foreign affairs
From Gaza to Guantanamo: The Horrors of Western Imperialism
Over the past six months, we have witnessed some of the darkest moments in human history and some of the worst of its capabilities.
Every day, we collectively watch in horror as an apartheid state carries out war crimes against defenseless civilian populations with almost complete impunity – and with the near total support of Western leaders, who continue to funnel money, weapons and political protection to Israel.
Every day, images of war crimes are beamed to our smartphones, and the screams of babies, the wails of widows and the cries of fathers carrying their deceased children ring through our ears.
Tens of thousands of people have already been slaughtered. Officials in Washington simply repeat the mantra that Israel has a right to defend itself, even as it commits war crimes by destroying schools, hospitals and places of worship, deliberately starving a population under its control and heavily bombing populated civilian areas.
But not only is every war crime effectively signed off by Washington, but what Israel is doing in Gaza and beyond is the standard for American foreign policy.
The Israeli military has repeatedly used banned white phosphorus weapons in Gaza, burning down houses and melting peoples’ skin.
Yet the United States has admitted to using the same weapons in Syria and Iraq and used depleted uranium in Fallujah. To this day, hospitals in Fallujah report a 2,200% increase in Leukemia rates and a 740% spike in the number of brain tumors.
Deliberate Israeli strikes have destroyed or damaged every single hospital in Gaza. The United States itself has a very long history of targeting hospitals, including in El Salvador, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Cambodia and Laos. In Syria in 2017, the U.S. dropped white phosphorus munitions on Syria’s Raqqa hospital, killing at least 30 civilians.
Food supplies in Gaza are desperately low, with two-thirds of households currently limited to only one meal per day. The Israeli government is refusing to allow aid convoys into Gaza, leaving its residents to starve as acute malnutrition begins to set in.
Yet U.S. sanctions are deliberately crafted to produce the same result and have led to shortages of food in targeted countries, such as Iran and Venezuela. Meanwhile, a U.S. government document explicitly states that their Cuba sanctions are meant to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government.”
We should rightly be shocked at the brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners, which has included zip-tying limbs so tightly they needed to be amputated. But we should also remember what the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib and continues to do in Guantánamo Bay.
And while we watch ghastly videos of IDF atrocities daily, are they really so different from the “Collateral Murder” video released by Wikileaks in 2010, which showed U.S. forces massacring Iraqi civilians, including two journalists? A crime for which no one has been charged but for which Julian Assange remains languishing in a British prison.
To be clear, what Israel is doing in Gaza is terrible and amounts to genocide. But this is far from the first time this has happened; Israeli-style terrorism is standard U.S. foreign policy.
What Israel is doing in Gaza is just an outward expression of what the United States has done for decades to the Global South.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has dominated the world, overthrowing governments left, right and center, crushing movements for national liberation, and propping up brutal dictatorships across the planet. In 2016, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War alone.
Israel has been a key outpost of U.S. power in the Middle East since its creation in 1948. But that power is slipping. After its defeats and fiascos in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and beyond and as nations like China rise, American influence is waning.
And what the war in Gaza has done has exposed the moral depravity of the so-called rules-based international order, as the U.S. and other Western powers make themselves look foolish carrying water for genocide while still trying to present themselves as the arbiters of morality on the world stage.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, yes. But so is President Joe Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and all the other Western leaders backing Israel.
What Israel is doing is rooted in a standard Western policy that needs to be addressed in our own countries. Yes, Zionism is the problem, but it’s only part of the problem. The overriding issue is Western imperialism, which creates this kind of ideology. And fortunately, we are seeing the beginnings of a moral awakening. Tens of millions of people around the world have taken to the streets for Palestine.
Students across college campuses in this country are occupying their universities, demanding their campuses divest from Israel and weapons manufacturers building the bombs Israel is dropping on Gaza.
We are shutting down weapons companies that supply the apartheid regime with arms like Palestine Action is doing in the UK, we are occupying the offices of our elected officials, and we are protesting on college campuses the world over.
And while many of Palestine’s neighbors quietly assist Israel in its attack, Yemen, the region’s poorest country, has enforced a Red Sea maritime blockade of Israeli ships in a bid to force Israel to end its siege on Gaza.
People have broken through the fog of war and see this for what it is. But we cannot rely on our elected officials to stop it because Israeli barbarity was made and perfected in the USA in the first place.
Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.
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Inside Job? Ominous New Questions Surround Navalny’s Death
On April 27, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation based on as yet unpublished U.S. intelligence community assessments and anonymous briefings courtesy of “security officials from several European capitals,” which concluded that Vladimir Putin neither orchestrated Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s death in prison two months earlier nor desired it to happen.
It was a belated and confounding intervention in a case that, after an initially intense frenzy of mainstream speculation and accusations, quickly went cold before vanishing from mainstream consideration entirely.
While exerting little domestic influence outside atypically liberal enclaves in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities, Navalny was the U.S. and Europe’s most cherished and prominent Putin detractor by some margin for over a decade before his death. His every publicity stunt garnered universal media attention, and the regular publications of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) on state official embezzlement and grift in Russia invariably broke the internet. Western human rights awards were routinely forthcoming.
