a war crime. After World War II, the US government tried, convicted and hanged Japanese military leaders for the war crime of waterboarding.

Torture is prohibited under the US Torture Statute; the US War Crimes Act; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (also known as the Convention Against Torture).

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” the Convention Against Torture states unequivocally.

Last week, however, Haspel testified that the CIA’s actions in the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program were lawful.

“The very important thing to know about CIA is, we follow the law,” she said. “We followed the law then, and we follow the law now.”

She was likely relying on memoranda written by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, including John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Yoo and Bybee wrote memos with twisted reasoning purporting to justify torture, and advised high government officials on how to avoid criminal liability under the US War Crimes Act.

According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, the torture policy emanated from Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office.

That makes Cheney — along with George W. Bush and other officials who authorized the torture — liable for war crimes. But since Barack Obama refused to hold the Bush war criminals accountable, Cheney continues to advocate torture with impunity.

In a recent appearance on Fox Business, Cheney supported Haspel’s nomination. He said he “wholeheartedly” favors “enhanced interrogation techniques” — a euphemism for torture.

“I think the techniques we used were not torture,” Cheney claimed. “If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” Cheney said. “If it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Haspel’s Elusive Moral Compass

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 499-page executive summary of its 6,700-page classified torture report in 2014. It contains many disturbing revelations. The summary says several detainees were waterboarded. One detainee in CIA custody was waterboarded 183 times; another was subjected to the waterboard on 83 occasions.

Al-Nashiri was waterboarded on Haspel’s watch. A rag was placed over his forehead and eyes and water was poured into his nose and mouth until he began to choke and aspirate. The rag was lowered, suffocating him with the water still in his throat, sinuses and lungs. After he was allowed to take three to four breaths, the process was repeated.

A broomstick was wedged behind Al-Nashiri’s knees as he knelt and his body was forced backward, pulling his knee joints apart. CIA agents also cinched his elbows behind his back and hoisted him up to the ceiling, causing a physician’s assistant to fear they had dislocated his shoulders.

Al-Nashiri was placed in a coffin between interrogations. At other times, he was locked into a small box the size of an office safe. Agents used a rolled towel placed around Al-Nashiri’s neck to swing him into a plywood wall, so the towel became an object of fear.

Agents instilled in Al-Nashiri “learned helplessness” to render him passive and dependent. To induce sleep deprivation, he was shackled to a bar on the ceiling and forced to stand with his arms above his head.

While hooded, naked and shackled to the ceiling, agents racked a handgun near Al-Nashiri’s head, then substituted a revved-up power drill.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to “rectal feeding.” A mixture of pureed hummus, pasta and sauce, nuts and raisins was rammed into his rectum. He was also forcibly sodomized and a stiff brush was raked across his “ass and balls and then his mouth.”

The summary confirmed the CIA used “rectal feeding” without medical necessity on prisoners, saying “rectal rehydration” was used to establish the interrogator’s “total control over the detainee.”

Other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that the summary documented included being slammed into walls; deprived of sleep — sometimes with forced standing — for up to seven and one-half days; forced to stand on broken limbs for hours on end; kept in total darkness; confined in a coffin-like box for 11 days; dressed in diapers; and bathed in ice water. The summary said one detainee “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) asked Haspel,

“Do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral?”

the nominee gave a non-responsive answer. Haspel said,

“Senator, what I believe sitting here today is, I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice-chairman of the committee, asked Haspel,

“If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do? Will you carry out that order or not?”

She replied,

“Senator, my moral compass is strong. I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral — even if it was technically legal,” Haspel explained.

Apparently Haspel has no moral objection to the torture techniques used on Al-Nashiri.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) inquired of Haspel,

“If the CIA has a high-value terrorism suspect in its custody and the president gave you a direct order to waterboard that suspect, what would you do?”

Again, Haspel demurred with a non-responsive reply:

“I do not believe the president would ask me to do that,” she testified.

Haspel is apparently unaware of Donald Trump’s declarations during the presidential campaign that he would “immediately” resume waterboarding and would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” because the United States has a “barbaric” enemy. Trump called waterboarding a “minor form” of interrogation.

Torture Doesn’t Work

Trump said he would allow the use of waterboarding “in a heartbeat” because “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.”

But even “if it doesn’t work,” he added, “they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.”

When queried about Trump’s statement that “torture absolutely works,” Haspel said,

“I don’t believe that torture works.”

She then wavered, saying that valuable intelligence had been obtained from senior al-Qaeda operatives “and I don’t think it’s knowable whether interrogation techniques played a role in that.”

The executive summary of the Senate report came to a contrary conclusion.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published on GR in September 2017.

The Black Alliance for Peace is resolute in its opposition to United States-led imperialism, no matter which nations may be among the targets. We contend no justification exists for U.S. government interference in the affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea.

President Donald Trump differs from his predecessors only with his intemperate language, threatening “fire and fury” and asserting that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded.”

The corporate media may lampoon his choice of words, but they do not oppose the premise that this country has the right to tell North Korea and every other sovereign nation what it can and cannot do.

Like the United States, North Korea has the right to test and develop as many weapons as it chooses. North Korea does not need another country’s permission to enhance its arsenal. Given the United States’ history of aggression, it would appear wise to do so. Any country deemed an enemy of the United States that does not have a strong defense is in danger of ending up like Iraq or Libya—invaded or destroyed by other means.

The U.S. military is the greatest threat to world peace. With more weapons—nuclear and conventional—than any other nation in the world, the United States is armed with the capacity for complete global destruction multiple times over.

The greatest danger stemming from North Korea’s missile program comes from American reactions to it.

The war party is made up of Democrats and Republicans who were nearly unanimous in passing a bill requiring economic sanctions not just against North Korea, but against Iran and Russia as well.

These countries are guilty of only one thing. They assert their right to exist and to resist American hegemony.

It is the United States that escalates tension with war games that simulate an invasion of North Korea. At the same time that North Korea is labeled a danger, the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system is being installed in South Korea. The THAAD poses a very real threat to peace in the region.

North Korea is not the only country targeted by the United States in this latest crisis. The saber rattling is also directed against China, which like the rest of the world, has great reason to defend itself against Trump and the war party duopoly. While the media helps the United States frighten the American public unnecessarily, none of them will speak simple truth. The truth is the United States doesn’t have to do anything about North Korea. America is not exceptional, nor is it indispensable. It should not have more rights than other nations and should not be allowed to threaten the world with destruction.

One would not know it from reading major American newspapers, but voices of reason exist around the world. Most American reporters and op-ed writers seem to see North Korea as a problem to be solved instead of as a nation to be engaged in a serious and respectful manner. They deliberately obscure the history of America’s near destruction of North Korea from 1950 to 1953 and the fact that the truce never ended the war between the north and south on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea is considered a bogeyman whether it tests missiles or not. It has been accused of everything from hacking into the Sony corporation computer systems to creating new malware viruses. Its president, Kim Jong-un, is treated like a joke or a demon. He appears to have chosen what seems to be the only defense he has at his disposal—to make America think twice about attacking his country.

The media may call North Korea a “rogue” nation, but that designation belongs to the United States. The United States has more than 1,000 military facilities around the globe. It spends more money on defense than any other country and has more conventional and nuclear weapons than any other nation. This should not be normalized. Yet it is.

This monstrous situation did not begin with Donald Trump. It has been building for decades as the United States became the world’s only superpower. Every American president exceeds the violence committed by predecessors and there is consensus among the politicians and punditry that “might makes right.” That is a patriarchal-white-supremacist-capitalist logic embodied in a national identity. The target may be North Korea or China or Russia or Iran or Iraq or Syria or Somalia. Regardless, the apparent goal of the United States’ global policy is for Full Spectrum Dominance, a doctrine which brings horrific conflict closer to reality.

Trump’s rhetoric may be more dangerous, but he is just the latest American president to make unilateral threats of nuclear attack.

Yet, the United States is not the only one that can assert its strength. The Chinese government has made clear that it will not stand by and allow the United States to attack North Korea. China’s ability to defend its ally is real. The pundits and politicians who utter words just as dangerous as Trump’s are equally culpable in bringing the world to the brink of multi-national conflict and casualties.

People who say they want peace, claim to be anti-fascist, and speak against white supremacy and patriarchy, must stand with North Korea against threats from the United States. The Black Alliance for Peace joins with people of conscience all over the world in condemning America’s aggressions and threats of aggression against North Korea and every other nation.

Hands Off North Korea!

No to U.S. Military Exercises Against North Korea and China!

Remove THAAD Missiles and U.S. Bases from South Korea!

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Globalization of War includes chapters on North Korea, Ukraine, Palestine, Libya, Iran, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Syria and Iraq as well as several chapters on the dangers of Nuclear War including Michel Chossudovsky’s Conversations with Fidel Castro entitled “Nuclear War and the Future of Humanity”.

According to Fidel: “in the case of a nuclear war, the ‘collateral damage’ would be the life of all humanity”.

The book concludes with two chapters focussing on “Reversing the Tide of War”.

“The Globalization of War” is diplomatic dynamite – and the fuse is burning rapidly.”

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95 

Order directly from Global Research

Special Price: $15.00

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

Conversations on the Dangers of Nuclear War: Fidel Castro and Michel Chossudovsky, Havana, October 2010

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.

The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.

Order directly from Global Research

REVIEWS:

“Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the most realistic of all foreign policy commentators. He is a model of integrity in analysis, his book provides an honest appraisal of the extreme danger that U.S. hegemonic neoconservatism poses to life on earth.”

Übersetzung : K. S.

La decisione degli Stati uniti di uscire dall’accordo sul nucleare iraniano – stipulato nel 2015 da Teheran con i 5 membri permanenti del Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu più la Germania – provoca una situazione di estrema pericolosità non solo per il Medio Oriente.

The White House has declined to comment on a planned Indonesian real estate project which will bring together Trump Organization branding and hundreds of millions of dollars of Chinese government money.

“MNC Lido City” is the name of the massive, billion-dollar “integrated lifestyle resort” that will be built on the outskirts of Jakarta. Among other things, the resort will include hotels, residences, and a golf course that will all be under the Trump Organization brand.

Meanwhile, a state-owned Chinese construction firm has signed a deal to be the ones to build a theme park inside the resort.

The project is yet another part of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” an ambitious trillion dollar effort that’s aimed at improving infrastructure, connectivity, and cooperation across Asia, Africa, and Europe while helping China to reassume its position at the center of the world.

In that vein, the resort will receive funding of up to $500 million in Chinese government loans, according to the AFP.

Though the Chinese construction firm will not actually build any of the Trump-branded properties, the AFP notes that China will play an extremely critical part in the project’s overall success — providing half of the funding and constructing one of its key attractions.

There’s no evidence that the Trump Organization lobbied for Chinese money and help in the project, however, the president’s sons were reportedly directly involved in various stages of the resort’s planning. The organization first signed on to be a part of the Lido project in 2015.

At a White House press briefing yesterday, a Los Angeles Times reporter asked how this project was not a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause and of the Trump Organization’s promise not to engage in any new foreign deals while Trump was president.

“I’ll have to refer you to the Trump organization,” answered Press Secretary Raj Shah. “You’re asking about a private organization’s dealings that may have to do with a foreign government. It’s not something that I can speak to.”

Asked about Chinese government's involvement in a Trump Organization project in Indonesia and if that violates the emoluments clause, Raj Shah says, "I'll have to refer you to the Trump Organization… you're asking about a private organization's dealings." pic.twitter.com/3R2vjEHe32

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2018

While this sort of questionable and corruptible fusion of private business and the presidency has been part of the President Donald Trump experience from the very beginning, the Lido project has managed to raise more eyebrows than usual, coming just as Trump has made the unusual decision to publicly step forward to protect Chinese phone maker ZTE and save Chinese jobs.

ZTE is facing financial ruin at the moment after being hit with a crippling ban from the US Commerce Department which forbids American companies from selling to the firm for the next seven years. The ban came after ZTE was found to have broken an agreement reached last year with the US when it was caught illegally shipping millions of dollars of American hardware and software to Iran, violating sanctions.

Considering Trump’s “America First” persona and his fiery rhetoric against Iran, many were stunned and perplexed by his pro-ZTE tweet on Sunday. Some have now insinuated that the US president’s sudden support for the Chinese phone-maker comes because of the $500 million in loans from Beijing.

If you didn't care about Trump breaking the emoluments clause before, now that he's trying to bail out China Smartphone giant ZTE in what seems to be a way to secure a $500 million Chinese loan that benefits Trump hotels in Indonesia, maybe now would be a good time to start!

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) May 14, 2018

However, others argue that Trump is merely acting as the Negotiator in Chief, offering to save ZTE in exchange for important trade concessions. The Wall Street Journal has reported that for the removal of sanctions against ZTE, China is prepared to drop tariffs on a number of US agricultural products including pork.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

Internet freedom defenders warned on Tuesday that with only 24 hours left before the Senate votes to possibly nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal of net neutrality, the vote is expected to be “excruciatingly close”—and urged net neutrality supporters to flood Capitol Hill’s phone lines and demand that lawmakers protect the Open Internet.

.

Republican senators were hoping to avoid the vote, but Democrats are using a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to force the full Senate to vote. The CRA resolution would nullify the FCC's December 2017 vote. https://t.co/QTFb5HnzYL

— Free Press (@freepress) May 15, 2018

Several lawmakers including Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), John Kennedy (R-La.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) are currently on the fence, due to concerns over “retribution from Comcast’s and Verizon’s army of lobbyists,” according to the net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future.

WE'RE LESS THAN 24 HOURS AWAY FROM THE SENATE VOTE FOR #NetNeutrality

We need to sound the alarm in Louisiana and Alaska. Tell senators @lisamurkowski and @SenJohnKennedy why the open Internet matters to you. Take action before it's too late: https://t.co/VkoZiZdHEd pic.twitter.com/BqFZOSlN8i

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) May 15, 2018

“We need to make it clear that they should be more afraid of us than they are of them. And we only have a few more hours to make a difference,” wrote the group in an email to its supporters.

The latest call to action followed similar rallying cries in recent days, as senators who oppose the FCC’s December repeal of net neutrality rules have prepared to bring the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to the senate floor for a vote. Passage of the resolution by the Senate and the House would offer a chance to void the Republican-controlled FCC’s 3-2 vote.

The FCC’s decision was welcomed by internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon, which without net neutrality in place would be able to throttle traffic in order to charge content producers and web users for premium access or services. While powerful telecom companies would be the sole beneficiaries of the FCC’s rule change, surveys have consistently showed widespread and bipartisan backing for the net neutrality protections, with a recent poll showing 83 percent of Americans in support.

“The outcome of this Senate vote will impact the fight for Internet freedom for years to come,” wrote Fight for the Future’s deputy director, Evan Greer. “If we turn this into a huge moment, we can shift the dynamic in Washington, D.C. and get lawmakers from both parties to listen to their constituents for once, at least on this one issue.”

The group urged supporters to call key senators in Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and California, as well as Murkowski, Gardner, and Kennedy, to ensure that the Democratic caucus of 49 senators have the Republican support they need to pass the CRA. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is the only Republican who has pledged to support net neutrality.

“The next 24 hours could make or break this fight…This is a moment where the entire Internet needs to go all-in for net neutrality,” wrote Greer.

*

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

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“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.

Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

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Western Governments Complicit in Crimes against Humanity. “Israel has the Right to Defend itself” Says Trump

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2018

Not a single Western country has sofar ordered the expulsion of Israeli diplomats in protest over the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by IDF snipers, including children. A crime against humanity under international law is casually dismissed. “Israel has the right to defend itself”, says  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

West’s Failure to Act Will be Cause of the Next Gaza Massacre

By Jonathan Cook, May 16, 2018

Faced with protests at the perimeter fence in Gaza, Israeli snipers killed dozens of unarmed Palestinians and wounded more than 2,000 others, including children, women, journalists and paramedics, in a hail of live fire. Amnesty, the international human rights organisation, rightly called it a “horror show”.

Kim Jong Un’s Move from Nuclearization to Denuclearization? Changes and Continuities in North Korea and the Future of Northeast Asia

By Prof. Jae-Jung Suh, May 16, 2018

Kim Jong Un’s recent moves appear to many a complete reversal of his earlier policy of Byongjin under which his regime went full steam ahead towards developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs. In 2017 alone, Pyongyang conducted ICBM tests and an alleged “hydrogen bomb” test, declared the completion of a strategic nuclear force, and even threatened to annihilate the United States.

Trump Israel Collusion on Syria

By Renee Parsons, May 16, 2018

Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.

Why is Venezuela’s Buying Foreign Oil for Latin American Allies?

By Andrew Korybko, May 16, 2018

All blame aside, however, the narrative that Venezuela is subsidizing its institutional partners at the expense of its own citizens is only partially true since there’s of course a literal “zero-sum” cost involved in these sorts of transactions, but that storyline misses the larger strategic point of why the Bolivarian Republic is even doing this in the first place.

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza

By Black Alliance for Peace, May 16, 2018

While a delegation from the Trump administration and leaders from various parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem to witness the illegal and immoral move of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to the beleaguered and contested city, Israeli soldiers slaughtered unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The latest count reports more than 50 dead and 2,700 wounded.

Victory Day! Russians Remembered Their 26 Million Dead, Unaware of Contribution of US Capitalism to Nazi Germany’s War Economy

By Jay Janson, May 15, 2018

This past weekend saw Russians parading in celebration of the anniversary of their costly victory over Nazi Germany. Millions marched throughout Russia, holding photographs of their fallen family members in bittersweet remembrance. To this archival research peoples historian’s knowledge there was no public reminder that Hitler’s armed forces were built up by the West in open violation of the Versailles Treaty’s prohibitions in expectation of Hitler fulfilling his threats to invade the Soviet Union.

This week, 61 killed and over 770 wounded: Palestinian civilians were targeted by IDF snipers with live ammunition.

 Not a single Western country has sofar ordered the expulsion of Israeli diplomats in protest over the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by IDF snipers. 

A crime against humanity under international law is casually dismissed.

Double standards is an understatement: Flashback to early March 2018. When the Skripal affair broke out in the U.K., the Kremlin was accused without evidence of poisoning double agent Peter Skripal and his daughter Yulia, with the deadly novichok nerve gas.

Pressured by London and Washington, more than twenty Western countries ordered the expulsion of more than 100 Russian diplomats. In the meantime the Skripals have fully recovered. Nobody was killed.

In contrast, following the Gaza massacre, not a single Israeli diplomat has been expelled from the member states of the European Union.

“Israel has the right to defend itself”, says  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

No UN member “would act with more restraint than Israel has.” said US Ambassador to the UN Nicki Halley.

The lie becomes the truth. These statements are tantamount to an endorsement of crimes against humanity by the self-proclaimed “international community”.

And the corporate media applauds. Palestinians are tagged as terrorists.

While the Skripal affair was the object of extensive (invariably biased) coverage largely with a view to upholding Theresa May’s baseless accusations against Russia, the reports pertaining to the Gaza killings largely uphold the notion that “Israel has the right to defend itself”.

The broader issue of crimes against humanity under international law is barely mentioned. What we are facing is the political acceptance of the Gaza massacre which is tantamount to the criminalization of the Western governments which represent us.

Here are the the names of some of the 61 Palestinians killed by IDF snipers, who, according to Donald Trump have been attacking Israel. They happen to be children.  An eight months old baby was targeted.

1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old

2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old

3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old

4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old

5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old

For the complete list of Palestinians killed click here

Eight-month-old Laila is the youngest Palestinian killed in Gaza on Monday, the deadliest day since 2014 war

.

.

From left: Ahmed Alrantisi, Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, Ahmed Altetr, Alaa Alkhatib Ezz el-din Alsamaak, Motassem Abu Louley (screengrab)

From left: Fadi Abu Salah, Motaz Al-Nunu, Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh

From left: Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah (screengrab)

From left: Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, Obaidah Salim Farhan (screengrab)

From left: Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk (screengrab)

List of names and ages

1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old

2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old

3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old

4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old

5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old

6. Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, 18 years old

7. Eman Ali Sadiq Alsheikh, 19 years old

8. Zayid Mohamed Hasan Omar, 19 years old

9. Motassem Fawzy Abu Louley, 20 years old

10. Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh, 21 years old

11. Mohamed Abd Alsalam Harz, 21 years old

12. Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, 22 years old

13. Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, 22 years old

14. Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, 23 years old

15. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23 years old

16. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shahadah, 23 years old

17. Ahmed Awad Allah, 24 years old

18. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, 25 years old

19. Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26 years old

20. Bilal Ahmed Abu Diqah, 26 years old

21. Ahmed Majed Qaasim Ata Allah, 27 years old

22. Mahmoud Rabah Abu Maamar, 28 years old

23.Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, 28 years old

24. Ahmed Fawzy Altetr, 28 years old

25. Mohamed Abdelrahman Meqdad, 28 years old

26. Obaidah Salim Farhan, 30 years old

27. Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, 30 years old

28. Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, 30 years old

29. Motaz Bassam Kamil Al-Nunu, 31 years old

30. Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, 31 years old

31. Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, 31 years old

32. Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, 32 years old

33. Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, 35 years old

34. Mohammed Mahmoud Abdulmoti Abdal’al, 39 years old

35. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27 years old

36. Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk, 30 years old

37. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Alrantisi, 27 years old

38. Alaa Alnoor Ahmed Alkhatib, 28 years old

39. Mahmoud Yahya Abdawahab Hussain, 24 years old

40. Ahmed Abdullah Aladini, 30 years old

41. Saadi Said Fahmi Abu Salah, 16 years old

42. Ahmed Zahir Hamid Alshawa, 24 years old

43. Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, 33 years old

44. Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, 34 years old

45. Mokhtar Kaamil Salim Abu Khamash, 23 years old

46. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, 21 years old

47. Abdulrahman Sami Abu Mattar, 18 years old

48. Ahmed Salim Alyaan Aljarf, 26 years old

49. Mahmoud Sulayman Ibrahim Aql, 32 years old

50. Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah, 25 years old

51. Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old

52. Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old

53. Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old

54. Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old

55. Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old

56. Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old

57. Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old

58. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old

59 – 61: Unidentified

Never to forget …. never to forgive!

Featured image: Israel’s Merkava Tank in the Golan Heights. (By ChameleonsEye /Shutterstock)

The exchange of missiles last week on the Syrian-Israeli border was anything but normal.

This firefight established new rules of engagement in the Levant, and made the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights an “operational theater” in the Syrian conflict overnight.

The mainstream media’s version of events began with Israel retaliating against Iranian missile strikes, and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) destroying Iran’s military capabilities inside Syria. But that information is questionable: it comes almost exclusively from Israelis who rarely miss an opportunity to beat the “Iranian threat” war drum.

In the lead-up to the May 10 skirmish—just after the Trump administration exited the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear agreement—Israeli officials began warning of an impending Iranian attack from inside Syria. Then, within hours of the ensuing firefight, an Israeli army spokesman announced that the elite “Quds Force” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had fired 20 missiles into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, after which Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman boasted that

“we hit nearly all Iranian infrastructures in Syria.”

IDF spokesman Brigadier General Ronen Manilas described Israel’s actions as “one of the greatest operations of the Israel Air Force in the past decade.” But as the dust settled, an altogether different version of events began to take shape.

A check of the actual conflict chronology shows that Israel initiated the incident by striking Syrian military targets in Kisweh (the Damascus suburbs) and Baath city (Quneitra) over the two preceding days. Russia had warned both Syria and Iran of the impending Israeli strike with the result that neither Iranian military personnel nor weapons systems appear to have been hit. The Syrian military (and not the IRGC) retaliated by firing 55 rockets at Israeli military outposts and installations in the occupied part of the Golan. Local Arab media identified these targets as key Israeli surveillance centers that crippled Israel’s “eyes and ears” along that vital demarcation line. Israel’s vaunted “Iron Dome” defense system failed to intercept most of these rockets, while the Syrian military intercepted more than half of Israel’s missiles, according to Russian military officials.

What is undisputed: the military back-and-forth was the first major firefight between Syria and Israel in the occupied Golan Heights since 1973—making the Golan an operational theater for the first time in over four decades. This is also the first time during the Syrian Civil War that the Syrian military has retaliated against Israeli strikes by hitting Israeli military installations—not just the incoming missiles and the Israeli warplanes firing them. And finally, Israel must contend for the first time with the fact that any battle it initiates can be waged in its own backyard.

Clearly, this is neither the result nor the response that Israel expected.

So how did we get here? The Israelis have been aiming to gain a “buffer zone” along their border with Syria, but that effort has faced serious setbacks since the the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces ejected militants from key Damascus suburbs this year.

Israel has materially backed many of these militant forces along its border with Syria for years, including medical and other forms of support for extremists, like al-Nusra fighters, and moral support for ISIS, which maintains a small presence on Israel’s border with Syria. Nusra and ISIS, after all, have been the most successful “opposition” forces combating the SAA in the Syrian crisis, and were therefore valuable assets for Israel-–especially as neither group has shown any inclination to target the Israelis. ISIS once even apologized to Israel for a brief clash with IDF forces in late 2016.

A partitioned and weak Syria is what Israel wants, as it would thwart the strength of one of its main Arab states as well as Syria’s vital Iranian ally. But now southern Syria is once more awash with the SAA and its allied troops, who have set their sights on continuing their southward trek into areas Israel considers its strategic depth.

In December, Beit Jinn—the last significant militant-held enclave southwest of Damascus—was overrun by the SAA, reportedly with the assistance of Hezbollah and the IRGC. Beit Jinn is nestled in a mountain passageway linking Syria, Lebanon, and Israel— near the Golan demarcation line—and its loss threw the Israelis into a tizzy.

This move brought Hezbollah, the Iranians, and the Syrians into one of the most strategic points on the Golan border, a development Israel has frantically tried to reverse since the U.S.-Russian-Jordanian “de-escalation-zone” was established in southern Syria last year.

On April 9, Israel launched unprecedented strikes against Iranian targets at the T4 military base in Homs, killing seven IRGC troops, including a commander. This was just one of the 100 separate airstrikes that Israel has claimed since it first struck Syrian targets in 2013. But the T4 attack changed everything. For the “Resistance Axis”—whose core members are Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah—it was time to deliver some “consequence” and take control of the Israeli escalation.

Four days later, Hezbollah Secretary General Seyed Hassan Nasrallah hit the airwaves to make this shift clear to the Israelis:

“The Israelis should know that they have committed a historic mistake. It is not an ordinary mistake…. It is a pivotal incident in the status of the region. What preceded this incident is not the same as what comes after it.”

Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah have rarely responded directly to an Israeli military action, because, according to recent public statements from the deputy leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, they refused to allow Israel to “control the rules of conflict.” It’s a difficult balance to strike, and Israel appears to have been emboldened by the hitherto measured response from its three antagonists. But this time, Israel’s quest to achieve more favorable rules of engagement through repeated missile attacks, even incrementally, may well have backfired. As Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran Mideast correspondent currently in Syria, notes:

“Any Israeli attack from now on, the battle will be taken to the Golan. The Israelis did not anticipate this. They have incorrectly believed that Assad would be busy in Yarmouk, al-Badiya, etc.—that at most he would react in the same way as before.”

In a speech on Monday, Nasrallah confirmed this:

“The message was delivered to the Israeli enemy. It said that the era when you hit Syria without response is over.”

The Hezbollah leader said his alliance had conveyed a message to Israel through third parties that if it “crosses the red lines in Syria more rockets will be launched and they will hit the Israeli depth.”

The Israelis expected the Syrian government, Iran, and Hezbollah to stay mired in their battles against militants elsewhere—and to be restrained by the Russians, who have openly resolved to stay out of Israel’s fights with Hezbollah and Iran. They did not expect this alliance to redirect the confrontation toward Israel’s military land targets inside the occupied Golan Heights, which remains legally Syrian. The international consensus that the “Golan is Syrian” is enshrined in countless UN resolutions, including a recent one adopted in December, creating a real source of political vulnerability for Israel, which cannot legally claim its northeastern border.

That vulnerability has deepened since 2011, as the primarily Druze population of occupied Golan watched in horror as their Syrian relatives across the border were occupied, harassed, and even killed at the hands of Islamist militants. Many Druze believe these militants are supported by Israel. The “axis” is seeking to harness the anger by backing anti-Israel resistance fighters in Golan. Put simply, the Golan is ripe for some stirring from inside and outside, and Israeli strikes in Syria last week just made it a target.

The Russians may not like this turn of events—they would rather focus on de-escalating and resolving the Syrian conflict. But while Moscow has tolerated small Israeli strikes against Syrian and allied military targets, they have the leverage to contain the size and frequency of these attacks. Israel is held in check by Russia’s ability to deliver fully loaded S-300 and S-400 air defense systems to the Syrians, which would be a regional game changer.

In turn, while it is unlikely that any of Israel’s three opponents (Syria, Iran, or Hezbollah) will choose to pick a fight with the Israelis right now, it’s also clear that all of them will retaliate if provoked. In the past seven years, the Middle East has never been so close to war as it is today, which is why there’s an urgent need for cooler heads to prevail—even if, as with Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah—they need to retaliate in order to de-escalate conflict and establish deterrence.

*

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics based in Beirut

Israeli forces shot a Canadian doctor in the leg on Monday as he treated wounded Palestinians protesting in Gaza and killed his medical assistant.

Dr Tarek Loubani, who works as an emergency physician in London, Ontario, and teaches at Western Ontario’s medical school, said he was wearing a distinctive green surgeon’s scrubs and was standing with several paramedics decked in bright orange vests that signify their status as medical workers.

“I am very seasoned about not being shot at. I know where to stand. I know where to be. I know how not to get shot,” he told the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

“Snipers don’t reach me because of mistakes. I did everything right. We were all huddled. It was quiet at the exact moment I got shot. The bullet went through my left leg, through my right leg out and hit the ground,” Loubani added.

"If we receive more patients, how are we going to take care of them? Doctors are overworked. Nurses are overworked. We are running out of stock." Dr. Srihari, ICRC #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/7vN6MOmHxF

— ICRC in Israel & OT (@ICRC_ilot) May 15, 2018

Loubani’s medical assistant, Musa Abuhassanin, was shot and killed by Israeli forces.

“There was relatively heavy fire that was going on. He was wearing a high visibility jacket. It was clearly marked. He was shot in the chest,” Loubani said.

“They couldn’t remove him. They couldn’t recover him for about 30 minutes until finally they dragged him to a blind spot and then dragged him down a hill and took him to the hospital in a civilian vehicle. He died before he got to the hospital,” he said.

Israel has targeted health workers since the protests in Gaza began on 30 March. According to the World Health Organisation, there have been 229 attacks against medical personnel that have helped treat wounded Palestinians.

Doctors Without Borders issued a statement describing chaotic scenes at Gaza’s hospitals, condemning Israel’s attacks on medical workers on Monday.

“In one of the hospitals where we are working, the chaotic situation is comparable to what we observed after the bombings of the 2014 war, with a colossal influx of injured people in a few hours, completely overwhelming the medical staff. Our teams carried out more than 30 surgical interventions today, sometimes on two or three patients in the same operating theatre, and even in the corridors,” the statement read.

Israel has implemented a debilitating blockade on Gaza for nearly a decade, which has crippled the coastal’s hospitals, and the recent protests have, in turn, greatly consumed their medical supply stock.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said 27 percent of the drugs and 40 percent of “medical disposals” were consumed on Monday alone to treat the wounded. UN OCHA said one hospital consumed a month’s amount that day as well.

Hospitals in Gaza are “on the brink of collapse,” according to AIDA, an umbrella group of more than 80 international non-governmental organisations operating in Palestine.

They are “unable to deal with the vast number of injured as a result of a decade-long blockade and insufficient electricity and medical supplies and equipment,” said AIDA.

“Due to the near impossibility of obtaining a medical referral for surgery outside the Gaza Strip, 21 Palestinians injured during demonstrations have so far had limb amputations since 30 March,” AIDA added.

On Tuesday, Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council that Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, including lengthy electricity blackouts, required immediate action to be taken.

“Starting tomorrow, the United Nations, together with international partners will need to focus and redouble efforts to implement projects that will have an immediate impact on improving the electricity, water and health situation as a matter of urgency,” he said.

Typical of the mindset of corporate media reporting on what happened in Gaza on Monday as Israeli soldiers killed more than 50 protesting Palestinians, is this tweet from CNN. It says: “Death toll rises to at least 52 people during clashes along the border fence between Israel and Gaza, Palestinian officials say. More than 2,400 people have been injured.” CNN’s new slogan is “#FactsFirst.”

Adam Johnson, who writes for the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, responded to CNN with a tweet of his own:

“This one’s got it all:

• ‘death toll rises’ — no one was killed and no one specific party did the killing, the death toll just mysteriously ‘rises’

• ‘clashes’ — launders all power asymmetry
• ‘2,400 people have been injured’ — all 2,400 are Palestinian but lets go with ‘people’.”

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said on his blog that he did a Google News search for the word “massacre” and found not one reference to Gaza.

A New York Times headline on Monday said: “Dozens of Palestinians have died in protests as the U.S. prepares to open its Jerusalem Embassy.” Journalist Glenn Greenwald responded:

“Most western media outlets have become quite skilled – through years of practice – at writing headlines and describing Israeli massacres using the passive tense so as to hide the culprit. But the all-time champion has long been, and remains, the New York Times.#HaveDied.”

[Perhaps because of pressure from Greenwald and others, the Times on Monday night changed its headline to “Israel Kills Dozens at Gaza Border as U.S. Embassy Opens in Jerusalem.”]

Yet another CNN headline simply read: “Dozens die in Gaza.” Journalist Max Blumenthal responded:

“Maybe they were old. Perhaps they were very sick. They just up and died! Who will solve the mystery behind these deaths?”

Blumenthal later offered a possible solution to the mystery:

“According to the White House, Khhamas launched 41 protesters into unsuspecting Israeli bullets.”

Projecting

Deflecting blame from Israel is one thing. But projecting it onto the victim is quite another. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon on Monday called for the U.N. Security Council to, “Condemn Hamas for their war crimes,” because “every casualty on the border is a direct victim of Hamas.”

He said in a statement released by Israel’s U.N. mission:

“Condemn Hamas for the war crimes they commit. Not only does Hamas incite tens of thousands of Palestinians to breach the border and hurt Israeli civilians, but Hamas also deliberately endangers Palestinian civilians. The murder of Israeli civilians or deaths of the people of Gaza – each one of them is a desirable outcome for Hamas. Every casualty on the border is a victim of Hamas’ war crimes, every death is a result of Hamas’ terror activity, and these casualties are solely Hamas’ responsibility.”

That’s one way to wash the Israeli government’s (blood-soaked) hands of the matter. Especially if you fear Israel will be accused of war crimes itself for its actions on Monday. Danon mentioned “breaching the border.” But it is virtually impossible to get in or out of Gaza without Israeli permission. Burning kites lofted over the barrier that pens in nearly two million Gazans subject to an internationally unrecognized economic blockade, supposedly constitutes “breaching,” in Danon’s mind.

Source: Middle East Eye

He would do well to consider the words of Moshe Dayan, one of the Israel’s Founding Fathers, who said in 1956:

“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.” He went on: “We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”

So on the day, 61 years later, when the United States declared Jerusalem/Al Quds as the capital of Israel by moving its embassy there, rather than leaving its status to negotiation, people still trapped in Gaza protested at the gate fencing them in while Israeli military snipers picked off more than 50 of them and wounded thousands more for protesting their entrapment.

U.S. Parrots Israel, Media Parrots U.S.

Danon’s position was callously promoted by the White House on Monday. Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah was asked several times to condemn Israel’s military response.

“We believe Hamas is responsible for these tragic deaths,” he said. “Their rather cynical exploitation of the situation is what’s leading to these deaths and we want it stopped.”

He later blamed Hamas for a “gruesome and unfortunate propaganda attempt.”

Unsurprisingly, Congress also lined up behind the Jewish State, mostly ignoring what went on in Gaza.

At the ceremony opening the embassy, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called Monday “a monumental day in United States-Israel relations.” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who was among four senators and 10 members of the House of Representatives present, incredulously said

moving the embassy “furthers the chances of peace in the Middle East by demonstrating that America’s support for Israel is unconditional and will not be bullied by global media opinion.”

Back in Washington, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, proclaimed:

“Every nation should have the right to choose its capital. I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.”

Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party vice presidential candidate in 2016, tweeted:

“Where are the democrats condemning the slaughter in Gaza? If this was Assad they would be joining the republicans calling for military action pretending like they cared for Arab life.”

Handful of Democrats Speak Out 

Bernie Sanders (image on the right) of Vermont mildly criticized Israel’s murderous response.

“Hamas violence does not justify Israel firing on unarmed protesters,” he said. “The United States must play an aggressive role in bringing Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the international community together to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and stop this escalating violence.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, was more critical:

“It’s just heartbreaking. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is desperate. Instead of cutting aid, the Trump administration must restore our leadership role and do what it can to alleviate the Palestinians’ suffering. The location of the embassy is a final-status issue that should have been resolved as part of peace negotiations where both sides benefit, not just one side. Israel will only know true security when it is at peace with its neighbors.”

Representative Betty McCollum, a Democrat from Minnesota, tweeted:

“Today’s @USEmbassyIsrael opening in Jerusalem & killing of dozens of Gaza protesters advances @netanyahu agenda of occupation & oppression of Palestinians. @realDonaldTrump policies are fueling conflict, abandoning diplomatic efforts to achieve peace.”

Pressure to support Israel on The Hill is infamously intense. But what is the media’s excuse for being afraid to simply report facts, such as that Israeli soldiers “killed” Palestinians on Monday. They didn’t just simply die.

Just because U.S. government figures are apologists for Israel, does not mean the media must be too. But that would require the U.S. having an independent mainstream media.

When control of powerful mainstream communications breeds self-aggrandizement and adherence to a line pushed for so long because it got you where you are in the pecking order of media culture, it seems virtually impossible to shift gears and take another look at what you are reporting.

*

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

Reuters published an exclusive report claiming that Venezuela is purchasing foreign oil for its regional friends, but contrary to what the outlet implies is a desperate bid by a failing state to hold on to its last partners left, it’s really doing so in order to stave off the hemisphere’s re-subjugation to full-spectrum American dominance.

Reuters just released a report that it provocatively headlined “Exclusive: As Venezuelans suffer, Maduro buys foreign oil to subsidize Cuba”, which attempts to frame Caracas’ purchase of foreign oil for its regional friends like Cuba as a harebrained scheme by an ideologically extreme socialist government on the brink of all-out state failure. There’s no doubt that Venezuela has been pushed to the edge of collapse, but the US’ multipronged Hybrid War is just as responsible for this as is the government’s shortcomings in managing this situation afterwards. All blame aside, however, the narrative that Venezuela is subsidizing its institutional partners at the expense of its own citizens is only partially true since there’s of course a literal “zero-sum” cost involved in these sorts of transactions, but that storyline misses the larger strategic point of why the Bolivarian Republic is even doing this in the first place.

It’s not because, like Reuters strongly implies, Venezuela is desperately trying to hold on to its last partners left and has no other choice than to foot the bill for their energy expenses if it hopes to avoid the implementation of tougher regional sanctions. It might appear that way on the surface but the events of the past decade and a half since the US led a so-called “Coalition of the Willing” in waging the War on Iraq prove that groups of states can bypass international organizations in carrying out punitive measures against their targets so long as they’re willing to accept the political and other risks involved. Some Latin American countries have already ramped up the pressure against Venezuela at the US’ presumed behest, but the smaller and more multipolar-aligned ones such as Cuba and Nicaragua that are beneficiaries of Caracas’ “energy diplomacy” have no logical interests in bandwagoning with Washington.

Their governments are ideologically aligned with Venezuela’s on many levels and wouldn’t backstab their Bolivarian brothers like that, though it must be cautioned that smaller states such as the Caribbean island ones might not have the same loyalty to Caracas as they do. In any case, the geostrategic states that matter aren’t at risk of capriciously changing their mind, at least under “normal” circumstances. What’s meant by this is that the worsening Hybrid War conditions that the US is putting them under in their own way are presenting challenges to their governments, and the resultant instability could eventually lead to regime change and the replacement of the present multipolar-friendly authorities with unipolar ones. It’s precisely because of this strategic danger why Venezuela isn’t just giving its own subsidized oil to its partners, but is even purchasing foreign reserves when it can’t provide the same amount to them that it previously had.

