Anadolu Agency – December 14, 2023
Gaza death toll from Israeli attacks nears 18,800
Health Ministry says 50,897 other people injured in Israeli onslaught
The Palestinian death toll from the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has soared to 18,787 since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said that 50,897 other people were injured in the Israeli offensive.
“At least 179 people were killed and 303 others injured in the past hours,” the spokesman added during a press conference.
“A large number of the victims remain under the rubble and on the roads,” al-Qudra said.
Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip from the air and land, imposed a siege, and mounted a ground offensive in retaliation for a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Nearly 1,200 people are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack, while around 139 hostages remain in captivity.
https://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/gaza-death-toll-from-israeli-attacks-nears-18800-3674796
Daily Sabah – December 14, 2023
No end in sight for Gaza war as conflict benefits Hamas, Israel
BY DILARA ASLAN ÖZER
The conflict in Gaza, now in its third month, is showing no signs of slowing down or willingness by any party to cease fighting. Both Israel and Hamas actually bear interest in the continuation of the conflict, which started on Oct. 7.
Israel’s devastating aerial and ground offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killed more than 18,600 people, mostly women and children, and caused unparalleled damage to the Gaza Strip. However, amid the mounting deaths on both sides, support among Gazans for Hamas’ resistance, as well as Israeli extremists’ wish to pursue the end of Hamas, the violence continues.
In the first stages of the conflict, many questioned the reasons behind Hamas’ attack on Israeli territory that initiated the violence, seeing no strategic advantage reached from the move that unleashed Israel’s unprecedented air bombing on Gaza. But the motives are clearer now.
Hamas has achieved at least three crucial goals as a result of the Oct. 7 incidents and what followed. The decadeslong Palestinian cause, in which the international community had lost interest, has currently become the main global agenda, leaving behind other conflicts and wars, such as Syria and even Ukraine. Hamas has achieved its goal of Gaza becoming the center of the resistance after being left in the shadow for years, with attention being focused mainly on the occupied West Bank due to continuous illegal Israeli settlements and the tensions born out of it.
A poll published recently by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh had the support of 78% of people in the Palestinian territories, compared to 58% before the war. This shows that the many civilian sacrifices of the Palestinian population did not hinder continued support toward Hamas.
Secondly, the conflict has been essential to display the brutality of Israel’s occupation and treatment of civilians through wide media coverage and the support of several leading countries. Public opinion on the international stage is slowly turning against Israel, with civilian deaths mounting by the day. This week, theﾠU.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly backed a non-binding resolution for a cease-fire in a sign of shifting intentions. Even Israel’s main backer, Washington, has to answer calls to stop the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.
U.S. President Joe Biden, whose government has provided Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, on Wednesday gave his sharpest rebuke of the war yet, saying Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza was weakening international support.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his offensive, vowing, “We are going until the end, until victory, nothing less than that.”
And Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the war against Hamas would continue “with or without international support.”
Thirdly, Hamas’ move disrupted Arab-Israeli normalization as Saudi normalization would have meant the end of a chapter for Palestine, whose cause had been championed by the Arab world for years and was even dubbed the “Arab-Israeli conflict” instead of the currently used “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
On the other side, Tel Aviv has its own objectives in refraining from ceasing its attacks. Hamas, making the first move to attack Israeli territory, has gained Tel Aviv partial justifiability in taking revenge, with several Western countries acknowledging Israel’s “right to self-defense.” Taking advantage of the last bits of Western support, Israel hopes to eliminate its long-time foe Hamas completely. Whether this is possible is another discussion since Hamas must not be viewed solely as a group but as deeply embedded in the Palestinian population and not just as a movement. Moreover, after weeks of fighting, there are few signs that Hamas has been weakened, let alone eradicated.
One more Israeli goal is to clear out Gaza’s population through mass displacements toward the Sinai, opening the way for Tel Aviv to gradually take what remains of the Palestinian territories.
With both warring parties set on furthering their aims on the battlefield, it is no surprise that the recent humanitarian pause could not be translated into a permanent cease-fire. As Clausewitz said, war is sometimes a mere continuation of policy by other means. Yet both Israel and Hamas should weigh whether the humanitarian toll is worth their greater strategic aims.
https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/news-analysis/no-end-in-sight-for-gaza-war-as-conflict-benefits-hamas-israel
The West Does Not Seek to Establish a Palestinian State: Lavrov
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the United States and its allies are not interested in the creation of a Palestinian state.
"Judging by the current stance of the West, they have no intention of establishing a Palestinian state," he stated during an appearance in the Russian Senate.
Lavrov maintained that Western countries and Israel "do not want the unification of Gaza with the West Bank, as required by the decision on the creation of a Palestinian state," adding that the United Nations also does not "eagerly interfere in the situation."
"Meanwhile, Israel categorically claims that it will complete the operation against Hamas until the complete destruction of the group," he said, emphasizing that Russia is doing everything possible to achieve a ceasefire in the region and the release of hostages held by Islamists.