After purportedly being poisoned on an inter-Russian flight by the FSB in August 2020, then recovering in Germany, he made a much-publicized “hero’s return” to Moscow, at which point, he was summarily jailed. Despite giving regular interviews to the Western media from prison and testifying to the rotten conditions in which he was held, Navalny had largely faded from public consciousness by the time news of his death broke on February 16.
Immediately, the entire Western political, media, and pundit sphere was apoplectic. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death!” U.S. President Joe Biden forcefully declared. Meanwhile, Navalny’s widow, Yulia, accused Russian authorities of “hiding his body” as they were “waiting for the traces of yet another of Putin’s novichoks to disappear”:
My husband could not be broken. And that’s exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look into his eyes or simply say his name. We will tell you about it soon. We will definitely find out who exactly carried out this crime and how exactly. We will name the names and show the faces.”
Yet, on February 26, Ukrainian military chief Kyrylo Budanov “disappointed” everyone by announcing Navalny, in fact, died as a result of simple health complications – namely, a blood clot. The U.S. intelligence assessments cited by the Wall Street Journal, based on “some classified intelligence and an analysis of public facts,” reportedly draw the same conclusion. Quite why this apparent confirmation took so long to surface isn’t clear, although it delivered a “coup de grâce” to any and all suggestions Navalny was deliberately assassinated.
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, Western spying agencies and officials in Kiev have relentlessly spewed oft-intelligence insulting, illogical black propaganda about the proxy conflict. We must ask ourselves why the same sources that would have us believe Russian forces were at one point fighting with shovels, and Moscow blew up its own Nord Stream 2 pipeline, seek to shut down suggestions Navalny was murdered.
‘Cataclysmic Loss’
Budanov’s declaration decisively shunted Navalny’s demise from international headlines. Such is the pace with which events move these days that it is perhaps forgotten that immediately following February 16, there was a concerted campaign by highly influential Western anti-Russian actors for the EU and U.S. to adopt a “Navalny Act.” Under its auspices, the approximately $300 billion Russian assets frozen by Western financial institutions in the wake of Moscow’s invasion would be seized and given to Ukraine.
At the forefront of this effort was billionaire Bill Browder, an investment manager who reaped untold sums from privatization and asset stripping in Russia during the 1990s and supported Putin’s rise to power before being turfed from the country in 2005 on national security grounds. Since then, he has transformed himself into the Kremlin’s most pugnacious overseas critic and an “anti-corruption” campaigner, despite giving up his U.S. citizenship to evade tax. Speaking to UnHerd on February 20, Browder talked a big game:
Now is the moment…Putin is willing to lose one million men, but to lose $300 billion would be a cataclysmic loss. All world leaders are looking for a way to hit Putin back for this murder. I’ve been working on confiscating these assets for the last two years, and the Navalny murder is the impetus to get it done.”
Browder had good reason to believe this campaign would bear fruit. For almost 15 years, he has traveled the world telling journalists, lawmakers, and human rights organizations a shocking story of corruption, fraud, and murder at the highest levels of the Kremlin. In brief, he claims local officials forcibly seized the Russian division of his company, Hermitage Capital Management, to carry out a massive tax scam, reaping $230 million in the process.
According to Browder’s narrative, he then set his “friend” Sergei Magnitsky, a gifted lawyer, on the case to determine what happened. The diligent sleuth duly uncovered the fraud and alerted authorities but ended up jailed on bogus charges for his courageous whistleblowing. He was then viciously tortured in prison in an attempt to make him retract his testimony before being beaten to death by guards for refusing.
Typically, Browder’s audiences have been highly receptive. Over the years, his story has been immortalized in multiple articles, books, official reports and documentaries, influencing legislation and prosecutions in numerous countries. Every member of the “Five Eyes” global spying network and the EU have been successfully lobbied to adopt a “Magnitsky Act,” which sanctions government officials overseas—particularly in Russia—for purported human rights abuses.
‘Navalny Act’
In reality, Browder’s entire Magnitsky fable is a tangled web of lies, fabrications, distortions, exaggerations, and libel. From the very moment he started spinning this deceptive yarn, sufficient open-source, public-domain evidence was available to disprove its every aspect comprehensively. Yet, it took a decade for mainstream journalists to conduct serious due diligence on his assertions. In November 2019, leading German news outlet Der Spiegel published a comprehensive demolition job, savagely indicting Browder’s integrity in the process.
In the publication’s words, Brodwer “has a talent for selling a set of facts so it supports his own version of events.” Magnitsky was, in fact, neither a lawyer nor a whistleblower. He was a crooked accountant who had long-abetted Browder’s fraudulent financial dealings in Russia and was justly imprisoned for these activities. This was confirmed by a damning ruling in August of that year by the European Court of Human Rights in a case brought by Browder and Magnitsky’s family.
While the ECHR ordered Moscow to pay Magnitsky’s relatives $37,500 due to a failure to protect his life and health, having identified shortcomings in the medical treatment he was provided in prison, no mention of murder or even unlawful killing was made in the judgment. Conversely, the court rejected suggestions his arrest and subsequent detention were “manifestly ill-founded” or that “authorities had…acted with bad faith or deception:”
The Court reiterated the general principles on arbitrary detention…It found no such elements in this case. The decision to arrest him had only been made after investigators learned he’d previously applied for a UK visa, booked tickets to Kiev, and hadn’t been residing at his registered address. Furthermore, the evidence against him, including witness testimony, had been enough to satisfy an objective observer that he might have committed the offense in question.”
