I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I’ve set up a program
to deal with that,” Biden told reporters. “I also condemn those who
don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
Biden’s comments came as the media is focused on Columbia University
in New York City, where students have set up a camp named the “Gaza
Solidarity Encampment.” Some of the students involved in the protest
were arrested last week and suspended by the university, prompting a
walkout by faculty members to show support for the students.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also smeared protesters
as “antisemitic,” saying, “I am horrified and disgusted with the
antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus.”
The demand of the protesters is for Columbia University to divest
from companies profiting from the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and
the occupation of the West Bank. Al Jazeera
reported that the protest is being organized by the student-led
coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), Students for
Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace. According to the
CUAD’s website, the coalition includes 116 organizations.
Critics of the protests have accused the demonstrators of harassing
Jewish students, which has been a common claim about recent college
protests in general. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, made the point on X
that Jews are usually “overrepresented” among pro-Palestinian
protesters at colleges. “Sometimes they’re the largest identity group.
Maybe folks calling for cracking down on protesters in the name of
Jewish safety should consider their safety too,” he said.
Eighty years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the ruling class
in Germany is shedding its democratic mask. The suppression of the
Palestine Congress in Berlin is reminiscent of the darkest times in
German history.
Last Friday, 900 police stormed the peaceful gathering and arrested
numerous participants, including Jewish opponents of Israel’s genocide
in Gaza. Approximately 2,500 police officers were mobilized in total,
and they have since been brutalizing protesters demonstrating against
the dispersal of the Congress.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Sozialistische
Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) condemn the German
state’s crackdown—which is redolent of outright dictatorships and
fascist regimes—on the Palestine Congress in the strongest terms. It is
not only directed against the congress and its supporters, but aims to
suppress all social and political opposition. Under conditions in which
the ruling class is again relying on militarism and war and is planning
massive attacks on the working class, protests are not allowed.
The organizers of the Palestine Congress and their lawyers were
willing to abide by all police restrictions. A statement from the
lawyers’ collective, which worked closely with the organizers of the
congress, showed that there were already several rounds of “safety
talks” between organizers and the police in advance, which further
restricted the congress. Nevertheless, it was brutally dissolved in the
end. Even its most prominent participants were treated like criminals.
For example, the Federal Ministry of the Interior imposed a ban on
the former Greek Minister of Finance and chairman of the pan-European
party DiEM25, Yanis Varoufakis. The ban also includes an entry and
online access ban. In other words, although a few years ago Berlin was
still working closely with Varoufakis to impose the European Union’s
austerity dictates on the Greek working class, he is now no longer
allowed to express himself politically in Germany, because he criticises
the mass murder of Palestinians.
Another well-known person blacklisted by the federal government at
short notice is the physician and rector of the University of Glasgow,
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah. After the Federal Police also issued him with an
entry ban, he was detained upon arrival at Berlin Airport, subjected to
an hours-long interrogation and then sent back to London by plane.
Abu Sittah worked in the Gaza Strip during the first six weeks of the
war in the Shifa and Ahli hospitals, which were repeatedly attacked by
the Israeli army. He testified about his terrible experiences at the
International Court of Justice, where Germany has been charged with complicity in genocide, and also gave a harrowing interview to German news magazine Der Spiegel. Now, as an eyewitness to the mass murder, he was forbidden from reporting on the events in Gaza at the congress.
The crackdown against the Palestine Congress is the culmination of a
veritable police terror campaign carried out against all opposition
since the beginning of Israel’s genocide. In Berlin and other major
German cities, entire districts with large Palestinian and Arab
populations are under siege. Anyone who wears a Palestinian scarf or in
any way expresses their opposition to the government and the genocide it
supports must expect to be stopped and arrested by the police.
Applying the same arbitrariness and brutality, the cultural and
educational sector is being scoured and whipped into line. Exhibitions
by Palestinian artists and opponents of the genocide have been
cancelled, cultural institutions such as the Oyoun in Berlin have lost
their funding, and teaching appointments, prizes and awards have been
withdrawn. Anyone who expresses criticism as an artist, scientist or
journalist first loses their job, then is branded an antisemite in a
public smear campaign and destroyed by the media.
No one should be intimidated by this filthy campaign. It is the
height of provocation when the German ruling class, of all people,
invokes the Holocaust to justify another genocide and to criminalize any
opposition to it. This also applies to Jewish opponents of genocide.