Whether for better or for worse, Venezuela’s Latin American allies have grown dependent on cheap Caracas-provided energy, and the price increases (however marginal they may be) that they’d have to deal with if they were forced to purchase resources at the normal market rates could be enough to capsize their already-fragile economies, especially under the US-imposed Hybrid War conditions that they’re facing. Paradoxically, while Venezuela may have originally given its partners subsidized energy in order to allow them to reinvest the extra money into social programs for sustaining the loyalty of their populations and therefore proactively thwarting Hybrid War threats, it nevertheless turns out that any decrease in these said subsidizes as a result of US pressure could inadvertently function as their own Hybrid War triggers against them, representing perhaps one of the cruelest ironies from the “Pink Tide” era that’s rapidly ebbing due to Washington’s  “Operation Condor 2.0” hemisphere-wide unipolar pushback.

To recap, Venezuela is almost compelled to continue providing subsidized energy to its partners – even if it has to purchase these same resources from abroad due to domestic production difficulties – in order to maintain the regional strategic equilibrium as best as it can by complicating the US’ manifold Hybrid War plots. In and of themselves, cheap petroleum shipments won’t put an end to any Hybrid War campaigns, but they will at the very least make them harder to pull off. Should these subsidies decrease in scale, especially suddenly, then the economic repercussions for the recipient country would be severe and the consequent systemic shock could provoke a fast-moving regime change movement that succeeds in toppling the targeted government.  Venezuela shows no signs of stopping its shipments, but the timing of this Reuters release suggests that the news of Caracas purchasing foreign resources for its friends in the midst of its own nationwide crisis is designed to influencing the upcoming 20 May elections.

Venezuela is therefore caught in the horns of a classic dilemma in that it’s “damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t” continue with its regional energy program. Doing so despite the Hybrid War crisis might provoke rage among some of the electorate who believe that their government shouldn’t prioritize other countries’ economies over their own, especially if it’s going as far as buying foreign energy for them because it doesn’t even have enough at home to sell at a subsidized rate. On the other hand, each of the beneficiary states fulfills a certain strategic function for Venezuela beyond the superficial one that international media likes to focus on in supposedly only being worthwhile in preventing regional organizations from reaching a census decision for further pressuring it. It’s for this reason more so than any other such as “buying” friends or self-sacrificing ideological solidarity why Venezuela continues to provide its partners with subsidized energy resources, even if it’s been forced to buy some of them from abroad.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Pyongyang cancelled May 16 high-level inter-Korean talks in response to provocative US/South Korean military exercises, violating the Panmunjom Declaration’s letter and spirit – explained below.

On Tuesday, a North Korean KCNA media report said the following:

This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea and targeting us, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean Peninsula, adding:

The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities.

Provisions of the inter-Korean Panmunjom Declaration include the following:

• alleviating longstanding bilateral military tension to curb the threat of war on the peninsula;
• ceasing hostile actions by both sides against each other, including transformation of the DMZ into a peace zone;
• establishing a permanent peninsula peace regime, ending an uneasy armistice, and formally ending the Korean War;
• concluding a Non-Aggression Agreement between both sides;
• beginning a process of phased disarmament – providing tensions between both countries ease, along with achieving military confidence-building progress.

Pyongyang justifiably believes US/South Korean military exercises are rehearsals for war on the North.

The Panmunjom Declaration was an important step in the right direction – yet a long way from achieving peace and stability on the peninsula because Washington rejected normalized relations with the PPRK since the late 1940s.

Earlier initiatives to change things failed when less extremist US administrations were in power than now.

World peace and stability are virtually off the table with hardline neocons in charge of Trump’s geopolitical agenda – targeting all sovereign independent countries for regime change, a US imperial objective long before his election.

High-level May 16 inter-Korean talks were scheduled to discuss implementation of what both countries agreed on last month in summit talks.

On Wednesday, DPRK First Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan (image on the right) said

(w)e will not be interested in talks anymore if (the Trump administration) only tries to push us unilaterally into a corner and force us to give up nukes, adding:

It would be inevitable to reconsider whether to respond to the upcoming summit with the US.

North Korea’s minister criticized US unilateral demands, calling them a way to force the destiny of the collapsed Libya and Iraq to our dignified state.

Endless violence and chaos followed US-led war on both countries, devastation the DPKR experienced from Washington’s aggression in the early 1950s – developing nukes as a deterrent to prevent another war on the peninsula.

Minister Kim said he doubt(s) whether the United States really wants sound dialogue and negotiation.

In dealings with other countries, Washington demands, especially sovereign independent ones – most often breaching agreements made, JCPOA pullout the latest example, proving again the US can never be trusted.

If DPRK/US summit talks take place in mid-June as scheduled, chances for ending US hostility toward the North are slim at best – and that’s being generous.

Replacing all sovereign independent governments with pro-Western vassal ones is part of Washington’s aim for global hegemony – naked aggression and color revolutions its favored strategies.

America’s long history of deal-breaking and determination to dominate other nations is the greatest obstacle to peace and stability on the peninsula – and everywhere else.

Things aren’t likely to be different from DPRK/US talks if any occur ahead.

A previous article explained the Korean peninsula remains a hugely dangerous tinderbox. Trump’s rage for warmaking could ignite an uncontrollable firestorm – talks or no talks.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

As was predicted, when Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar returned from his supposed brief – two weeks departure from the Libyan scene, allegedly in hospital – he launched a major operation to take control of the last main bastion of ‘Islamists’ in the East, in Derna ….and he is winning.

Haftar declared from his HQ that this was “the zero hour to liberate Derna” from the control of self-styled ‘Derna Mujahideen Shura Council’ (DMSC). Note DMSC has been rebranded DDF and is in actuality a coalition of armed Islamist factions.

In the coming days, it appears that Haftar will succeed in taking Derna, which will mean that Haftar will finally have the entire eastern region completely under his control, making him undisputed leader of the oil rich eastern region. Additionally, by taking Derna, he will have succeeded in eradicating Islamist extremists from the whole of the eastern part of the country. Haftar can then truly present himself to all Libyans and his foreign backers – headed by Russia, not America – as the only real power in the whole of Libya worth dealing with.

Moreover, Haftar will be perceived as an unstoppable force, able to defeat even the most hardened and entrenched Islamist extremists in Derna, which was considered as Libya’s militant Islamist stronghold, even for American/British covertly-supported ISIS.

This is likely bring the other parts of Libya into line, even past Tripoli to the Tunisian border. While Haftar has some supporters in these areas, they are likened to ‘a silent majority’ the famous phrase used by a previous US President.

Importantly, former Gaddafi regime members, of whom there are many, could put their full support behind Haftar, especially those who are disillusioned by a weak and ineffectual Saif Gaddafi, a potential leader with no vision, strategy nor any significant ground forces of any kind.

Apart from Russia, if Haftar gets the support from regional players, namely Egypt and the UAE, to also vanquish all remnants and networks of the Muslim Brotherhood Sect, who are supported by Turkey and Qatar, Haftar will become the de facto, undisputed ruler of Libya.

The writer believes Haftar should be very wary of continuing to accept too much support from Saudi Arabia for many good reasons, too numerous to mention here. Where Saudi goes there follows military and intelligence advisors from Israel, which is risky for Haftar; his greatest error would be to accept help from Israel, despite that country’s current partial rapprochement with Egypt.

A very notable humiliation by the British was last week’s admission by the UK government to their ‘mishandling’ of a well known admitted Al Qaeda terrorist, Abdul Hakim Belhadj, even publicly apologising to him, over actions taken 15 years ago on Tony Blair‘s Labour’s watch. This, what amounted to grovelling, was given emphasis by Conservative Prime Minister May’s government, as she also stayed silent about the devastation her predecessor Cameron wreaked on Libya and its people, by the unprovoked destruction of a nation using the NATO organisation. Is that the new reality of Orwellian ‘newspeak’ to describe NATO’s new role as ‘humanitarian interventionists’ advocated by these self-styled ‘liberal democrats’, everyone to a man/woman a hypocrite?

Given this ultimate British humiliation, Haftar’s most important individual target would be the capture or the execution of Belhadj, which would provide a tremendous psychological defeat in every way to Islamic extremists and their masters in the West, namely USA and UK.

Such action would reverberate beyond Libya’s borders, throughout the MENA region, particularly in Tunisia. It is worth remembering that Tunisians make up the majority of ISIS fighters who, simultaneously, are followers of the Muslim Brotherhood sect, a British imperialist creation from the 1920s.

The ‘fashion’ for a 21st century revival of a version of imperialistic colonialism by countries such as USA, UK, France and now Israel, is a passing fad that is doomed to failure. In a multi-polar world it should be crushed and eliminated whenever it rears its ugly head, whether in Libya or for that matter, anywhere on the planet.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns Israel’s shooting of London, ON based doctor Tarek Loubani, shot while attending the wounded in Gaza. Despite being clearly identified as a first responder, Loubani sustained a moderate injury to his left leg, and a minor injury to his right leg. A friend and colleague of Loubani’s, paramedic Musa Abuhassanin was killed, along with at least 54 other Palestinians in Gaza yesterday.

Loubani makes regular medical missions to Gaza, and was trying to provide medical treatment to Palestinian protesters injured by Israeli snipers. Monday was the bloodiest day yet of a weeks-long protest in Gaza where Palestinians seek to call international attention to the “Nakba”: the dispossession and loss suffered by Palestinians as a result of the UN Partition Plan of 1947. International condemnation of Israel’s violent response to the protest grew yesterday, as UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein condemned the “shocking killing of dozens” by Israel, and the EU called on Israel to respect the principle of proportionality.

The Trudeau government’s response was muted, with foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland refusing to call out Israel on its bloody response to what is a passionate, but manifestly peaceful protest. However, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh asserted,

“The use of live ammunition against protestors and resulting deaths are clear violations of international law and human rights.”

He also called for an independent investigation of the Palestinian deaths.

“We demand that our government condemn the shooting of Loubani, if not the killing of the 55 other Palestinians,” declared Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “While the shooting of Palestinians civilians is unlawful, the shooting of medical personnel is even more egregious,” continued Woodley.

Many pundits pointed out the incongruity between the killings in Gaza, and the nearby fanfare of the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem. Current events suggest that CJPME was correct in disagreeing with US president Trump’s assertion that the move of the embassy was a step toward peace.

Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Moon Jae-In and the coming summit with Donald Trump do not constitute a volte-face by the North Korean leader. He has consistently sought meetings to find a solution to the nuclear problem, but equally consistently responded with nuclear or missile tests when his diplomatic initiatives are rejected. The recent virtuous cycle began when Moon seized the opportunity of the Winter Olympics in South Korea to create an opening for inter-Korean meetings and Kim reciprocated. Kim has also been consistent in his quest for engagement with the world economy as a strategy of economic development, and steadily taken steps away from his father’s Military First policy toward his Economy First policy. His consistency creates an opening, which Moon effectively used to engage the North to propose a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons and end the state of war. The United States will have a historic choice to make in June when Trump meets Kim in Singapore.

*

Kim Jong Un’s recent moves appear to many a complete reversal of his earlier policy of Byongjin under which his regime went full steam ahead towards developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs. In 2017 alone, Pyongyang conducted ICBM tests and an alleged “hydrogen bomb” test, declared the completion of a strategic nuclear force, and even threatened to annihilate the United States. But all the weapons tests, threats, and hostilities were halted in 2018 when Kim in his New Year’s Address proposed talks with South Korea and sent a high level delegation as well as a team of athletes and artists to the South during the Winter Olympics. His “peace offensive” intensified with an announcement on April 20^th that the DPRK would stop testing missiles and nuclear weapons, and culminated in the summit meeting a week later with Moon Jae-In, South Korea’s President, where he agreed to a “complete denuclearization.

 Undated North Korean photograph of missile tests

Why the sudden change? How credible are Kim’s peace overtures this time? Analysts and policymakers have offered a variety of answers. Some argue that Kim changed under pressure of U.S.-led international sanctions that had begun to take a toll on the North’s economy.² Others believe that Kim is trying to negotiate from a position of strength now that he has acquired nuclear weapons and that he is not likely to give up his trump card.³ It is critical to understand the reasons for change because it is likely to lay a basis for how the world, particularly South Korea, the United States, and China, may respond.

Did Kim Change?

A close reading of the record suggests that Kim has not changed. While it is certainly true that he had conducted a series of nuclear and missile tests at an accelerating rate until last year, it is largely forgotten that he had also repeatedly proposed to discuss denuclearization and peace. On July 6, 2016, for example, the North Korean government’s spokesperson issued a proposal for talks that referred to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as not only a legacy left by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il but also the “unchanging will of our party, military and people under Kim Jong Un’s guidance,” invoking virtually every source of authority that North Koreans could mobilize. But the Park Geun-Hye and Obama administrations rejected the proposal the following day, accusing the North of conditioning denuclearization talks on its traditional demand that the U.S. withdraw its military from the South. In fact, Pyongyang had called only for “an announcement” that the troops would leave, and limited – as if it was worried that Seoul and Washington might miss the tacit retreat from its traditional position – its demand to U.S. troops “that held the authority to launch nuclear weapons from the South.” Given that the U.S. commander in Korea does not decide on the use of nuclear weapons, this demand was Pyongyang’s de facto if roundabout acceptance of a continued American military presence in the South.⁴

Pyongyang made another overture in 2017. Kye Chun Yong, North Korea’s ambassador to India, suggested in a TV interview that his country could freeze its nuclear and missile tests if Americans suspended their military exercises with the South, adding that it was ready to start a dialogue with Washington “at any time and without any precondition.” With this proposal, Pyongyang sweetened its earlier announcement that it was prepared to freeze only its nuclear tests in exchange for freezing the planned U.S.-South Korea military exercise, de facto submitting to Beijing’s proposal of “freeze for freeze.”⁵ But this too fell on deaf ears as Seoul and Washington turned it down the following day. Each time its proposal was rejected or replied with a military maneuver or a sanction, Pyongyang responded with missile and nuclear tests, exacerbating the vicious cycle between weapons tests and sanctions.

The cycle was broken by President Moon in December 2017. In an interview with the American NBC TV, he broke the news that he had proposed to President Trump postponement of the joint US-ROK military exercise until the end of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Paralympics on February 27. The seemingly minor yet politically difficult move – many in the South consider the joint military exercise a sacrosanct foundation of the U.S.-ROK alliance relationship that should not be altered especially as a concession to the North – precipitated a cascade of changes. Kim Jong Un responded positively in less than a week that he would send a delegation and hold a meeting with Seoul. Moon and Trump quickly reciprocated. They agreed in a telephone call on January 4^th to postpone the military exercise, with Trump going so far as to state that “America supports President Moon 100 percent.” Kim then sent a special envoy to the South; and Moon reciprocated. A virtuous cycle had begun.

Kim Changed Long Ago

The cycle received a boost from an unexpected source. On April 20^th a week before the summit, the Korean Workers Party held a plenary meeting of the Central Committee and adopted a new national strategy that moved the country from the Byongjin line – simultaneously developing nuclear weapons and the economy – to an Economy First policy. Now that the Byongjin line had been successfully completed with successive nuclear tests, Kim declared at the meeting, it was time to dedicate “the whole party and the entire nation” to economic development. He thus completed the journey he had started with his Byongjin initiative in 2013 when he elevated the economy to the same level as the military, a bold step away from his father’s “military first” policy that had prioritized the military, as I argued earlier.⁶ With the new Economy First policy, he took another step in the same direction. His eyes had been set on the economy from the beginning, but needed the stepping stone of nuclear success to turn fully toward the economy without contradicting his father.⁷ Cheong Seong-Chang of the South’s Sejong Institute suggested that the Central Committee decision made clear Kim Jong Un’s intention to negotiate away the nuclear weapons and focus on economic development, calling it his bid to become a “Deng Xiaoping of North Korea.”⁸

Kim Jung Un presides over a meeting of the Central Committee

The change in the ruling party’s orientation was prepared about a week earlier at the Supreme People’s Assembly. The North’s highest state organ shuffled its top officials on April 11^th in ways that provided a stepping stone to the party’s decision. It demoted military officials and promoted diplomats and economic technocrats. Hwang Pyong So, Political Commissar of the military, was dismissed from the second highest post as Vice Chairman of the State Affairs Commission (SAC), and his successor Kim Jong Gak was appointed only as a member of the SAC. Kim Jong Un had earlier established the SAC to replace the National Defense Commission, the most powerful administrative body during his father’s rule, and now the SAC rid itself of generals from the top positions, leaving Kim Jong Un as Chairman with two civilians as Vice-Chairs. One of them was Choe Ryong Hae, Director of the party’s organization bureau who had restored the party’s control over the military during Kim Jong Un’s initial years. The other, Pak Pong Ju, was a technocrat who rose through the ranks to become Premier of the Cabinet. The change at the top made it clear that the military’s influence in state affairs would be limited, reversing the central role the military had played under the Military First politics of Kim Jong-il.

These changes in turn built on earlier developments. Jong Seok Lee, former ROK Reunification Minister and North Korea specialist, observed that it was curious that the North designated Pyongyang’s Gangnam district as an “economic development zone” on December 21, 2017, soon after a series of missile tests and the 6^th nuclear test and amidst increasing international sanctions. It appeared irrational that Pyongyang would go to the trouble of creating the zone – the equivalent of a Special Economic Zone whose success would be contingent on foreign investments – precisely when it was most unlikely that outsiders would start investing. The timing made sense, according to Lee, only if the North Korean regime was looking beyond the vicious cycle of weapons tests and sanctions. He interpreted this as a signal that Kim Jong Un wanted to focus more on the economy by trading nuclear weapons for lifting the sanctions so that he might reach his goal of faster development than China and Vietnam.⁹ The alternative would be to keep the nukes for national security and settle for self-reliant economic development under sanctions, a suboptimal strategy for the North.

Lee’s reasoning is supported by yet earlier developments. In fact, Gangnam was the 22^nd economic development zone established since May 2013 when the Economic Development Zone Act was promulgated, following the 11 zones created that November and 10 more by 2015. It is significant that these zones, and the act that supports them, were all initiated under Kim Jong Un. His father had established five “Special Economic Zones,” starting with Rason in 1991, but there had been little to show for them except in the Gaeseong and Geumgangsan zones where South Korean businesses invested after the first inter-Korea summit of 2000. These earlier zones were hampered by the lack of a uniform set of rules and the limits on capital remittance as well as fluctuating political relationships with China, South Korea, and others. The younger Kim seems to have learned from his father’s experiences. The “Economic Development Zones (EDZs),” created under Kim Jong Un, were all based on the same Economic Development Zone Act of 2013 that also allowed unimpeded outward remittance of foreign capital. Again, it would have been irrational for the younger Kim to have created these zones while pursuing nuclear weapons under the Byungjin line – unless he had a long-term strategy to trade them for peace.¹⁰ To normalize the North’s relations with the South and the U.S. was the missing piece needed for the success of these zones – and perhaps the North’s economic development as a whole.¹¹

Kim Jong Un was not the only force behind the economic development zones. Pyongyang had been sending economists to Canada since 2011 to be educated on international trade, management, finance, and economics – in a word, on how the capitalist system works. The Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Program (KPP) at the University of British Columbia hosted about 6 scholars from North Korean universities each year, training them for 6 months at a time.¹² It was this group of economists who helped engineer a vision of economic development that would leverage the North’s resources and human capital to engage the international market for maximum benefits.¹³ They, and other younger generation bureaucrats and party workers, have risen to fill important posts, and seem to serve as a support base for Kim.¹⁴

Nor was the Economic Development Act the only legal instrument adopted under Kim to provide an institutional foundation for economic development. The Ministry of External Economy was created in 2014 by merging the Ministry of Trade with the Committee of Joint Venture/Investment and the Committee of National Economic Development to centralize the North’s economic activities with outsiders, such as trade, joint ventures, FDI, and economic development zones as well as to strengthen its relations with other economies. Kim emphasized in his 2015 New Year’s Address the need to diversify the North’s economic relations with the world not only in terms of the number of countries with which to trade but also in areas of cooperation including joint ventures, science and technology, finance and insurance. His directive included an initiative to encourage not only the national organizations in Pyongyang but also local administrations and enterprises to expand exchanges with the world. These changes led Chinese scholars to conclude that

“the North’s economic cooperation has already exceeded the traditional model of relying on trade only for what was lacking in the country and emerged as a national economic development strategy.”¹⁵

These changes were part of a yet larger drive. Kim Jong Un emphasized the importance of pragmatism and grassroots orientation in his directives on the “economic management method of our style” in March 2013 and May 2014 that empowered party workers and producers at the lowest level to take responsibility and initiative. Changes in collective farms came even earlier. In 2012, the farms devolved their decision-making and production responsibilities further down from a bunjo (分組) to a pojeon (圃田).¹⁶ Collective farms started distributing income based on evaluation of a pojeon’s performance, and empowered farmers to keep any surplus left after meeting the state’s quota. Pyongyang started restructuring its legal system on the economy, industry, and science in order to support the economic drive as soon as Kim Jong Un assumed power in 2012, according to the North Korean Law Center of South Korea’s Kukmin University.¹⁷ The pragmatic turn towards the Economy First policy was preceded and justified by the ideological campaign, “Kim Jong Il Patriotism,” pronounced in July 2012 that essentially presented commitment to material well-being as a path to love for the nation, not a contradiction or betrayal.¹⁸

A caveat is in order. While I have listed a number of measures that lend credence to the view that Kim has consistently prioritized the economy, I am not arguing that they have succeeded in producing significant growth. There is some evidence that the North’s economy has grown even under the ever tightening sanctions.¹⁹ But it is all but impossible to assess, with the limited data available, how much of that is attributable to any of Pyongyang’s measures. Nor do we have enough data to realistically estimate the impact of the sanctions, for it would involve a comparison with counterfactuals. Suffice it to note, for the purpose of this article, that Kim Jong Un, the government, and the party have taken repeated steps designed to promote economic development and engagement with the international economy for the past several years.²⁰

Changes and Constants

Behind the blizzard of missile and nuclear tests until last year lurked the young Kim’s consistent movement toward a focus on economic development. Given the consistency in the measures and campaigns Kim Jong Un initiated, it is probably not an overstatement that his priority is economic development predicated on a reduction of military tensions. But what about the missiles and nukes?

Kim and his two predecessors have also been consistent in their demand for peace – since at least the 1970s. While it may seem odd to casual observers that Pyongyang has consistently called for peace, it is worthwhile to remember that the U.S. government also has been consistent in at least one of its policies towards North Korea since 1950. President Truman shocked the world, including the North, by announcing at a press conference on November 30^th 1950 that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons in Korea, five years after he authorized the use of two atomic bombs against Japan. The U.S. military has since maintained the threat to use nuclear weapons against the North and regularly practiced what it calls a deterrence strategy – the “tailored deterrence” during the Obama administration. That is the source of Pyongyang’s gravest insecurity, one that drove it towards nuclearization. Now that Kim Jong Un has declared that he has acquired nuclear weapons that could threaten the U.S., he is offering a choice. If Washington chooses to maintain the deterrence posture, he too will prioritize mutual deterrence. But if Washington chooses to negotiate for peace, he will trade his nukes for a peace regime under which he could focus on economic development. While the former would be a suboptimal strategy as I argued above, he is likely to settle for it unless he receives credible security assurance.

Kim said as much at the inter-Korea summit.

“If we meet often and build trust with the United States, and if an end to the war and nonaggression are promised,” Kim asked, “why would we live in difficulty with nuclear weapons?”²¹

South Korean officials added on April 29 that Kim indicated he would take concrete measures to add credence to his words. He, for example, revealed at the summit with Moon Jae-in a plan to invite experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea to witness the dismantling of the nuclear test facilities.²² As soon as he returned to Pyongyang, to take another example of an attempt to reduce frictions with the South, he scrapped Pyongyang time – his 2015 initiative that had created a 30 minutes gap with Seoul time²³ – in order to “reunify the time zone.” He also removed from the North-South border the loud speakers that had been used for a war of words, almost as soon as the South did.

Image on the right: Kim Jung Un and Moon Jae-in at the Korean summit

It is notable that the second article of the Panmunjom Declaration commits the two Koreas to “joint efforts to alleviate the acute military tension and practically eliminate the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula,” and the third article to “actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.” After Moon and Kim agreed to cooperate on “declaring an end to the War, turning the armistice into a peace treaty, and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime,” they confirmed “the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” in the last clause of the third article. Given that the declaration consists of three articles, its structure makes it clear that the two leaders see Korea’s denuclearization as part of a peace regime.

It remains to be seen – “time will tell,” as Trump said – whether a planned Kim-Trump summit in June now scheduled to take place in Singapore will lead to a concrete agreement on Korea’s denuclearization and peace. Kim has at least shown some consistency: he has consistently moved towards the goal of economic development even while developing nuclear capabilities, and has consistently reciprocated with nuclear tests and threats when his proposals for talks have been dismissed or met with “maximum pressure.” It is now up to Trump and the United States to decide whether to take advantage of that consistency.

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Jae-Jung Suh is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at International Christian University and a specialist on the international relations of the Korean Peninsula. His publications include Origins of North Korea’s Juche and Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances.

Notes

¹ I’d like to thank Mark Selden, Gavan McCormack, Martin Hart-Landsberg and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions.

² “Geopolitics Watch: Forecasting the Korean Peninsula Peace and Denuclearization Process,” SinoInsider, April 29, 2018.

³ Mark Landler, “As Two Koreas Talk Peace, Trump’s Bargaining Chips Slip Away,” The New York Times, April 28, 2018.

⁴ Pyongyang’s departure from the previous demand for the troop withdrawal was also confirmed by President Moon. He announced in a statement on April 19 that North Korea expressed its desire for “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula and would not be seeking the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the peninsula as a condition for denuclearization. Instead the North would accept security guarantees and an end to what it called the “hostile policy” of the U.S.

⁵ Pyongyang had previously indicated its willingness to freeze only its nuclear testing in return for the suspension of the U.S.-ROK military exercise whereas Beijing called on it to freeze its nuclear and missile tests in its “freeze-for-freeze” proposal.

⁶ Suh, JJ. “Half Full or Half Empty? North Korea after the 7th Party Congress.” The Asia Pacific Journal-Japan Focus 14, no. 14 (July 2016). 

⁷ Kim Jong Un called it his “firm resolution” in his first public address in April 2012 to “have the people never tighten their belt again but heartily enjoy socialism’s prosperity.”

⁸ 정성장, “북한의 경제-핵 병진노선 폐기 배경과 비핵화에 대한 입장 평가,” 세종논평, No 2018-22 (2018.4.23).

⁹ 이종석, “김정은의 비핵화 의지와 ‘강남경제개발구’,” 한겨레, 2018.3.25.

¹⁰ Kim Jong Un also put significant efforts – including a 2014 order to scrap the old plan and redesign the terminal – to renovate the Pyongyang International Airport. The second terminal that opened in 2015 is 5 times as large as the previous one, complete with restaurants and duty-free shops. In March, a month before the inter-Korea summit, Pyongyang requested the International Civil Aviation Organization that it be allowed to open several “trans-regional routes.” This, together with the opening of the Wonsan ski resort among other things, seems to indicate Kim’s interest in bringing in more foreign visitors. “북한, ‘옛청사의 6배’ 평양국제공항 신청사 준공식(사진),” 연합뉴스, 2015.7.2; 변종국, and 천호성. “[단독]北 “해외항로 늘리고 영공 열겠다” 하늘길 제재풀기 나서.” 동아일보, 05.02 2018.

¹¹ These zones seem part of a national development strategy, not a piecemeal response to the needs of the time. See footnote 13 for more.

¹² Park, Kyung-Ae and Mark Bennett. “Engaging North Korea with High-Culture Soft Power: Knowledge Sharing with Pyongyang.” Pacific Affairs 87, no. 1 (03, 2014): 29-41. For other educational exchanges between the U.S. and North Korea, see U.S.-DPRK Educational Exchanges: Assessment and Future Strategy, edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Karin J. Lee, The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, 2011.

¹³ This of course raises the question of who will benefit most from these changes and how these benefits will be distributed within the society if the North extensively engages world capitalism. It remains to be seen how the North will address such “externalities” as social inequalities and environmental degradation that most post-socialist economies have experienced.

¹⁴ Kim has organized a series of meetings designed to strengthen his support at the grassroots, including a Party Cell Secretaries Conference (2013 and 2017), “enthusiasts” conferences in various sectors, youth and women conferences of various age groups, and conferences of foot soldiers like “patrols” and unit leaders.

¹⁵ 찐저·쉬원지·위즈쌴 (金 哲·徐文吉·于治賢), 중·북경제협력과 북한의 경제발전 전망 (中朝经济与合作朝鲜变革发展展望), 중장기통상전략연구 15-05 (대외경제정책연구원: 2015.12.30), 22.

¹⁶ A bunjo is made up of 10~25 farmers whereas a pojeon is comprised only of 3~5. The management committee is responsible for the overall operation of a collective farm, but a pojeon is the smallest unit that carries out farming and allocates income based on its output. Pyongyang organized a national conference of agricultural bunjo chiefs in 2014 for the first time in its history in an effort to accelerate the change nationwide. 정창현, “농업 분조장대회와 포전담당제,” 통일뉴스, 2014.2.3.

¹⁷ 김헌주. “[단독] 김정은, 집권 초부터 경제法 정비… 경제강국 실현 치밀하게 준비했다.” 서울신문, 05.02 2018.

¹⁸ “김정은동지의 노작《김정일애국주의를 구현하여 부강조국건설을 다그치자》 전문,” 조선중앙통신, 2012.8.3. This is the speech that Kim reportedly delivered on July 26^th, 2012.

¹⁹ ROK government sources, Statistical Office and Bank of Korea, show a 12% growth of the DPRK’s GNI from 2011 to 2016. 2017 북한의 주요통계지표 [Major Statistics Indicators of North Korea], 통계청 [Statistics Korea] (2017.12); and 한국은행 경제통계시스템 [Economic Statistics System], Accessed May 12, 2018.

²⁰ Showing that Kim has published more writings – so-called Kim Jong Un’s Works – on economic policies than any other policy areas, Chin Heegwan argues that Kim prioritizes the economy. 진희관, “북한의 「로작」 용어 등장과정과 김정은 로작 분석,” 북한연구학회보, 21권 2호 (2017), 25-53.

²¹ Choe, Sang-Hun, “Kim says He’d End North Korea Nuclear Pursuit for U.S. Truce,” The New York Times, April 29, 2018.

²² The DPRK’s Foreign Ministry followed up with an announcement on May 12, 2018 that the nuclear test sites would be dismantled under foreign journalists’ observation between 23^rd and 25^th of May.

²³ The DPRK decided to set UTC+08:30 as its standard time, calling it Pyongyang Time, on August 5, 2015. The decision, which went into effect on the seventieth anniversary of Korea’s liberation, was presented as a break from one of the legacies of Japanese colonialism because it was the Governor General of Korea who set in 1912 Korea’s time zone to UTC+9:00 to align with Japan Standard Time. Kim’s directive to nullify the 2015 decision seems well inline with his emphasis on cooperation with the South and outsiders.

All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.

The image of Antarctica in common circulation is environmental and utopian.  The scientist of valour, the investigator thirsting for discovery in a litmus test environment that will give warning about current and impending variations in temperature that will affect the globe.  Noble stuff indeed.

On other occasions, the continent has tickled the conspiratorial mind.  Did Adolf Hitler find relief and sanctuary in such frozen climes instead of perishing in his Berlin bunker in 1945 before the Soviet onslaught?  Did the Nazis establish a base that would dock extra-terrestrial aircraft? Tyle Glockner of SecureTeam10 videos certainly finds food for thought there.

“The continent,” he said tritely last year, “has been shrouded in a mystery of its own for years now.”

Despite being deemed a “triumph of the global commons” where “state sovereignty has remained unrecognised” in favour of “the principles of peace and environmental protection”, another, somewhat neglected view, also exists of this glacial wonderland.

Nick Johnson was one who recorded and chronicled life working in Antarctica at McMurdo Station, doing so with a degree of wit and ruthlessness that led to his masterly compilation Bid Dead Place.  But it was not an account of the dingy corridors of White Hall or the dank context of a police state apparatus.  He was considering the human encrustations that had found themselves on the earth’s seventh continent, one filled with its fair share of intrepid explorer corpses.

Venturing to his website, now generally defunct in terms of links, one finds an entry by a certain Lazarus B. Danzig, described as “a manager in an unnamed department at McMurdo Station.”  White collar management is examined and revealed for its absurd guiding principles, a farce in slow motion.  

“The average manager in Antarctica insists on indoor temperatures that would call for air conditioning were they summering at home. And, while the outside temperatures might for months remain well below zero, they will wear clothing suitable to Sub Saharan Africa or perhaps Polynesia.”

Such is the managers’ role of defiance: to resist, and deny the environment they exist in.  Manual labour is shunned while “Blue Collar day outdoors provides more exercise than a month of inane managerial exertions.”  And it is the role characterised by certain markers: the promotion of mediocrity; the cultivation of “marooned scavengers” who clamber up the hierarchy.

Interviews were also posted, featuring the mocking bleakness rife at McMurdo.  One contractor is philosophical:

“Antarctica prepared me for the War Zones, a stepping stone which made the transition to Iraq a little easier.”

Another speaks about not being able to get enough disco clothes.  

“They are a source of infinite delight.”

Then come the somewhat sinister undertone: secrecy, clandestine insinuations and a sense of menace fostered by that big daddy corporation, Raytheon.

Johnson sketches the absurd popularity of Antarctica as façade and the station as micro reality.  

“Today,” he writes in one account, “the international science community working in Antarctica is carrying on this proud legacy, helping us to learn more about global processes affecting Earth’s environment. Consequently, we will have the solid scientific information we need to develop sound environmental policies.”

Other tasks must also be performed.  There are menial but necessary.  Needs must also be met, perversions sated.  Johnson was clearing the rubbish and station detritus, an unheralded garbo, personified Blue Collar grunt.  

“Though I am a garbageman and I spent Independence Day sorting through vomit-covered aluminium cans, the warm glow of your Midwinter’s Day greeting,” he pens in a note to US President George W. Bush in 2001, “reminded me of my contribution to learning and knowledge.”

Illusions are punctured; hope given a good dampening before a regulated world and hierarchy policed by Raytheon.  He dismisses the nobility of the US mission in Antarctica, which he rightly noted as being less about altruistic engagement than geopolitical fancy.  In such an environment, other projects were being pursued.  NASA psychologists, for instance, take to Antarctica’s bases to examine what human behaviour might look like in a simulated lunar setting.

The manager’s response to such accounts as Johnson’s is typical: ignore, deny and repudiate.  Why did he return if he detested his experiences?  Why would he actually work in such a horrid environment?  This is the usual deflection adopted by those who wish to accept the horrors they perpetuate, the ghastliness they foment.

On being refused a permit to work another stint at McMurdo, Johnson suffered inexorable decline. After taking his life at the end of a shot gun at his West Seattle home, barely a murmur registered across the US literary landscape.

Johnson seemed drawn to Antarctica, not so much as a doomed explorer finding El Dorado but as part of an intrepid life that took him to South Korea to teach English drive a taxi in Seattle.  On the most barren of terrains, the most viciously hostile of environments, relief as a sharp observer could be found.  It was then taken away from him. In refusing him return, the indifferent bureaucrat’s revenge was assured. 

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.

In presenting their own self-serving narrative of lies and distortions that Iran is conducting a ‘secret’ nuclear weapons program,  Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump remain oblivious to the stunning hypocrisy of their own duplicity and stupidity; as if the rest of the world does not see through their pathological deceits.  In their most recent public presentations, both pathetically flawed individuals, trapped in a Matrix of their own, continue to confuse war with peace and have no clue how to distinguish the difference.

Publicly projecting one’s own evil agenda onto an ill-fated population is an old political trick to deflect attention from one’s own sins while pointing the finger elsewhere and it would come as no surprise to discover that National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has dual citizenship with Israel, has been the key choreographer.

Immediately after Trump’s April 3^rd “time to get out of Syria” and ‘bring our troops home” statement, an alleged gas attack occurred on April 7^th that was allegedly ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  That attack was followed by Netanyahu’s April 30th dog and pony show as a warm up for Trump’s much anticipated announcement withdrawing from the nuclear accord with Iran (JCPOA) on May 8^th.  By May 9^th, Netanyahu was in Moscow viewing the Russian Victory Day parade along side Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We can only speculate on the details of the Putin-Netanyahu conversation but it is an unlikely  coincidence that Russia’s previous plan to provide its sophisticated S300 surface to air missile system to Syria has been put on the backburner and it appears the Russians took no active role to counter the Israeli offensive.

As reported in Haaretz, Netanyahu used the old cliché with Putin that “Israeli has the right to defend itself in the face of Iranian aggression” and as Putin should be aware, that is smokescreen lingo for Israel will pursue its policy of death and destruction throughout the Middle East with no apologies to anyone and international law be damned.

All this of course comes after the US, Israel, Saudis and their proxies suffered a humiliating defeat in Syria thanks to the Russians in the air and Iranians on the ground, both of which provided military assistance at the request of Assad.

Netanyahu’s promise to provide a ‘new and conclusive proof of a secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive” proved to be nothing more than a rehash of outdated, useless talking points.

It was not an oversight that Netanyahu failed to provide his own data about Israel’s super secret nuclear weapon arsenal which has been kept top-secret since the 1960’s. Estimated  at 200 nuclear warheads in a 2016 email by former Secretary of State Colin Powell,  former President Jimmy Carter revised his estimate upwards in 2014 to 300 Israeli nuclear warheads while in 1996 the authoritative Jane’s magazine put the number at 400 Israel nuclear warheads.   If American intelligence was correct in 1986 that Israel had 200 nuclear warheads, with a production schedule of ten each year since the mid 1970’s, a more accurate current estimate could be as high as 600 Israeli nuclear warheads.

It might have been worth the price of admission to hear Netanyahu’s response to Iran’s Hassan Rouhani’s first UN visit as President in 2013 when he called for a ‘nuclear free zone’ in the Middle East?  Or let’s hear Netanyahu or Trump explain how Iran signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968 with its Parliament ratifying the Treaty in 1970 while Israel has consistently refused to sign and refused to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its nuclear facilities?  The NNPT has now been signed by 191 nations, not including Israel.

It is astonishing that after his ‘fake news’ testimony before a subservient Congress in 2002, Netanyahu continues to perpetuate the Iran lie practically word for word as he perpetuated the Iraq wmdlie in 2002:

“there is no question whatsoever, that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development nuclear weapons, no question whatsoever – and there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately…”

While Trump’s long anticipated declaration relied heavily on scare tactics, bombast and a barrage of belligerent, unverified accusations citing ‘new evidence’ presented at Netanyahu’s flim-flam event, Trump failed to provide one iota of evidence that Iran had not been in compliance with the Agreement.  Trump failed to explain how attempts to improve the Agreement had failed and totally missed the irony when he dutifully parroted that Iran’s ‘regime has funded a long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people”as if America’s history of spreading global chaos and terror remains a Deep State secret.

Within hours of Trump’s green light, Israel initiated a massive bombing attack on Iranian positions in Syria, according to Haaretz, firing from Israeli positions in the disputed Golan Heights in southwest Syria.  The GH, which is within missile range of Damascus, has been occupied by Israel since the Six Day War in 1967 and remains internationally recognized as  Syrian territory.

The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) reported that its Iron Dome missile defense system was deployed and intercepted some twenty incoming projectiles in what may have been an unprecedented return volley from Syria which Israel labelled as an ‘act of aggression”.   The Iron Dome system was built for Israel by the American weapons manufacturer  Raytheon and with Congress funding the system, courtesy of $705 Million from the American taxpayer.

As Israel Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said referring to an increased US budget allotment  for Israel,

“I thank our great friend the United States, which has invested $6.5 billion to defend the skies of the State of Israel.”

The speed and ease with which Israel stepped in and took control has been stunning, requiring the capitulation of Trump and Putin as Israel assumed all the authority to initiate attacks with no fear of reprimand or being held accountable to anyone.  With the same confident assurance since the confiscation of Arab lands for Israeli settlements began in 1947, Israel has never been a nation that respected diplomatic protocol or honored international law.