Der Spiegel’s investigation contained a striking passage, the obvious import of which was bizarrely ignored by the outlet. In it, Zoya Svetova, a Moscow-based human-rights activist who investigated Magnitsky’s death in 2009, said:
What sense would it make to murder him? Magnitsky did not reveal any secret. They wanted testimonies against Browder. That was the motivation. He should have accused Browder of not paying taxes. Magnitsky was a hostage. He himself was of no interest to them. They wanted Browder.”
Anti-Russia campaigner Bill Browder speaking to the media outside the Old Bailey in London, December 19, 2018. Mr Perepilichnyy, 44, Dominic Lipinski | PA Wire
In other words, it was Browder who benefited from Magnitsky’s death, not Russian authorities, which raises the grave prospect that it was the “anti-corruption” campaigner himself who was, one way or another, responsible for his accountant’s tragic passing. Such a reading is amply reinforced by the sworn deposition of Russian opposition activist Oleg Lurie in a failed legal case brought by U.S. authorities against Russian-owned company Prevezon, based on Browder’s bogus claim the firm’s owners were beneficiaries of the $230 million fraud.
Lurie was concurrently incarcerated in the same prison as Magnitsky, and the pair crossed paths twice. The first time, the accountant was in a “happy mood,” boasting of how he was held in a “big special block” for “white crime inmates,” where cells had “plasma TV sets, refrigerators, kettles” and illegally installed telephones. The reason for his buoyancy, Magnitsky explained to Lurie, was that his Western employers would “save him…they would take him out of there” in a matter of days.
As Browder et al. wished for Magnitsky to “keep silence about their actions” and his own crime to be “not serious,” he seemed assured that freedom was impending. Lurie warned him that “his attorneys and people who claim to be standing behind him are lying to him,” but the accountant was unconvinced. Fast-forward a few weeks, and they met again. Magnitsky was “a completely different person at that time…a tangle of nerves,” Lurie testified.
Magnitsky revealed that the “Western people who stood behind him deceived him…they demanded him to sign various documents” completely unrelated to his case, which would’ve implicated him in numerous serious crimes he didn’t commit. As a result, “he had a feeling that he would never get out.” Navalny, like Magnitsky, wasn’t leaving prison anytime soon and almost certainly knew too much. Did his Western backers similarly consider it necessary to silence him?
At the very least, it is supremely puzzling that the Ukrainian government effectively torpedoed the “Navalny Act.” After all, Kiev has, since the start of the proxy conflict, implored Western leaders to hand Russia’s frozen assets to them in service of the country’s reconstruction and the purchase of ever-more weapons and ammunition. The Act would’ve delivered on those demands. There was no clear need at all for Budanov to electively sabotage the narrative of Navalny as a Kremlin murder victim.
‘British Spy’
There are also sinister echoes in the sudden mainstream “reverse ferret” on Navalny’s untimely demise with the similarly mysterious and abrupt November 2019 passing of James Lemesurier, longtime British mercenary and military intelligence operative. Immediately following his fatal fall from the window of his lavish Istanbul apartment, Western sources rushed to convict Russia without evidence, claiming his death may have been – or was likely – a targeted assassination. The most prominent was Mark Urban, veteran BBC “defence” editor.
Within hours of Lemesurier’s lethal crash landing, Urban took to Twitter, urging Turkish authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation” and “ascertain whether there was state involvement.” His misgivings were in part perked by an “extensive black propaganda campaign by Russian and Assad media and their acolytes” in the months prior. In other words, critical, independent reporting raises grave questions about whether Lemesurier’s “White Helmets” were the crusading humanitarian group universally portrayed in the mainstream or something far darker.
More substantively, “a former colleague” – whether of Lemesurier or Urban isn’t clear – told the BBC journeyman, “I know the flat well, [and] it’s not possible to ‘fall’ from that balcony.” They strongly suspected foul play as a result. Seismic stuff, although curiously, these posts were quickly deleted due to Urban allegedly receiving “new information.” The nature of this “information” and who supplied it has never been revealed. But immediately after that, the same sources that hitherto cried murder began labeling Lemesurier’s death an unambiguous suicide.
To say the least, Urban is extremely well-connected in the Western military, security, and intelligence sphere and highly adept at withholding salient facts from public view. In July 2018, he revealed he’d serendipitously spent much of the previous year interviewing Sergei Skripal, who, along with his daughter, was purportedly poisoned in the British city of Salisbury three months earlier. In the intervening time, Urban fronted multiple BBC Newsnight reports about the incident without ever mentioning his personal relationship with the GRU defector.
For Urban – coincidentally once part of the same British Army tank regiment as Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 recruiter, handler, and Salisbury neighbor – to delete his incendiary tweets surely required a high-level intervention. At that time, as now, blaming Russia or Putin for anything and everything – including quite literally the weather – was a thoroughly safe option in the West, without any consequences attached. We are thus left to ponder how and why a long-serving, spook-adjacent British state ‘journalist’ was compelled to retract these charges.
Evidently, though, Urban’s sources – the “former colleague” who clearly said too much aside – were keen that Lemesurier’s end not be perceived or investigated as murder by anyone. Turkish media reports in the aftermath may provide a rationale for this. One article revealed James and his wife, Emma Winberg, a self-professed MI6 operative, “fought violently” outside an Istanbul restaurant just before his deadly plunge. Another suggested Lemesurier – a “British spy” – was “likely running away from someone before his death.”