Already in the run-up to the congress, the bank account of the Jewish
Voice for a Just Peace, where donations for the event were collected,
was frozen. When the police stormed the congress, a leading member of
the organisation, Udi Raz, was arrested.
The crackdown was supported by all parties in the Bundestag (federal
parliament). Social Democratic Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy
Faeser praised the brutal actions of the police. It was “right and
necessary” that the Berlin police crack down on the so-called Palestine
Congress, she wrote on the social media platform X.
A cross-party “Alliance against Anti-Semitic Terrorism,” which
includes leading representatives of the governing Social Democrats,
Green and Free Democrats, and the opposition Christian Democrats and
Left Party in Berlin, like a large part of the media, waged a vicious
smear campaign even before the congress began and called for its
banning. The participants were concerned with “spreading anti-Semitic
hatred” and Berlin should not become “the centre of terrorist
glorification,” they wrote in a statement.
The established politicians and the propagandists in the media can
shout until they are blue in the face, this will not change reality. The
filthy narrative of the fight against “antisemitism” and “terrorism” is
increasingly being exposed. It is nothing more than a cover under which
the ruling class returns to its roots: fascism and war.
It is not the oppressed Palestinians and the millions of people
around the world who stand in solidarity with them and protest against
the genocide that promote antisemitism, but the imperialist powers and,
above all, the ruling class of Germany. The very narrative that
collectively associates Jewish people with the genocidal policies of the
far-right Netanyahu regime is thoroughly antisemitic.
In addition, the same parties, politicians and journalists who are
now shouting “antisemitism” have no problem courting the far-right
Alternative for Germany (AfD) and openly glorifying fascist forces in
Ukraine in the NATO war against Russia. They also defended the
right-wing extremist Humboldt University Professor Jörg Baberowski after
he declared that Hitler was “not vicious” and did not want to know
about the extermination of the Jews.
The ruling class is not concerned with the fate of the Jews. As in
Ukraine and Russia, German imperialism is also pursuing geostrategic and
economic interests in the Middle East, relying on genocide and war. The
government is currently working feverishly to, in the words of Defence
Minister Boris Pistorius, make Germany “fit for war” again.
Domestically, as in the past, this requires the militarisation of
society as a whole and the establishment of a dictatorship.
As early as 2017, Germany’s secret service, the Verfassungsschutz
(Office for the Protection of the Constitution), under the leadership of
right-wing extremist President Hans-Georg Maassen, placed the SGP under
intelligence surveillance. And this on the exclusive grounds that the
SGP advocates a socialist programme, criticises capitalism, militarism
and nationalism, and opposes the established parties and the trade
unions. The SGP filed a lawsuit against this and warned even then:
The secret service’s attack on the SGP is a fundamental assault on
democratic rights. It is a component of government policy that is
increasingly based on authoritarian forms of rule and the reliance on
right-wing extremist forces so as to enforce militarist policies, the
strengthening of the repressive state apparatus and attacks on social
spending, and to suppress all opposition that emerges. It recalls the
Weimar Republic, when the intelligence agencies, judiciary, and police
ruthlessly persecuted socialists and pacifists while strengthening the
Nazis.”
This is the reality. And the suppression of the Palestine Congress is
another serious warning. It underlines how aggressive the ruling class
is and that, as in the Third Reich, it will stop at nothing to enforce
its policy of war and dictatorship. At the same time, their Gestapo-like
methods will only act to further fuel popular opposition. According to a
recent survey, just 18 percent consider Israel’s actions in Gaza to be
justified, while 69 percent oppose them.
The SGP bases itself on this opposition, which is part of a much
broader radicalisation of the working class and the development of the
international class struggle. It will use the European election
campaign, together with its sister parties in the International
Committee of the Fourth International, to promote the building of an
independent mass movement against genocide, war and dictatorship–and
their root cause, capitalism. Our election statement declares:
Millions of people around the world have demonstrated against the
genocide in Gaza in recent weeks, despite the propaganda from the
politicians and the media, and have indicated how strong and globally
networked the working class is today. This movement must be expanded and
armed with a socialist perspective.
We demand:
• An immediate end to the siege of Gaza and the complete demobilization of the Israeli army!
• The holding of Netanyahu, Biden, Scholz and all other war criminals accountable for their war crimes!