Meanwhile, Members of the US Congress continue to “sit in their places with bright, shiny faces.”

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31.

Featured image is from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Flickr.

Francis Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is the author of many books on International Law and an outspoken critic of US policy in the Middle East. Boyle’s books include Foundations of World Order and the sequel, Destroying World Order. In the following interview with  Pacifica Radio host Dennis J Bernstein, Boyle warns that, among other things, given her background as key implementer of the US torture program, Gina Haspel is vulnerable to be arrested for war crimes and crimes against humanity if she travels abroad.

Dennis Bernstein spoke with Francis Boyle on May 10th, 2018.

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Dennis Bernstein: You may have heard by now that Israel is blaming Iran for attempting to target the occupied Golan Heights with missiles, and they say that they are responding.  But there have been reports that Israel opened fire only hours after the US pulled out of the Iran deal. Francis Boyle, who do you believe in terms of who is firing missiles at whom? Who has the motivation?

Francis Boyle: It appears that Israel has decided to escalate, with a green light from the Trump administration.  It also appears that this has been coordinated with Trump pulling out of the nuclear agreement.

You have to understand that Iranian troops are in Syria with the legitimate consent of the Syrian government under the right of collective self-defense, recognized under UN Charter Article 51.  The reason Iran went in there was because, starting with Clinton and Obama, the United States decided to overthrow the government of Syria in violation of international law, including the decision of the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua case.

As for Israel in the Golan Heights, it is clearly there illegally.  Israel stole the Golan Heights in 1967 and they have refused to leave.  They have refused to negotiate in good faith with Syria, except when Prime Minister Rabin did negotiate a comprehensive peace settlement with Syria along the lines of the peace settlement with Egypt.  Of course, he was assassinated by religious fundamentalists for that reason. Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel is not going to leave the region. It is a very dangerous situation we are in today.

DB: You talked about Israel essentially taking off the gloves.  We have seen many presidents side with Israel when it slaughters Palestinians.  Is there something new here? Is there going to be that final attempt at regime change in Syria?

FB: General Wesley Clark says it all in his memoirs.  After 9/11 he went to the Pentagon–then under the control of the Bush, Jr. neocons–and the Pentagon told him that there was a plan to take over and destroy several different Muslim states.  Iraq was on the list, Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Iran and Syria. Clearly Syria has been in the crosshairs from at least that time.

DB: There is another subject that you have been addressing for several years and that is illegal torture programs.  It looks like we are going to have a new CIA director who likes to get her hands dirty and participate directly in torture.  She has also been actively involved in making sure nobody finds out that torture takes place.

FB: “Bloody” Gina Haspel is her nickname at the CIA.  She was directly involved in the extraordinary rendition program, which is a euphemism for the enforced disappearance of human beings and their consequent torture.  This was in the complaint I filed against Bush and company in 2010 with the International Criminal Court for this crime against humanity.

Last fall the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she is going to open up an investigation into the entire CIA extraordinary rendition program for violating the Rome Statute.  Although the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, these actions took place on the territorial sovereignty of Rome Statute states, and therefore the ICC does have jurisdiction.  In my opinion, Gina Haspel is a presumptive war criminal and torturer. It looks like she might get confirmed, and then we will have a torturer and war criminal as head of the CIA.

As I have argued in anti-CIA cases here in the United States, the CIA is an organized criminal conspiracy like the SS and the Gestapo.  We argued that successfully back in 1987 at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I was involved in large numbers of CIA protest cases back in the 1980’s because of what was going on in Central America, with 35,000 dead in Nicaragua, 75,000 dead in El Salvador, and perhaps a quarter of a million in Guatemala.  Most of those killed were Mayan Indians, which meant outright genocide.

DB: Will it be difficult for our director of the CIA to travel abroad?  Maybe she has to be covert forever.

FB: That is correct.  Under international law today–following a terrible decision by the International Court of Justice–heads of state and foreign ministers have diplomatic immunity while there are in office.  But that is not going to apply to the head of the CIA.

I have a whole dossier here against Bush, Jr. and the rest of them for the extraordinary rendition program.  We scared him out of Switzerland over that. A Swiss prosecutor demanded that Bush be prosecuted if he showed up in Switzerland.  I know that Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights also have extensive dossiers against high-level US officials involved in these torture programs, including Haspel.  She would be a sitting duck for international human rights lawyers. The evidence is there.

We have a 600-page executive summary of the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee’s report on the extent of torture and extraordinary disappearances by the CIA.  This is an official US government document. She was not personally named in there, but she was a high-level official who was personally involved. She certainly supervised the operation in Thailand.  Under international law, there is a command responsibility. She is denying that she herself physically tortured anyone, but she supervised others doing the torturing. Under international criminal law, she is accountable for the criminal behavior she oversaw.

DB: She admitted at the hearing that she had the tapes of these torture sessions but she considered it prudent to destroy them.

FB: The Senate Committee had just announced their investigation so her boss, Jose Rodriguez, ordered her to destroy the tapes.  Arguably, this would be obstruction of justice. Unless something happens within the next couple weeks, we are going to be seeing a notorious international criminal heading up the CIA.  In my opinion, any senator who votes to confirm her becomes an accessory after the fact to her crimes: torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture.

DB: This is a very difficult time.  We are all worried about our friend Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who was brutalized while protesting the Haspel nomination.  Obviously, they are very serious about shutting up anyone protesting torture.

FB: Ray arguably has the defense of prevention of crimes under international law.  I am not saying it would be a winner, because it is always tough going into a federal court and defending anyone protesting and resisting criminal behavior by the United States government.

*

Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.  You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at [email protected].

A “global industrial rebalance” refers to a recent relocation of some energy-intensive industries from China to technologically more advanced countries. This is a reversal of the trend of several decades, which has resulted in a global concentration of energy-intensive manufacturing in China, notably steel, cement, aluminum, paper and glass. In this article, I argue that such a global industrial rebalance would benefit both China and the world. The relocation of energy-intensive production is also economically viable, as illustrated by a number of recent investments in developed countries by Chinese firms in those industries.

*

As a global powerhouse in manufacturing, China now produces more steel, aluminium, glass and cement than the rest of the world combined (Fig. 1). The global concentration of energy-intensive manufacturing has been at the center of China’s rapid industrialization and its positioning as the world’s factory in the course of recent decades, as well as the deindustrialization that has concurrently occurred in many western countries.

Figure 1. China’s share of world production in selected industries

Source: author based on the data available from the World Steel Association (for steel), the US Geographical Survey (for aluminium and cement), the BP Statistical Review of World Energy (for coal), Wintour (2014) (for glass), and statistica.com (for paper).

Yet today, excessive production and export of many energy-intensive products in China, such as steel, aluminium and glass, are becoming increasingly problematic for the country and for the world. These Chinese industries are plagued by rising costs and shrinking demand, and they bear heavy responsibility for high levels of air, water and soil pollution that have accompanied China’s emergence as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases. Overcapacity in these sectors, where their capacity to produce efficiently exceeds demand, resulting in negative environmental impact from the excess production of polluting industries in China. This has been widely recognized by the Chinese government, the industries and the public.¹

The oversupply of these products in China has produced strong criticism from other countries. In western countries, increasing trade with China, especially since China’s entry into the WTO in the early 2000s, while bringing considerable economic benefits in terms of providing consumers with low cost products, has had negative consequences for certain industries and regions, an effect that economists have termed “China shock”.² The spectre of competition from Chinese imports has been used by politicians in a number of countries to introduce protectionist measures amidst charges of illegal Chinese protectionism, sometimes to justify nationalist agendas.

In 2017, the total U.S. trade deficit was $566 billion, of which about $375 billion, two thirds of the total, was with China. The Trump administration has recently introduced a number of protectionist trade policies with a claimed aim to reduce the trade imbalance with China, including tariffs imposed in March 2018 on imported steel and aluminium, and further tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports following the Section 301 investigation. Since the U.S. trade deficit is primarily driven by factors such as the comparative advantage of low wages and high efficiency in East Asian economies and long-term flight of major industries abroad,³ together with overspending by Americans and over-saving by Chinese and others,⁴ those tariffs alone will have limited impact on the pattern of world trade.⁵

Economists have also pointed out that American officials regularly overstate the size of the U.S. deficit with China. For example, the actual trade surplus of China with the U.S. in 2011 was actually one-third smaller than the official figure when measured in terms of value added when the foreign content of Chinese exports was deducted from the value of gross exports.⁶ This is the major reason why U.S. estimates of the trade imbalance are far higher than Chinese estimates. Further, limitations of unilateral trade protectionist actions to reduce the trade deficit, and the damages to global trade for all economies including those who start the trade war, have been well discussed in the literature.⁷ Indeed, China’s tit-for-tat trade retaliation, especially its targeting of U.S. exports of soybeans and cars, has already created turmoil in the U.S. stock market and provoked concerns of American enterprises and farmers.

Despite the protectionist measures currently being imposed by countries, fundamental economic and political changes are occurring in China and western countries that will have more long-lasting effects on trade and the global industrial structure. Shifting economics in energy-intensive industries, such as steel, glass and aluminium, and domestic political considerations, are driving relocation of manufacturing activities in those industries from China to developed countries, in particular the U.S. The result of this is what I call “a global industrial rebalance.” Such a rebalance will benefit the global environment thanks to differences in energy efficiency across countries.

Energy-intensive production in China and the challenges this poses

Since the 1980s, China has emerged as a major producer in a number of heavy industries, including steel and aluminium. China produced less than 0.01% of global steel at the time of the Chinese revolution in 1949, and about 5% in 1980 when it started its “Reform and Opening” policy. Chinese steel output expanded from 10% to 50% of the global total between 1990 and 2015. By contrast, the share of steel output from major steel producing countries in Europe in the global total has consistently declined over most of the past 150 years (Fig. 2). Steel production in the U.S. as a percentage of the global total peaked in the early 1920s and fell sharply thereafter. The U.S. currently accounts for less than 5% of global steel production. Similarly, the share of Japanese steel production continues to fall after reaching over 15% of the global total in the 1970s. Increased steel production has not been limited to China. It has also grown in other new industrialising countries such as India, which currently contributes about 6% of the global total – but China’s steel production has outstripped that of all other countries. The result is that global steel production has shifted dramatically against the United States, Europe and Japan and toward China over the last century and particularly the last four decades.

Figure 2. The shares in the world’s steel production by countries (1870-2016)

Source: author based on data available in Tarr (1988)⁸ (for the period up to 1984) and from the World Steel Association (for the period since 1984.)

The rapid growth of China’s heavy industries such as steel and aluminium played an important role in the country’s industrialization. The level of steel consumption per capita in China (480kg finished steel equivalent in 2014) is now not only well above that in other BRIC countries, including India (58kg), Brazil (136kg), and Russia (351kg), but also surpasses the level in many developed economies, including the US (387kg), Japan (411kg), and Germany (364kg). However, the continuous growth of production in these industries in China is increasingly recognized as being unsustainable.

These industries have struggled financially in recent years. According to official Chinese statistics, steel was the least profitable of all Chinese manufacturing industries for six consecutive years between 2011 and 2016, the profitability level ranging between -2.2% and 2.9%.⁹ In 2015, the industry as a whole lost RMB 78 billion (US$12 billion). The profitability of aluminium was not much better, below 4% in a majority of recent years. The poor financial performance of those industries has been due to intensifying competition resulting from excess capacity, and fast-growing production costs. The latter has particularly been driven by rising costs of labour and more rigorous enforcement of environmental laws as both official and popular concern about climate crisis and local pollutions grows. While many environmental policies and laws introduced in China in the 1980s and 1990s were regarded as ‘paper tigers’,¹⁰ enforcement of environmental laws has been strengthened in recent years. For example, authorities launched a number of so-called ‘environmental protection storms’ during which many steel plants that did not meet environmental standards were forced to upgrade their technologies or in some cases were shut down.¹¹

Facing an increasingly saturated domestic market, Chinese companies have set their sights upon the international market. Over the ten years since 2005, exports of Chinese steel products increased more than 500%, from 20 million tons in 2005 to 112 million tons in 2015. Exports of Chinese aluminium products quadrupled during the same period, from one million tons to four million tons. Chinese exports of energy-intensive goods, particularly steel, have become a major subject of international trade disputes with a record number of trade remedy investigations of Chinese steel launched by its trading partners in 2016. Among 119 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations in the year, 49 concerned Chinese steel products.¹² Consequently, exports of Chinese steel fell to under 100 million tons in 2016 and 75 million tons in 2017.

The few, if any, financial gains for China’s energy-intensive industries come at a significant cost for the rest of the country. A 2014 study by researchers from Tsinghua University, for instance, found that coal, a main ingredient in energy-intensive production in China, would be 40% more expensive if local social and environmental costs were taken into account, even without considering costs associated with climate change as a result of carbon emissions.¹³ This comes at a time when Chinese citizens and officials alike are pressing to improve the country’s environmental record — according to a 2015 online survey, air pollution was the single most important issue concerning the Chinese public, even ranking above corruption and the wealth gap.¹⁴

Exports of energy-intensive goods such as steel and aluminium are creating ever greater environmental problems and other challenges for China. One 2015 study indicated that export-related production from China accounted for 15% of the country’s emissions of PM2.5, a deadly industrial byproduct that kills 157,000 Chinese each year.¹⁵ Exports also account for around 20% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions—a substantial amount, given that China is the world’s largest carbon emitter.¹⁶ China’s steel industry uses more energy than any other domestic industry. Production of steel, aluminium, cement and glass accounts for approximately one fourth of total energy consumption in the country. China needs to greatly reduce production in those energy-intensive industries in order both to combat local pollution and to fulfill its commitment as part of the Paris agreement to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030.

The Chinese government has initiated some steps in this direction, announcing plans to cut steel production capacity by 100 to 150 million tonnes over the 13^th Five-Year plan period (2016 – 2020), and to significantly reduce production in other energy-intensive industries, such as cement, aluminium, and glass. Some recent plant closures, such as those in Hangzhou and Sichuan, have drawn intense scrutiny from international media.¹⁷ In April 2017, the Chinese government announced a plan to create a massive “special economic zone” called the Xiongan New Area in Hebei Province. Hebei is the heartland of China’s steel industry, currently producing almost one-quarter of steel output. To establish Xiongan, which the government has billed as a “world-class, green, modern and smart city,” many of the old, polluting steel mills will reportedly be dismantled. For example, Baoding, a former steel city in Hebei near Xiongan New Area, announced in 2017 that it had become a ‘steel production free’ city.¹⁸

Relocation of energy-intensive manufacturing

At the same time that China is looking to reduce its energy-intensive production, U.S. energy-intensive manufacturing is becoming more economically viable thanks to the recent revolution in shale gas production. Shale gas production through fracking technologies in the United States and other developed countries has confronted powerful, but largely abortive, anti-fracking movements denouncing the environmental consequences of fracking. Nevertheless, soaring shale gas output has effectively brought down energy costs of manufacturing in the U.S.

Energy is a significant portion of total production costs in energy-intensive industries, for example, up to 40% in steel making,¹⁹ and 14 – 40% in glass production, depending on plant location. Today, the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is 70% lower in the U.S. than in China, and electricity for industrial consumers is almost 40% cheaper,²⁰ making energy-intensive manufacturing in the U.S. increasingly attractive. Some companies are taking note. In 2017, one of Taiwan’s largest steel companies announced that it had abandoned a plan to invest in Vietnam, and instead planned to invest $1.6 billion to build a steel factory in the U.S.²¹ The largest auto glass producer in China, Fuyao Glass, recently made a $1-billion investment in Ohio.²² This trend is further illustrated by Chinese manufacturers’ recent investments in other energy-intensive industries, such as paper²³ and aluminium²⁴, in the U.S. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. , which have fallen since 1979, have indeed increased since 2010 (Figure 3). While still at an early stage, manufacturing industry in the U.S. has considerably benefited from reshoring and foreign direct investment activities.²⁵

Figure 3. Number of manufacturing employees in the U.S.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, seasonally adjusted

In addition to becoming more price competitive, energy-intensive production is likely to be cleaner in developed countries than in China. Steel manufacturing in China on average emits 24% more carbon than that in the U.S. and 26% more than in Germany, because electric arc furnaces (EAFs), a more environmentally friendly technology used in steel making there, are less common in China.²⁶

A global rebalancing of energy-intensive manufacturing would cost jobs in China, but international relocation of production from China is already taking place. In the steel industry, a number of state-owned steel conglomerates have built or acquired overseas facilities, including HBIS Group’s purchase of the largest steel mill in Serbia;²⁷ Shougang Steel’s investment in a new plant in Malaysia;²⁸ Wuhan Steel’s new plant in Liberia;²⁹ and Nanjing Iron and Steel’s joint venture with a local partner in Indonesia.³⁰ A private Chinese steel company, Delong, has also recently invested in Thailand.³¹

This international investment has so far focused on developing countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But although such investment aligns with the foreign policy of Chinese president, Xi Jinping, it is economically risky because of weak institutional infrastructure, heavy debt burdens, and high levels of political instability in many of these countries.

The BRI was initially proposed both to provide development assistance to poor countries and as an economic policy tool to address the overcapacity problem facing Chinese industry. One goal was to provide “roundabout subsidies” to Chinese companies using the country’s foreign reserves to fund major infrastructure and construction projects in developing countries.³² The strategic objectives of BRI have been adjusted since being officially introduced by the Chinese government in 2013. Initially in part launched to counter former U.S. President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, with the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP),³³ and the re-orientation of American strategy in Asia by the Trump administration, the geopolitical argument for Chinese investment in developing countries along the “Belt and Road” regions has become less compelling.

A global industrial rebalance in the making

From an American perspective, any increase in domestic production of energy-intensive goods such as steel would be a political victory for Trump, who campaigned in part on a promise to restore U.S. manufacturing pre-eminence. The U.S. steel industry currently employs about 269,000 workers, accounting for less than 0.2 percent of the U.S. work force.³⁴ However, steel production is largely concentrated in several Rust Belt states, including Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, which played key roles in electing Trump. As a result, economic growth and job creation in these states are high on the new president’s agenda.

An industrial rebalance that turns exports of energy-intensive goods from China into direct investment in those industries in the U.S. would seem to serve the interests of both sides. Compared with Chinese investments in the U.S. high technology sector, investment in more mature industries such as steel would be less politically sensitive, indeed it would be championed by the Trump White House. The first attempt by a Chinese steel company, the Angang Group, to invest in the U.S. faced opposition in 2010 from members of the powerful Congressional Steel Caucus. However, the Committee on Foreign Investment, the authority responsible to review and approve such foreign investments, did not launch an investigation as called for by the lawmakers, and the investment was free to proceed.³⁵ The plan was subsequently withdrawn for internal reasons within the company. Meanwhile, with incentives and support from the local government of Texas, another Chinese steel company, Tianjin Pipe Corporation, has been manufacturing seamless steel pipes in the U.S. since 2014.³⁶ When fully built, this $1-billion facility will be the largest single manufacturing investment in the U.S. by a Chinese firm. Other significant investments from China to the U.S. include the $1.85 billion-project of YCI Methanol One by Shandong Yuhuang Chemical and the $100 million-project of Golden Dragon in Alabama to produce advanced copper tubing.

During the past several decades, production in a number of energy-intensive industries, such as steel, aluminium, and glass, has moved from developed countries to China. But a reversal seems to be taking place. Since 2015, China has invested more in the U.S. than the other way round (Fig. 4); and in 2016 for the first time the scale of the foreign direct investment (FDI) flow from China to the U.S. also surpassed that from the U.S. to China in the basic materials, metals and minerals industries (Fig.5). Chinese investments in those industries in the U.S. have been motivated by the cheap land, plant and energy, as well as reflecting a strategic move by Chinese companies to overcome barriers to trade such as tariffs and anti-dumping investigations into Chinese exports. Both total Chinese FDI in the U.S. and that in the metal industry fell in 2017 after rising sharply in the two preceding years, though, amid limits that the Chinese government imposed on overseas investment by Chinese companies as well as the tightening control of FDI in the U.S by the Trump administration.

Figure 4. Bilateral FDI flows between the US and China: 1990-2016

Primary data source

Figure 5. The bilateral FDI flows between the US and China in basic materials, metal and mineral industry: 1990-2016

Primary data source

Understanding of the rebalance that is underway could lead China and a number of developed countries, especially the U.S., to make the rebalance more economically, politically and environmentally favorable. This could involve measures discouraging steel production and exports on the Chinese side, and encouragement of Chinese investment in steel plants in the U.S., measures that would be more effective than the current punitive tariff imposed by the United States that threaten to lead to economic warfare between the two countries. For example, China could remove incentives for steel exports, such as value-added tax (VAT) rebates,³⁷ which refund steel producers part of the VAT they pay when making export sales. China could also re-instate its export tariff on energy-intensive products, such as steel, which it introduced in the middle of the previous decade amid concerns about the environment and the country’s resource security. Since the financial crisis of 2007–08, however, the export tariff has been largely scaled back to help the steel industry weather difficult economic conditions. By taking measures to restrict its steel exports, however, China could simultaneously free itself from accusations of steel dumping and reduce excess production and environmental degradation while improving relations with the Trump administration as the two countries continue to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty. On the American side, the Trump administration could make clear that Chinese investment in the U.S. steel industry is welcome and could strengthen bonds between the two countries.

Given the imbalance accumulated over past decades, a global industrial rebalance in energy-intensive manufacturing will take many years, if not decades, to achieve. But if successful, it would reduce the environmental costs of producing energy-intensive goods, and thus benefit the world.

*

This is a revised and expanded version of an article that originally appeared at Foreign Policy on May 19, 2017 under the title “The art of the steel deal: Why the U.S. and China need a production rebalance,” available here. This research was supported in part by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) under its international program.

Hao Tan is Associate Professor at Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2008, Australia. He also currently serves as Program Convenor of Doctor of Business Administration. His research interests are in China’s energy transition and its global implications.

Notes

¹ Tan, H. 2016. There is another way to solve China’s industrial overcapacity. Chinadialogue, 12 Dec. Available here.

² Autor, D.H., Dorn, D. & Hanson, G. H. 2016. The China Shock: Learning from labor-market adjustment to large changes in trade. Annual Review of Economics, 8: 205-240.

³ Lin, J. Y.-F. 2017. High tariffs on Chinese imports would weaken America. Project Syndicate, Mar 28, available here.

⁴ See example given here. I thank one of the reviwers for suggesting this point.

⁵ Rines, S. 2018. Trump’s tariffs are a trade tool. The National Interest, 9 Mar. Available here.

⁶ See here.

⁷ Irwin, D. A. 2017. The false promise of protectionism: Why Trump’s trade policy could backfire. Foreign Affairs, May/June Issue.

⁸ Tarr, D. G., 1988. The steel crisis in the United States and the European Community: Causes and adjustment. In R. E. Baldwin, C. B. Hamilton and A. Sapir (eds) Issues in US-EC Trade Relations, NBER & University of Chicago Press: Chicago, pp: 173-200.

⁹ See the reports of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in various years . There were more than 500 steel companies in China in 2015, some 400 being privately owned while state enterprises produced 60% of the steel.

¹⁰ Ryan, E. 2016. The elaborate paper tiger: environmental enforcement and the rule of law in China. Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, XXIV, 183-239.

¹¹ See related news reports here.

¹² See here.

¹³ The calculation in this cited study is presumably based on the costing in the Chinese context. The real cost of coal would be even higher if the costings in more advanced countries is used as references.

¹⁴ See here.

¹⁵ Jiang, X. et al. 2015. Revealing the hidden health costs embodied in Chinese exports. Environmental Science & Technology, 49: 4381-4388.

¹⁶ Su, B. & Thomson, E. 2016. China’s carbon emissions embodied in (normal and processing) exports and their driving forces, 2006–2012. Energy Economics, 59: 414–422.

¹⁷ For example, for the closure of Panchenggang Steel & Vanadium Co. in Sichuan, see here; for the capacity reduction in Bayi Steel and Hangzhou Iron & Steel, see here.

¹⁸ See here.

¹⁹ See here.

²⁰ See here.

²¹ See here.

²² See here.

²³ See here.

²⁴ See here.

²⁵ See a study by the Reshoring Initiative here.

²⁶ Hasanbeigi, et al. 2015. Comparison of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions intensity of the international iron and steel industry. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, available here.

²⁷ See here.

²⁸ See here.

²⁹ See here.

³⁰ See here.

³¹ See here.

³² See here.

³³ Despite the withdrawal of the U.S. from TPP, the trade agreement is being revived by Japan and other members and President Trump has indicated a possible willingness to renegotiate and re-join the TPP.

³⁴ See here.

³⁵ See here.

³⁶ See here.

³⁷ See here.

While a delegation from the Trump administration and leaders from various parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem to witness the illegal and immoral move of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to the beleaguered and contested city, Israeli soldiers slaughtered unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. The latest count reports more than 50 dead and 2,700 wounded.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) demands the United States condemn Israeli state violence and the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to murder unarmed Palestinians, a violation of U.S. law. Guidelines for the sale and transfer of military equipment stipulates U.S.-supplied arms cannot be used to violate human rights.

However, BAP is clear responsibility for the barbarity the world is witnessing does not only rest with the Israeli colonial state. The systematic violence of ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, exile, assassinations, land thefts, bombings, and the denial of water and other vital services that provide basic dignity could not have occurred without ongoing support from the United States, as well as both major political parties in the United States, the corporate press and every major institution of U.S. society, including many churches.

Support for Israeli settler-colonialism has been the stated policy of both dominant U.S. political parties, along with a firm commitment to ensure the Israeli government has the military means to not only sustain the occupation but impose its military will on its neighbors in the region. The two-state solution was always a subterfuge to delay the eradication of illegal Israeli settlements, while military containment policies represented most dramatically in the apartheid walls that crisscross Palestinian territories on the so-called West Bank actually created new realities on the ground, making a two-state solution impossible.

In accordance with the principles and values reflected in the platform of the Poor People’s Campaign and the stated support for that campaign by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, BAP is calling on both to condemn the attacks and join BAP in calling for an intervention by the international community.

We believe this public stance is important because the recent decisions to sabotage the Iran agreement and give Israel a green light to escalate military aggressions in the sovereign state of Syria, coupled with the brutal violence unleashed against unarmed protesters in Gaza, provide unassailable evidence both the United States and Israel have opted to operate outside the rule of law as rogue criminal states.

Therefore, BAP calls on the international community to use all means at its disposal to force the United States and Israel to comport themselves in line with acceptable international norms. It is quite obvious to us that absent pressure from the international community in the form of arms embargoes, economic sanctions and universal moral condemnation, both states will continue to be global threats to peace and international outlaws in relation to human rights.

A decisão dos Estados Unidos de sair do acordo nuclear iraniano – assinado em 2015, por Teerão, pelos 5 membros permanentes do Conselho de Segurança da ONU e pela Alemanha – provoca uma situação de extremo perigo não só para o Médio Oriente.

Para compreender quais são as implicações desta decisão, tomada sob a pressão de Israel, que define o acordo como sendo “a capitulação do Ocidente ao Eixo do Mal, liderado pelo Irão”, devemos partir de um facto inequívoco: é Israel que tem a Bomba, não é o Irão.

Há mais de cinquenta anos, Israel produz armas nucleares nas instalações de Dimona construída, sobretudo,  com a ajuda da França e dos Estados Unidos. Não é inspeccionada porque Israel, a única potência nuclear no Médio Oriente, não adere ao Tratado de Não-Proliferação de Armas Nuclear, que o Irão assinou há cinquenta anos. As provas de que Israel produz armas nucleares foi demonstrada há mais de trinta anos, por Mordechai Vanunu, que trabalhava na fábrica de Dimona: depois de serem examinadas pelos principais especialistas de armas nucleares, elas foram publicadas pelo jornal The Sunday Times em 5 de Outubro de 1986. Vanunu, raptado em Roma pelo Mossad e transportado para Israel, foi condenado a 18 anos de prisão e, depois de libertado em 2004, foi submetido a severas restrições.

Israel possui hoje (embora sem admiti-lo) um arsenal estimado em 100-400 armas nucleares, entre as quais há mini-bombas nucleares e bombas de neutrões da nova geração, e produz plutónio e trítio em quantidades que permitem a construção de uma outra centena. As ogivas nucleares israelitas estão prontas para lançamento em mísseis balísticos, como o Jericho 3, e pelos caças F-15 e F-16 fornecidos pelos EUA, aos quais se juntam agora os  F-35.

Consoante confirmam as numerosas inspecções da AIEA, o Irão não tem armas nucleares e compromete-se a não produzi-las, submetendo-se ao acordo através de um rigoroso controlo internacional. No entanto – escreve o antigo Secretário de Estado americano, Colin Powell, em 3 de Março de 2015, num email que veio a público – “em Teerão, sabem muito bem que Israel tem 200 armas nucleares, todas apontadas para Teerão, e que nós (USA) temos milhares delas”.

Os aliados europeus dos EUA, que formalmente continuam a apoiar o acordo com o Irão, fundamentalmente, estão alinhados com Israel. A Alemanha forneceu-lhe quatro submarinos Dolphin, modificados para lançar mísseis de cruzeiro com ogivas nucleares. A Alemanha, a França, a Itália, a Grécia e a Polónia participaram, com os EUA, no maior exercício internacional de guerra aérea na História de Israel, a Bandeira Azul 2017. A Itália, ligada a Israel por um acordo de cooperação militar (Lei n. 94, 2005), participou com os caças Tornado do 6º Stormo, de Ghedi, adaptados para transportar  bombas nucleares B-61 dos EUA (que em breve serão substituídas pelas B61-12). Os EUA, com o F-16 da 31st Fighter Wing de Aviano, estão adaptados para a mesma função.

As forças nucleares israelitas estão integradas no sistema electrónico da NATO, no âmbito do “Programa de Cooperação Individual” com Israel, um país que, embora não sendo membro da Aliança, tem uma missão permanente no quartel general da NATO, em Bruxelas.

De acordo com o plano testado no exercício EUA-Israel Juniper Cobra 2018, as forças dos EUA e da NATO viriam da Europa (especialmente das bases em Itália) para apoiar Israel numa guerra contra o Irão. Pode começar com um ataque israelita contra as instalações nucleares iranianas, como o que foi realizada em 1981, em Osiraq, no Iraque.

No caso de haver uma retaliação iraniana, Israel poderia usar uma arma nuclear, iniciando uma reacção em cadeia com resultados imprevisíveis.

Manlio Dinucci

Il manifesto,15 de Maio de 2018

If you want to know the untold history of the U.S.A., then a good place to start is with the history of US imperialism in Asia from the mid-19^th century until today. Not only will that reveal the history of the criminality of US foreign policy, but it will also reveal the true nature of U.S. capitalism, imperialism, fascism and U.S. wars of aggression: past, present and future.

For centuries the U.S. has preached that it believes in democracy, freedom and self-determination, but its actions towards other countries speak louder than words. Internationally the U.S. is a predator and a bully. It subjugates small countries, corrupts them by backing right-wing dictators, and enables death squads to commit mass murder of all suspected dissidents. During the First Cold War leftists, anti-colonialists, nationalists and intellectuals were called “communists” and imprisoned, tortured and executed. Now they are called “terrorists”.

The foreign policy interests of the U.S. are to promote the neocolonial interests of U.S. corporations, and to project the financial and military power of the U.S. internationally. If the U.S. cannot bully a head of state into collaborating then it backs a military coup d’etat, stirs up internal violence with divide and conquer strategies, and covertly uses mercenaries to start civil wars. If all else fails it will find a pretext or a false flag to invade and overthrow an unfriendly government.

Because of past disasters in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq the U.S. is hesitant to commit large numbers of U.S. boots on the ground. Instead it prefers the safety of “boots in the sky” with its domination of air power to bomb helpless countries into submission. If it cannot get a country to submit then it destroys it mercilessly as an example of the price that other countries will pay if they do not go along to get along with the U.S.A. The U.S. never gives up on its quest for control of worldwide capitalism. Any doubters of U.S. persistence need only to look to North Korea, Cuba and Iran.

U.S. foreign policy is the domain of the elites. The public busies itself with domestic issues, just trying to make a living and raise a family. Sometimes the elites of foreign policy let their masks slip to reveal their true nature. When Zbigniew Brzezinski said in 2009 that “today it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people” he was not just intellectualizing, as if teaching a Harvard course on political science. Brzezinski was admitting to his personal responsibility for policies that have killed millions of people.

Brzezinski with First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Jimmy Carter. (Image by CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies)

It was Brzezinski that advised President Jimmy Carter to destabilize Afghanistan in the late 1970s early 1980’s. At the time Afghanistan’s socialist government was modernizing the country, developing its economy, educating its people, and improving the standard of living for millions of Afghans. It was also advancing the rights and opportunities for women, which the U.S. is constantly touting as one of its cherished human rights concerns. It was Brzezinski’s destabilization project that set women’s rights back hundreds of years in Afghanistan. When human rights get in the way of U.S. foreign policy objectives, then human rights lose.

In 1979 Brzezinski advised Carter to secretly authorize the CIA to give financial and military aid to further inflame Islamic fanatic mujahideen that were violently opposed to modernization. When the Soviet Union intervened militarily in support of the threatened Afghan government it was not an invasion. It was the legal response of Russia to a neighboring country that was asking for military aid against foreign backed insurgents. Today we see a similar Russian military assistance program in Syria for similar reasons against very similar villains.

Carter feigned indignation and outrage towards Russia and he put the freeze back into the Cold War. He decried the “invasion as a deliberate effort by a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people”, and Carter claimed it was a Russian plot to control Afghanistan’s oil. Carter declared a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow-hosted Olympics to punish Russia, and by doing so he dashed the dreams of U.S. athletes that had been training for 4 years in preparation for the Olympic Games. A good time was had by all in Moscow without the U.S. participation. U.S. athletes were sacrificed as pawns in Brzezinski’s game of the Grand Chessboard. It is a blood soaked chessboard where the masters see flesh and blood people as objects to be toyed with.

What Brzezinski and Carter did was to set a trap that the Soviets fell into when they sent their military into Afghanistan. The trap had been laid before the Russian “invasion”, and not afterwards as Brzezinski would brag years later in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur:

“Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Carter and Brzezinski were overjoyed that the U.S. would then have the sweet revenge of giving Russia a bloody Vietnam experience. Carter and Brzezinski gave Afghanistan a Vietnam experience too, in which millions of people were destroyed.

Once events in Afghanistan were set into motion, then Carter and Brzezinski added gasoline to the inflamed Islamic fanatics with billions of dollars in U.S. military support funneled through Pakistan. Thousands of mercenaries from Arab countries poured into Afghanistan to join the fight and get paid too. They were called “Afghan-Arabs”. The Brzezinski-Carter scheme would be continued under President Reagan and led to the destruction of Afghanistan, the re-subjugation of Afghan women, and millions of Afghan civilian victims of war. Afghanistan never recovered but from its ashes rose up the Taliban and al Qaeda. The mysteries surrounding the attacks on the U.S. of September 11^th 2001 are unresolved. Regardless of whodunit the attacks of 9/11 would be used as justification by President W. Bush to launch another invasion of Afghanistan.

Brzezinski’s egotism to show how smart he thought he was is the smoking gun of George Orwell’s famous quote:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

For decades the U.S. pretended that the false narrative of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was reality. The U.S. glorified the mujahideen as freedom fighters, when actually they were Islamic fanatics and mercenary proxies used by the U.S. and its co-conspirators. The U.S. and the Saudis funded a heavily armed brand of Islamic terrorism that the U.S. though that it could control, ignore or kill off once it was no longer needed.

As Brzezinski also said in that Le Nouvel Observateur interview:

“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

The U.S. thought that it had found the “silver bullet” to destroy all of its enemies and control West Asia with “stirred-up Muslims”. With the illusion of such power the U.S. fed its addiction to regime change projects using Islamic mercenaries. As Brzezinski said, controlling people is difficult. The result of regime change projects has been chaos. For the U.S. chaos is an opportunity. It is of no concern for the elites that chaos costs millions of people in the world to suffer.

Today the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria can be laid posthumously at the feet of Brzezinski. Carter has escaped public blame and he still teaches Sunday School as the Nobel Peace Prize president. Brzezinski was so good at killing millions of people that he went on to advising another Peace Prize president how to do it. President Obama called Brzezinski “one of our most outstanding thinkers”. Obama picked up the killing where W. Bush left off.

Killing millions of people instead of trying to control them is the model for asymmetrical warfare. Asymmetrical warfare is when the U.S. destroys a small country that has a limited ability to defend itself and cannot strike back. The tools of the trade are the CIA, air power, missiles, drones and mercenaries.

The U.S. public has become immune to its government killing millions of Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghans, and Arabs, as long as it does not interrupt with the public’s busy daily lives. The opportunity costs to the American people is costing them universal healthcare, affordable higher education, modern mass transportation, modern infrastructure and economic security in old age; but the public does not seem to notice, and cannot connect the dots. They still think that the U.S. has the highest standard of living in the world. The reality is that the U.S. comes in at about 19^th on everything from the infant mortality rate to high speed internet; except military spending and political prisoners at which the U.S. is number one.

John Trumbull: The Declaration of Independence (Image by cizauskas)

How did the U.S. fall so low when it started with such high hopes on July 4^th 1776 with the Declaration of Independence that proclaimed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?

Those words never really meant what most Americans think they mean.  American capitalism is a hierarchicalbased class society.  Property bestows more rights and privileges on the top of the pyramid of wealth. The Founding Documents of the U.S.A. were written by the elites, for the elites and for future elites in the lottery of capitalism American-style. By “Life” is meant for those that can afford the necessities and luxuries of life. “Liberty” is the liberty to close off the commons from the natives and those that do not own property. “Happiness” is the happiness that comes with owning slaves, and finding foreign sources of cheap labor.

As the greed for more and more land, more slaves and more wealth grew, the elites declared that it was Manifest Destiny for them to spread capitalism and the American way of life across all of North America. It was then that Asia’s destiny became America’s destiny. When the U.S. boundary met the Pacific Ocean the U.S. did not stop its Westward expansion. It kept on going to Hawaii, Japan, China and Korea. The U.S. joined the European scramble for overseas colonies and empire.

Capitalism Kills Democracy Community + Family (Image by Jagz Mario)

Capitalism must expand to survive. Adam Smith’s quaint form of capitalism was based on bartering. The butcher, baker and candlestick maker traded their products with each other providing all with meat, bread and light. Modern capitalism American-style is based on money, and money is based on debt. Debt requires that interest be paid by the borrower to the lender, thus syphoning off capital from the capitalist to the financier. The capitalist must expand production and find sources of cheap labor to pay the interest and to skim a profit too. Expanding production means that more and more natural resources are needed. To produce more requires even cheaper labor and automation. To sell an ever increasing amount of finished products of capitalism requires advertising and expanding to foreign markets. If any link in the chain is broken then the Ponzi scheme of capitalism collapses into an economic depression.

Economic depressions cause social unrest, civil disturbances and class conflict. When the social hierarchy of capitalism is shaken by economic depression, then capitalism must restore order either with violent repression or appeasement by redistributing some of the wealth to reduce tension. The first instinct of the capitalists is to resort to violence and repression to preserve their wealth. That is why capitalism and true democracy cannot coexist. One or the other has to give or the system is in danger of breaking down entirely.

Pinochet – Moneda (Image by fpealvarez) 

The natural political order for capitalism is right-wing dictatorship, martial law and fascism. Only by continuous expansion, imperialism and the exploitation of others can there be a compromise between capitalism and democracy domestically. When U.S. presidents say that the “American Way of Life” is being threatened by enemies what they mean is that small countries resist being subjugated and exploited by the U.S. Empire.

When the U.S. first began to expand beyond the shores of the Pacific Ocean they were met with rejection. Ancient societies such as in Japan, Korea and China had civilizations with thousands of years of history. They had their own social order, their way of life and they were self-sufficient. They told the U.S. capitalists to go away. Such behavior by Asians was intolerable to the U.S. capitalist and merchant classes who wanted to sell their excess production and make trading profits. The U.S. was outraged that Asians, whom the white supremacists Euro-Americans saw as being non-Christian barbarians and inferior humans, would act so superior as to refuse to buy and sell with U.S. traders. How was the U.S. to expand trade when it was met with such ‘insolence’? The answer that came naturally was to send in the navy with gunboats and the marines with bayonets to subjugate the ‘insolent barbarians’ to either open up to trade or have their cities bombarded with cannon balls and burnt to the ground.