In Lavrov's opinion, the only possibility of finding a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to convene an international conference involving representatives from the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, namely, Russia, China, France, the U.S., and the United Kingdom.
"An organization like the United Nations should play a key role in convening such an event. And I hope that the UN Secretary-General can take that initiative," he concluded.
According to the latest report from the Gaza-based Health Ministry, Israeli occupation forces have killed 18,200 Palestinians since October 7.
So far, the number of people displaced by Israeli bombings in Gaza has reached approximately 1.9 million, representing 80 percent of its population of 2.3 million residents.
Daily Sabah reported:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday said Moscow cannot recognize Israel's methods against the Palestinian group Hamas as "acceptable."
"From the very beginning, we strongly condemned ... the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7 against Israeli civilians ... and urgently called for the need to suppress such terrorist activities. But, at the same time, we cannot recognize as acceptable those methods which began to be used (by Israel) against Hamas, from which civilians suffered the most," Lavrov said in a speech at the Russian Federation Council.
Saying that Israel apparently believes it has the right to destroy Hamas by any means, Lavrov said the result of such a line of thought is clear due to the huge number of casualties in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, when Israel's offensive began, following the Hamas attack. "Neighborhoods are being razed to the ground, more than 18,000 civilians have already died, this figure is increasing every day, two-thirds of them are women and children. The situation is terrible," Lavrov said. His remarks come days after a conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin, in which the former criticized the cooperation between Russia and Iran and expressed his dissatisfaction with the positions taken "against Israel by Russian representatives at the U.N. and in other forums."
Lavrov said there currently is a dispute at the U.N. "about who will prevail in rhetoric, in the ideological struggle." He said Russia will never agree to a deal undermining Israel's security, but Moscow is also convinced that security can only be ensured in accordance with U.N. decisions, which call for an independent Palestinian state. He accused the West of not intending to create such a state, adding that attempts to create Jewish settlements in the West Bank did not stop. "The practice of demolishing Palestinian houses and expelling Palestinian families from these houses continues because Israel wants to develop these territories for new settlements," he said.
https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/god-bless-him-putin-hails-erdogans-role-for-peace-in-gaza/news
Conscience of the World Is Being Activated, as the ‘West’ Is More Isolated Than Ever
BY STEWART BATTLE
A resounding defeat for the “rules-based order” was delivered today with the United Nations General Assembly vote for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza. This resolution passed overwhelmingly, with 153 in favor, 10 against, and 23 abstaining. Compared to the last UN vote in October which called for a “humanitarian truce,” at 120-14 and 45 abstentions, this shows that the world is increasingly opposed to the barbaric slaughter being conducted by Israel, and that the U.S. and its allies are isolated to a degree never seen before.
When the U.S. vetoed last week’s UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, it was met with a wide denunciation; but it also pushed those in favor of peace to become even more determined. This was perhaps best exemplified by UN Secretary General António Guterres—who had initiated the Dec. 8 Security Council vote—and said forcefully afterwards: “I promise I will not give up” in achieving a ceasefire. Echoing this sentiment Dec. 11 while visiting Egypt’s Rafah crossing into Gaza, Chinese UN Ambassador Zhang Jun said: “We are here with the belief that with our joint efforts we can stop the war. We might not be able to change the whole situation, but we will not give up.”
Over the entirety of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the U.S. and U.K. have attempted to “manage” all parties involved, by massaging public perceptions and promising one thing while doing the other. This short-sighted approach was bound to fail, as it clearly is now. But beyond that, it is setting into motion something far broader than the immediate issue at hand, and is collapsing any trust in the Western “rules-based order” by force of its own actions.
The vote on Dec. 8 was likely the final nail in the coffin of this perception management operation, and the world is now forced to see the ghastly truth of the pro-genocide orientation of Wall Street and London which underlines all Anglo-American policy. The Dec. 12 UN General Assembly vote showed that more and more of the world are not cowed by threats and word-games. While the Five Eyes thought police may be able to control Westerners’ perceptions on television and the internet, the world is seeing what is happening in Gaza in full color.
This is why China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman’s remarks hit so hard on Monday, Dec. 11. When asked about China’s response to the new round of sanctions and condemnation of China for “human rights” abuses, Mao Ning simply said: If the U.S. really cares about human rights, “the last thing it should do is to veto the Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, the only country that has done so, while the humanitarian disaster in Gaza deteriorates by the hour.”
Expect pressure to continue to build against this blatantly hypocritical and failing system. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Dec. 10 at the Doha summit over the weekend, there is a new “multipolar world which is emerging after 500 years of domination of what we call the ‘collective West.’ … In order to suppress this kind of development, [or] any dissent, our western colleagues decided to sacrifice all the principles of globalization, which they have been selling to everybody for decades and decades … for the sake of rules-based world order.”
Another element of this can be seen at the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, where all language implying the elimination of fossil fuels has been rejected by China, India, and the rest of the developing world. No amount of lecturing or stomping of feet is enough to convince the majority of the world that energy consumption is bad, and that development should be reserved for only wealthy countries.