• The fight to unite Palestinian and Israeli workers in the struggle for a common secular and socialist state!
Ann
Arbor (Informed Comment) – The brief interlude of the Iranian rocket
attack on Israel, in which almost all the projectiles were shot down or
intercepted, did nothing to slow the Israeli assault on Gaza.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, no helpful foreign power is
intercepting Israeli rockets fired at dense urban neighborhoods with
deadly effect. The Israelis murdered another 43 people on Sunday, many
of them from the sky.
Reporters for CNN, some of them stringers on the ground in Gaza, reported Sunday that thousands
of civilians attempted to return from their 191-day exile in Rafah to
their homes in the north. They appear just to have grabbed up their
children and a few things, and hit the road, as rumors circulated that
people were being let through the checkpoints by the Israelis. The
rumors were untrue.
Al-Sharq
reports that according to eyewitnesses, early on Sunday “dozens of
displaced women and children were able to return from the south of the
Gaza Strip to the north, without the Israeli army attacking them at the
checkpoiint at Al-Shuhada Junction on the coastal road, Al-Rashid
Street.”
Videos shared by women and children in this brave and successful
exodus north appear to have started the rumor that it was safe to go
home, which then created the rush of thousands of hopeful returnees.
Eyewitnesses told al-Sharq: “But fire was opened on another group of citizens hundreds of yards from the checkpoint.”
Mohammad Al-Sawalhi, Abeer Salman, Kareem Khadder and Zeena Saifi
report in more detail for CNN that the group used donkey carts,
bicycles, even some pick-up trucks to head north. They quote one Majd
al-Aqqad as saying “I’m going to Gaza City. It’s enough. We need to go
back to our homes and lands. We are tired of displacement… we heard
people saying we can go back, but no one official told us. We’ll leave
it to God.”
Another interviewee who went north, Um Mohammed, told them, “I don’t
know anything about my house. It’s our home and our land. The Israelis
displaced us and humiliated us,”
But then the Israeli troops began shooting, apparently an entire
arsenal, including from helicopter gunships, when they saw some men with
the refugees. A woman who appears to have declined to be identified
told CNN, “We reached all the way to the checkpoint until we saw Israeli
tanks. We headed back because they fired towards us. We didn’t see
anyone make it to the other side. We risked our children’s lives to
cross, but apparently it was all a lie,”
One little girl was shot in her mother’s arms and is now being treated in what is left of a hospital back south.
Meanwhile, Israel’s artificial intelligence programs went on
mindlessly identifying supposed militants and directed air force pilots
and drone operators to hit them at home with their families and
neighbors.
According to Sharq
the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza alleged, “the Israeli
occupation committed 4 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, as a
result of which 43 dead [“martyrs”] and 62 wounded arrived at hospitals
during the past 24 hours.” As a result of these bombings, “a number of
victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and
civil defense crews cannot reach them.”
These 43 newly dead Palestinians brought the total since last October
to 33,739, the Ministry said, with 76,371 injured. Some 70% of the
casualties are women and children, and many of the others are
noncombatant men. Since the Israelis are using an indiscriminate
artificial intelligence program, we cannot know whether any of the men
they are killing were in any way connected to the October 7 attack,
which involved perhaps a couple thousand cadres. The operation was kept
secret from all but a few persons in Gaza, and it appears that even the
expatriate civilian leadership may not have known about it.
On Monday morning, Sharq writes, “the Palestinian Wafa News Agency
reported that an Israeli airstrike killed 5 Palestinians in an area
northwest of the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.”
It continues, “Wafa reported, citing local sources, that Israeli
fighters bombed a house northwest of the Nuseirat camp, and also a
mosque inside the camp, while it indicated that Israeli army artillery
bombed the [residential] Asar Tower [apartment complex] in Nuseirat.”
Unless Israeli troops were taking fire from the mosque, which seems
unlikely, bombing it is a war crime. Bombing a residential apartment
building, unless you know that no innocent civilians are in it, is also a
war crime.
In fact, it is by now all a war crime. This is not “self-defense” or
“defeating Hamas.” It is just bombing people you think may have served
in the Hamas paramilitary at some point, and everyone around them. Some
10 percent of the AI identifications are admitted to be faulty. And the
rationale for killing every single paramilitary member is weak,
especially if it is done from the air, leaving them no opportunity to
surrender, and especially if you are trying to kill their children and
wives along with them.
