December 15 is the 70th day since the genocide in Gaza began
December 15th. It is the 70th day since the genocide in Gaza began. Israel has killed more than 19,000 civilians, with over 8,000 being children in Gaza and West Bank. In Gaza, there are 7,000 missing or unaccounted for, and the number of casualties is staggering, with hospitals overwhelmed and more than 50,000 injured awaiting treatment. For the past two months, Gaza has been without electricity, and access to water, and over 2 million surviving inhabitants are unable to access food and essential supplies. Israel restricts humanitarian aid to Gaza from entering.
Al Jazeera – December 15, 2023
Israel continues Gaza onslaught despite US envoy’s ‘new phase of war’
Israel has continued to pound Gaza despite a senior United States official saying that Tel Aviv has agreed to end widespread bombing and ground operations and move towards precision targeting of Hamas.
Despite mounting international calls for restraint, Israel on Friday pressed on with its offensive in Gaza. Air strikes across the strip killed dozens of people, according to local authorities.
The bombardment came after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“There will be a transition to another phase of this war, one that is focused in more precise ways on targeting the leadership and on intelligence-driven operations,” the US envoy told reporters in Tel Aviv after the meeting.
However, he did not say when the shift would happen.
The US agrees with Israel that the war on Gaza will still last for months, Sullivan added, noting “intensive discussions” about future stages of the conflict and the aftermath.
Washington is also working to release the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza, he said.
‘America’s face-saving’
Sullivan will travel to the occupied West Bank later on Friday to meet Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Sullivan told Netanyahu that it is not appropriate for Israel to occupy Gaza in the long term.
“We do not believe that it makes sense for Israel or is right for Israel to occupy Gaza, reoccupy Gaza over the long term. … Ultimately, the control of Gaza, the administration of Gaza and the security of Gaza has to transition to the Palestinians.”
Washington has suggested that after the war, the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, could play a role in governing Gaza instead of Hamas, something Sullivan may discuss with Abbas.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, asserted that “the world’s foremost superpower of the past 70 years” is being humiliated by Israel.
“America laid few red lines: No reoccupation of Gaza, which is now no reoccupation of Gaza long term; no indiscriminate bombing. And then Sullivan comes to the region and says, ‘No, we understand,’” he said.
“Every time we talk about a spat, it involves Israel spitting and America’s face-saving. It is not exactly an equal relationship. The patron continues to follow the orders of the client,” Bishara added.
‘Immediate protection’
The US is a key military backer of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza, which has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians – mostly women and children. Israel launched the offensive after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people.
The US has repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war, but it has recently been more critical of Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians with President Joe Biden on Thursday urging Israel to “be focused on how to save civilian lives” and to “be more careful”.
Despite mounting international calls for restraint, Israel on Friday continued its offensive in Gaza and wound down its longest raid on the occupied West Bank since the war began.
Hospitals in Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah reported rising casualties after strikes early in the morning.
In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, an Israeli attack near a school run by the United Nations killed at least 33 people, health authorities said.
In the eastern part of Rafah, also in the south, there was a heavy exchange of fire, Al Jazeera’s reporters said.
Israel’s military also continued to target the occupied West Bank, where its raids and settler violence have killed 289 Palestinians and wounded 3,365.
In Jenin in the West Bank, the Israeli army ended a raid on a refugee camp that began on Tuesday. At least 12 people were killed and more than 500 arrested, Al Jazeera reporters said, although some have been released.
The United Kingdom and a dozen other countries – including Australia, Canada and France – on Friday called on Israel to take immediate and concrete steps to tackle settler violence in the West Bank.
“This rise in extremist settler violence committed against Palestinians is unacceptable,” the countries said in a joint statement published by the British government.
“Proactive steps must now be taken to ensure the effective and immediate protection of Palestinian communities.”
World Socialist Web Site – December 15, 2023
Israeli officials spell out plans for ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians,
as Gaza massacres continue
by Thomas Scripps
Following the United Nations General Assembly vote Tuesday for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli government has not only pledged to continue the war but made clear its plan for an onslaught against the Palestinians across the whole region. Its leaders know they have full license to do so, whatever cynical votes are cast at the UN or statements made to the press by its imperialist backers.
On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen declared, “Israel will continue the war against Hamas, with or without international support.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told military commanders the war would “continue until the end, until the victory, until the elimination of Hamas” and that “nothing will stop us.”