These actions and others are setting into motion a profound and historical shift which can no longer be avoided. But at the same time, the intensity of the evil being perpetrated in Gaza risks triggering a much broader conflict throughout Southwest Asia and even beyond. As Egypt’s UN Ambassador Osama Mahmoud Abdel Khalek Mahmoud said during the General Assembly Dec. 12: “The perpetration of this destructive war will lead to a full-fledged catastrophe. This will unfortunately mean that genocide will be used as a tool for war, completely disregarding international law. This will lead the region to a full-fledged war, and it will jeopardize the credibility of this international organization.”
Therefore, the eyes of history are upon us in these coming days and hours. Will we act in time?
Countercurrent – December 14, 2023
Getting Serious About Halting Israeli Genocide
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
On Friday, December 8, the UN Security Council met under Article 99 for only the fourth time in the UN’s history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the Secretary General to summon the Council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security.” The previous occasions were the Belgian invasion of the Congo in 1960, the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and Lebanon’s Civil War in 1989.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that he invoked Article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point,” with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 cosponsors.
The World Food Program has reported that Gaza is on the brink of massﾠstarvation, with 9 out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked Article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.
The Secretary General stressed that “The brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity.”Top of Form
Mr. Guterres concluded, “The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… The eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”
UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the Council voted thirteen to one, with the U.K. abstaining, to approve the resolution. But the one vote against by the United States, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the Council impotent to act as the Secretary General warned that it must.
This was the sixteenth U.S. Security Council veto since 2000 – and fourteen of those vetoes have been to shield Israel and/or U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability. While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the U.S.’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country.
The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN Ambassador Sérgio França Danese told the Council, if the U.S. hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution that Brazil drafted on October 18, “thousands of lives would have been saved.” And as the Indonesian representative asked, “How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”
Following the previous U.S. veto of a ceasefire at the Security Council, the UN General Assembly took up the global call for a ceasefire, and the resolution, sponsored by Jordan,ﾠpassed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions. The 12 small countries who voted with the United States and Israel represented less than 1% of the world’s population.
The isolated diplomatic position in which the United States found itself should have been a wake-up call, especially coming a week after a Data For Progress poll found that 66% of Americans supported a ceasefire, while a Mariiv poll found that only 29% of Israelis supported an imminent ground invasion of Gaza.
After the United States again slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on December 8, the desperate need to end the massacre in Gaza returned to the UN General Assembly on December 12. An identical resolution to the one the U.S. vetoed in the Security Council was approved by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than the one in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sends a clear message that the international community is disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.
Another powerful instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to this massacre is the Genocide Convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified. It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Convention, and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take preliminary measures to protect the victims in the meantime.
On January 23, 2020, the Court didﾠexactly that in a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority. In a brutal military campaign in late 2017, Myanmar massacred tens of thousands of Rohingya and burnt down dozens of villages. 740,000 Rohingyas fled into Bangladesh, and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever.”
China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so The Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictatorship, submitted a case to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention.
That opened the door for a unanimous ruling by 17 judges at the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the Genocide Convention required. The ICJ issued that ruling as a preventive measure, the equivalent of a preliminary injunction in a domestic court, even though its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away. It also ordered Myanmar to file a report with the Court every six months to detail how it is protecting the Rohingya, signaling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.
So which country will step up to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the Genocide Convention? Activists are already discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alertﾠthat you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkïye, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).
There has also been increasing pressure on the International Criminal Court to take up the case against Israel. The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes, but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel. After a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza, and he was criticized by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on October 7, but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
However, as long as the world is faced with the United States’ tragic and debilitating abuse of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, the economic and diplomatic actions of individual countries may have more impact than their speeches in New York.
While historically there have been about two dozen countries that have not recognized Israel, in the past two months, Belize and Bolivia have severed ties with Israel, while others–Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan and Turkey–have withdrawn their ambassadors.
Other countries are trying to have it both ways–condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the U.S. of obstructing a ceasefire.
And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even today, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossings, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns. If it means what it says, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States.
Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the Security Council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Under the so-called Abraham accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign on to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred million dollarﾠarms deals with Israel.
In New York, the UAE sponsored the latest failed Security Council resolution, and its representative declared, “The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.”
And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in U.S. “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades. Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of U.S. warplanes are still based at the Al-Dhafra Airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the U.S. Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. Speeches at the UN may have helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it.
The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is not that it is illegitimate or anti-semitic. It is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.
U.S. Alternate Representative to the U.N. Robert Wood told the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and U.S. views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously.
But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of U.S. and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians.
While Israel, with U.S. bombs and howitzer shells, is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity. The grassroots clamor to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking diplomatic relations and other measures that will make Israel a pariah state on the world stage.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder ofﾠCODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, includingﾠInside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author ofﾠBlood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
https://countercurrents.org/2023/12/getting-serious-about-halting-israeli-genocide/
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