Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin Laden’s interview with Ummat, a Pakistani daily, published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. It was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001.

The authenticity of this interview remains to be confirmed. It was available in recognized electronic news archives including the BBC. 

The interview tends to demystify the Osama bin Laden persona.

Osama bin Laden categorically denies his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.  Bin Laden’s statements in this interview are markedly different from those made in the alleged Osama video tapes.

In this interview, Osama bin Laden exhibits an understanding of US foreign policy. He expresses his views regarding the loss of life on 9/11. He focusses on CIA support to the narcotics trade.

He also makes statements as to who, in his opinion, might be the likely perpetrator of  the September 11 attacks.

This is an important text which has not been brought to the attention of Western public opinion.

We have highlighted key sections of this interview.

It is our hope that the text of this interview, published on 28 September 2001 barely a week before the onset of the war on Afghanistan, will contribute to a better understanding of the history of Al Qaeda, the role of Osama bin Laden and the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

I should be noted that on the day preceding the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden had been admitted for treatment in a Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

This was confirmed by Dan Rather in a CBS News Report. 

This interview is published for informational purposes only.

GR does not in any way endorse the statements in this interview. Nor are we in a position to confirm its authenticity.

Michel  Chossudovsky, September 2, 2023

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Full text of September 2001 Pakistani paper’s “exclusive” interview with Usamah Bin-Ladin

translated from Urdu by the BBC World Monitoring Service

Karachi, 28 September 2001, pp. 1- 7.

Ummat’s introduction

Kabul: Prominent Arab mojahed holy warrior Usamah Bin-Ladin has said that he or his al-Qa’idah group has nothing to do with the 11 September suicidal attacks in Washington and New York. He said the US government should find the attackers within the country. In an exclusive interview with daily “Ummat”, he said these attacks could be the act of those who are part of the American system and are rebelling against it and working for some other system. Or, Usamah said, this could be the act of those who want to make the current century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Or, the American Jews, who are opposed to President Bush ever since the Florida elections, might be the masterminds of this act. There is also a great possibility of the involvement of US intelligence agencies, which need billions of dollars worth of funds every year. He said there is a government within the government in the United States.

The secret agencies, he said, should be asked as to who are behind the attacks. Usamah said support for attack on Afghanistan was a matter of need for some Muslim countries and compulsion for others. However, he said, he was thankful to the courageous people of Pakistan who erected a bulwark before the wrong forces. He added that the Islamic world was attaching great expectations with Pakistan and, in time of need, “we will protect this bulwark by sacrificing of lives”.

Following is the interview in full detail:

Ummat: You have been accused of involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington. What do you want to say about this? If you are not involved, who might be?

Usamah [Osama bin Laden]: In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. Praise be to Allah, Who is the creator of the whole universe and Who made the earth as an abode for peace, for the whole mankind. Allah is the Sustainer, who sent Prophet Muhammad for our guidance. I am thankful to the Ummat Group of Publications, which gave me the opportunity to convey my viewpoint to the people, particularly the valiant and Momin true Muslim people of Pakistan who refused to believe in lie of the demon.

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.

Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.

There is also a warning for those Muslim countries, which witnessed all these as a silent spectator. What had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya, and Bosnia?

Only one conclusion could be derived from the indifference of the United States and the West to these acts of terror and the patronage of the tyrants by these powers that America is an anti-Islamic power and it is patronizing the anti-Islamic forces. Its friendship with the Muslim countries is just a show, rather deceit. By enticing or intimidating these countries, the United States is forcing them to play a role of its choice. Put a glance all around and you will see that the slaves of the United States are either rulers or enemies of Muslims .

The US has no friends, nor does it want to keep any because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others. Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates.

However, our case is different. We have pledged slavery to God Almighty alone and after this pledge there is no possibility to become the slave of someone else. If we do that, it will be disregardful to both our Sustainer and his fellow beings. Most of the world nations upholding their freedom are the religious ones, which are the enemies of United States, or the latter itself considers them as its enemies. Or the countries, which do not agree to become its slaves, such as China, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Syria, and the former Russia as received .

Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.

According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US government has stated. But the Bush administration does not want the panic to spread. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the US itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.

Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger.

They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of 40bn dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance.

Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other US president, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.

Ummat: A number of world countries have joined the call of the United States for launching an attack on Afghanistan. These also include a number of Muslim countries. Will Al-Qa’idah declare a jihad against these countries as well?

Usamah: I must say that my duty is just to awaken the Muslims; to tell them as to what is good for them and what is not. What does Islam says and what the enemies of Islam want?

Al-Qa’idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa’idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad.

We are in favour of armed jihad only against those infidel countries, which are killing innocent Muslim men, women, and children just because they are Muslims. Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan. The orders of Islamic shari’ah jurisprudence for such individuals, organizations, and countries are clear and all the scholars of the Muslim brotherhood are unanimous on them. We will do the same, which is being ordered by the Amir ol-Momenin the commander of the faithful Mola Omar and the Islamic scholars. The hearts of the people of Muslim countries are beating with the call of jihad. We are grateful to them.

Ummat: The losses caused in the attacks in New York and Washington have proved that giving an economic blow to the US is not too difficult. US experts admit that a few more such attacks can bring down the American economy. Why is al-Qa’idah not targeting their economic pillars?

Usamah: I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom. This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the US is not uttering a single word.

Ummat: Why is harm not caused to the enemies of Islam through other means, apart from the armed struggle? For instance, inciting the Muslims to boycott Western products, banks, shipping lines, and TV channels.

Usamah: The first thing is that Western products could only be boycotted when the Muslim fraternity is fully awakened and organized. Secondly, the Muslim companies should become self-sufficient in producing goods equal to the products of Western companies. Economic boycott of the West is not possible unless economic self-sufficiency is attained and substitute products are brought out. You see that wealth is scattered all across the Muslim world but not a single TV channel has been acquired which can preach Islamic injunctions according to modern requirements and attain an international influence. Muslim traders and philanthropists should make it a point that if the weapon of public opinion is to be used, it is to be kept in the hand. Today’s world is of public opinion and the fates of nations are determined through its pressure. Once the tools for building public opinion are obtained, everything that you asked for can be done.

Ummat: The entire propaganda about your struggle has so far been made by the Western media. But no information is being received from your sources about the network of Al-Qa’idah and its jihadi successes. Would you comment?

Usamah: In fact, the Western media is left with nothing else. It has no other theme to survive for a long time. Then we have many other things to do. The struggle for jihad and the successes are for the sake of Allah and not to annoy His bondsmen. Our silence is our real propaganda. Rejections, explanations, or corrigendum only waste your time and through them, the enemy wants you to engage in things which are not of use to you. These things are pulling you away from your cause.

The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.

Ummat: What will the impact of the freeze of al-Qa’idah accounts by the US?

Usamah: God opens up ways for those who work for Him. Freezing of accounts will not make any difference for Al-Qa’idah or other jihad groups. With the grace of Allah, al-Qa’idah has more than three such alternative financial systems, which are all separate and totally independent from each other. This system is operating under the patronage of those who love jihad. What to say of the United States, even the combined world cannot budge these people from their path.

These people are not in hundreds but in thousands and millions. Al-Qa’idah comprises of such modern educated youths who are aware of the cracks inside the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their hands. These are the very flaws of the Western fiscal system, which are becoming a noose for it and this system could not recuperate in spite of the passage of so many days.

Ummat: Are there other safe areas other than Afghanistan, where you can continue jihad?

Usamah: There are areas in all parts of the world where strong jihadi forces are present, from Indonesia to Algeria, from Kabul to Chechnya, from Bosnia to Sudan, and from Burma to Kashmir. Then it is not the problem of my person. I am helpless fellowman of God, constantly in the fear of my accountability before God. It is not the question of Usamah but of Islam and, in Islam too, of jihad. Thanks to God, those waging a jihad can walk today with their heads raised. Jihad was still present when there was no Usamah and it will remain as such even when Usamah is no longer there. Allah opens up ways and creates loves in the hearts of people for those who walk on the path of Allah with their lives, property, and children. Believe it, through jihad, a man gets everything he desires. And the biggest desire of a Muslim is the after life. Martyrdom is the shortest way of attaining an eternal life.

Ummat: What do you say about the Pakistan government policy on Afghanistan attack?

Usamah: We are thankful to the Momin and valiant people of Pakistan who erected a blockade in front of the wrong forces and stood in the first file of battle. Pakistan is a great hope for the Islamic brotherhood. Its people are awakened, organized, and rich in the spirit of faith. They backed Afghanistan in its war against the Soviet Union and extended every help to the mojahedin and the Afghan people. Then these are the same Pakistanis who are standing shoulder by shoulder with the Taleban. If such people emerge in just two countries, the domination of the West will diminish in a matter of days. Our hearts beat with Pakistan and, God forbid, if a difficult time comes we will protect it with our blood. Pakistan is sacred for us like a place of worship. We are the people of jihad and fighting for the defence of Pakistan is the best of all jihads to us. It does not matter for us as to who rules Pakistan. The important thing is that the spirit of jihad is alive and stronger in the hearts of the Pakistani people.

Copyright Ummat in Urdu, BBC translation in English, 2001

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Read about Osama Bin Laden in Michel Chossudovsky’s international best-seller

Order Directly from Global Research

America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

 

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A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending France’s military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME’s article, “The Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?” decides that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome “War on Terror” narrative.TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop “Islamist” terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the article states:

“…there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for attack.”

What TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France intervened on behalf of during NATO’s 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya – providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.

As far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote “Algeria will be next to fall,” where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted:

Algeria has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis.

And thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become – a Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. AQIM’s headway in northern Mali and now French involvement will see the conflict inevitably spill over into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of “Which Path to Persia?” which openly conspires to arm yet another US State Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there – illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign policy.Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar noted a more direct connection between LIFG and AQIM in an Asia Times piece titled, “How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli:”

“Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda’s number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same – and Belhaj was/is its emir. “

“Belhaj,” referring to Hakim Abdul Belhaj, leader of LIFG in Libya, led with NATO support, arms, funding, and diplomatic recognition, the overthrowing of Muammar Qaddafi and has now plunged the nation into unending racist and tribal, genocidal infighting. This intervention has also seen the rebellion’s epicenter of Benghazi peeling off from Tripoli as a semi-autonomous “Terror-Emirate.” Belhaj’s latest campaign has shifted to Syria where he was admittedly on the Turkish-Syrian border pledging weapons, money, and fighters to the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” again, under the auspices of NATO support.

LIFG, which with French arms, cash, and diplomatic support, is now invading northern Syria on behalf of NATO’s attempted regime change there, officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007 according to the US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). According to the CTC, AQIM and LIFG share not only ideological goals, but strategic and even tactical objectives. The weapons LIFG received most certainly made their way into the hands of AQIM on their way through the porous borders of the Sahara Desert and into northern Mali.

It is no coincidence that as the Libyan conflict was drawing to a conclusion, conflict erupted in northern Mali. It is part of a premeditated geopolitical reordering that began with toppling Libya, and since then, using it as a springboard for invading other targeted nations, including Mali, Algeria, and Syria with heavily armed, NATO-funded and aided terrorists.

Algeria was able to balk subversion during the early phases of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011, but it surely has not escaped the attention of the West who is in the midst of transforming a region stretching from Africa to Beijing and Moscow’s doorsteps – and in a fit of geopolitical schizophrenia – using terrorists both as a casus belli to invade and as an inexhaustible mercenary force to do it.

Part I: Syria comes to the Russian Caucasus

On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi, acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous Russian Republic of Dagestan, was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to enter his house and detonate an explosive device.

The murder target had been carefully selected. Sheikh Afandi, a seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role in attempting to bring about reconciliation in Dagestan between jihadist Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions, many of whom in Dagestan see themselves as followers of Sufi. With no replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny Russian autonomous republic.[1]

The police reported that the assassin was an ethnic Russian woman who had converted to Islam and was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist insurgency against Russia and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated North Caucasus region.

Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990. Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus.

The latest Salafist murders of Sufi and other moderate Muslim leaders in the Caucasus are apparently part of what is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.

Previously US and allied intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that began in Tunisia late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan across Central Asia to Morocco—is the incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named “democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda groups, Saudi Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.

Fundamentalism comes to Caucasus

Following the dissolution of the USSR, radical Afghanistani Mujahadeen, Islamists from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on Turkey’s Erdogan AKP party.

Gülen was quick to establish The International Dagestani-Turkish College in Dagestan. During the chaotic days after the Soviet collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation officially registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly Saudi foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included Al-Haramein a Saudi foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in Germany, that allegedly raised funds for jihadi fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, and was charged by French intelligence of ties to Al Qaeda.[3] Many of these charities were covers for fundamentalist Salafists with their own special agenda.

As many of the foreign Islamists in Chechnya and Dagestan were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil war, Russian authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and institutions. Throughout the North Caucasus at the time of the Chechyn war in the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all mosques.

The International Dagestani-Turkish College was one that was forced to close its doors in Dagestan. The College was run by the Fethullah Gülen organization.[4]

At the point of the Russian crackdown on the spread of Salafist teaching inside Russia at the end of the 1990’s, there was an exodus of hundreds of young Dagestani and Chechyn Muslim students to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other places in The Middle east, reportedly to receive training with the Gülen movement and various Saudi-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in Russia that the students trained by Gülen supporters or Saudi and other Salafist fundamentalist centers then were sent back to Dagestan and the North Caucasus to spread their radical strain of Islam.

By 2005 the situation in the Caucasus was so influenced by this Salafist intervention that the Chechen Salafist, Doku Umarov, cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda,[6] unilaterally declared creation of what he called the Caucasus Emirate, announcing he planned to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law encompassing the entire North Caucasus region including Dagestan. He modestly proclaimed himself Emir of the Caucasus Emirate. [7]

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

Part II: Salafism at war with Sufi tradition

Salafism, known in Saudi Arabia as Wahhabism, is a fundamentalist strain of Islam which drew world attention and became notorious in March 2001 just weeks before the attacks of September 11. That was when the Salafist Taliban government in Afghanistan willfully dynamited and destroyed the historic gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan on the ancient Silk Road, religious statues dating from the 6^th Century. The Taliban Salafist leaders also banned as “un-islamic” all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Sharia.

Afghani sources reported that the order to destroy the Buddhas was made by Saudi-born jihadist Wahhabite, Osama bin Laden, who ultimately convinced Mullah Omar, Taliban supreme leader at the time to execute the act.[8]

Before and…After Salafist Taliban …

While Sufis incorporate the worship of saints and theatrical ceremonial prayers into their practice, Salafis condemn as idolatry any non-traditional forms of worship. They also call for the establishment of Islamic political rule and strict Sharia law. Sufism is home to the great spiritual and musical heritage of Islam, said by Islamic scholars to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam, going back centuries.

As one Sufi scholar described the core of Sufism, “While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise–after death and the ‘Final Judgment’– Sufis believe as well that it is possible to become close to God and to experience this closeness–while one is alive. Furthermore, the attainment of the knowledge that comes with such intimacy with God, Sufis assert, is the very purpose of the creation. Here they mention the hadith qudsi in which God states, ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation in order to be known.’ Hence for the Sufis there is already a momentum, a continuous attraction on their hearts exerted by God, pulling them, in love, towards God.” [9]

The mystical Islamic current of Sufism and its striving to become close to or one with God is in stark contrast to the Jihadist Salafi or Wahhabi current that is armed with deadly weapons, preaches a false doctrine of jihad, and a perverse sense of martyrdom, committing countless acts of violence. Little wonder that the victims of Salafist Jihads are mostly other pacific forms of Islam including most especially Sufis.

The respected seventy-five year old Afandi had publicly denounced Salafist Islamic fundamentalism. His murder followed a July 19 coordinated attack on two high-ranking muftis in the Russian Volga Republic of Tatarstan. Both victims were state-approved religious leaders who had attacked radical Islam. This latest round of murders opens a new front in the Salafist war against Russia, namely attacks on moderate Sufi Muslim leaders.

Whether or not Dagestan now descends into internal religious civil war that then spreads across the geopolitically sensitive Russian Caucasus is not yet certain. What is almost certain is that the same circles who have been feeding violence and terror inside Syria against the regime of Alawite President Bashar al-Assad are behind the killing of Sheikh Afandi as well as sparking related acts of terror or unrest across Russia’s Muslim-populated Caucasus. In a very real sense it represents Russia’s nightmare scenario of “Syria coming to Russia.” It demonstrates dramatically why Putin has made such a determined effort to stop a descent into a murderous hell in Syria.

Salafism and the CIA

The existence of the so-called jihadist Salafi brand of Islam in Dagestan is quite recent. It has also been deliberately imported. Salafism is sometimes also called the name of the older Saudi-centered Wahhabism. Wahhabism is a minority originally-Bedouin form of the faith originating within Islam, dominant in Saudi Arabia since the 1700’s.

Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism give the following description of Saudi conditions under the rigid Wahhabi brand of Islam:

“Women living under Saudi rule must wear the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male family member or “guardian.” These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also known as “the religious police,” officially designated the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol Saudi cities, armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as believers in other faiths.” [10]

It’s widely reported that the obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards Saudi Royal Family made a Faustian deal with Wahhabite leaders. The deal supposedly, was that the Wahhabists are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the Saudi Royals alone.[11] There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist Saudi stew.

Little known is the fact that the present form of aggressive Saudi Wahhabism, in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into the Saudi Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading teaching posts in Saudi religious schools. One student there was a young well-to-do Saudi, Osama bin Laden.  [12]

During the Third Reich, Hitler Germany had supported the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the British in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Marc Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thus:

…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and ’40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and “supreme guide” Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.[13]

After the defeat of Germany, British Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons, the British decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s. [14]

According to former US Justice Department Nazi researcher John Loftus,  “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism.” [15]

“Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They think that Islam–the Saudi version of Islam–is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia–that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence.” [16]

Loftus identified the significance of what today is emerging from the shadows to take over Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, and the so-called Syrian National Council, dominated in reality by the Muslim Brotherhood and publicly led by the more “politically correct” or presentable likes of Bassma Kodmani. Kodmani, foreign affairs spokesman for the SNC was twice an invited guest at the Bilderberg elite gathering, latest in Chantilly, Virginia earlier this year.[17]

The most bizarre and alarming feature of the US-financed  regime changes set into motion in 2010, which have led to the destruction of the secular Arab regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muhammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the secular regime of President Ben Ali in Tunisia, and which have wreaked savage destruction across the Middle East, especially in the past eighteen months in Syria, is the pattern of emerging power grabs by representatives of the murky Salafist Muslim Brotherhood.

By informed accounts, a Saudi-financed Sunni Islamic Muslim Brotherhood dominates the members of the exile Syrian National Council that is backed by the US State Department’s Secretary Clinton and by Hollande’s France. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is tied, not surprisingly to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood of President Mohammed Morsi who recently in a meeting of the Non-Aligned in Iran called openly for the removal of Syria’s Assad, a logical step if his Muslim Brothers in the present Syrian National Council are to take the reins of power. The Saudis are also rumored to have financed the ascent to power in Tunisia of the governing Islamist Ennahda Party,[18] and are documented to be financing the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council against President Bashar al-Assad. [19]

Part III: Morsi’s Reign of Salafi Terror

Indicative of the true agenda of this Muslim Brotherhood and related jihadists today is the fact that once they have power, they drop the veil of moderation and reconciliation and reveal their violently intolerant roots. This is visible in Egypt today under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi.

Unreported in mainstream Western media to date are alarming direct reports from Christian missionary organizations in Egypt that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood has already begun to drop the veil of “moderation and conciliation” and show its brutal totalitarian Salafist colors, much as Khomeini’s radical Sharia forces did in Iran after taking control in 1979-81.

In a letter distributed by the Christian Aid Mission (CAM), a Christian Egyptian missionary wrote that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood “announced they would destroy the country if Morsi didn’t win, but they also said they will take revenge from all those who voted for [his opponent Ahmed] Shafiq, especially the Christians as they are sure we did vote for Shafiq. Yesterday they began by killing two believers in el Sharqiya because of this,” the missionary added, speaking on condition of anonymity.[20]

This report came only weeks after Egyptian State TV (under Morsi’s control) showed ghastly video footage of a convert from Islam to Christianity being murdered by Muslims. The footage showed a young man being held down by masked men with a knife to his throat. As one man was heard chanting Muslim prayers in Arabic, mostly condemning Christianity, another man holding the knife to the Christian convert’s throat began to cut, slowly severing the head amid cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”), according to transcripts. In the letter, the Egyptian missionary leader added that, “soon after Morsi won, Christians in upper Egypt were forcibly prevented from going to churches.” Many Muslims, the letter claimed, “also began to speak to women in the streets that they had to wear Islamic clothing including the head covering. They act as if they got the country for their own, it’s theirs now.” [21]

Already in 2011 Morsi’s Salafist followers began attacking and destroying Sufi mosques across Egypt. According to the authoritative newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (Today’s Egyptian), 16 historic mosques in Alexandria belonging to Sufi orders have been marked for destruction by so-called ‘Salafis’. Alexandria has 40 mosques associated with Sufis, and is the headquarters for 36 Sufi groups. Half a million Sufis live in the city, out of a municipal total of four million people. Aggression against the Sufis in Egypt has included a raid on Alexandria’s most distinguished mosque, named for, and housing, the tomb of the 13th century Sufi Al-Mursi Abu’l Abbas.[22]

Notably, the so-called “democratically elected” regime in Libya following the toppling of Mohamar Qaddafi by NATO bombs in 2011, has also been zealous in destroying Sufi mosques and places of worhip. In August this year, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova expressed “grave concern” at the destruction by Islamic Jihadists of Sufi sites in Zliten, Misrata and Tripoli and urged perpetrators to “cease the destruction immediately.” [23] Under behind-the-scenes machinations the Libyan government is dominated by Jihadists and by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, as in Tunisia and Egypt. [24]

The explosive cocktail of violence inherent in allowing the rise to power of Salafist Islamists across the Middle East was clear to see, symbolically enough on the night of September 11,^th when a mob of angry supporters of the fanatical Salafist group, Ansar Al-Sharia, murdered the US Ambassador to Libya and three US diplomats, burning the US Consulate in Bengazi to the ground in protest over a YouTube release of a film by an American filmmaker showing the Prophet Mohammed indulging in multiple sex affairs and casting doubt on his role as God’s messenger. Ironically that US Ambassador had played a key role in toppling Qaddafi and opening the door to the Salafist takeover in Libya. At the same time angry mobs of thousands of Salafists surrounded the US Embassy in Cairo in protest to the US film. [25]

Ansar Al-Sharia (“Partisans of Islamic law” in Arabic) reportedly is a spinoff of Al-Qaeda and claims organizations across the Middle East from Yemen to Tunisia to Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Ansar al-Sharia says it is reproducing the model of Sharia or strict Islamic law espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. The core of the group are jihadists who came out of an “Islamic state”, either in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, or among jihadists in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003.[26]

The deliberate detonation now of a new round of Salafist fundamentalist Jihad terror inside Muslim regions of the Russian Caucasus is exquisitely timed politically to put maximum pressure at home on the government of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin and the Russian Government are the strongest and most essential backer of the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, and for Russia as well the maintenance of Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base at Syria’s Tartus port is vital strategically. At the same time, Obama’s sly message to Medvedev to wait until Obama’s re-election to evaluate US intent towards Russia and Putin’s cryptic recent comment that a compromise with a re-elected President Obama might be possible, but not with a President Romney, [27] indicate that the Washington “stick-and-carrot” or hard cop-soft cop tactics with Moscow might tempt Russia to sacrifice major geopolitical alliances, perhaps even that special close and recent geopolitical alliance with China.[28] Were that to happen, the World might witness a “reset” in US-Russian relations with catastrophic consequences for world peace.

F. William Engdahl*  is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Notes:

Dear Readers,

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A new study on harms resulting from the COVID vaccine was published on April 8 in the U.S.-based peer-reviewed medical science journal Cureus. It represents the largest study to date on adverse effects of the COVID vaccine, and the results are shocking, to put it mildly.

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Apart from causing large-scale distress the prolonged Ukraine conflict also has very dangerous possibilities of escalation. There do not seem to be any visible efforts on the part of Ukraine and its NATO backers for ending the war as early as possible despite all the adversities the Ukraine forces have suffered in recent times. In these circumstances, and keeping in view the urgent need for peace, Russia should take a bold initiative with unilateral declaration of ceasefire. This should be on the basis of the existing line of control. Russia should also announce that the ceasefire, if reciprocated, would be followed by extensive, longer-term talks to resolve various differences in conditions of peace.

If Russia announces such a unilateral ceasefire then this should be welcomed by various forces of peace all over the world as well as by various eminent persons known for their commitment to peace. This will increase the chances of a positive response by Ukraine.

If Ukraine respects the ceasefire and responds in similar fashion, a big breakthrough for peace would be achieved. Peace will get a big chance. Both sides should work carefully to build further on this so as to achieve more durable peace in a spirit of give and take. Meanwhile everyone can pray that NATO or the USA will not obstruct or sabotage this.

If Ukraine does not respond to this ceasefire, then Russia will still not lose much as it can regretfully continue its war effort after clarifying to the world that its ceasefire offer was not accepted or respected. In its existing strong position Russia will not incur any big loss and so it has nothing much to lose by declaring a unilateral ceasefire and initiating a peace effort on this basis.

On the other hand if Ukraine responds well and also declares a ceasefire, then a very big achievement and opening for peace will be made and the entire world should support this.

If both sides cooperate in this way then chances will increase that the war ends not on a note of frozen conflict with all its continuing dangers and risks, but instead ends with genuine goodwill and peace. The United Nations should try its best to help to take this forward if and when such opportunities emerge.

Senior scholars, diplomats and statespersons of various countries, particularly Western countries, can make an important contribution to such efforts by extending their support. The peace movement worldwide should of course extend very enthusiastic support to any such initiative. 

Of course such an initiative can also start with Ukraine making a ceasefire offer. The reason why a Russian initiative has been emphasized here is that while Russia is very capable of entirely independent decision making, in the case of Ukraine, for the time-being at least, the decision making is heavily impacted by the USA in particular and therefore the chances of such an independent initiative emerging from Ukraine are much lesser.   

*

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, A Day in 2071 and Earth without Borders. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.       

Featured image source    

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The World Economic Forum’s plan for global carbon surveillance is nearly complete.

Journalist Whitney Webb joins us to talk about how this is all tied together with a digital ID, CBDC’s, and removal of personal property.

 

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

Russia’s “Fourteen Points” for a European Security Policy: Why Was Moscow’s 2009 Proposal Rejected?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, April 26, 2024

In 2009, Russian President Medvedev (President from May 7^th, 2008 to May 7^th, 2012) called for a new European security policy known as “Fourteen Points” as a new security treaty to be accepted to maintain European security as the ability of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and functional integrity (this Russian draft European security treaty was originally posted on the President’s website on November 29^th, 2009).

On Record: The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal’s 2013 Indictment of the State of Israel on Charges of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide

By Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, April 26, 2024

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (Tribunal) reconvened on 20 November 2013 to hear two charges against Amos Yaron (first Defendant) and the State of Israel (second Defendant). The first Defendant was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, whilst the second Defendant was charged with the crime of genocide and war crimes.

Mordechai Vanunu and Israel’s Plans to Wage Nuclear War on Iran: History of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

By Michael Carmichael, April 26, 2024

In 1986, an Israeli civil servant who worked in the state-owned nuclear industry flew to London where he was invited to meet with reporters working for The Sunday Times. In these press briefings, Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s top secret – the Israelis had gained control of a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads.

Students Are Taking the Lead in Denouncing Gaza Atrocities

By Philip Giraldi, April 26, 2024

The current unrest of pro-Palestinian “encampments” and “liberated zones” at 33 college campuses in the US protesting against what is clearly a genocide taking place in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire and a halt to institutional investment in Israel as well as a suspension of ties to Israeli government educational bodies.

Never Forget! 1999–2024. “From Aggression to a New, Fairer World Order”. Belgrade International Conference

By Živadin Jovanović and Current Concerns, April 26, 2024

NATO armed aggression ended 25 years ago, but aggression by other means of political, economic, financial and propaganda character – continued throughout this period and since recently have been even intensified. Using UNSC’s mandate, NATO practically keeps Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija under occupation.

NATO’s “War Mongering Tentacles” to Scandinavia

By Drago Bosnic, April 25, 2024

Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns that NATO expansion to Finland would mean that assault troops and advanced weapon systems would be deployed within the country, threatening Russia’s national security interests. As previously mentioned, Finland has not only refused to reassure its eastern neighbor, but has actually doubled down on the deployment of foreign forces, particularly American.

Pfizer ‘Chose Not to’ Tell Regulators About SV40 Sequence in COVID Shots: Health Canada Official

By Noé Chartier and Matthew Horwood, April 25, 2024

A senior Health Canada official says pharma giant Pfizer made a conscious decision not to advise regulators that its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contained a DNA sequence from the Simian Virus 40 (SV40).

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In 2009, Russian President Medvedev (President from May 7^th, 2008 to May 7^th, 2012) called for a new European security policy known as “Fourteen Points” as a new security treaty to be accepted to maintain European security as the ability of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and functional integrity (this Russian draft European security treaty was originally posted on the President’s website on November 29^th, 2009).

This treaty proposal was passed to the leaders of the Euro-Atlantic States and the executive heads of the relevant international organizations such as NATO, EU, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In this proposal, Russia stressed that it is open to any democratic proposal concerning continental security and is counting on a positive response from Russia’s (Western) partners. 

However, not so surprisingly, D. Medvedev’s call for a new European security framework (based on mutual respect and equal rights) became interpreted particularly in the USA in the fashion of the Cold War 1.0, in fact, as a plot to pry Europe from its strategic partner (USA).

Nevertheless, this program in the form of a proposal was the most significant initiative in IR by Russia since the dismissal of the USSR in 1991. From the present perspective, this proposal could save Ukrainian territorial integrity but it was rejected primarily due to Washington’s Russophobic attitude. 