The “West was won” with genocide of the Native Americans, and if genocide was needed to subjugate Asia, then the U.S. would use it, and it did. The U.S. continued its killing spree in the Philippians, Korea, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. The U.S. considers the Pacific Ocean a U.S. lake.

The U.S. is still trying to control the world with cannon balls. The cannon balls keep getting bigger, more technologically complex and more genocidal. The U.S. cannot accept the reality that it cannot control the world. The more it tries to, the more destruction, death and chaos it causes. Instead of creating world order the U.S. keeps creating world disorder. World disorder threatens domestic order as more and more of the U.S. wealth is drained off by military expenditures and maintaining a foreign empire.

Vladimir Lenin explained how today’s U.S. foreign policy works in his 1917 thesis on the causes of World War One: “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism“. Capitalism leads to monopoly, monopoly leads to imperialism and imperialism leads to war. Capitalism also leads to inequality. Inequality and democracy cannot coexist forever because there are limits to expansion and growth. To preserve inequality requires fascism and a police state. Democracy can only thrive if there is more equality. Eventually, choices will be made between fascism or democracy, and between capitalism or something else?

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This article was originally published on OpEdNews.

David William Pear is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Global Research, and many other publications.   David is active in social issues relating to peace, race relations and religious freedom, homelessness and equal justice. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete for Peace, CodePink, and International Solidarity Movement.

To this writer any time I dare mention that I am a Socialist brings smirks to many faces. The stigma is so great, mostly due to the successful propaganda of this empire, that a majority of my fellow Americans, regardless of the prism of demographics, will shake their heads in disagreement.

The schools, the media and of course this Two Party/One Party con job have been indoctrinated to do the bidding of the Super Rich and its empire. Well, perhaps if my fellow citizens would at least listen to this writer and thinker’s version of a socialist society:

• Public funding of all elections, with NO private money allowed… period!
• Local, state and federal ownership of energy ( gas and oil and natural gas) resources, all run NON PROFIT
• Ditto for Big Pharma, banking, weapons manufacturing, military equipment of all types
• Government run Healthcare and Dental Care for All, nonprofit hospitals and medical equipment manufacturing
• Local communities owning and running ( via eminent domain )  ALL rental properties, residential and commercial
• A 50% Flat Surtax on all income over one million dollars per year… with NO deductions
• A Payroll tax forgiveness on wages of up to $ 20k a year for both the employee AND the employer. For the employer, in order to aid small businesses, their ‘forgiveness portion’ is only for the employer’s contribution for up to 100 employees. All workers anywhere get it regardless of where they work

Here is what would happen if these ideas become reality:

With public funding the Two Party/One Party system would lose its power over time. More and more ‘regular folks ‘ could and would seek office running as either independents or with 3rd parties.

With the citizens owning  energy, Big Pharma, rental properties and banking  (All NON PROFIT) this would translate into major savings for the consumer… major savings! As far as weapons and military hardware mfg., taking the profit out of it would stifle the War Economy… because there would be NO such entity! Phony wars and preemptive ones would be unnecessary when there are no longer private, corporate interests involved in foreign policy.

As far as small business, obviously when working stiffs and their employers become covered by a viable National Health (and dental) plan, NON PROFIT, with NO expense to the employer, the stress is lessened. Plus, with that Payroll Tax Forgiveness plan in effect, once again the small business owner and employee each get a break. The Flat 50% Surtax on income would more than jumpstart these plans.  Factor in the lower commercial rental rates for small businesses because the community owns the rental space, and Mom and Pop Main Street will prosper.

When it comes to residential housing, consider this: With NO profit on mortgages (only overhead) many who now rent would find that their monthly mortgage payments could be even LESS than the current rent they now pay to a private landlord (a term right out of Feudalism by the way). Also, if the local community actually owned and operated residential rental properties, perhaps this could occur: The renter pays rent at a reduced rate, and maybe 25% of it goes into an escrow account, held by the community bank. When the renter is ready to purchase that apartment (or home) the escrow is then used towards the needed down payment on the mortgage. Why not? Also, with a socialist system in place, consider how many more NEW homeowners there would be. Translated, that means more construction needed, more doors, windows, cabinets etc needed.. which means economic stimulus! Plus, more jobs needed to complete these tasks A ‘Win- Win’ solution!

Socialism is NOT a totalitarian system. On the contrary, it is the best manner to achieve a more level and workable ‘economic playing field’. You will still have very wealthy people, but they will be contributing more of their excess income for the common good. Isn’t that what most religions preach?

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House,  Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

The logic is inescapable.  In 1917 when the British government of David Lloyd George issued the Balfour Declaration, his then cabinet consisted predominately of either Nonconformist or Evangelical Christian churchgoers whose beliefs were governed by the texts of the Bible. They believed in the Second Coming of Christ made possible by the redemption of the Jews who would be gathered together and baptised, en masse, in Jerusalem.

By 1948, however, British values and religious beliefs had changed dramatically but crucially not that of the Americans and their President, Harry S Truman. He was the key factor in the establishment of the new state, planted in Palestine, and the first to recognise it. The rest of the international community took its cue from the US super-state. Which is where we are today.

However, no one could have envisaged that a political entity established as a sanctuary for stateless European refugees, post WW2, would evolve to be a secret nuclear power with an increasing influence over the American Congress and Presidency and with carte blanche to kill at will – in particular those indigenous Palestinians whom it had forcibly expelled from their lands in 1948.

So, why will Israel not continue along the same path for another 70 years?

The answer lies in the changing face of America and its already declining influence on the world stage.  The mighty dollar will in the next years lose its position as the world’s reserve currency and, for a variety of reasons, will be replaced by that either of China or Europe.

At that point, Israel will lose its supply of arms, aircraft and funding from the United States and when that time comes, it will revert to just a small, non-strategic state on the Eastern Mediterranean with a mixed population of maybe just 10 million Muslims, Christians and Jews, all co-existing and having free access to the holy sites, in perpetuity.  It will probably also revert to its original name of Palestine and Jerusalem will become once again an international city in accordance with the will of the United Nations.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

May 15 is the 70th Nakba Day, reflecting endless Palestinian suffering since 1948 – under a ruthless occupier since 1967.

A displaced Palestinian earlier shared his heart-rendering memories, saying:

“I cannot forget three horror-filled days in July of 1948. The pain sears my memory, and I cannot rid myself of it no matter how hard I try.”

“First, Israeli soldiers forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes near the Mediterranean coast, even though some families had lived in the same houses for centuries.”

“My family had been in the town of Lydda in Palestine at least 1,600 years. Then, without water, we stumbled into the hills and continued for three deadly days.”

“The Jewish soldiers followed, occasionally shooting over our heads to scare us and keep us moving. Terror filled my eleven-year-old mind as I wondered what would happen.”

“I remembered overhearing my father and his friends express alarm about recent massacres by Jewish terrorists. Would they kill us, too?”

“We did not know what to do, except to follow orders and stumble blindly up the rocky hills. I walked hand in hand with my grandfather, who carried our only remaining possessions-a small tin of sugar and some milk for my aunt’s two-year-old son, sick with typhoid.”

Survivors remember Deir Yassin. On April 9, 1948, Israeli soldiers entered the village violently -machine-gunned houses randomly, many inside slaughtered.

1948 Deir Yassin massacre (Source: IMEMC News)

Remaining villagers were rounded up and murdered in cold blood. Among them were children, infants, the elderly and women – first raped before killed. Around 120 Palestinians were massacred that day.

An eyewitness said

“I was (there) when the Jews attacked…(They) closed on the village amid exchanges of fire with us.”

“Once they entered the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached the western edge.”

“The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, cannons. They enter(ed) houses and kill(ed) women and children indiscriminately. The (village) youths…fought bravely.”

They were no match against brutality committed on them. Israeli high crimes continued from then to now.

Nakba survivors recall the horror of that time – Arabs shot in cold blood, women raped, other atrocities committed, hundreds of thousands displaced, hoping one day to return, they and descendants still waiting, enduring ruthless militarized occupation.

On Nakba day eve, the Global BDS movement for freedom, justice and equality in Occupied Palestine said the following:

On May 15, “Palestinians commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, or ‘Catastrophe,’ marking the systematic mass expulsion of indigenous Palestinians from their homes to establish a Jewish-majority state.”

“In Gaza, where most Palestinians are refugees, thousands will participate in Great Return March demonstrations, calling for the right of refugees to return to the lands from which they were forcibly expelled.”

“These demonstrations are expected to be the largest since they began over seven weeks ago.”

“Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist paramilitaries, and then the Israeli military, made 750,000 to one million indigenous Palestinians into refugees, massacred Palestinian civilians, and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian communities.”

“Israel used force to prevent Palestinian families from returning to their homes, and continues to deny Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right of return.”

“A key Palestinian demand, prominently expressed by demonstrators in Gaza…is for a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, similar to the one that was imposed on apartheid South Africa to end its egregious violations of human rights.”

Gaza-based community organizer/BDS National Committee member Abdulrahman Abunahel said the following:

“For us Palestinians, the Nakba is not just a crime of the past. It’s ongoing. It has never ended.”

“My grandparents were violently expelled from their village in 1948 and forced to live as refugees in the Gaza Strip.”

“Their beautiful village, called Barbara, is only 10 miles away. I can almost see it, but I have no way to reach it.”

“The ongoing Nakba is why I’ve grown up as a refugee living under Israeli military rule. It’s why I live in what many of us call a suffocating, open-air prison crammed with two million people, denied my basic rights, including freedom of movement.”

“Israel will not even allow me to leave Gaza temporarily to receive important medical care. My hardships are not exceptional. Tens of Palestinians died last year, just waiting for Israel to grant them permits to seek life-saving medical care outside Gaza, and thousands couldn’t make their medical appointments.”

“The ongoing Nakba is why I participate in the Great Return March and support the BDS movement.”

“I simply want the right to live in the land where I am from, in freedom, in peace and with dignity. I was born a refugee. I do not want to die as one.”

BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti (image on the right) said the following:

“The Trump administration’s decision to open the US embassy in Jerusalem as Palestinians commemorate 70 painful years of displacement signals that it’s giving Israel freer reign than ever to try to push us out of our homeland.”

“The Trump-Netanyahu far-right alliance is wreaking havoc in Palestine and, by extension, the world.”

“In Jerusalem, Israel has long destroyed Palestinian homes, revoked the right of the indigenous Palestinians to live in their city, and encouraged illegal Israeli settlers to evict Palestinian families and openly steal their homes.”

“The Trump administration is now not just an enabler, but also a full partner in Israel’s accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem and beyond.”

“Still, I have hope in popular, creative Palestinian resistance, now invigorated by the Great Return March.”

“I have hope because growing numbers of people around the world are seeing the connection between our struggle for freedom, justice and equality, and their own justice struggles.”

“This is why they are increasingly supporting the Palestinian-led BDS movement.”

“This growing international alliance of progressive communities working to defeat the hateful agenda of the far-right is what gives me hope that we can, and shall, eventually end the ongoing Nakba, end the ongoing destruction of Palestinian life, and create a better world for all.”

Millions of Palestinians are prisoners in their historic homeland – held hostage by Israeli viciousness, besieged Gazans suffering most of all.

Bloody Nakba Day Tuesday almost surely will follow bloody Monday, the worst carnage in Gaza since Israel’s summer 2014 aggression – 59 dead, around 2,700 injured, the death toll sure to rise.

The number of Gazan deaths since March 30 Great March of Return Friday is around 105 and rising, many thousands wounded, hundreds seriously, countless numbers with disabling injuries – the world community doing nothing to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Being Muslim under oppressive Jewish occupation is a horrendous cross no one should have to bear.

A May 14 White House statement called the opening of Washington’s embassy in Jerusalem a “milestone” – an intolerable millstone for long-suffering Palestinians.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Featured image: Tero Varjoranta 

Almost universally missing from the UK’s mainstream media coverage of the current Iran crisis is the fact that the UN’s most senior nuclear inspector has unexpectedly ‘resigned.’

AP News 12/05/18: The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog says its top inspector has quit with immediate effect, just as the agency’s work in Iran is once again in focus. The International Atomic Energy Agency didn’t give a reason for the sudden resignation of Tero Varjoranta, stating Saturday that it doesn’t comment on confidential personnel matters. The move comes just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord designed to keep Tehran’s atomic weapons program in check.

The significance of this resignation is historical.

It is uncanny just how short the collective memory of political leaders and the mainstream media really is. Iraq was invaded in 2003 by America followed largely by an allied force whose membership was made up of the sycophantic, frightened or coerced.

With Iran, like Iraq, there are some striking features that come from a well-used playbook and the resignation of the most senior weapons inspector to Iran confirms what America wants next.

Like Iraq in 2003, Iran is now being propagandised as a foe with weapons of unimaginable destruction even though they don’t exist.

Like Iraq, international weapons inspectors have continually countered the false claims of America that they exist.

Like Iraq, America’s allies in Europe have continually supported those weapons inspectors as we have recently witnessed.

Like Iraq, France and Germany have specifically warned America in no uncertain terms that inflaming Iran would ignite the Middle East into total chaos.

Like Iraq, America is once again pursuing a policy of confrontation.

Like Iraq, America has sought to discredit the same weapons inspection teams.

Like Iraq, the most senior nuclear weapons inspector was forced to resign.

And Like Iraq, just some of the individuals responsible for setting the Mid-East up in flames first time around was the fake news and propaganda fest created by Benjamin Netanyahu and John Bolton. It was unquestioningly swallowed whole by the Western media. Clearly, nothing has changed. Same two warmongers, same media.

One year before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Israeli government was distrustful of America’s confrontational and aggressive stance. Today, the Israeli government is aggressively lobbying for exactly that – confrontation. Like today, in 2002, Netanyahu was at the centre of creating the invasion of a neighbour.

“There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons – no question whatsoever,” Netanyahu, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on September 12, 2002. “And there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately.”

Today, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has evidence Iranian officials were “brazenly lying” when they said Iran wasn’t pursuing nuclear weapons and that the Islamic republic is keeping an “atomic archive” at a secret compound. This is in total and repeated contradiction to the weapons and nuclear facility inspectors own reports, who are fully supported by the EU, Russia and China.

John Bolton advocated for another U.S. invasion of Iraq, following the first Gulf War, as far back as the 1990s, when he called on President Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein. Later, as Undersecretary of State for arms control, during President George W. Bush’s first term in office, he told the BBC the U.S. was “confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq.”

Today, says John Bolton,

“Iran had never made a strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons programme” and then went further to say that Iran’s “ballistic missile program, which continued essentially unchecked, was proof that what they were seeking was delivery systems for the nuclear weapons”

And with some irony Bolton accuses Iran of being the “world’s central banker of international terrorism”, and causing “conventional hostilities across the region.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (image on the right) was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2009. He and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei learned that the Bush administration was trying to deny him a third term as head of the Agency in 2003. In its effort to find incriminating information, the United States even tapped ElBaradei’s phone. That effort’s ringleader was none other than – John Bolton.

José Maurício Bustani is a Brazilian diplomat who was the first director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) until he was ousted after falling out with the US government in April 2002 over exactly the same story – WMD in Iraq. It was the first time in history that the head of a major international organization was removed during his/her term of office. Testimony has since emerged that Bustani was removed because he would have “placed a formidable obstacle in the path of the Bush administration’s war plans, by removing their ostensible motive.”

Bustani had a visitor in his office in the Hague who threatened:

 “If you don’t there will be consequences, there will be retaliation – we know where your kids are.”

That visitor was – John Bolton.

Tero Varjoranta is a Finnish diplomat who started working as Deputy Director General of the IAEA and Head of the agency’s Inspection and Supervision Department. He had 30 years experience in the industry. He stepped down three days after Donald Trump’s Iran withdrawal announcement. One wonders if Varjoranta has suffered a visit from Bolton too.

On March 5 2003, Germany, France, and Russia issued a joint statement declaring that they “resolutely support Messrs Blix (head of the IAEA) and El Baradei.”

“In these circumstances, we will not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorise the use of force,” said the joint statement.

On March 17, in a primetime speech, George W. Bush told the American people that the inspectors had been “systematically deceived.”

American intelligence, he insisted, “leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Much of that intelligence came from Israel’s Netanyahu.

Two days later, America invaded Iraq.

The pretext for war with Iran is coming – we just haven’t been told what it is yet – but it’s coming. Will the EU’s resolve stand firm this time around?

The awarding of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) may mark a turning point in efforts to ensure that humanity survives the nuclear-weapons era. The urgency of ICAN’s work was recently highlighted when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward to just 2 minutes to midnight, the highest level of danger since 1953 and 5 minutes closer to midnight than when concerns about U.S. and Soviet preparations for nuclear war sparked the founding of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 1980 (see figure).

ICAN was launched in April 2007 by IPPNW. Exactly 50 years earlier, Albert Schweitzer had appealed for a ban on atmospheric nuclear test explosions, whose radioactive fallout endangered human health worldwide. The 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty achieved that goal. Subsequent research has documented the medical consequences of nuclear war and the ineffectiveness of post-attack medical services, making clear the imperative for primary prevention.^1,2 IPPNW was awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. President Mikhail Gorbachev cited IPPNW as a major influence, and President Ronald Reagan agreed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” When the Cold War ended in 1991, the Clock was set back to 17 minutes to midnight.

Doomsday Clock History, 1947 to 2018: Number of Minutes to Midnight and Selected Events.

But nuclear disarmament has stalled: today, nine countries — Russia, the United States, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea — maintain nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons. Almost 20 years after warnings were published in the Journal and elsewhere about the dangers of “accidental nuclear war,” nearly 2000 weapons remain on “launch-on-warning” hair-trigger alert, despite the growing vulnerability of weapons systems to cyberattack.³

Although President Barack Obama publicly committed the United States in 2009 to the abolition of nuclear weapons, when he left office the country had a $1.25 trillion, 30-year budget to modernize its nuclear arsenal. President Donald Trump has pledged major increases in U.S. nuclear weapons and has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Particularly ominous is the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review articulating U.S. nuclear-weapons policies, which includes unprecedented plans to use nuclear weapons in response to nonnuclear threats or attacks and plans for the development of “more usable” nuclear weapons.⁴ The 74-page document makes no mention of Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which commits all signatories “to pursue…nuclear disarmament,” or of the specific commitments to disarmament made by the United States and other nuclear-armed states in the 2010 NPT action plan. President Vladimir Putin recently boasted about Russia’s new and “invincible” nuclear weapons, including nuclear-powered cruise missiles and intercontinental autonomous torpedoes. Despite decades of advocacy by physicians and others, a nuclear strike remains only a computer malfunction, other human or technical error, or military escalation away.

How, then, could we be at a turning point?

ICAN applies to nuclear weapons a proven strategy for making progress toward the elimination of other inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, such as biologic and chemical weapons, antipersonnel land mines, and cluster munitions. This approach can be summarized as stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate. In each case, weapons that cannot be used without unacceptable consequences have first been prohibited in an international treaty, which has laid the foundation for their progressive elimination. ICAN has rapidly grown into a global campaign coalition of nearly 500 partner organizations in more than 100 countries with the goal of uniting all sectors of civil society, in partnership with governments, to work toward complete nuclear disarmament.

Whereas studies on the health effects of nuclear war have traditionally focused on the direct effects of nuclear explosions on populations in targeted countries, more recent studies have confirmed that most deaths would probably occur in noncombatant states. Even a “limited” nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons (less than 1% of the current stockpile of weapons, and within the capacity of any of the nine nuclear-armed states, with the probable exception of North Korea) would ignite massive confluent fires that would release millions of tons of smoke and soot into the atmosphere. Such pollutants would cause substantial global cooling, drying, and darkening for more than a decade, disrupting food production worldwide and putting more than 2 billion people, the majority of them in Africa and Asia, at risk for death from starvation.¹

Recent false alarms of impending nuclear attacks in Hawaii, Japan, and Guam, and disclosures that the U.S. National Security Agency’s computers have been successfully hacked, have demonstrated that the risk of a nuclear war started by mistake or because of a cyberattack is growing.⁵ For decades, nuclear-armed states claimed a right to possess nuclear weapons for their own national security. Apart from the ethical issues inherent in basing perceived security on the capacity to indiscriminately wipe out millions of civilians, the theory that “mutually assured destruction” will ensure that countries never actually use nuclear weapons has assumed — contrary to all evidence — the infallibility of both technical systems and human judgment during times of crisis. In reality, the fallibility of human and technical systems and the global devastation that would result from a nuclear attack means that any country possessing nuclear weapons is accepting an ever-increasing possibility of self-destruction.

Past efforts to promote disarmament were often mired in the arcane policy labyrinths of nuclear-armed states. ICAN maintains that given the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and the impossibility of guaranteeing that such weapons will never be used, ensuring the survival of human civilization requires the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Compelling medical, scientific, and moral arguments against nuclear weapons have proven insufficient. ICAN’s work therefore focuses on translating these arguments into binding legal prohibitions.

Although legal arguments for disarmament have stressed that the use of nuclear weapons would violate international humanitarian law (i.e., it would constitute a war crime), the legal status of possession of such weapons is less clear. Much of current international law — from the outlawing of slavery to the banning of chemical and biologic weapons — grew out of moral stigmatization of a previously accepted practice. A crucial milestone was obtaining the active support of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world’s largest humanitarian network, for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

ICAN’s first major victory was the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in July 2017. The treaty was supported by 122 countries, although all nuclear-armed countries and many of their allies boycotted the negotiations. Political strategies for turning moral and legal stigmatization of nuclear weapons into verifiable elimination will vary from country to country. ICAN’s “Don’t Bank on the Bomb” campaign encourages individual investors, banks, pension funds, and other entities to divest from any company involved in nuclear-weapons production. The largest pension funds in Norway and the Netherlands have already agreed to do so. The World Bank’s recent decision to divest from fossil fuels raises the possibility of similar action by major investors regarding nuclear weapons.

The road to abolition will take years, and immediate steps to reduce the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used are urgently needed. In the United States, the “Back from the Brink” grassroots campaign has begun seeking endorsements from cities and towns, medical and other professional organizations, faith communities, health facilities, and other groups.

BACK FROM THE BRINK: THE CALL TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WAR*

We call on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by

• 1. Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first
• 2. Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack
• 3. Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
• 4. Cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons
• 5. Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals

La decisione degli Stati uniti di uscire dall’accordo sul nucleare iraniano – stipulato nel 2015 da Teheran con i 5 membri permanenti del Consiglio di sicurezza dell’ONU più la Germania – provoca una situazione di estrema pericolosità non solo per il Medio Oriente.

Per capire quali implicazioni abbia tale decisione, presa sotto pressione di Israele che definisce l’accordo «la resa dell’Occidente all’asse del male guidato dall’Iran», si deve partire da un fatto ben preciso: Israele ha la Bomba, non l’Iran.

Sono oltre cinquant’anni che Israele produce armi nucleari nell’impianto di Dimona, costruito con l’aiuto soprattutto di Francia e Stati Uniti. Esso non viene sottoposto a ispezioni poiché Israele, l’unica potenza nucleare in Medioriente, non aderisce al Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari, che invece l’Iran ha sottoscritto cinquant’anni fa. Le prove che Israele produce armi nucleari sono state portate oltre trent’anni fa da Mordechai Vanunu, che aveva lavorato nell’impianto di Dimona: dopo essere state vagliate dai maggiori esperti di armi nucleari, furono pubblicate dal giornale The Sunday Times il 5 ottobre 1986. Vanunu, rapito a Roma dal Mossad e trasportato in Israele, fu condannato a 18 anni di carcere duro e, rilasciato nel 2004, sottoposto a gravi restrizioni.

Israele possiede oggi (pur senza ammetterlo) un arsenale stimato in 100-400 armi nucleari, tra cui mini-nukes e bombe neutroniche di nuova generazione, e produce plutonio e trizio in quantità tale da costruirne altre centinaia. Le testate nucleari israeliane sono pronte al lancio su missili balistici, come il Jericho 3, e su cacciabombardieri F-15 e F-16 forniti dagli USA, cui si aggiungono ora gli F-35.

Come confermano le numerose ispezioni della AIEA, l’Iran non ha armi nucleari e si impegna a non produrle sottoponendosi in base all’accordo a stretto controllo internazionale. Comunque – scrive l’ex segretario di stato Usa Colin Powell il 3 marzo 2015 in una email venuta alla luce – «quelli a Teheran sanno bene che Israele ha 200 armi nucleari, tutte puntate su Teheran, e che noi ne abbiamo migliaia».

Gli alleati europei degli USA, che formalmente continuano a sostenere l’accordo con l’Iran, sono sostanzialmente schierati con Israele. La Germania gli ha fornito quattro sottomarini Dolphin, modificati così da poter lanciare missili da crociera a testata nucleare. Germania, Francia, Italia, Grecia e Polonia hanno partecipato, con gli USA, alla più grande esercitazione internazionale di guerra aerea nella storia di Israele, la Blue Flag 2017. L’Italia, legata a Israele da un accordo di cooperazione militare (Legge n. 94, 2005), vi ha partecipato con caccia Tornado del 6° Stormo di Ghedi, addetto al trasporto delle bombe nucleari USA B-61 (che tra non molto saranno sostituite dalle B61-12). Gli USA, con F-16 del 31st Fighter Wing di Aviano, addetti alla stessa funzione.

Le forze nucleari israeliane sono integrate nel sistema elettronico NATO, nel quadro del «Programma di cooperazione individuale» con Israele, paese che, pur non essendo membro della Alleanza, ha una missione permanente al quartier generale della NATO a Bruxelles.

Secondo il piano testato nella esercitazione USA-Israele Juniper Cobra 2018, forze USA e NATO arriverebbero dall’Europa (soprattutto dalle basi in Italia) per sostenere Israele in una guerra contro l’Iran. Essa potrebbe iniziare con un attacco israeliano agli impianti nucleari iraniani, tipo quello effettuato nel 1981 a Osiraq, in Iraq.

In caso di rappresaglia iraniana, Israele potrebbe far uso di un’arma nucleare mettendo in moto una reazione a catena dagli esiti imprevedibili.

Manlio Dinucci

Il manifesto, 15 maggio 2018

In less than three months, rank-and-file teachers and educational support staff in five states – West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona – have turned the entire country into their classroom. They haven’t just pushed for – and won – better pay and working conditions for themselves. They’ve also mounted a direct challenge to decades of bipartisan tax cuts for corporations, helping us all understand what austerity means. And by championing a raft of policy proposals to redistribute wealth away from the 1 per cent and back to the working and middle-class, they’ve shown us how austerity can be defeated.

As Emily Comer, a middle-school Spanish teacher who was a leader in the strikes in West Virginia, put it,

“The phase we are in now – to win a real, progressive solution to the health-insurance crisis – forces us to dream bigger. This isn’t just about our healthcare plan. It’s about rebalancing the power of workers and corporations in our state.”

Remarkably, these strikes have garnered overwhelming support from the public, despite years of well-funded attacks on teachers’ unions. In a recent NPR/Ipsos poll, just one in four respondents said they think teachers are paid enough, and three-quarters said teachers have the right to strike. Remarkably, this support cut across party lines.

“Two thirds of Republicans, three-quarters of independents and nearly 9 in 10 Democrats” support the teachers’ right to strike, the poll showed.

The most recent walkouts have shifted to western states. On April 26, 50,000 teachers and their supporters marched through Phoenix in 100 degree heat. That same day, thousands of protesters descended on the capitol of Colorado.

Walkouts and Victories

Every walkout has resulted in victories, some more than others. In Kentucky, educators forced the governor’s veto of new taxes to be overturned, providing some additional funds for schools. But they fell short of preventing the conservative legislature from weakening their pension plan. In Oklahoma, while educators failed to stop a raft of tax cuts and increase overall funding, they still won their first raise since 2007 by $6,000 a year, which by is huge by local standards. In Arizona, the teachers won a 9 per cent immediate raise, with Governor Doug Ducey pledging 11 per cent more to achieve what he calls the 2020 deal, a 20 per cent pay raise for all teachers by 2020. Governor John Hickenlooper, the only Democrat to head one of these states, responded to thousands of protesters by committing to restore $1-billion in education funding.

The two fiercest fights in the rebellion thus far have been in West Virginia and Arizona. In both states, the struggle hasn’t been only, or even mostly, over teacher pay; it’s been about the very future of public education. In both states, vouchers and privatization of public education have been front and center. In West Virginia, strikers defeated a move to gut seniority and a proposal to expand charter schools.

In Arizona, the fight is about “whether there will be brick-and-mortar schools in the near future,” says education journalist Jennifer Berkshire. Long a laboratory for right-wing education policies, the state has the highest percentage of students in charter schools (17 per cent) in the nation.

“Arizona is ground zero for the Koch Brothers and Betsy DeVos,” Berkshire notes, “They’ve rolled out something they call education savings accounts [ESAs]. Bank of America has a contract to create a debit card for parents to use for homeschooling, private tutors, school supplies, or a down payment on private-school tuition.”

Of course, DeVos herself is frequently heard – as she was during a recent disastrous interview with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes – repeating a version of her mantra,

“What’s an education ‘system’? There’s no such thing! Are you a system? No, you’re individual students, teachers, and parents.”

Arizona’s #RedForEd movement sprung up last year, after a coalition called Save Our Schools formed when Governor Doug Ducey pushed through an ESA pilot program. Started by parents, Save Our Schools has gathered enough signatures to place a question on the November ballot to roll back the ESA program entirely. By day two of the teacher walkouts, a second ballot initiative was drafted to create a new, dedicated tax to fund public schools; signature gathering is under way. Winning either initiative will be a heavy lift, in part because of the Koch Brothers’ opposition. But the massive turnout in favor of the teacher strike – the first statewide strike in Arizona history, and an illegal one at that – has Joe Thomas, the head of the Arizona Education Association, feeling optimistic.

“It’s been an amazing two days, with educators by the tens of thousands walking out of their classrooms and into the state capitol,” he said. “We love this energy!”

Source: The Bullet

In West Virginia, the strike settlement included the creation of a task force to come up with a long-term solution to rapidly rising health-insurance costs facing not just teachers but all state workers. The Public Employees Insurance Agency Task Force (PEIA), which includes representatives from all three education unions, was created in the heat of the strike by an executive order from the governor. But once the media turned their attention away, Governor Jim Justice tried to undo the part of the order that mandated 55 public hearings in all 55 counties.

“To us, the hearings were a key part of the executive order because it gives our community the right to be heard in designing the largest healthcare plan in our state,” Comer says. “We immediately started an action plan, generating 350 letters in a week, demanding they restore the public-hearing process. We wound up winning back what will be a total of 21 public hearings across the state. That was definitely a win.”

Perhaps more importantly from an organizing perspective, the task force puts into place a mechanism to continue building power on a key issue, while also allowing educators to get back to work educating.

The first PEIA hearing was on May 1, and workers are advancing a series of corporate tax increases to generate a long-term revenue stream for healthcare. Ted Boettner, the executive director of the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, has already analyzed which tax increases will generate what levels of revenue.

“The reason PEIA is in this crisis is because then Democratic Governor Joe Manchin lowered taxes by $420-million, getting rid of the business franchise tax and slashing the corporate net income tax from 9 per cent to 6.5 per cent,” says Boettner. “We’ve got several options, including raising the gas severance tax from 5 to 7.5 per cent, which will yield $86-million in FY 2020 and $115-million by FY 2023. In addition, we should restore the corporate net income tax to 9 per cent, which would yield $62-million in 2020 and $83-million in 2023.”

Jay O’Neal, the treasurer of the Kanawha County chapter of the West Virginia Education Association and a key strike leader, reports that at the April 26 delegate assembly,

“We unanimously passed a resolution calling for the funding to come from this combination of taxes, and explicitly endorsed progressive taxation as the solution.”

On the Horizon…

With the school year winding down, the next teachers strike might be in North Carolina in mid-May, when the state legislature resumes session. On the horizon, however, is the real possibility that the rebellion will rise up next in blue (Democratic Party) state California. Teachers in Los Angeles, the second-largest school district in the country, are already assessing the membership’s willingness to start the next school year on strike if an agreement isn’t reach by June.

“This isn’t a red state issue, it’s a blue state issue too,” says Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. “The rank and file are going to take the fight to the Democrats who have been complicit in the attack on public education and teachers unions.”

According to Caputo-Pearl, California ranks 46th in per pupil spending, and his school district is “spending $1-billion of its $6.4-billion budget on special education to cover the shortfall in federal funding for kids with special needs.” Caputo-Pearl also notes that over the past 10 years, a “287 per cent increase in private charter schools in LA has diverted $600-million per year from neighborhood schools.”

We are used to seeing dramatic inequalities between school districts in red states, but according to a new report issued by the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, California (like Mississippi and Alabama) is one of several states in which “the highest poverty school districts fall as much as $14,000 to $16,000 per pupil below the necessary spending levels.” UTLA has a multi-pronged approach to ending this blue-state austerity, all of which involves taxing corporations and the super wealthy.

Caputo-Pearl says they are working closely with a broad coalition of smart and determined community groups on several revenue-raising strategies.

“First up is we are working on the Schools and Communities First Initiative, collecting signatures for a 2020 ballot initiative to close the corporate loophole in Prop 13,” he says. “When we win this, it will generate $11-billion annually, and the measure calls for $5-billion of that to go to public education. We have also gotten Assembly Bill 2731 introduced, which closes the federal loophole Trump put into the federal tax cut by placing a tax surcharge on hedge fund and private-equity managers in California. It will put $1-billion into education.”

The coalition advancing the 2020 ballot is headed by Anthony Thigpenn, who led one of the groups that got a millionaires’ tax passed by citizen ballot in California in 2012. The initiative hasn’t attracted nearly the attention it deserves: it flipped the sixth largest economy in the world from billions in the red to restoring billions in cuts in one year and created enough revenue to restart a rainy-day fund.

“In 2012, the conventional wisdom said we couldn’t win new taxation. There’s a dominant narrative that Americans are anti-tax, but we proved the pundits wrong,” Thigpenn says. “When we help people connect decades of tax cuts to their kids schools falling apart and a dearth of affordable housing or healthcare, they will in fact vote to tax corporations again.”

“When we help people connect decades of tax cuts to their kids schools falling apart and a dearth of affordable housing or healthcare, they will in fact vote to tax corporations again.”

Such blue-state activism (and intra-Democratic Party feuding) was presaged by Massachusetts in 2016, when the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) defeated a ballot measure that would have greatly expanded charter schools. A whopping $35-million in favor of the measure poured in from hedge funds and private-equity groups. But in the end, the teachers – who took a gamble by not coming to a legislative compromise that would have stopped the ballot in exchange for less charter expansion – defeated the measure by an almost 2-to-1 margin.

The 113,000-member MTA was headed by a left-leaning rank and file president, Barbara Madeloni, who had to overcome skeptics inside her own union who feared the public wouldn’t back teachers. Madeloni herself ran for president after being inspired by the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike, which came about after a slate of younger, more diverse teachers won election to CTU’s highest posts in 2010. Caputo-Pearl and a team of progressively minded teachers in California were next to win.

Movement for Change: Using the Strike Weapon

These union leaders represent a movement for change toward a more visionary, progressive teacher unionism – one that is continuing to grow. On May 5, in an election to succeed Madeloni, a progressive slate of candidates swept the MTA’s top offices.

“The teacher members didn’t just vote for progressive candidate,” says incoming MTA president Merrie Najimy, “they voted decisively… to endorse an all-out commitment to support the ballot referendum this fall which proposes to tax millionaires, with the income dedicated to public education and transportation.”

Several key differences in approach distinguish this new leadership. The most important is their strong belief in using the strike weapon. The dynamism of the new teacher movement flows from the methodical work required to hold effective strikes because a strike’s success is predicated on workers being in control and making real decisions about their future. Another characteristic of this new generation is that they understand challenging corporate Democrats isn’t an option, it’s essential.

To continue this spring’s momentum, and increase turnout for the midterm elections, two things are urgently needed. First, national and state-level teacher union officials must embrace this rank-and-file movement. There’s no better way to build the kind of workplace organization needed to stave off the coming blow from the Supreme Court in the Janus case than supporting this robust movement from below. This will necessarily include breaks with Democrats who have been virtually as complicit in the charter-school movement as DeVos and the Koch Brothers.

Second, the broader progressive movement must make the teacher union fight our fight. If you believe in society, in public education, in the idea of the collective, then embracing teacher unions and all public-service-worker unions is essential. It’s time to dream big.

*

I have explained Russian President Valdimir Putin’s Christian practice of turning the other cheek to Western provocations as  a strategy to convey to Europe that Russia is reasonable but Washington is not and that Russia is not a threat to European interests and sovereignty but Washington is. By accommodating Israel and withdrawing from the multi-nation Iran nuclear-nonproliferation agreement, US President Donald Trump might have brought success to Putin’s strategy.  

Washington’s three main European vassal states, Britain, France, and Germany have objected to Trump’s unilateral action.  Trump is of the opinion that the multi-nation agreement depends only on Washington.  If Washington renounces the agreement, that is the end of the agreement.  It doesn’t matter what the other parties to the agreement want.  Consequently, Trump intends to reimpose the previous sanctions against doing business with Iran and to impose additional new sanctions.  If Britain, France, and Germany continue with the business contracts that have been made with Iran, Washington will sanction its vassal states as well and prohibit activities of British, French, and German companies in the US.  Clearly, Washington thinks that Europe’s profits in the US exceed what can be made in Iran and will fall in line with Washington’s decision, as the vassal states have done in the past.

And they might.  But this time there is a backlash.  Whether it will go beyond strong words to a break with Washington remains to be seen.  Trump’s neoconservative pro-Israel National Security Advisor John Bolton has ordered European companies to cancel their business deals in Iran.  Trump’s ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell has ordered German companies to immediately wind down their business operations in Iran.  The bullying of Europe and blatant US disregard of European interests and sovereignty has made Europe’s long vassalage suddenly all too apparent and uncomfortable. 

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, previously a loyal Washington puppet, said that Europe can no longer trust Washington and must “take its destiny into its own hands.” 

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Washington’s leadership had failed and it was time for the EU to take over the leadership role and to “replace the United States.”  Various French, German, and British government ministers have echoed these sentiments.

The cover story of the German news magazine Der Spiegal, “Goodbye Europe,” has Trump giving Europe the middle finger. The magazine declares that it is “Time for Europe to Join the Resistance.” 

"Goodbye, Europe!", my new cover for Der Spiegel magazine, on newsstands today. pic.twitter.com/CKA6Hqjoko

— Edel Rodriguez (@edelstudio) May 11, 2018

Although European politicians have been well paid for their vassalage, they might now be finding it an unworthy and uncomfortable burden.

Whereas I respect the virtue of Putin’s refusal to reply to provocation with provocation, I have expressed concern that Putin’s easy acceptance of provocations will encourage more provocations that will increase in intensity until war or Russian surrender become the only options, whereas if the Russian government took a more aggressive position against the provocations, it would bring the danger and cost of the provocations home to the Europeans whose compliance with Washington enables the provocations.  Now it seems that perhaps Trump himself has taught that lesson to the Europeans.

Russia has spent several years helping the Syrian Army clear Syria of the terrorists that Washington sent to overthrow the Syrian government.  However, despite the Russian/Syrian alliance, Israel continues illegal military attacks on Syria.  These attacks could be stopped if Russia would provide Syria with the S-300 air defense system.  

Israel and the US do not want Russia to sell the S-300 air defense system to Syria, because Israel wants to continue to attack Syria and the US wants Syria to continue to be attacked.  Otherwise, Washington would call Israel off.  

Several years ago before Washington sent its Islamist proxy troops to attack Syria, Russia agreed  to sell Syria an advanced air defense system, but gave in to Washington and Israel and did not deliver the system.  Now again in the wake of Netanyahu’s visit to Russia we hear from Putin’s aide Vladimir Kozin that Russia is continuing to withhold modern air defenses from Syria.