Around 18,800 people have already been killed in Gaza—over 300 in the last day—with thousands more still trapped, dead or alive, under rubble.
As the World Socialist Web Site explained this week, “When the fascist Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks of ‘Hamas’, he is speaking not of a political organization but of any will to resist on the part of the Palestinian population.”
The implications of this objective for Palestinians everywhere were spelled out by Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who commented Wednesday, “There will be no Palestinian state here. We will never allow another state to be established between Jordan and the [Mediterranean] sea.” This was, he said, “our country; the historical property of our ancestors.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely reiterated the point in an interview with Sky News Thursday morning. Asked about the prospect of a future Palestinian state she replied, “Absolutely no. Israel knows today, and the world should know now that the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel.”
She added snidely, “They want to have a state from the river to the sea. They are saying it loud and clear.” Hotovely detailed the single Israeli state “from the river to the sea” she and the Zionists want to create in a 2013 essay, “The Five Stage Plan for the Greater Land of Israel”.
She argues that discussion of a two-state solution has “obstructed the most basic desire harboured by a majority of Israeli citizens—not to give up territory that was conquered through blood.”
Her five steps involve declaring full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, adopting as a Basic Law the principle of the State of Israel being a Jewish nation state (achieved in 2018), making full Israeli citizenship conditional on service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and encouraging the migration of a further two million Jews to Israel to ensure a Jewish majority as Palestinian areas are annexed.
This would necessarily involve an eruption of violence from the IDF and its far-right vigilante allies. It is because the United States knows and supports this strategy that it has delayed the sale of 20,000 assault rifles to Israel—where they are set to be handed out among fascist settler groups—in an attempt to distance the White House from the worst of the crimes it authors.
What the Israeli state is preparing is a permanent state of war against the entire Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and Israel itself in pursuit of their expulsion.
On Thursday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told visiting US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan the war “will require a long period of time—it will last more than several months”. Earlier in the day the Knesset passed a wartime budget adding an additional $7 billion, formally to cover the costs of the Gaza war, though opposition members alleged the funds would be directed to the Settlements and National Projects Ministry.
The IDF has already massively stepped up its aggression in the West Bank. An operation has been ongoing in the city of Jenin since Tuesday, with 12 Palestinians, including children, reported killed, 10 wounded and over 500 rounded up, with some needing medical treatment after “questioning”—roughly 100 are still detained. Raids and bulldozers have destroyed people’s homes and vehicles, and many families are now struggling to access food.
IDF soldiers have provocatively delivered Jewish prayers from mosque loudspeakers, forcing their suspension from operations for giving the game away.
As in Gaza, denying access to healthcare is a clear military objective. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International announced Wednesday, “Yesterday, a man had to carry his 13-year-old son to Khalil Suleiman hospital because Israeli armoured cars blocked ambulances. The boy died soon after.
“Yesterday and today, Israeli forces tear gassed the hospital in response to children throwing stones at armoured cars…
“Today, after a patient was discharged from hospital and an ambulance attempted to take her home, the ambulance was fired upon, and the same patient was re-admitted with a gunshot wound.”
In another post, the organisation recounted the shooting and killing of an unarmed teenager, Musa Ahmed Musa Khatib, inside the hospital. It described how “Israeli forces stopped ambulances taking discharged patients home outside Khalil Suleiman hospital. Paramedics and ambulance drivers were ordered out of the ambulances, stripped and made to kneel in the street.”
The Jenin operation is now being expanded to local villages, while other raids have been carried out in Ramallah, Qalqilya, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron. More than 280 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, among them 69 children, and at least 4,400 detained.
Attacks in the West Bank replicate the programme being carried out with unrestrained savagery in Gaza, once again under the cover of a telecommunications blackout.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that IDF forces occupying the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north of the strip prevented medical staff from providing emergency care, leading to the deaths of two people. Soldiers reportedly stopped medical staff from moving between departments, and cut off food, electricity and water, including to 12 infants in the neonatal department. Staff and patients were later forcibly evacuated to the hospital yard.
Across Gaza, just 11 out of 36 hospitals are still functioning at all, according to the World Health Organization, and nine out of 28 primary health clinics. The UN has recorded 364 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Strip since October 7, and 300 health ministry staff killed.