As a matter of fact, Moscow since 1991, and particularly since 2000, viewed NATO as a Cold War 1.0 remnant and the EU as no more but only as a common economic-financial market with many crisis management practices. Nevertheless, Medvedev’s 2009 “Fourteen Points” was announced on November 29^th, 2009 Russia published a draft of a European Security Treaty. Medvedev’s program resembles the program drawn up by US President Woodrow Wilson (issued on January 8^th, 1918), who had emancipated peace aims in his well-known “Fourteen Points”. These two programs have two things in common:

1) Both documents advocate multilateralism in the security area and devotion to international law; and

2) They are very idealistic in terms of the tools needed for their implementation. 

The Russian proposal from 2009 is founded on existing norms of international security law according to the UN Charter, Declaration on Principles of International Law (1970), and the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975) followed by the Manila Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (1982) and the Charter for European Security (1999). 

The 2009 Russian proposal on European Security (ten years after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia) can be summarized in the following six points:

1. Parties should cooperate on the foundation of the principles of indivisible, equal, and unrelieved security;
2. A Party to the Treaty shall not undertake, participate in, or support any actions or activities significantly detrimental to the security of any other party or parties to the treaty;
3. A Party to the treaty which is a member of military alliances, coalitions, or organizations shall work to ensure that such alliances, coalitions, or organizations observe principles of the UN Charter, the Declaration of Principles of International Law, the Helsinki Final Act, the Charter for European Security followed by certain documents adopted by the OSCE;
4. A Party to the treaty shall not allow the use of its territory and shall not use the territory of any other party to prepare or carry out an armed attack against any other party or parties to the treaty or any other actions affecting significantly the security of any other party or parties to the treaty;
5. A clear mechanism is established to address issues related to the substance of this treaty and to settle differences or disputes that might arise between the parties in connection with its interpretation or application;
6. The treaty will be open for signature by all states of Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space followed by several international organizations: the EU, the OSCE, the CSTO; NATO, and the CIS.

Russia, in fact, understood the treaty as a reaffirmation of the principles guiding security relations between states but above all respect for independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty within nation-state borders, and the policy not to use force or the threat of its use in IR.

Actually, the security issue in Europe became a strategic agenda for Russia from 2000 onward. During its whole post-Soviet history, Russia felt very uncomfortable as put on the margins of the process of the creation of a new (US/NATO-run) security order in Europe based on the NATO enlargement toward the borders of Russia. 

It has to be remembered that Moscow at that time proposed to Washington and Brussels three conditions that, if accepted by NATO, might make enlargement acceptable to Russia: 

1. A prohibition against stationing nuclear weaponry on the territory of new NATO members; 
2. A requirement for joint decision-making between NATO and Russia on any issue of European security especially where the use of military force was involved; and
3. Codification of these and other restrictions on NATO and rights of Russia in a legally binding treaty. 

However, none of these proposed conditions of NATO-Russia security cooperation in Europe was accepted.  

After this failure, a new military doctrine of the Russian Federation from 2010 accepted the reality that the existing international security architecture including its legal mechanism does not provide equal security for all states (a phenomenon of the so-called “asymmetric security”). The same doctrine clearly stressed that NATO’s ambitions to become a supreme global actor and to expand its military presence toward Russia’s borders became a focal external military threat for Russia. Surely, from 2010, it became clear to Moscow that NATO has not accepted the Russian proposal to create a common European security framework functioning on the principle of “symmetric” relations including certain duties and rights equal for both sides. 

Nevertheless, the time when Moscow suggested a new security initiative was very appropriate for the matter of the declination of both soft and hard power of the Collective West (USA/EU/NATO) as a result of the second war against Iraq and the global economic meltdown. Since the disasters of Iraq, Guantánamo, and Abu Ghraib, Washington and its Western allies lost any moral credibility and authority to claim global leadership. In addition, Western support for Georgian aggression and the corrupted regime of Mikheil Saakashvili revealed once more the Atlanticist disregard for real democracy and justice. Simultaneously, the global economic and financial crisis spelled the end of the neoliberal fiction of globalization confirming at the same time Western unsuccess in regulating global finance. Consequently, the unipolar IR around the Collective West ceased to shape and direct both global geopolitics and geoeconomics. 

The Russian (in fact, President Dmitry Medvedev’s) proposal for a new security agreement with NATO was a serious test of the honesty of the Collective West versus Russia.

Simply, the proposal called for a new treaty to implement already accepted previous declarations since the end of the Cold War 1.0 that the West and Russia are friends, security is indivisible, and nobody’s security can be enhanced at the cost of others.

Basically, the new security treaty should be founded on a multilateral system, rather than a system based on hegemony or bipolarity.

Behind the proposal was the rejection of a hegemonic role for the USA.

However, the crucial question was:

Does the USA want to participate in multilateral efforts to address issues of both European and global security challenges?

Nonetheless, very soon it became clear that this Russian agenda for a new European security concept was seen by Western policymakers as an attempt to undermine NATO and its eastward expansionistic policy.

In other words, President D. Medvedev’s proposal for the new security design in Europe was understood by the Westerners as a perfidy intention to change the terms of the debate on the future of the European security system without the participation from NATO to the direction of the new body that includes Russia as a founding member and, therefore, as a pillar of a new security framework of the Old Continent. Therefore, his proposal, as such, was unacceptable to the Collective West.

It has to be stressed that the most difficult step in the rapprochement between Russian and Western competing European security agendas after the Cold War 1.0 was and still is the politicized attitude by the pro-Western part of Europe (EU/NATO) that Russia is posing security danger to the continent. However, on the opposite side, Russia’s security fears come primarily at least from the policy of NATO’s eastward enlargement if not from the question of NATO’s existence after 1991 in general. 

 

NATO enlargement

 

After all, it appears that, in fact, the focal problem was not about keeping the status quo in terms of the European security framework, but, however, what a new security system was going to be. In other words: 

1. Should it be a NATO-centric structure (as it has been since 1991)? In this case, NATO will be turned into a forum for consultation on both European and global security questions; or
2. Should it be a new institutional framework founded on a legally framed treaty that guarantees equality and indivisibility of security of all political subjects (states)?

The Russian 2009 “Fourteen Point” security program represented at that time, actually, the first positive foreign policy initiative by Moscow since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This D. Medvedev’s initiative had both real geopolitical meaning and many diplomatic symbolic features. The initiative’s crucial value was that:

1. It advocated the formation of a new European security framework founded on new and democratic principles of the indivisibility of international security and the inclusiveness of all interested and relevant actors; and
2. The focal objectives of the initiative were to upgrade the already existing (but ineffective) European security system and to expand it into the region of Asia-Pacific for the sake of creating a common security area from Alaska to Siberia.

It was, however, obvious that the creation of such a security system would preserve primarily Russian national interests in both regions primarily in Europe but in Asia-Pacific as well. In addition, the proposal will pave the way for integrating a rising China and other countries of Asia into a complex network of the European security framework. Nonetheless, the proposal was rejected in the name of further NATO eastward expansion which was in many Western eyes the most fateful error of the US policy during the whole period of the post-Cold War 1.0 era. 

Such NATO policy, in fact, inflamed nationalistic, anti-Western, and militaristic feelings in Russia, and finally restored the policy of Cold War 1.0 into Cold War 2.0 (a renewed East-West security competition in Europe) keeping in mind the fact that in Russia, exists strong belief, based on accounts by Mikhail Gorbachev, Evgenii Primakov, and other Russian most influential policymakers, that Washington has broken its commitment not to expand NATO as a precondition for German reunification in 1989−1990.   

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

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The Baltic states continue to promote racist policies against the Russian people, creating a serious atmosphere of hostility in Europe.

Latvia is planning to completely eradicate the Russian language from the school curriculum, which will certainly have catastrophic consequences for the country’s social stability, as a substantial portion of the Latvian population is ethnic Russian. In addition to unnecessarily affecting innocent people, the measure makes it clear that Russophobia will continue to be a priority for the Latvian government.

According to a recent government decision, from September 2025 on, no Latvian students will be able to learn Russian in schools. The only languages allowed to be taught in schools, in addition to the native one, will be the languages of Western European countries. The measure affects both ethnic Russian citizens and ethnic Latvians who want to study Russian as a second foreign language – English is the first mandatory foreign language in all Latvian schools.

25% of the Latvian population is ethnic Russian, while at least 36% of citizens are Russian speakers.

Russian is the most spoken language in the country after Latvian and has always been an important communication mechanism for a substantial portion of Latvians.

In practice, there has never been a distinction between knowing Russian or Latvian, with any citizen being able to use either of these languages in their public activities, but recent policies of cultural genocide are generating a true apartheid, excluding ethnic Russian citizens from social life.

Like all ex-Soviet countries, Latvia is home to many Russians. During the communist period, all socialist republics belonged to the same country. When the USSR collapsed, millions of Russians became “foreigners” in the newly created post-Soviet countries, generating one of the greatest social tragedies in recent history. In countries such as the Baltic states, the end of the USSR coincided with the rise of a chauvinistic nationalism strongly encouraged by Western powers. These Russophobic sentiments have become increasingly common and dangerous in recent years.

Since the beginning of the special military operation, the Russophobic wave in the Baltics has reached increasingly worrying levels. Russian citizens have been subjected to mandatory Latvian language proficiency tests. Unsatisfactory results in these tests legitimize the Latvian government to expel these citizens and cancel their Latvian citizenship. This has been a serious problem especially for elderly people from the Soviet era, who have lived on Latvian soil for decades and have never learned the local language, as Russian has always been widely spoken in the country. These elderly people are being the biggest victims of the Latvian linguistic apartheid, with thousands of them fearing that they will be expelled from the country at any moment.

In addition to the anti-Russian cultural genocide implemented through the language ban, other coercive measures against ethnic Russian citizens have been practiced. For example, Russian citizens were threatened with expulsion from the country for voting in the Russian Federation’s presidential elections in March. Latvian police officers simply stated that they were monitoring the areas around the Russian diplomatic facilities, making it clear that any Russian who voted would have their personal data discovered by the authorities and would lose the right to live in the country.

According to the Latvian government, the mere act of participating in Russian political life is a gesture of support for the special military operation – called an “unjustified invasion of Ukraine” in the West. In this sense, Russian citizens who wanted to vote were seen by Latvia as true criminals, having to be punished and being “unworthy” of continuing to live in the country. Clearly, by implementing such draconian racist policies, Latvia is striving to make life impossible for Russian citizens, forcing them to leave the country as quickly as possible.

Latvia basically wants 25% of its population to leave the country – or to deny their own Russian ethnicity and accept to be culturally assimilated, forcing themselves to speak Latvian and give up their original identity. These measures are obviously reprehensible from the point of view of European values. There is nothing humanitarian or democratic about promoting ethnic apartheid and cultural genocide. However, apparently, the Collective West gives carte blanche to its allies to implement any measure against Russians.

In the Latvian case, instead of an absolute eradication of Russian culture, there is more likely to be a serious social instability and crisis of legitimacy, with the local Russian people taking to the streets to protest against the government’s Nazi-like measures.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Due to the immense suffering of the people of Gaza, the attention of the entire world has understandably been concentrated more on Gaza lately. There is also the risk of escalation here. However both due to human suffering as well as the risk of escalation the situation in Ukraine should also continue to get the world’s serious attention. In fact the danger of escalation is even more serious here, and in the worst possible scenario the possibility of the ongoing Ukraine conflict blowing up ultimately into a nuclear war and the Third World War also exists. 

Even if the possibility is just about 5 to 10% just now, its implication, the destruction associated with it is so serious that this should get very serious attention from the point of view of striving to ensure that such a horribly destructive situation never arises. Russia and NATO countries have over 11000 nuclear weapons and if even 5 to 10% of these ever get actually used, this would be the end of the world as we have known it, and probably our own end as well, mine and yours, no matter where we live, even if only from the longer term impacts of the ‘nuclear winter’.

Most people would say that the big leaders would never allow such a destructive course of action to take place. However large-scale use of nuclear weapons against Soviet Russia had come up for serious consideration by a section of influential leaders of the USA and its closest ally Britain soon after the Second World War ended even though the Soviet Union had been their close ally in the War and had played such an important role in the defeat of Hitler.

Hawkish sections of US military leadership had considered use of nuclear weapons in the Korea war too, although here Truman (who had cleared the first use of two nuclear weapons against Japan) played a preventive role.

Again hawkish elements in the USA military and security establishment had argued much in favor of nuking the Soviet Union and allies at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, despite the fact that the Soviet Union had acquired its own nuclear weapons by then and would have retaliated. Ultimately it was left to the great statesmanship of two great leaders on both sides, John Kennedy and Khrushchev, to bring back the world from the brink of nuclear war. Unfortunately we do not have anyone like John Kennedy (who ultimately had to sacrifice his life for advocating the path of peace) in the western leadership today, we only have Biden, Sunak and Macron, and they have been as irrationally anti-Russia in times as anyone can possibly be.

Recently the Ukraine conflict has been going very badly for Ukraine forces. Almost everyone agrees that the ill-planned, reluctantly undertaken Ukrainian offensive last year was a big failure and after that there has been no recovery, only further losses, and this is despite all the billions poured into a highly corrupt system by western allies. As future prospects indicate the high possibility of continuing losses, the best course of action at present to prevent further loss of life, human suffering and loss of even more territory is for Ukraine to reach an agreement with Russia for immediate and unconditional ceasefire and peace. The various contentious points can be sorted out later by prolonged talks which should continue whatever the difficulties in reaching agreements. Meanwhile large-scale reconstruction and relief work should start very soon in Ukraine with the help of all countries of the world who can afford to help in this.

However this course of action, which minimizes the further sufferings of the Ukrainian people while increasing possibilities of early start of a big relief and rehabilitation effort, is unacceptable to President Zelenskyy as well as to the USA and its close allies for two reasons. Firstly, Biden has been personally very hawkish in the context of Ukraine and the strategy followed by him and his key officials has been to bleed Russia as much as possible using Ukraine as a proxy regardless of the high costs for Ukrainian ordinary people—several hundred thousand of them have died or suffered serious injuries while millions have been displaced internally and externally. The chosen path of Zelenskyy has been to follow the US-recommended path for his country—his last independent effort was to sincerely participate in a Turkey-mediated peace initiative at an early stage of the war but this was aborted by the USA and Britain.

So under the present circumstances Ukraine is most likely to continue experiencing military reverses and at some stage its military efforts may be almost in a state of collapse. The NATO members led by the USA would be aware of this on the basis of their intelligence. They would never like to see a collapse taking place, but what can they do? They have already sent their billions of dollars. They have already sent as much weapons as they could send, and more of the same may not help much. They have already even sent limited numbers of their trainers to accompany their weapon systems. It is at this stage that they may consider sending their own forces to Ukraine. Macron has already flagged this, indicating his willingness to send some French troops for special types of operations. He does not yet have the support of his own people for this, and his proposal did not get much support from other NATO members, particularly the more important ones. Despite this, it is just possible that due to the very strong reluctance on the part of the USA in particular to accept anything that looks like a defeat in Ukraine, ultimately there may be wider acceptance for what was initially criticized as a rather wild and highly escalatory proposal of Macron.

If this happens, then this would be a very dangerous beginning of direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces.

As these forces try to destroy each other using more and more destructive weapons, where will this end? In such a situation, the chances of using nuclear weapons and moving towards the Third World War will be much higher. As such a confrontation will take place in conditions of very high suspicions and tensions, the chances of exchange of nuclear weapons taking place even on the basis of misunderstandings and misjudgment of the intentions of the other side will be a possibility. Either of the two sides can make the first strike, followed by even bigger retaliation and one does not know where this will end. As very fast delivery systems have been developed, chances of start of nuclear war based on misunderstanding and misjudgment have increased. This is also because of the possibilities of launch of certain conventional weapons being confused with the launch of nuclear weapons, in conditions of high tensions and suspicions.

Due to this possibility and potential of destruction on a very massive scale, there is great urgency of preventing the Ukraine conflict from escalating towards such much more horrible possibilities. Due to the inability of the UNO to take up big responsibilities of this kind as seen in recent times (although of course it can still play a helpful supportive role), the lead has to be taken by a renewed effort by senior, not-in-active-service diplomats and statesmen of all the involved countries, helped by fast growing peace activism, to prevent such horrible possibilities under all circumstances and to bring peace to Ukraine as early as possible.

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071 and Earth without Borders. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from South Front

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

Of relevance to the crimes currently committed by the Netanyahu government against the People of Palestine, we bring to the attention of our readers the 2013 Judgement of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, an initiative of former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who headed the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC).

On a personal note, I was a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War (2005). I was subsequently invited to become a member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) which was created in 2007.

I should mention that the indictment directed again the State of Israel was the object of sabotage.

One of the appointed foreign judges was a Zionist who was in “conflict of interest” with links to the State of Israel. Members of the KLWCC brought this issue to the attention of  Prof. Francis Boyle who had acted as prosecutor on behalf of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission chaired by Tun Mahathir Mohamad. The numerous witnesses from Palestine refused to provide testimony. 

The Tribunal hearings were postponed and reconvened on November 13, 2013 following the act of recusal and the appointment of a new judge.

The Kuala Lumpur Judgment is all the more significant in view of the current procedure of the International Criminal Court’s instigated by the Republic of South Africa against the State of Israel, on charges of genocide directed against the People of Palestine.

Read it carefully, particularly the testimonies. Forward this text far and wide.

In solidarity with the People of Palestine. 

Michel Chossudovsky,  January 18, 2024

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Video. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Global Solidarity in Support of Palestine

November 4, 2023

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The 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War

under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

 

Signatories of the 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration. From Left to Right: 

Francis A.Boyle, Helen Caldicott,  Denis J. Halliday, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck, Michel Chossudovsky, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

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Important Excerpt from the  2013 Judgment

What Amounts To Genocide? 

Simply put, genocide means any designated acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The definition of genocide as given in Article 2 of the Tribunal’s Statute is taken verbatim from Articles 2 & 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which states that the following acts may by themselves or cumulatively constitute the international crime of genocide:

1. Killing members of the group

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

 

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The State of Israel was charged on 20 November 2013

with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

 

 

The procedure was initiated by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission under the helm of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

It was part of an initative launched in December 2005 to Criminalize War.

It involved detailed testimonies and evidence.

The Members of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) are:

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, chairman, 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, 

Mr. Denis Halliday, 

Mr. Musa Ismail, 

Dr. Zulaiha Ismail, 

Dr. Yaacob Merican, 

Dr.  Hans von Sponeck

This indictment is supported by extensive evidence and testimony. Read the following recommendations:

As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. We have no power of enforcement. What we can do, under Article 34 of Chapter VIII of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, WHICH WE HEREBY DO, to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

 The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations. It urges the Commission to use all means to publicise this judgement and in particular with respect to the Parliaments and Legislative Assemblies of the major powers such as members of the G8 and to urge these countries to intervene and put an end to the colonialist and racist policies of the State of Israel and its supporters.

Below is the full text of the procedure as well as the formal indictment against Amos Yaron and the State of Israel.

For a summary version click here

Read Complete Judgment (pdf)

On behalf of the members of The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, under the helm of Dr. Tun Mahathir Mohamad.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 18, 2020, November 8, 2023

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THE KUALA LUMPUR WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
20 – 25 NOVEMBER 2013
Case No. 3 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
Amos Yaron
Case No. 4 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
The State of Israel

Coram

Judge Tan Sri Dato’ Haji Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus
Judge Tunku Sofiah Jewa
Judge Shad Saleem Faruqi
Judge Mohd Saari Yusuf
Judge Salleh Buang
Judge John Philpot
Judge Tunku Intan Mainura

Prosecution Team

Prof. Gurdial Singh Nijar
Tan Sri Aziz Rahman
Mr. Avtaran Singh
Ms. Gan Pei Fern
Mr. Nizamuddin Hamid
Dr. Sharizal M Zin
Ms. Rafika Shari’ah
Ms. Mazlina Mahali
Ms. Diyana Sulaiman

Amicus Curiae-Defence Team

Mr. Jason Kay Kit Leon
Ms. Larissa Jane Cadd
Dr. Abbas Hardani
Prof. Dr. Rohimi Shapiee
Dr. Rohaida Nordin
Dr. Matthew Witbrodt

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (Tribunal) reconvened on 20 November 2013 to hear two charges against Amos Yaron (first Defendant) and the State of Israel (second Defendant). The first Defendant was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, whilst the second Defendant was charged with the crime of genocide and war crimes.

The charge against the first Defendant is as follows –

“The Defendant Amos Yaron perpetrated War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps in violation of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; the 1948 Genocide Convention; the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950); customary international law, jus cogens, the Laws of War, and International Humanitarian Law” 

The charge against the second Defendant is as follows –

“From 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel (hereafter ‘the Defendant’) carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. 

The conduct of the Defendant was carried out with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people.

These acts were carried out as part of a manifest pattern of similar conduct against the Palestinian people.

These acts were carried out by the Defendant through the instrumentality of its representatives and agents including those listed in Appendices 1 and 2.

Such conduct constitutes the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

Such conduct by the Defendant as an occupying power also violates customary international law as embodied in the Hague Convention of 1907 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Such conduct also constitutes War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity under international law.”

The charges (together with the particulars of the charges) had been duly served on the Defendants, and were read in open court by the Registrar as these proceedings commenced.

Neither Defendant was present in these proceedings, but both were represented by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

1. Preliminary objections and applications by Amicus Curiae-Defence Team

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team filed two preliminary objections to these proceedings – the first contending that there are defects in the Charges preferred against the first Defendant, and the second contending that the State of Israel cannot be impleaded in these proceedings on the grounds of State Immunity.

In respect of its first preliminary objection the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team contends that the trend in modern international criminal tribunals is either to have jurisdiction for acts that have been committed after these tribunals have been constituted such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), or alternatively its jurisdiction is for a limited duration of time such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that this Tribunal came into existence on 6 June 2008, whilst the various acts allegedly committed by the Defendant in charge no. 3 occurred in the month of September 1982, while the acts allegedly committed by the Defendant in charge no. 4 occurred since 1948 and continued up to the present day.

In respect of its second preliminary objection the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that there is no authority conferred by the Charter on this Tribunal to hear any action against the government of a country, for example, the government of Israel. The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team also argued that international law does not allow the “State of Israel” to be impleaded as an accused. The State of Israel is a nation state, recognised by the United Nations, and as a nation state, it has rights under international law.

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team further submits that the State of Israel has not entered appearance in these proceedings and has therefore not submitted to the jurisdiction of this Tribunal. The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that the State of Israel enjoys immunity for the crimes of genocide and war crimes and therefore Charge 4 should be dismissed.

On behalf of the Prosecution Team, it was argued that with regard to the first preliminary objection, the jurisdiction issue must be established by reference to the founding Charter or statute that sets up the Tribunal. The Charter of the KL Foundation to Criminalise War states that the jurisdiction of the Tribunal shall be governed by the provisions of this Charter: Part 1, Article 1. There isno temporal limit. In particular, Article 7 sets no time limit. In this sense the Charter is identical to the ‘open ended’ temporal jurisdiction of the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

The Prosecution Team also submitted that the Tribunal had convicted Bush and Blair of war crimes committed in 2003 – which also predates its setting up: KL War Crimes Commission v George W. Bush and Anthony L. Blair, KLWCT Reports 2011, p. 1. The verdict by the KLWCT against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld et alwent back to torture committed from 2001.

With regard to the second preliminary objection, the Prosecution Team submits, inter alia, that these two Charges are international criminal war crimes being adjudicated by an international tribunal. States have no immunity for such crimes before such tribunals.

Before these proceedings began, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team had also submitted two (2) applications to quash the charge against the two Defendants. The grounds of applications were as follows:

1. The charge is defective for duplicity, and / or latent duplicity.
2. The charge is defective for uncertainty.
3. The charge is an abuse of process and / or oppressive.

On behalf of the two Defendants, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team sought for the Tribunal to make the following orders:

1. That the charge against the two Defendants be quashed.
2. That the Prosecution against the two Defendants be permanently stayed.
3. In the alternative, that the Charges be redrafted according to the principles of criminal law.

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team contends that there were multiple offences within one charge and multiple forms of alleged instances of criminal conduct within one charge.The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that the Rules against Duplicity must be strictly adhered to in a criminal proceeding.

In rebuttal, the Prosecution Team submits that this Tribunal is governed by its own Rules and these Rules are silent on the application of the Rule against Duplicity in drafting charges. This rule against duplicity, as it exists in national legal systems, does not, and cannot, apply in the same way in proceedings before international criminal courts. More importantly, the Tribunal should take into account the heinous nature of these crimes and the scale they were alleged to be perpetrated.

On the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team’s submission that the charge is defective due to uncertainty, the Prosecution Team submits that it is premature for anyone to say so without appreciating the particulars contained in the charge. The particulars in the charge are facts that the Prosecution seeks to prove in the course of the proceedings.

Having considered the Preliminary Objections raised by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the Two Applications filed by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the submissions by both the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the Prosecution Team in the several documents already filed with this Tribunal, and having considered further oral submissions by both parties, the Tribunal unanimously ruled that the Preliminary Objections and Two Applications have little merit and were accordingly dismissed.

A written ruling of the Tribunal was read out by Judge Tunku Sofiah Jewa on 20 November 2013.

2. Prosecution’s Case

The Prosecution’s case against the first Defendant is that the first Defendant had committed War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli-occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps. These crimes were in violation of, inter alia, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the 1948 Genocide Convention, jus cogens, International Humanitarian Law; and Articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

The Prosecution’s case against the second Defendant is that from 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel had systematically carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction – with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people.

These acts constitute the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

In his opening statement, the Chief Prosecutor Prof Gurdial Singh said that the Prosecution will adduce evidence to prove the counts in the indictment through oral and written testimonies of victims, witnesses, historical records, narrative in books and authoritative commentaries, resolutions of the United Nations and reports of international bodies.

3. Testimony of Witnesses

The Prosecution Team called 11 witnesses to testify on its behalf.

The Prosecution’s first witness (PW1) was Chahira Abouardini, a 54 year old resident of Camp Shatila, Beirut, Lebanon.

She testified that when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in May 1982, they attacked the area near Camp Shatila, which was then the base of the Palestinian resistance. She also testified that her father and sister were shot and killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia.

She also said that there were a lot of dead bodies everywhere, strewn all over – bodies of men, women, children and even animals. Armed militiamen had started the killing from the houses near the sports complex where the Israeli forces were based. They entered homes and killed people. Anyone who moved was killed.

PW1 also testifed that at one location on the way to the stadium, she saw her cousin’s daughter’s body. The killers had opened her body and taken out her baby and then placed the baby on her dead body. PWI testified that the victim was actually deaf and dumb and was living in a home for the disabled.

PW1 testified that there were bodies piled up everywhere because the militiamen had collected the people together and then shot them all at one time. As a result it was difficult to identify the dead victims, and families had to dig between dead bodies to find their relatives.

PW1 said that in the 36 hours of the attack, some 3,500 people from Shatila and Sabra had been massacred. She said that the Phalangist militia who committed these atrocities worked together with the Israelis. They were puppets of the Israeli forces.

When PW1 was offered by the Prosecution to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine the witness.

The second Prosecution witness (PW2) called by the Prosecution Team was Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout. She gave her testimony as an expert witness through Skype. She was not physically present before the Tribunal.

The Prosecution tendered (as an exhibit) excerpt of a book titled “SABRA AND SHATILA – SEPTEMBER 1982” written by PW2 where she said “For 40 continuous hours between sunset on Thursday 16 September and midday on Saturday 18 September 1982, the massacre of Sabra and Shatila took place, one of the most barbaric of the twentieth century”.

When asked by the Prosecutor to give her comments on the published figure of 3,500 being the number of people killed, PW2 said that according to her research she estimated the figure to be around 1,350. She said that she had approaced various international organisations to collect the list of victims, but she never received them.

When PW2 was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the latter also said that they have no desire to cross-examine the witness.

The Prosecution’s third witness (PW3) was Mahmoud Al Samouni, a 15 year old resident of Sammouna Street, Gaza Zaitun, Gaza City. He gave his testimony through Skype.

PW3 testified that the Israeli forces attacked his place on January 3, 2009 with bombs and missiles. He said that he saw parachutists coming down and landing on the highest buildings.

He testified that more than 50 soldiers came to his house, all with weapons. They shot at the inner walls of the house and all over his home. They demanded the owner of the house to come out and when PW3’s father came out, the soldiers shot him, killing him on the spot. The soldiers continued shooting into the house for 15 minutes, injuring his brother Ahmad and 5 other members of his family, including his sister Amal – who sustained serious injuries, including a shrapnel in her head. His brother Ahmad subsequently died.

PW3 was not cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

The Prosecution’s fourth witness (PW4) was Salah Al Sammouni, a 34 year old resident of al-Zaytour neighbourhood in Gaza City. He gave his testimony through Skype.

He said that on January 3, 2009, he received information from his father’s cousin that Israeli military tanks had entered Gaza City and surrounded the al-Zaytoun neighbourhood and the surrounding areas.

He further testified that 21 members of his family were killed by the Israelis on January 5, 2009. He tendered as an exhibit a list of the names of these dead family members.

When this witness was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine him.

The Prosecution’s fifth witness (PW5) was Paola Manduca, currently residing in Genova, Italy. She gave her testimony as an expert witness through Skype.

She told the Tribunal that she had conducted and co-ordinated in 2011 two research projects relating to the impact of weapons on reproductive health arising from the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The outcome of her research reveals the degradation of the reproductive health and increase in major structural birth defects.

She also testified that 66% of Gaza parents with a birth defect child had been exposed to bombing or white phosphorus shelling during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009.

Her research led her to the conclusion that there is a long term effect on reproductive health associated to metal contamination by exposure to weaponry during the war and by war remnants.

When PW5 was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine her.

The Prosecution’s sixth witness (PW6) was Dr Ang Swee Chai, a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon, currently residing in London, England. She was physically present during the proceedings and was orally examined by the Chief Prosecutor and subsequently cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

She testified that she arrived in Beirut in August 1982 as part of a British medical team, volunteering her services as an orthopaedic surgeon. She started work as an orthopaedic surgeon in Gaza Hospital on August 22. The Hospital was an 11 storey building in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, officially opened on August 23, 1982.

PW6 gave a detailed account of the events that took place from 15-22 September 1982.

On 15 September, Israeli planes flew from the sea towards the direction of the camps, and then the shelling began in all directions, clearly seen from the Gaza Hospital. On 16 September, casualties poured into the hospital, whilst shootings and shelling continued outside. Shootings continued into the night.