Perhaps Putin believes he has to do this in order not to give Washington an issue that could be used to pull Europe back in line with Washington’s policy of aggression. Nevertheless, for those who do not see it this way, it makes Russia again look weak and unwilling to defend an ally.

If Putin believes that he will have any influence on Netanyahu in terms of selling peace agreements with Syria and Iran, the Russian government has no understanding of Israel’s intent or Washington’s 17 years of war in the Middle East. 

I hope Putin’s strategy works.  If it doesn’t, he will have to change his stance toward provocations or they will lead to war.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The significance of the fourteenth General Election goes beyond Malaysian shores. 9^th May will be remembered as the day when the multi-ethnic population of a country ousted the world’s longest ruling coalition through the ballot-box in a peaceful atmosphere without a drop of blood. This is unique in emerging democracies in the Global South. It makes one proud to be a Malaysian.

This victory of the political opposition should be placed within its proper perspective before we try to explain the reasons for it. Also, what are the challenges that the Pakatan Harapan led government now faces and will it be able to handle them?

Since the early years of Independence, Malaysia has had a functioning opposition. There hasn’t been a single moment in our history when there was no one on the opposition benches, not in 1964 nor in 1974 nor in 2004, occasions when the ruling coalition in the form of the BarisanNasionaland its predecessor, the Alliance, won overwhelmingly in Parliamentary elections.

Opposition parties forging coalitions to defeat the Alliance or the BN has also been happening for a long time. A partnership of two left parties, the PartiRakyat and the Labour Party called the Socialist Front for instance did fairly well in the 1959 General Election. 40 years later there was a more earnest attempt to create a four party coalition comprising PAS, DAP, KeAdilan and PartiRakyat. Named the Barisan Alternatif (BA), the coalition sought to mobilise voters in the 10^th General Election in 1999 through allegations of abuse of power and authoritarianism against Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the BN. The ‘black eye’ of the incarcerated Anwar Ibrahim was a major rallying point for the BA.The BA, specifically PAS, made some electoral gains notably capturing the state of Terrenganu.

However, it was in the 2008 General Election that the opposition really made great strides, denying the BN its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time and capturing four states, namely Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor, apart from retaining control over  Kelantan. Anwar was an important campaigner as he was in the 2013 contest in which the opposition Pakatan Rakyat consisting of PAS, the DAP and Keadilan remained in power in Kelantan, Penang and Selangor and continued to deny the BN its two-thirds majority in Parliament. In fact, the opposition increased its parliamentary representation by 7 seats.

The issues that brought the votes to the Pakatan Rakyat in the twelfth and thirteenth General Elections were related to allegations of restrictions to civil and political rights, corruption, socio-economic injustices, ethnic polarization and, in the case of PAS, the inability of the BN to implement Islamic law. In themselves, these issues were not new except that the environment had changed with the alternative media playing a huge role in shaping public perceptions. They served to erode the support base of the ruling BN.

It is against this backdrop that one should view the defeat of the BN in the recently concluded General Election. Each and every issue that had been part of the opposition’s menu in the past now assumed a more concrete manifestation. Thus, the neglect of the bottom 40% of society and the marginalisation of a substantial segment of the middle-class amidst rising cost of living that had become pervasive in the last 5 or 6 years found a villain in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) introduced in April 2015. This was undoubtedly a chink in the armour of the BN which exposed the government’s vulnerability. But it would not have had such an adverse impact had it not been for the 1MDB scandal. A mammoth money-laundering scam implicating  Najib, his family and his sidekicks, the then Prime Minister sought to conceal and camouflage it through dismissal of political comrades, by squeezing out public officials and by emasculating local inquiries. Not a single person has been charged for any of the wrongdoings connected with 1MDB or its affiliates within Malaysia. It is this utter lack of honesty and integrity on the part of the Najib government that incensed a lot of Malaysians and convinced them that they should oust him. If anything, suspicions about the mismanagement of FELDA reflected in the sale of land and properties and alleged misdeeds in other government linked outfits further undermined his credibility. To put it in a nutshell, over a period of 4 or 5 years, a yawning trust deficit had developed between Najib and the people. The verdict at the polls was a mirror of that deficit.

What exacerbated the trust deficit was the conduct of the election itself. As in 2013, Najib campaigned as if he was in a presidential race where everything is focused upon him. Since there was already a trust deficit, it weakened his position further. The temporary dissolution of Mahathir’s party by the Registrar of Societies and the ban on his image in the campaign by the Election Commission intensified the anger among voters. Most of all, it was the viciousness with which Mahathir was savaged in the government linked media that increased their disgust towards the incumbent. There was a total lack of manners, of courtesy which is so integral to Malay culture. This gross, crude violation of ‘adab’ in Najib’s campaign cost him dearly.

Najib had underestimated the strength of the bond between his nemesis and the people. At the helm of the nation for 22 years, there was a high degree of appreciation of Mahathir’s  contribution to the well-being of the masses, even if many were also aware of the downside of his leadership. As leader of the PakatanHarapan, he demonstrated two dimensions of his leadership which were critical to the success of his coalition. One, he solidified a disparate coalition by endowing the four parties with a sense of common purpose. A common logo was an outstanding achievement. Previous attempts at creating such a unifying symbol among opposition parties had failed. The logo gave Pakatan a shared identity as a result of which the voters’ confidence in the coalition heightened.  Two, Mahathir also succeeded in convincing the people that their overriding mission was to overthrow a leader who was perceived as corrupt and greedy. It was a simple direct message which he clinched by telling the voters that if they did not fulfil their mission Malaysia was doomed. Hence, Pakatan’s battle-cry “to save the nation.”

Formulating effective strategies to combat corruption would therefore be the Pakatan’s greatest challenge. Its manifesto contains some ideas on this, including making political donations transparent. It also seeks to make the anti- corruption commission truly independent of the Executive by providing the Malaysian parliament with authority over the body.  There are many other office-holders and institutions vital for good governance that the Pakatan has identified which will also be subjected to parliamentary oversight. The Council of Elders that Prime Minister Mahathir has established to address matters pertaining to finance and the economy may also have to provide inputs on governance and integrity.

There are of course other equally serious challenges that the new government will have to face. The widening income gap between those who have a lot and those who have a little which has far-reaching consequences for other sectors of society should be the nation’s priority. Certain laws which subvert the quest for human dignity should also be reviewed. Creating conditions that are conducive for the growth of empathy and understanding among the communities is of crucial importance.

For Pakatan to implement the onerous tasks ahead, there will have to be internal cohesion. This is especially true of a coalition like PakatanHarapan. It stands to reason that Dr. Mahathir be given a bit of time and space to strengthen the sinews of the coalition as it leads the quest for a better Malaysia.

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The above article is based upon a presentation made at the Yusuf Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore on the 11^th of May 2018.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and Research Associate of the The Centre for Research  on Globalization (CRG). 

One of the most outstanding features of a truly standing-out Trump Presidency to date is how precisely the actual policy developments, when we clear away the deliberate smoke and mirrors of tweets and scandal, follow a basic strategy of Washington geopolitics going back to at least 1992. This is the case in the latest unfortunate and quite illegal unilateral decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement. This is also the case in the relentless Cold War-style demonization campaign against Russia and the deployment of insidious new sanctions. This is also the case with the looming trade war the Trump Administration has initiated with the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that US President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case. Strategic geopolitical policies of the Trump Administration are a response, not of the President himself, but rather of the powers that be, the permanent establishment who actually control what is sometimes called the Deep State. The geopolitics of that policy determines to a large degree who they allow to be President.

The first official formulation of today’s Washington foreign policy came in 1992 when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary under Bush senior. The Soviet Union had collapsed and Bush triumphantly declared America as Sole Superpower. Cheney’s deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, was responsible for developing a Defense Planning Guidance, 1994-1999. It was blunt, and later described by Senator Ted Kennedy as imperialist. In part the unedited Wolfowitz Doctrine declared

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Under George W. Bush the Wolfowitz Doctrine re-emerged as the Bush Doctrine after 2002 in the runup to the Iraq war, declaring unilateralism and use of preventative war as central to US policy.

Basic Geopolitics

Going back to my title, I quote from the 1997 book of the late Presidential advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives to make the point of what US foreign and defense policy under Trump today is. It is nothing less than application of the Brzezinski geopolitical challenge and the preventive war notion of the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine in context of today’s emerging resistance to an American sole superpower domination.

Brzezinski, was of course architect of Jimmy Carter’s Afghan war against the Soviet Army using Mujahideen Islamic terrorists trained by the CIA, Saudi Intelligence and Pakistan ISI.

In 1997 he wrote that it was

“imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.”

He further declared,

“Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances…a grand coalition of China, Russia, perhaps Iran…Averting this contingency…will require US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

When we add to this the recent Pentagon National Defense Strategy document that defines Russia and China as the greatest potential threat to American hegemony, then combine this with the growing ties between Russia, China and Iran since lifting of sanctions in 2015, especially in Syria, it becomes clear what Washington is doing. They are in an all-out effort to break what I call the Eurasian Challenge to the sole hegemon—Russia, China, Iran.

As Brzezinski pointed out, for American purposes of continued domination, it matters not that there are ethnic, religious and other differences between Russia, China and Iran. US foreign policy since September 2001 has increasingly forced those three to cooperate, despite those differences, for what they see as defense of their national sovereignty.

Target Russia…

Look at the recent events in light of the Brzezinski Eurasia warning of 1997. Washington stood behind the UK in the bogus Skripal poisoning affair that was blamed, with no proof, on Russia. A fake chemical attack outside Damascus then was used as pretext for the illegal US bombing raid, ignoring all precepts of the UN Charter and international law. That, in retrospect, was more of a test of possible Russian reaction. Whether or not US Tomahawk and other missiles hit or not, the precedent was set for Israel and other US allies to escalate attacks on Iran in Syria.

Then come diabolical new crippling sanctions against “Putin’s oligarchs” such as Deripaski of Rusal, world’s second largest aluminum producer. Washington doesn’t even try to make up excuses for new sanctions. They state as reason that the Russian government is involved in “a range of malign activity around the globe.”

The new sanctions punish any Western banks or investors holding shares in sanctioned Russian companies even if they were bought before the new sanctions. It is the US Treasury’s new form of financial war, every bit as deadly as shooting wars, if not more so. It developed in the wake of 911 and has since been refined to a devastating weapon of warfare using the fact that under economic globalization, the world is still dependent on the US dollar for trade and for central bank currency reserves to an overwhelming degree.

For the first time, under the latest US sanctions on Russian individual oligarchs and companies, not only is future access to borrow in western capital markets blocked. Non-Russian investors who invested billions in select Russian companies in recent years have been forced to panic liquidate or face secondary sanctions for holding Russian assets. But who will buy? Already the two major EU securities clearing companies, Clearstream and Euroclear have been forced to refuse clearing sanctioned Russian securities. They also face sanctions to hold the Russian shares. If, say, a Chinese state bank is borrowing from dollar markets, they are now de facto prohibited from doing business with sanctioned Russian companies.

Target China…

At the same time as Washington escalates pressure on Putin’s Russia over Syria and Ukraine, they launch the early stage of what will clearly be a devastating economic war with China using trade as the initial lever. Washington, as I pointed out in a previous article, is aiming to force China to dismantle its strategy to bring China’s economy over the next decade into leading status of hi tech producer. The strategy is called China 2025 and is the heart of the Xi Jinping strategic agenda and of his Belt Road Initiative or economic Silk Road project.

The first taste of what Washington plans to target China’s move to become a high-tech world leader under China 2025 is the treatment of leading China telecomm maker ZTE and Huawei, major challengers of Apple. ZTE was sanctioned in April by Washington for allegedly selling telecommunications equipment to Iran. US suppliers have been banned from supplying essential components to the China tech group. The company has temporarily shut operations as it tries to win a reprieve from the US.

Target Iran…

Now, over the vehement protests of Germany and France and other EU states, Trump unilaterally tears up the Iran nuclear agreement. The aim is clearly to reimpose crippling sanctions again on Iran, disrupt the feeble progress that was begun since 2015. The fact that the EU refuses to break its treaty agreement with Iran will be ultimately of little consequence as US sanctions on Iran also threaten with sanctions EU companies doing business in Iran.

As part of the latest Trump tearing up of the nuclear agreement with Iran, the USA gives other countries like China or Japan or EU countries 180 days to end any purchase deals for Iran oil. European companies like Airbus that have multi-billion aircraft purchase orders from Iran will be forced to cancel. On 6 August, the purchase of US dollars, trade in gold and certain other metals, as well as aviation and the car industry will be sanctioned. After 4 November US sanctions will target Iran’s financial and oil institutions and sanctions reinstated against individuals previously on the US Treasury sanctions list.

The clear aim is to use the devastating new weapons of US Treasury pin-point sanctions to plunge Iran’s fragile economy into crisis. At the same time reports are that NSC Adviser John Bolton is advocating reinvigorating the Iranian Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK terrorist organization to launch a new try at a Color Revolution. MEK was removed from the US State Department terror list by Secretary of State Clinton in 2012.

CENTCOM

If we step back from the specific details of each country and Washington actions against each, we see that the three Eurasian powers—Russia, China, Iran—are being systematically targeted and so far with varying degrees of success.

At the end of February, General Votel, commander of US Central Command or CENTCOM gave an interview to DoD News. There, in addition to listing Russia and especially her involvement in Syria and China and both its new Belt Road Initiative and its military bases in Djibouti and elsewhere, Votel cites the ties of both to Iran. Votel states that,

“both Russia and China are cultivating multidimensional ties to Iran. The lifting of UN sanctions under the joint comprehensive plan of action opens the path for Iran to resume membership application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

Ironically, the simultaneous opening of a de facto three-front war, even if on the level of economic warfare at present, creates a strategic imperative for the three powers to work even more closely. China is the largest buyer of Iranian oil. Russia provides military equipment and is negotiating far more. Each of the triad—China, Iran, Russia—for reasons of self-survival –have no better option than to collaborate as never before, whatever mistrust or differences, in face of Washington’s geopolitical three-front war.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

An activist who was violently escorted out of a U.S. Senate hearing and detained on Wednesday, has now been released. Outside the court, 79-year-old CIA veteran Ray McGovern showed the bruises he claimed were caused by the security officers.

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The National Priorities Project headlines “U.S. Military Spending vs. the World” and reports: “World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total.” But it can’t be believed, because, even if other nations aren’t under-reporting their military expenditures, the U.S. certainly is — under-reporting it by about 50%. The reality is approximately twice the official figure, so that America’s current annual military expenditures are around $1.5 trillion, which is to say, almost equal to that entire global estimate of “more than $1.6 trillion in 2015.”

America’s actual annual military budget and expenditures are unknown, because there has never been an audit of the ‘Defense’ Department, though an audit has routinely been promised but never delivered, and Congresses and Presidents haven’t, for example, even so much as just threatened to cut its budget every year by 10% until it is done — there has been no accountability for the Department, at all. Corruption is welcomed, at the ‘Defense’ Department.

Furthermore, many of the military expenditures are hidden. One way that this is done is by funding an unknown large proportion of U.S. military functions at other federal Departments, so as for those operations not to be officially “‘Defense’ Department” budget and expenditures, at all. This, for example, is the reason why Robert Higgs, of The Independent Institute, was able to report, on 15 March 2007, “The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here”. He found that America’s military expenditures, including the ones he could identify at other federal agencies, were actually already nearly a trillion dollars ($934.9 billion) a year:

“To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2006, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $499.4 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.6 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $69.1 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $25.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $69.8 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $38.5 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2006 total by nearly half again, to $728.2 billion.”

Furthermore,

 “Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. … [As regards] Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. … The Federal Bureau of Investigation … devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury informs us that it has ‘worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.’”

But, almost everything there relied upon mere estimates, because the Congress and the President always supply to the public numbers that are sadly uninterpretable by anyone who wants to know what percentage of the federal government is actually military.

For example, on April 3rd, the White House, as required by law, sent to Congress “the Seven-Day-After report for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (Public Law 115-141). The President signed this Act into law on March 23, 2018.” That’s the current authorized spending for the entire U.S. federal Government. It was broken down there into twelve categories, some of which were for multiple federal Departments, in order to make the reported numbers as uninterpretable as possible — for example, nothing was shown for the Treasury Department, but something was shown for “Financial Services and General Government Appropriations” and it didn’t even mention the “Treasury” Department. And nothing was shown for the Justice Department, nor for the Commerce Department, but something was shown for “Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies” (whatever those are). However, as bad as this is, the military (or invasions) department is even less fathomable from the publicly available reports than those other ones are. The ‘Defense’ Department is the only one that’s still “unauditable” so that in one of the attempts to audit it:

“The audits of the FY 1999 DoD financial statements indicated that $7.6 trillion of accounting entries were made to compile them. This startling number is perhaps the most graphic available indicator of just how poor the existing systems are. The magnitude of the problem is further demonstrated by the fact that, of $5.8 trillion of those adjustments that we audited this year, $2.3 trillion were unsupported by reliable explanatory information and audit trails or were made to invalid general ledger accounts.”

Largely as a consequence of this, Wikipedia’s “Military budget of the United States” is a chaotic mess, though useful for links to some sources (all of which are likewise plagued as being uninterpretable). 

On 1 March 2011, Chris Hellman headlined “The Real U.S. National Security Budget: The Figure No One Wants You to See”, and he estimated (using basically the same approach that Higgs had done in 2007, except less accurate than Higgs, due to failing to base his numbers on “the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available” but instead using only the President’s budget request) that at that time, the U.S. Government was spending annually on ‘Defense’, “$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)” That amount was far less than the totals that the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense had been reporting, in some of its periodic investigations (such as the one just cited), to have been missed or undocumented or falsely ‘documented’ as having been spent, by that Department; but, for some mysterious reason, the American people tolerate and re-elect ‘representatives’ who ‘debate’ and rubber-stamp such corruption, which is of enormous benefit to corporations such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, whose sales and profits depend upon the U.S. Government and its allied governments. Any such privatization of the ‘Defense’ industry, in America or any other country — treating its military operations so as to produce profits for investors (investors in mass-murder) — thus guarantees that the national-security function will be heavily loaded with lobbying and graft, because the military industry’s entire market is to one’s own government and to its allied governments: it’s not a consumer market, but a government one. Thus, privatized military suppliers grow virtually to own their government; democracy consequently becomes impossible in such nations. And, one outcome from that is the uninterpretable financial reports by America’s government, regarding ‘Defense’. 

For example, probably fewer than 1% of Americans have even been informed by the press as to what the currently authorized annual federal spending for the ‘Defense’ Department is. When the Washington Post, on 23 March 2018, reported their main story about the FY 2018 federal spending authorizations (“In late-night drama, Senate passes $1.3 trillion spending bill, averting government shutdown”), the figure for the ‘Defense’ Department was buried inconspicuously in a 52-word passage within that 1,600-word ‘news’-report, which was otherwise loaded with distractive trivia. This buried passage was: “The legislation funds the federal government for the remainder of the 2018 budget year, through Sept. 30, directing $700 billion toward the military and $591 billion to domestic agencies. The military spending is a $66 billion increase over the 2017 level, and the nondefense spending is $52 billion more than last year.” That’s all. For readers interested in knowing more, it linked to their 2,200-word article, “Here’s what Congress is stuffing into its $1.3 trillion spending bill”, and all that it said about the military portion of the new budget was the 27-word passage, “defense spending generally favored by Republicans is set to jump $80 billion over previously authorized spending levels, while domestic spending favored by Democrats rises by $63 billion.” Though 23 categories of federal spending were sub-headed and summarized individually in that article, ‘Defense’ wasn’t one of them. Nothing about the budget for the U.S. Department of ‘Defense’ — which consumes more than half of the entire budget — was mentioned. However, the reality was that, as Defense News reported it, on 7 February 2018 — and these figures were unchanged in the bill that President Trump finally signed on March 23rd — “Senate leaders have reached a two-year deal that would set defense spending at $700 billion for 2018 and $716 billion for 2019.” This year’s $700 billion Pentagon budget thus is 54% of the entire $1.3 trillion FY 2018 U.S. federal budget. Another article in Defense News on that same day, February 7th, noted that,

“‘I’d rather we didn’t have to do as much on non-defense, but this is an absolute necessity, that we’ve got these numbers,’ said the Senate Armed Services Committee’s No. 2 Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma.”

So: 54% of the federal budget wasn’t high enough a percentage to suit that Senator; he wanted yet more taken out of non-‘defense’. How can people (other than stockholders in corporations such as Raytheon) vote for such a person? Deceit has to be part of the answer.

Using similar percentages to those that were employed by Higgs and by Hellman, the current U.S. annual military expenditure is in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion. But that’s more than the total authorized federal spending for all departments. Where can the extra funds be coming from? On 5 February 2018, CNBC bannered “The Treasury is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year”. Then, charts were presented on 10 May 2018 by Dr. Edward Yardeni, headlined “U.S. Government Finance: Debt”, in which is shown that the U.S. federal debt is soaring at around a trillion dollars annually; so, that extra money comes from additions to the federal debt. Future generations of U.S. taxpayers will be paying the price for the profligacy of today’s U.S. aristocracy, who receive all the benefits from this scam off the public, and especially off those future generations. But the far bigger losses are felt abroad, in countries such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, where the targets will be suffering the consequences of America’s invasions and coups.

Notwithstanding its pervasive corruption and enormous uncounted waste, the U.S. military is, by far, the U.S. institution that is respected above all others by the American people. A great deal of domestic propaganda is necessary in order to keep it that way. With so many trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for, it’s do-able. All that’s needed is a tiny percentage of the huge graft to be devoted to funding the operation’s enormous PR for ‘patriotism’. And this treasonous operation has been sustainable, and very successful (for its ultimate beneficiaries), that way, in the U.S., at least for decades.

I have previously explained why specifically military corruption has come to take over the U.S. Government, but not certain other governments. And the result of its having done so has by now become obvious to people all around the world, except in the United States itself. Furthermore, ever since the first poll was taken on that matter, in 2013, which showed that globally the U.S. was viewed as the biggest national threat to peace in the world, a subsequent poll, in 2017, which unfortunately was taken in fewer countries, showed that this negative impression of the U.S. Government, by the peoples in those fewer countries, had actually increased there during the four intervening years. So: not only is the situation in the U.S. terrible, but the trend in the U.S. appears to be in the direction of even worse. America’s military-industrial complex can buy a glittering ‘patriotic’ image amongst its own public, but America’s image abroad will only become uglier, because the world-at-large dislikes a country that’s addicted to the perpetration of invasions and coups. Just as bullies are feared and disliked, so too are bully-nations. Even if the given bully-aristocracy becomes constantly enriched by their operation, economies throughout the world suffer such an aristocracy, as being an enormous burden; and, unfortunately, the American public will get the blame, not America’s aristocracy — which is the real beneficiary of the entire operation. This deflection of blame, onto the suckered public, precludes any effective response from the publics abroad, such as boycotts of U.S.-branded products and services might be. Instead, American tourists abroad become increasingly perceived as ‘the ugly American’. The restored ‘Cold War’ — this time with no ideological excuse (such as communism) whatsoever — could produce a much stronger global tarnishing of America’s global reputation. The beneficiaries, apparently, just don’t care.  

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This article was originally published on The Saker.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez / Truthout.

Featured image: Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa

21st Century Wire says…

Bahrain’s foreign minister tweeted out ‘Israel had a right to defend itself from Iran’ on May 11th. In an unprecedented show of support for the Zionist regime, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa issued the extraordinary statement on the social media platform:

“As long as Iran has breached the status quo in the region and has (yet to) evacuate its troops and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, is entitled to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”

Peter Ford, who was British Ambassador to Bahrain 1999-2002, has resigned from his position as adviser to the Royal Charity Organisation of Bahrain, in protest at Bahrain’s new found support for Israel.

Peter Ford (image on the right) told 21st Century Wire:

“This is the latest step in the downward path Bahrain has been taking recently, distancing itself from its previous staunch support for Palestinian and Arab rights. The exchange of fire was started by Israel and not Iran, in a transparent design to provoke an Iranian reaction following President Trump’s decision to end the Iran nuclear deal.

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

 I thought you really loved me
I thought you really cared
I thought that when the bombs were falling
You’d shelter me when I was scared

But now I know that you’re a liar
I should have trusted my dear heart
You sided with your dirty killers
You walked beside them from the start

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

I guess we’ll have to go and die now
While you go on your merry way
We’ll travel on our final journey
But some day you will have to pay

 So thanks for all the kisses that you threw me
I almost caught them on the fly
They seemed so gentle in the twilight
Until I heard them whisper die

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

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Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely; he is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

This article was first published on Global Research in March 2017.

Below is the text of a report co-authored by Virginia Tilley and myself, commissioned by the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) that examines the argument for regarding Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ with respect to the whole of the Palestinian people, that is, not only those Palestinians living under occupation, but also those living as residents of Jerusalem, those living as a minority in Israel, and those enduring refugee camps and involuntary exile.

The report concludes that Israel is guilty of the continuing crime of apartheid as it is defined in the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

The report reviews the evidence for such a finding, and offers recommendation for acting upon such a conclusion within the United Nations, by national governments, and by civil society. Upon the release of the report on March 15, 2017 there was an immediate reaction of condemnation by American and Israeli representatives at the UN, including calls for its removal from the UN website and the repudiation of the report.

The Executive Secretary of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, has resigned after refusing to remove the report from the ESCWA website, and has made strongly supportive statements about the quality of the report as issued.

It should be noted, as stated below, that the report is an independent academic work that has at the present time been neither endorsed or repudiated by any part of the UN System. It is the hope of the authors that the report encourages debate and action that deepens involvement with the Palestinian quest for a just peace and the end to their prolonged ordeal of suffering; it is also our hope that the study will be taken seriously within Israel itself.

Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1

United Nations Beirut, 2017 © 2017 All rights reserved worldwide

Photocopies and reproductions of excerpts are allowed with proper credits.

All queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), e-mail: [email protected].

The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Links contained in this publication are provided for the convenience of the reader and are correct at the time of issue. The United Nations takes no responsibility for the continued accuracy of that information or for the content of any external website.

References have, wherever possible, been verified.

Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures. Mention of such a symbol indicates a reference to a United Nations document.

United Nations publication issued by ESCWA, United Nations House, Riad El Solh Square, P.O. Box: 11-8575, Beirut, Lebanon.

Website: http://www.unescwa.org.

Acknowledgements

This report was commissioned by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) from authors Mr. Richard Falk and Ms. Virginia Tilley.

Richard Falk (LLB, Yale University; SJD, Harvard University) is currently Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus at Princeton University. From 2008 through 2014, he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. He is author or editor of some 60 books and hundreds of articles on international human rights law, Middle East politics, environmental justice, and other fields concerning human rights and international relations.

Virginia Tilley (MA and PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and MA in Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University) is Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University. From 2006 to 2011, she served as Chief Research Specialist in the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa and from 2007 to 2010 led the Council’s Middle East Project, which undertook a two-year study of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition to many articles on the politics and ideologies of the conflict in Israel-Palestine, she is author of The One-State Solution (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005) and editor of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Pluto Press, 2012).

This report benefited from the general guidance of Mr. Tarik Alami, Director of the Emerging and Conflict-Related Issues (ECRI) Division at ESCWA. Mr. Rabi’ Bashour (ECRI) coordinated the report, contributed to defining its scope and provided editorial comments, planning and data. Ms. Leila Choueiri provided substantive and editorial inputs. Ms. Rita Jarous (ECRI), Mr. Sami Salloum and Mr. Rafat Soboh (ECRI), provided editorial comments and information, as well as technical assistance. Mr. Damien Simonis (ESCWA, Conference Services Section) edited the report.

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

Appreciation is extended to the blind reviewers for their valuable input.

We also acknowledge the authors of and contributors to Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Reassessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law, whose work informed this report (see annex I) and was published in 2012 as Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Preface

The authors of this report, examining whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, fully appreciate the sensitivity of the question.[1] Even broaching the issue has been denounced by spokespersons of the Israeli Government and many of its supporters as anti-Semitism in a new guise. In 2016, Israel successfully lobbied for the inclusion of criticism of Israel in laws against anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States of America, and background documents to those legal instruments list the apartheid charge as one example of attempts aimed at “destroying Israel’s image and isolating it as a pariah State”.[2]

The authors reject the accusation of anti-Semitism in the strongest terms. First, the question of whether the State of Israel is constituted as an apartheid regime springs from the same body of international human rights law and principles that rejects anti-Semitism: that is, the prohibition of racial discrimination. No State is immune from the norms and rules enshrined in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which must be applied impartially. The prohibition of apartheid, which, as a crime against humanity, can admit no exceptions, flows from the Convention. Strengthening that body of international law can only benefit all groups that have historically endured discrimination, domination and persecution, including Jews.

1 This report was prepared in response to a request made by member States of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) at the first meeting of its Executive Committee, held in Amman on 8 and 9 June 2015. Preliminary findings of the report were presented to the twenty-ninth session of ESCWA, held in Doha from 13 to 15 December 2016. As a result, member States passed resolution 326 (XXIX) of 15 December 2016, in which they requested that the secretariat “publish widely the results of the study”.

2 Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism (CFCA): FAQ: the campaign to defame Israel. The CFCA is an Israeli Government “national forum”. “The new anti-Semitism” has become the term used to equate criticism of Israeli racial policies with anti- Semitism, especially where such criticism extends to proposing that the ethnic premise of Jewish statehood is illegitimate, because it violates international human rights law. The European Union Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism has accordingly included in its working definition of anti-Semitism the following example: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour” (see EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism). In 2016, the United States passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, in which the definition of anti-Semitism is that set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti- Semitism of the Department of State in a fact sheet of 8 June 2010. Examples of anti-Semitism listed therein include: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.” (Available here).

Secondly, the situation in Israel-Palestine constitutes an unmet obligation of the organized international community to resolve a conflict partially generated by its own actions. That obligation dates formally to 1922, when the League of Nations established the British Mandate for Palestine as a territory eminently ready for independence as an inclusive secular State, yet incorporated into the Mandate the core pledge of the Balfour Declaration to support the “Jewish people” in their efforts to establish in Palestine a “Jewish national home”.[3] Later United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions attempted to resolve the conflict generated by that arrangement, yet could not prevent related proposals, such as partition, from being overtaken by events on the ground. If this attention to the case of Israel by the United Nations appears exceptional, therefore, it is only because no comparable linkage exists between United Nations actions and any other prolonged denial to a people of their right of self-determination.

Thirdly, the policies, practices and measures applied by Israel to enforce a system of racial discrimination threaten regional peace and security. United Nations resolutions have long recognized that danger and called for resolution of the conflict so as to restore and maintain peace and stability in the region.

To assert that the policies and practices of a sovereign State amount to apartheid constitutes a grave charge. A study aimed at making such a determination should be undertaken and submitted for consideration only when supporting evidence clearly exceeds reasonable doubt. The authors of this report believe that evidence for suspecting that a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people meets such a demanding criterion. Given the protracted suffering of the Palestinian people, it would be irresponsible not to present the evidence and legal arguments regarding whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses the Palestinian people as a whole, and not to make recommendations for appropriate further action by international and civil society actors.

In sum, this study was motivated by the desire to promote compliance with international human rights law, uphold and strengthen international criminal law, and ensure that the collective responsibilities of the United Nations and its Member States with regard to crimes against humanity are fulfilled. More concretely, it aims to see the core commitments of the international community to upholding international law applied to the case of the Palestinian people, in defence of its rights under international law, including the right of self-determination.

3 The Council of the League of Nations, League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, December 1922, article 2. Available here.

Contents

1. The Legal Context: Short History of the Prohibition of Apartheid 11

Alternative definitions of apartheid 12

2. Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine 27
3. The political geography of apartheid 27 B. Israel as a racial State 30 C. Apartheid through fragmentation 37 D. Counter-arguments 48
4. Conclusions and Recommendations 51
5. Conclusions 51 B. Recommendations 52

Annexes

1. Findings of the 2009 HSRC Report 57 II. Which Country? 63

Executive Summary

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law.

The analysis in this report rests on the same body of international human rights law and principles that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention):

The term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to… inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

Although the term “apartheid” was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to which:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).

The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by this report should not be confused with usage of the term in popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the “apartheid wall”), a phenomenon generated by anonymous structural conditions like capitalism (“economic apartheid”), or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition of apartheid in international law, which carries with it responsibilities for States, as specified in international instruments.

The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire the status of crimes against humanity only if they intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination. The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of an “institutionalized regime” serving the “intention” of racial domination. Since “purpose” and “intention” lie at the core of both definitions, this report examines factors ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension — especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in law and the design of Israeli State institutions — to establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.

That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law (Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing its management permanently under their authority. The State Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property (including land) to the State in any area “in which the law of the State of Israel applies”. The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept of “public purpose” as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits any political party from challenging that public purpose. Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial domination illegal.

Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish statehood. Some laws involving demographic engineering are expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish councils to reject applications for residence from Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied territory or beyond. On a far larger scale, it is a matter of Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to territory under Israeli control.

Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial domination must be present to qualify the regime as an instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific “racial group”. This report accepts the definition of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of “racial discrimination” as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. On that basis, this report argues that in the geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can be considered “racial groups”. Furthermore, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid Convention.

The second attribute is the boundary and character of the group or groups involved. The status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses the issue of a proper identification of the “country” responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under international law.)

This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the Palestinian people being divided into different geographic regions administered by distinct sets of law. This fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a unified and effective resistance. Different methods are deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same time impedes international recognition of how the system works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid regime.

Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what the report refers to as four “domains”, in which the fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:

1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;
2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem;
3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel’s control.

Domain 1 embraces about 1.7 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. For the first 20 years of the country’s existence, they lived under martial law and to this day are subjected to oppression on the basis of not being Jewish. That policy of domination manifests itself in inferior services, restrictive zoning laws and limited budget allocations made to Palestinian communities; in restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities; and in the mostly segregated landscape in which Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel live. Palestinian political parties can campaign for minor reforms and better budgets, but are legally prohibited by the Basic Law from challenging legislation maintaining the racial regime. The policy is reinforced by the implications of the distinction made in Israel between “citizenship” (ezrahut) and “nationality” (le’um): all Israeli citizens enjoy the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter. “National” rights in Israeli law signify Jewish-national rights. The struggle of Palestinian citizens of Israel for equality and civil reforms under Israeli law is thus isolated by the regime from that of Palestinians elsewhere.

Domain 2 covers the approximately 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, who experience discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, residency and building rights. They also suffer from expulsions and home demolitions, which serve the Israeli policy of “demographic balance” in favour of Jewish residents. East Jerusalem Palestinians are classified as permanent residents, which places them in a separate category designed to prevent their demographic and, importantly, electoral weight being added to that of Palestinians citizens in Israel. As permanent residents, they have no legal standing to challenge Israeli law. Moreover, openly identifying with Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory politically carries the risk of expulsion to the West Bank and loss of the right even to visit Jerusalem. Thus, the urban epicentre of Palestinian political life is caught inside a legal bubble that curtails its inhabitants’ capacity to oppose the apartheid regime lawfully.

Domain 3 is the system of military law imposed on approximately 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory, 2.7 million of them in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip. The territory is administered in a manner that fully meets the definition of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention: except for the provision on genocide, every illustrative “inhuman act” listed in the Convention is routinely and systematically practiced by Israel in the West Bank. Palestinians are governed by military law, while the approximately 350,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is further confirmed by the fact that all West Bank Jewish settlers enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime when coupled with the racially discriminatory management of land and development administered by Jewish-national institutions, which are charged with administering “State land” in the interest of the Jewish population. In support of the overall findings of this report, annex I sets out in more detail the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory that constitute violations of article II of the Apartheid Convention.

Domain 4 refers to the millions of Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles, most of whom live in neighbouring countries. They are prohibited from returning to their homes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return in frankly racist language: it is alleged that Palestinians constitute a “demographic threat” and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish State.

The refusal of the right of return plays an essential role in the apartheid regime by ensuring that the Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine does not grow to a point that would threaten Israeli military control of the territory and/or provide the demographic leverage for Palestinian citizens of Israel to demand (and obtain) full democratic rights, thereby eliminating the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Although domain 4 is confined to policies denying Palestinians their right of repatriation under international law, it is treated in this report as integral to the system of oppression and domination of the Palestinian people as a whole, given its crucial role in demographic terms in maintaining the apartheid regime.

This report finds that, taken together, the four domains constitute one comprehensive regime developed for the purpose of ensuring the enduring domination over non-Jews in all land exclusively under Israeli control in whatever category. To some degree, the differences in treatment accorded to Palestinians have been provisionally treated as valid by the United Nations, in the absence of an assessment of whether they constitute a form of apartheid. In the light of this report’s findings, this long-standing fragmented international approach may require review.

In the interests of fairness and completeness, the report examines several counter- arguments advanced by Israel and supporters of its policies denying the applicability of the Apartheid Convention to the case of Israel-Palestine. They include claims that: the determination of Israel to remain a Jewish State is consistent with practices of other States, such as France; Israel does not owe Palestinian non-citizens equal treatment with Jews precisely because they are not citizens; and Israeli treatment of the Palestinians reflects no “purpose” or “intent” to dominate, but rather is a temporary state of affairs imposed on Israel by the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements. The report shows that none of those arguments stands up to examination. A further claim that Israel cannot be considered culpable for crimes of apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have voting rights rests on two errors of legal interpretation: an overly literal comparison with South African apartheid policy and detachment of the question of voting rights from other laws, especially provisions of the Basic Law that prohibit political parties from challenging the Jewish, and hence racial, character of the State.

The report concludes that the weight of the evidence supports beyond a reasonable doubt the proposition that Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, which amounts to the commission of a crime against humanity, the prohibition of which is considered jus cogens in international customary law. The international community, especially the United Nations and its agencies, and Member States, have a legal obligation to act within the limits of their capabilities to prevent and punish instances of apartheid that are responsibly brought to their attention. More specifically, States have a collective duty:

(a) not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful;

(b) not to aid or assist a State in maintaining an apartheid regime; and

(c) to cooperate with the United Nations and other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end.

Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral and political duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel in order to persuade it to dismantle apartheid structures in compliance with international law. The report ends with general and specific recommendations to the United Nations, national Governments, and civil society and private actors on actions they should take in view of the finding that Israel maintains a regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people.

Introduction

This report examines the practices and policies of Israel with regard to the Palestinian people in its entirety. This is not an arbitrary choice. The legal existence of the “Palestinian people” and its right, as a whole people, to self-determination were confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion on the separation wall in occupied Palestinian territory: [1]

As regards the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, the Court observes that the existence of a “Palestinian people” is no longer in issue. Such existence has moreover been recognized by Israel in the exchange of letters of 9 September 1993 between Mr. Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Mr. Yitzhak Rabin, lsraeli Prime Minister. In that correspondence, the President of the PLO recognized “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and made various other commitments. In reply, the Israeli Prime Minister informed him that, in the light of those commitments, “the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people”. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 28 September 1995 also refers a number of times to the Palestinian people and its “legitimate rights” (preamble, paras. 4, 7, 8; article II, para. 2; article III, paras. 1 and 3; article XXII, para. 2). The Court considers that those rights include the right to self-determination, as the General Assembly has moreover recognized on a number of occasions (see, for example, resolution 58/163 of 22 December 2003).

The status of the Palestinians as a people is therefore legally settled (although Israel contests it), and so the practices and policies of Israel towards the whole Palestinian people, despite the Palestinians being fragmented geographically and politically, should be addressed as a single, unified matter. That view is reinforced by the realization that there is no prospect for achieving fundamental Palestinian rights, above all the right of self-determination, through international diplomacy as long as this question remains open.

The authors hope that this report will assist United Nations Member States in making responsible and full use of their national legal systems in the service of the

1 Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004, p. 136. Available here. global common good. Civil society organizations are also urged to align their agendas and priorities with the findings of this report. Nonetheless, it is primarily incumbent on Israel to comply with international criminal law. Apartheid as an international crime is now viewed by jurists as a peremptory norm (jus cogens) of international customary law, which creates obligations erga omnes. In other words, it is an overriding principle, from which no derogation is permitted, and which is therefore binding, regardless of the consent of sovereign States, and cannot be renounced by national Governments or their representatives.[2] In effect, this means that even States that do not accede to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (hereinafter the Apartheid Convention) are responsible for adhering to its obligations. Israel is thus bound by its obligations to end a crime of apartheid if authoritative findings determine that its practices and policies constitute such a criminal regime.