Fast forward to today, and again, interested parties are eager to dismiss suggestions a high-profile Western asset’s death was the result of foul play. In Navalny’s case, as with Lemesurier, those shadowy elements – the Ukrainian government and the CIA being just two publicly confirmed so far – had every reason to accuse Moscow of murder. Yet, they not only didn’t but instead went to great lengths to remove any insinuation of deliberate killing from the equation. Make of that what you will.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
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How the Georgian ‘Foreign Agents Bill’ May Cost it Everything its People Have Ever Dreamed Of – And Benefit No One But Russia
As someone who came to greatly love and admire the Georgian people during my three years’ service as British Ambassador there from 2013 to 2016, it is heartrending to see the current scenes of violence and confrontation on the streets of Tbilisi.
Georgians, for all their formidable prowess on the rugby field, their bellicose classical dance, and traditional costumes adorned with daggers and bullet pouches, are not inherently war-like.
They are, in fact, more inclined to offer any stranger a warm smile and glass of wine, than to ignore or slight you. However, they will not run away from a fight, if goaded beyond reason.
The duality of their nature is vividly represented in the form of the famous statue of Mother Georgia on a hilltop overlooking Tbilisi, holding a glass of wine in one hand and a sword in the other. Friends are welcome. But, cross us, if you dare.
Demonstrators build a barricade to close an entrance of the Georgian Parliament building during an opposition protest against 'the Russian law' in Tbilisi on 2 May 2024. Photo: Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP/Alamy
It is clear that a line has been crossed for many Georgians now – unfortunately by their own government rather than any foreign invader.
They have risen up in anger to protest the ruling Georgian Dream party’s attempt to pass a law requiring any organisation receiving more than 20% of its funding from foreign sources to register as an organisation representing a foreign interest – dubbed “the Russia law” by its critics for its similarity to legislation introduced in Russia. They judge it, quite rightly, to be a naked attempt to discredit and curtail the important work of civil society, most of the funding for which comes from Western countries, to strengthen Georgian democracy, including by holding the Government to account, highlighting corruption, and observing elections.
However, much more is at stake than just the role of NGOs.
The introduction of the controversial legislation also seems to reflect a deliberate decision by the ruling party to turn Georgia away from its Euro-Atlantic path, since leading figures in both the EU and NATO have repeatedly made it clear that this law is incompatible with membership of those bodies. The protests are therefore also about what kind of country Georgia seeks to be – an independent, democratic nation, aligned with Europe and embedded in Western security architecture; or a subordinate, weak, client state of Russia.
For years, the Georgian Dream Government has seemed ambivalent about the country's Euro-Atlantic trajectory, despite opinion polls repeatedly showing that Georgians overwhelmingly support joining the EU and NATO, and regard Russia as their number one threat.
While I was Ambassador there, the Government played lip service to these aspirations and passed just enough legislation – for example, banning discrimination against people based on their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, and improving transparency of institutions – to keep obtaining more benefits bringing them closer to the EU and NATO – such as visa-free travel across the EU, and joint training and military exercises with NATO countries.
However, democratic reforms slowed meaningfully in recent years and even reversed in some areas, such as media freedom and independence of the judicial system. Government leaders have increasingly frequently criticised and insulted Western diplomats, attacked civil society organisations as enemies, accused Western governments of interfering in Georgian democracy, and even used Kremlin talking points to blame NATO for the war in Ukraine.
Georgia noticeably has also failed to uphold EU sanctions on Russia, allowed thousands of Russian citizens to evade the military draft by seeking refuge in Georgia, and been a conduit for banned goods to enter Russia through its own border with Russia.
These developments presented Western policy-makers with a difficult dilemma: should they continue to honour the wishes of the vast majority of the Georgian people by keeping their hopes of EU and NATO membership alive, despite the failings of their Government; or should they hold up further progress towards the EU and NATO at the risk of fuelling Kremlin-backed propaganda that the West cannot be trusted and that Georgia is better off casting its lot with Russia?
Until now, the balance has come down in favour of keeping cooperation alive with Georgia, even to the extent of recently granting Georgia EU candidate status, alongside Ukraine and Moldova – not least since Georgia’s internal struggles are understood to be part of the wider geopolitical conflict between Russia and the West playing out across the region, most brutally in Ukraine.
The feeling has been that, whatever our concerns about the current Government, we should not turn our backs on the Georgian people as long as they want our support. But, this has allowed the ruling Georgian Dream party to claim that its actions still have Western support, though this is actually very far from the case.
With these current protests, it seems a line is now being crossed at the international level as well.
The US, EU and UK have been issuing steadily stronger statements of concern about the situation. A bipartisan group of 14 US senators sent a letter to Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze warning that if the “foreign agents” law is passed, they would be compelled to encourage a shift in US policy towards Georgia.
Today, the US Embassy issued a forthright condemnation of the Government, noting that its choices “have moved the country away from its Euro-Atlantic future” and that “unfortunately, some in the ruling party have chosen to attack the greatest supporters of Georgia’s sovereignty, the United States and the European Union”.