On 17 September, the witness said that she operated on an eleven year old boy, shot with 27 members of his family. All 27 died, but the boy survived.

On 19 September PW6 said members of the hospital medical team were able to return to Sabra and Shatila camps, where they saw dead bodies everywhere, whole families obviously shot together. She said that according to the International Red Cross, the total number of dead people was 1,500.

The witness testified that from the Israeli headquarters in the Kuwait Embassy most of the area of the massacre in the two camps could be easily seen. She was told by Palestinian survivors that they could not escape during the massacre because the Israelis had sealed off the camps. When the Norwegian Ambassador came in to try to evacuate the Norwegian medics, he told the witness that he had to get the Israeli authorities to agree.

The witness also said that from recently declassified materials from the British National Archives, she discovered that the death toll in the two camps was 3,500 people. When the Israelis surrounded and invaded the Akka Hospital on 15 September, they killed patients, nurses and doctors.

PW6 was cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team, but her testimony remained intact and unshaken.

The Prosecution’s seventh witness (PW7) was Nabil Alissawi, a resident of Karkfa Street, Bethlehem.

The witness said that whilst he was a student of Ahliya University in 2008, he took part in a peaceful street demonstration near the Azah Refugee Camp and Paradise Hotel. At about 12.30pm whilst the demonstrators were thus engaged, he was shot by a sniper. He passed out and was taken to a hospital.

He later discovered that a dum dum bullet had pierced his stomach and then broke into 3 pieces, going into 3 different directions – 2 exiting his body but the third remained stuck in his bladder. He was hospitalised for 2 1/2 months where he underwent 3 operations. He subsequently received treatment for another 2 1/2 months where he underwent more surgical operations to repair his intestines.

As a result of his injuries, his life had been totally altered. He carried an abdominal scar, he cannot sit upright, nor can he swim competitively. He is prohibited from entering Israel, and is always in a state of fear and anxiety. He is a victim with no freedom in his own country.

The Prosecution’s 8^thwitness (PW8) was Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and social activist. He gave his oral testimony via Skype. Author of 15 books, including “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (2006), “Gaza in Crisis” (co-authored with Noam Chomsky, 2010) he is one of Israel’s New Historians who have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948 and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year. He has written that the expulsion was not decided on an ad hoc basis as other historians had argued, but constituted the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in accordance with Plan Dalet, which was drawn up in 1947 by Israel’s future leaders.

The witness testified that the people behind Plan Dalet was small group of people (about 30) comprised of generals in the Jewish military outfit, experts on Arab affairs, with the Chairman who would be the first Prime Minister of Israel. They turned this plan into a Master Plan with a blueprint for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from their country.

When asked by the Chief Prosecutor what happened to those Palestinians who refused to move, the witness said that in certain places, elder villagers were executed to intimidate the rest. And in some places, all male members were massacred. Palestine had some 800 villages. 530 villagers had their residents expelled.

The witness also testified that the villages that were occupied were wiped out physically and on the ruins they built settlements or recreational places. In the cities, the Palestinian neighbourhoods were repopulated by Jewish immigrants from Europe or from other countries.

Asked about Gaza, the witness said that Gaza is a huge prison, incarcerating 2 million people.

Cross-examined by the Defence – Amicus Team whether he would agree that the body of his work and his views “could be to assuage the guilt of being alive because of Zionism”, the witness replied that he does not feel that way. He said that because his parents were victims of genocidal policies of the Nazi, he does not want be part of the new genocide.

Responding to another question from the Defence – Amicus Team, the witness said that the Jews who escaped from Germany and Europe in the 1930s were indeed refugees looking for safe haven, but the Jews who came in 1982 and in subsequent years came as colonisers.

The Prosecution’s 9^thwitness (PW9) was Taghreeb Khalil Nimat, a resident of Nablus, West Bank. She lives with her parents and 9 siblings.

The witness testified that in 1979 or early 1980, her father was arrested by the Israeli forces and detained in prison for 18 days for singing a song about Palestinian freedom. A year later, he was again arrested and detained in prison for 21 days for the same offence.

In 1987 the witness applied for employment at the government office but her application was rejected. It was commonly understood that if any family member has a history of being detained by the Israeli government, it would be difficult to seek employment at the government office.

The witness testified that on 15 April 2004, whilst travelling from Nablus to Bethlehem (a distance of 80 km) she was stopped by an Israeli military car and then detained for 29 hours without food or water. During detention, the witness was put under interrogation and insulted verbally. Following the incident, the witness was stigmatised by her community, including her friends and colleagues.

The Prosecution’s tenth witness (PW10) was Dr. Walid Elkhatib, a resident of Beit Jalla City, Bethlehem District, West Bank. He is a qualified medical doctor, specialising in public health.

The witness testified that as a general practitioner, he worked at an emergency clinic during the first intifada, where he saw many patients with different kinds of injuries as a result of Israeli violence – gun shot wounds, exposed to tear gas and physically abused by Israeli soldiers. Over the last 17 years he had been in charge of child health and protection, social health and Palestinian child law and rights.

He also testified that the invasion of Palestinian cities by Israeli forces (including the shelling and bombing, usage of tear gas, the building of walls to separate Jerusalem and the West Bank, check points which restrict the movement of the Palestinian people) have affected Palestinian health and education, especially that of children.

The witness said that the first intifada (1987-1993) was not military in nature. It involved demonstrations against the Israeli occupation. There were then no roadblocks, no wall, no shelling and no airplane bombings.

The second intifada (2000-2009) began when Ariel Sharon went to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinians protested against this visit. On that day, Israeli soldiers killed 20 people outside a mosque.

During the second intifada, the witness said that 77.8% of Palestinian families suffered mental problems. From 2001-2011, there were 2282 cases of disability – mostly due to injuries sustained by those involved in the intifada, caused by live ammunition, shrapnel, rubber bullets and explosions. Disabilities means that many of these people have less opportunities for work and they end up in poverty.

The witness testified that poverty is rife in the West Bank and Gaza, increasing from an average of 20% (prior to intifada) to 51% (during the intifada). Anemia became prevalent amongst the children (42%) as a result of imbalanced diet and amongst pregnant women (21%).

On the subject of checkpoints, the witness testified that there were about 730 checkpoints between cities, towns and villages in the West Bank. There had been many cases of pregnant women (forced to stop and wait at these places) delivering their babies at these checkpoints. There had also been many emergency cases who had been stopped at these checkpoints and prevented from going through to hospitals. In such cases, people had died at these checkpoints.

The witness also testified that before the second intifada, he believed that Israel was looking for peace with Palestinians. After the second intifada, he no longer had that belief.

The Prosecution’s eleventh witness (PW11) was Jawad Musleh, a resident of Beit Sahour, Bethlehem District. He is a program co-ordinator in a travel agency.

The witness, a Christian, testified that he was arrested in August 1985 by the Israeli authorities and released 20 months later, in March 1987. He was first detained at a prison in West Jerusalem, and later transferred to another prison in Haifa and finally to another prison in the West Bank. He was then only 15 years old, a student of a Catholic School at Beit Sahour.

The witness testified that he was tortured in the first prison in West Jerusalem, during interrogation. The Israelis used mental and psychological torture to make him confess to crimes he did not commit – that he was a member of the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He refused to confess but he continued to be beaten, and if not beaten, put in confinement with his hands tied behind his back and a hood over his head.

He finally confessed, after which he was detained for 20 months. He continued to be tortured when he was incarcerated. He said that there are now more than 5,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons.

The witness also testified that more Israeli colonies are being built on lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem. There are now 700,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The West Bank is now divided into 3 Areas – A, B and C. Area A are lands under the Palestinian authority and cover main cities and towns like Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin and others. Area B are small villages surrounding the main cities, where Israel is in control of security whilst civil services like health and education are the responsibility of the Palestinian authority. Area C, which is the rest of the West Bank, is under the complete control of the Israeli authorities. Checkpoints and roadblocks are set up throughout Areas A, B and C. These checkpoints are often closed arbitrarily and without prior notice, for long hours.

The witness further testified that Area C is the richest source of water supply. Water supply is therefore under the complete control of the Israeli authorities. Water is supplied to the Israeli settlers at a cheaper price, and 5 times more in volume, compared to water supplied to the Palestinians – which is often inadequate for their daily use, causing great hardship and suffering.

4. Prosecution’s closing submission

In his closing submission, the Chief Prosecutor said that he had called 11 witnesses (some of whom had testified through Skype), tendered 15 exhibits and furnished several documents and reports to the Tribunal during the course of the proceedings.

He urged the Tribunal to bear in mind that this is a Tribunal of Conscience and the case before it is an extraordinary case, which Winston Churchill used to call as a “crime without a name”.

He said that the Prosecution had provided evidence of facts which, examined as a whole, will show that the perpetrators had committed acts against the Palestinians, with intent to kill, cause serious bodily or mental harms and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinians as a whole or in part.

From the testimony of Prof Pappe (PW8) the Prosecution had shown that before 1948, before UN Resolution 47, there was already a plan in place to take over the Palestinian territory, and this plan would be activated the moment the British relinquished its mandate over the territory.

At that point in time, the Palestinians were on 94% of the land, with the Jewish population settling over a mere 6% of the land. Under the UN partition plan, more than 50% of the land was to be given to the Jews.

Plan Dalet might not legally be genocidal in form at its inception, but as it took shape the ethnic cleansing metamorphised into killing, massacre and creating impossible conditions for life for the Palestinians – either they leave or they die. The Prosecution submits this is genocide within the meaning of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.

On Sabra and Shatila, prosecution witnesses (PW1 and PW6) had testified that the Palestinian refugees in those camps had been killed by the Phalangists, aided and abetted by the Israelis who were in complete control of the two camps.

According to the Kahan Report, all of Beirut was under Israeli control, and there was clear symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Christian forces (the Lebanese Maronite Christian militia or the Phalangists or Keta’ib).

On Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the Chief Prosecutor said that the Israeli Defence Force had used all kinds of weapons, including white phosphorus – which is an incendiary weapon. The use of incendiary weapons is prohibited under Protocal III on the Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons.

As a result of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians. 1.5 million Palestinians are now trapped in despair, their fragile economy ruined. Under the Dahiya Doctrine (October 2008), the complete destruction of Gaza is the ultimate objective, the whole place must be flattened.

The Prosecution submits that the cumulative effect of the actions taken by the Israeli government, as shown by the Prosecution witnesses and the several documents tendered to the Tribunal, have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention and the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (The Charter).

Co-Prosecutor Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, submitting on the first charge against Amos Yaron, said that Amos Yaron was the commanding officer in charge of the Israeli Defence Force, in charge of the area of Beirut, and camps Sabra and Shatila. He said there were two issues which he has to deal with – first, whether or not there was a large scale massacre of the residents of the two camps, and second, whether or not Amos Yaron facilitated and permitted such massacre, in violation of international law and Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Charter?

On the first issue, he submitted there was a large scale massacre, as testified by PW1. She was there, and she saw the massacre with her own eyes. There was corrobating testimony by PW6, and further acknowledged in the Kahan Report.

On the second issue, Amos Yaron was in charge, to ensure that there would be peace and law and order. The Kahan Report itself concluded that anybody who knew about Lebanon would know that by releasing the Phalangists into Beirut, there would be massacre. Surely, Amos Yaron, the General in charge, must have known that by allowing the Phalangists to go into the two camps, the massacre would take place. But he decided to do nothing.

He received the reports of the killing of women and children, but he did not check the report. He did not pass the report to his superiors. The co-prosecutor submits that by ignoring all this despite knowing the circumstances, he himself had the intention of causing the death of the people in the two camps.

5. Whether the Prosecution has established a prima facie case

After the Prosecution Team had submitted its closing submission, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted there is no case to answer – as provided in Article 26 of Chapter V (Mode of Proceedings) of Part 2 of the Charter.

The Tribunal then had a short recess to enable the Judges to deliberate and consider the totality of the evidence adduced by the Prosecution.

When the Tribunal reconvened a short while later, the President of the Tribunal ruled that the Tribunal had unanimously agreed that a prima facie case had been established in both charges and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team is therefore invited to present the defence case.

6. The Defence case

Mr. Jason Kay Kit Leon of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that in the charges against the two Defendants, the Prosecution had listed war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Apparently the Prosecution had abandoned these charges, concentrating only on genocide.

He said that the offence of genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention 1948, whilst the OED defines it simply as “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group”.

He submitted that the charge of genocide is unique; it means that you don’t like a group, you kill them; you kill them in a grand manner. Genocide means that at the end of the act, you have a lesser number of victims than before the genocide started.

He further submitted that when one talks of “massive killing”, it is many hundreds of thousands to millions of people. To suggest that an isolated event, the unfortunate murder of 3,000 people (Sabra and Shatila) is the same as massive killing is almost disrespectful of the true horror of massive killing (as in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were killed in 100 days).

With regard to the Kahan Report, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it also identified other people as being responsible, with two other names other than Yaron still alive. The question is why only Yaron was charged? Why was Defence Minister Ariel Sharon spared?

He also submitted that the PLO had repeatedly violated the July 1981 cease-fire agreement. By June 1982, when the IDF went into Lebanon, the PLO had made life in northern Israel intolerable through its repeated shelling of Israeli towns.

On Cast Lead, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the IDF had come out with two reports. The point is if you are going to kill people nilly willy, you do not report it.

On the issue of the wall, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the primary consideration is one of security of the Israeli settlers. The State of Israel has a duty to defend their lives, safety and well-being.

On the issue of checkpoints, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said countries have a right to immigration laws.

With regard to Plan Dalet, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it is subject to divergent opinions, with historians on one side asserting that it was entirely defensive, while other historians assert that the plan aimed at an ethnic cleansing.

7. Finding by the Tribunal of the Charge against Amos Yaron

Sabra and Shatila Massacres

Under Charge 3, theDefendantAmosYaronis charged with WarCrimes,CrimesagainstHumanity,andGenocide. As the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli occupied Lebanon in September of 1982, he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps in violation of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; the 1948 Genocide Convention; the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950); customary international law, jus cogens, the Laws of War, and International Humanitarian Law; and their related provisions set forth in articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission.

Israel invaded Lebanon beginning June6,1982.

The Israeli siege and bombardment of West Beirut continued throughout the summer of 1982. In spite of the devastation caused to Lebanon and the civilian population, Israel did not succeed in its goal of defeating or dislodging the Syrian and P.L.O. forces.

An agreement was brokered onAugust19, 1982 between Lebanon, the United States, France, Italy, Israel, and the P.L.O. for the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces under the auspices and protection of a multi‑national force. The agreement further provided that the Israeli Defense Forces would not attempt to enter or occupy West Beirut following the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces.

Pursuant to that agreement, the multinational American, French, and Italian force oversaw the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces until completed on September l, 1982. The multinational force left Lebanon from September l0-12, 1982, after the completion of the evacuation.

On September 14, 1982, Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, a Phalangist, was assassinated in Beirut.

Israeli Prime Minister Begin, Prime Minister of Defense Sharon, and Chief of Staff Eitan decided that the IsraeliDefense Forces (IDF) would immediately enter and occupy West Beirut.

Pursuant to the decision, on September 15, 1982, the IDF entered West Beirut under the command of Defendant Brigadier General Amos Yaron, the Defendant in this case. The IDF established a forward command post on the roof of a seven-story building southwest of the Shatila camp, and Defendant Brigadier General Yaron commanded IDF forces from that post. The area surrounding the two camps, Sabra and Shatila, was thereafter under the command and control of the IDF, and all forces in the area, including the Phalangists, were considered to be operating under the authority of the IDF and acting according to its instructions.

The Tribunal heard detailed testimony about the events occurring between September 16 and September 18, 1982. A horrible systematic massacre of defenceless Palestinian refugees occurred with the deaths of up to 3,500, largely women and young children in the two camps.

Brigadier General Amos Yaron was commander of the operation in Beirut. He was asked by Major General Drori to coordinate the entry of Phalangist force at the forward command post.[1]

After these massacres, the Israeli government was under immense pressure set up a commission of enquiry under the chairmanship of Yitzuk Kahan (‘the Kahan Commission’), to enquire into the massacre. This commission held 60 sessions hearing 58 witnesses.[2]

The Kahan Commission made the following observations:

• Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff, Eitan declared on Sept 16 1982 before the massacres began that all of Beirut was under Israeli control and the camps were closed and surrounded.[3]
• There was a clear symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Christian forces (the Lebanese Maronite Christian militia) known as the Phalangists or Keta’ib assisted by the Israeli Mossad. Even the uniforms of the South Lebanese Army (SLA) and the Phalangists were the same as those of IDF – and provided by Israel.[4]
• The Israelis exercised some degree of control of the SLA.[5]
• The Phalangists’ plan to use force to remove Palestinians was discussed at several meetings with Israel[6].
• Three key officials of the Israel cabinet decided that the IDF under the command of Brigadier General Amos Yaron would enter West Beirut: the PM Begin, Defence Minister Sharon and Chief of Staff Eitan. The IDF would not enter the camps but rather would delegate the entry in to the camps to the Phalangists. Eitan said that he and Sharon agreed on the entry of the Phalangists into the Sabra and Shatila camps: the operational order provided: “…Searching and mopping up of the camps will be done by the Phalangists-Lebanese army”. [7]Also a summary of the Defence Minister’s instructions: “Only one element, and that is the IDF, shall command the forces in the area. For the operation in the camps the Phalangists should be sent in”.[8]
• The use of terms such as:

“purifying and purging” (NY Times, Sept 20 1982 at A6, col 5; Washington Post Sept 21 at A14, col 6);

“moppingup”(NY Times, Sept 23, 1982 at A8, col 4); and

“cleaning up” (NY Times, Sept 23 1982 at A8, col 6; Sept 26 1982, A11, col 2) the camps

shows the actual intent of the Israeli officials’ and its commanders[9]

• The camps were surrounded and under the complete control of the Israelis, preceding the killings[10]:
• The Chief of Staff Eitan, after acknowledging that the Phalangists ‘had gone too far” gave the thumbs up to continue the “mopping up’

An International Commission was set up to enquire into the reported violations of international law byIsrael during its invasion of Lebanon.

It produced a Report in 1983: Israel in Lebanon: Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law byIsrael during its Invasion of Lebanon 196 (1983)[11]:

(a)  The Commission was chaired by Sean MacBride, former Irish Foreign Minister, and former United Nations Commissioner for Namibia and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1974.

(b)  Four of the Commission’s six members concluded that Israel embarked on “deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people amounting to genocide”.

(c)  It concluded that:

The massacres that took place at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982 can be described as genocidal massacres, and the term “complicity in genocide” is wide enough to establish the responsibility of Israel for these acts.”

(d)   The Report placed the massacre in context:

“[Sabra and Shatila] massacres were low-technology sequels to earlier high-technology saturation bombardment by Israel from land, sea and air of every major Palestinian camp situated anywhere near the combat zone throughout southern Lebanon. The underlying Israeli objective seems clearly directed at making the Palestinian camps uninhabitable in a physical sense as well as terrorizing the inhabitants and thereby breaking the will of the Palestinian national movement, not only in the war zone of the Lebanon, but possibly even more centrally, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza”: p. 121[12],

(e)  That this represents a comprehensive policy to destroy an entire ethnic group is again illustrated by Ammon Kapeliouk, Sabra and Shatila (p. 45-6):

“Since the beginning of the war in June 1982, the Israelis have repeatedly used bulldozers to destroy homes and force the residents to flee. The refugee camps of south Lebanon were bombarded and then destroyed with explosives and bulldozers. In Israel, this operation was known as “the destruction of the terrorist infrastructure.” The objective was to prevent the Palestinians from forming a national community in Lebanon. Therefore, it was necessary to destroy not only homes, but also Palestinian institutions such as schools, hospitals, and social service centers. In addition, the Israelis sought to deprive the Palestinian population of all males by arresting thousands of men and forcing thousands more to flee.”[13]

The Defendant Amos Yaron

The Commander, Brigadier General Yaron, and the Phalangists agreed that a Phalangist Liaison Officer with communications equipment would be present at all times in the IDF command post with a Mossad Liaison officer at the Phalangist headquarters.[14]

Yaron knew about Phalangist combat ethics. He was pleased with his decision and was quite content to have the Phalangists participate and not leave the operation up to the IDF.

Yaron could not explain his lack of action or intervention by the Israeli army to protect civilians when he learnt on the first night, September 16, after the intervention of the Phalangists that massacres were occurring.[15]

Even when Israeli military authorities were well aware of the exactions by the Phalangists on Friday 17 September, they did not intervene to protect the Palestinian civilians but rather allowed them to bring in tractors to do what they wanted.[16]

The following testimony confirms that from the command posts, the Israelis, including of course Brigadier Commander Amos Yaron, could see into the camps and observe the massacres:

(a)     From the command post, it was possible to see into the camps, even into the narrow alleys. One could see the mass grave 300 meters away dug by the Phalangists and the bulldozer used to bury the hundreds of victims.[17]

(b)     Similarly, the testimony of Dr Ang Swee Chai

(c)     Reports of Senior Journalists.[18]

Washington Post, senior foreign correspondent, Jonathan Randal: noted this as an ‘obviously wrongheaded factual error’;

Israeli journalist, Ammon Kapeliouk;

Israeli newspaper Yedi’at Aharanot ridicules finding;

A New York Times article Sept 26 1982 at A9, col 2.

Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Beirut correspondent, Sept 20 1982: Israel aided and abetted.

(d)     Doctors and nurses testified they heard constant shooting and shelling from Shatila and knew later that a massacre might be taking place: NY Times Sept 20 1982 at A6, cols 3-4 [19]

(e)     Leila Shahid quotes an Israeli officer saying that watching from the roofs of one of the buildings occupied by the Israelis was like watching ‘from the front row of a theatre’. [20]

(f)      Israeli soldiers prevented Palestinian refugees from fleeing and returned them to the camps. Soldiers reported to their superiors that massacres were taking place.[21]

The United Nations condemned the Sabra Shatila killings… Security Council Resolution S/RES/521(1982): 19 September 1982 condemned the “criminal massacre. The General assembly went much farther than the Security Council. In the General Assembly Resolution 37/123: on 16 December 1982, it held:

Section D.1: Condemned in the strongest terms the large scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (Vote: 123 -0; 23 abstentions)

Section D.2: Resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide (vote: 98-19; 23 abstentions)

Legal Issues

Burden of proof

The burden of proof in this tribunal is beyond all reasonable doubt.[22] All elements of an infraction must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. This applies to War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the Crime of Genocide.

A person is guilty of genocide if he acts with an intention as described in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) at Article 2.[23]

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)     Killing members of the group;

(b)     Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)     Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)     Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This intention is known as the mens rea of specific intention in criminal law as opposed to the concept of general intention. The expression dolus specialis has been adopted by the Ad Hoc Tribunals to describe this requirement with respect to the criminal state of mind. To convict, an accused must have the intention to destroy, in whole or in part the group described in the Convention.

Proof of genocidal intent can be done by inference in the light of all the facts and does not require a specific plan.[24] This intent must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. If there is any alternative interpretation of the state of mind of the Defendant, the Prosecution will fail. The inference must be the only reasonable inference available on the evidence.[25]

State liability is incurred if an organ of the State or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the state commits any of the acts described in Article III of the Convention.[26]

Evidentiary Conclusions

The findings below are only made if the Tribunal is convinced beyond all reasonable doubt of the finding.

The Status of the Israel Defence Force in Lebanon from 15 September 1982

The evidence described above shows that Israel had invaded Lebanon illegally and had become an occupying force for part of Lebanon. Defendant Yaron was in charge of the occupation. As discussed below, this amounts to a Crime against Peace incurring the criminal responsibility of the State of Israel and the Defendant Yaron.

The relationship between Lebanese militia and the Defendant

The evidence described above shows without doubt that the Defendant and the IDF collaborated with the Phalangist militias and used the militias to carry out Israeli policy of destroying the Palestinian people. The Defendant Yaron worked with the militias personally.

Victims

The evidence shows that a large number of men woman and children were killed. Most were Palestinian. There was little or no resistance to the invaders. This is a part of the Palestinian nation and as such satisfied the requirements of the Genocide Convention.

Knowledge by the Defendant and his acts and omissions

There is no room for doubt that the Defendant Yaron had a thorough knowledge of the exactions being committed by the associated militias. The Defendant actively sent these militias into the Sabra and Shatila camps knowing what they would do. As reports emerged of their killings of unarmed civilians: men, woman and children, he failed in his duty as commander of an occupying and invading force to protect civilian population.

Intention of Israeli State, Intention of Defendant Amos Yaron

This evidence shows beyond all reasonable doubt that the Defendant Yaron consciously refused to protect the Palestinian population in the Sabra Shatila camps. His responsibility however goes much farther. He and the Israeli army used the Militias to destroy the Palestinian population in the camps. There was almost no resistance. The massacres were fully observed by the Israeli army from its vantage points. No persons could escape from the area cordoned off by the Israeli army. He was informed throughout about the progress of the massacre. The only inference reasonably possible is that Amos Yaron intended mass murder and that the Palestinian population be destroyed.

The Defence argued that Yaron did nothing to commit the crimes in Sabra and Shatila and cited exculpatory findings of the Kahan commission to attempt to clear Yaron for the charges.

This Tribunal is not bound by the Kahan Commission but its factual observations are useful in the search for truth. The Kahan Commission findings were made in Israel whereas the Tribunal is an international tribunal of opinion independent of Israel and the major powers. The Tribunal does not accept Defence arguments concerning the acts and omissions of the Defendant Yaron.

The Defence argued that the Prosecutor erred in not accusing Ariel Sharon. As for the failure to accuse Ariel Sharon, it is up to the Prosecutor to decide whom to charge, and barring abuse or oblique motive by the Prosecutor, the Tribunal cannot intervene in Prosecutorial Discretion.

The Defence objected to the use of General Assembly resolutions to prove genocide. The finding of intent (to commit genocide) by the General Assembly is soft law but is useful in the context to help to evaluate the intention of Israel and Amos Yaron.

The Tribunal considers the actions of Amos Yaron as engaging his personal criminal liability.

Command responsibility

Given the finding that Amos Yaron is personally responsible for the crimes committed, it declines to consider his liability for command responsibility.

Legal consequences

The Tribunal will examine the facts proven in the light of the crimes provided for in the Charter, namely Crimes against Peace, Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes, provided for in articles 8, 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter.

Cumulative convictions

The Tribunal recalls the law with respect to cumulative convictions. The Appeals Chamber of the International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia held at paragraph 168[27]:

168. The Appeals Chamber accepts the approach articulated in the Čelebići Appeal Judgement, an approach heavily indebted to the Blockburger decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.[28] The Appeals Chamber held that:[29]

“fairness to the Defendant and the consideration that only distinct crimes justify multiple convictions, lead to the conclusion that multiple criminal convictions entered under different statutory provisions but based on the same conduct are permissible only if each statutory provision involved has a materially distinct element not contained in the other. An element is materially distinct from another if it requires proof of a fact not required by the other.

Where this test is not met, the Chamber must decide on the basis of the principle that the conviction under the more specific provision should be upheld”.

The Tribunal will follow this principle.

Crimes Against Peace

Lebanon is a sovereign state which was invaded by Israel on 15 September 1982. Amos Yaron participated in this aggression of Lebanon and became Brigadier General of this occupation force. The Tribunal recalls the Nuremberg Principles I and VI

Principle I states, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment”.

Principle VI states,

“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a)     Crimes against peace:

(i)      Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii)     Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

We recall the terms of the Nuremberg judgement under the pen of Mr Justice Birkett states:

“The charges in the Indictment that the Defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are the charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from the other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.

The State of Israel has committed the mother of all international crimes by invading Lebanon and this has led Yaron to commit crimes against humanity and genocide.

Crimes against humanity

The Tribunal repeats the relevant parts of Article 9 of the Charter.

Crimes against humanity

For the purpose of this Charter,“crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a)         Murder;

(b)        Extermination…;

The crime of extermination is the act of killing on a large scale.[30] The expression “on a large scale” does not, however, suggest a numerical minimum.[31] In addition to the threshold mens rea requirements for all crimes against humanity, the mens rea of extermination requires that the Defendant intend to kill persons on a massive scale or to subject a large number of people to conditions of living that would lead to their deaths in a widespread or systematic manner.[32]

The Tribunal has found above that Amos Yaron (and the Israeli State) participated directly with the Lebanese Militias in the mass murder and destruction of the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila camps.

For this reason, the Tribunal finds Amos Yaron guilty of a crime against humanity as charged.

Genocide charge

As found above, the Defendant Yaron intended the mass murder and the destruction of the Palestinian population at Sabra and Shatila. This population constituted a national group as envisaged by the Genocide conventions. Not only did Amos Yaron intend the mass murder of these Palestinian refugees and their destruction as a group, he succeeded in killing of up to 3,500 Palestinians.

Amos Yaron intended the destruction of this part of the Palestinian people and therefor had the specific intent as required by Article 10 of the Charter.

The Tribunal notes that as Brigadier General of the Israeli Army occupying force, he engages the Criminal responsibility of the Israeli State implying the guilt of the Israeli State as was found in the Chapter of this judgement on Charge 4.

The Tribunal finds Amos Yaron guilty as charged of genocide.

War crimes

This tribunal will decline to consider war crimes since the crimes against humanity are more specific. A war crimes conviction would be a cumulative conviction. 

8. Finding of the Tribunal of the Charge against the State of Israel 

In relation to the charges against the State of Israel for genocide and war crimes, the Tribunal is conscious of the novelty of the issues raised. It wishes to confront these issues head-on with a view to furthering the ideals of international law and to interpret existing precedents in such a way as to make them as good as can be from the point of view of justice and morality.

We take note that the Prosecution did not pursue the charge of war crimes vigorously and instead concentrated on the charge of genocide. The Tribunal too will, therefore, confine itself to the issue of genocide.

The main legal points raised before us were the following:

Preliminary Objection About Retrospectivity Of Laws 

Learned counsel for the Defence argued that the general moral rule against retrospective laws prevents the Tribunal from hearing cases that occurred prior to its establishment on 6^th June 2008. The charges against Israel relate to facts that occurred well before 2008.