2 John Dugard, ”Introductory note to the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law, 2008. Available here.

1. The Legal ContextShort History of the Prohibition of Apartheid

The prohibition of apartheid in international human rights law draws primarily from two areas:

(1) prohibitions of discrimination on the basis of race; and

(2) rejection of the racist regime that governed in the Republic of South Africa between 1948 and 1992.6

The prohibition of racial discrimination traces to the earliest principles of the United Nations. While a full list would overburden this report, foundational statements include Article 55 of the United Nations Charter and article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Later instruments, particularly the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, spelled out the prohibition in greater detail. Thus Member States of the United Nations are obligated to abide by the prohibition of apartheid whether or not they are parties to the Apartheid Convention.

The juridical history of international rejection of apartheid in South Africa dates to the early years of the existence of the United Nations. General Assembly resolution 395(V) of 1950 was the first to make explicit reference to apartheid in southern Africa, which it defined as a form of racial discrimination.7 Resolution 1761(XVII) of 1962 established what came to be called the Special Committee against Apartheid.8 In the preamble to the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, alarm is expressed about “manifestations of racial discrimination still in evidence in some areas of the world… such as policies of apartheid, segregation or separation” (emphasis added). In article 3, signatories to the Convention “particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and

6 The precise date given for the end of apartheid varies with the benchmark used: decriminalization of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990; the launching or closure of the CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) talks in 1991 or 1993 respectively; the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993, which triggered the capitulation of the apartheid regime; the election of Nelson Mandela as President in 1994; or passage of the new Constitution in 1995. Taking the meaningful collapse of apartheid’s legitimacy as a rough signpost, the fall of apartheid is here dated to 1992.

7 Resolution 395(V) addressed racial discrimination against people of Indian origin in South Africa (A/RES/395(V)). Concern for that population had been expressed earlier, beginning with resolution 44 (I) of 1946 (A/RES/44(I)).

8 A/RES/1761(XVII) undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction” (emphasis added).

The Apartheid Convention of 1973 classifies apartheid as a crime against humanity (in articles I and II) and provides the most detailed definition of it in international law.9 It also clarifies international responsibility and obligations with regard to combating the crime of apartheid. In the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (hereinafter Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions), apartheid is defined as a war crime. The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), hereinafter the Rome Statute, lists apartheid as a crime against humanity (article 7 (1) (j)), bringing its investigation and possible prosecution under the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Although only 109 States are parties to the Apartheid Convention, most States (currently 177) are parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, under which they commit themselves to “prevent, prohibit and eradicate” apartheid (article 3). As of 31 January 2017, 124 States had ratified the Rome Statute. Hence, most States have a legal responsibility to oppose apartheid and take measures to end it wherever it may arise. That responsibility concerns not only human rights violations resulting from apartheid but the threat it poses to international peace and security. The Apartheid Convention further provides that States parties should act at the national level to suppress and prevent the crime of apartheid, through legislative action and prosecutions and legal proceedings in any competent national court.

This report proceeds on the assumption that apartheid is a crime against humanity and that all Member States of the United Nations are legally responsible for acting to prevent, end and punish its practice.

Alternative definitions of apartheid

Arguments about whether a State practices apartheid rest on how apartheid is defined. Several definitions are currently used in polemical debate with regard to Israel, which is frequently labelled an “apartheid State” for its practice of discrete

9 When the Convention was drafted, apartheid had already been described as a crime against humanity by the General Assembly, as in resolution 2202 (XXI) of 1966 (A/RES/2202(XXI) A-B).

“acts of apartheid”, such as the “apartheid wall”.10 Those who insist that Israel cannot be held culpable for apartheid argue that the country’s laws are fundamentally different from those of apartheid South Africa: for example, because Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote.11 These diverse arguments arguably fall outside a study grounded in the tenets of international law as set forth in the pertinent instruments, but a quick overview of them here is warranted. This brevity should not be taken to imply a dismissal of such definitions, which have their place beyond strict considerations of international law. Rather, the overview serves to explain why they are not employed in this report. Neat divisions cannot always be made between these definitions, and some clearly overlap, but they can be identified as types or tendencies.

1. Defining only regimes consistent with the apartheid regime in South Africa as being apartheid, so that, by definition, digressions from South African practices preclude any charge of apartheid.
2. Treating discrete practices considered to have qualities of apartheid, such as the so-called “apartheid wall” (“separation fence” or “separation barrier” in official Israeli discourse), as signifying that a State has established a comprehensive apartheid regime.
3. Defining apartheid as the outcome of anonymous structural global forces, such as global corporate influences or neoliberalism, as enforced by Bretton Woods institutions.
4. Defining apartheid as the aggregate body of private racist practices by the dominant society as a whole, whereby State involvement is a contingent tool for enforcing a draconian social system based on racial hierarchy, discrimination and segregation.
5. Treating apartheid as pertaining only to Palestinian citizens of Israel, or only to Palestinians in the occupied territory, or excluding Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles living outside territory under Israeli control.12

These types of definition, and the reasons that make them unsuitable for this report, are elaborated upon below.

10 A literature review of such references exceeds the scope of this report.

11 CERD/C/ISR/14-16.

12 Palestinians expelled from the occupied Palestinian territory by Israel and not allowed to return.

14 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

1. The comparison with southern Africa

Arguments about whether Israel has established an apartheid regime often compare the policies and practices of Israel with the system of apartheid in southern Africa (South Africa and Namibia).13 The very term “apartheid” may suggest that the system of racial discrimination as practised by the South African regime constitutes the model for a finding of apartheid elsewhere.14 The comparison does sometimes provide illuminating insights: for instance, by clarifying why existing proposals for a two-State solution in Mandate Palestine are most likely to generate a Palestinian Bantustan.15 Such insights are found by examining the South African distinction between so-called “petty apartheid” (the segregation of facilities, job access and so forth) and “grand apartheid”, which proposed solving racial tensions with the partition of South African territory and by establishing black South African “homelands” delineated by the regime. Be that as it may, the South African comparison will be mostly avoided in this report, because (1) such comparison contradicts the universal character of the prohibition of apartheid and (2) because apartheid systems that arise in different countries will necessarily differ in design. Nonetheless, because they tend to have much in common, this approach requires brief elaboration.

(a) Reasons for the error of comparison

The first reason people turn to the South African case is that the collective memory of the South African struggle and the term “apartheid” itself encourage this error. On coming to power in 1948, the Afrikaner-dominated Nationalist Party translated its constituency’s long-standing beliefs about racial hierarchy into a body of racial laws designed to secure white supremacy and determine the life conditions and chances of everyone in the country on the basis of race. The Nationalists’ term for this comprehensive system was apartheid (Afrikaans for “apart-hood” or “separate development”).16 The opposition to apartheid (coordinated by the African National Congress, the Pan-African Congress, the domestic United Democratic Front and

13 The term “southern” Africa reflects the practice of South Africa in extending apartheid to South West Africa (now Namibia), which South Africa had held under a League of Nations mandate and refused to relinquish after the Second World War.

14. Afrikaans is the adapted Dutch of the indigenized Dutch-European “Afrikaner” settler society in southern Africa.
15. For a study of how arrangements for the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority replicate the South African“homelands”, or Bantustans, see Virginia Tilley, “A Palestinian declaration of independence: implications for peace”, Middle East Policy, vol. 17, No. 1 (March 2010). Available here.

16 The National Party was the principal party in South Africa expressing the Afrikaner worldview and white-nationalist political goals. Hold-outs against United Nations denunciations of apartheid in South Africa included Israel, which maintained a close alliance with the regime throughout its duration, and the United States of America, which had close business ties with South Africa.

other southern African actors, as well as sympathetic international human rights networks) accordingly adopted the term in order to denounce it. The General Assembly did the same, using the term for a series of measures concerning South Africa. For many people, this long history of legal activism naturalized the association between apartheid and South Africa to the point of conflation.

That this conflation is a legal error can be seen in the history of usage through which the term gained universal application:

• 1962 – The General Assembly established the Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of South Africa, later renamed the Special Committee against Apartheid;
• 1965 – Under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, apartheid was classified as a form of racial discrimination (preamble and article 3) with no mention of South Africa;
• 1973 – The Apartheid Convention clarified that “inhuman acts” that constitute the crime of apartheid would “include” acts that are “similar to” those of apartheid South Africa;
• 1976 – The Secretariat of the United Nations set up the Centre against Apartheid;
• 1998 – Apartheid was listed in the Rome Statute as a crime against humanity, with no mention of South Africa.That the term has come to have universal application is clarified by South African jurist John Dugard (a leading legal scholar of apartheid):

That the Apartheid Convention is intended to apply to situations other than South Africa is confirmed by its endorsement in a wider context in instruments adopted before and after the fall of apartheid… It may be concluded that the Apartheid Convention is dead as far as the original cause for its creation – apartheid in South Africa – is concerned, but that it lives on as a species of the crime against humanity, under both customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (emphasis added).17

This report assumes that the term “apartheid” has come to have universal application in international law and is accordingly not confined to the South African case.

17 John Dugard, “Introductory note to the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”. Available here.

(b) The paucity of precedents

A second reason people turn to the South African comparison is that, because no other State has been accused of the crime of apartheid, South Africa stands as the only case providing a precedent. Given the importance of precedents in the interpretation of law, it is arguably natural for people to look at the “inhuman acts” of apartheid in southern Africa as the models or benchmarks for what apartheid “looks like”. For example, some claim that Israel clearly does not practise apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote in national elections, while black South Africans did not. That the design of apartheid regimes in other States must necessarily differ — due to the unique history of their societies and the collective experience shaping local racial thought, such as settler colonialism, slavery, ethnic cleansing, war or genocide — is neglected in such a simplified search for models.

Nevertheless, the case of southern Africa does serve to expose some legal arguments as specious. For example, it might be argued that the treatment by Israel of Palestinian populations outside its internationally recognized borders (that is, in the occupied Palestinian territory and abroad) falls beyond the scope of the question, making its policies on Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living under occupation irrelevant to a charge of apartheid. That this argument is unsupportable is confirmed by reference to ICJ advisory opinions regarding the behaviour of South Africa in South West Africa (Namibia).18 In 1972, the ICJ found South African rule over Namibia illegal partly on the grounds that it violated the rights of the Namibian people by imposing South African apartheid laws there.19 South Africa was thus held to account for apartheid practices outside its own sovereign territory and in respect to non-citizens.

This report assumes that the question of formal sovereignty is not germane to a finding of apartheid.

18 In the 1960s, South Africa administered South West Africa (Namibia) as a fifth province and applied to it its doctrine of apartheid, complete with Bantustans. The policy attracted repeated criticism from the General Assembly.

19 The ICJ was addressing the legality of South Africa’s continued rule of South West Africa in violation of a Security Council resolution calling for its withdrawal. See especially the last of four opinions issued between 1950 and 1971: International Status of South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1950, p. 128; Voting Procedure on Questions Relating to Reports and Petitions Concerning the Territory of South West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1955, p. 67; Admissibility of Hearings of Petitioners by the Committee on South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1956, p. 23; Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) Notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16 (especially paras. 131 and 133).

2. Apartheid as discrete practices

Discrete acts by Israel are frequently labelled as examples of “apartheid”: for example, as noted earlier, in references to the “apartheid wall”. Such references are useful to those wishing to highlight how the forcible segregation of groups strongly suggests apartheid. Yet it would be erroneous to take such isolated practices as indicative that a State is constituted as an apartheid regime.20 Rather, the Apartheid Convention provides a definition that stresses the combination of acts with their “purpose” or intent:

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of (emphasis added) establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them (article II).

The Convention then lists six categories of such “inhuman acts”. In article 7 (2) (h), the Rome Statute formulates the same concept differently, but again places emphasis on such acts as reflecting an “intention”:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1 [i.e., “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”], committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Both instruments thus establish that discrete acts are crimes of apartheid only if they are part of an institutionalized regime and have the “intention” or “purpose” of racial domination and oppression. The same acts, if not observably part of such a regime or lacking such a clear purpose, may be denounced as reprehensible instances of racism but do not meet the definition of a crime of apartheid. For that reason, a check-list method alone — such as looking for the “inhuman acts” mentioned in the Apartheid Convention — would be a misreading of the

20 Former special rapporteurs John Dugard and Richard Falk highlighted the problem of determining when “features of apartheid” signify that an apartheid regime is operating, which would constitute a matter that might be referred to the ICJ. For both rapporteurs, the question arose with regard to the legality of the Israeli occupation. Mr. Dugard described “road apartheid” in the occupied Palestinian territory and noted that the Israeli occupation has “features” or “elements” of apartheid. However, whether Israel is constituted as an apartheid regime remained for Mr. Dugard a question still to be legally determined (A/62/275). Mr. Falk adopted a similar position (A/HRC/25/67, p. 21).

Convention’s intention. In article II, it explicitly establishes that such acts are illustrative, not mandatory, and are crimes of apartheid only if they serve the overarching purpose of racial domination. Hence, such acts can be considered crimes of apartheid only after the existence of an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination” has been conclusively established.

The very existence of the Apartheid Convention indicates that apartheid is rightly distinguished from other forms of racial discrimination, already prohibited under instruments such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, by its character as a regime. The Rome Statute expressly refers to apartheid as a regime. In political science, a State regime is the set of institutions through which the State is governed, principally regarding its arrangements for exercising power. In the oft-cited formulation by political scientist Robert Fishman:

A regime may be thought of as the formal and informal organization of the centre of political power, and of its relations with the broader society. A regime determines who has access to political power, and how those who are in power deal with those who are not… Regimes are more permanent forms of political organization than specific governments, but they are typically less permanent than the State.21

On the basis of this definition, relevant evidence for an apartheid regime in Israel- Palestine must go beyond identifying discrete acts and determine whether the regime blocks access to “the centre of political power” on the basis of race. Moreover, the Apartheid Convention specifies that “organizations, institutions and individuals” may be culpable for the crime of apartheid (article I, para. 2). This, too, means that the State as a whole may be held accountable for committing that crime.

Finally, identifying apartheid as a regime clarifies one controversy: that ending such a regime would constitute destruction of the State itself. This interpretation is understandable if the State is understood as being the same as its regime. Thus, some suggest that the aim of eliminating apartheid in Israel is tantamount to aiming to “destroy Israel”. However, a State does not cease to exist as a result of regime change. The elimination of the apartheid regime in South Africa in no way affected the country’s statehood.

To determine whether specific acts constitute evidence of apartheid, this report examines whether they contribute to the overarching purpose of sustaining an institutionalized regime of racial oppression and domination.

21 Fishman, Robert M., “Rethinking State and regime: Southern Europe’s transition to democracy”, World Politics, vol. 42, No. 3 (April 1990).

3. Apartheid as generated by anonymous structural conditions

Some writers have begun to define apartheid as the racialized impact of anonymous socioeconomic forces, such as the capitalist mode of production. It may indeed be heuristically useful to use the term “economic apartheid” to describe situations where economic inequality feeds into racial formation and stratification, even in the absence of any deliberate State policy to achieve this result.22 (Scholars of race relations will identify this as the illimitable race-class debate.) In this model, “apartheid” is used to flag discrimination that emerges spontaneously from a variety of economic conditions and incentives. Some argue that the entire global economy is generating a kind of “global apartheid”.23

The trouble with this hyper-structural approach is that it renders agency, particularly the role of a given State, unclear or implicitly eliminates it altogether. International law interprets apartheid as a crime for which individuals (or States) can be prosecuted, once their culpability is established by authoritative legal procedures. No such criminal culpability could pertain when treating apartheid as the product of the international structure itself, as this would not signify whether the State regime is configured deliberately for the purpose of racial domination and oppression — the distinguishing quality of apartheid according to the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute.

This report considers that the question of whether or not an apartheid system is in place should be analysed at the level of the State, and that the crime of apartheid is applicable only to that level.

4. Apartheid as private social behaviour

The term apartheid is also used to describe racial discrimination where the main agent in imposing racial domination is the dominant racial group, whose members collectively generate the rules and norms that define race, enforce racial hierarchy and police racial boundaries. The primary enforcers of such systems are private, such as teachers, employers, real estate agents, loan officers and vigilante groups, but they also rely to varying degrees on administrative organs of the State, such as the police and a court system. It follows that maintaining these organs as compliant with the system becomes a core goal of private actors, because

22 For more on this, see Cass Sunstein, “Why markets don’t stop discrimination”, Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 8, issue 2 (April 1991).

23 Anthony H. Richmond, Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism, and the New World Order (Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1994).

excluding dominated groups from meaningful voting rights that might alter that compliance is essential to maintaining the system.

Social racism doubtless plays a vital role in apartheid regimes, by providing popular support for designing and preserving the system, and by using informal methods (treating people with hostility and suspicion) to intimidate and silence subordinated groups.24 Social racism is rarely entirely divorced from institutionalized racism. Law and practice are so interdependent that the difference between them may seem irrelevant to those oppressed by the holistic system they create.

Nonetheless, one significant difference distinguishes the two: the role of constitutional law. Where a State’s constitutional law provides equal rights to the entire citizenry, it can provide an invaluable resource for people challenging discrimination at all levels of the society. However, if constitutional law defines the State as racial in character — as in Israel (as a Jewish State), and apartheid South Africa (as a white-Afrikaner State) — movements against racial discrimination not only lack this crucial legal resource but find themselves in the far more dangerous position of challenging the regime itself. Such a challenge will naturally be seen by regime authorities as an existential threat and be persecuted accordingly.25

In short, it is crucial for a finding of apartheid to establish whether the State’s constitutional law (the Basic Law in Israel) renders discrimination illegal or renders resistance to discrimination illegal. The latter case fits the definition of apartheid in the Apartheid Convention, which lists as a crime against humanity “persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid” (article II (f)).

5. Apartheid and the question of race

The Apartheid Convention defines apartheid as “domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons…”. The Rome Statute uses similar wording: “…systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups…”. However, neither Jews nor Palestinians are

24 Surveys of Jewish Israeli attitudes towards “Arabs” and Palestinians are omitted here because they do not pertain to a study of the State’s institutionalized regime. This omission in no way intends to suggest that popular views are not key guardians and enforcers of that regime.

25 Although the Constitution of the United States of America states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, race relations always complicated this principle in practice. Constitutional law favouring white supremacy included the key “separate but equal” provisions in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896). They were overturned only in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483, which was later followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

referred to as “races” today. Moreover, Jews are correctly argued to include many “races” in the sense of the old colour categories: black, white, Asian and so forth. Thus, one challenge to any accusation that Israel maintains an apartheid regime is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not racial in nature. Hence, the argument goes, Jews cannot be racist toward Palestinians (or anyone else) because Jews themselves are not a race.

Such arguments reflect a mistaken and obsolete understanding of race. Through the first half of the twentieth century, the idea of race was seen as scientifically established and measurable. Since the Second World War, however, it has come to be recognized as a social construction that varies over time and may be contested within each local context. One illustration of such variability is the North American “one-drop rule”, which has long operated to label as “black” anyone with a perceptible element of African phenotypes or known black ancestry. Yet the same “black” person, travelling to Latin America, finds the one-drop rule working in reverse, such that s/he is not considered “black” if s/he has any portion of “white” blood, instead being called mestizo or mulatto. Thus racial identity changes with the setting.

Consequently, there can be no single, authoritative, global definition of any race. The only way to determine how racial identities are perceived and practiced locally is through historical studies of racial thought and by field observations in each local setting. The question is therefore not whether Jewish and Palestinian identities are innately racial in character wherever they occur, but whether those identities function as racial groups in the local environment of Israel-Palestine.

This point raises another question on how race is handled in United Nations instruments.26 For the purposes of human rights law, a finding of racial discrimination is based less on how groups are labelled than how they are treated. For example, although Jews today are not normally referred to as a “race”, anti- Semitism is correctly seen as a form of racism. It would indeed be unethical and politically regressive sophistry to argue that Jews cannot be subject to racial discrimination simply because they are not normally referred to as a “race”.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination captures that point by defining “racial discrimination” as embracing a range of identities:

26 The exception that proves the rule regarding definitions of race is the isolated effort by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: see Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgement (TC), 2 September 1998, Akayesu Trial Judgment, paras. 511-515.

22 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

In this Convention, the term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life (part I, article 1) (emphasis added).

By invoking that Convention in its preamble, the Apartheid Convention suggests that its language regarding “racial group or groups” embraces the same range of identities.

Recognizing this contextual meaning of “race” is not haphazard. Since the mid- twentieth century, scholars of international law have joined social scientists in coming to understand racial identity as fundamentally a matter of perception, rather than objectively measurable qualities. Racial identities are usually signally somatic and so are seen as stable and permanent, acquired at birth and thus immutable. That races are actually social constructions is evidenced by how such constructions vary from society to society: that is, the significance of specific somatic criteria, such as skin colour or eye shape, to a racial typology. Where such perceptions of an essential identity persist, the difference disappears between language about groups understood as racial or “ethnic”, as descent groups, and that which sees them as sharing a particular national or ethnic origin. What matters in all those cases is that all members of a group — including infants and others who cannot possibly constitute a “racial threat” — are embraced by one policy. A pertinent example of this conflation of terms has been discrimination against Jews, for whom a mix of labels (race, religion and ethnicity) has been used by those pursuing anti-Semitic segregation, persecution or genocide. The question here is, therefore, whether relations between Jews and Palestinians in Mandate Palestine rest on ideas that each group has an immutable character, such that their relations fit the definition of “racial” discrimination.

A comprehensive review of how Jewish and Palestinian identities are understood locally in Israel-Palestine would overburden this report. Fortunately, one factor confirms the racial quality of both identities in this context: both are considered descent groups (one of the categories in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). Palestinian identity is explicitly based on origins or ancestral origins in the territory of Mandate Palestine. The 1964 Charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)27 expresses this

27 See this.

The Arab countries and which together form the great Arab homeland.

Principle by affirming that Palestinian identity is passed down through the paternal line and is intergenerational:

Article 5: The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from fathers to sons.

Palestinian national identity has always been nested within pan-Arabism, an ethno- national identity formulated first as a modern territorial nationalism by Sherif Hussein of Mecca. “Arab” was certainly the generic term for Arabic-speaking people in Palestine when the Zionist movement began to settle the area. General Assembly resolution 181(II) of 1947,28 which recommended the partition of Mandate Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”, drew from that discourse. Updated and promoted especially by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser to craft an anticolonial Arab identity bloc across the Middle East and North Africa, Arab identity became a vital identity and political resource for the PLO, as reflected in its Charter:

In this conception, Palestinians are integral members of the Arab “Nation”, but it is the “Palestinian people” that holds the right to self-determination in Mandate Palestine, thus conveying the international legal meaning of “nation” to the Palestinian people.

In contrast, Jewish identity combines several contradictory elements.29 “Jewish” is certainly a religious identity in the sense that Judaism is a religious faith to which anyone may convert if willing and able to follow the required procedures. On that basis, opponents of Israeli policy insist that Jewishness is not a national identity but simply a religious one, and so Jews qua Jews are not a “people” in the sense of international law and therefore lack the right to self-determination. Supporters of Israel use the same point to deny that Jewish statehood is racist, on the grounds

28 A/RES/181(II).

29 Internal debates about “who is a Jew” are irrelevant to the State’s construction of Jewishness as a single people, and thus not pertinent to this report. On such debates, see, for example, Noah Efron, Real Jews: Secular Versus Ultra-Orthodox: The Struggle For Jewish Identity In Israel (New York, Basic Books, 2003).

Article 1: Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of

… Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation. It shares the sufferings and aspirations of the Arab

Nation and its struggle for freedom, sovereignty, progress and unity… that Zionism and Israel cannot be racist if Jews are not a race. However, those arguments are flawed, even disingenuous, as religious criteria alone are not adequate for defining what it is to be “Jewish”.

Like many other groups that today are now commonly called “ethnic” or “national”, until the mid-twentieth century Jews were often referred to as a “race”. Jewish-Zionist thinkers adopted the same approach, reflecting contemporary concepts of what races were, how races composed peoples and nations, and how on that basis they had the right to self-determination. For example, Zionist philosopher and strategist Max Nordau commonly used the term “race” for Jews in speaking of Jewish interests in Palestine.30 For decades, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, wrote passionately about the Jewish “race” and how the “spiritual mechanism” associated with it granted transcendental value to a Jewish State.31 Today, this usage persists in the Memorandum of Association of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which in article 2 (c) cites one of its objectives as being to “benefit, directly or indirectly, those of Jewish race or descent”. In none of those sources is religious faith even mentioned (because it is recognized to vary): the concern is entirely with descent. Halachah (often translated as “Jewish law”) and social norms in Jewish communities provide that Jewish identity is conveyed from mother to child, irrespective of the individual’s actual religious beliefs or practice. The State of Israel enshrined the central importance of descent in its Law of Return of 1950 (amended in 1970),32 which states that:

For the purposes of this Law, “Jew” means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.

Descent is crucial to Jewish identity discourse in Israel because direct lineal descent from antiquity is the main reason given by political-Zionist philosophers for why Jews today hold the right to self-determination in the land of Palestine. In this view, all Jews retain a special relationship and rights to the land of Palestine, granted by covenant with God: some schools of Zionism hold that Israel is the successor State to the Jewish kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. That claim is

30 See, for example, Max Nordau, “Address to the First Zionist Congress”, 29 August 1897. Available here.

31 See Vladimir Jabotinsky, A lecture on Jewish history (1933), cited in David Goldberg, To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought (London, Penguin, 1996), p. 181.

32 Passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950 and amended on 10 March 1970.

expressed, inter alia, in the Declaration of Independence of Israel,33 which affirms that Jews today trace their ancestry to an earlier national life in the geography of Palestine and therefore have an inalienable right to “return”, which is given precedence over positive law:

The Land of Israel 34 was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book
of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. […]

That claim to unbroken lineal descent from antiquity attributes collective rights to the “land of Israel” to an entire group on the basis of its (supposed) bloodlines. The incompatible claim that Jewishness is multiracial, by virtue of its character as a religion to which others have converted, is simply absent from this formula.

The emphasis on descent implicitly portrays all other descent groups — including Palestinians — as lacking any comparable right by virtue of their different descent. Thus the claim to Palestine as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people rests on an expressly racial conception of both groups. This means that Jews and Palestinians are “racial groups” as defined by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, accordingly, for the purposes of the Apartheid Convention.

33 Provisional Government of Israel, The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, Official Gazette, No. 1 (Tel Aviv, 14 May 1948). It is also commonly referred to as the Declaration of Independence. Available here.

34 Eretz-Israel in Hebrew.

2. Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine

The design of an apartheid regime in any State will necessarily reflect the country’s unique history and demography, which shape local perceptions of racial hierarchy and doctrines of racial supremacy. The first task here is, therefore, to consider how local conditions in Israel-Palestine constitute such an environment. The main feature, stemming from the history of wars and expulsions, is the geographic fragmentation of the Palestinian people into discrete populations that are then administered differently by the State regime. Those components include Palestinians living under direct Israeli rule in three categories (as citizens of the State of Israel, residents of occupied East Jerusalem, and under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) and Palestinians living outside direct Israeli rule: refugees and involuntary exiles expelled from the territory of Mandate Palestine who

are prohibited by Israel from returning. The next section clarifies how those four categories have emerged from the territory’s history of warfare and incremental annexation.

1. The political geography of apartheid

The geographic unit of “Mandate Palestine” was established by the League of Nations in 1922 with the stated intention of fostering the future independence of Palestine as a State, as specified in the League of Nations Charter.35 Famously, the Palestine Mandate included contradictory provisions for a Jewish “national home” (not a State) and the special authority of the Jewish Agency in establishing that “home”. Later British commissions and white papers specified that “national home” had not been intended to signify a Jewish State, but that position was not

35 The borders of Mandate Palestine were derived from the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided Ottoman imperial territory after the First World War and placed it under British or French Mandates. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provided for various classes of mandate territory. Palestine was considered one of the most advanced areas, whose “existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”. In that context, “independent nations” signified independent statehood, thus informing language in the Mandate for Palestine. The early history of Palestine’s mandate borders, which combined Transjordan and Palestine, is not considered material to this report, but for that history, see especially Victor Kattan, From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (London, Pluto Press, 2009).

accepted by the Zionist leadership. Endemic violence that emerged from this contradictory formula, combined with imperial exhaustion after the Second World War, ultimately led Great Britain to withdraw from its role as Mandatory Power and submit the fate of Palestine to the United Nations. In 1947, the General Assembly passed resolution 181(II) by a modest majority of 36 Member States, recommending the territory’s partition into a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”. The same resolution specified conditions and measures deemed essential to make partition viable, including borders that provided for racial majorities in each titular State, constitutional protections for minorities, economic union between the two States and a special international regime for the city of Jerusalem.36

In the 1948 war, however, the Zionist movement took over territory far beyond what had been assigned to the Jewish State under resolution 181(II) and, by so doing, rendered moot its labyrinthine provisions, including acquiescence by the internationally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people. In 1948, the Zionist leadership declared the independence of Israel in territory under its military control, although its final borders had yet to be established. In 1949, the General Assembly recommended admission of the State of Israel to membership even though its borders had still not been finalized. Palestinians remaining in Israel, who had not fled or been expelled in the 1948 war, became citizens of Israel, but Israel administered them under emergency laws and denied them civil rights, such as the franchise, until 1966.

From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) was governed by Jordan, while the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. As a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, both territories came under Israeli military occupation and rule, yet were not formally annexed.37 The geographic separation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has suggested the existence of two discrete territories. However, the United Nations commonly refers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the singular as the “occupied Palestinian territory”, treating both as geographic fragments of “Palestine” as established under the League of Nations Mandate.38 Pursuant to article XI of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and

36 Resolution 181(II) was the result of work by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), with its two subcommittees providing options for a partitioned or unified State.

37 Although effectively annexed, the occupied Syrian Golan is excluded from the scope of this report because that territory was not part of the Palestine Mandate and is considered legally to be Syrian territory. However, many of this report’s findings could apply to Israeli policy in the Golan and may be consistent with apartheid, as Israel has used Jewish settlement to stake a claim to the land and the population of the four Druze villages there live in conditions of relative deprivation.

38 Steps taken by the General Assembly to recognize a “State of Palestine” have prompted some to suggest that occupied Palestinian territory should now be referred to as “occupied Palestine”. However, since recognition of such a State still lacks any final agreement about its borders, the authors here continue to use the term “occupied Palestinian territory” to refer to territory delineated by the 1949 Armistice Agreement and occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

the Gaza Strip (also known as the Oslo II Accord or Oslo II), for the purposes of negotiation those areas were considered a “single territorial unit” (article XI). Hence, international jurists and the United Nations consider Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be under one legal category: that is, civilians under belligerent occupation, whose rights and protections are stipulated primarily in the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War (1949).

East Jerusalem (that part of Jerusalem on the east side of the Armistice Line or “green line” of 1949) obtained a special status. Although seamlessly integrated with the West Bank between 1948 and 1967, East Jerusalem retained the aura of the diplomatic character, proposed by resolution 181(II), of a corpus separatum, reflecting its vital importance to all three Abrahamic faiths. After the 1967 war, however, Israel passed legislation making East Jerusalem part of the unified city of Jerusalem, radically expanding the city’s borders, and extending Israeli civil law throughout. After the second intifada (from September 2000), parts of East Jerusalem were re-segregated from Jewish areas physically by the separation wall and its security gates and Israeli checkpoints. This forced separation has allowed Israel to separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank in juridical terms and so has generated the category of Palestinian “residents” of East Jerusalem, whose rights stem largely from Israeli law on permanent residency.39

The territory’s history has further generated the separate case of Palestinian citizens of Israel: people who remained inside the internationally recognized borders of Israel after 1949 and their descendants. Granted Israeli citizenship although not full “national” equality as non-Jews in a Jewish-national State, this Palestinian population now makes up 20 per cent of the country’s citizenry.40

How Israeli law and doctrine has defined this population as citizens but not “nationals” of the State is addressed below. Here it is incumbent only to recognize that Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise a distinct legal category. The situation of refugees and involuntary exiles comprises the final category, distinct from the others in that they are governed by the laws of the other States in which they reside.

39 The Knesset passed Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel on 30 July 1980 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 980 of 5 August 1980, p. 186).

40 Jewish Virtual Library, Vital Statistics: Latest Population Statistics for Israel (January 2017). Available here.

Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine

By developing discrete bodies of law, termed “domains” in this report, for each territory and their Palestinian populations, Israel has both effected and veiled a comprehensive policy of apartheid directed at the whole Palestinian people.41 Warfare, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and occupation in Palestine have, over the decades, generated the complex geography in which the Palestinian people have become fragmented into different juridical categories and are administered by different bodies of law. What matters for the purposes of a study of apartheid is how Israel has exploited this fragmentation to secure Jewish-national domination.

1. Israel as a racial State

A test of apartheid cannot be confined, methodologically, to identifying discrete policies and practices, such as those listed under the Apartheid Convention. Such policies and practices must be found to serve the purpose or intention of imposing racial domination and oppression on a subordinated racial group. In somewhat circular reasoning, international law provides that discrete “inhuman acts” acquire the status of a crime against humanity only if they intentionally serve that purpose, but establishes that such a purpose requires the identification of related inhuman acts. The solution is to examine the context in which acts and motives are configured: that is, whether the State itself is designed to ensure “the domination of a racial group or groups over any other racial group or groups”. (For example, in South Africa, State institutions were designed to ensure incontestable domination by whites and, particularly, Dutch-Afrikaners.)

In this study, it is vital to establish the racial character of the regime that the system of domains is designed to protect. Otherwise, their internal diversity — the laws that comprise them — can convey the incorrect impression of discrete systems.

That Israel is politically constructed as the State of the Jewish people requires no extended explanation here, but will be discussed briefly.42 Since the turn of the twentieth century, the history of the Zionist movement has been centred on creating and preserving a Jewish State in Palestine. That aim remains the cornerstone of

41 “Domain” is used in the report in the sense of logic or discourse analysis, in which concepts and actors are understood as part of one “universe” of references. Hence, the domains in Israeli policy consist of definitions of the populations themselves (domestic, foreign, citizens or otherwise, “Palestinians” oriented toward Palestinian self-determination or “Arabs” as an Israeli minority, and so forth), as well as the laws, practices, norms and other measures, formal and informal, by which Israeli definitions of those identities are imposed on Palestinian populations in each domain.

42 For a more complete discussion, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chaps. 3 and 4.

Israeli State discourse. During the Mandate years, the Jewish Agency and Zionist leadership argued that the “Jewish national home” promised under the Mandate was to be a sovereign Jewish State. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel specifically referred to the new State as a “Jewish State in Eretz- Israel”. The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty43 and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation44 specify concerns with “the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State”.45 The 1952 World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency (Status) Law,46 which establishes those organizations as “authorized agencies” of the State on a range of responsibilities, including land settlement, specifies that Israel is “the creation of the entire Jewish people, and its gates are open, in accordance with its laws, to every Jew wishing to immigrate to it”.

The mission of preserving Israel as a Jewish State has inspired or even compelled Israel to pursue several general racial policies.

1. Demographic engineering

The first general policy of Israel has been one of demographic engineering, in order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel. As in any racial democracy, such a majority allows the trappings of democracy — democratic elections, a strong legislature — without threatening any loss of hegemony by the dominant racial group. In Israeli discourse, this mission is expressed in terms of the so-called “demographic threat”, an openly racist reference to Palestinian population growth or the return of Palestinian refugees. Related practices have included:

1. A global programme, organized by the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, launched at the end of the nineteenth century and accelerating into the early 1930s, to bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine in numbers large enough to ensure the demographic majority needed for building a Jewish State with democratic characteristics;

43 Passed by the Knesset on 17 March 1992 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 1391 of 25 March 1992). Available here.

44 The law amending the original 1992 legislation was passed by the Knesset on 9 March 1994 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 1454 of 10 March 1994). Available here.

45 A controversial bill to declare this principle as a central tenet had been tabled in the Knesset but not yet passed at the time of writing. See Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, Ministry of Justice. Available here. Accessed 5 February 2017.

46 The Status Law was amended in 1975 to restructure this relationship: see World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency for Israel (Status) (Amendment) Law, 1975.

2. Ethnic cleansing (forcible displacement) in 1948 of an estimated 800,000 Palestinians from areas that became part of the internationally recognized territory of Israel;47
3. Subsequent measures undertaken by Israel to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority within its internationally recognized territory, including by:(a) Preventing Palestinian refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967 from returning to homes in Israel or in the occupied Palestinian territory, which they had abandoned due to fighting, dispossession, forced expulsion and terror;48

(b) Composing the Law of Return and Citizenship Law (often wrongly translated as Nationality Law) to provide Israeli citizenship to Jews from any part of the world, while denying citizenship even to those Palestinians who have a documented history of residency in the country;

(c) A range of other policies designed to restrict the size of the Palestinian population, including harsh restrictions placed on immigration, the return of refugees, and rules prohibiting Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from gaining legal residency rights in Israel.

4. The affirmation in the Basic Law that Israel is a “Jewish and democratic State”, thus establishing Jewish-racial domination as a foundational doctrine.

Together, those measures have been highly effective in maintaining an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel. In 1948, the ratio of Palestinians to Jews in Palestine was approximately 2:1 (some 1.3 million Arabs to 630,000 Jews).49 Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute only about 20 per cent of the population, rendering them a permanent minority.

2. Banson challenges to racial domination

Israel reinforces its race-based immigration policy with measures designed to prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from challenging the doctrine and laws that purport to establish Israel as a Jewish State. Article 7 (a) of the Basic Law: Knesset (1958), for instance, prohibits any political party in Israel from adopting a platform that challenges the State’s expressly Jewish character:

47. See Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London, Oxford One World Press, 2006).
48. Ibid. The right of refugees to return is specified in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

Discrimination (article 5 (d) (ii)).

49 Censuses categories under the British Mandate were ordered by “religion” rather than ethnicity. Statistics therefore grouped together Arab and non-Arab Christians. In 1947, Christians and Muslims numbered 143,000 and 1,181,000 respectively.

A candidates list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset, and a person shall not be a candidate for election to the Knesset, if the objects or actions of the list or the actions of the person, expressly or by implication, include one of the following:

(1) Negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State (emphasis added)…50

Voting rights lose their significance in terms of equal rights when a racial group is legally banned from challenging laws that perpetuate inequality. An analogy would be a system in which slaves have the right to vote but not against slavery. Such rights might allow slaves to achieve some cosmetic reforms, such as improved living conditions and protection from vigilante violence, but their status and vulnerability as chattels would remain. Israeli law bans organized Palestinian opposition to Jewish domination, rendering it illegal and even seditious.

3. Israeli Jewish-national institutions

Israel has designed its domestic governance in such a way as to ensure that the State upholds and promotes Jewish nationalism. The term “Jewish people” in political Zionist thought is used to claim the right to self-determination. The quest of an ethnic or racial group for its own State amounts to a national project, and so Israeli institutions designed to preserve Israel as a Jewish State are referred to in this report as “Jewish-national” institutions.

In Israel, an interplay of laws consolidates Jewish-national supremacy. For example, regarding the central question of land use, Basic Law: Israel Lands51 provides that real property held by the State of Israel, the Development Authority or the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel (JNF-Jewish National Fund) must serve “national” (that is, Jewish-national) interests and cannot be transferred to any other hands. It further establishes the Israeli Lands Authority (ILA) as administrator of such lands. The ILA (as successor of the Israeli Lands Administration) is charged with administering land in accordance with the JNF Covenant, which requires that land held by the JNF be held in perpetuity for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people. The ILA also operates in accordance with the World Zionist Organization- Jewish Agency Status Law (1952), which sets forth the responsibility of those conjoined organizations for serving Jewish settlement and development. Thus, State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of land within the country’s

50. Basic Law: Knesset. Available here.
51. Passed by the Knesset on 19 July 1960 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 312 of 29 July 1960).