As for Nuseirat Camp,
according to UNRWA, just a few years ago it had about 85,000
Palestinian refugees, whose families had been ethnically cleansed by
Zionist gangs and chased out of their homes in what is now southern
Israel in 1948. It was about as populous as Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Poverty-stricken, their orchards and farms now in the hands of
Israelis, they were crowded into makeshift structures and dense
apartment buildings. They suffered from lack of potable water, inability
to fish off the coast, and malnutrition and unemployment, all
exacerbated by the Israeli blockade imposed in 2007 to punish them
collectively for the fact that Hamas ruled them. Most have now been
doubly made refugees, having been expelled to Rafah by the Israeli
military, with no consideration for their welfare or well-being. Imagine
almost everyone in Santa Fe being frog-marched south to huddle on the
Mexican border with inadequate shelter, food and water.
April 7 marks six months since the beginning of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
In the span of just half a year, Israel has displaced 1.9 million of
Gaza’s 2.2 million people, denied the entire population access to food,
water and medical care, and carried out daily, systematic massacres
leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
The death toll currently stands at 33,137. Once the missing are
added, the true toll is likely over 44,000. A further 75,815 people have
been wounded.
Over the course of just six months, 5.45 percent of Gaza’s population
has been killed, wounded or is missing. A comparable percentage of the
American population would be more than 18 million people.
This is an intensity of mass death without precedent in post-World
War II history. But most shocking of all is the fact that two-thirds of
those killed are women and children. Israel has deliberately targeted
medical workers, humanitarian workers, journalists and artists. It is
waging, as World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres said Sunday, a “war
against humanity.”
In the course of the past six months, every element of the US-Israeli
justification for bombing, invading and blockading Gaza has been
exposed as a lie.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Israel was in possession of
Hamas’s entire operational plan for the October 7 attack that served as
the pretext for the war. Despite this knowledge, Israeli intelligence
and military forces were ordered to stand down and redeploy from the
Gaza border immediately ahead of the attack.
In a matter of days, the Israeli military put into effect long-held
plans for a genocidal war against the population of Gaza. “We are
fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” declared Israeli
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9. “I have ordered a complete
siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no
fuel.”
Just four days later, Israeli President Isaac Herzog declared, “It’s
an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this
rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved… we will fight until
we break their backbone.” Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter declared,
“We’re rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”
Having made these statements of genocidal intent, the Netanyahu
government systematically targeted all aspects of social, economic and
cultural life in Gaza, working to level every hospital, school and home,
and kill as many men, women and children as possible.
The genocide has undeniably shown that the perspective of Zionism is
bankrupt and reactionary. Israel will forever be marked by its
association with mass murder. It is the end product of decades of brutal
oppression of the Palestinians, and the false identification of the
interests of the Jewish people as a whole with the Israeli state.
Beyond Israel, the genocide stands as a condemnation of the entire
imperialist order. The capitalist powers in the US-NATO axis have
supported, armed, funded and politically justified one of the greatest
crimes of the modern era.
As the Israeli government was publicly stating its intent to massacre
and expel the population of Gaza, the Biden administration declared
over and over its opposition to any negotiated settlement of the
conflict. There is “no possibility” of a ceasefire, Biden said on
November 9.
Just days later, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer addressed a
pro-genocide rally in Washington, in which he bellowed, “We stand with
you … . We will not rest until you get the assistance you need.”
Over the course of six months, the Biden administration has made more
than 100 separate arms transfers to Israel, making it clear that the
Netanyahu government has a green light to starve, kill and torture the
population of Gaza at will.
This reality stands as an unanswerable rebuttal to the claims by the
Biden administration and US media that the White House has sought to
“pressure” the Netanyahu government to protect civilians.
In fact, the administration’s policy has amounted to a massive blank
check for Israel, a policy that continues to this day despite the purely
verbal criticism of Netanyahu by the White House.
The Biden administration’s categorical support for the Israeli
genocide is part of an eruption of US militarism throughout the Middle
East, including Iran, as part of a broader struggle for global
domination targeting Russia and China.
The Gaza genocide will have vast and far-reaching social and
political consequences. Already, the mass murder in Gaza has sparked the
largest global mass demonstrations since the Iraq war. It has shown the
imperialist powers, who endlessly invoke “human rights” to justify
their wars, as enablers and accomplices of genocide.