This issue was raised by the Defence as a preliminary objection and was unanimously rejected by the Tribunal for the following reason: the offences of genocide and war crimes for which the State of Israel is being charged were not created by the Charter. These offences have existed since the middle of the last century. The Charter sets up a machinery to investigate and prosecute these charges and to create a war crimes tribunal to adjudicate on them. The Charter does not specify any dates or time frames as was the case for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).

Defence counsel was magnanimous to concede that open ended temporal jurisdiction did indeed exist for the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Tokyo Tribunal and under the US Military Commission Act 2006 for the Guantanamo detainees.

The Tribunal holds that as our Charter does not confine the Tribunal to any time frame, it is not prevented from adjudicating on events that occurred decades ago. The Tribunal notes that almost all international tribunals that deal with genocide are created to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed well before the creation of the tribunal. The Tribunal holds that the jurisdiction of the Tribunal is open-ended and not confined to any time period. The Tribunal has full jurisdiction to try this case.

Preliminary Objection That Only Natural Persons Can Be Charged 

Learned Defence counsel argued that there cannot be a charge against the State of Israel because under Article 2(1)(iii) of the Charter plus the Rules of Procedure and Evidence in Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 & 12, the Charter envisages jurisdiction only over natural persons and not against nation states. However, Defence counsel conceded that the Charter in Article 2(1)(ii) permits jurisdiction over a “government”. The Tribunal is of the view that being a tribunal of conscience, and created to investigate serious crimes, it must reject such technical and esoteric distinctions as between a “state” and a “government”. States operate through their governments. The Tribunal will not refuse jurisdiction simply on this technical ground.

Further, it rules that Chapter III Article 6(b) of its Charter explicitly lays down that “if the charge involves a sovereign state, a current head of state/government or a former head of state/government, service of a copy thereof to any relevant embassy or High Commission shall suffice…” This is conclusive proof that under its Charter, the Tribunal is empowered to try States as well as individuals.

Preliminary Objection That Israel Has Sovereign Immunity

Defence counsel submitted that international law does not allow the State of Israel to be impleaded as an accused. It was submitted that no matter what the facts may be and how serious the alleged crime may be, the State of Israel enjoys absolute immunity in international law from being impleaded in a domestic court or tribunal unless it voluntary subjects itself to such jurisdiction.

To our mind, the impugned preliminary objection of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team raises the need for an appraisal of the dichotomy between the concept of State Immunity on the one hand and the doctrine of jus cogens on the other.

The concept of State immunity stipulates that a State is immune from jurisdiction in a foreign court unless it consents.

On the other hand, the doctrine of jus cogens refers to that body of peremptory principles or norms recognised by the international community as a whole as being fundamental to the maintenance of an international legal order and from which no derogation is permitted.

As corollary to a study of these two doctrines, the following three questions need to be considered, namely:

(a)        What principles of law, relevant to the issue at hand, constitute jus cogens?

(b)       Can the doctrine of State Immunity be considered as having acquired the status of jus cogens?

(c)        If there is a conflict between two principles of law, one being a jus cogensbut not the other, which should prevail?

Well into the middle of the twentieth century, nations had accepted the proposition that a sovereign State could not be sued before its own municipal Courts. When that dogma ceased to exist, e.g. in the UK with the passage of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947, it was replaced by the equally unhelpful doctrine that a sovereign State was exempt from the jurisdiction of a foreign municipal court. The Latin maxim upon which the proposition is based was par inparem imperium non habet, i.e. an equal has no power over an equal.

This practice which provided carte blanche immunity to foreign States became known as the “Absolute State Immunity principle”.

Support for the Absolute State Immunity principle can be found in most, if not all, of the cases, appearing in Bundle 3 of the authorities submitted by learned Amicus Curiae-Defence Team in support of their preliminary objection application. These cases include The Schooner Exchange[33]; Mighell v. Sultan of Johore[34]; The Porto Alexandre Case[35]; Duff Development Co. v. Kelantan Government[36]; The Cristina Case[37], Commonwealth of Australia v Midford (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd & Anor [38] and Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v Italy)[39].

Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece Intervening) was a 2012 International Court of Justice case where the Court, inter alia,found by a 14 to one majority, that the Italian Republic had violated its obligation to respect the immunity which the Federal Republic of Germany enjoyed under international law by allowing civil claims to be brought against it based on violations of international humanitarian law committed by the German Reich between 1943 and 1945.

At page 10 paragraph 31 of their notes on Preliminary Objection, Amicus Curiae-Defence Team, quoted a passage from the second edition of Judge Tunku Sofiah’s work, Public International Law – a Malaysian Perspective, as follows:

“Judgments of the International Court of Justice “are always considered as pronouncements of what the most authoritative international judicial body holds to be in international law on a given point, having regard to the given set of circumstances.”

The learned judge Tunku Sofiah, however, agrees with us that the outdated concept of absolute state immunity must be read along with other compelling considerations relevant to our times and especially to the situation before us.

Laws, unless they concern that of the Almighty, can neither be immutable nor static. And when justice so demands, through the passage of time, shifts and changes to laws that are unjust invariably take place.

In some countries, like China, for example, the State jealously guards the “absolute” concept of State Immunity and denies any attempt by anyone to implead a State unless that State consents.

Other States prefer a “restrictive” interpretation of the concept and allow immunity to States only in respect of the States’ “public” acts as opposed to their “private” ones.

As evidence of state practice, one can point to the example of the United States. It is to the credit of the United States Government, that through a proposal made in a letter by the U.S. State Department’s Acting Legal Adviser, Jack B. Tate, to the Acting Attorney-Generaldated 19 May 1952, there was a shift in policy of the U.S. Government fromsupport for the absolute theory of State immunity to support for the restrictive theory.

Let us now briefly turn to the subject of jus cogens. What principles of law, relevant to the issue at hand, constitute jus cogens?

If one were to look into the jurisprudence of the ICJ as well as that of national courts, there are numerous instances where the prohibition on genocide as a jus cogens norm of international law has been recognised. See, for example:

• the ICJ judgment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda(2006) at para 64;
• Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia), 26 Feb. 2007 (ICJ Judgment) at paragraphs 161, 162, 173 &174. A historical account of the Convention reveals many currents and cross-currents. But what is clear is that obligations relating to the prevention and punishment of genocide are part of customary international law (para 161). The undertaking is unqualified (para 162). There is dual responsibilityon the part of individuals as well as the State. “Genocide is an international crime entailing national and international responsibility on the part of individuals and States” (A/RES/180(II)) (paras 161 &163). “Contracting parties are bound by the obligations under the Convention not to commit, through their organs or persons or groups whose conduct is attributable to them, genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III. Thus if an organ of the State, or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the State, commits any of the acts proscribed by Article III of the Convention, the international responsibility of that State is incurred” (para 179).
• “Duality of responsibility continues to be a constant feature of international law. This feature is reflected in Article 25, paragraph 4, of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, now accepted by 104 States: “No provision in this Statute relating to individual criminal responsibility shall affect the responsibility of States under international law”.
• “Where crimes against international law are committed by State officials, it will often be the case that the State itself is responsible for the acts in question or for failure to prevent or punish them. In certain cases, in particular aggression, the State will by definition be involved. Even so, the question of individual responsibility is in principle distinct from the question of State responsibility. The State is not exempted from its own responsibility for international wrongful conduct by the Prosecution and punishment of the State officials who carried it out” (ILC Commentary on the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, ILC Report A/56/10,2001 Commentary on Article 58, para 3).
• Requests for Provisional Measures,13 Sept. 1993 (ICJ Rep.325) Separate Opinion of Judge Lauterpacht at para. 100.

Eminent scholars of international law, such as M. Bassiouni[40], too, have confirmed the prohibition on genocide as a jus cogens norm of international law.

So has the influential Restatement on Foreign Relations of the United States.

We can find no legal authority which states that the doctrine of State Immunity has acquired the status of jus cogens, that Latin tag which, in English, simply means “compelling law”.

On the other hand legal authorities abound that as a source of law, jus cogensis hierarchically higher.

It is also trite law that where there is a conflict between two principles of law, the one hierarchically higher in importance should prevail.

To our mind the international law doctrine against impleading a foreign state, being hierarchicallylower in importance than that of the prohibition against genocide, resulted in the Charge against the State of Israel to be maintained for full trial.

Decline Of State Sovereignty: The Distinction Between Sovereign & Commercial Acts 

By the so-called “Tate Letter”, the United States confers immunity on foreign States only for their public and governmental acts, but not their commercial activities. It is worth observing that the commission of a war crime or genocide or crime against humanity can never be a sovereign or governmental act.

This preference for restrictive State immunity was given statutory effect in the United States by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976.

The United Kingdomcame later in 1976 in adopting the restrictive immunity approach. That occurred in the case of The Philippine Admiral [41] where the Privy Council held that in cases where a State-owned merchant ship involved in ordinary trade was the object of a writ, it would not be entitled to sovereign immunity and the litigation would proceed.

In 1978 the State Immunity Act of 1978, adopting a restrictive approach, was enacted by the

United Kingdom. Since then, these two legislations have been served as a model for the national legislations of other countries including Australia, Canada, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa and Malaysia.

The Tribunal find it rather mind-boggling when some courts can consider commercial disputes as a reason for not allowing a State to be shielded by the State Immunity principle and yet strenuously protect such a State in cases of genocide or other war crimes. Human lives cannot be less important than financial gain!

Other Inroads Into The Concept Of State Sovereignty 

There have been other inroads into the domain of the State Immunity principle including the following:

• In 1972, the European Convention on State Immunity 1972was executed. That became the first attempt to establish an international legal regime for State immunity on the basis of the restrictive doctrine. It is already in force amongst the signatory States.
• In 2004, the United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Propertywas adopted by the General Assembly but this has yet to come into force[42].
• And not too long ago, both the United States and Canada enacted legislation to permit their respective citizens or permanent residents to institute proceedings against States which harbour terrorists.
• In the law of the European Union, member States, can be subjected to hefty fines for violations of EU law. The consent or non-consent of the State is irrelevant. It is the State and not individual state actors who are defendants in EU courts. The subjection of the State to the jurisdiction of the EU courts flows automatically from membership of the EU.
• In a jurisprudential, Hohfeldian analysis, the concepts of legal right and legal duty are co-relatives of each other. If a state has legal duties under international law, then someone must have a corresponding legal right against the State. Defence counsel confirmed for us that the State of Israel is a signatory to the Genocide Convention. It has never repudiated the Convention. In fact it has its own law on Genocide that it enacted to conduct genocide trials in Israel like the one in the Eichmann We hold that Israel’s voluntary subjection to the Genocide Convention imposes on it enforceable duties that it cannot repudiate by simply refusing to give consent to a proceeding against it on a charge of genocide.
• Like all other areas of law, international law is not static and is evolving to meet the felt necessities of the times. The Tribunal is conscious that the concept of state sovereignty is in decline. In the human rights era in which we are living, state sovereignty is a shield against foreign aggression. It cannot be used as a sword against one’s own nationals or the nationals of another territory. If a sitting head of a sovereign State like the President of Sudan (who personifies the State of Sudan) can be indicted for certain heinous crimes against international law, then it does not make sense to submit that a sovereign state can never be held accountable in international courts without its consent. This will not be in line with modern developments in international law. Witness for example the opinion in the Bosniacase which the Tribunal referred to earlier.
• It was submitted to us that the rationale for excluding the State from prosecution and instead directing the Prosecution at natural persons is that if a State is visited with a verdict of ‘guilty’ that verdict would be onerous to the entire, innocent population of the State. Touching though this argument is, it is not consistent with a large body of international law e.g. the Charter of the United Nations where measures are prescribed which would amount to collective punishment of the entire population. Under Article 41 the Security Council may authorise complete or partial interruption of economic relations. Embargoes that may devastate innocent lives may be imposed. Under Articles 42 and 44, war measures including the use of force may be employed against a nation. Under Article 5, membership of a nation to the General Assembly can be suspended. Under Article 6, a member can be expelled.

A system of law must have coherence. Its different parts must, in the words of the great jurist Ronald Dworkin, have a “fit”. The idea of absolute State immunity from prosecution for grave crimes like genocide appears inconsistent with other wholesome developments in international law. Absolute state immunity is an antiquated doctrine and given the choice between precedents, this Tribunal is inclined to break free of the icy grip of this past dogma.

All these go to show that concerted efforts are taking place on the international scene to move towards a less restrictive State Immunity doctrine. In the words of Lord Denning:

The doctrine of sovereign immunity is based on international law. It is one of the rules of international law that a sovereign state should not be impleaded in the Courts of another sovereign state against its will. Like all rules of international law, this rule is said to arise out of the consensus of the civilised nations of the world. All nations agree upon it. So it is part of the law of nations.

To my mind [so Denning continued], this notion of a consensus is a fiction. The nations are not in the least agreed upon the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The Courts of every country differ in their application of it. Some grant absolute immunity. Others grant limited immunity, with each defining the limits differently. There is no consensus whatever. Yet this does not mean that there is no rule of international law upon the subject.

It only means that we differ as to what that rule is. Each country delimits for itself the bounds of sovereign immunity. Each creates for itself the exceptions from it. It is, I think, for the Courts of this country to define the rule as best they can, seeking guidance from the decisions of the Courts of other countries, from the jurists who have studied the problem, from treaties and conventions and, above all, defining the rule in terms which are consonant with justice rather than adverse to it[43].

Inequitable Enforcement of International Law

Another reason why the Tribunal wishes to reject the doctrine of absolute state immunity from prosecution in matters of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is that the existing international law on war and peace and humanitarianism is being enforced in a grossly inequitable manner. Small, weak nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, are periodically subjected to devastating sanctions, military interventions and regime changes. At the same time, unbearable atrocities and brutalities that are inflicted on the militarily weak nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia by powerful nations in the North Atlantic and their allies go unscrutinised and unpunished.

We take note that the Israeli perpetrators of Sabra and Shatila were never punished and instead rewarded. We took note of the Jerusalem Poststory of Nov. 22, 2013. On January 4, 2009, 100 members of the al-Samouni family huddled inside a house. In the morning mist, an Israeli airstrike killed 21 people inside. Yet last week the Military Advocate General of the IDF informed B’Tselem (human rights group in Israel) that he had decided to close the investigation into this incident without taking any measures.

In the light of this reality that horrendous wrongs go unpunished and instead the victim is demonised and brutalised, we feel that it is time for the legal world to bring some juristic balance to our exposition of state immunity and international rights and wrongs and to expose the truth. This is what the Charter requires us to do.

What Amounts To Genocide? 

Simply put, genocide means any designated acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The definition of genocide as given in Article 2 of the Tribunal’s Statute is taken verbatim from Articles 2 & 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which states that the following acts may by themselves or cumulatively constitute the international crime of genocide:

1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

No significant evidence was introduced by the Prosecution Team in relation to acts (d) & (e) above, but we heard 11 witnesses and examined thousands of pages of documents relating to acts (a)-(c). The Prosecution repeatedly used the words “ethnic cleansing” and the tribunal regards ethnic cleansing as part of acts (a) to (c) above.

Actus Reus

The central issue before us was whether genocidal acts took place contrary to Article 2 of the Convention (Part 1, Article 10 of the Charter).

The Tribunal heard 11 witnesses and examined documentary evidence that clearly indicated a long catalogue of incredible crimes conceived as long ago as 1945 and continuing till the present. What is significant is that these are not isolated acts in the heat of the moment but repeated pattern of atrocities committed against the inhabitants of Palestine.

• Forcible expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
• Massacres of those who refused to abandon the land of their birth.
• Repeated, periodic and massive killings through air and naval strikes using the most sophisticated weaponry over the last 65 years.
• Brutal assaults on many refugee camps as for example in Sabra and Shatila. Israel’s military action in Sabra and Shatila was condemned by no other than the 1983 Israeli Kahan Report. The report found Brigadier General Yaron to be complicit in the atrocities and massacres committed by the Lebanese Phalangists. As Brigadier General Yaron was a commanding officer of the Israeli Armed Force, his culpability has to be attributed to the State of Israel. The IDF sealed the camps and prevented any Palestinians from leaving. It allowed the Phalangist militias to enter the camp and to commit mass murders. The Kahan Report notes (Prosecution document volume 3, page 291) that Brigadier General Yaron had no reservations about admitting the Phalangists into the camps; he testified that he was happy with his decision and explained his position in that “We have been fighting here for four months already, and there is a place where they can take part in the fighting, the fighting serves their purposes as well, so let them participate and not let the IDF do everything”. Credible witnesses testified to us that women and children were shot in their homes; pregnant mothers were killed and their babies extruded from the womb. Among the witnesses the Tribunal heard was the internationally respected medical doctor, Dr. Ang Swee Chai who testified to the magnitude of the atrocities and the fatalities that she witnessed first hand.
• Periodic seizure of Palestinian lands and farms and conversion of them into Israeli settlements.
• Building of a 190km long wall/fence which has been condemned by the ICJ (but whose construction has been rationalised by 2 Israeli Supreme Court decisions).
• Apartheid like conditions of affluence in the illegal settlements and extreme depravation in the Palestinian ghettos. Some roads are for the Jewish population only.
• Use of white phosphorus which tears out the insides of human bodies on the civilian population.
• Detention without trial and ill treatment of prisoners.
• Torture.
• Denial of adequate food, stealing of water resources, supply of inadequate quantum of water, and building materials.
• Land and sea blockades of Palestinian areas, especially in Gaza.
• Use of excessive force on Palestinian combatants armed with crude weapons and in some cases against children throwing stones.
• Siege and imprisonment of an entire nation.
• Daily humiliations at hundreds of checkpoints on Palestinian territory and impossible conditions of life.

The Tribunal heard moving testimony from credible witnesses that what has happened to them has happened to thousands of their brethren.

The Tribunal also took note that many of the above atrocities committed by Israel over the last 67 years were, now and then, condemned by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and other international organisations.

Chief Counsel for the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team presented to us an ingenious argument that there is no genocide in Palestine because the population of the Palestinians is continuing to grow. Unless there is a significant decrease in population, there can be no genocide he asserted. The Tribunal finds this submission totally insensitive and inhuman. It is internationally documented that nearly 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their home to lead nomadic and deprived lives in neighbouring lands where they are not generally welcomed. The fact that the remaining population of Palestine after the ethnic cleansing in the mid 1940s continues to show modest growth has not disproved the existence of periodic killings, humiliation, and dehumanisation.

In determining whether genocide has been committed, one cannot play a game of numbers. Even if one person is killed on account of his race, ethnicity or religion with intention to kill others for the same reason, that is genocide.

It is impossible for the members of the Tribunal to disregard clear cut evidence of brutalisation, demonisation and dehumanisation of an entire population. It is incredible that in an age of human rights, such atrocities can continue to rage for more than 6 decades and that there are people in nations who trivialise such inhumanity. The Tribunal unanimously holds that the acts committed against the Palestinians amount to genocide over the last 67 years.

The Tribunal must however clarify that it takes note of the violations of international humanitarian law by some members of the Palestinian community. Their prosecution and guilt is a separate matter.

Was There Mens Rea?

As the Tribunal has stated earlier, the Tribunal heard 11 witnesses and examined documentary evidence that clearly indicated a long catalogue of incredible crimes conceived as long ago as 1945 and continuing till the present. What is significant is that these are not isolated acts in the heat of the moment but repeated pattern of atrocities committed against the dispossessed inhabitants of Palestine.

What is also significant is that the above culpable acts are systematically directed against the same group and by the same offender over the last 67 years. The scale of atrocities committed and their general nature indicate a clear genocidal intention.

Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia stated that the specific intent of the crime of genocide “… may be inferred from a number of facts such as the general political doctrine which gave rise to the acts possibly covered by the definition in Article IV or the repetition of destructive and discriminatory acts”. The Tribunal accepts evidence from various internationally respected social scientists among them Prof Ilan Pappe and John Pilger and Prof Noam Chomsky that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a world historic tragedy that is the result of deliberate State policies of succeeding governments of Israel since 1948.

The Tribunal wishes to state that the test that it employed in determining guilt was the test of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Was it a case of Self-Defence?

The Tribunal heard significant evidence from the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team that Israeli actions of bombing, killing, maiming, other military interventions, curfews, checkpoints and “apartheid walls” were in response to continuous Palestinian terrorism.

The Tribunal agrees that there is cogent evidence of Palestinian resistance to Israeli presence, incidences of suicide bombing, and firing of crude rockets into Israeli territory by Palestinian fighters. However it is our finding that much of the Palestinian generated violence is not on Israel’s own territory, but from and on Israeli occupied Palestinian land. Much of the violence perpetrated by Palestinians is a reaction to the brutalities of the vicious racism, brutalities and genocide that is a tragic feature of Palestinian life.

Much as we condemn violence and pray for peace, it must be stated that no power on earth can douse the flame of freedom from the human spirit. As long as there is suppression, there will always be people prepared to die on their feet than to live on their knees.

We also hold that the force employed by IDF is excessive, totally disproportionate and a violation of international humanitarian law. The methods used are unspeakably inhumane and amount to war crimes.

We unanimously find the State of Israel guilty as charged.

9. Verdict

After considering the evidence adduced by the Prosecution and submissions by both the Prosecution and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team on behalf of the two Defendants, the Tribunal is satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the First Defendant, Amos Yaron, is guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide and the Second Defendant, the State of Israel is guilty of Genocide.

10. Orders

10.1   The Tribunal orders that reparations commensurate with the irreparable harm and injury, pain and suffering undergone by the Complainant War Crime Victims be paid to them. While it is constantly mindful of its stature as merely a tribunal of conscience with no real power of enforcement, this Tribunal finds that the witnesses in this case are entitled ex justitiato the payment of reparations by the two convicted parties. It is the Tribunal’s hope that armed with the Findings of this Tribunal, the witnesses (victims in this case) will, in the near future, find a state or an international judicial entity able and willing to exercise jurisdiction and to enforce the verdict of this Tribunal against the two convicted parties. The Tribunal’s award of reparations shall be submitted to the War Crimes Commission to facilitate the determination and collection of reparations by the Complainant War Crime Victims.

10.2   International Criminal Court and the United Nations, Security Council– As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. We have no power of enforcement. What we can do, under Article 34 of Chapter VIII of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, WHICH WE HEREBY DO, to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

10.3   Commission’s Register of War Criminals – Further, under Article 35 of the same Chapter, this Tribunal recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of the two convicted parties herein be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicised accordingly.

10.4   The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

10.5   The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations. It urges the Commission to use all means to publicise this judgement and in particular with respect to the Parliaments and Legislative Assemblies of the major powers such as members of the G8 and to urge these countries to intervene and put an end to the colonialist and racist policies of the State of Israel and its supporters.

11. Conclusion

Having delivered its verdict and consequential orders, this Tribunal wishes to place on record its deep appreciation to both the Prosecution and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Teams for their efforts in ensuring that this resumed Hearing was able to be conducted in the best tradition of any Bar.

The Tribunal commends Co-Prosecutors Prof Gurdial Singh Nijar and Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman and the other members of their team for their thorough preparation of their case.

The Tribunal also commends every single member of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for accepting their difficult assignment as friends of the court and for giving their all beyond their call of duty in the name of justice and fair play for their absent Defendants. Mr Jason Kay, Ms. Larissa Jane Cadd and Dr. Matthew Witbrodt, all of whom had addressed the Tribunal during the Hearing, meticulously presented the case for the Defendants with extraordinary fidelity even though none of them had met or had been instructed by the Defendants.

Finally, the Tribunal extends its thanks to members of the Malaysian public and other benefactors who had generously contributed to the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War in financing the holding of this adjourned Hearing.

*

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Notes

[1] The Kahan Report, Ariel Charon and the Sabra and Shatila Massacres in Lebanon : Responsablity Under International Criminal Law for Massacres of Civilian Populations, Linda A Malone, Utah Law Review, 373, herein after Malone

[2] Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, herein after the Kahan Report. February 8, 1983, p.2

[3] Kahan Report. p. 16, Malone p. 402.

[4] Malone p. 381, Kahan Report p. 7.

[5] Malone p. 372, Kahan Report. P. 7

[6] Malone p. 382-383, Kahan Report p. 8

[7] Malone p. 383, Kahan Report. P. 12

[8] Malone p. 386

[9] Malone p. 432

[10] Malone pp. 387-388

[11] The Sabra and Shatila Massacre : Eye-Witness Reports, Leila Shahid, Journal of Palestinian studies.Vol 32.     No. 1. p. 36 at p. 43

[12] cited in Shahid at p. 43

[13] Shahid. P. 44

[14] Malone p. 388

[15] Kahan Commission p. 81.

[16] Malone p. 392

[17] Malone page 384-385

[18] Malone page 384-385

[19] Malone pa. 385, fn 52

[20] Shahid, p. 44

[21] Shahid, pp. 40-41

[22] KLWCT Charter article 2, subsection (i)

[23] As adopted in Article 10 of the KLWCT Charter.

[24] Akayesu Trial Judgement, ICTR, para 560

[25] Krstic, ICTY, Appellate Judgment, 19 April 2004, para. 41

[26] Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I.C. J. Decision of 26 February 2007 para. 179

[27] Prosecutor V. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković, Case No. It-96-23& It-96-23/1-A, Judgement, 12 June 2002

[28] Blockburger vUnited States, 284 U.S. 299, 304 (1931) (“The applicable rule is that, where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one is whether each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.”).

[29] ^elebi}iAppeal Judgement, paras 412-13. Hereinafter referred to as the ^elebići test.

[30] Bagosora and Nsengiyumva ICTR, Appeal Judgement, para. 394; Rukundo Appeal Judgement, para. 185, citing Ntakirutimana Appeal Judgement, para. 516.

[31] Bagosora and Nsengiyumva ICTR Appeal Judgement, para. 394; Rukundo Appeal Judgement, para. 185, citingNtakirutimana Appeal Judgement, para. 516.

[32] Brđanin Appeal Judgement, ICTY para. 476; StakićAppeal Judgement, paras. 259-260; GacumbitsiAppeal Judgement, para. 86; NtakirutimanaAppeal Judgement, para. 522.

[33] The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 11 U.S. 116, 136 (1812);

[34] Mighell v. Sultan of Johore(1894), 1Q149;

[35] The Porto Alexandre Case(1920);

[36] Duff Development Co. v. Kelantan Government924] A. C. 797

[37] The Cristina Case(1938) AC 485

[38] Commonwealth Of Australia V Midford (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd & Anor [1990] 1 MLJ 475

[39] http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/143/16883.pdf

[40] M. Bassiouni, ‘International Crimes: Jus Cogens and Obligatio Erga Omnes’(1996) Law and Contemporary Problems 58(4), p.68

[41] [1976] 2 WLR 214

[42] The Convention was open for signature by all States until 17 January 2007 and would have entered into force on the thirtieth day following the date of deposit of the thirtieth instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession. As of 7 May 2013, there are 28 signatories to the Convention and 13 instruments of ratification have been deposited. (According to its Article 30, the Convention requires 30 state parties in order to come into force.)

[43] Trendtex Trading Corporation Ltd v. Central Bank of Nigeria,(at p. 888)

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If you were wondering why or how the mainstream media coverage of what is taking place in Gaza is so slanted as to make it look like a real war between two well-armed and competitive adversaries instead of a massacre of civilians, wonder no longer! A leak has exposed a New York Times internal document that provides editorial guidance about words that should not be used in any article relating to Gaza or to Palestine. They include “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “occupied territory,” and even “Palestine” itself. The intent is clearly to eliminate any words with negative connotations what might be applied in some fashion to Israel and to what Israel is doing, even going so far as to not include any suggestion that Palestine itself might be considered a legitimate political entity. At the same time the media is letting be heard arguments that Israelis killing Palestinians is justified as they are all “terrorists,” even the little ones who will grow up to become enemies of Israel and Jews worldwide.

To a large extent, it is the Zionists themselves that created the need to censor the language being used to describe developments between Israel and its neighbors and that is because Israel, which de facto and illegally occupies all of historic Palestine, made itself de jure “the nation state of the Jewish people” back in 2018 in spite of its Christian and Muslim citizens which, at the time, amounted to something like 20% of the population. To put it simply, a Jewish state cannot also be a democracy for all of its citizens any more than the US can be a Christian state, so it is necessary to divert attention away from that paradox. And there are other degrees of unpleasantness that spring from that necessity, including the fact that devout Jewish believers actually do follow the ten commandments, including “Thou shall not kill!” while Israel has been doing nothing but killing since its foundation as well as plenty of violations of “Thou shall not steal” and “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor!” So instead of behaving better and trying to live peaceably with its neighbors, the “Jewish state” opted instead to cultivate a partly mythical saga of victimhood referred to as the “Holocaust” and to label all of its lethal overreactions as legitimate “right to defend itself” responses.

This in turn has spawned another line of defense, what has become the virtual industry which might be referred as the pursuit of “antisemitism.” And to make it really dangerous for the average American citizens who still believe that it is possible to criticize the behavior of foreign countries, the chant of “antisemitism” has been picked up wholeheartedly by the politicians and it is being turned into laws particularly at state levels to punish people who attempt to criticize Israel. National level politicians in Congress are also submitting draft laws that would apply similar restraints throughout the country so it will inevitably be goodbye the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.

The current unrest of pro-Palestinian “encampments” and “liberated zones” at 33 college campuses in the US protesting against what is clearly a genocide taking place in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire and a halt to institutional investment in Israel as well as a suspension of ties to Israeli government educational bodies. The movement is, as a consequence, being assiduously labeled a manifestation of “antisemitism” by Congress, by Joe Biden in the White House and by nearly all of the mainstream media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responding to the unrest, is saying, inevitably, that “antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities” similar to Nazi rallies in the 1930s and he called for a major security crackdown on the demonstrators. And it should be observed how the reaction by the universities has been fairly consistent, i.e. to shut down Palestinians groups or speakers on campus while leaving Jewish groups supporting Israel’s actions alone, indicating clearly that this has not been an even-handed response to political unrest.

The House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has made his pro-Israel sentiments very clear, spoke at Columbia University, where the movement began, on Wednesday and dismissed suggestions that the protests were legally protected free speech. He was addressing what he thought were “Jewish students” but was nevertheless heckled by demonstrators as he said the university must restore order on campus and had “failed to protect Jewish students amid concerns about antisemitism on and around campus. This is dangerous. We respect free speech, we respect diversity of ideas, but there is a way to do that in a lawful manner and that’s not what this is.”