34 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid internationally recognized borders, is managed through laws prohibiting its use by non-Jews.52

In a legal process that Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard has called “channelling”, Israel has extended the application of laws regarding land to the occupied Palestinian territory.53 Large areas of the West Bank have been declared “State lands”, closed to use by Palestinians and administered in accordance with Israeli regime policies that, as described above, by law must serve the Jewish people.54 In other words, much of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is under the authority of an Israeli State institution that is legally bound to administer that land for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people. The same arrangement once governed Israeli Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, but since the Israeli “disengagement” of 2005 and the withdrawal of Jewish settlements, such laws apply only to small portions of the Strip, such as the unilaterally imposed security zone by the fence.

The Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organisation (hereafter JA-WZO) deserve special attention for their role in establishing the racial character of the Israeli regime. According to Israeli law, they remain the “authorised agencies” of the State regarding Jewish-national affairs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.55 Their authority is detailed in the Covenant signed on 26 July 1954 between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive, representing the JA- WZO.56 The Covenant provides for a coordinating board, composed half of State officials and half of JA-WZO members, which is granted broad authority to serve the Jewish people, extending to development plans for the entire country. Powers accorded to the JA-WZO by its Covenant are:

The organising of [Jewish] immigration abroad and the transfer of immigrants and their property to Israel; participation in the absorption of immigrants in Israel; youth immigration; agricultural settlement in Israel; the acquisition and amelioration of land in Israel by the institutions of the Zionist Organisation, the Keren Kayemeth Le-Israel [Jewish National Fund] and the Keren Hayesod [United Jewish Appeal]; participation in the establishment

52. ILA website. Available here.
53. For details on how this is done, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation.
54. Provisions of humanitarian law prohibiting the occupant from altering the infrastructure, laws and economic institutions thatexisted in occupied territory prior to its coming under belligerent occupation include articles 43 and 55 of the 1907 Hague Regulations (Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land) and article 64 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. See also Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 2.

55 The World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency (Status) Law of 1952 was amended in 1975. Available here.

56 Read Reconstitution of the Jewish Agency, appendix I. and the expansion of development enterprises in Israel; the encouragement of private capital investments in Israel; assistance to cultural enterprises and institutions of higher learning in Israel; the mobilisation of resources for financing these functions; the coordination of the activities in Israel of Jewish institutions and organisations acting within the sphere of these functions with the aid of public funds.

A principle task of the JA-WZO is to work actively to build and maintain Israel as a Jewish State, particularly through immigration policy:

… 5. The mission of gathering in the [Jewish] exiles, which is the central task of the State of Israel and the Zionist Movement in our days, requires constant efforts by the Jewish people in the Diaspora; the State of Israel, therefore, expects the cooperation of all Jews, as individuals and groups, in building up the State and assisting the immigration to it of the masses of the [Jewish] people, and regards the unity of all sections of Jewry as necessary for this purpose (emphasis added).57

Such explicit language by the State’s authorized agencies conclusively underlines the State’s essentially racist character.

The World Zionist Organisation-Jewish Agency (Status) Law is linked to a second body of Israeli law and jurisprudence that distinguishes between citizenship (in Hebrew, ezrahut) and nationality (le’um). Other States have made this distinction: for example, in the former Soviet Union, Soviet citizens also held distinct “national” identities (Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek and so forth), but all nationalities had equal legal standing. In Israel, by contrast, only one nationality, Jewish, has legal standing and only Jewish nationality is associated with the legitimacy and mission of the State. According to the country’s Supreme Court, Israel is indeed not the State of the “Israeli nation”, which does not legally exist, but of the “Jewish nation”.58 National rights are reserved to Jewish nationality. For instance, the Law of Return serves the “in-gathering” mission cited above by allowing any Jew to immigrate to Israel and, through the Citizenship Law59, to gain immediate citizenship. No other group has a remotely comparable right and only Jews enjoy any collective rights under Israeli law.

57. World Zionist Organisation-Jewish Agency (Status) Law of 1952.
58. George Rafael Tamarin v. State of Israel (20 January 1972), Decisions of the Supreme Court of Israel (Jerusalem: Supreme

Court, 1972), vol. 25, pt. 1, 197 (in Hebrew). See also Roselle Tekiner, “On the inequality of Israeli citizens”, Without Prejudice, vol. 1, No. 1 (1988), pp. 9-48.

59 Passed by the Knesset on 1 April 1952 and amended in 1958, 1968 and 1971.

The operational platform of the JA-WZO, reformulated in 2004 as the Jerusalem Programme, further clarifies how the State of Israel will serve as a “Jewish State”. Its language is illuminating, especially in the light of the broad powers held by the JA-WZO, cited above:

Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, brought about the establishment of the State of Israel, and views a Jewish, Zionist, democratic and secure State of Israel to be the expression of the common responsibility of the Jewish people for its continuity and future. The foundations of Zionism are:

• The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation.
• Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all [Jewish] immigrants into Israeli Society.
• Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic State and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.
• Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, fostering spiritual and cultural values and teaching Hebrew as the national language.
• Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation, representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people, and struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism.
• Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism (emphasis added, bullet points in the original).60This discussion, although incomplete, should suffice to demonstrate that Israel is designed to be a racial regime. To remain a “Jewish State,” uncontested Jewish- nationalist domination over the indigenous Palestinian people is essential — an advantage secured in the democracy of Israel by population size — and State laws, national institutions, development practices and security policies all focus on that mission. Different methods are applied to Palestinian populations depending on where they live, requiring variations in their administration. Within Israel that discriminatory feature is exhibited by the deceptive distinction between citizenship laws that treat all Israelis more or less equally, and nationality laws that are blatantly discriminatory in favour of Jews. The distinction allows Israel to continue

60 See the Jerusalem Program. Accessed 19 February 2017.

its insistence on being “a democracy”, while discriminating in fundamental ways against its non-Jewish citizens.

Most important here is that Israel uses different methods of administration to control Palestinian populations depending on where they live, generating distinctive conditions. Fragmentation of the Palestinian people is indeed the core method through which Israel enforces apartheid.

1. Apartheid through fragmentation

Different methods of administration are used to control Palestinian populations depending on where they live. The practical onus of that administrative complexity also benefits Israel, as the fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the core method through which Israel enforces apartheid.

It would be an error to assume that, although comprising one regime, apartheid is effected through a single monolithic body of laws, applied everywhere to everyone without variation. The South African case is relevant here: even within the comprehensive body of law that defined life chances for everyone in the country, apartheid included important variations: for instance, different laws for black South Africans living in townships and in the Bantustans and different privileges for Indians and Coloureds. Similarly, the apartheid regime of Israel operates by splintering the Palestinian people geographically and politically into different legal categories.

The international community has unwittingly collaborated with this manoeuvre by drawing a strict distinction between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, and treating Palestinians outside the country as “the refugee problem”. The Israeli apartheid regime is built on this geographic fragmentation, which has come to be accepted as normative. The method of fragmentation serves also to obscure this regime’s very existence. That system, thus, lies at the heart of what is to be addressed in this report.

The four domains

This report finds that Israel maintains an apartheid regime by administering Palestinians under different bodies of law, identified here as constituting four legal domains:

• Domain 1: laws curtailing the capacity of Palestinian citizens of Israel to obtain equal rights within the State’s democracy.

• Domain 2: permanent residency laws designed to maintain a highly insecure legal status for Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem.
• Domain 3: military law governing Palestinians in occupied Palestinian territory as a permanently alien population, which rejects any claim they may want to make on Israeli political representation for equal rights and conditions.
• Domain 4: policy preventing Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles from returning to their homes in Mandate Palestine (all territory under the direct control of Israel).These domains interplay so as to enfeeble Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid oppression in each of them, thereby reinforcing oppression of the Palestinian people as a whole. The following sections describe how the system works.61

Palestinian citizens of Israel

Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem)

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem

Palestinian refugees and exiles

61 Much of the following section represents an edited version of the discussion in Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 4.

Domain 1: Palestinian citizens of Israel

Approximately 1.7 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel and have homes within its internationally recognized borders. They represent those who were not expelled or did not flee in the 1948 or 1967 wars. As citizens, they purportedly enjoy equal rights along with all Israeli citizens. For the first 20 years of the country’s existence, however, they were subjected to martial law and they continue to experience domination and oppression solely because they are not Jewish. Empirically, this policy of domination is manifest by the provision of inferior social services, restrictive zoning laws, and limited budget allocations benefitting their communities, in formal and informal restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities, and in the segregated landscapes of their places of residence: Jewish and Palestinian citizens overwhelmingly live separately in their own respective cities and towns (the few mixed areas, as in some neighbourhoods in Haifa, are exceptional).62

Those problems are not only the result of discrete policies. The dilemma for Palestinian Muslim, Christian and other non-Jewish citizens is to seek equal rights in a regime that openly privileges Jews.63 Any actions to weaken or eliminate that regime are considered “national” (that is, Jewish-national) threats. Even constitutional law providing for equal treatment before the law, such as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation (see above), allows for discrimination on those “national” grounds. Israeli constitutional law therefore, rather than providing tools for combatting oppression, makes resistance to oppression illegal.

The concern of the regime is that Palestinian citizens of Israel could eliminate its discriminatory design if they were able to revise the Basic Law and other key legislation (such as the Law of Return). Such changes require only a simple majority vote in the Knesset. However, as long as Palestinians represent only 20 per cent of the population, they will be unable to win the necessary proportion of Knesset seats. For example, even after forming an unprecedented unity list for elections to the Knesset in 2015, Palestinian parties held only 13 (10.6 per cent) of 120 seats. Because the Basic Law: Knesset disallows political parties from adopting a platform containing any challenge to the identity of Israel as a Jewish State,

62 See Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1980); Nadim Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997) and Ben White, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy (London, Pluto Press, 2011).

63 Druze citizens of Israel have fallen into a different category under Israeli policy. They serve in the military and are accorded rights and treatment superior to those of Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

Palestinian parties can campaign only for minor reforms and better municipal budgets. They are legally prohibited from challenging the racial regime itself. Thus the right to vote is circumscribed by laws regarding party platforms.64

Any study of domain 1 will involve interpreting coded language. For example, the Admissions Committee Law of 2011 authorizes the creation of private Jewish councils in small rural Jewish towns to exclude applications for residency on the basis of the applicants’ “social suitability”. This is a proxy term for Jewish identity and provides a legal mechanism for such communities to reject Palestinian applicants.65

Israeli law must be evaluated in its application in order to determine whether a racist agenda lies beneath the apparently neutral legal language. A plethora of Israeli laws reserve public benefits to those who qualify as citizens under the Citizenship Law and the Law of Return — an oblique reference to Jews — thus creating a nested system of covert racism that is invisible to the casual observer.

Effectively interchangeable under international law, the terms “citizenship” (ezrahut) as “nationality” (le’um) have distinct meanings in Israel, where citizenship rights and national rights are not the same thing. Any citizen enjoys the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter, as only Jewish nationality is recognized under Israeli law. These and other laws comprise a regime of systematic racial discrimination that imposes second-class citizenship on Palestinian citizens of Israel.66 The broad impact is confirmed even by Israeli data, which detail, for instance, inferior funding for Palestinian schools, businesses, agriculture and health care, as well as limits on access to jobs and freedom of residence.

Thus, domain 1 sustains the myth that one portion of the Palestinian people enjoys the full benefits of democracy, while at the same strengthening the apartheid

64 The Arab-Israeli party Balad has uniquely adopted an openly anti-Zionist platform and calls for Israel to become a State of all its citizens. The arrests, attacks, investigations and Supreme Court cases involving Balad illustrate the determination of the Israeli authorities not to let this stand spread.

65 Human Rights Watch, “Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens”, 30 March 2011: “The “admissions committee” law requires anyone seeking to move to any community in the Negev and Galilee regions with fewer than 400 families to obtain approval from committees consisting of town residents, a member of the Jewish Agency or World Zionist Organization, and several others. The law empowers these committees to reject candidates who, among other things, “are ill- suited to the community’s way of life” or “might harm the community’s fabric”. Available here.

66 A particularly valuable source on this discrimination is the database of discriminatory laws maintained by Adalah: Centre for Legal Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel, which in 2016 listed more than 50 discriminatory laws of Israel, and reports on related legal challenges. Available here.

regime that serves to preserve Israel as a Jewish State. Israel uses the trappings of token universal democracy to lead many observers astray and deflect international opprobrium. The success of this approach depends on limiting Palestinian citizens to a politically ineffectual minority. However, it is impossible to fully appreciate this outcome without examining Israeli policies and practices in the other three domains. Indeed, the success of domain 1 depends on the workings of the other three.

Domain 2: Palestinians in East Jerusalem

Israeli policies towards the some 300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem can be addressed more concisely.67 The discrimination evident in domain 1 is reproduced: Palestinians in East Jerusalem experience discrimination in areas such as education, health care, employment, residency and building rights, experience expulsion from their homes and house demolitions consistent with a project of ethnic engineering of Greater Jerusalem, and suffer harsher treatment at the hands of the security forces.68

The central question here, however, is not whether Israel discriminates against Palestinians — amply confirmed by the data — but how the domain for Palestinians in East Jerusalem operates as an integral element of the apartheid regime. In brief, domain 2 situates Jerusalem Palestinians in a separate category designed to prevent them from adding to the demographic, political and electoral weight of Palestinians inside Israel. Specific policies regarding their communities and rights are designed to pressure them to emigrate and to quell, or at least minimize, resistance to that pressure. The “grand apartheid”69 dimension of this domain can be appreciated by observing how the Israeli Jerusalem municipality has openly pursued a policy of “demographic balance” in East Jerusalem. For instance, the Jerusalem 2000 master plan seeks to achieve a 60/40 demographic balance in favour of Jewish residents.70 As long ago as the 1980s, the municipality had drafted master plans to fragment Palestinian neighbourhoods

67. The figure of 300,000 was provided by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in March 2015.
68. For more details, see A/HRC/31/73; B’Tselem, “Statistics on Palestinians in custody of the Israeli security forces” (January 2017, available here); Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Humanitarian Bulletin (16 November 2015, available here); Alternative Information Center (AIC), “OCHA: One in two Palestinians to need humanitarian assistance in 2017” (26 January 2017, available here).

69. See Tilley, “A Palestinian declaration of independence”.
70. A/HRC/22/63, para. 25.

with intervening Jewish ones, stifling the natural growth of the Palestinian population and pressuring Palestinians to leave.71 Describing Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem as “neighbourhoods” is part of the wider tactic of disguising violations of international humanitarian law through the use of non-committal language.

Such policies have a significant impact because Jerusalem has such importance for the collective identity of Palestinians as a people. For them, the city is the administrative, cultural, business and political capital of Palestine, home to the Palestinian elite, and site of hallowed places of worship and remembrance. Although many Palestinians in East Jerusalem maintain networks of family and business connections with Palestinian citizens in Israel, the West Bank and (now to a lesser extent) the Gaza Strip, their primary interest is to go about their lives and pursue their interests in the city where they have homes, businesses, a vigorous urban society, strong cultural resonances, and, in some cases, ancestral roots going back millennia.

Israel pursues efforts to weaken the Palestinians politically and contain their demographic weight in several ways. One is to grant Palestinians in East Jerusalem the status of permanent residents: that is, as foreigners for whom residency in the land of their birth is a privilege rather than a right, subject to revocation. That status is then made conditional on what Israeli law terms their “centre of life”, evaluated by documented criteria such as home and business ownership, attendance at local schools and involvement in local organizations. If the centre of life of an individual or family appears to have shifted elsewhere, such as across the Green Line, their residency in Jerusalem may be revoked.

A Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who has spent time abroad may also find that Israel has revoked his or her residency in Jerusalem.

Proving that Jerusalem is one’s “centre of life” is burdensome: it requires submitting numerous documents, “including such items as home ownership papers or a rent contract, various bills (water, electricity, municipal taxes), salary slips, proof of receiving medical care in the city, certification of children’s school registration”.72 The difficulty in meeting the criteria is suggested

71 For further discussion of the Jerusalem master plans, see Francesco Chiodelli, “The Jerusalem Master Plan: planning into the conflict”, Journal of Palestine Studies, No. 51 (2012). Available here. For related maps, see Bimkom, Trapped by Planning: Israeli Policy, Planning and Development in the Palestinian Neighborhoods of East Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 2014). Available here.

72 B’tselem, “Revocation of residency in East Jerusalem”, 18 August 2013. Available here.

by the consequences of failure to do so: between 1996 (a year after the “centre of life” legislation was passed) and 2014, Jerusalem residency was revoked for more than 11,000 Palestinians.73 To avoid that risk, a growing, albeit relatively low, number of Palestinians are seeking Israeli citizenship. Israel has granted only about half of those requests.74

Their fragile status as permanent residents leaves Palestinians in East Jerusalem with no legal standing to contest the laws of the State or to join Palestinian citizens of Israel in any legislative challenge to the discrimination imposed on them. Openly identifying with Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory politically carries with it the risk of Israel expelling them, for violating security provisions, to the West Bank and removing their right even to visit Jerusalem. Thus, the urban epicentre of Palestinian nationalism and political life is caught inside a legal bubble that neutralizes Palestinians’ capacity to oppose the apartheid regime.75

Domain 3: Palestinians in occupied Palestinian territory

The roughly 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory (2.7 million in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip) are governed not by Israeli civil law, but by military law, codified as orders issued by the commander of the territories and administered by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and other designated arms of the occupying power.76 Since the Israeli “disengagement” and withdrawal of settlers in 2005, the Gaza Strip has been internally governed by the Hamas Government (elected in 2006 to head the Palestinian Authority but later deposed). Still, Israeli military law continues to apply for Gaza regarding exclusive Israeli control over Palestinian movement and trade in and out of the territory, the unilaterally imposed “security zone” along the perimeter fence, and Palestinian

73 Data from B’tselem, Statistics on Revocation of Residency in East Jerusalem. Available here.

74 Maayan Lubell, “Breaking taboo, East Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship in East Jerusalem”, Haaretz, 5 August 2015. Available here. According to the article, the number of Jerusalem Palestinians applying for Israeli citizenship has grown to between 800 and 1,000 annually, although in 2012 and 2013 only 189 out of 1,434 applications were approved.

75 Nonetheless, Palestinians in Jerusalem have made formidable contributions to critiques of Israeli policies, the more impressive for their having done so under such conditions.

76 Until the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, governance of the occupied Palestinian territory was assigned to a “civil administration” operating within the IDF. In 1994, much of its authority was transferred to the Palestinian Authority (also known as the Palestinian National Authority), an interim self-government body.

access to fishing areas and sea routes. Gaza remains, therefore, under military occupation in the eyes of the United Nations.77

In 2009, a comprehensive report by the Human Rights Research Council of South Africa found that Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territory were overwhelmingly consistent with apartheid (see annex I). Israel has not accepted those findings, however, on several grounds. Those who claim that Israel does not govern Palestinians in an apartheid regime invariably cite conditions and rights for Palestinians in domain 1 (citizens of Israel). Leaving aside the issue of domain 2, they say that the situation of Palestinians in the occupied territory is irrelevant to the question. That approach can be persuasive at first glance. Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of Israel and, under the laws of war (cf. the Fourth Geneva Convention), are not supposed to be. The differential treatment by Israel of citizens and non-citizens in the occupied Palestinian territory could therefore seem admissible or, at least, irrelevant. In this common view, Israel would be practicing apartheid only if it annexed the territory, declared one State in all of Mandate Palestine and, thereafter, continued to deny equal rights to Palestinians. Influential voices such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former United States President Jimmy Carter, former United States Secretary of State John Kerry, and a host of Israeli, American and other critics and pundits have warned that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank precisely to avoid that scenario.

However, those warnings rest on flawed assumptions. First, Israel already administers the occupied Palestinian territory in ways consistent with apartheid, given that the territory has not one population but two: (a) Palestinian civilians, governed by military law; and (b) some 350,000 Jewish settlers, governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is evidenced by the fact that all West Bank settlers are administered by Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not.78 Thus, Israel administers the West Bank

77 The authors of this report concur with those scholars who have concluded that Gaza remains under military occupation. Although governed entirely by Palestinians, key elements of apartheid as defined by the Apartheid Convention remain. In particular, Israel has exclusive control of the borders of Gaza and, since 2007, has imposed a blockade, which translates into draconian restrictions on Palestinian movement that affect trade, work, education and access to health care (article II (c)), and repression of any resistance to those conditions (article II (f)). The Palestinian Authority has suffered from de facto separation, particularly since the 2006 legislative election victory of Hamas and the clashes that led to its taking effective control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Between then and 2014, there were two de facto Palestinian Governments, one in Gaza and the other in Ramallah, controlled by Hamas and the Fatah movement respectively. In 2014, they formed a national unity Government, although Hamas retained effective control of the Gaza Strip.

78 Limor Yehuda and others, One Rule Two Legal Systems: Israel’s Regime of Laws in the West Bank (Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), October 2014), p. 108. Available here.

through a dual legal system, based on race, which has led to expressions of concern by, among many others, former special rapporteurs Mr. Dugard and Mr. Falk.

Secondly, the character of this dual legal system, problematic in itself, is aggravated by how the State of Israel manages land and development on the basis of race. By denying Palestinians essential zoning, building and business permits, Israeli military rule has crippled the Palestinian economy and society, leaving Palestinian cities and towns (outside the Ramallah enclave) increasingly under- resourced and suffocating their growth and the welfare of their inhabitants. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has resulted in even worse living conditions for the entrapped Palestinian population there.

In contrast, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are flourishing. All State ministries provide support for their planning, funding, building and servicing; some, such as the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, have been entirely committed to doing so. They also offer financial incentives for Jews to move to the settlements, including interest-free loans, school grants, special recreational facilities, new office blocks, agricultural subsidies, job training and employment guarantees. State complicity is further demonstrated by measures to integrate the economy, society and politics of Jewish settlements into those of Israel, generating seamless travel and electricity networks, a unified banking and finance system for Jews, Jewish business investment, and, in particular, a customs union.79

This vast State involvement belies any claim that the settlements are the work of maverick religious zealots, and challenges the plausibility of claims that Israel will leave the West Bank as soon as a negotiated settlement is achieved.80 The scale, complexity and cost of the settlement grid, estimated by some researchers at hundreds of billions of United States dollars, further underline the intensity of the Israeli commitment to the settlements. The potential cost of (and political resistance to) withdrawal far exceed the political will or capacity of any Israeli Government.

The dual legal system applied by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory justifies two brief digressions from the report’s method: of eschewing a check-list method (comparing a State’s behaviour with the Apartheid Convention’s sample “inhuman acts”) and avoiding comparisons with southern Africa. A check-list

79. Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 135.
80. In July 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced: “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.” See David Horovitz, “Netanyahu finally speaks his mind”, The Times of Israel, 13 July 2014.

approach helps to clarify how Israel imposes apartheid on one racial group in order to ensure the domination of another. Such an item-by-item comparison of Israeli practices with the “inhuman acts” listed in the Apartheid Convention was undertaken for the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) report issued in 2009. The findings of that study, summarized in annex I, were conclusive: except for the provision on genocide (which was not practiced in southern Africa either), every “inhuman act” listed in the Apartheid Convention is practiced by Israel in the West Bank.

The architects of South African apartheid adopted a strategy of “grand apartheid” to secure white supremacy in the long term through the country’s geographic partition into white areas (most of the country) and disarticulated black areas. That policy inspired the clause in the Apartheid Convention denouncing as a crime the creation of “separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups” (article II (d)). “Bantu” or “black” reserves were controlled by black South Africans appointed as leaders by the State. In the rhetoric of “grand apartheid”, those reserves or “homelands” were slated to become independent States that would provide self-determination to black South African peoples (language groups). Black South African governors were authorized (and armed) to suppress resistance by their African inhabitants, many of whom had been forcibly transferred into them, and to govern their territories in ways compatible with white development interests. That model so closely resembles current premises supporting a two-State solution in Palestine that it calls for sober reflection, not least because of the violent and destabilizing effects it had throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

The question arises as to whether Israel has deliberately pursued fragmentation of the West Bank into an archipelago of Palestinian cantons, divided by intervening Jewish-only areas (the Bantustan model). Certainly, this geography will permanently enfeeble any putative Palestinian sovereignty, preserving the prerogative of Israel to administer intervening land for the Jewish people. Oslo II, paradoxically, facilitated this “grand” strategy by establishing borders for the Palestinian autonomy enclaves. The comparison with South Africa helps to clarify an essential observation: with Israeli Jewish-national domination over an area dotted with Palestinian autonomy zones, apartheid is expressed as fully in a partition strategy as it is in a unified State.

In sum, domain 3 has been configured to exclude indefinitely the 4.6 million Palestinians living under Israeli military law from mounting any claim against the State of Israel for rights under Israeli civil law. International law and diplomacy, with its commitment to reject the acquisition of territory by force, has led to the population of the occupied Palestinian territory being projected as a permanently separate and distinct Palestinian-national entity. Well intentioned and based on international law, this approach has had the effect of splitting Palestinians in the occupied territory from the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel and those in East Jerusalem. In that way, the demographic balance in Israel can be maintained as Jewish and a united Palestinian challenge to its apartheid regime can be avoided.

Domain 4: Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles

In early 2016, 3,162,602 Palestinians living outside Mandate Palestine were officially registered as refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).81 Estimates of the entire refugee population, including those not registered with UNRWA and people who left Palestine under other circumstances and are not allowed to return (referred to as “involuntary exiles” in this report), range from six to eight million people. Although an exact count is difficult given the global diaspora of Palestinians now in their fourth and fifth generations, by any responsible estimate more Palestinians live outside Mandate Palestine than in it.82

Palestinian refugees are widely distributed. Approximately two million live in the occupied Palestinian territory: 792,000 in camps in the West Bank and 1.3 million in the Gaza Strip. Living under Israeli occupation, these people fall under domain 3, although they benefit from some protections and special services from UNRWA. The rest live mostly in the frontline States of Jordan (around 2.1 million), Lebanon (around 458,000) and the Syrian Arab Republic (around 560,000).83 Only about 5 per cent live outside the Middle East. Lacking any citizenship, they are subject, without recourse, to the laws of their host State (not always comfortably, as some States — notably Lebanon — impose special restrictions on Palestinian refugees).84 Those conditions have contributed to sustaining a strong nationalist nostalgia and sentiment among the great majority of Palestinian refugees regarding their origins in Palestine and a potent sense of enduring injustice resulting from Israeli policies. Their inability to return to their country thus remains a central grievance and a key

81 UNRWA lists of total of 5,266,603 refugees, the difference being accounted for by those living in the occupied Palestinian territory. See here. Accessed 8 February 2017.

82 The figure is a middle estimate, as the number of Palestinians who fled in the 1948 war has not been firmly established. Some scholars suggest 700,000 and 750,000 left; the Israelis provide a figure of 520,000; and Palestinian authorities estimate the number at between 900,000 and 1 million.

83 UNRWA, UNRWA in figures as of 1 Jan 2016. Available here.

84 For a short summary of the conditions in which Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, see Meghan Monahan, Treatment of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Human Rights Brief (2 February 2015). Available here.

issue in peace talks. Politically, no Palestinian leadership can acquiesce to a peace agreement that ignores the refugees.

In 1948, General Assembly resolution 194(III) resolved that “the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so” and that compensation should be provided to the rest. Israel has rejected the application of that resolution on security grounds and on the basis of the “demographic threat” of a Palestinian majority: in the unlikely event that the entire Palestinian population of refugees and involuntary exiles returned to Palestine en masse, the Palestinian population under Israeli rule would total some 12 million, electorally overwhelming the 6.5 million Jews in Israel. Even if that refugee population returned in numbers sufficient only to generate a Palestinian majority (as is far more likely), Israel would be forced into either adopting an explicitly apartheid policy in order to exclude them, and abandoning democracy altogether, or enfranchising them and abandoning the vision of Israel as a Jewish State. As expressed in an article posted on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website:

According to Palestinian sources, there are about 3.5 million Palestinian refugees nowadays registered with UNRWA. If Israel were to allow all of them to return to her territory, this would be an act of suicide on her part, and no State can be expected to destroy itself (emphasis added).85

Thus, domain 4 plays an essential role in the apartheid regime of Israel. Its refusal to allow refugees and involuntary exiles to return ensures that the Palestinian population never gains the demographic weight that would either threaten Israeli military control of the occupied Palestinian territory, or provide the demographic leverage within Israel to allow them to insist on full democratic rights, which would supersede the Jewish character of the State of Israel. In short, domain 4 ensures that Palestinians will never be able to change the system in ways that would lead to political equality between the two peoples.

1. Counter-arguments

Several arguments can be and have been made to deny that the Apartheid Convention is even applicable to the case of Israel-Palestine. Some of them, such

85 Ruth Lapidoth, “Do Palestinian refugees have a right to return to Israel?”, posted on Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 15 January 2001. Available here.

as the contention that Jews and Palestinians are not “races” and that, because Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy the right to vote, the treatment of them by the Israeli State cannot constitute apartheid, are addressed and rejected above. Other arguments include:

1. Consistency with international practice: The Israeli doctrine of maintaining a Jewish majority, enabling the Jewish people to have its own nation-State, is consistent with the behaviour of States around the world, such as France, which express the self-determination of their respective ethnic nations. It is therefore unfair and exceptional treatment — and implicitly anti-Semitic — to target Israel as an apartheid State when it is only doing the same.

This common argument derives from miscasting how national identities function in modern nation States. In France, for example, anyone holding French citizenship, regardless of whether they are indigenous or of immigrant origin, are equal members of the French nation and enjoy equal rights. According to the Supreme Court, Israel is not the State of the “Israeli nation” but of the “Jewish nation”.86 Collective rights in Israeli law are explicitly conferred on Jews as a people and on no other collective identity: national rights for Jews, embedded in such laws as the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law (discussed above) do not extend to any other group under Israeli rule. Hence, racial-nationalist privileges are embedded in the legal and doctrinal foundations of the State. That is exceptional and would meet with opprobrium in any other country (as it did in apartheid South Africa).

2. The standing of Palestinians as foreigners: Palestinian residents of the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of the State and so the State does not owe them rights and treatment equal to that accorded to Israeli Jewish citizens and settlers.

The similarities between the legal situation in Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation and in Namibia under South African occupation have already been noted. Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory Israeli citizenship because they are not Jews. As the “in-gathering” of Jews is a central mission of Israeli State institutions and the State promotes naturalisation of Jews from other parts of the world, it is fair to assume that the Palestinians, born in territory under the State’s exclusive control, would have been granted Israeli citizenship had they been Jewish (and had they wanted it). In its General Recommendation No. 30 on discrimination against non-citizens, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial

86 George Rafael Tamarin v. State of Israel (1972) C.A.630/70.

Discrimination recommends that States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination should:

Recognize that deprivation of citizenship on the basis of race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin is a breach of States parties’ obligations to ensure non-discriminatory enjoyment of the right to nationality.87

The Apartheid Convention cites as crimes of apartheid “measures calculated to deny members of a racial group or groups” basic human rights, including “the right to a nationality” (article II (c)). Thus, the argument that Israel cannot be responsible for Palestinians who are non-citizens reinforces a finding of apartheid when one asks why they are not citizens. At the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed the exclusion of the Palestinians, as non-Jews, from citizenship in the State that governs their country. (The liminal condition of living in a “State of Palestine” recently recognized by the General Assembly yet lacking all attributes of sovereignty has not provided Palestinians with a “citizenship” that has concrete application.)

3. The purpose clause. Israeli policies that oppress Palestinians are motivated by security concerns, and not the intention or desire to impose racial domination.

The Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute define crimes of apartheid as acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over another. It could be argued that Israeli practices are only temporary measures, the purpose of which is not racial domination, but only to maintain order until a peace agreement removes the need for such measures. However, the security issues related to Israeli measures relevant to this study are usually cited only in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory, while the apartheid regime is applied to the Palestinian people as a whole. Moreover, apartheid is prohibited under international law irrespective of its duration.88 The Apartheid Convention makes no distinction in terms of the period of time apartheid is carried out or the State’s ultimate vision for the future.89

87. CERD/C/64/Misc.11/rev.3, para. 14.
88. The uniquely extended character of the Israeli occupation has generated a new body of literature on the legal implications of “prolonged occupation”. For more on this, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 2.

89 The Government of apartheid South Africa also argued that racial domination was not a goal in itself but a defensive measure designed to preserve the way of life of the white population. Apartheid was presented as merely a stage on the path to a mutually beneficial end, in which all “peoples” of South Africa would enjoy self-determination and peaceful coexistence. In practice, the “homelands” system was geared towards stabilizing the low-cost workforce and white land tenure.

3. Conclusions and Recommendations A. Conclusions

This report establishes, on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. However, only a ruling by an international tribunal in that sense would make such an assessment truly authoritative. The authors therefore urge the United Nations to implement this finding by fulfilling its international responsibilities in relation to international law and the rights of the Palestinian people as a matter of urgency, for two reasons. First, the situation addressed in the report is ongoing. Many investigations of crimes against humanity have concerned past behaviour or events, such as civil wars involving genocides, which have formally concluded. In such cases, the international community faces no particular pressure to act in a timely way to terminate an ongoing crime prior to investigating the legal facts of culpability. In the case of Israel-Palestine, any delay compounds the crime by prolonging the subjugation of Palestinians to the active practice of apartheid by Israel. Prompt action is accordingly imperative to avert further human suffering and end a crime against humanity that is being committed now.

Secondly, the extreme gravity of the charge requires prompt action. Since the 1970s, when the international campaign to oppose apartheid in southern Africa gathered momentum, apartheid has been considered in the annals of the United Nations and world public opinion to be second only to genocide in the hierarchy of criminality.90 This report accordingly recommends that the international community act immediately, without waiting for a more formal pronouncement regarding the culpability of the State of Israel, its Government and its officials for the commission of the crime of apartheid.

While urging swift action to oppose and end this apartheid regime, the authors of this report urge as a matter of highest priority that authoritative bodies be requested to review its findings. Opinions of the General Assembly, ICJ and ICC are especially crucial, although assessments by national courts would also be relevant to interpreting international criminal law and appraising its

90 Genocide and apartheid are the only two international crimes, the commission of which States have a duty to prevent.

implementation by Member States. On the basis of such findings, States and United Nations bodies could deliberate on a firm foundation of international law how best to discharge their responsibility to address and bring to an end the crime of apartheid and domination of the Palestinian people. In any event, pending that longer deliberative process, the authors of this report conclude that the weight of the evidence supports beyond a reasonable doubt the contention that Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people.

The prohibition of apartheid is considered jus cogens in international customary law. States have a separate and collective duty (a) not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful; (b) not to aid or assist a State in maintaining an apartheid regime; and (c) to cooperate with the United Nations and other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end. A State that fails to fulfil those duties could itself be held legally responsible for engaging in wrongful acts involving complicity with maintaining an apartheid regime. The United Nations and its agencies, and all Member States, have a legal obligation to act within their capabilities to prevent and punish instances of apartheid that are responsibly brought to their attention.

Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle apartheid structures and negotiate in good faith for a lasting peace that acknowledges the rights of Palestinians under international law and makes it possible for the two peoples to live together on the basis of real equality.

Apartheid in southern Africa was brought to an end, in part, by the cumulative impact of a variety of measures, including economic sanctions and sports boycotts, undertaken with the blessing of United Nations bodies and many Member States, and with grassroots support in States with strong strategic and economic ties with South Africa. The effectiveness of the anti-apartheid campaign was in large part due to the transnational activism of civil society, which reinforced the intergovernmental consensus that took shape in the United Nations.

1. Recommendations

The following recommendations cover general responsibilities and those of specific institutional actors. Their purpose is, first of all, to focus attention on the principal finding of this report, that Israel has imposed a regime of apartheid on the Palestinian people as a whole, thereby challenging the United Nations and other international, national and civil society actors (including private citizens) to act in response. They are also designed to encourage the implementation of practical measures in accordance with international law to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle its apartheid regime and end the unlawful status quo by engaging in a peace process that seeks a just solution.

General Recommendations

1. United Nations bodies, national Governments and civil society actors, including religious organizations, should formally endorse the principal finding of this report that the treatment by Israel of the Palestinians is consistent with the crime of apartheid.
2. On that basis, those actors should examine what measures can be taken in accordance with their legal obligations, as set forth under the Apartheid Convention. As the crime of apartheid qualifies as a peremptory or jus cogens norm of international law, States are bound by the Convention even if they are not parties to it, and would have similar legal obligations even in the absence of the convention, because the crime of apartheid is prohibited under customary international law.

Recommendations for the United Nations

1. Each United Nations body should promptly consider what action to take in view of the finding that Israel maintains a racist regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people, taking due account of the fragmentation of that people by Israel, which is itself an aspect of the control arrangements that rely on “inhuman acts” for the purpose of systematic racial domination.
2. ESCWA should take a central role in advocating international cooperation to end the apartheid regime. Its special role in this respect derives not only from the Commission’s geographic position but also its mandate.
3. United Nations entities should cooperate with one another, and in particular with ESCWA, to discuss and disseminate this report. They should consider, possibly in cooperation with the Palestinian Government and other Palestinian institutions, convening a special meeting to assess how to follow up on and implement the recommendations of the report.
4. The General Assembly should, taking inspiration from resolution 1761(XVII) of 6 November 1962, revive the Special Committee against Apartheid, and the United Nations Centre against Apartheid (1976-1991), which would report authoritatively on Israeli practices and policies relating to the crime of apartheid, including the legal and administrative instrumentalities used to carry out the underlying criminal enterprise. Those bodies gathered and disseminated vital legal analysis and information with respect to South African apartheid. Those resources benefited not only jurists and scholars, but also civil society activists around the world, helping them to shape media presentations and public opinion, legitimating calls for boycotts, divestments and sanctions, and contributing overall to the formation of a transnational movement against apartheid in South Africa.

5. The Human Rights Council should be vested with particular responsibility for examining the findings of this report and reinforcing its recommendations. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 should be instructed to report annually to the Council and the Third Committee of the General Assembly on steps taken to comply with the terms of the Apartheid Convention and to encourage member States of the Council to take appropriate action.
6. The competent bodies of the United Nations should consider seeking an advisory opinion from the ICJ as to whether the means used by Israel to maintain control over the Palestinian people amount to the crime of apartheid and, if so, what steps should be taken to end that situation promptly.
7. Pursuant to article 7 (1) (j) of the Rome Statute, the ICC should be formally encouraged to investigate, as a matter of urgency, whether the State of Israel, its Governments and individuals, in implementing policies and practices with respect to the Palestinian people, are guilty of the crime of apartheid and, if so, to act accordingly.
8. On the basis of this report, the Secretary-General should be respectfully urged to recommend to the General Assembly and the Security Council that a global conference be convened at an early date in order to consider what action should be taken by the United Nations and what might be recommended to civil society and private sector actors.

Recommendations for national Governments of Member States

1. National Governments should be reminded of their legal duty under international law to take appropriate action to prevent the crime of apartheid and punish its perpetrators, taking cognizance of the findings of this report and any parallel findings by competent bodies.
2. National Governments should, within the limits of their legislative, executive and judicial institutions, take appropriate action, including allowing criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials demonstrably connected with the practices of apartheid against the Palestinian people.
3. National Governments, especially of member States of ECSWA, should explore ways of cooperating in the discharge of their duty to oppose and overcome the regime of apartheid.
4. National Governments should support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives.

Recommendations for civil society and private sector actors

1. Civil society actors should be invited to submit to the Human Rights Council reactions to this report. A special meeting should be convened to consider those reactions and to plan appropriate next steps, including recommendations to the Human Rights Council and to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
2. Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society actors.
3. Private sector actors should be made aware of the findings of this report and requested to act accordingly, including by informing the public about the criminality of the apartheid regime, and urging Governments to fulfil their obligations under the Apartheid Convention and to propose initiatives that could be undertaken by civil society. Private sector actors should also be reminded of their legal, moral and political responsibility to sever ties with commercial ventures and projects that directly or indirectly aid and abet the apartheid regime imposed.

Annex I

Findings of the 2009 HSRC Report

Legal analysis cited here from Beyond Occupation draws from work by contributors to a study conducted between 2007 and 2009, under the auspices of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) and at the request of the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Coordinated, co-authored and edited by Virginia Tilley, that study was issued in 2009 under the title Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Reassessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law. Principal contributors included Iain Scobbie, Professor and Chair of International Law, University of Manchester (Great Britain); Max du Plessis, Associate Professor of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) and Senior Research Associate, Institute for Security Studies; Rina Rosenberg, Esq., International Advocacy Director of Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Haifa); John Reynolds, formerly researcher at Al-Haq (Ramallah) and now lecturer in international law and critical legal studies, National University of Ireland-Maynooth; Victor Kattan, Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute and an Associate Fellow at the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore; and Michael Kearney, now Senior Lecturer in Law at Sussex University (Great Britain).