Most of all, the Gaza genocide is a crime of capitalism. The
capitalist social order is legitimizing every form of social barbarism:
from nuclear war to perpetual mass death in a preventable pandemic to
genocide. Future generations will see the Gaza genocide as an inflection
point, propelling the growth of powerful currents in opposition to the
capitalist social order.
The ongoing war, for all its horrors, has made one significant
political contribution. It has awakened the youth. It has opened the
eyes of the world. It has exposed the Zionist regime and its imperialist
accomplices for the criminals they are. It has set into motion a tidal
wave of outrage that is sweeping across the world and will sweep across
those responsible for this genocide.
The task is to turn this growing opposition, which is as yet of a
politically amorphous character, into a conscious movement based on a
socialist perspective oriented to the working class.
The U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza
– torrents of heavy weaponry, diplomatic and political cover, and vast
majorities in Congress swearing fealty to Netanyahu’s extremist regime –
is usually attributed to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs
Committee), the powerful domestic pro-Israeli government lobby,
organized in every Congressional District, with its abundant campaign
cash and its many personal contacts in Congress and the Executive
Branch.
This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far
more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have
overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally –
with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires
operate in tandem.
Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. The U.S. sends
special forces, drones, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, anywhere
and anytime it wants – especially the case of Iraq and Afghanistan.
National boundaries and sovereignty mean nothing. Similarly, Israel
completely dominates the Middle East militarily, bombing, sabotaging,
and killing whomever it wants in neighboring countries. It has attacked
Lebanon and Syria routinely with its air force, artillery, and invaded
Lebanon on the ground, prompting feeble responses it always labels
“terrorism.”
"Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires—one in the Middle East and the other globally—with deep common purposes."
Both Empires consider every military operation defensive. They say they never conduct offensive attacks, but when they do, they invariably describe them as self-defense.
Israel slaughters Palestinians decade after decade in the Palestinian
territories while claiming self-defense. With the second most modern
military in the world, backed by the U.S., Israel invades, engages in
nightly destruction of Palestinian homes, seizes Palestinian land and
water for their colonies, imprisons thousands without charges, including
women and children, inflicts collective punishment, operates many
checkpoints and imposes embargoes, sieges and blockades. All of these
unlawful actions are claimed to be taken in the name of self-defense.
The U.S. has 750 military bases in over 80 countries, 26 military
installations in the Middle East, runs the provocative NATO military
alliance, and digs into the South China Sea. All this is also claimed to
be done in the name of self-defense.
Both Empires have collaborating military-industrial complexes and are
major arms exporters. As the chief innovator in weapons of mass
destruction, the U.S. and its companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin,
and Boeing welcome feedback from the Israeli military on how their
weapons fare in its attacks. Palestine has become a major testing ground for the most super-modern surveillance technology. (Check out the book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein, 2023).
Both Empires wield “force projection” as atomic bomb powers, though Israel refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty.
Despite their many wars and raids on defenseless populations, both
incurred a rare counter-attack (9/11 & October 7) when advance
warnings by advisors were ignored (GW Bush and Netanyahu) and military
defenses were AWOL. After being attacked, both Empires went berserk and
responded with massive killing of civilians by overwhelming invasions.
Both Empires lie repeatedly regarding their tactics and strategies.
Recall Rep. Ron Paul’s terse recognition that Bush and Cheney “lied us
into invading Iraq.”
Both Empires control the United Nations Security Council with the U.S.
veto shielding whatever Israel does. Both occupy or control land that is
not theirs, violating international laws.
Both Empires violate their legal duty as occupiers to protect the
civilian population’s well-being. Both have restricted humanitarian
assistance and critical civilian imports – Israel savagely in Gaza and
Palestine, and the U.S. in Iraq under Bill Clinton. Both decline to
estimate their aggregate civilian casualties.
Both Empires’ leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, profess to practice their
respective religions, though they are violating the basic precepts of
both their religions in implementing their violent wars.
Both Empires spend little time pressing for ceasefires, peace
negotiations, and the stability of peace treaties. They find such
restraints as unacceptable curbs on their freedom to wage war.