Speaking of the Columbia University administration, Johnson asked plaintively whether

“They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They’re expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It’s just, it’s maddening.”

If the Speaker had done a little more investigating he would have learned that nearly all alleged instances of “antisemitism” on campus have been greatly exaggerated by organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose Director Jonathan Greenblatt has been a prime rabble rouser in calling for criminal charges against all those he accuses of “hating Jews.” Neither Greenblatt nor Johnson, himself a Christian Zionist, is evidently troubled at all by the fact that Israel has slaughtered likely well upwards of 40,000 unarmed civilians, including many children. It is a death toll that includes the torture and killing of prisoners execution style, mass graves of victims and the deliberate destruction of hospitals, schools and churches. It even encompasses the removal of organs from captives and cadavers for transplant, for which product Israel has a well-known and highly developed international clientele. But such details are regarded as unproven or even as an irrelevancy to Greenblatt and Johnson, as is the reality that many American Jews possessing consciences are participating in the demonstrations. They presumably will soon be labeled as “self-hating Jews” to make the approved narrative complete.

It is difficult to ignore what a monster Israel has become under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs. When Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir responded to reports that Israel has run out of jail room for its circa 10,000 Palestinian prisoners by saying the solution was to take some of them out and kill them to make more room, there was no response from Washington. Perhaps a better solution would be to free the majority of those prisoners, who are being detained without charges, since imprisoning people without due process is considered to be unacceptable in most “rule of law” civilized countries, which Israel and Joe Biden’s US consider themselves to be but manifestly are not.

So, I welcome the student rebellion against Israeli atrocities even though they have already been confronting a massive wave of oppression from the school authorities and even from alumni who are withholding donations and also forming groups that will advise prospective employers of the names of students who are regarded as anti-Israel, presumably denying them employment after graduation. The universities themselves are engaging in suspension or expulsion of the protesters, including an email sent by Princeton University to all students on Wednesday threatening that students participating in Pro-Palestinian protests like those at Columbia, Yale and other universities would be subject to “arrest and being immediately barred” from campus followed by expulsion. Meanwhile the civil authorities will be called upon to continue to arrest protesters, when necessary, using both police and the National Guard resources. It all recalls the shooting of nonviolent student demonstrators at Kent State University 54 years ago! Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a major recipient of Israel Lobby money, is advocating that demonstrators, whom he describes as “pro-Hamas criminals,” be confronted by angry citizens who ought to “take matters into [their] own hands” and directly punish the offenders.

May 4th will be the 54th anniversary of the government cops killing 4 students at Ohio's Kent state University for protesting our killing squads in Vietnam (My Lai massacre). pic.twitter.com/bgBEranvDT

— Shelley P. 🍉🔻🔻🔻 (@shelleyofthe) April 24, 2024

And meanwhile the government of this fair country, which has become the full-time defender of Israel, will be bleating in unison that the demonstrators are “antisemites” and even Hamas-aligned “terrorists,” demeaning them to such an extent that anything done to them will be considered okay by the media and opinion makers. There will not be a critical word uttered about what Israel is doing apart from vague Biden-esque appeals to take some “humanitarian” steps to kill less, which are routinely ignored by Netanyahu.

On the contrary, Congress and Biden are rewarding Israel for its behavior with their recent foreign aid grant of $26 billion to rearm the Jewish state, which an in-debt Washington can no longer afford even though Biden claims that the gift will “make the world safer” and be remembered as a “good day for world peace.” Ironically, part of the money is intended for “humanitarian aid” which might suggest something for the Palestinians, but as the US refuses to deal with the UN assistance agency (UNRWA) and most certainly will not work with what remains of existing formerly Hamas government in Gaza, Israel will no doubt limit and control the aid, just as it is doing now, before pocketing all of the leftover cash. How Israel treats the United States as a chattel, a source of money, weapons and unlimited political cover without providing anything at all in return apart from constant unrest and complicity in crimes against humanity is what the real tale should be all about. One can only hope that the courage of the students who have begun some pushback with their encampment at Columbia will produce some understanding among the American public of how uncritical deference to Israeli “needs” and interests has seriously corrupted the United States and might well lead to the brink of ruin for both countries.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

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Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.

She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.

She wonders where she will spend the night.

The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.

“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”

Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students —  many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.

Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.   

Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.  

Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.

The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists. 

As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”

The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

But if the students again attempt to erect tents – they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning – it seems certain they will all be arrested.

“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”

Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.

“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”

These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.

Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”

“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”

She starts to cry.

A few minutes after 7 a.m, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline “Princeton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.” The leaflet stated that the students were “engaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and/or disrupting a University event.” The leaflet said those who engaged in the “prohibited conduct” would be considered a “Defiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.”

A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say “Get those two.”

Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.

“There was an initial warning from cops about ‘You are trespassing’ or something like that, ‘This is your first warning,’” Sayed says. “It was kind of loud. I didn’t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said ‘You are resisting arrest if you do that.’ They put the handcuffs on.”

He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.

“No mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,” he says. “I get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.”

Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university’s police station.

Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.

 He was again told he was banned from the campus.

“Is this an eviction?” he asked the campus police.

The police did not answer.

He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.

“They may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don’t remember clearly,” he says. “It certainly was not made salient to me.”

He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with “defiant trespassing.”

“I say, ‘I’m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,’” he says. “They really don’t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, ‘ban from campus.’ I said something like that doesn’t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I’m like, ‘Who is writing the letter?’ ‘Dean of grad school’ they respond.”

Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.

Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was “sobering.”

“The disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “It was always very bizarre to me. I think that’s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.” 

She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.

“I gotta find somewhere to sleep,” she says, “tell my parents, but that’s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can’t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.”

There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. 

The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes. 

History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.

*

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

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[First published on April 12, 2024]

This incisive article by Michael Carmichael first published on January 15, 2007 provides a historical focus on Israel’s nuclear weapons program. 

***

In 1986, an Israeli civil servant who worked in the state-owned nuclear industry flew to London where he was invited to meet with reporters working for The Sunday Times.

In these press briefings, Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s top secret – the Israelis had gained control of a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads.

In the weeks immediately following these explosive revelations, Mr Vanunu visited Rome where Israeli espionage agents abducted him and forced his return to Israel. Back in Tel Aviv, Mr Vanunu was placed on trial for treason. Tried before a secret tribunal, Mr. Vanunu’s conviction was a foregone conclusion, and he served an eighteen-year prison sentence with eleven of those years in solitary confinement.

Released in 2004, Mr Vanunu was placed under orders prohibiting him from travel to other nations where he has been offered academic posts.

Mr Vanunu is now living in the sanctuary of a Christian Church in Israel, but this refuge has not stopped his political persecution by the government of Israel. Since his release, Mr Vanunu has been arrested four times, and he is now facing 21 charges of contravening a lawful direction, a charge that carries a penalty of two years in prison for each count (ie. 42 years).

The European Parliament condemned the state of Israel’s persecution of Mr. Vanunu. Amnesty International published a report charging that Israel’s treatment of Mr. Vanunu was, “cruel, inhuman and degrading . . . such as is prohibited by international law.”

Since his exposé of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, Mr. Vanunu has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a total of seventeen times.

Even though Joseph Rotblat placed Mr. Vanunu’s name in nomination, Vanunu’s Nobel nominations have always faced systematic opposition organized by friends and supporters of the state of Israel who wield immense influence in the Nobel deliberations.

In 1987, Mr. Vanunu received the alternative Nobel Peace Prize (ie. the Right Livelihood Award). In 2005, he was awarded the Peace Prize of the Norwegian people and an honorary doctorate from the prestigious University of Tromso.

The state of Israel has consistently blocked Mr. Vanunu’s taking up his academic post as a Lecturer in history at the University of Glasgow. The Israeli government prohibits Mr. Vanunu from traveling beyond their borders apparently for fear that he will hold press briefings about their now well-known arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Expert opinions vary but some now rank Israel third or fourth behind only the USA, Russia and possibly France in holding the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

In addition to the nuclear devices themselves, Israel has a formidable arsenal of delivery systems. Israel’s Shavit rocket has been used to launch satellites into orbit, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the Shavit could be converted to an ICBM with a range of 7,000 miles allowing an Israeli nuclear strike anywhere in the Middle East as well as eastern and western Europe and Central Asia. Additionally, Israel now has a fleet of Dolphin class submarines armed with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that Israel may have developed nuclear artillery shells as well as nuclear land-mines that could be deployed in the Golan Heights to discourage Syrian designs on the region.

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Video on Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Facility

English subtitles

 

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Even though the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is now a well-established fact, the state of Israel has consistently refused to confirm its nuclear status. Furthermore, Israel refuses to become a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel’s adamant nuclear insularity and denials have created tensions – not only in the Middle East – but globally.

America’s acquiescence to the Israeli nuclear arsenal may have encouraged India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other states now known to be capable of developing nuclear capabilities. For instance, in 2003, leading members of the government of Saudi Arabia announced that due to worsening relations with the United States they were considering the development of nuclear weapons. The worsening relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States are predicated upon the policies of Israel: its rogue nuclear arsenal and its harsh treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Some reports indicate that India has secretly provided Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons.

In the early 1990s, one of America’s premiere journalists, Seymour Hersh, published a best-selling book, The Samson Option, detailing Mr Vanunu’s testimony. Hersh’s book contained a great deal of new information about Israel’s vaunted nuclear defense capability.

Since 1986, the overwhelming majority of the global population has known about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, but many Americans remain completely unaware of the existence of hundreds of nuclear warheads under the direct control of the Israeli defense establishment. In the mid-1990s, Michael Moore – a person who is not known for his conservatism nor for his reflexive support for the policies of the state of Israel – made disparaging remarks during an interview that touched on the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Moore made this gaffe because – even though he is usually well-informed – it was obvious that he was oblivious to either Mordechai Vanunu’s testimony or Mr Hersh’s bestselling book.

In the reports linked below, The Sunday Times have now revealed new evidence that Israel is currently [early 2007] planning to launch a nuclear attack against Iran.

Aimed at destroying the embryonic Iranian nuclear industry, the Israeli missiles armed with nuclear warheads will be delivered via conventional jet fighters. The Sunday Times reported that Israeli jet pilots are already undergoing advanced training to fire the nuclear warheads at targets in Iran – – in a tactical replay of their attack that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1982.
 In The Sunday Times coverage, no reference was made to the possibility of a nuclear strike from Israeli submarines that have been equipped with cruise missiles that could be armed with nuclear warheads. Military experts have been reporting the presence of Israel’s Dolphin class submarines in the Persian Gulf for the past two years ostensibly to support US naval operations in case Iran attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz.

Two years ago, Seymour Hersh began publishing a series of papers in The New Yorker detailing a vast planning project in Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to attack and wage war on Iran. In the interim, many other authors have now reported details of the highly publicized policy of the Bush-Cheney White House to use military force to compel Iran to abandon any ambitions she might have to develop nuclear weapons. These American military options involve the use of nuclear weapons sometimes called bunker busters that are designed for striking deeply embedded underground locations such as Iran’s nuclear laboratories.

It is worthy of note that Elizabeth Cheney, the eldest daughter of Vice President Richard Cheney, is the US government official at the State Department responsible for a budget of circa $100 million per year to encourage “democracy” inside Iran – ie. covert operations designed to construct a fifth column inside Iranian society that is hostile to the existing government.

From a lengthening series of reports, it is now clear that the Bush-Cheney administration has been severely weakened by the recent midterm elections, and they apparently no longer feel capable of launching a direct nuclear strike against Iran using American forces, American weapons and America’s formidable nuclear arsenal. In negotiations that took place in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George Bush – as well as in the highly publicized negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia – it would now appear that the joint planning to strike Iran has altered only slightly from the grandiose schemes originally designed by Donald Rumsfeld prior to his abrupt retirement on the day after the midterm elections last year.

According to The Sunday Times, there has been a slight re-calibration of the plans for the war against Iran. Rather than a direct American nuclear strike against Iran’s hard targets, Israel has been given the assignment of launching a coordinated cluster of nuclear strikes aimed at targets that are the nuclear installations in the Iranian cities: Natanz, Isfahan and Arak.

What remains to be seen is whether the American media – now ranked 53rd on the International Press Freedom Index – will cover the story, and whether the American people will be informed of the intimate collaboration between the Bush-Cheney White House, the Olmert government in Israel and other governments now known to be involved in the military planning to contain Iran’s still nascent nuclear development.

Following The Sunday Times’ detailed coverage of Israeli’s plans to launch a nuclear strike against Iran, the government of Israel issued an unconvincing denial. One Israeli official made an ambiguous statement when he said that the story could have been leaked intentionally in order to prevent the nation of Israel from doing something, “crazy.” When Israeli government officials offer praise – even in this odd manner – it is time to take note that a political realignment may be taking place in Tel Aviv.

In America, there is no doubt whatsoever that a major political realignment has already taken place. The American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and its cheerleaders are concerned that the trend to criticize Israel is now intensifying both on the left and in the center of the political spectrum in the US. The government of Israel’s support for the disasters brought about by the neoconservative ideology has triggered an American political backlash in the wake of years of disappointment over the war in Iraq – a war that was to have been the crowning achievement of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid is now standing high on the bestseller lists even though he has faced a firestorm of protest from the Israel-Firsters led by Abraham Foxman, the formidable propagandist of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Against this rapidly shifting backdrop, American politicians of both parties – and from all parts of the political spectrum: left, right and center – are now openly expressing their opposition to the war in Iraq. That said, relatively few members of Congress have taken any position on the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld plans for war with Iran.

Last week, the new Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) challenged Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, about her inflammatory remarks threatening a military intervention to confront what she termed Iran’s “aggression.” In striking terms, Senator Biden warned Secretary Rice that Congress would not tolerate any US military attack across the Iraq-Iran border. Senator Biden arrested Secretary Rice with his promise of a “constitutional confrontation” between Congress and the White House if President Bush orders US forces to cross the border. Currently the most outspoken opponent of America’s plans to wage war on Iran in the US Congress, Senator Biden is an unannounced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

In a parallel development, top-ranking staff at the White House ordered Tony Snow to issue a weak statement designed to allay rising public concerns about expanding the unpopular war into Iran. Snow attempted to pour scorn on what he deemed to be an “urban legend” – that the Bush White House has made plans for war with Iran.

Coming as they did in the aftermath of Condoleezza Rice’s provocative remarks about Iranian “aggression” and the highly publicized seizure of five Iranian officials by US forces in Iraq, Mr. Snow’s attempt to quell the concerns of Americans was underwhelming, unconvincing and little more than a transparent attempt to disinform the public. The appointment of Mr. Snow, a former personality from Fox News, was, perhaps, one of the worst of many questionable decisions made by a White House besieged on so many fronts.

During his confirmation hearings last month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates responded to a question about potential US military intervention against Iran. Mr. Gates stated that such an attack could have, “devastating consequences,” for America and her friends in the region.

Mr. Gates was right. The reality is stark. If Israel attacks Iran, she will be playing Russian roulette on a grand scale. The retaliation from a broad spectrum of nations and multinational militias in the Middle East could bring about a concerted series of devastating hard power attacks against both Israeli and American forces arrayed in a dense cluster from Iraq to Kuwait, Qatar and the Persian Gulf.

During his recent appearance at the Oxford Union, Avi Shlaim, one of the premiere historians of Israel, said,

“There was never any special relationship between America and Britain. Whenever Bush was confronted with the choice of pleasing Blair or Sharon, he always sided with Sharon. The real special relationship is between America and Israel.”

There is an old adage in politics: It’s never your enemies who get you into trouble: it’s your friends.

(Mordechai Vanunu in Israel)

Michael Carmichael is Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, The Planetary Movement, Oxford, UK and a frequent contributor to Global Research

References

Mordechai Vanunu

The Mordechai Vanunu website

Free Mordechai Vanunu

Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran

An unholy alliance threatening catastrophe

Israel will do whatever it takes

Ellsberg warns Bush & Cheney contemplating ‘gravest crime against humanity’

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists / Israeli nuclear forces, 2002

List of states with nuclear weapons

THE COMING WARS

THE IRAN PLANS

Israel Denies It Has Nuclear Strike Plans – Newspaper Report Claims Israeli Pilots Are Training For Nuke Hit On Iran

Tensions rise as Washington accuses Iran over militias

Rice: U.S. aims to curb Iran aggression

US seeks to banish Iran war ‘rumor’

US: No immediate plans to attack Iran

Next target Tehran – All the signs are that Bush is planning for a neocon-inspired military assault on Iran

Israel, US camouflage Iran attack plan

First published by Washington’s Blog and Global Research in February 2015

The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth

In 2011, Danios wrote:

 Below, I have reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which reveals something quite interesting: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence.  In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.

To put this in perspective:

* Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.

* No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president.  Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.”

* The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.

* The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

*  *  *

 

Year-by-year Timeline of America’s Major Wars (1776-2011)

1776 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamagua Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War

1777 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War

1778 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1779 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1780 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1781 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1782 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1783 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War

1784 – Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War, Oconee War

1785 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1786 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1787 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1788 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1789 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1790 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1791 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1792 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1793 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1794 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War

1795 – Northwest Indian War

1796 – No major war

1797 – No major war

1798 – Quasi-War

1799 – Quasi-War

1800 – Quasi-War

1801 – First Barbary War

1802 – First Barbary War

1803 – First Barbary War

1804 – First Barbary War

1805 – First Barbary War

1806 – Sabine Expedition

1807 – No major war

1808 – No major war

1809 – No major war

1810 – U.S. occupies Spanish-held West Florida

1811 – Tecumseh’s War

1812 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Seminole Wars, U.S. occupies Spanish-held Amelia Island and other parts of East Florida

1813 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Peoria War, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in West Florida

1814 – War of 1812, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in Florida, Anti-piracy war

1815 – War of 1812, Second Barbary War, Anti-piracy war

1816 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war

1817 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war

1818 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war

1819 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war

1820 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war

1821 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)

1822 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)

1823 – Anti-piracy war, Arikara War

1824 – Anti-piracy war

1825 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war

1826 – No major war

1827 – Winnebago War

1828 – No major war

1829 – No major war

1830 – No major war 

1831 – Sac and Fox Indian War

1832 – Black Hawk War

1833 – Cherokee Indian War

1834 – Cherokee Indian War, Pawnee Indian Territory Campaign

1835 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War

1836 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Missouri-Iowa Border War

1837 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Osage Indian War, Buckshot War

1838 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Buckshot War, Heatherly Indian War

1839 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars

1840 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade Fiji Islands

1841 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade McKean Island, Gilbert Islands, and Samoa

1842 – Seminole Wars

1843 – U.S. forces clash with Chinese, U.S. troops invade African coast

1844 – Texas-Indian Wars

1845 – Texas-Indian Wars

1846 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars

1847 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars

1848 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War

1849 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians

1850 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, California Indian Wars, Pitt River Expedition

1851 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars

1852 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars

1853 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, Walker War, California Indian Wars

1854 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians

1855 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Yakima War, Winnas Expedition, Klickitat War, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay

1856 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, Tintic War

1857 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Utah War, Conflict in Nicaragua

1858 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Mohave War, California Indian Wars, Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-Paloos War, Utah War, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay

1859 Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Pecos Expedition, Antelope Hills Expedition, Bear River Expedition, John Brown’s raid, U.S. forces launch attack against Paraguay, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1860 – Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Paiute War, Kiowa-Comanche War

1861 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign

1862 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Dakota War of 1862,

1863 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Goshute War

1864 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Snake War

1865 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Colorado War, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War

1866 – Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Franklin County War, U.S. invades Mexico, Conflict with China

1867 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua and attack Taiwan

1868 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Battle of Washita River, Franklin County War

1869 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War

1870 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War

1871 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, Kingsley Cave Massacre, U.S. forces invade Korea

1872 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Franklin County War

1873 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Apache Wars, Cypress Hills Massacre, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1874 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Red River War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1875 – Conflict in Mexico, Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Eastern Nevada, Mason County War, Colfax County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1876 – Texas-Indian Wars, Black Hills War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1877 – Texas-Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Black Hills War, Nez Perce War, Mason County War, Lincoln County War, San Elizario Salt War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1878 – Paiute Indian conflict, Bannock War, Cheyenne War, Lincoln County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1879 – Cheyenne War, Sheepeater Indian War, White River War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1880 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1881 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1882 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1883 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1884 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1885 – Apache Wars, Eastern Nevada Expedition, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1886 – Apache Wars, Pleasant Valley War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1887 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1888 – U.S. show of force against Haiti, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1889 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1890 – Sioux Indian War, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Ghost Dance War, Wounded Knee, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1891 – Sioux Indian War, Ghost Dance War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1892 – Johnson County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico

1893 – U.S. forces invade Mexico and Hawaii

1894 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1895 – U.S. forces invade Mexico, Bannock Indian Disturbances

1896 – U.S. forces invade Mexico

1897 – No major war

1898 – Spanish-American War, Battle of Leech Lake, Chippewa Indian Disturbances

1899 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1900 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1901 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1902 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1903 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1904 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1905 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1906 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1907 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1908 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1909 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1910 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1911 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1912 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars

1913 – Philippine-American War, Banana Wars, New Mexico Navajo War

1914 – Banana Wars, U.S. invades Mexico

1915 – Banana Wars, U.S. invades Mexico, Colorado Paiute War

1916 – Banana Wars, U.S. invades Mexico

1917 – Banana Wars, World War I, U.S. invades Mexico

1918 – Banana Wars, World War I, U.S invades Mexico

1919 – Banana Wars, U.S. invades Mexico

1920 – Banana Wars

1921 – Banana Wars

1922 – Banana Wars

1923 – Banana Wars, Posey War

1924 – Banana Wars

1925 – Banana Wars

1926 – Banana Wars

1927 – Banana Wars

1928 – Banana Wars

1930 – Banana Wars

1931 – Banana Wars

1932 – Banana Wars

1933 – Banana Wars

1934 – Banana Wars

1935 – No major war

1936 – No major war

1937 – No major war

1938 – No major war

1939 – No major war

1940 – No major war

1941 – World War II

1942 – World War II

1943 – Wold War II

1944 – World War II

1945 – World War II

1946 – Cold War (U.S. occupies the Philippines and South Korea)

1947 – Cold War (U.S. occupies South Korea, U.S. forces land in Greece to fight Communists)

1948 – Cold War (U.S. forces aid Chinese Nationalist Party against Communists)

1949 – Cold War (U.S. forces aid Chinese Nationalist Party against Communists)

1950 – Korean War, Jayuga Uprising

1951 – Korean War

1952 – Korean War

1953 – Korean War

1954 – Covert War in Guatemala

1955 – Vietnam War

1956 – Vietnam War

1957 – Vietnam War

1958 – Vietnam War

1959 – Vietnam War, Conflict in Haiti

1960 – Vietam War

1961 – Vietnam War

1962 – Vietnam War, Cold War (Cuban Missile Crisis; U.S. marines fight Communists in Thailand)

1963 – Vietnam War

1964 – Vietnam War

1965 – Vietnam War, U.S. occupation of Dominican Republic

1966 – Vietnam War, U.S. occupation of Dominican Republic

1967 – Vietnam War

1968 – Vietnam War

1969 – Vietnam War

1970 – Vietnam War

1971 – Vietnam War

1972 – Vietnam War

1973 – Vietnam War, U.S. aids Israel in Yom Kippur War

1974 – Vietnam War

1975 – Vietnam War

1976 – No major war

1977 – No major war

1978 – No major war

1979 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan)

1980 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan)

1981 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua), First Gulf of Sidra Incident

1982 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua), Conflict in Lebanon

1983 – Cold War (Invasion of Grenada, CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua), Conflict in Lebanon

1984 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua), Conflict in Persian Gulf

1985 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua)

1986 – Cold War (CIA proxy war in Afghanistan and Nicaragua)

1987 – Conflict in Persian Gulf

1988 – Conflict in Persian Gulf, U.S. occupation of Panama

1989 – Second Gulf of Sidra Incident, U.S. occupation of Panama, Conflict in Philippines

1990 – First Gulf War, U.S. occupation of Panama

1991 – First Gulf War

1992 – Conflict in Iraq

1993 – Conflict in Iraq

1994 – Conflict in Iraq, U.S. invades Haiti

1995 – Conflict in Iraq, U.S. invades Haiti, NATO bombing of Bosnia and Herzegovina

1996 – Conflict in Iraq

1997 – No major war

1998 – Bombing of Iraq, Missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan

1999 – Kosovo War

2000 – No major war

2001 – War on Terror in Afghanistan

2002 – War on Terror in Afghanistan and Yemen

2003 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, and Iraq

2004 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2005 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2006 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2007 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen

2008 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2009 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2010 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

2011 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen; Conflict in Libya (Libyan Civil War)

In most of these wars, the U.S. was on the offense. Danios admits that some of the wars were defensive.   However, Danios also leaves out covert CIA operations and other acts which could be considered war.

Let’s update what’s happened since 2011:

2012 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen

2013 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen

2014 – War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen; Civil War in Ukraine

2015 – War on Terror in Somalia, Somalia, Syria and Yemen; Civil War in Ukraine

So we can add 4 more years of war. That means that for 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. (We can quibble with the exact numbers, but the high percentage of time that America has been at war is clear and unmistakable.)

Indeed, most of the military operations launched since World War II have been launched by the U.S.

And American military spending dwarfs the rest of the world put together.

No wonder polls show that the world believes America is the number 1 threat to peace.

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On April 24, US State Secretary Antony Blinken landed in China and officially started his (hopefully) diplomatic visit. The relationship between the two countries has worsened significantly. Beijing’s peaceful overtures have been met with nothing but hostility in Washington DC. The United States is simply terrified of the prospect that China will overtake it. However, this has already happened in many ways.

When not murdering millions around the world, America is still trying to figure out whether public toilets should be “mixed-gender”, while China is busy building not just itself, but the world, too.

Most of the planet is perfectly aware of this disparity and is making it clear that cooperation with Beijing is a matter of choice, while having anything to do with Washington DC mostly boils down to coercion, as the political elites there are simply incapable of conducting “diplomacy” without resorting to arm-twisting.

Blinken is going to China precisely with such bearing, pompously announcing that he “arrives with a warning that the US and its European allies are no longer prepared to tolerate China’s sale of weapon components and dual-use products to Russia”. The political West insists that this is “helping Vladimir Putin rebuild and modernize his arms factories, enabling him to intensify his onslaught on Ukraine”. Caught in the web of its own endless stream of lies, the belligerent power pole is trying to blame anyone but itself. However, this is all futile, particularly when it comes to superpowers such as China. Beijing will certainly decide whether or not to do business with someone and the political West has no say in it whatsoever. Blinken will have three days to relay the US position and if that time will be used to make toothless threats and attempt blackmail, he should’ve certainly picked another country.

The mainstream propaganda machine thinks that the relations between the US and China are improving, citing Blinken’s planned attendance at a basketball game as the indicator of this.

However, the simple fact that none of the top-ranking officials greeted him when he flew in indicates something completely different. Blinken is supposed to meet Beijing’s veteran Foreign Minister Wang Yi tomorrow. The encounter is expected to last at least six hours and might even include President Xi Jinping. This will certainly depend on Blinken’s command of actual diplomacy, as the aforementioned threats he pompously announced are only for domestic consumption and are entirely void in China. The US might threaten with sanctions, but this is a two-way street and any reciprocal measures would certainly hurt America’s economic and maybe even national security interests. It’s entirely up to the US whether things will take such an unpleasant turn.

The troubled Biden administration reportedly raised the issue of the supposed “support” for Russia directly with President Xi Jinping, while US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did the same during her recent visit to China. However, Beijing seems completely unconcerned, as it has repeatedly stated that Washington DC’s threats regarding its close ties with Moscow mean nothing, particularly as the US and its vassals and satellite states keep escalating their aggression in the Asia-Pacific. It seems that simply maintaining normal economic and financial relations with Russia now boils down to “helping” its efforts to push back against NATO aggression in Europe. After all, even if countries like China, Iran and North Korea are building closer ties with their northern neighbor, it can only be expected that everyone the political West keeps threatening will find ways to unite their forces and push back together.

“Let me stress again that China’s right to conduct normal trade and economic exchanges with Russia and other countries in the world on the basis of equality and mutual benefit should not be interfered with or disrupted,” Wang Wenbin, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, stated just before Blinken’s arrival, adding: “China’s legitimate and lawful rights and interests should not be infringed on.”

US officials insist that Beijing supposedly “gave up on the idea of sending weapons directly to Moscow thanks to their threats“. However, the entire claim is essentially a multilayered lie, as there’s no evidence whatsoever that China ever planned on arming Russia, let alone that it stopped doing so because of the political West’s pressure. On top of that, Washington DC is trying to disrupt the rapidly growing trade between the two (Eur)Asian giants, particularly through claims that Beijing is supplying so-called “dual-use” industrial goods. This is where the endless hypocrisy and mental gymnastics of the political West become most evident. While the US just decided to send dozens of billions worth of weapons to directly undermine Russia’s and China’s basic national security interests, it’s accusing the latter of “helping” the former by simply trading with it, as the so-called “dual-use” industrial goods can be pretty much anything.

Worse yet, the US and its vassals and satellite states are surrounding both Beijing and Moscow with long-range missiles and deploying troops not only in their vicinity, but directly on their borders. Still, according to their own admission, “the Blinken team is worried that China’s response to pressure over Russia could be to slow down progress in other areas of the bilateral relationship”. This also includes the (Eur)Asian giant’s close ties with North Korea, as the US wants it to put pressure on Pyongyang. Washington DC is particularly terrified of the prospect that Russia, China and North Korea are forming a more monolithic alliance that the political West will be simply hopeless to match. However, they have nobody else to blame but themselves. Constant threats and attempts to undermine all three of these countries left them with no other choice but to work together. After all, that’s one of the reasons why BRICS itself exists.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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A Warning to America: 25 Ways the US is Being Destroyed | Explained in Under 2 Minutes pic.twitter.com/qwmBO8DmMt

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 22, 2024

Comments by Paul Craig Roberts

I would add several more. For example, the independence of doctors requires private practice. Private practice is being destroyed systematically by medical insurance, malpractice insurance, Medicare, Big Pharma, and the US Congress which panders to Big Pharma for campaign contributions. Medical doctors are being forced into becoming employees for HMOs where they have to follow their employer’s protocols or be fired. This means that they must abandon the Hippocratric Oath and follow the profit-enhancing practices of their employer HMOs. Big Pharma provides software for diagnosis and treatment, and doctors have to prescribe according to what Medicare and insurance companies will pay a percentage of the billing amount. Even doctors in private practice find that what they can prescribe and what operations they can perform is limited to insurance and medicare decisions.