The method was to review Israeli practices in accordance with the list of “inhuman acts” described in the Apartheid Convention. The team determined that Israel was practicing every act listed in the Convention except genocide and the ban on mixed marriages. Subsequently, Israel passed a law banning mixed marriages by people registered as having different religious identities. The revised version of the report published in 2012 was amended accordingly.

The list provided here is a summary of findings regarding those acts. Detailed empirical evidence, data and citations on each category are available in Beyond Occupation (chapter 4).

Apartheid Convention, article II

(a) denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:

(i)  by murder of members of a racial group or groups;

(ii)  by the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups ofserious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

(iii)  by arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

Article II (a) is satisfied by Israeli measures serving to repress Palestinian dissent against the occupation and its system of domination. Israeli policies and practices include murder, in the form of targeted extrajudicial killings; torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees; a military court system that falls far short of international standards of due process, including fair trial; and arbitrary arrest and detention of Palestinians, including administrative detention imposed, often for extended periods, without charge or trial and lacking adequate judicial review. All of those practices are discriminatory, in that Palestinians are subject to different legal systems and different courts, which apply different standards of evidence and procedure that result in far more severe penalties than those applied to Jewish Israelis.

(b) deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

Article II (b) takes its language from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide and is interpreted here as signifying a policy of genocide. Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory are not found to have the intent of causing the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in this sense. Israel pursues policies that are inimical to human health and life and so are serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law: they include policies that cause human suffering, such as closures imposed on the Gaza Strip, thereby depriving Palestinians of access to essential health care, medicine, fuel and adequate nutrition. However, those policies do not meet the threshold of a deliberate policy of mass physical extermination.

(c) any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

Article II (c) is satisfied on all counts:

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(i)

Restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement are endemic, stemming from Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian territory border crossings, the wall in the West Bank, a matrix of checkpoints and separate roads, and obstructive and all-encompassing permit and ID systems.

The right of Palestinians to choose their own place of residence within their territory is severely curtailed by systematic administrative restrictions on residency and building in East Jerusalem, by discriminatory legislation that operates to prevent Palestinian spouses from living together on the basis of which part of the occupied Palestinian territory they originate from, and by the strictures of the permit and ID systems.

Palestinians are denied the right to leave and return to their country. Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory are not allowed to return to their homes inside Israel, while Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles outside Israel and the territory are not allowed to return to their homes in either the territory or Israel. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have been prevented from returning. Many Palestinian residents of the occupied territory must obtain Israeli permission (often denied) to leave it; political activists and human rights defenders are often subject to arbitrary and undefined “travel bans”, and many Palestinians who travelled abroad for business or personal reasons have had their residence IDs revoked and been prohibited from returning.

Israel denies Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory the right to a nationality, denying them citizenship of the State (Israel) that governs the land of their birth, and also obstructing the exercise by the Palestinians of the right to self-determination and preventing the formation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip.

(v)  Palestinians are denied the right to freedom and residence through the cantonization of the West Bank, which confines them to designated areas on the basis of race; through bans on their returning to homes in the occupied Palestinian territory from which they were displaced by fighting and terror; and through restrictions on building permits that prevent them from establishing homes where they wish to live.

(vi)  Palestinians are restricted in their right to work through Israeli policies that severely curtail Palestinian agriculture and industry in the occupied Palestinian territory, restrict exports and imports, and impose pervasive obstacles to internal movement that impair access to agricultural land and travel for employment and business. Since the second intifada, access for Palestinians to work inside Israel, once significant, has been dramatically curtailed and is now negligible. The unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole has reached almost 50 per cent.

(vii)  Palestinian trade unions exist but are not recognized by the Israeli Government or by the Histadrut (the largest Israeli trade union) and cannot effectively represent Palestinians working for Israeli employers and businesses in the occupied Palestinian territory. Palestinian unions are not permitted to function at all in Israeli settlements. Although they are required to pay dues to the Histadrut, the interests and concerns of Palestinian workers are not represented by the Histadrut; nor do they have a voice in its policies.

(viii)  Israel does not operate the school system in the occupied Palestinian territory, but severely impedes Palestinian access to education on a routine basis through extensive school closures; direct attacks on schools; severe restrictions on movement, including travel to schools; and the arrest and detention of teachers and students. The denial by Israel of exit permits, particularly for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, has prevented thousands of students from pursuing higher education abroad. Discrimination in education is further underlined by the parallel and greatly superior Jewish Israeli school system in Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank, to which Palestinians have no access.

(ix)  Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are denied the right to freedom of opinion and expression through censorship laws enforced by the military authorities and endorsed by the Supreme Court. Palestinian newspapers must have a military permit and articles must be pre-approved by the military censor. Since 2001, the Israeli Government Press Office has drastically limited press accreditation for Palestinian journalists, who are also subjected to systematic harassment, detention and confiscation of materials, and in some cases assassination. The accreditation of foreign journalists working in the occupied territory may be revoked at the discretion of the Government Press Office Director on security grounds, which include writing stories that are deemed to “delegitimize” the State.1 Foreign journalists are regularly barred from entering the Gaza Strip.

(x)  The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is impeded through military orders. Military legislation bans public gatherings of 10 or more persons without a permit from the Israeli military commander. Non- violent demonstrations are regularly suppressed by the Israeli army with live ammunition, tear gas and arrests. Most Palestinian political parties have been declared illegal and institutions associated with those parties, such as charities and cultural organisations, are regularly subjected to closure and attack.

(xi)  The prevention of full development in the occupied Palestinian territory and participation of Palestinians in political, economic, social and cultural life is most starkly demonstrated by the effects of the ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

(d) any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

Article II (d) is satisfied in the following ways:

(i) Israeli policies have divided the occupied Palestinian territory into a series of non-contiguous enclaves (Areas A and B in the West Bank, as a whole separated from the Gaza Strip) in which Palestinians are allowed to live and maintain a degree of local autonomy. Land between those enclaves is reserved exclusively for Jewish and State use: the Jewish settlement grid, nature reserves, agro-industry, military zones and so forth. Land not already used is considered “State land” and administered by State institutions for the benefit of the Jewish people. Segregation of the populations is ensured by pass laws that restrict Palestinians from visiting Jewish areas without a permit and ban Jewish-Israeli travel into Palestinian zones. The wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent and “floating” checkpoints enforce those restrictions.

1 “Cards will not be given under these rules to any applicant if the Director is of the opinion, after consultation with security authorities, that providing the Cards may endanger the State security”, article 3 (f), Rules regarding cards for foreign media journalists, press technicians and media assistants. Available from http://gpoeng.gov.il/media/54705/gpo-rules.pdf.

(ii)  Inter-faith marriages between Muslims or Christians with Jews are prohibited by law.2 No civil marriage exists in Israel except for the tiny minority whose faith is not declared. Mixed-faith couples must leave the State to marry. Mixed marriages conducted outside of Israel are recognized by the State, provided that marriages among Jews accord with Orthodox Jewish law.

(iii)  Israel has extensively appropriated Palestinian land in the occupied Palestinian territory for exclusively Jewish use. Private Palestinian land comprises about 30 per cent of the land unlawfully appropriated for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Approximately 40 per cent of the West Bank is completely closed to use by the Palestinians, and significant restrictions are placed on access by them to much of the rest.

(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups , in particular by submitting them to forced labour;

Article II (e) is today not significantly satisfied, as Israel has raised barriers to Palestinian employment inside Israel since the 1990s and Palestinian labour is now used extensively only in the construction and services sectors of Jewish-Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. Otherwise, exploitation of labour has been replaced by practices that fall under article II (c), regarding the denial of the right to work.

(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.

Arrest, imprisonment, travel bans and the targeting of Palestinian parliamentarians, national political leaders and human rights defenders, as well as the closing down of related organisations by Israel, represent persecution for opposition to the system of Israeli domination in the occupied Palestinian territory, within the meaning of article II (f). Article II (f) is especially important in the occupied Palestinian territory, where “security” measures are focused on resistance to occupation.

2 The Israeli prohibition of mixed marriages is mainly concerned with marriages involving Jews. This is effected by requiring that all marriages be conducted by religious authorities. Since Muslim law permits mixed marriages, marriage between Muslims and Christians is not prohibited. The aim of this arrangement is clear: to avoid blurring the social divisions between Jews and non-Jews. Similarly, under apartheid in South Africa, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 banned marriages between “Europeans and non-Europeans” but not between non-Europeans and other non-Europeans.

Annex II

Which Country?

Israeli policies confuse the issue in relation to the categorization under the Apartheid Convention of all acts fitting the purpose clause and preventing “participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country” (article II (c)) as crimes of apartheid. The question is, from which “country” are Palestinians being denied equal rights and full participation? This question engages larger questions about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself.

1. The “country” from which Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are excluded could arguably be Mandate Palestine as established by the League of Nations. The League’s intention was for it to gain independence as a State representing the shared patrimony of the entire multi-sectarian population of Palestine. That model, overtaken by events, was confused from the start by language about a “Jewish national home” and in any case was rendered moot by war, expulsion and other events on the ground. However, exclusive Israeli control since 1967 over all of Mandate Palestine has preserved the original geographical unit of Palestine. Hence the “country” in which Palestinians are being deprived of rights could be the Palestine that was never allowed to form, and arguably should form. The remedy in that case is to restore the standing of the original Mandate, which holds that the region is properly one country that has wrongfully been divided by racial agendas.
2. The country from which Palestinians are excluded could be the “Arab State” recommended by resolution 181(II), which also never formed. This view accepts as authoritative the findings of the Special Committee on Palestine in 1947 and as irreversible the events of the 1948 war, in which a “Jewish State” was formed in part of Mandate territory. What in more recent times has been declared the State of Palestine and sought recognition by the United Nations is a much reduced version of that “Arab State”. Israeli policies remain aimed at depriving such a State of the essential attributes of sovereignty; those policies would have to be reversed for this approach to generate a true State. Since Israel shows no indication of changing its position, the alternative is that a Palestinian State be granted some political rights as “reserves” enjoying local autonomy, comparable to the Bantustans of southern Africa or Native American reservations in the United States. Such an arrangement is unlikely to satisfy Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, however. It is more likely to lead ultimately to violence and insurrection by a terminally frustrated Palestinian population.

3. The “country” from which Palestinians are wrongfully deprived of equal rights may be the State of Israel. Accepting as irreversible the annexation measures of Israel in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, this approach would see Israel incorporating the occupied Palestinian territory fully into its governing institutions but dismantling the policies of racial oppression and domination that make Israel an apartheid State. Jews and Palestinians may, however, fear the consequences: enduring security perils for the former and enduring discrimination against the latter.

This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established that
the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.

A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles,

living beyond.This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime.They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence.This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).

This article was originally published by Global Research in November 2017.

Only a relatively few historians acknowledge just how close Britain came to losing the First World War.

Although heavy loss of young lives in the stalemated land war on French territory dissipated national strength and morale, Britain’s fate, ominous for a certain period of time, was dependent on the development of the war on the high seas. This was not related to a diminution in the formidable power of Britain’s navy which had imperiously ruled the waves since the time of Lord Nelson’s victory.

A defeat at the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile in November 1914 had been swiftly revenged the following month in the Battle of the Falklands. And while the German High Seas Fleet inflicted heavy losses on the Royal Navy in the epic Battle of Jutland in 1916, the result was essentially a draw, after which the German Navy did not venture out of its ports on the Baltic Sea to confront the British. The problem at sea related to German U-Boat warfare which was inflicting colossal losses on British cargo. An Island nation could only sustain so much before capitulating.

This was the warning delivered in 1917 by the British Admiralty to its political overlords.

America’s resources of manpower and martial machinery was needed to tip the balance. But just as would be the prelude to US intervention in the Second World War, the Americans, for long heeding of the advice given by their Founding Fathers, were wary of getting into “foreign entanglements”.

This is where the leaders of world Zionism came in.

It was a simple bargain: If Jewish leaders such as Chaim Weizmann could call on the Jewish Diaspora in America to use their influence to bring the United States into the war to rescue a desperate situation, then Britain would do what it could to help bring to fruition the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The ‘Balfour Declaration’ was part of this bargain.

Winston Churchill acknowledged this in a statement he made to the House of Commons in July 1937:

It is a delusion to suppose this was a mere act of crusading enthusiasm or quixotic philanthropy. On the contrary, it was a measure taken. . .in due need of the war with the object of promoting the general victory of the Allies, for which we expected and received valued and important assistance.

Other evidence of the bargain comes from correspondence between Churchill and Chaim Weizmann, a prominent leader of world Zionism. In a letter to Churchill which was dated September 10th 1941, Weizmann while pleading for Churchill to establish a “Jewish fighting force” that would have “our name and flag arrayed against [Adolf Hitler]”, wrote the following:

It has been repeatedly acknowledged by British Statesmen that it was the Jews who, in the last war, effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favour of Great Britain. They are keen to do it – and may do it – again.

The Balfour Declaration was one of several bargains entered into by Zionists en route to the eventual declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. Another would be the controversial Haavara Agreement [or ‘Transfer Agreement’] with Nazi Germany entered into by German Zionists in the 1930s.

Before Israel was born would be the struggle of the Palestine-based Jewish Agency to get Britain, the holders of the Mandate, to allow unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, the bombings and assassinations conducted by Irgun and Lehi against British and Arab targets, the United Nations Partition Plan and a war against Arab armies.

Today the Armenians bemoan the ‘betrayal’ of the Western powers for not enabling the creation of an Armenian nation spanning much of its historical territory, and the Kurds similarly feel ‘betrayed’ by the unfulfilled promise of a homeland made by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But few are aware that a Jewish homeland -the Jewish Autonomous Oblast- was created in the USSR under the watch of Joseph Stalin in 1934 with Birobidzhan as its administrative capital. It still exists, albeit with a rather minute Jewish population.

Meanwhile, Israel is approaching its seventieth year of statehood. The Balfour Declaration put into the public imagination the idea of a Jewish state which twenty years earlier, Theodor Herzl, wary of ridicule, was content to write of in his diary after the Basel Congress.

“If I said this out loud today,” Herzl wrote on September 3rd 1897, “I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.”

Lord Arthur Balfour’s declaration to Lord Walter Rothschild was problematic at the time for the reason that Britain had yet to obtain custodianship of Palestine in succession to its Ottoman rulers. But most problematic of all was the caveat that such promise would “not prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.”

That the Arabs of Palestine, tied for centuries to the hamlets, towns and cities on the land Zionists refer to as Eretz Yisrael, have been subjected to dispossession and occupation while been continually denied a state of their own is surely evidence that Balfour’s condition has not been met.

The Jews created a nation in Palestine, but that created an inevitable injustice against its Arab Muslim and Christian inhabitants.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Featured image is from the author.

Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published on GR in October 2013.

In a cycle of habit borne out repeatedly in the mainstream western media, demonization and fear mongering against Iran is picking up pace again in the face of attempts by the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to rebuild relations with the west and work toward international cooperation. The techniques and methodologies used by the west in perpetuating the geopolitically-motivated, neo-imperialist, agenda against Iran often come across in the media as clumsy and awkward in their reasoning. Before delving into the hard geopolitical reality, a much needed word on the disingenuous leveraging of human-rights against countries such as Iran is critical.

Iran and the Western “Human Rights Card”

In a recent Fox News report, Iran’s human rights record is criticized by Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). His arguments are employed to argue against the feasibility of pragmatic negotiations with Iran as according to his logic, Iran is not a regime “worthy” of practical negotiation with. To use the reported human right violations against religious minorities and Christians and particular as geopolitical leverage to argue against diplomacy and negotiation with Iran wreaks of compromised, corporate-financier motivation, especially when juxtaposed with the intimate collaboration of the United States and its allies with one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East (and the world), Saudi Arabia.

While Iran is often berated for its short-comings, these short-comings pale in comparison to the atrocities perpetuated by the Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, no Jewish or Christian worship is allowed and possession of a Bible could warrant you various brutal punishments. Saudi Arabia has been notorious for rigid campaigns against Bible possession and religious symbols, especially in airport customs searches including the shredding of any Bibles found and in one case, harassing a nun who was passing through Jeddah on a transit flight.

Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the United States, is currently promoting a sectarian-extremist-driven destabilization campaign in Syria whose byproduct has resulted in nightmarish lives for people across religious lines which can be described as nothing less than premeditated genocide with former CIA official Robert Baer predicting campaigns against Christians in Syria and Lebanon during an interview with Seymour Hersh for his excellent 2007 article, “The Redirection.”

What is rather ironic in light of western focus on Iran is that Baer stated that joint US-Saudi-Israeli machinations in Lebanon, which were generating radical Islamist groups, would necessitate the protection of Christians which would be done by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and the Shiites as opposed to the US and France. Iran is predominantly Shiite and while conservative Islam is the norm, this conservatism is distinct from the twisted inventions and atrocities of radical Wahabism in Saudi Arabia which serve as the hotbed of global Al Qaeda activity.

Let it not be forgotten that Saudi Arabia is the primary underwriter of Al Qaeda’s proliferation throughout Eurasia, done admittedly and particularly in line with western imperialist designs of isolating Iran and serving as geopolitical pawns. It is noted that the Taliban and the Wahabi fundamentalists that constitute its ranks and the ranks of extremists from Nigeria to the Philippines would not exist without Saudi financing done purposefully to create a twisted brand of Islam and produce a “Swiss-Army knife” to be used against the targets of western foreign policy such as Syria today and previously against Afghanistan during the 1980s; it has since formed the cornerstone of the fake “war on terror” driven by western neo-imperialist interests. The largest arms sale in U.S. history has been to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia regularly conducts brutal executions through the means of hooded swordsmen including on religious charges of being accused of “sorcery and witchcraft” in the grimly-dubbed “Chop-Chop Square.” Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia and foreign women cannot visit the country without being accompanied by a male guardian.  In addition to toeing the line of western corporate-financier geopolitical agendas in cooperation with Israel such as in Syria, the Saudi establishment interlocks with these interests as noted in points “6” and “7” in the article “Introducing the Gulf State Despots” by Tony Cartalucci.

Iran, which may have its shortcoming, has an unprecedented standard when compared to Saudi Arabia. Iranian Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are guaranteed their own seats on the Iranian parliament in proportion to their population. Iranian Jews, roughly 30,000 in population, enjoy relatively peaceful lives in Iran with a Jewish hospital, two kosher restaurants in Tehran, 11 synagogues, many with Hebrew schools, and a Jewish library including 20,000 titles. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued edits in the 1980s stating that Iran’s Jewish and Christian populations be “protected.” Many of these points are noted by Benjamin Schett’s article “Debunking Anti-Iran Propaganda” which conflict with the gravely austere picture painted by western media. This short documentary by Journeyman Pictures gives a candid picture of Jewish life in Iran.

It is often claimed that Iran promotes institutionalized anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial but Benjamin Schett explains why this is not true. Ahmadinejad has made accusations against the reliability of the Holocaust but this does NOT represent the position of the Iranian state or people whose state-media even broadcasted a popular, Hollywood-quality film commemorating the suffering of the Jews and featuring the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who helped save Jews from the Holocaust by giving them false passports to flee Nazi-occupied France. Iran’s former Jewish Member of Parliament, Moris Motamed, has criticized Ahmadinejad for his statements on the Holocaust and even held a press conference to denounce those statements. However, such sentiments must not be seen as reflecting the entirety of the Iranian society as clearly is not the case.

Criticism against Israel is mainstream and expected but not because of any religious animosity towards the Jews, as Ahmadinejad himself stated in a speech in Esfahan cited by Schett, but rather because of the complicated political issues surrounding the Palestinian plight.

Benjamin Schett notes that it is impossible to give 100% insight of life as a religious minority in a religiously conservative country without being in that position oneself but unlike in Saudi Arabia, at least such minorities openly exist. Of course, such minorities must not settle for the bare minimum and as a westerner, I’m in the tradition of the equality for all. If and where any cases of rights violations exist, such as those noted in the original Fox News article by Benjamin Weinthal, they must be openly addressed but done so in a manner unlike the western media’s purpose which is to highlight certain facts, at the expense of others, and use any incident they can as propaganda fodder for the sake of western geopolitical objectives aimed at stifling peace and diplomacy, substituting it with war-mongering, and covering up the west and its assets’ own serial crimes against humanity.

 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): Is it Really About Democracy?

Of particular interest in the Fox News article is that the author, Benjamin Weinthal, is listed as a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an organization with a vested interest in promoting western corporate- financier objectives around the world with human rights simply employed as an easily-leveraged cloak for naked imperialism. I will assume good faith on the part of Benjamin Wienthal as many people drawn into organizations and NGOs that served western subversion are drawn it by honest intentions which is something that imperialist systems exploit as they have in history. Nevertheless, the overall bulk and existence of the FDD cannot be casually excused when one gets an insight into the interests and networks propping it up. Tony Cartalucci in his excellent article, “The War on Terror is a Fraud”, explains the FDD:

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting “pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” It is decidedly “Neo-Conservative” and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America’s expense.

FDD’s “executive team” includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its “leadership council” includes Bill Kristol – all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO’s Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD’s “leadership council” and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the “Neo-Conservative” establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD’s only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a “freedom scholar,” expresses this well in his article titled, “Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran),” where he throws in his organization’s collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, “Al-Qaeda Is Winning,” written by FDD “senior fellow” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the “War on Terror,” Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda’s ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world “hunting terrorists,” doesn’t go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Those who have read my recent article on Libya will note the entirely illegitimate nature of the NATO campaign against Libya and the intellectually bankrupt mentality of those who shamefully perpetuate its talking-points. The FDD, at the top of the organization, is not merely concerned with human rights themselves but rather leveraging such concerns for their own sake, something the US government and the corporate-financier interests it represents have clearly done before with regards to China. It should be noted that the FDD is just one element in the neo-imperialist racket. Other corporate-financier, “globalist” think-tanks, who are the true underwriters of western policy, includes the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the International Crisis Group, and the Brookings Institute. In “Naming Names: Your Real Government”, Tony Cartalucci points out who truly controls the United States/NATO and lists the prominent individuals and corporations financing and directing them.

 Iran and the Western Geopolitical Struggle

The Brookings Institution is of particular concern among these think-tanks as it has been the primary facilitator in the drive for war against Iran founded on distortion and geopolitically-motivated propaganda. Contrary to media reports portraying Iran as an immediate, existential threat to US and Israeli security, the Brookings Institute released a policy report that was basically a handbook for overthrowing nations titled Which Path to Persia? (.PDF). It was written by six prominent analysts within establishment circles, including Kenneth Pollack, admitting that Iran poses not a threat to the survival of the United States and Israel’s security but their collective regional and geopolitical hegemony and interests across the region. It was noted that Iran was playing a strategy of firmness and even aggressiveness but not recklessness in combating western hegemony and imperialism as can be seen in its recent economic endeavors in the pipeline and gas politics of the region. It was also noted that Iran was deliberately avoiding a conflagration with the west and that any possible nuclear weapons capability for Iran (which is noted as unconfirmed and nonexistent in other reports) would be used as a deterrence for attack and protecting regional ambitions Iran has for the region (pg. 24-25).

 This is reconfirmed by the recent 2013 RAND Corporation report Iran After the Bomb which while noting that no evidence exists that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons according to the US intelligence community, envisions a post-nuclear scenario of Iran. RAND is another “globalist” think-tank that hosts compromised interests but manages to give an honest synopsis of the Iranian reality. It is also noted that Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has issued religious decrees labeling nuclear weapons as “against Islamic principles.” Contrary to recent reports circulation by MEMRI TV and mainstream media, these fatwas are not fake and actually do exist. And contrary to some critics, they are not an example of taqiyya (deception) as Juan Cole notes. One thing that is very revealing is the following statement by RAND which sums up their insightful report:

The Islamic Republic [of Iran] is a revisionist state that seeks to undermine what it perceives to be the American-dominated order in the Middle East. However, it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations. Its chief military aim is to deter a U.S. and/or Israeli military attack while it undermines American allies in the Middle East [which includes the economic interests of the totalitarian kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose atrocities in human rights dwarfs anything Iran is guilty of]… Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons will lead to greater tension between the Shi’a theocracy and the conservative Sunni monarchies [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.] However, Iran is unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries…The Islamic Republic views Israel in ideological terms. However, it is very unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, given the latter’s overwhelming conventional and nuclear military superiority. (pg. vii)

The Brookings Institution not only enumerates transparently the similar points that Iran is not an existential threat but goes further to enumerate a list of strategies for US provocations against Iran to initiate a war that, according to the report, Iran does not want. It is even noted that an Iranian retaliation in the case of American airstrikes would not be inevitable and that Iran may deliberately refrain from retaliation in order to strategically “play the victim” (pg. 84-85, 95) Let it not be forgotten how the US and Britain staged the CIA “Operation Ajax” in 1953 to oust the democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh, who nationalized the country’s oil, in favor of the pro-American Shah who ruled as a brutal dictator. Similar plans for regime change are enumerated in the Brookings Institute report where it is admitted that the opposition “Green Movement” in 2009 was orchestrated by the US government through “civil society and NGOs” in order to provoke Iranian belligerence through regime change operations, capitalizing on internal dissent. This is not to deny any legitimate aspirations and calls for reform in Iran which are prevalent among student groups but merely to point out how such ambitions are co-opted and used by western interests for their own agenda (103-105, 109-110). See this excellent summary of all these critical points.

Other means proposed included playing upon sectarian and ethnic divisions inside Iran to destabilize the country and even funding radical Sunni militant groups, specifically the MEK, which has killed Americans in the past and is labeled by the U.S. state department as a “foreign terrorist organization”. Its ideology is described by analysts as radical “left-wing” Islamic-Marxism which makes it interesting to consider the US plans to fully employ this group as political assets. MEK has also collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s forces in guerilla warfare against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (113, 117-118). The group is against the dominant Iranian establishment and it is noted that the US has worked covertly with them in the past and that in order to work overtly with them, the group had to be removed from the terrorist list (118).  Regarding the MEK on pages 117-118, Brookings states:

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

 Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

 The compounded criminality of western and Israeli collaboration with MEK is emphasized here. It should be noted that the MEK has recently been removed from the US list of terrorist organizations as part of the next phase of using them as a proxy. MEK claims to have killed 40,000 Iranians in the past and has been trained on U.S. soil in a secret base in Nevada, published on the Huffington Post and cited here by Kurt Nimmo in an excellent and well-sourced article emphasizing the coordinated western agenda against Iran.

In culminating these abhorrent proposals, Brookings further notes the option of a military invasion and conventional war against Iran if the above proposals failed to accomplish western interests. This is the most alarming option especially in context to the following admission:

If the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. ..However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all (65)… it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes [as a catalyst for an invasion] before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it (85).

In all this certified criminality, which has obviously been at play even as the report was being published in 2009, it must not be forgotten that the Brookings Institution is of, for, and by big business and their collective agenda of integrating Iran into their international consensus and exploiting its 76 million population for their unipolar order. This is opposed to Iran’s attempts to foster national self-sufficiency and develop ties with nations strategic to western interests including India, Thailand, China, and Russia. Brookings Institution is funded by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and the Carlyle Group among others; their report even includes a special acknowledgement of financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation upon which Zbigniew Brzezinski sits as an active governor as pointed out by Tony Cartalucci and easily verifiable in the report’s preface.

Such international criminality is magnified when Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in his article “Preparing the Battlefield” that the U.S. is cooperating with their anti-Iranian terrorist asset, Saudi Arabia, in order to fund radical, Al Qaeda-linked, Sunni-groups like the Jundallah to destabilize and destroy Iran as a viable geopolitical opponent. Al Qaeda, directed by the Saudis in cooperation with western geopolitical objectives, has been leveraged as a “Swiss army knife of destabilization” across the Middle East in the fake “war on terror” as Seymour Hersh exposed in another report  titled “The Redirection”  published in 2007. In that report, Hersh reveals that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been working since 2007 to destabilize Syria and Lebanon with a wave of sectarian-extremists currently being marketed in the media as a “political uprising” and a “revolution”. This is different from the legitimate internal political opposition in Syria that has collaborated with the Syrian government in a reform initiative and maintains distinctiveness from the extremist and terrorist elements that clearly constitute the bulk of the “Syrian rebels” supported by the west. In his report, Seymour Hersh states:

 To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda…[Saudi Arabia’s Prince] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis [Al Qaeda] to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.

 There is no doubt that there is an anti-Iranian proxy conflict being waged in Syria by a joint US-Saudi-Israeli effort to further the Wall Street-London geopolitical consensus. Undermining and destabilizing Syria would further isolate Iran and perpetuate the united geopolitical front against Iran that has been the objective of western politicians and think-tanks. Iran would ultimately serve as a vital door into central Asia and a springboard against Russia and China who are the ultimate target for absorption within the western design of a unipolar world order. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is an active agent in the networks of these machinations, makes it no secret in his book The Grand Chessboard that U.S. “global pre-eminence” (a euphemism for Wall Street/London geopolitical domination and a unipolar world order) is the agenda along with American influence in central Asia to which Iran is a doorway. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken of hegemonic ambitions on the part of the west to establish a unipolar order at a 2007 Munich conference.

 In addition to this evidence of open subversion, it must be noted that Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama in December 2011 claiming that there is no nuclear weapons threat from Iran, stating the following on Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

 The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using  dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives.

As warmongering against Iran is expected to drastically pick up pace as western designs for domination across the Middle East show increasing signs of faltering, it is absolutely critical to be educated on these matters in order to undermine and extinguish the effects of the media propaganda echo-chamber. This is not to deny any human rights accusations against Iran altogether but one must guard themselves from being misguided and swayed by disingenuous corporate-financier, globalist interests seeking to expand their empire. It is imperative for people around the world to recognize the corporations and institutions perpetuating systematic atrocities and genocide across the planet and realize that once they eliminate the sovereignty of other countries, they will then turn their attention fully to the people within their own borders in the west.

A real revolution will come by boycotting the degenerate corporations and financier interests seeking to enslave humanity and building up our own communities to create a world order in our own image and not in the image of Wall Street and London.

Sam Muhho is a student of history and an advocate for anti-imperialism and anti-globalism. He can be reached at [email protected] and runs the Facebook page “Globalist Watch” at facebook.com/gwatch1776 in order to explain the reality at play in global affairs.

President Putin’s decision to military involve his country in the anti-terrorist struggle in Syria saved the Arab Republic from its assured destruction irrespective of the criticisms that can be levelled against it throughout the course of this campaign, but sincere appreciation for the Russian leader’s decision (especially from foreigners) shouldn’t ever go overboard into the realm of cultish “worship” and the cultivation of unrealistically high hopes that are bound to always end with disappointment.

The Alt-Media Civil War

Last week’s Putin-Netanyahu Summit in Moscow during Victory Day and Russia’s subsequent announcement that it won’t be dispatching S-300 anti-air defense systems to Syria (a decision that it claims was made independently before these high-level talks) have caused a major rift in the Alt-Media Community, with many people – especially those from the Mideast and the West – hysterically alleging that Russia “sold out” and was never in Syria for the “right reasons” to begin with. This demagogic narrative attempts to capitalize on the disappointment that a lot of people felt after hearing this news and following the unrealistically high hopes that they had come to have for the Russian leader, particularly in terms of their assumption that he would always be on the polar opposite side of the US and its allies.

The reality is that Russia has morphed its decisive anti-terrorist military intervention into a game-changing diplomatic “balancing” act that’s forever transformed Mideast geopolitics, but the many nuances of this strategy hadn’t been effectively enough conveyed to the regional masses and therefore partially led to the false expectations and widespread uncertainty that people are experiencing right now. Regrettably, the virtual pitchfork-wielding denizens of Alt-Media, in a state of veritable shock after their community’s dogma was defied by the very figure that so many of them “worship” (which is one of their key dogmas in and of itself), have proven the age-old adage that “there’s a thin line between love and hate” by turning on the same country and its leader that they had previously “deified”. Baseless accusations are now swirling around that Russia, and President Putin specifically, have “betrayed” Syria, which is totally untrue.

Debunking The Doubts

Far from “betraying” the country, he literally saved it by agreeing to the request that was made by Syria’s democratically elected and legitimate government to involve the Russian Aerospace Forces in the world’s most effective anti-terrorist operation. Since then, there’s been an unceasing effort to call this fact into doubt, with “revisionists” now insisting that Syria would have survived Daesh’s onslaught without Russian support, and that Moscow’s assistance came “too little, too late” to make a difference anyhow. This latter claim is a popular one among these same cynical circles, but regardless of how “convincing” this particular point of criticism might seem, it doesn’t negate the country-saving outcome of Russia’s anti-terrorist intervention when it “finally” occurred in September 2015. That’s not all though, because there are some widespread “follow-up” narratives that are associated with this debunked one as well.

Another seed of doubt that some forces have tried to plant about Russia is that its outreaches to the “opposition” – which refers to armed groups that have agreed to enter into the ceasefire regime and adhere to the so-called “de-escalation zones” – is unbecoming of an “ally”, but this attempt overlooks that Damascus itself has cut many deals with most of these very same forces, even if they were only short-term tactical ones related to the immediate battle at hand or dealt with a general amnesty. Unlike Syria’s Iranian partner, Russia has no intentions to invest the amount of money and on-the-ground personnel that it would take to help Damascus achieve a “total victory”, settling instead on the more “pragmatic solution” (from Moscow’s perspective) of a multisided “political compromise” for bringing about an end to the war, which is the essence of its “balancing” strategy.

From Man To “God”

This realpolitik approach to the Hyper-Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” on which contemporary geopolitics is being decided might be “sobering” for some who saw in President Putin all their hopes and desires for a “perfect world” free from everything that they dislike, but the resultant disappointment that accompanies this real-life realization speaks to the “political immaturity” of those who never held any serious foundational understanding of International Relations and instead succumbed to the “cult of the savior”. Just because President Putin saved Syria from destruction doesn’t mean that he deserves to be “deified”, as he’s only a human being just like everyone else, albeit a powerful one. That said, it’s understandable why the desperate masses all across the world would yearn so bad for someone to save them from their misery that they’d end up seeing their “savior” in President Putin.

There’s no shame in having high expectations about any person or country, but it becomes ridiculous when the aforesaid are all but “worshipped” as “infallible”, “selfless” entities when nothing in the world is like that. Somehow that’s exactly what happened over the years with President Putin, though, with countless people (mostly non-Russians) imaging him to be a modern-day “god” when he’s really just an effective delegator of important tasks with a solid understanding of challenging situations, That’s not at all to take away from the profound respect that he rightly deserves for his many accomplishments in Russia and around the world, but just to say that President Putin isn’t anything like the “second Jesus” that his “worshippers’” many memes deceptively portray him as being. “Putin Worship” isn’t only an annoyance, but it’s actually turning into a serious soft power danger for Russia, too.

Turning Love Into Hate

Like it was written earlier, “there’s a thin line between love and hate”, and many of the same people who just last week were prostrating before their computers by sharing countless memes of their “god” are now loudly denouncing him as a “false prophet” and veering into veritably “anti-Russian” territory with their remarks. Yes, it’s “politically inconvenient” that the man responsible for saving the anti-Zionist government in Syria is also on exceptionally friendly terms with Damascus’ “Israeli” enemies, but such is the complicated nature of geopolitics, especially when it comes to Russia’s “balancing” strategy. That does not mean, however, that Russia is “anti-Syrian” or “never was sincere in its desire to save Syria”. To the contrary, precisely because of President Putin’s understanding of this challenging situation, he knew that the only way to ensure Syria’s survival would be in getting “Israel” to begrudgingly accept President Assad’s continued leadership, which he did.

That wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for this very same “balancing” strategy that’s now being presented as “evidence” of Russia’s “betrayal”, but the ideologues need to accept that “it takes two to tango” and there’s no such thing as a “one-sided compromise”. As a quid-pro-quo for getting “Israel” to uncharacteristically back down from its seven-year-long regime change operation, it’s expected that Syria will work to provide Iran and its Hezbollah allies with a “dignified” pretext to begin their “phased withdrawal” from the Arab Republic, or at the very least remain outside of the Tel Aviv’s de-facto “sphere of influence” in the south of the country beyond the occupied Golan Heights. President Putin doesn’t believe in “maximalist” outcomes, hence why both “Israel” and Syria need to enact their own “compromises” as part of this Russian-mediated “balancing” strategy.

Concluding Thoughts

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the present Syrian government wouldn’t even still be in office had it not been for Russia’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention that accomplished what the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its Iranian & Hezbollah allies couldn’t do on their own for four years up until that point, which is defeat terrorism in the country and prevent it from being used as a regime change instrument by foreign powers. The three aforesaid Mideast allies fought bravely and to the best of their ability, but they lacked the technological prowess that Russia brought to the equation by unleashing its world-class Aerospace Forces on Daesh and suddenly changing the entire state of affairs. Had it not been for President Putin’s decision to agree to his Syrian counterpart’s request, Syria would have been destroyed because the US and its allies (which at that time included Turkey) were preparing to “go in for the kill” by providing maximum support to their proxy forces.

Irrespective of how one feels about the most popular criticisms coming from the Alt-Media Community concerning the specifics of Russia’s anti-terrorist campaign and its subsequent “balancing” strategy to advance a “political solution” to the crisis, none of that takes away from the indisputable reality that President Putin is the country’s savior, but paying profound respect to him for this shouldn’t ever get to the point of cultishly “worshipping” him as the “world’s savior”. The elevation of President Putin to a modern-day “deity” in the eyes of Alt-Media dogma is highly dangerous in the soft power sense because it inevitably leads to the cultivation of unrealistically high hopes that this human being can’t ever expect to satisfy, prompting some degree of deep disappointment with time that could transform love into hate and be exploited by a third party’s infowar operations in order to turn “Russophiles” into actual Russophobes.

Unfortunately, the dynamic events of the past week week – “Israel’s” two bombings of Syria, the Putin-Netanyahu Summit, and Moscow’s decision to not provide S-300s to Syria – triggered many in the Alt-Media Community to react with uncontrollable emotions after some of their most “sacred beliefs” were proven to be false, but instead of questioning why their “thought leaders” misled them into believing something that was ultimately untrue (and to which they were never publicly held to account for afterwards), the masses took the “easy route” of attributing all the blame for this solely on President Putin, flipping in an instant from “proselytizing” the “Putin Worship” “faith” to angrily denouncing their one-time “god” as a “false prophet” and urging others to do the same. When it comes down to it, this entire debacle is largely attributable to the tendency (key word) for “ideological extremism” that’s associated with Alt-Media’s “activist” origins blinding many of its followers to the amoral reality of International Relations that a surprising number of people have yet to accept.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Tero Varjoranta (Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA))

The head of the Department of Safeguards Tero Varjoranta at the Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resigned unexpectedly on May 11, 2018, three days after Trump announced that the US was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. 

One suspects that this resignation is related to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear weapons agreement which is subject to IAEA verification. 

According to Reuters:

The departure of Tero Varjoranta comes at a sensitive time, three days after the United States announced it was quitting world powers’ nuclear accord with Iran, raising questions as to whether Tehran will continue to comply with it.

Varjoranta, a Finn, had been a deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of its Department of Safeguards, which verifies countries’ compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, since October 2013. He will be replaced in an acting capacity by the head of the department’s Iran team, the Vienna-based IAEA said (Reuters, May 12, 2018, emphasis added).

Was Tero Varjoranta pressured into resigning pending the appointment of a US sponsored replacement?

Will the new head of the Department of Safeguards be pressured into upholding the Trump-Netanyhu assertions regarding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

The IAEA director general has appointed Mr Massimo Aparo, acting director, Office for Verification in Iran, as acting deputy director general and head of the Department of Safeguards. When asked what were the reasons for Varjorana’s resignation, the IAEA spokesman responded: “The agency cannot comment on personnel matters, which are confidential. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano plans to appoint a permanent replacement as soon as possible“(Reuters, May 12, 2018, emphasis added).