The destruction of healthcare infrastructure prepares the way for a catastrophic spread of disease over winter, with flooding that brings with it water borne diseases and hypothermia already a major problem. “The perfect storm for disease has begun,” said UNICEF chief spokesperson James Elder.
Viruses and bacteria will spread like wildfire amid the overcrowded, squalid and starved conditions Israel has forced the population of Gaza into. According to the UN, over half of its people are now sheltering in the Rafah governate in the far south, in a tent mega-slum which has now been inundated with floodwater. In the city of Deir al-Balah further north, images show ambulance workers wading up to their waist in water trying to rescue the injured.
UN Palestinian refugee chief Philippe Lazzarini described the situation in Rafah: “It lacks infrastructure and all the basics. It is not a place to hold more than one million people. One warehouse is home to 30,000 people. Families live in tiny spaces only separated by blankets and plastic sheeting.”
Like the rest of the Strip, Rafah is under regular bombardment, despite the IDF declaring it a safe zone. On Wednesday night, an enormous airstrike obliterated two houses in the city, killing 26 people at a stroke.
Referring to the lack of aid entering Gaza and the increasingly difficulty in distributing it, Lazzarini said people were “desperate and hungry.” He added, “Gaza is not habitable as a place anymore.”
While continuing its genocidal assault, Israel and its allies are mounting provocations against Lebanon, Syria and Iran in the hope of a wider war in which every Palestinian can be treated as an enemy combatant.
Iranian Defence Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani warned Thursday of “extraordinary problems” if plans go ahead for a US-led military task force in the Red Sea, on the pretext of Houthi rebel attacks on shipping. NBC reported of the “worries grow[ing]” in Lebanon “that Netanyahu won’t stop with Gaza.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/14/fzck-d14.html
Countercurrent – December 15, 2023
May Peace Prevail in Gaza
By Jim Miles
I can see the photos: the faces of children haunted by chaos beyond their control; their faces of pain, the silent cries and screams of injuries and fear; parents’ faces, torn with grief and more silent cries of pain and injustice; blood washed across staircases and floors in hospitals, blood caked on faces of innocent people – clotted with the powder and grit of demolished concrete and plaster from homes, hospitals, and schools;
I can see the photos: neighbourhoods crumpled and flattened by thousands of bombs; craters where buildings and streets used to be; people, small by comparison to the deluge of destruction, digging with bare hands through the tangled rubble of steel and mortar; people, frozen in time, calling for help, beseeching the world, damning the world, nowhere to turn, no escape from the whistle and rumble of bombs and missiles;
I cannot hear that: nor the screams of the wounded, the cries of the injured, the cries for lost parents, lost children, lost lives; the cries of those trapped under the wreckage of their homes;
I cannot smell that: the sickly metallic sweet smell of blood; the acrid sulfurous smoke of explosions; the dustings of powder and chemicals drifting around the ruins; the heart and gut-wrenching smells of bodies decomposing under the rubble; the smoke of a small fire somehow scavenged to boil water for a meager meal of…some unknown provenance;
I cannot touch that: the heat, the cold, the grit, the twist of iron bars under calloused and bloody hands searching for victims; the warm damp of bloodied clothing and bandages.
…and I understand: this is not a war, but a genocide committed against an imprisoned people; a genocide that has endured slowly over many decades; an ethnic cleansing long understood by the perpetrators to be an underlying feature of their conquest; as long as the very origins of the concept of the settler state started over a century ago.
There is no morality in U.S. governance
I listen to the politicians: the members of the U.S. congress and their fawning obsequiousness towards Israel; the same coming from the EU, Britain, Canada and other members of the ‘western’ (and diminishing) world. I listen to news commentaries: knowing that “balance” and “fairness” do not apply in a situation where one side has vastly superior military power (although not the touted prowess of such), controls most of the media, and has its mystique inculcated into its own population: exceptionalism, freedom, indispensability ring hollow in a world of violence they themselves have created.
The United States, as the largest purveyor of violence in the world, could easily put a stop to all this. The feeble words and excuses of the U.S. government only emphasize how the politicians, the military-industrial-financial complex, and the corporate “persons” – all of whom reap large financial rewards for this carnage – do not want the savagery to end. The military corporations – Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northop Grumman, an almost endless list – and those supplying them, are providing as per President Biden a financial boost for the U.S. economy. Lives and deaths are not important; the dollar reigns supreme, both for profits and global hegemony.