During the orchestrated “Covid pandemic,” the entire propaganda operation was geared toward maximizing Big Pharma’s profits from the Covid “vaccine” and to cancelling people’s control over their own health care by imposing “vaccine” mandates. This was the first exercise in the imposition of mass tyranny in the Western World. Individual countries had experienced tyranny, but never before the entire Western world simultaneously.

In order to maximize Big Pharma’s profits and impose mass tyranny, it was necessary to prohibit two safe, effective, known preventatives and cures for Covid–hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Doctors who successfully used these cures and preventatives to protect their patients were subject to persecution by medical authorities and governing boards. Some were fired from their HMO jobs and university medical schools, some were stripped of their licenses, some were prosecuted. In order to mass inject people with an untested “vaccine” under an emergency use order the requirement was that there were no cures. So, the fact that there were cures had to be suppressed. The utterly corrupt US medical establishment, the whore media and the Western governments suppressed the cures and ridiculed them as “horse medicine.”

If the Western peoples were not so insouciant, so gullible, so trusting of “authorities,” so utterly stupid and incapable of thinking for themselves, there would have been no orchestrated “Covid pandemic” and no mass vaccination, which is against all medical protocols in the face of a pandemic. According to all available scientific evidence to date, the “Covid vaccine” has killed and destroyed the health of more people than the Covid virus. The corrupt “authorities” have done their best to cover this up, but as I have reported the coverup has failed. Still nothing is being done about it.

Nothing can be done as long as Congress is dependent on campaign contributions from corporations. “Our” representatives are really representatives of those interest groups that fund election campaigns. Congress reports to them, not to us. The idiot US Supreme Court actually ruled that corporations had a legitimate Constitutional right to purchase the US government.

This ruling converted a government that represented the people into one that represented the political campaign contributors.

Another addition I would make is the destruction of manners. Try to find today any sign of the manners I grew up with or the civilization that existed. Men were taught to respect women, and women in those days were safer than they are in our feminist times. Even when I was in my 20s, when a woman entered the room, the men stood up. Car and restaurant doors were opened for women. Women were helped into their seat at the table. Only when women were seated did men sit down. Men were trained to be gentleman, and ladies to be ladies. No gentleman ever used a four-letter word in a woman’s presence, and no woman ever spoke one. Listen to the barbaric youth today. Even the terms ladies and gentlemen have passed out or have been driven out of use. Feminists said that civility was the way men patronized women and demanded an end to civility.

Elegance in dress and demeanor has left us. When is the last time you saw a well dressed man or woman on an air flight even in first class, in an airport, shopping mall, restaurant, on the street? It has been years.

I remember a few years ago a first class flight from a New York meeting to Atlanta. My seat mate was a young attractive black woman bursting out of her cut off shorts and minimal halter. She was happy and celebrating with her drinks. I asked her what her good news had been. She said that she had just been signed by a Jewish firm as a recording artist and that her future was made. I asked her about her music, and she played some for me from her cell phone. Every other word was four-letter. What struck me was that she had no sense of inappropriate language, much less shame, in presenting a litany of four-letter words to a person long outside her generation. For her, it was normality, what she knew. No reason for me to be disturbed.

In other words, she simply reflected her times. That told me that my civilized time had passed, and that we were headed down, not up.

Today in the Disunited States we have a government in power that was not elected; instead it used control over the blue cities in swing states and the whore American media to steal the election. Massive amounts of evidence was provided by experts that the election was stolen, but this was strongly denied by the whore media, and experts were prosecuted for making the facts known.

Today America is governed by an illegitimate tyrannical regime, and nothing has been done about it. The Republican Party is useless. Only Trump soldiers on with four orchestrated criminal indictments and a number of civil cases arrayed against him. The media, Democrats, and Rino Republicans are all against him. Only the people are for him, and the people are powerless. They don’t even have the vote as the Democrats made clear by stealing the last two elections. Those prosecuting Trump have no concern that they are destroying America’s reputation and reducing the power of all future presidents, making them even more subservient to the deep state.

America’s only representative–Donald Trump–is so overloaded with criminal and civil prosecutions that he has no time to campaign and even as a billionaire is overwhelmed with the legal costs of defending himself from obvious nonsensical charges.

The legal profession, the law schools, the bar associations, the Congress, the courts, the media stand aside as if they are not also endangered and as if the weaponization of law isn’t a foundation of tyranny.

What we are witnessing most certainly is the transformation of American law into a weapon for subjecting the American population and eliminating anyone who dares to protest or challenge the tyrannical ruling establishment.

This is the reason that the United States of America is a totally dead and buried formerly free nation. Americans have sat on their butts and allowed the destruction of civility, the rule of law, the Constitution, and their nation.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this commentary was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “a False Flag”? They Let It Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

By Philip Giraldi and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 25, 2024

“A tissue of lies” has served to justify the killing in the Gaza Strip of more than 34,000 civilians, of which 70% are women and children coupled with total destruction and an endless  string of atrocities. The cat is out of the bag. Netanyahu has tacitly acknowledged that it was “a false flag” which was intent upon justifying a carefully planned genocidal attack against Palestine.

Pfizer ‘Chose Not to’ Tell Regulators About SV40 Sequence in COVID Shots: Health Canada Official

By Noé Chartier and Matthew Horwood, April 25, 2024

A senior Health Canada official says pharma giant Pfizer made a conscious decision not to advise regulators that its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contained a DNA sequence from the Simian Virus 40 (SV40).

Is It Game, Set, Match to Moscow? The Imminent Collapse of the Ukrainian State. Douglas Macgregor

By Douglas Macgregor, April 25, 2024

When Moscow sent Russian forces into eastern Ukraine in February 2022, it did so without any plan of conquest or intention to permanently control Ukrainian territory. As Western military observers pointed out at the time, the Russian force that intervened was far too small and incapable for any mission beyond limited intervention for a brief period.

“This Is Your Problem Now”: US Leaving Ukraine to Its European Allies “to Do the Dirty Work”

By Ahmed Adel, April 25, 2024

Washington is pragmatic and will abandon Europe with the Ukrainian conflict they caused, said Éric Denécé, director of the French Centre for Intelligence Studies. Likewise, he stressed that Russia had no choice but to launch its special military operation against Ukraine.

Health Benefits of Caffeine, Retained Spike Protein Causing Long-COVID, Pandemic Preparedness for Avian Influenza

By Dr. Peter McCullough, April 25, 2024

Dr. Loudon asked Dr. McCullough about the cause of long-COVID syndrome. Here it is important to understand that the Spike protein gets into the body with the infection and to a much greater degree is produced by mRNA within the body in the vaccinated. Sadly most vaccinated persons has both forms of Spike protein.

Massive Propaganda Has Brainwashed You to Believe that Wars Make Peace

By Peter Koenig, April 25, 2024

War for Peace has never worked in the history of mankind. Those who say War is Peace, know it is a lie. Those who say it, also never go to war. They plan wars – they force young people to the front and fight their wars for naught. Sorry. Not for naught, for profit and power for those who are planning these wars for Peace.

David Sacks and Elon Musk Slam New US Aid: “Ukraine will collapse anyway”

By Ahmed Adel, April 24, 2024

American businessman David Sacks predicted the collapse of Ukraine despite a new $61 billion aid package approved by the US House of Representatives since Kiev will need an even larger annual cash injection “to stave off total defeat.”

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In the last couple of years, particularly since the special military operation (SMO) started, the geopolitical landscape of Europe has been marked by NATO-orchestrated tensions that keep escalating. The belligerent alliance’s unceasing expansionist tendencies are the main source of instability, especially since it officially extended its warmongering tentacles to Scandinavia, specifically Finland, a country that shares a very long border with Russia. Helsinki’s decision to not only join NATO, but also host US military bases left Moscow with no choice except to further reinforce its newly (re)established Leningrad military district that now includes the republics of Karelia and Komi, the regions (oblasts) of Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kaliningrad, Leningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod and Pskov, as well as the federal city of St. Petersburg and the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous oblast.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns that NATO expansion to Finland would mean that assault troops and advanced weapon systems would be deployed within the country, threatening Russia’s national security interests. As previously mentioned, Finland has not only refused to reassure its eastern neighbor, but has actually doubled down on the deployment of foreign forces, particularly American. Thus, Moscow was left with no choice but to enhance the security of its second most important city and what has perhaps become one of the premier military districts in the country. This includes the deployment of the now legendary “Iskander-M” missiles precisely in the Leningrad military district. Various missiles of the “Iskander-M” system are known for hypersonic speed (up to Mach 8 while also maneuvering) and a maximum range of approximately 500 km.

In practice, this means that the entire territory of Finland is completely exposed now, the consequence of its suicidal decision to join the world’s most aggressive military cartel/racketeering organization. The “Iskander-M’s” missiles can use massive 700 kg HE warheads that are excellent against higher concentrations of troops in the rear. Virtually the same goes for much faster 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missiles that could also see more active deployment to the Leningrad Military District. According to military sources, Karelia has established a special missile brigade equipped with precisely the “Iskander-M” missile systems. The 14th Army Corps has been transferred to the command of the newly (re)established district and deployed in the Murmansk oblast, which, along with Karelia, is situated along Russia’s border with Finland.

“The formation of a missile brigade is a very timely decision. This is an adequate response to Finland’s accession to NATO,” former commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral Vladimir Valuev, told Izvestia.

Valuev also noted that the missile brigade would quickly respond to any threat posed by NATO troops in the area by “carrying out relevant operations”. And while Finland is bolstering its ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems, the “Iskander-M” uses missiles with enhanced countermeasures that have only been improved in the context of the SMO. On the other hand, if Finland were to ever accept or even call for the deployment of American nuclear weapons on its soil, “Iskander-M” is perfectly capable of carrying thermonuclear warheads that Russia would have no other choice but to aim at any strategically important target. Even in the case that the potentially less destructive tactical nuclear weapons are used, this would have disastrous consequences for Helsinki. Obviously, this is not to say the “Iskander-M’s” conventional capabilities are any less frightening.

Its missiles have demonstrated remarkable performance in the SMO, obliterating high-value targets with pinpoint accuracy. As previously mentioned, when taking only the 9M723 hypersonic missiles into account, the immediate danger for any larger troop concentrations in Finland lies in its speed and destructive power. On the other hand, this is only one of the two notable versions of the missiles used by the system. The other is the 9M729, essentially a land-based iteration of the “Kalibr” family of cruise missiles. Its range has been a matter of debate for quite some time now, but it could be around 2500 km, meaning that the entire Scandinavia would be covered, including Sweden and Norway. It should be noted that both Helsinki and Stockholm were previously a strategic buffer zone that limited the possibility of a direct Russia-NATO conflict.

However, that’s now gone thanks to the belligerent alliance’s unrelenting greed for expansionism. Worse yet, it could be argued that Norway has also lost with Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO, as there are now no directions that Russia couldn’t use because of their previous “neutrality”.

This directly jeopardizes Oslo’s southern regions, the most important part of the country. Moscow is also forced to respond in such a way as Norway is directly participating in the militarization of the increasingly contested Arctic region where the United States is trying to establish a firmer presence. Obviously, this is part of the much larger strategy of encircling Russia and placing additional strategic weapons in its proximity, particularly the latest iterations of the B61 thermonuclear bomb. All this is forcing Moscow to make moves it never wanted to, but it’s simply left with no other option.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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A senior Health Canada official says pharma giant Pfizer made a conscious decision not to advise regulators that its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contained a DNA sequence from the Simian Virus 40 (SV40).

This information appears among multiple emails between staff from key drug regulators, including Health Canada (HC), the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The information was obtained through an access-to-information request.

On Aug. 23, 2023, Dr. Dean Smith, a senior scientific evaluator in Health Canada’s Vaccine Quality Division, wrote an email to a colleague at the FDA about SV40.

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The Russian Federation’s armed forces conducted an artillery operation in Kharkov on April 22, destroying a huge TV tower in the center of the city. Images circulate on the internet showing the moment the facility was hit, being heavily damaged. Ukrainian media and their Western supporters spread disinformation about the attack, describing it as a terrorist incursion into civilian infrastructure – ignoring the fact that the Kiev regime was using the tower for military purposes, legitimizing Moscow’s reaction.

The tower was one of the tallest buildings in the city, measuring more than 240 meters. A third of the building was completely destroyed in Russian bombing, with the rest of the structure partially damaged. Local sources claim that the projectile used by the Russians was an X-59 missile. The operation was carried out with the highest precision, reaching the target exactly and without generating damage for the surrounding structures.

The Russian attack came amid a recent wave of high-precision bombing raids on targets in Kharkov. The aim is to neutralize the infrastructure that allows the Kiev regime to conduct terrorist operations against the Russian side of the border. As I reported in a recent press expedition in Belgorod, Russian borders are often the target of heavy attacks by Ukrainian artillery, which has resulted in many civilian casualties. On the very day of the Russian bombing on the tower, a Ukrainian Tochka U missile was launched against Belgorod, being fortunately neutralized in the air by Russian defense forces.

Data recently published by Russian authorities shows that so far 120 people, including 11 children, have died from Ukrainian missiles and drones in Belgorod. In addition, 651 people, including 51 children, were injured in such attacks. In the neighboring oblast, Kursk, a similar situation is occurring, with constant incursions of Ukrainian drones and missiles. This has led Russian forces to increase attacks in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, aiming to destroy the infrastructure that makes enemy bombings possible.

Russian attacks have faced some operational difficulties due to intelligence and radar systems strategically placed by Ukrainian forces in civilian infrastructure. Kiev was using the Kharkov TV tower to maintain military equipment that facilitated anti-aircraft operations, thus creating a problem for Russian bombers in the region’s airspace. The regime’s forces are known for using illegal tactics, such as human shields and allocation of military resources into civilian infrastructures. This was precisely the case at the TV tower.

According to international law, if a civilian structure is being used for military purposes, it is legitimate to attack it – as long as civilian lives are spared from the targeting. Russia did not launch attacks against inhabited regions or generate civilian casualties, only hitting with high precision facilities used by Ukrainian forces. Obviously, every attack on infrastructure generates collateral damage for ordinary people. When Ukrainian electrical facilities are destroyed by the Russians, many citizens lose their power supply. Likewise, when the Kharkov tower was destroyed, many Ukrainians lost TV communication. However, these damages are small when compared to the humanitarian disaster being caused by the Ukrainians in Belgorod and Kursk, which is why there is nothing that illegitimates Russian actions.

Moscow has always avoided hitting enemy infrastructure. The final outcome of the special military operation would be achieved much more quickly if the Russians frequently hit Ukrainian strategic facilities, but the Russian priority has always been to avoid generating any problems for the civilian population. Not by chance, attacks against the Ukrainian critical infrastructure have been interrupted since May 2023, having now been resumed as retaliatory measures against Ukrainian bombings on the borders.

Protecting Belgorod and Kursk has become the Russian Federation’s top humanitarian priority in recent months. Moscow is not willing to tolerate that its undisputed and demilitarized territory continues to be targeted in terrorist raids by the Kiev regime. So, if it is necessary to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure in order to protect its border cities, Moscow will do it. It remains for the Kiev regime to show that it is in some way concerned about the well-being of its own people and then stop terrorist actions, fighting only on the battlefield – if this happens, Moscow will again cease attacks on infrastructure, as it has already done for almost one year, since May 2023.

Since the beginning of the special military operation, there has been a permanent situation in the conflict: the Russians show willingness to de-escalate and reduce collateral damage to the population, while the neo-Nazi regime seems completely willing to take hostilities to their ultimate consequences, regardless of the impact on the civilians. The Ukrainian insistence on bombing the Russian borders, even aware of retaliations against the infrastructure, shows this difference in mentality between the sides in the conflict.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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It is an axiom of warfare that it is always desirable to have friendly territory beyond one’s own borders or the capacity to prevent the buildup of significant military power in neutral territory for an attack against one’s own territory. When it lacked the military strength to do much, the United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine with a similar purpose in mind. 

When Moscow sent Russian forces into eastern Ukraine in February 2022, it did so without any plan of conquest or intention to permanently control Ukrainian territory. As Western military observers pointed out at the time, the Russian force that intervened was far too small and incapable for any mission beyond limited intervention for a brief period. In fact, Western observers predicted Russian forces would soon run out of ammunition, equipment, and soldiers.

The rationale for Moscow’s limited military commitment was obvious. Moscow originally sought neutrality for Ukraine as a solution to Ukraine’s hostility toward Russia and its cooperation with NATO, not territorial subjugation or conquest. Moscow believed, not unreasonably, that a neutral Ukrainian nation-state could be a cordon sanitaire that would shield Russia from NATO and, at the same time, provide NATO with insulation from Russia. 

Nearly three years of Washington’s practically limitless funding for modern weapons and support in the form of spaced-based surveillance, intelligence, and reconnaissance for a proxy war designed to destroy Russia makes this approach laughable. Chancellor Merkel’s admission that the Western sponsored Minsk Accords were really designed to buy time for Ukraine to build up its military power is enough for Moscow to reject Western promises to ever respect, let alone enforce, Ukrainian neutrality.

When questioned on January 19 about the potential for negotiations with Washington and NATO, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said,

“We are ready [for negotiations]. But unlike the Istanbul story, we will not have a pause in hostilities during the negotiations. The process must continue. Secondly, of course, the realities on the ground have become different, significantly different.”

What do Lavrov’s words mean? 

In 1982, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, argued that control of the Rhine River would determine the outcome of any future war with NATO in Central Europe. There is little doubt that Russia’s senior military leaders have already concluded that Russian control of the Dnieper River is essential to Russian national security. 

In addition to annexing historically Russian cities like Odessa and Kharkiv, Moscow will almost certainly insist on a modern demilitarized zone from the Dnieper River to NATO’s eastern border to prevent the reemergence of a hostile military force in Western Ukraine.

Whether the Poles, Hungarians, or Belarusians decide to engage Moscow in discussions regarding Ukrainian territory with historic connections to their countries is unknown, but the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian state and armed forces will no doubt inform such discussions.

Washington’s strategy toward Moscow, if it can be called a strategy, consisted of organizing coercive measures across the Atlantic Alliance—economic, diplomatic, and military—to harm Russia fatally and destabilize its government. Washington’s unrealistic approach failed, and NATO, the framework for its implementation, is now fatally weakened, not Russia. 

As a result, Washington’s brand has been grievously diminished, even enfeebled. Washington’s belief that with the combined might of NATO’s scientific-industrial power it could achieve a strategic victory over Russia by arming Ukrainians to do the fighting for them backfired badly. Like FDR in 1939, who expected the Germans to end up in a stalemate with the Anglo-French Armies on the model of the First World War, Washington did not consider the possibility that Ukraine would lose the fight.

During the 1930s, FDR became trapped in a debt spiral of “special interest” spending. In defiance of logic and affordability, FDR opted for more Federal spending until he realized that it was not working. With the onset of war in Europe, FDR saw the opportunity to extricate American society from the Depression by steering the United States into war. FDR’s scheme worked. The Second World War reinvigorated the American economy and ended America’s chronic unemployment. At the same time, America’s physical insularity kept American infrastructure and the American People beyond the reach of its enemies.

President Biden and Congress are on a similar course with profound consequences, but today, horrifically destructive modern weapons make the war option suicidal.

Put another way, 21st-century problems cannot be solved with the use of 20th-century plans and policies. Instead of framing another false narrative to justify funding for a corrupt Ukrainian state that is collapsing, Washington and its allies should question the rationale for a new, costly cold war directed against Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and a host of countries with world views that diverge sharply from our own. 

Business schools teach their students that good brands have the power to sway decision-making and create communities of like-minded people. It isn’t just companies that need brands; countries need them, too. When asked about Washington’s ability to cope with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, President Biden said,

“We are the most powerful nation in the world, in the history of the world. We can take care of both of these [wars].”

Biden was and is wrong. America’s resources are not limitless. Our power is constrained.

In Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, the American brand has been damaged. Americans need (and should demand) a sober-minded analysis of the facts from the men who want to be president. They should be compelled to identify the United States’ true national interests; a process that should also identify the political and cultural realities that are not Washington’s to change.

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Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.

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Forçado a continuar a lutar, o regime de Kiev tenta desesperadamente fornecer novos recrutas às suas tropas na linha da frente. Tendo já esgotado as suas reservas, o governo ucraniano aposta agora no recrutamento de crianças nas escolas como uma forma eficiente de substituir as suas vítimas no campo de batalha. De um ponto de vista realista, contudo, tal medida tende a aumentar ainda mais a impopularidade do regime.

Um projeto de lei está sendo discutido no Parlamento ucraniano para estabelecer o treinamento militar básico nas escolas do país. Os estudantes ucranianos do ensino médio seriam obrigados a frequentar aulas de treinamento militar nas escolas, nas quais aprenderiam lições básicas de combate, manejo de armas, além de receberem uma “educação patriótica” – que na Ucrânia, como se sabe, significa basicamente neonazismo e lavagem cerebral anti-russa.

Segundo a Comissão Parlamentar da Juventude e Desporto, este tipo de medida “contribuiria para a melhoria da formação militar inicial e da educação militar-patriótica da juventude ucraniana”. A proposta parece ter amplo apoio tanto do Ministério da Defesa como do Ministério da Educação e Cultura. Espera-se que ambas as instituições desenvolvam em conjunto o currículo militar que será adicionado às atividades normais nas escolas ucranianas.

O projeto de lei estabelece a obrigatoriedade do treinamento militar para os homens e um regime voluntário para as mulheres. No entanto, já houve declarações da principal conselheira militar de Kiev, Oksana Grigorieva, de que todas as mulheres do país estão prontas para o recrutamento militar. Na prática, isto significa que todas as estudantes do sexo feminino serão provavelmente forçadas a participar nos programas de formação das suas escolas.

É necessário também enfatizar que os batalhões nacionalistas ucranianos não são obrigados a obedecer aos protocolos do exército, tendo luz verde para recrutar crianças e adolescentes. Assim, na prática, os estudantes ucranianos serão certamente cooptados pelas tropas neonazistas para o alistamento precoce assim que receberem instruções básicas nas escolas.

Na verdade, espera-se que a medida ucraniana seja aprovada, uma vez que o parlamento do país parece completamente cooptado por agentes estrangeiros, servindo os interesses da OTAN e não os do povo ucraniano. Os políticos do regime estão a aprovar todas as medidas possíveis para aumentar o recrutamento militar e assim tornar viável a continuação da guerra. Embora seja impossível para o regime alterar o resultado final do conflito, continuar a lutar é uma “necessidade”, uma vez que o Ocidente Coletivo exige que as hostilidades contra a Federação Russa sejam mantidas.

Várias medidas semelhantes foram recentemente aprovadas para aumentar o número de tropas disponíveis para serem enviadas para o campo de batalha. A idade mínima de alistamento foi reduzida e, além disso, mulheres, idosos, pessoas com graves problemas de saúde e até adolescentes têm sido frequentemente enviados para a linha da frente. Isto é catastrófico para o futuro do país, uma vez que a Ucrânia começa a ter graves problemas demográficos devido às vítimas no campo de batalha e à emigração em massa.

A situação ucraniana no conflito já é considerada uma derrota pela maioria dos especialistas militares. Desde a tentativa fracassada de contra-ofensiva, Kiev não demonstrou qualquer capacidade de continuar a lutar a longo prazo. Tendo sofrido cerca de 500.000 de mortos, além da evasão de milhões de refugiados, a Ucrânia não consegue continuar os seus esforços de guerra. Entretanto, os russos continuam a utilizar apenas uma pequena percentagem da sua capacidade militar, com tropas e equipamento suficientes para continuar a lutar durante anos, se necessário.

Racionalmente, Kiev deveria parar as políticas militares e negociar com a Federação Russa, aceitando os termos de paz e reconhecendo os territórios libertados. No entanto, o regime neonazista não tem qualquer soberania, sendo obediente aos seus patrocinadores ocidentais, que claramente querem que o conflito continue. Como não é possível derrotar a Rússia numa guerra direta, o Ocidente aposta em conflitos por procuração como mecanismo para “desgastar” a Rússia, razão pela qual Kiev é forçada a lutar “até ao último ucraniano”.

No entanto, em algum momento a guerra terminará. Kiev já não terá tropas suficientes para enviar para as linhas da frente e, portanto, não haverá outra alternativa senão a rendição incondicional. Quando isso acontecer, os tomadores de decisões ucranianos compreenderão quão erradas foram as suas atitudes de recrutamento forçado. O futuro da Ucrânia parece terrível, já que todos os jovens do país estão a morrer na guerra ou a fugir para o estrangeiro. O país está a ficar sem estudantes universitários, profissionais, técnicos ou qualquer pessoal qualificado para reconstruir a sociedade ucraniana no pós-guerra.

Ao aprofundar as suas políticas de recrutamento, e até mesmo ao treinar crianças para a guerra, Kiev está a destruir ainda mais as gerações futuras. A única esperança do povo ucraniano é que o regime neonazista entre em breve colapso, levando à restauração da paz e às boas relações com a Rússia.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : Kiev regime about to recruit children in schools, InfoBrics, 22 de Abril de 2024

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

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GR Introductory Note

The dirty work concept is embedded in U.S foreign policy.

Let your allies do the Dirty Work for You.  

It is worth noting that at the outset of Bush’s Second Term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell, hinting, that Israel would, so to speak: be doing the dirty work for us  without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”.  

In relation to Ukraine, Washington is inciting its EU-NATO allies to act so to speak on their behalf. 

M. C. GR. April 25, 2024

Washington is Pragmatic 

Washington is pragmatic and will abandon Europe with the Ukrainian conflict they caused, said Éric Denécé, director of the French Centre for Intelligence Studies. Likewise, he stressed that Russia had no choice but to launch its special military operation against Ukraine.

The expert noted that it is impossible not to notice the US’ role in unleashing the conflict in Eastern Europe but stressed that policymakers in Washington are very pragmatic and will not get directly involved in a battlefield that is not favourable to them.

“When they notice things are not going well, they do not hesitate to turn back and do a 180-degree turn. They are preparing for this – it is not yet seen, but I think it will soon become clear – they were preparing to give him a damn warm-up to Europe and say: this is your conflict now,” Denécé told the French network TVL on April 20.

Furthermore, the analyst emphasised that the US greatly contributed to the Russia-Ukraine war, among other things, with its NATO enlargement policy and the start of fighting in Donbass in 2014. He stressed that Russia’s intervention “did not come out of nowhere.”

Regarding the current phase of the conflict, the director lamented that the Europeans are facing a problem they do not want.

“And from now on, we Europeans will find that we have to deal with a situation that we did not cause and that we did not want,” he stressed.

After months of discussion, the US House of Representatives approved a bill on April 20 to provide almost $61 billion to Ukraine—$23.3 billion to replace defence articles and services, $13.8 billion to purchase advanced weapons systems, and $11.3 billion to US military operations in the region.

For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that the new US aid package to Ukraine will not change the situation on the battlefield but will instead increase the number of Ukrainian deaths.

This aid package was approved amid statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine would lose without Western help. Also, in mid-April, European allies could not agree on supplying Kiev with air defence systems.

According to the president of the State Duma (Lower House of the Russian Parliament), Viacheslav Volodin,

“The US no longer believes in the victory of the Kiev regime. Therefore, they are ready to give only money on credit, which Ukraine will have to return, or not even their own money when it comes to the transfer of Russian assets to Kiev.”

Washington is desperately attempting to freeze the conflict to fix the current situation. Western media has been pushing the false narrative of a stalemate since Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. In fact, Ukraine’s situation is so precarious that the US does not necessarily want its victory but instead for the country to serve as a constant source of problems for Russia and even the EU.

The US aid package was paralysed for months due to conflicts between Democrats and Republicans, and after receiving approval from the House of Representatives, the bill has now been moved to the Senate for a vote. Subsequently, it will be presented to US President Joe Biden for his signature. Once the bill is signed, the law will come into force.

It is recalled that in the first weeks after the start of the special military operation, Zelensky seemingly appeared more willing to negotiate, but under pressure from Western allies, including the US, he decided to give up on a peace agreement. Now, these very same allies that encouraged the Kiev regime to continue fighting a futile war are not providing, or are incapable of providing, the means for Ukraine to fight Russia.

As Denécé highlighted, the US is slowly abandoning Ukraine so that it will become exclusively a European problem. With Donald Trump leading the polls ahead of the US Presidential elections in November, Washington’s abandonment of Kiev will only be sped up if the former president is to return to the White House.

This would be especially disastrous for the European Union, which has destroyed its economy due to the boomerang effect of the US-led sanctions on Russia, has exhausted its weapon stocks for no advantage to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and is dealing with millions of Ukrainian refugees. Yet, Europe will only have itself to blame for blindly following Washington’s reckless Russophobic policies, which were obviously only going to hurt the bloc and not Russia or the US, who, as Denécé highlighted, “do not hesitate to turn back and do a 180-degree turn” when things are not going well.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Please enjoy this brief summary from April 23, 2024 on health benefits of caffeine and news on avian influenza when Dr. McCullough joins Dr. Gina Loudon on American Sunrise by Real America’s Voice. 

Start at 35:15 and end at 43:03.

Coffee is among the most researched food or drink on earth. The net analysis is that regular coffee intake has health benefits in terms of improved cognitive function, lesser risk of diabetes, lower rates of heart disease, and possibly prevention of some neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. The main caveats are to limit intake during pregnancy and be sure drinking ceases before noon so the caffeine can clear out of the body for a good nights sleep. Over-indulgence can lead to heart rhythm problems and anxiety.

Dr. Loudon asked Dr. McCullough about the cause of long-COVID syndrome. Here it is important to understand that the Spike protein gets into the body with the infection and to a much greater degree is produced by mRNA within the body in the vaccinated. Sadly most vaccinated persons has both forms of Spike protein. As of today, antibodies to the Spike protein can be measured as a proxy for how much is in the body. Soon the Spike protein itself should be measurable on a blood test. Because our bodies cannot readily clear Spike, we use McCullough Protocol Base Spike Detoxification to aid the body in catabolism and clearance of this foreign invader.