Given that Georgia’s protestors show no inclination to back down, the question is why has the Government chosen to pursue this course, at the risk of being driven out of office altogether, as the protests gain momentum? After all, the Government did reverse itself one year ago, in the face of strong public opposition, when it first tried to introduce this law.
The timing of this crisis is particularly suspicious given that it comes just before NATO is due to hold a critical summit in Washington in July, which might decide to advance the membership aspirations of Ukraine.
The EU is also poised to begin accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova. In the current climate, Georgia is almost bound to be excluded from these measures.
It’s surely no coincidence the Government in March also introduced a bill to curtail LGBT rights, reversing some of its previous measures. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is all a deliberate attempt to sabotage Georgia’s progress. The country with most to gain from this is Russia.
What should western policy-makers do in response?
If the Georgian Government no longer cares about EU and NATO reactions, then tougher measures seem required. The US senators’ letter suggested “the possibility of imposing sanctions on individuals, cutting off direct government funding and expanding visa restrictions”. These would most likely be targeted at members of Parliament who vote in favour of the legislation, and the founder of the Georgian Dream party who still pulls all the strings behind the scenes – the billionaire oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili – who made his money in Russia, in an effort to target his wealth directly.
As reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) recently, the Georgian Government may already be preparing for such an eventuality.
Last September, RFERL reports, the Georgian National Bank changed rules limiting its obligations to comply with international sanctions on Georgian nationals. It also acquired seven tons of gold worth $500 million, to be transferred from London to Tbilisi.
In April, the Georgian Parliament fast-tracked legislation to turn Georgia into a tax haven, allowing it to “take a cut of the world’s estimated $11 trillion offshore funds” – many of which, according to Transparency International, Ivanishvili himself invests in or owns. The Georgian branch of Transparency International, incidentally, is one of the NGOs most singled out for criticism by the Government.
Georgia is due to hold national elections in October. As the crisis escalates, the Government may be tempted to declare a state of emergency, suspend elections, and round up opposition politicians and civil society activists. I believe this would backfire spectacularly – and only bring more people out on the streets.
It could even lead to a 2014 Ukraine Maidan scenario, whereby Ivanishvili, like former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, flees to Moscow, and the Government collapses behind him.
In theory, this provides an opportunity for the country’s democratic opposition to regroup and take over. The greater danger is that the country descends into further chaos as different factions fight for power, with the Russians egging on the disorder with misinformation from the sidelines, threatening to intervene more directly under the guise of 'restoring order’, or protecting Russian nationals from alleged Georgian hostility. This is a highly fraught moment, with wider geopolitical implications.
While this is primarily about Georgia, as an American resident, I see events there as a cautionary tale for the dangers of allowing any one individual to dominate government to the extent that Ivanishvili has done in Georgia, and as Donald Trump would like to do in the US.
Trump can at least claim to be seeking to return to power through elections, unlike the unelected Ivanishvili, and will still be subject to the checks and balances built into America’s democracy. But, like many paranoid authoritarian leaders before them, both seem prone to indulge in wild conspiracy theories about secretive plots, to regard their country as their personal fiefdom, national institutions as their personal cohorts, and any opposition as a form of personal affront.
And, as a British national observing the never-ending cost of Brexit on our politics, economy and society, I can’t help but note the bittersweet irony in seeing the Georgian protestors cloak themselves in the EU flag: a symbol of their hopes and dreams for a better future.
America is Rising for Gaza: What Should We Expect?
The mass protests at dozens of U.S. universities cannot be reduced to a stifling and misleading conversation about antisemitism.
Thousands of American students across the country are not protesting, risking their futures and very safety, because of some pathological hate for the Jewish people. They are doing so in a complete rejection of, and justifiable outrage over, the mass killing carried out by the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.
They are angry because the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7, is fully funded and backed by the U.S. government.
These mass protests began at the University of Columbia on April 17 before covering all of U.S. geography, from New York to Texas and North Carolina to California.
The protests are being compared, in terms of their nature and intensity, to the anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s.
While the comparison is apt, it is critical to note the ethnic diversity and social inclusiveness in the current protests. On many campuses, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Native American and White students are standing shoulder to shoulder with their Palestinian peers in a unified stance against the war.
None of them is motivated by fear that they could be drafted to fight in Gaza, as was, indeed, the case for many American students during the Vietnam War era. Instead, they are united around a clear set of priorities: ending the war, ending U.S. support of Israel, ending their universities’ direct investment in Israel and the recognition of their right to protest. This is not idealism but humanity at its finest moments.
Despite mass arrests, starting in Columbia, and the direct violence against peaceful protesters everywhere, the movement has only grown stronger.
On the other side, U.S. politicians, starting with President Joe Biden, accused the protesters of antisemitism without engaging with any of their reasonable and globally-supported demands.
Once again, the Democratic and Republican establishments stood together in blind support for Israel.
Biden condemned the “antisemitic protests,” describing them as “reprehensible and dangerous.”
Police advance on pro-Palestinian demonstrators in an encampment on the UCLA campus, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. Jae C. Hong | AP
A few days later, the U.S. House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, visited the university under tight security, using language hardly suitable for a country that claims to embrace democracy, respect, freedom of expression and the right to assembly.
“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses,” he said, adding: “I am here today joining my colleagues and calling on President (Minouche) Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”
Shafik, however, was already on board, as she was the one who had called for the New York Police Department to crack down on the protesters, falsely accusing them of antisemitism.