A big if, a gigantic if: if the U.S. simply stopped sending military support to Israel, the bombs and missiles and tanks would soon become silent. So simple; so not going to happen.
The U.S. is the least moral country in the world today. It has created and facilitated more wars, more deaths, more damages, more humanitarian disasters than any other country. The U.S. sees everything as a win or lose situation, a zero sum game in which only they can be the winners, at all costs – the costs of millions of lives around the world. Now it is the costs of tens of thousands of lives in Gaza/Palestine, the costs of all civic functions, of hospitals, doctors, schools, teachers, bakeries, electrical and sewage systems, all to support the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The future is unknown, but obviously major changes of some kind are in process, violently so. There are solutions, none of which the U.S. or Israel will even consider for a moment, until and unless some unforeseen event forces them to. As both are nuclear armed violent societies, the world needs to hope above all hopes for a peaceful resolution to current events, beyond a pause, beyond a ceasefire, well into the creation of a democratic state for all citizens, well into the creation of a global democracy where politicians and their militaries do not rule.
In the meantime sumud in the face of a genocidal threat has served along with the resistance to ethnic tyranny. May peace eventually prevail.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educationist
https://countercurrents.org/2023/12/may-peace-prevail/
VT Foreign Policy – December 14, 2023
Death and Destruction in Gaza
John Mearsheimer: As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?
By Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor
I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.
What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”
Let me elaborate.
First, Israel is purposely massacring huge number of civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women. The claim that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example, the IDF spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” That same day, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have lowered all the restraints – we will kill everyone we fight against; we will use every means.”
Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of the IDF’s bombing campaign – both published in Israeli outlets – explain in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture what each has to say:
“‘A Mass Assassination Factoryﾒ: Inside Israelﾒs Calculated Bombing of Gaza”
“The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing.”
Similarly, the New York Times published an article in late November 2023 titled: “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace.” Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since” his appointment in January 2017.
Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has Israel greatly limited the supply of fuel into Gaza, which hospitals need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations.
Defense Minister Gallant’s comment on 9 October captures Israeli policy: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Israel has been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so small that a senior UN official reports that “half of Gaza’s population is starving.” He goes on to report that, “Nine out of 10 families in some areas are spending ‘a full day and night without any food at all’.”
Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has “genocidal intent.” Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning.
To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman animals.” And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,” or “destroyed.” One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.” Going even further, a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza. These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel’s government.
Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba. To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”
Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding, and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure – to include mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings, and hospitals. As of 1 December 2023, the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000 buildings, including entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble. Consequently, a stunning 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s cultural heritage; as NPR reports, “more than 100 Gaza heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.”
Fifth, Israel is not just terrorizing and killing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a public way in their neighborhoods – sitting them down in large groups in the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the streets – before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most cases, the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.
Sixth, although the Israelis are doing the slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but it has also been providing Israel with the weaponry necessary to wage this massacre. As one Israeli general (Yitzhak Brick) recently made clear: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.” Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending Israel additional ammunition, by-passing the normal procedures of the Arms Export Control Act.
Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article in the New York Review of Books describing these horrors, David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians. “What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman,” the settler freely admits, “But if you think about it clearly, it all follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the Jews, and only to them.” Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israel government has markedly increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to Amnesty International, there is considerable evidence that these prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.
As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?
John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and one of the leading foreign policy scholars in America.
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonaldﾒs Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
Information Clearing House – December 15, 2023
‘Palestine Must Be Obliterated’:
‘Times of Israel’ Publishes, Deletes Article Calling for Genocide
By Palestine Chronicle Staff
An article appeared in the popular Israeli newspaper The Times of Israel on Thursday, openly calling for the genocide of the Palestinian people. Though the piece seems to have been removed from the blog section of the website, it is still accessible through the digital library Internet Archive.
The article had listed Chicago-based blogger Jeffrey Camras, as the author, who is described in the bio as a person with a “deep love for the Jewish people and the state of Israel”.
“In order to right a wrong, in order to make peace and move forward, Palestine must be obliterated,” Camras wrote, adding, “It is an affront to society, morality, humanity. It represents lies and antisemitism, oppression and terror. Nothing more.”
He also wrote,
“No one cares about the Palestinians. Care for them solely exists in the form of Anti-Israel advocacy, NOT Pro-Palestinian support.