 

Hulscher N, Procter BC, Wynn C, McCullough PA. Clinical Approach to Post-acute Sequelae After COVID-19 Infection and Vaccination. Cureus. 2023 Nov 21;15(11):e49204. doi: 10.7759/cureus.49204. PMID: 38024037; PMCID: PMC10663976.

Dr. McCullough gave an update on the avian influenza H5N1 scare presented to the world by WHO, WEF, CEPI, and CDC just a few months ahead of the World Health Organization meeting on the International Health Regulations and Pandemic Treaty Agreement. WHO is widely anticipated to cite H5N1 as an example of why the world needs global pandemic governance.

 

Dr. Loudon pointed out the best course of action is for the public to be ready with Wellness Company emergency kits. The contagion kit has been recently extended to cover bird flu and telemedicine doctors can upgrade antivirals and add antibiotics if severe cases arise. Keep a watch on the Geneva Health Forum 2024 Conference and the The Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly is being held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 27 May – 1 June 2024.  Expect avian influenza to come up as the agreements and regulations are drafted.

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“Five years have passed since the day when Poland, having listened to the encouragement of the British government and received its guarantees, stood alone in the fight against the German power…” – that is how general Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Polish Commander-in-chief during the late period of the WW2, started his last order to the Polish soldiers, dated 1st September 1944. After that harsh but true reminder, that Poland was pushed to fight by Britain, Churchill successfully demanded general Sosnkowski’s dismissal and the Polish ruling class has memorised never to expose true British intentions. 

Not Our War

When the UK previously offered its guarantees to Poland in March 1939, that brought Hitler’s aggression against our country.  This is neither a conspiracy theory nor an invention of Anglophobes, but a recognised scholar view, confirmed by the research of renowned authors as professors A.J.P. Taylor, Anita J. Prażmowska and Simon Newman. It was England that dragged Poland into the war by directing a German attack on it, not Polish diplomacy succeeded in securing us the support of Western powers in the conflict with the Nazis. These are the facts, and the current situation of Poland is exactly the same. It is not Warsaw that has achieved the support of NATO capitals, these are the decision-making centres of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that are pushing Poland into a war against Russia the rest of the member states will not be obliged to participate in. The visit of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to Poland, half a year before the UK general elections (after which he is supposed to lose his job) is just an element of the same tactic of forcing Poland into a struggle in which we have already lost a lot and may lose even more.

No British Offer for the Poles Themselves

Sunak is weakening, but his mission to Warsaw cannot be underestimated, especially since the Prime Minister is bravely seconded by the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer with his pro-war rhetoric. Nonetheless, despite such pathetic leaders, London is invariably the capital of the sixth country in the world in terms of GDP, one of the centres of global finance and, despite Brexit, COVID, energy transformation and growing internal problems, still one of the leading European and global players. So when the UK Prime Minister promises someone cooperation, rapprochement and alliance, it can only mean troubles.

All the more so because Rishi Sunak came to Poland with nothing to offer the Poles, except perhaps the costs of maintaining an additional RAF Typhoon fighters squadron on our territory, intended for air cover of the Baltic countries and useless in the face of a real threat, such as Ukrainian missiles violating Polish airspace. Prime Minister Sunak’s entire message, although delivered in Warsaw, concerned the British military-industrial complex, meeting Washington’s demands for NATO countries to increase military spending. Just to compare, the UK is expected to reach 2.5% GDP in 2030 spent on an arms race, while Poland is to spend as much as 4% GDP on armaments from its own, much poorer budget already in 2024. It is therefore difficult to resist the impression that the British incentive also means reaching deeper into the pockets of Polish taxpayers.

Anti-Peace Mission

Therefore, the British Prime Minister spoke in Warsaw not to the Poles themselves, but rather to the British warmongers, to the Americans and to the Kiev junta, which Sunak (following Boris Johnson’s example) apparently tries to discourage even the thought of ceasefire neither peace talks.  Neither the additional £0.5 billion, nor new vehicles, strike and air missiles and even tons of ammunition will decide this war in Kiev’s favour, but their supply only prolongs this unfortunate conflict by further months of unnecessary resistance. By declaring increase of arm industry’s profits (all together £3 billion of the UK military funding for Kyiv in 2024/25 only and £7.6 billion since February 2022), Sunak also announced a death sentence for thousand more victims of struggle, which could have been easily avoided if Ukrainians had faced reality and laid down their weapons —weapons that ordinary citizens pay dearly for, and which will be stolen and sold by their Kiev rulers anyway.

Messengers of Death

United Kingdom is a rich state with rising costs of living and expanding zones of institutional poverty, where the only hope for the hungry are food banks, and yet it spends billions on an arms race, including nuclear weapons. For the equivalent of Poland’s defence budget, the entire Polish health service’s debts could be paid off and the queues for cancer patients and those waiting for surgery could be eliminated. Only the end of the war and the neutralisation of Ukraine can create at least a chance for its reconstruction, denazification and deoligarchisation.  

However, as long as people like Sunak, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (who visited Warsaw at the same time with the similar message of death) or Prime Minister Donald Tusk will be the bearers of good news for the military-industrial complex and death sentences for ordinary people, then there will be war, hunger, corruption, homelessness and hopelessness —in Ukraine, but also in Poland and even in the UK.

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Konrad Rękas is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from EPA-EFE/Pawel Supernak

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That is what they all say: Let us go to war to bring about Peace. It is like killing to make life worth living.

War for Peace has never worked in the history of mankind. Those who say War is Peace, know it is a lie. Those who say it, also never go to war. They plan wars – they force young people to the front and fight their wars for naught. Sorry. Not for naught, for profit and power for those who are planning these wars for Peace.

These young men and women propagandized and brainwashed to believe that war makes Peace, help the war industry making profit from killing. They bathe death in a sea of gold. Death is sacrifice, death is shiny, death is good for Peace.

One may legitimately ask, why are people at large still going along?

Propaganda is certainly one reason. Massive propaganda. Propaganda never talks about killing, about the thousands, millions of deaths wars bring about – no. Wars bring Peace and tranquility.

Globe and Mail 

 

Business Insider

 

Washington Post

People at large – the YOUs and the MEs – we want a quiet, peaceful life in harmony, where our children can grow up without fear. And if the media tell them, this WAR is for Peace – after this war there are no more wars, this is the war of all wars, leading to PEACE, their wish for peace is so immense, so deep. They believe it.

So, once more they tolerate the misery, the indiscriminate killing, bombing of humans. Our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered in the name of Peace.

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Take the Zionists for example. They are convinced to be the Chosen People. They have captured Israel, way before Israel was created on stolen Palestinian land – the story has been recorded ad nauseam but not by the mainstream media – to become the Greater Israel in control of most of the Middle Eastern natural resources, predominantly oil and gas.

See this, this and this.

Alternatively, will Peace look the other way? See this.

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Peace will call for War to protect its integrity. The God of Zion, Yahweh, the God of Israel, will overcome us all – in the Name of Peace. He is part of the “Chosenness” of the People of Zion.

Therefore, Iran must go too. They are the stumbling block to Peace. Muslims and gentiles, who do not bend to Zion, are enemies of Peace.

Once they, the omni-present Zionists, have reached that goal, PEACE for all, they and the (Western) world will live in Peace. Because Zionist-Israel will peacefully reign over good and evil – and distribute life-economy sustaining energy to the world as they see fit.

Before reaching this noble goal – Peace for All, massive killing and slaughtering is necessary in the name of Peace, supported by the warrior leaders for Peace, called the United States and Europe.

Peace be with us. Peace is the objective of War.

Peace costs money. The United States has within the last two years allocated about $200 billion for Peace, supplying Ukraine with weaponry and cash so they can fight and kill for Peace. This is money from the taxpayers, from the very people who only want Peace, for living in Peace.

They are not saying NO to the allocation of their money for killing to eventually live in Peace. Killing and atrocities are intermediary stages for Peace.

The US Congress has just allocated another $95 billion to Ukraine and Israel – to continue killing themselves and each other into the final stages of Peace. Still, people in the name of Peace do not say NO, as in NO, do not give our money for slaughtering more people, they may hope Peace will come and engulf them all.

Otherwise, it is not fathomable that they let their money being transferred into guns and tanks and bombs – so they may kill – working towards Peace.

The final eternal Peace.

We all want Peace.

But we know Peace does not come without war, so we are told and so we believe – for generations after generations, after generations. For societies after societies, after ever more societies; and ultimately, for civilizations, after civilizations, after endless civilizations – war will bring Peace. It has always been that way. And it will stay that way, as long as humanity exists.

Unless humanity breaks some rules, seeing Peace not as the result of wars, but as an end in itself. Forget it. That would be a dream. Warriors for Peace do not dream.

Rules must be followed. So we are told. And we MUST believe. We, the People, MUST always believe the higher echelons, our leaders, because we elected them, we gave them our trust, we delegated them our authority, and now we must give them our money, so they will lead us to Peace via wars.

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The US government has made its choice in favor of war, siding with evil and supporting fascism, the Russian Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, recently said. He commented on the latest massive American military aid package for Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden just signed a $95 billion foreign aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine and some $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan. The US Congress voted overwhelmingly for the $61 billion for Ukraine as Peace in this part of the world is of high priority.

And not to be shamed, Congress also voted an additional $9 billion for humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and other war zones. Of course, humanitarian aid is the grease that lubricates first war and then Peace.

Biden added that within hours the US will send weapons and military equipment to Ukraine. Most likely they will do the same for Israel. Maybe for Taiwan too. Because war with Taiwan over China can turn the world around – into a huge camp of Peace.

What the Russian Ambassador got wrong is that these are not weapons of evil, but weapons for Peace.

For heaven’s sake, they are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons for building true Peace.

Both Ukraine and Zionist Israel are shooting, bombing, ravaging, and killing their way to Peace.

If this puts the world on the brink of a direct clash between nuclear powers, it means that a final mushroom cloud, or several of them, may bring final Peace to the world. Just in case, if there is no other way to Peace, nuclear may be the way.

See this and this.

We must never forget, no matter how much killing, slaughtering, burning, destruction war MUST bring to finally reach Peace – it is all worth it. Because this rotting, warrying world must be destroyed to be rebuilt in PEACE. No worries, BlackRock is there to help.

And rebuilt it will be, by all those who generously plan war for Peace – but for the safety of future Peace, they stay clear of war. Of course, who else would rebuild the world into Peace, if not the thinkers and shakers of this world?

Those who finance wars, the military-industrial-complex, the BlackRock’s, et al, they know it. That is why they finance wars. They will never stand in the way of wars, nor in the front line of wars, but they are ready to rebuild the devastated world into a glowing new world of Peace.

The world needs these people, generous thinkers of Peace for humanity.

They know what they are doing. We must believe them and support their efforts, equally generously with our tax money. Nothing is more important than war and killing for Peace.

And yes, before it’s forgotten or overseen, let us remember that the Biden Administration sacrifices the lives of ordinary people for the insatiable but generous war industry which helps us find the way towards Peace.

All great Peace-loving nations must bring sacrifice, lest Peace may not prosper, nor prevail and last. We are talking about sustainable Peace.

People of this world, let us continue vouching for war as Peace is our ultimate goal. Our minds are strong. If we can make war – we must be able to see through the haze that war will make Peace.

Amen.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance. Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack” ? Or Was it “A False Flag”.

In the words of Philip Giraldi: 

“As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.” 

A Tissue of Lies 

“A Tissue of Lies” has served to justify the killing in the Gaza Strip of more than 34,000 civilians, of which 70% are women and children coupled with total destruction and an endless  string of atrocities. 

The Cat is out of the bag. Netanyahu has tacitly acknowledged that it was “A False Flag” which was intent upon justifying a carefully planned genocidal attack against Palestine: 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this candid statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians? 

On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a carefully planned military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.  

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance.

Had  “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War” could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023. 

South Africa’s  Legal Procedure against The State of Israel 

On January 11, 2024, The Republic of South Africa  presented to The Hague World Court, a carefully formulated Legal Procedure against the State of Israel predicated on  The Genocide Convention.

This legal procedure, however, has not contributed to repealing the ongoing genocide and saving the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.

I should mention that the False Flag issue –which constitutes a crime against humanity– was casually ignored by the ICJ.

Our suggestion is that  an investigation followed by a legal procedure pertaining to the “False Flag” should be undertaken.

The heads of State and heads of government who have endorsed Israel’s Genocidal Acts are from a legal standpoint complicit. 

The ICJ Judgement was contradictory. The Presiding Judge (former legal advisor to Hillary Clinton) was in conflict of interest: 

The ICJ Judgment of January 26, 2024 assigns the Netanyahu government representing the State of Israel –accused by the Republic of South Africa of genocide against the People of Palestine– with a mandate to “take all measures within its power” to “prevent and punish” those responsible for having committed “Genocidal Acts”. (under Article IV of the Genocide Convention)

Sounds contradictory? What the ICJ judgment intimates –from a twisted legal standpoint– is that Netanyahu’s Cabinet which was “appointed” to implement  the “prevent and punish” mandate cannot be accused of having committed “Genocidal Acts”.

See

“Fake Justice” at The Hague: The ICJ “Appoints” Netanyahu to “Prevent” and “Punish” Those Responsible for “Genocidal Acts”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 24, 2024

 

The titles of the videos, articles and texts presented below:  

1. Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?, by Dr. Philip Giraldi. 
2. Video: ICJ Hearings in The Hague, 
3. Text of Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum. Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland
   
4. Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, Interview. Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux
5. “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, by Michel Chossudovsky
6. Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor? But Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”, by Philip Giraldi 

 

In solidarity with the People of Palestine.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 11, 2024, April 25, 2024 

 

Part I

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”?

They Let it Happen?

Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

by Dr. Philip Giraldi 

October 8, 2023

Am I the only one who read about a speech given by Netanyahu or someone in his cabinet about a week ago in which he/they in passing referred to a “developing security situation” which rather suggests (to me) that they might have known about developments in Gaza and chose to let it happen so they can wipe Gaza off the map in retaliation and, possibly relying on the US pledge to have Israel’s “back,” then implicating Iran and attacking that country.

I cannot find a link to it, but have a fairly strong recollection of what I read as I thought at the time it would serve as a pretext for another massacre of Palestinians.

As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.

And as is also ALWAYS the case Joe Biden is preparing to send some billions of dollars to poor little Israel to pay for “defending” itself.

 

 Part II

VIDEO. ICJ Hearings in The Hague

ICJ Hearings 

1. January 11, 2024. Click Here to View the ICJ Hearings,

2. January 12, 2024. Israel’s Legal Team’s response to South Africa, ICJ The Hague at 10 am. Video in Real Time 

3. Video: South Africa’s Closing Argument against Israel for Genocide. January 11 Hearing at the World Court

 

Part III

Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum

Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland

 

An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s  Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations  as well as consultations with the U.S. 

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry … assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. … The document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the ministry, has been translated into English in full here on +972.

See below, click here or below to access complete document (10 pages)

For further details and analysis see:

“Wiping Gaza Off the Map”: Israel’s “Secret” Intelligence Memorandum “Option C” by Michel Chossudovsky

 

Part IV 

Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”

Interview: Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux 

October 17, 2023

 

To comment or access Rumble 

 

 

 

 

Part V 

“False Flag”. Wiping Gaza Off the Map

by

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

October 12, 2023

 .

Introduction

.

Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” led by Hamas’ Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War”.  

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance (See Netanyahu’s January 2023 statement below). Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack” ?

U.S. intelligence say they weren’t aware of an impending Hamas attack. 

“One would have to be almost hopelessly naïve to buy the corporate state media line that the Hamas invasion  was an Israeli “intelligence failure”. Mossad is one of, if not the, most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet.”

Did Netanyahu and his vast military and intelligence apparatus (Mossad et al) have foreknowledge of the Hamas attack which has resulted in countless deaths of Israelis and Palestinians.

Was a carefully formulated Israeli plan to wage an all out war against Palestinians envisaged prior to the launching by Hamas of  “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”? This was not a failure of Israeli Intelligence, as conveyed by the media. Quite the opposite. 

Evidence and testimonies suggest that the Netanyahu government had foreknowledge of the actions of Hamas which have resulted in hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian deaths. And “They Let it Happen”:

“Hamas fired between 2-5 thousand rockets at Israel and hundreds of Israeli are dead, while dozens of Israelis were captured as prisoners of war. In the ensuing air response by Israel, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Gaza.” (Stephen Sahiounie)  

This was Not a “Surprise Attack”

Was the Hamas Attack a “False Flag”? 

“I served in the IDF 25 years ago, in the intelligence forces. There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming.

A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this??

What happened to the “strongest army in the world”?

How come border crossings were wide open?? Something is VERY WRONG HERE, something is very strange, this chain of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defense system.

To me this suprise attack seems like a planned operation. On all fronts. 

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that this feels like the work of the Deep State.  

It feels like the people of Israel and the people of Palestine have been sold, once again, to the higher powers that be. 

(Statement by Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence,  October 7, 2023, emphasis added)

Ironically, the media (NBC) is now contending that the “Hamas attack bears hallmarks of Iranian involvement”

History: The Relationship between Mossad and Hamas

What is the relationship between Mossad and Hamas? Is Hamas an “intelligence asset”? There is a long history. 

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. It was supported at the outset by Israeli intelligence as a means to weaken the Palestinian Authority:

“Thanks to Mossad, (Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”), Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation.

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. (L’Humanité, translated from French)

The links of Hamas to Mossad and US intelligence have been acknowledged by Rep. Ron Paul in a statement to the U.S Congress: “Hamas Was Started by Israel”?

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)

What this statement entails is that Hamas is and remains “an intelligence asset”, namely “an “asset” to intelligence agencies”

See also the WSJ (January 24, 2009) “How Israel helped to Spawn Hamas”. 

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. (WSJ, emphasis added)

 

“The Hamas Partnership” is confirmed by Netanyahu

 

“The Cat is Out of the Bag”

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians? 

“Support” and “Money” for Hamas. 

“Transferring Money to Hamas” on behalf of Netanyahu is confirmed by a Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report: 

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)

.

The Dangers of Military Escalation?

 

Let us be under no illusions, this “false flag” operation is a complex military-intelligence undertaking, carefully planned over several years, in liaison and  coordination with US intelligence, the Pentagon and NATO. 

In turn, this action against Palestine is already conducive to a process of military escalation which potentially could engulf a large part of Middle East.

Israel is a de facto member NATO (with a special status) since 2004, involving active military and intelligence coordination as well as consultations pertaining to the occupied territories.

Military cooperation with both the Pentagon and NATO is viewed by Israel’s Defence Force (IDF) as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.”

The premise of NATO-Israel military cooperation is that “Israel is under attack”. Does Israel’s agreement with the Atlantic Alliance “obligate” NATO “to come to the rescue of Israel” under the doctrine of “collective security” (Article 5 of the Washington treaty)?

In recent developments, U.S. military deployments in the Middle East are ongoing allegedly to avoid escalation.

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

There is always the risk that nations and/or organisations hostile to Israel will take try to take advantage. And that includes, for instance, organisations like Hezbollah or a country like Iran. So this is a message to countries and organisations hostile to Israel that they should not try to utilise the situation. And the United States have deployed, or has deployed more military forces in the region, not least to deter any escalation or prevent any escalation of the situation. (NATO Press Conference, Brussels, October 12, 2023, emphasis added) 

Netanyahu’s “New Stage”

“The Long War” against Palestine

 

Netanyahu’s stated objective, which constitutes a new stage in the 75 year old war (since Nakba, 1948) against the people of Palestine is no longer predicated on “Apartheid” or “Separation”. This new stage –which is also directed against Israelis who want peace— consists in “total appropriation” as well as the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:

“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me [Netanyahu]: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” (Netanyahu January 2023. emphasis added)

We bring to the attention of our readers the incisive analysis of  Dr. Philip Giraldi pointing to the likelihood of a “False Flag’”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 8, 2023, Above text updated on October 12, 2023

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Part VI

Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor?

But Who Actually Did What to Whom?

“This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

by

Dr Philip Giraldi

October 16, 2023

.

“As a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.”

It’s amazing how America’s thought-controlled media is able to come up with a suitable narrative almost immediately whenever there is an international incident that might be subject to multiple interpretations.

***

Since 1948 Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes,

has occupied nearly all of the historic Palestine, has empowered its army to kill thousands of local people, and

has more recently established an apartheid regime that even denies that Palestinian Arabs are human in the same sense that Jews are.

Netanyahu-allied government minister Ayelet Shaked memorably has called for Israel not only to exterminate all Palestinian children, whom she has described as “little snakes,” but also to kill their mothers who gave birth to them.

But when the Arabs strike back against the hatred that confronts them with their limited resources it is Israel that is described as the victimand the Palestinians who are dehumanized and portrayed as the “terrorists.”

Media in the US and Europe were quick to label the Hamas offensive breaching the formidable Israeli border defenses as “Israel’s 9/11” or even “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” to establish the context that the Israelis have been on the receiving end of an “unprovoked” attack by a cruel and heartless enemy.

Israel has responded to the attack with a heavy bombardment of Gaza that has destroyed infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, while also cutting off food supplies, water and electricity.

It has demanded that residents of north Gaza, all 1.1 million of them, evacuate to make way for a possible ground offensive but there is nowhere to go as all the borders are closed, and the United Nations is calling it a demand with “devastating humanitarian consequences.” Journalist Peter Beinart has commented “This is a monstrous crime. It’s happening in plain view, with US support.”

And the United States government is indeed typically on the same page as Israel. President Joe Biden, citing fabricated stories about dead Jewish babies, speaks of how Israel has a “duty” to defend itself, while the Palestinians somehow have no right to protect themselves at all, much less to rise up against their persecutors in a struggle for freedom.

And Washington has also unhesitatingly chosen to directly involve itself in the conflict, completely on the side of the Jewish state, asserting repeatedly that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and telling the Israelis that “we have your back” while also dispatching two aircraft carrier groups to the scene of the fighting as well as the 101^st Airborne to Jordan and increasing the readiness of Marines stationed in Kuwait.

The White House could have taken more aggressive steps to encourage a ceasefire and talks but has chosen instead to issue essentially toothless calls to let the trapped civilians escape while also backing a devastating Israeli military response.

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

Israel is also hosting the worthless and brain dead Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who will be providing advice along the lines of his insightful comment that Hamas is “evil” and “worse than ISIS.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in Jerusalem, announcing that the US is there to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unity government “as long as America exists” after first saying “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

Blinken’s explicit association of his personal religion with his official role as a representative of the US government makes clear that a key element in why he is there is because he is “a Jew.” Perhaps he should recuse himself from policy making involving Israel as being “a Jew” would not appear to be a United States national interest and is likely to produce irrational responses to developing situations.

If all of this sounds a lot like Ukraine it should, except that in Ukraine the US and NATO are fighting against Russia, which is being demonized for occupying what is claimed Ukrainian territory, whereas in Palestine they are supporting the occupier of actual Palestinian territory, Israel.

Funny thing that, and the word “hypocrisy” comes immediately to mind. As it turns out, however, I am somewhat on the same page as much of the media, agreeing that the Hamas incursion is something like 9/11, though I am sure that my take would not be found acceptable to the CNN Jake Tappers of this world.

My thinking is that Israel knew in advance about 9/11 in the United States due to its extensive spying network and chose not to share the information because it was to their advantage not to do so.

Indeed, a pleased Netanyahu even stated several years later that “9/11 was a good thing because it made the United States join us in our fight.”

That the attacks killed 3,000 Americans did not bother the Israeli government as Israel has a long history of killing Americans when it can benefit from so doing, starting with the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 sailors.

So too in this case in Gaza, Netanyahu may have decided to encourage an unexpected development, making it like 9/11, that would enable him to escalate and “mow the grass” as the Israelis put it, in the remainder of Arab Palestine.

And bear in mind that the actual incident that triggered the uprising was a rampage involving at least 800 Israeli settlers in and around the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, beating pilgrims and destroying Palestinian shops, all without any interference from the nearby Israeli security forces. The rioting was clearly allowed and even encouraged by the government.

Drawing on my experience as a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.

Israel had an extensive electronic and physical wall backed by soldiers and weaponry that completely surrounded Gaza on the landward side, so effective that it was claimed that not even a mouse could get in.

The Mediterranean side of Gaza was also tightly controlled by the Israeli Navy and boats to and from Gaza were completely blocked.

Egypt tightly controlled the southern part of Gaza bordering on the Sinai. So Gaza was under 24/7 complete surveillance and control at all times. Israeli military intelligence also certainly had a network of recruited informants inside Gaza who would report on any training or movements, easy enough to do when you can approach people who are starving and make them an offer they cannot refuse just for providing information on what they see and hear.

And then there was a warning from the Egyptian government to Israel ten days before the Hamas attack, with Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally calling Netanyahu and sharing intelligence suggesting that the Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Other media accounts reveal how Hamas trained and practiced their maneuvers publicly. There were also assessments made by US intelligence, which were shared with Israel, suggesting that something was afoot. So, given all of the evidence, there likely was no intelligence failure to anticipate and counter the Hamas attack but rather a political decision made by the Israeli government that knew what might be coming and chose to let it proceed to provide a casus belli to destroy Gaza, vowing that “Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” and then go on from there. And “from there” might well include Lebanon, Syria and Iran, possibly with the assistance of the United States to do the heavy lifting. Iran in particular is already being blamed by the usual suspects as a party involved in the Hamas attack, so far without any evidence whatsoever, which is typical of how these stories evolve.

Image: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visits Al-Aqsa, 3 January (Social Media)

And Israel has moved far to the right politically to such an extent that it might appreciate a little ethnic cleansing to demonstrate its seriousness. Netanyahu and other senior government officials in his cabinet have recently been making passing references to a “developing security situation” in the country to justify the intensifying of the raids by the army against Palestinian towns and refugee camps. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He has been exploiting his position to call in particular for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza, which is precisely what is happening. Gaza might be of particular interest to Ben-Gvir and others as it uniquely shelters an armed and organized resistance in the form of Hamas, which, oddly, was founded with the support of Israel to split the Palestinian political resistance with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

There is another issue relating to the recent fighting that one would like to know the answer to, namely how did Hamas get its weapons in the first place?

Some were clearly manufactured from parts and scrap but others were sophisticated and, as Gaza is blockaded on all sides, smuggling them in becomes problematical. One argument is that they were supplied by Iran and others to be brought in by tunnels, but the tunnels on two sides would end up in Israel and on the third side in Egypt. The fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea. So how did they arrive? Is there a possible triple or even quadruple cross taking place with different parties lying to each other? And should there be concerns that after the American armada arrives off the coast of Gaza there just might be some kind of false flag incident engineered by Netanyahu that will involve Washington directly in the fighting?

And there is what amounts to a related issue that should be of concern to everyone in the US and generically speaking the “Western world” where human rights are at least nominally respected. The message from almost all Western governments is that Israel has a carte blanche to do whatever it likes even when it involves war crimes to include mass forced displacement or genocide. In this case, the coordinated government-media response which is intended to protect Israel from any criticism almost immediately began circulating fabricated tales of atrocities while also delivering a hit on freedom of speech and association. President Biden, who should be trying to defuse the crisis, is instead adding fuel to the flames, saying of Hamas that “Pure, unadulterated evil has been unleashed on the earth!”

In Florida the arch Zionist stooge Governor Ron Desantis met with Jewish leaders in a synagogue to announce draconian measures against Iran to include sanctions on companies that are in any way linked to that country. One might point out that those businesses have done nothing wrong and Desantis also called for “eradication of Hamas from the earth.” His intellectual depth was at the same time revealed when he said the US should not take in any Gazan refugees because they are “antisemites.”

And in South Carolina, America’s favorite he/she Senator Lindsey Graham is calling for a US attack on Iran as well as declaring the war against Hamas to be “a religious war” and urging the Israeli army to invade Gaza and do “Whatever the hell you have to do to” to “level the place.”

And the Europeans are equally spineless in their deference to Israel. The Israeli president declared the that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, and not long after that top European Union representatives met with him to offer their unqualified support. Meanwhile in France, the spineless and feckless government of Emmanuel Macron has sought to outlaw any gathering that expresses support for Palestinian rights.

And in the UK, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman has proposed criminalizing any protest against Israeli actions or anything in support of Palestine to include banning any public display of the Palestinian national flag, which she regards as a “criminal offense toward the Jewish community in Britain.”

She has also said that “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.” Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has also classified the use of the expression as a “criminal offense.” The manner in which most Western political elites are lining up unquestionably and even enthusiastically behind Israel and its craven leaders’ desire for bloody vengeance is truly shocking but comes as no surprise.

Beyond the issue of Gaza itself, some in Israel are arguing that Netanyahu has personally benefitted from the unrest through the creation of the national unity government which has ended for the time being the huge demonstrations protesting his judicial reform proposals. If all of this comes together politically as it might in the next several weeks, we could be seeing the initial steps in what will develop into the complete ethnic cleansing of what was once Palestine, in line with Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” So all of the former Palestine is now a land to be defined by its Jewishness where Jews are in full control and are free to do whatever they want without any objection, referred to by the Israeli government as “an exclusive right to self-determination.” And it has all possibly been brought to fruition by the enablement provided by the current developments in Gaza.

The original source of Dr. Giraldi’s October 16, 2023 article. 

Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor but Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

By Philip Giraldi, October 16, 2023

***

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Global Research Referral Drive: Our Readers Are Our Lifeline

***

A forensic analysis by award-winning British journalist Richard Sanders and Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit provides a detailed examination of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The months’ long investigation found that many claims repeated by politicians and Western media, including mass rape and killings of babies, were false.

Richard Sanders is an award winning TV producer specialising in history and news and current affairs. He has made more than 50 films, mostly for Britain’s Channel 4 public broadcast television station. He has written for a number of publications including The Daily Telegraph and the Boston Globe and is also the author of two history books.

OCTOBER 7: The Full Story from If Americans Knew on Vimeo.

This is part of a playlist of the film. If Americans Knew has divided the hour-long documentary into four shorter subject matter videos:

• OCTOBER 7: The Lies
• OCTOBER 7: Israeli Military Kills Israelis
• OCTOBER 7: Israeli Failures
• OCTOBER 7: The Background
• OCTOBER 7: The Director
• OCTOBER 7: The Full Story (the entire film)

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

***

 

 

Almost fifteen years ago in December 2008, Israel invaded Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009)”.