U.S. mainstream media has contributed to the confusion and misinformation regarding the reasons behind the protests.
The Wall Street Journal, once more, allowed writers such as Steven Stalinsky to smear young justice activists for daring to criticize Israel’s horrendous genocide in Gaza.
“Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” he alleged, thus once more taking a critical conversation about U.S. support of genocide into bizarre and unsubstantiated directions.
U.S. establishment writers may wish to continue fooling themselves and their readers. Still, the truth is that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas ‘recruiters’ are active in Ivy League universities, where young people are often groomed to become leaders in government and large corporations.
All such distractions are meant to avoid the undeniable shift in American society, one that promises a long-term paradigm shift in popular views of Israel and Palestine.
For years before the current war, Americans have been changing their opinions on Israel and their country’s so-called ‘special relationship‘ with Tel Aviv.
Young Democrats have led the trend, which can also be observed among independents and, to some extent, young Republicans.
A statement that asserts that “sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis” would have been unthinkable in the past. But it is the new normal, and the latest opinion polls regarding the subject and Biden’s dwindling approval ratings continue to attest to this fact.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators from the Columbia University are held in an NYPD corrections bus on April 30, 2024. John Lamparski | NurPhoto | AP
The older generations of American politicians, who have built and sustained careers based on their unconditional support for Israel, are overwhelmed by the new reality. Their language is confused and riddled with falsehoods. Yet, they are willing to go as far as defaming a whole generation of their own people – the future leaders of America – to satisfy the demands of the Israeli government.
In a televised statement on April 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” who “have taken over leading universities,” alleging that the peaceful protesters are calling “for the annihilation of Israel.” His words should have outraged all Americans, regardless of their politics and ideology. Instead, more U.S. politicians began parroting Netanyahu’s words.
However, this political opportunism will generate a blowback effect, not just in the distant future but also in the coming weeks and months, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections.
Millions of Americans are fed up with war, with their government’s allegiance to a foreign country, with militarism, with police violence and with the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in the U.S. and more.
Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring: ‘Enough is enough.’ They are doing more than chanting. They are rising in unison, demanding answers, moral and legal accountability and an immediate end to the war.
Now that the U.S. government has taken no action and continues to feed the Israeli war machine in its onslaught against millions of Palestinians, these brave students are acting themselves. This is certainly an awe-inspiring watershed moment in the history of the United States.
Feature photo | People stand atop a pile of barricades as they lead a chant at an encampment by students protesting against Israel at George Washington University, April 30, 2024. Mark Schiefelbein | AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
The post America is Rising for Gaza: What Should We Expect? appeared first on MintPress News.
How Foreign Office and Development Aid Cuts Are Damaging Britain’s Reputation as a Serious Partner on the World Stage
In 2019, then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph promising “enormous opportunities across the world” when the UK left the EU. “We will be a champion of the basic freedoms… and a doughty defender of the rules-based international system,” he claimed.
This was off the back of a Foreign Affairs Committee report, in which the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), had predicted a growing focus on Africa, a stepped-up engagement with Latin America, and the promise that the FCO would become “best equipped to meet our national security objectives”.
It all looked so promising.
Fast-forward five years, with a full-English Brexit, a pandemic, an invasion of Ukraine, and a 14% drop in the value of the pound against the dollar since the Conservatives first came into power (in May 2010, it was $1.45 to the pound. Today it stands at $1.25), the promises of yesteryear seem lacklustre in the cold light of today.
Dominic Raab promised that the UK would be a "defender of the rules-based international system” after Brexit. Photo: Ian Davidson/ Alamy
In a letter on 16 April this year, Sir Philip Barton, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) wrote to the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee on the subject of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) reductions.
In it, he detailed “the damaging impact on relationships with partner governments and other donors and the overall damage to the FCDO’s reputation as a reliable donor” that Government cuts had had in recent years.
Barton outlined how, in 2022-23, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe received between £14.7 million and £39.8 million less than their initially allocated funds. Afghanistan’s ODA was initially set at £286 million but was reduced by 14%. Sudan saw a 40% cut, Ethiopia an 18% reduction, Nigeria a 17% decrease, and Zimbabwe a 35% decrease in funds.
In early 2024, the International Development Committee’s report on ‘the FCDO’s approach to sexual and reproductive health’ noted that the UK had “slashed its spending” on the issue, with devastating impact. The report described budgets cut “with little to no notice” with “the deepest impact on the most marginalised”. It concluded that this had damaged the “UK’s reputation as a credible and serious partner”.
Last year, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) also detailed in its report “UK aid under pressure” the past five years as being of “extraordinary turbulence”. Not least this was because “many UK aid officials were redeployed to support Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s contingency planning for a ‘no-deal Brexit’”.
Despite Raab’s promises of 2019, then, the real impact of Brexit was – the ICAI report outlined – the FCDO’s de-prioritisation of a range of development activities “including the UK’s engagement with United Nations (UN) agencies on humanitarian crises”.
Diverted Budgets
One of the reasons for these cuts and curtailments is that the UK Government paused all 'non-essential’ overseas aid spending for four months in 2022, due in part to the Home Office takeover of the budget for domestic asylum costs.
The Home Office then spent £2 billion more than initially allocated. As the ICAI noted, “aid spending on asylum seekers and refugees in the UK rose to £4.3 billion in 2023, constituting 28% of the (ODA) budget”.