“Israel (and you the reader) needs to put its faith in the Torah and Hashem in order fulfill our destiny. Establish sovereignty over Har HaBayit. Do this today! .. Conquer remaining biblical lands in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Do this diplomatically or militarily.”
In a previous article – still on the Times of Israel page – entitled “A Halachic Solution Is a Diplomatic Solution”, also published in The Times of Israel blogs section, on April 18, Camras wrote: “To change the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must transform the conflict from a national one to a religious one.”
The latest article was published on Thursday afternoon, around the same time that thousands of Israeli Jewish extremists took part in a provocative parade in the occupied Palestinian city of East Jerusalem, chanting racist slogans such as ‘death to the Arabs.’
It was unclear when the article was removed from the website, but according to the version of the piece accessed by the Palestine Chronicle in the digital library Internet Archive, the entry was posted on Thursday, May 18, at 3:32 PM.
Some Israeli officials and parliamentarians took part in the so-called ‘Flag March’, including far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Israeli Minister Yisrael Katz.
In his speech at the rally, Katz called for the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
“Yahya Sinwar should also know that if he dares to do so (meaning targeting the march), his fate will be the same as his friends in Islamic Jihad,” a reference to the assassinations carried out by Israel during its latest bombardment on Gaza.
Meanwhile, the US State Department condemned the “outrageous and unacceptable” violence and racism displayed at the Israeli Flag March.
The Cradle – December 11, 2023
BRICS and the Resistance Axis: a convergence of goals
The Gaza war has accelerated cooperation between Global South behemoths resisting western-backed conflict. Together, the Russian-led BRICS and Iran-led Axis of Resistance can shape a US-free West Asia.
By Pepe Escobar
MOSCOW - Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a notable pit stop in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to meet, respectively, Emirati President Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) before flying back to Moscow to meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The three key issues in all three meetings, confirmed by diplomatic sources, were Gaza, OPEC+, and BRICS expansion. They are, of course, interlinked.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership is developing at breakneck speed, alongside Russia-Saudi Arabia (especially on OPEC+) and Russia-UAE (investments). This is already leading to stark shifts in defense interconnection across West Asia. The long-term implications for Israel, way beyond the Gaza tragedy, are stark.
Putin told Raisi something that was extraordinary on so many levels:
“When I was flying over Iran, I wanted to land in Tehran and to meet you. But I was informed that you wanted to visit Moscow. Relations between our countries are growing rapidly. Please convey my best wishes to the Supreme Leader, who supports our relations.”
Putin’s reference to “flying over Iran” directly connects with four armed Sukhoi Su-35s flying in formation, escorting the presidential plane over 4,000 km (if measured as a straight line) from Moscow to Abu Dhabi, without any landing or refueling.
As every stunned military analyst remarked, an American F-35 is capable of flying at best 2,500 km without refueling. Yet the most important element is that both MbZ and MbS authorized the Russian Su-35s escorts over their territory – which is something extremely unusual in diplomatic circles.
And that leads us to the key takeaway. With a single move on the aerial chessboard, compounded with the subsequent clincher with Raisi, Moscow accomplished four tasks:
Putin proved - graphically speaking - that this is a new West Asia where the US hegemon is a secondary actor; destroyed the neocon political myth of Russian “isolation;” demonstrated ample military supremacy; and lastly, as the start of Russia’s BRICS presidency approaches, showed that it retains all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic cards.
Kill them, but softly
The original five BRICS – led by the Russia-China strategic partnership - will open their doors to three major West Asian powers Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE on 1, January, 2024. Their accession to the multipolar powerhouse offers these countries an exceptional platform for broader markets, and is likely to accompany a flurry of investments and tech exchanges.
The long-term, sophisticated game played by Russia-China is leading to a complete, tectonic change in the geoeconomics and geopolitics of West Asia.
BRICS 10 leadership – considering that the 11th member, Argentina, for the moment, is a wild card at best – even has the potential, under a Russian presidency, to become an effective counterpart to the toothless UN.
And that leads us to the complex interaction between BRICS and the Axis of Resistance.
At first, there were reasons to suspect that the bland condemnationﾠof the genocide in Gaza by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was a sign of cowardice.
Yet a renewed appraisal may reveal everything is evolving organically when it comes to the intersection of the Big Picture designed by the late Iranian Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani with the meticulous micro-planning by Gaza's Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who knows the Israeli mentality inside out and considered in detail its devastating military response.