Both Empires, contrary to their fundamental juridical documents, in the
case of the U.S., our Constitution, operate as elected dictatorships in
conducting military and foreign policy. The Congress and the Knesset
become supine and surrender to the Executive and, for Israel, the ruling
executive coalition. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court has long ruled
that no citizens of our country, not even individual members of
Congress, “have legal standing to sue” the U.S. government for either
initiating illegal wars or engaging in additional illegal tactics like
torture or corruption.
To remove the challenges from “We the People” against a lawless
government, the Supreme Court has endorsed the “state secrets” doctrine.
It authorizes the government to demand the dismissal of constitutional
claims, in federal court, based on killings, torture, kidnapping, or
otherwise by alleging the defense would require disclosure of national
security information.
The Israeli Supreme Court doesn’t worry about the Israeli military machine.
Both Empires have a so-called free mainstream media that mostly toes
the Empire party line and knows its permissible place in the overall
profit-making power structure. Both have a small independent media that
is still able to dissent, however futilely, though the U.S. has no
counterpart to the outspoken Israeli newspaper HAARETZ.
There are some differences between the two Empires. Israel attacked the
USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding
171, and mostly got away without consequences. (See, The Intercept article: Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret by Miriam Pensack).
Prosperous Israel persuades the U.S. Congress yearly to provide Israel
with billions of dollars, mostly for military arms, and is about to get
an additional $14.1 billion – the Biden genocide tax on Americans – as
Netanyahu’s terror state continues intensifying his Palestinian
Holocaust. (The reported casualty toll is lethally undercounted. See the
March 5, 2024 column: “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”).
If Biden’s people privately object to some Israeli
off-the-wall slaughter of courageous journalists, United Nations staff,
aid workers, patients in hospitals, and the starvation of babies,
Netanyahu can softly say to Biden and Blinken, “Joe, Tony, why don’t you
take up your complaints with OUR Congress.”
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The resistance movement of Palestinians in Gaza was said to be
holding about 100 hostages. According to some accounts, some of these
hostages were killed by Israeli bombardment.
Israel as an occupying power is illegally holding more than 8000
Palestinians. As a peace activist, I fully stand for the release of all
such hostages, both by the resistance movement and the occupying power.
It can happen when Israel stops its genocidal war and ethnic
cleansing, orders a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, withdraws its army from
Gaza (and also from the West Bank) and adheres to the UN resolutions to
end its occupation of the Palestinian land it captured in 1967.
That is the only sane way to peace. But will Israel and its main
sponsor and abettor of wars and ethnic cleansing, the United Sates, give
peace a chance? Because of their record, I am reluctant to make any
prediction.
The Biden administration continues to act contrary to logic and
humane values in response to Israel’s war policies. Despite overwhelming
evidence of Israel’s war crimes and acts that constitute genocide, the
administration plies the right-wing Israeli government with more
weapons. The latest arms package
being prepared by the administration will reportedly be the largest
since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Valued at around $18 billion, it will
include 50 F-15 fighter jets and precision-guided munitions kits as well
as more 2000- and 500-pound bombs.
Many critics, including some within the administration itself, have
pointed with alarm to the obvious contradiction in US policy between
supporting negotiations on a cease-fire and hostage release on one hand,
and continuing to ship non-defensive weapons to Israel on the other.
The contradiction applies not just to the immediate situation in Israel
but also to overall US policy on the abuse of military aid—NSM 20—which
specifies that arms recipients must adhere to international and American
law. Israel, while giving assurances about its use of US weapons, has
violated US policy guidelines in numerous ways—for instance, bombing
hospitals and other civilian targets with US bombs, and using
US-supplied white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of
Gaza.
Such violations make the US complicit in Israel’s war crimes and genocide, which Oxfam and Human Rights Watch documented in a joint letter
submitted to the administration March 13. Just recently, the UN Special
Rapporteur on Palestinian rights condemned Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza
and proposed an arms embargo on Israel. If the Biden administration
wants to be taken seriously when it demands Israel’s restraint in its
Gaza operations, calls for a “sustainable” cease-fire, and insists on
Israel’s removal of obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian aid, it
must stop delivery of non-defensive weapons to Israel. Otherwise, such
calls lack credibility, undercut any leverage the US might have on
Israeli policy, and spotlight the US role in prolonging the war and
contributing to the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, an international affairs quarterly and blogs at In the Human Interest.