The following article was first published by Global Research in January 2009 at the height of the Israeli bombing and invasion under Operation Cast Lead.

Author’s Note and Update

Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” which was led by its Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War.”

It is now amply confirmed that  “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” was not a “surprise attack”? It was a false flag intelligence operation.

According to Dr. Philip Giraldi,

“As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.”

[Did Netanyahu have foreknowledge] about developments in Gaza and chose to let it happen so they can wipe Gaza off the map… in retaliation” (Philip Giraldi, October 8, 2023) 

 Netanyahu is on Record for Supporting and Financing “Factions within Hamas” 

It should be understood that Netanyahu’s October 7, 2023 illegal declaration of war against Gaza is a continuation of its 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead.” 

The underlying objective is the outright military occupation of Gaza by Israel’s IDF forces and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.

Video: “Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves. 

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Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux, Lux Media

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Flash Back: Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009)

Gaza belongs to Palestine. In December 2008, Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip under Operation Cast Lead. The justification for this invasion was “persistent terrorist activities and a constant missile threat from the Gaza Strip directed at Israeli civilians.”

What was the hidden agenda?  

In the wake of the invasion, Palestinian gas fields were de facto confiscated by Israel in derogation of international law.

A year following “Operation Cast Lead,” Tel Aviv announced the discovery of  the Leviathan natural gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean “off the coast of Israel.”

At the time the gas field was: “ … the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.” (i)

Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration. (See Felicity Arbuthnot, Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant, Global Research, December 30, 2013

The Gazan gas fields are part of the broader Levant assessment area.

What has been unfolding is the integration of these adjoining gas fields including those belonging to Palestine into the orbit of Israel. 

It should be noted that the entire Eastern Mediterranean coastline extending from Egypt’s Sinai to Syria constitutes an area encompassing large gas as well as oil reserves.

 Below is my article entitled

 “War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields” (January 8, 2009),

which was subsequently published in my book entitled: 

The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity, Montreal, 2015

 

It was launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir Mohamad  

 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 8, 2023, April 25, 2024 

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War and Natural Gas:

The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

by Michel Chossudovsky

January 8, 2009

The December 2008 military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. 

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline. 

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21,  2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.

Map 1

Map 2

Who Owns the Gas Fields

The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.

The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.

British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.

The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine’s sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine” intimating that Gaza’s offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)

The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.

The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert  “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority.” The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.

Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:

“Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza’s offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.

The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:

 “Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror”. (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on “The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas,” March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security?  Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)

Israel’s intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).

Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board

The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under “Operation Cast Lead” was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:

“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)

That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza’s natural gas:

“Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel’s wish to renew the talks.

The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel’s request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials.” (Globes online- Israel’s Business Arena, June 23, 2008)

The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.

Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board. In all likelihood, a new “post war” political-territorial arrangement for the Gaza strip was also being contemplated by the Israeli government.

In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.

In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG’s offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)

“Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government’s decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.

The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender.” (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)

Gaza and Energy Geopolitics 

The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.

What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?

What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves?

A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?

The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?

The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?

If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above)

These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport – pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Map 3

Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline.

“What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline.” (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)

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While the administration of United States President Joe Biden seeks to avoid any substantive discussion on the genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, mass demonstrations and other forms of dissent over the White House’s foreign policy is expanding exponentially.

It is not surprising that youth, workers, artists, religious figures, among others, are focused on ending the slaughter of the people in Gaza.

Thousands of tons of weapons including warplanes and bombs are being transferred from Washington and its NATO allies to the State of Israel for the sole purpose of intensifying the repression against the Palestinian people. These are the realities that Biden and his advisors cannot hide from the people of the U.S. and the world.

A recently exposed massacre, one of hundreds of such incidents, involving the siege and destruction of Nassar Hospital, makes an even stronger case for an embargo to be placed on the transfer of arms to Tel Aviv.  The official figures for deaths given by the health authorities at this facility in Gaza so far is 283.

The targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers has been a mainstay of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) war against the Palestinians. Undoubtedly, the brutal and repeated attacks on those institutions needed during a war has contributed immensely to the deaths and injuries since October 7.

A Lebanon-based television network, Al Mayadeen, said of the discovery of mass graves at Nassar Hospital:

“Gaza’s Civil Defense announced today that 283 bodies of martyrs were recovered from the Israeli-made mass grave in Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis since the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from the area. There is clear evidence of field executions carried out by the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] at Nasser Medical Complex, it emphasized in its statement…. The spokesperson of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Nebal Farsakh, condemned the international community’s state of silence on the Israeli war on Gaza. In a press conference, Farsakh said that since the start of the war in Gaza, the international community has not taken any serious action towards the continuous Israeli crimes and violations against the health system, hospitals, humanitarian workers, and civilians in Gaza…. Addressing the Israeli-made recently discovered mass graves in Al-Shifa Hospital, Nasser Medical Complex, and Kamal Adwan Hospital, Farsakh said that so far, there are no accurate or specific numbers on the bodies of Palestinians discovered there or of those missing. All reports on the burying of Palestinian patients and refugees in the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital following the Israeli siege of the latter are horrific, Farsakh stressed further confirming that 23 PRCS ambulances are currently out of service.” 

By the last full week of April, the Gaza Health Ministry had said that over 34,000 people have been killed in the Strip since October 7. Since the retaliation by the Islamic Republic of Iran against occupation forces in Palestine, the Biden administration has reiterated what it called “ironclad” support for the settler-colonial state. The White House noted that the Pentagon had assisted in protecting military sites targeted by Tehran.

Biden immediately denounced Iran for the attacks which the administration said did minimal damage. Nonetheless, the White House never condemned the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1 which killed two high-ranking military officials and other personnel. U.S. military forces are still occupying areas in northeast Syria against the will of the government in Damascus. There has been nothing positive to come out of the Pentagon and NATO continuing presence in West Asia. Moreover, the way in which the Biden administration and his cohorts in Western Europe are approaching the crisis will inevitably lead to a wider imperialist war.

Living Conditions in Rafah

Many people living in the northern regions of Gaza have been forced to take shelter in Rafah in the south on the border with Egypt. In fact, the announcement from the IDF since the beginning of the siege in October directed people living in other areas such as Gaza City and Khan Younis to relocate to the south.

However, the increase in the number of people living in Rafah has not ensured its security from the IDF’s incessant bombing and shelling campaigns. Absent adequate housing and healthcare accommodations for the people in Rafah, the conditions will only worsen.

A school teacher and content writer for Electronic Intifada said of the situation in Rafah:

“Our new camp in Rafah, after our third displacement, is located in a graveyard near the Egyptian border. Each day the tents of new arrivals – of those forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks – creep closer to the graves. After every Israeli massacre, both graveyard and camp expand, crawling toward the outer edges of the desert. We’ve been here since December 2023. Nine of us share a tent that is 16 square meters. We are in the desert, but sometimes it does not feel that way because of the density and the near-constant sounds of Israeli explosions and drones. There are so many people in the camp, all of us in tents that do not protect from heat or cold. Winds sometimes uproot tents. There are stray dogs everywhere. Every day we line up for drinking water. Sometimes the water runs out and we return to our tents empty-handed.” 

This story provides a glimpse into the everyday lives of Palestinians in Gaza. The destruction by the IDF, which is facilitated by the U.S. and its NATO allies, has done more to destabilize the entire region from Palestine and Lebanon to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

In addition to the direct military assaults on the Palestinians and their institutions in Gaza, the Israeli regime of Benjamin Netanyahu is implementing a program of starvation. The next logical outcome of the war is the forced removal of 2.3 Palestinians from Gaza.

Several weeks ago, the Biden White House talked about the airdropping of food to the people impacted by the war. Later they announced the building of a temporary pier to deliver food and other essential supplies to Gaza.

Neither of these talked about initiatives have made a difference in the lives of the people. Through these proclamations by the Biden administration, they attempt to divert attention away from the central questions involving the plight of the Palestinians.

By continuing to fuel war, more people realize the actual aims of the overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The recent spending package for imperialist war garnered bipartisan support.

The U.S. policy has already failed in the attempt to conceal its strategic aims in Palestine. The Israeli regime serves as a major pillar within the hegemonic designs for total western domination of the world. A triumph for the Palestinians and the people of the West Asia region would clearly mean a resounding defeat for Washington and Wall Street.

Historically, successive U.S. administrations have carried out imperialist wars resulting in mass casualties and population displacement. For more than three decades this has been the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Today the world is watching in horror the situation in Gaza and demand an end to the genocide.

Mass Pressure Challenges White House Indifference

As the Biden administration seeks reelection for another term of office, the Palestinian question remains a major issue which it cannot readily dispose of. Biden campaign ads champion his purported accomplishments in the economic field and his commitment to restore federal law guaranteeing reproductive rights.

Gaza solidarity encampment in Columbia

However, the problems of inflation and declining real wages are embedded in the structures of the capitalist system during this historical period. The urban areas of the U.S. face rising homelessness among residents and recent migrants.

An ever-increasing defense budget takes away from the infrastructural and social needs of the workers, oppressed and impoverished. A foreign policy based on permanent warfare has created even more enemies for the U.S. ruling class.

Students have taken the lead at some of the most prestigious universities in the U.S. by denouncing the official complicity with Zionist aggression and demanding a withdrawal of all investments and other forms of collaboration with genocide in Palestine. Consequently, the duplicity and indifference of the ruling interests in the U.S. are a main driving force in the solidarity movement with Palestine.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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The attitudes down under towards social media have turned barmy. While there is much to take Elon Musk to task for his wrecking ball antics at the platform formerly known as Twitter, not to mention his highly developed sense of sociopathy, the hysteria regarding the refusal to remove images of a man in holy orders being attacked by his assailant in Sydney suggests a lengthy couch session is in order. But more than that, it suggests that the censoring types are trying, more than ever, to tell users what to see and under what conditions for fear that we will all reach for a weapon and go on the rampage.

It all stems from the April 15 incident that took place at an Assyrian Orthodox service conducted by Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and the Rev. Isaac Royel at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, Sydney. A 16-year-old youth, captured on the livestream of the surface, is shown heading to the bishop before feverishly stabbing him, speaking Arabic about insults to the Prophet Muhammed as he does so. Rev. Royel also received injuries.

Up to 600 people subsequently gathered around the church. A number demanded that police surrender the boy. In the hours of rioting that followed, 51 police officers were injured. Various Sydney mosques received death threats.

The matter – dramatic, violent, raging – rattled the authorities.  For the sake of appearance, the heavies, including counter-terrorism personnel, New South Wales police and members of the Australian domestic spy agency, ASIO, were brought in.  The pudding was ready for a severe overegging.  On April 16, the NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb deemed the stabbing a “terrorist incident”.  NSW Premier Chris Minns stated that the incident was being investigated as a “terrorist incident” given the “religiously motivated” language used during the alleged attack.

After conducting interviews with the boy while still in his hospital bed on April 18, the decision was made to charge him with the commission of an alleged act of terrorism.  This, despite a behavioural history consistent with, as The Guardian reports, “mental illness or intellectual disability.”  For their part, the boy’s family noted “anger management and behavioural issues” along with his “short fuse”, none of which lent themselves to a conclusion that he had been radicalised. He did, however, have a past with knife crime.

Assuming the general public to be a hive of incipient terrorism easily stimulated by images of violence, networks and media outlets across the country chose to crop the video stream.  The youth is merely shown approaching the bishop, at which point he raises his hand and is editorially frozen in suspended time.

Taking this approach implied a certain mystification that arises from tampering and redacting material in the name of decency and inoffensiveness; to refuse to reveal such details and edit others, the authorities and information guardians were making their moralistic mark. They were also, ironically enough, lending themselves to accusations of the very problems they seek to combat: misinformation and its more sinister sibling, disinformation.

Another telling point was the broader omission in most press reporting to detail the general background of the bishop in question.  Emmanuel is an almost comically conservative churchman, a figure excommunicated for his theological differences with orthodoxy. He has also adopted fire and brimstone views against homosexuality, seeing it as a “crime in the eyes of God”, attacked other religions of the book, including Judaism and Islam, and sees global conspiracies behind the transmission of COVID-19.  Hardly, it would seem, the paragon of mild tolerance and calm acceptance in a cosmopolitan society.

On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, got busy, announcing that X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had been issued with legal notices to remove material within 24 hours depicting “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”. The material in question featured the attack at the Good Shepherd Church.

Under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth), the commissioner is granted various powers to make sure the sheep do not stray.  Internet service providers can be requested or required to block access to material that promotes abhorrent violent conduct, incites such conduct, instructs in abhorrent violent conduct or depicts abhorrent violent conduct.  Removal of material promoting, instructing, or depicting such “abhorrent violent conduct”, including “terrorist acts” can be ordered for removal if it risks going “viral” and causing “significant harm to the Australian community”.

X took a different route, preferring to “geoblock” the content.  Those in Australia, in other words, would not be able to access the content except via such alternative means as a virtual private network (VPN). The measure was regarded as insufficient by the commissioner.  In response, a shirty Musk dubbed Grant Australia’s “censorship commissar” who was “demanding *global* content bans”.  On April 21, a spokesperson for X stated that the commissioner lacked “the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally.  We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court.”

The Australian censorship commissar is demanding *global* content bans! https://t.co/CRLglUYYIG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2024

In court, the commissioner argued that X’s interim measure not to delete the material but “geoblock” it failed to comply with the Online Safety Act.  Siding with her at first instance, the court’s interim injunction requires X to hide the posts in question from all users globally.  A warning notice is to cover them. The two-day injunction gives X the opportunity to respond.

There is something risible in all of this.  From the side of the authorities, Grant berates and intrudes, treating the common citizenry as malleable, immature and easily led.  Spare them the graphic images – she and members of her office decide what is “abhorrent” and “offensive” to general sensibilities.

Platforms such as Meta and X engage in their own forms of censorship and information curation, their agenda algorithmically driven towards noise, shock and indignation.  All the time, they continue to indulge in surveillance capitalism, a corporate phenomenon the Australian government shows little interest in battling.  On both sides of this coin, from the bratty, petulant Musk, to the teacherly manners of the eSafety Commissioner, the great public is being mocked and infantilised.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

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On April 19, Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) announced that a Tu-22M3 swing wing long-range bomber/missile carrier crashed in the Stavropol krai (roughly translated as “region”) in southern Russia. The Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that the venerable “Backfire” (Tu-22M3’s NATO reporting name) crashed due to a technical malfunction after it successfully conducted a strike mission in Ukraine. And yet, as soon as the Neo-Nazi junta found out about the crash, it immediately concocted a ludicrous story about how its air defenses supposedly “shot down” the Russian aircraft.

According to the infamous GUR (the Kiev regime’s military intelligence), the mythical “shootdown” allegedly happened at “a distance of 300 km”, despite the fact that the area is around 400 km away from Donetsk and over 450 km away from any territory firmly under the Neo-Nazi junta’s control. However, the GUR had a “convenient” explanation for such a discrepancy.

“The enemy aircraft was shot down at a distance of about 300 km from Ukraine. The damaged bomber was able to fly to the Stavropol region of Russia, where it fell and crashed,” the GUR posted on Telegram.

The Tu-22M3 is famous for carrying the near-hypersonic Kh-22 air-launched anti-ship/land-attack missiles and the more modern Kh-32 variant. It can also carry up to four of the now legendary 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles.

The range of the aforementioned weapons suggests that the “Backfire” doesn’t really need to fly over the territory of former Ukraine to conduct its missions.

In fact, it doesn’t even need to leave the airspace over undisputed Russian territories, meaning that the Kiev regime forces simply don’t have the means to reliably detect and track the Russian bomber, let alone engage it with either SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems or fighter jets. And yet, the GUR keeps insisting precisely that happened on April 19. Its supposed “evidence”? A laughable video that even a child with a single smartphone could’ve made. Of course, this didn’t stop the mainstream propaganda machine from parroting the same claims for days.

For instance, Politico reported that the GUR “used the same means to down the bomber as were previously used to shoot down an A-50 surveillance plane over the Sea of Azov in January”, which is another completely unsubstantiated claim, as there’s no evidence for this.

Still, the ridiculous claims keep piling up, with Politico citing the Kiev regime sources that the Tu-22M3 they allegedly “shot down” was part of a “larger Russian air attack which killed eight and injured 25 in the Dnipro region, in the east of Ukraine, in the early hours of Friday”. At the same time, Politico reports that the Neo-Nazi junta forces “shot down” all drones and most missiles fired by the Russian air attack group. And yet, these “downed” missiles somehow managed to supposedly “destroy five high-rise buildings, two private houses, three educational institutions, seven administrative and office buildings, a market, shops, trade pavilions and a hotel”.

Worse yet, they allegedly damaged “more than 60 private homes and destroyed a solar power station”. Still, the absurd lies and illogic don’t stop there. Namely, apart from all the drones, several other missile types and the Tu-22M3 bomber, the Kiev regime claims to have “shot down” eleven Kh-59/69 stealthy air-launched cruise missiles, as well as two Kh-22. In the case of the former, the Neo-Nazi junta has been complaining that it’s “worse than the ‘Kinzhal'” (more precisely, deadlier), while it has been complaining for years that it’s impossible to shoot down the latter. And yet, all of a sudden, it’s “shooting down” both types left and right while complaining that it’s out of air defense missiles and that it needs urgent deliveries from NATO. Despite all the nonsensical claims, the mainstream propaganda machine is spreading such myths everywhere, with the infamous UK state-run BBC even interviewing the GUR head Kyrylo Budanov about “how they managed to do it”.

As the interview was given to the BBC’s Ukrainian service, Newsweek went through the trouble of translating the laughable claims. As if everything that’s been said so far wasn’t ridiculous enough, Budanov insists that the Kiev regime forces “waited for a week to conduct an ambush”. The fact that the Tu-22M3 was well outside the range of any operational air defense system in service with the Neo-Nazi junta is ignored altogether, while the mainstream propaganda machine and its favorite puppet regime now claim that the SAM system their forces used was the S-200. They didn’t even specify which version of the air defense system was used, but even if we were to consider the most modern iterations, such a feat would still be impossible to accomplish. Firstly, the system would have to be very close to the frontline, which is very risky, even for mobile air defenses that the Kiev regime has been losing in the dozens lately. And second, the S-200 is a stationary system.

This would make it a sitting duck, not just for Russian aircraft and long-range missiles, but even the regular artillery. In addition, the video of the Tu-22M3 falling clearly shows one of its engines burning, suggesting that the Russian MoD’s claims hold without any chance of seeming illogical. On the other hand, the S-200 is (in)famous for its enormous missiles. These are equipped with a massive warhead weighing well over 200 kg and containing 21,000 3.5 g fragmentation pellets triggered by a radar proximity fuse or command signal. If such a monstrosity hit any aircraft or just close enough to it, there would be very little left (if anything at all). In the best-case scenario, there would be massive, clearly visible damage to the Tu-22M3. And yet, the video evidently shows that was not the case, as there was only a burning engine. It should be noted that absurd myths and blatant lies like this are nothing out of the ordinary for the Neo-Nazi junta forces.

For instance, they keep claiming that dozens of “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles have been “shot down” by their air defense systems. In recent weeks and months, these ludicrous claims have been extended to the “Zircon” hypersonic missiles, as well. In the meantime, the Russian military keeps obliterating the latest and most advanced NATO weapons and equipment in service with the Kiev regime forces, including by using its next-generation Su-57 jets armed with the latest Kh-69 missiles. The plethora of reports about the Neo-Nazi junta’s alleged “successes” are much-needed to keep the public in the political West oblivious to the fact that their favorite puppet regime is rapidly losing ground. In addition, Budanov taking the credit for this mythical “success” suggests that he’s trying to gain more political power and influence. However, as the situation on the ground keeps deteriorating, we’re likely to hear more about similar PR “victories”.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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American businessman David Sacks predicted the collapse of Ukraine despite a new $61 billion aid package approved by the US House of Representatives since Kiev will need an even larger annual cash injection “to stave off total defeat.” Responding to a follow-up tweet about Ukraine by Sacks, Elon Musk said that a new aid package for Ukraine approved by the US House of Representatives was contributing to “a forever war” with “no exit strategy.”

“These scenes of celebration are going to look particularly foolish when Ukraine collapses anyway. The federal government can print more money; it can’t just print more artillery shells and air defense missiles,” David Sacks posted on his X account on April 20. “And I should have added, they can’t print more soldiers.”

It’s not “just” $61 billion. Ukraine will need massive annual cash infusions to stave off total defeat. So it’s $61 billion as the baseline for an annual appropriation in a new forever war.

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) April 20, 2024

For Sacks, the issue will not be limited to $61 billion because “Ukraine will need massive annual cash infusions to stave off total defeat.”

“The Iraq War and the Afghanistan War also began with annual appropriations in the $60B range. Those wars ended up costing trillions,” the businessman warned, adding that the reconstruction cost will amount to $500-600 billion “if somehow Ukraine survives the war.”

The United States House of Representatives approved, by 311 votes in favour and 112 against, an aid package that allocates $23.3 billion to replenish Ukraine’s defence articles and services, $13.8 billion for the purchase of advanced weapons systems, and $11.3 billion to US military operations in the region. In addition, the package provides for the supply of ATACMS long-range missile systems to Ukraine.

After receiving approval from the House of Representatives, the bill moves to the Senate for a vote. Subsequently, it will be presented to US President Joe Biden for his signature. Once signed, the law will come into force.

In a follow-up tweet, Sacks said,

“Based on some simple math, the new funding bill that’s being widely hailed as saving Ukraine will buy precisely half of a Summer Counteroffensive.”

Responding to the tweet, Musk highlighted,

“My biggest concern is that there is no exit strategy, just a forever war where kids die in trenches from artillery or charging machine guns and snipers through minefields.”

The billionaire also drew attention to Sacks’ post in which he expressed surprise at the fact that American Democrats waved Ukrainian flags during the vote in Congress, yet

“If you vote to send our money abroad while waving a foreign flag, you’ll be called an American patriot,” whilst “if you vote to keep our money at home to fund domestic priorities like the border, you’ll be called a foreign agent. Bizarro world.”

“Crazy,” Musk commented.

Crazy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2024

Musk has consistently criticised Western policy on the Ukraine War. Last month, the owner of X slammed forced conscription in Ukraine, saying many people died without any progress in 2023. In February, the Tesla CEO supported David Sacks’ view that the Ukrainian conflict is “based on lies.” He stressed that none of the questions currently being raised about the crisis in Ukraine correspond to reality.

In early October 2022, a Twitter survey about a hypothetical peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev that would include, among other conditions, Ukraine’s neutrality and referendums on accession to Russia, supervised by the UN, in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. He also cast doubt on Ukraine’s victory, recalling that its population is three times smaller than Russia’s and urged for peace initiatives between the two states.

After Musk’s statements about the conflict in Ukraine, the Ukrainian “Kill List” website Myrotvorets added the tycoon to its list, noting that the businessman has allegedly “contributed to Russian propaganda on more than one occasion.” However, his profile was on the website for only 15 minutes, after which it was deleted.

The new US aid package will not change the situation on the battlefield. Instead, Ukraine will find itself in an inescapable debt bondage intended to enrich the “insatiable” defence industry, as Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said.

“Of course, we will win, despite the 61 billion blood dollars that will mainly feed its own insatiable sector of the defence industry,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel, adding that the US House of Representatives voted in favour of “maximising the number of victims of this war.”

The money that will likely be approved for Ukraine will mostly probably go to defence contractors to make newer equipment for the US military, while Washington will offload older material to Ukraine. Although this may prolong the conflict, it is certainly nowhere near enough to ensure Ukrainian victory, and this is a reality that Sacks and Musk continue to highlight, yet they are ignored or ridiculed by the US establishment.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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First published on April 23, 2024

Author’s Introduction 

My  long-standing commitment is to “the value of human life”,  “the criminalization of  war” , “peaceful co-existence” between nation states and “the future of humanity” which is currently threatened by nuclear war.

The World is at a Dangerous Crossroads.  We are no longer dealing with a hypothetical scenario. The threat of World War III is real.

While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day conventional wars, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using nuclear weapons until it occurs and becomes a reality.

The US administration has endorsed preemptive nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

It should be understood that the use of nuclear weapons in relation to the confrontation between US-NATO and Russia would inevitably lead to escalation and the end of humanity as we know it.  

I have been researching nuclear war for more than 20 years focussing on its historical, strategic and geopolitical dimensions as well as its criminal features as a means to implementing what is best described as “genocide on a massive scale”.  

What is outlined in this video presentation is a brief history of nuclear war: a succession of U.S. nuclear war plans going back to the Manhattan Project (1939-1945) which was conducive to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Unknown to the broader public, the U.S. War Department –in liaison with Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project team at Los Alamos– formulated the first U.S. Doomsday Blueprint of a attack against 66 urban areas of the Soviet Union with an estimated 200 atomic bombs. 

This was confirmed by “Top Secret” documents released by the War Department on September 15, 1945 when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.  

Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as a “Dress Rehearsal”, as a means to formulate a  “Doomsday Blueprint” which consisted in “Wiping the Soviet Union off the Map”

Video: The Dangers of Nuclear War.

Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux

April 23 2024,

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Video: Interview en français 

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The September 15, 1945 Blueprint to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” 

What is presented below is a summary. For an in-depth and detailed analysis see:

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”: Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 14, 2024

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Below is the image of the 66 cities of the Soviet Union which had been envisaged as targets using more than 200 atomic bombs.

The 66 cities. Click image to enlarge 

 

 

There is an element of political delusion and paranoia in the formulation of US foreign policy. The Doomsday Scenario against the Soviet Union has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for almost 80 years.

Had it not been for the September 1945 plan to “wipe the Soviet Union off the map” (66 urban areas and more than 200 atomic bombs), neither Russia nor China would have developed nuclear weapons. There wouldn’t have been a Nuclear Arms Race.

Barely two weeks after the official end of World War II (September 2, 1945), the US War Department issued  a blueprint  (September 15, 1945) to “Wipe  the Soviet Union off the Map” (66 cities with 204 atomic bombs), when the US and the USSR were allies.

This infamous project is confirmed by declassified documents. (For further details see Chossudovsky, 2017)

Numerous US nuclear war plans have been formulated from the outset, leading up to The 1956  Strategic Air Command SAC Atomic Weapons Requirements Study (Declassified in December 2015) which consisted in targeting 1200 urban areas in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.

The preparatory documents (see below) confirm that the data pertaining to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks were being used to evaluate the viability as well as the cost of  a much larger attack against the Soviet Union. These documents were finalized 5-6 weeks after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (6, 9 August 1945).

“To Ensure our National Security”

Note the correspondence between Major General Norstad and the head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, who was in permanent liaison with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos team of nuclear scientists. 

On September 15, 1945 Norstad sent a memorandum to Lieutenant Leslie Groves requesting an estimate of  the “number of bombs required to ensure our national security”  ( The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements )

Lieutenant General Groves no doubt in consultation with Dr. Oppenheimer responded to Major General Norstad in a Memorandum dated September 29, 1945 in which he refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

See section 2, subsections a, b and c.

“It is not essential to get total destruction of a city in order to destroy its effectiveness. Hiroshima no longer exists as a city even though the area of total destruction is considerably less than total.”

The Hiroshima Nagasaki  bombings  were a “Dress Rehearsal”

Read carefully. The text below confirms that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “A Dress Rehearsal”.

Bear in mind the name of the country which is threatening America’s “national security” is not mentioned.

Answering your memorandum of 15 September 1945, [see response below]

We are at a Dangerous Crossroads. 

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable. 

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.

Throughout History, “Mistakes” have Played a Key Role. Upholding WMDs as Instruments of Peace is a Dangerous Gimmick

Relentless War Propaganda and Media Disinformation Is the Driving Force. It Must be Confronted. 

Is “Peaceful Coexistence” and Diplomacy between Russia and the U.S. an Option? 

“War is Good for Business”: Corrupt Governments which Uphold the Interests of Big Money Must be Challenged

 

For details including documentation and history see: 

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”: Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 14, 2024

“Preemptive Nuclear War”: The Historic Battle for Peace and Democracy. A Third World War Threatens the Future of Humanity

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 31, 2023

 

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

Ukraine War Funding and Failed Russian Sanctions. Is the US Empire Shooting Itself in the Foot?

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, April 24, 2024

The recently passed US transfer of its $5 billion share of Russia’s $300 billion will accelerate the negative consequences especially for Europe should the latter follow the US lead and distribute its $260 billion share to Ukraine, which it eventually will.

April 23, 1564: 460th Anniversary; William Shakespeare and the New World Order Then and Now: “Hell Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 23, 2024

Today, we celebrate the 460th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare who taught us never to despair in our resolve to seek the truth and confront the lie.

Critical Race Theory and the Decline in American Civility

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, April 24, 2024

Today’s radical wing of Critical Race Theory (CRT) wants to reimagine our society in the image of its own paradoxical disdain towards racism. Simultaneously it is embracing misanthropic hatred towards its critics thereby erasing all of the historical accomplishments to cultivate racial harmony.

Divide and Conquer: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, April 24, 2024

We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

Will Neuroweapons and the “Control of the Human Mind” Trigger the Demise of Western Democracy?

By Mojmir Babacek, April 23, 2024

For the readers of Global Research, it is already well-known that electromagnetic weapons exist and can be used to control human thinking, emotions, perceptions and functioning of human organisms. Investment in this kind of equipment is huge.

Why Cuba Is Being Punished Harshly and Israel Is Not

By Marc Vandepitte, April 23, 2024

Where is the logic? Cuba, a country that does no harm to anyone and sends more doctors worldwide than the World Health Organization, has been harshly sanctioned for more than 60 years. The apartheid state of Israel, on the other hand, is carrying out a genocide before our eyes, yet no economic sanctions are imposed against the country. On the contrary, it continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and loads of heavy weapons to carry out its massacres.

Protect the Arctic Region: Already Threatened Arctic Ecology Can be Devastated Further by Rapid Militarization

By Bharat Dogra, April 23, 202

The Arctic region is warming at twice the global rate, leading to rapid melting of ice–some have even predicted ice-free summers by year 2034. This has brought unprecedented threats to various species of the region including the polar bear.