Arguably, the most incandescent focus of detailed discussions in Moscow these past few days is that we may be approaching the point where “a signal” will unleash a concerted Axis of Resistance response.
For the moment, what we have are sporadic attacks: Hezbollah destroying Israel’s communication towers facing the southern Lebanon border, Iraq's resistance forces attacking US bases in Iraq and Syria, and Yemen's Ansarallah concretely blocking the Red Sea for Israeli ships. All that does not form a concerted, coordinated offensive - yet.
And that would explain the desperation within the Biden administration in Washington, complete with rumors that it needs Israel to finish Plan Gaza between Christmas and the start of January. Not only have the global optics of the Gaza assault become horrifyingly unsustainable, but most of all, a lengthier military campaign dramatically raises the likelihood of a “signal” to the Axis of Resistance.
And that will result in the end of all the Hegemon’s elaborate plans for West Asia.
The geopolitical goals of Zionism are quite clear: re-establish its self-constructed aura of dominance in West Asia and maintain steady control over US foreign policy and the military alliance.
Depravity is a key component for accomplishing these goals. It’s so easy to bomb, shell, and burn ultra-soft civilian targets, including thousands of women and children, turning Gaza into a vast cemetery, while the White Man’s Burden Club urges Israeli occupation forces to kill them, of course, but more silently.
Cue to toxic Atlanticist and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offering bribes, in person, to Egypt's and Jordan's leaders - $10 billion to Cairo and $5 billion to Amman - as confirmed with Brussels diplomats. That’s the mind-numbing EU solution to stopping the Gaza genocide.
All Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah bin al-Hussein would need to do is to “facilitate” the forced exodus and Final Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza to their respective territories.
Because the eschatological goal of Zionism remains an undiluted Final Solution, whatever happens in the battleground. And, of course, as the 7 October Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood operation suggests, to destroy Jerusalem's Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish Third Temple on top of its ashes.
What happens when “the signal” comes
So what we have is essentially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Emigration-or-Annihilation plan - versus what veteran West Asia expert Alastair Crooke has memorably coined as “Sykes-Picot is dead.” That phrase means that Arab and Iranian inclusion in BRICS will eventually rewrite the rules in West Asia, to the detriment of the Zionist project.
There’s even a strong possibility this time around that Israel's certified war crimes in Gaza will be prosecuted, as Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslim-majority nations, with full BRICS support, form a Global South-recognized commission to take Tel Aviv and its armed forces to court.
Forget the tainted ICC, servile as it remains to the Hegemon's Rules-Based Order. The BRICS will help usher international law back to the forefront of the global scene, as intended when the UN was born in 1945 before it was castrated.
The Gaza genocide is also forcing all latitudes along the Global South to be more inclusive – as in delving into the wisdom of our common, intertwined pre-modern history. Everyone with a conscience has been forced to dig deeply into oneself to find explanations for the Inexcusable. In this sense, we are all Palestinians now.
As it stands, no power – the west because it refuses it; the BRICS and the Global South because they have not yet made their play – has been capable of stopping a Final Solution conducted by a racist, ethnocentrist ideology.
Yet that also opens the startling possibility that no power will be strong enough to stop the Axis of Resistance when the “signal” comes to pull the curtain down on the Zionist Project. By that time, the Axis will have a supreme moral imperative, recognized, even urged, by populations globally.
So that’s where we are now: evaluating the incandescent symmetry between impotence and imperative. The deadlock will be broken – perhaps sooner than we all expect.
That evokes a comparison with a previous deadlock. The current impasse between a perverse, trashy version of Hebraic “civilization” and emerging Islamic nationalism – let’s call it “civilizational Islam” – mirrors where we were in December 2021, when Russian-proposed treaties on the “indivisibility of security” were turned down by Washington. In hindsight, that was the last chance for a peaceful way out of the clash between the Heartland and the Rimland.
The Hegemon rejected it. Russia made its play – and accelerated exponentially the decline of the Hegemon.
The song remains the same, from the steppes of Donbas to the oil fields of West Asia. How can the multipolar Global South – increasingly represented by the expanded BRICS – manage a raging, fearful, out-of-control imperialist west staring into the abyss of moral, political, and financial collapse?
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Published since July 2008 |
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