This came at a time when the total ODA budget to the FCDO itself dropped between 2018 and 2022 by some 34% – down £3.8 billion. This has had a very real world impact. ODA funds to Africa are down 57%. Pakistan, once recipient of £331 million a year in aid in 2022 only received £58 million. The African Development Fund was cut from £177 million to £27 million.
As the latest 2022-23 FCDO annual report notes, managing “ODA budget pressures… has generated a level of uncertainty this year” which has “impacted FCDO staff around the world”.
FCO and DFID Merger
A good deal of the chaos can be laid at the feet of Boris Johnson.
In the early months of the pandemic, on 16 June 2020, the then Prime Minister announced the merger of the FCO and the Department for International Development (DFID) into the FCDO. He did so with the aim of streamlining the UK’s international engagement by combining diplomacy and development under a unified strategy. However, the transition appeared to have been chaotic and hurtful to Britain’s global diplomatic missions.
Ambitious integration plans were scaled back due to resource constraints, and the merger led to a loss of development expertise as many quit their posts or were laid off.
Critics have since raised concerns about reduced transparency, diminished focus on development outcomes, and an overarching impact on the quality and effectiveness of UK international aid as a consequence.
In June 2022, Boris Johnson announced the merger of the FCO and Department for International Development (DFID) into the FCDO. Photo: American Photo Archive/ Alamy
In previous comments to the Public Accounts Committee, Permanent Under-Secretary Barton has outlined how the merger led to a postponement or scaling-down of major British diplomatic initiatives designed to fulfil climate commitments, address health disparities, and promote economic reform around the world.
It’s little surprise that, in February 2022, the Government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) found the FCDO’s agenda to be “overambitious and unachievable”.
Selling Assets
This accompanying squeeze on public finances has meant that the FCDO now stands accused of selling off its family silver – with sales of embassies in prime real estate getting eyed up for short-term debt repayments.
In 2018, the then FCO sold its Bangkok embassy for some £420 million to move into a modern tower block, leased until just 2034. Given there seems no apparent core maintenance budget for FCDO property, the profits from the sale were reported to have gone into new electrical wiring in the Paris embassy and refurbishments in Cairo, New Delhi and Washington.
In 2021, it was also reported that a chunk of the British embassy in Tokyo was sold to the Japanese firm Mitsubishi Estate Group. At the time, the details were not made public but, in 2023, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee was informed that the deal was for £685.7 million. The sale, in “one of the most prestigious areas of Tokyo”, led Japanese press to speculate that the land could be used for luxury apartments likely to sell for more than £30 million each.
The latest FCDO accounts also note some £10.4 million further assets “held for sale”, on top of “£3.4 million from the sale of property in Dar Es Salaam and £1.5 million from the sale of surplus land in Skopje”.
Meanwhile, costs to renovate the British Embassy in Washington were reported to have more than doubled, to £118.8 million, in part fuelled by asbestos removal fees. As the annual report notes, “the risks to maintaining our global estate… remain high”.
A Lack of Ministerial Support
Given the parlous state of the FCDO’s funding, it is strange, then, that FCDO Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan was last heard calling for more funding – not for her department but for the Ministry of Defence.
In March, Trevelyan, the Minister for Indo-Pacific, wrote with Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat on LinkedIn that, “protecting ourselves requires investment”. She did not, however, appear to call for her own department to be given more funds.
With a seeming lack of leadership from the political sphere, it has led to disenchanted one-time FCDO stars to speak out.
Moazzam Malik, former director-general at the Foreign Office, recently co-penned a report that called for the UK “to do foreign affairs slightly differently, to modernise our approach”, including rebranding and facing its colonial legacy "head-on".
Others – still in the FCDO and speaking to Byline Times under conditions of anonymity – describe a depressing world of chronic under-investment, with more budget cuts looming with regards to staffing, travel, and other core costs.
All of this seems a far cry from the hubris of Dominic Rabb just five long years ago.
“When we leave the EU, there will be enormous opportunities across the world,” he claimed. When such opportunities will be realised, seems – at the moment – anyone’s guess.
“Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever
On April 13, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on Israel, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Iranian generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – particularly West Asia – will never be the same again.
“This action was hugely significant. Now, the Israelis will have to be extremely careful about what they do in Syria against Tehran. The regional balance of power has permanently shifted away from the Zionists. Tel Aviv will never recover at all. It is the end of them. They have destroyed themselves. They are seen as a regime that has no place in the civilized world, a Nazi state, across the entire globe,” geopolitical expert Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells MintPress News.
Iran’s first-ever strike on Israel, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. Israel claimed a 99% interception rate.
However, extensive photo and video material shows that most missiles hit their targets and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top-tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.
This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills through Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message—Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s to decide whether—and how—to retaliate. A response came on April 19 in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.
Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality, a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, Israel now has little time remaining and no good choices left to make.
Iraqi military personnel inspect Israeli missile fragments found by farmers in Latifiya and Aziziya. Photo | Sabreen
‘New Equation’
Despite its astonishing optics and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook Iran’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historical parallel and concerned with Israel eliciting a major escalation to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred a broader response while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards Israel. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:
We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point, we will attack against them.”
Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike Israel directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities and vulnerabilities of Israel and the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.
Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13, and the data yield was surely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:
We used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
If there’s a next time, too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles were fired at Israel during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general.
“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous,” comparable to what Israel burned through during the entire 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.
IDF personnel remove debris from missile intercepted during the Iranian attack in southern Israel. Photo | IDF
Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly a great many orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. Dr. Marandi tells MintPress News that “most” of the initial “decoy” barrage, including drones, were collecting dust. “Tehran was looking for an excuse to get rid of them,” he says.
“Most of the heavy-duty work attempting to counter Iran’s strike was done by the Americans anyway, not the Israelis. The Iron Dome barely factored in. The two places hit hardest – the southern airbase where F35s are based and Tel Aviv’s Golan Heights intelligence base resulted in significant damage and casualties. Of course, the Zionists don’t admit this,” Dr. Marandi adds.
This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for Israel, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end Ansar Allah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast at squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 Ansar Allah drones. A CIA officer lamented:
That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor. We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
‘Israel Goes Under’
There is no sign yet of Washington having publicly rectified this concern, which may account for why U.S. officials at the start of April offered Ansar Allah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade. This was summarily rejected. No business as usual – no commerce, no trade – on Yemen’s watch while Palestinians are slaughtered. In the event of any subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, too, Tehran’s drones will not be used to deter shipping either, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust Israeli air defenses.
This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause battlefield collapse and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.
That conclusion is supported by an April 22 Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end…of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.
On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st-century Holocaust, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation published on November 6 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself.
Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.
One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah could completely paralyze the country economically, render entire areas uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a terrifying scale.
Resultantly, Israel’s “Samson Option,” under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “We have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological payload of their own.
‘Whoever Moves’
Israel’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent they could be fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of the Israeli Defense Forces’ defeat is such that in a scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:
We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border…No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”
Haaretz | Apr 11, 2024
Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IDF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures” and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:
[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound…Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza, and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left…Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”
The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IDF operates. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “The only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:
“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalizing Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20, the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”
That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far Israel has fallen since October 7, 2023. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Adversaries do not fear its once-vaunted military and its ability to unilaterally strike neighboring countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.
Meanwhile, Israel has suffered population collapse, with simultaneous mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs. The trauma of perpetrating genocide and living under the daily threat of attack, as Palestinians have since 1948, has ravaged soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.
“I don’t think 10 years from now Israel will exist. Zionism will die. The only solution is equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout Palestine. This war will continue, but direct engagement with Iran would be totally destructive, militarily. So the Israelis now target Rafah, but they will be defeated there, and they know that. As long as Netanyahu is leader, we will have a continuation of this tragedy. The only way out is a coup in Tel Aviv,” Dr. Marandi concludes.
For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, Israel as we know it is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal.”
Time is now and forever on the side of the tenacious, undefeated Resistance – so, too, justice and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanizing words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023:
If I must die, let it bring hope.”
Feature photo | A passerby, taking on his cellphone, walks past a banner showing missiles being launched from Iranian map in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
The post “Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever appeared first on MintPress News.
European Parliament Elections: Experts and Law-Makers ‘Extremely’ Worried About Influence of Anti-Gender Movements
Less than six weeks from the European Parliament elections, Brussels is abuzz with anticipation – and concern about a further political move to the right.
The elections on 6-9 June – with a combined electorate of more than 400 million people voting across 27 countries – are expected to further mainstream far-right ideas and parties, potentially pulling the European Parliament to the right.
Whether in Italy, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany or France, the far-right is marching steadily into the mainstream, with the latest polls indicating significant electoral gains. EU law-makers and independent experts in Brussels consider this “extremely worrying”.
Renew Europe MEP Samira Rafaela, of the Netherlands, warns of a “significant backlash against the rights and values that progressive movements, democrats, and liberals have worked so hard to establish".
She told Byline Times: “Whether it's the bodily autonomy of women, the right to abortion, or LGBTIQ rights, these movements are actively working to roll-back these hard-won rights, directly threatening our rule of law."
Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld, also of Renew Europe, believes the agenda is connected with anti-rights movements and serves as a “smokescreen for their real objectives – authoritarianism and kleptocracy”. According to her, the discussion of ethical issues are “mere sales strategies”, not real goals and part of a broader movement.
Both parliamentarians emphasise the strong link between right-wing political parties and anti-gender movements – highlighting the significant funding, well-thought-out plans behind them, and their transatlantic nature.
“These anti-democratic actors are infiltrating our democratic institutions, including the European Parliament and other multilateral organisations like the UN," Rafaela said. "They are translating their ideology into dangerous legislative and policy proposals, which directly threaten people’s lives."
According to the parliamentarians, one of the tactics frequently used by the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group and the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), is to push for 'split votes’ on gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) issues to prevent decisions from being made, as neither side holds the majority.
Another strategy for pushing initiatives against abortion and equal marriage is utilising mechanisms such as the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) which, upon reaching one million signatures, requires the European Commission to either propose legislation or justify why it doesn’t. An example of a successful ECI by anti-democratic actors is One of Us, which now presents itself as “the most representative and global pro-life movement”.
These actors also employ traditional advocacy methods, using the same legal, advocacy, and campaigning techniques as progressive actors, but not their values and policy claims. They often focus on concepts like 'religious freedom’ and 'freedom of speech’, which is why they are sometimes referred to as “uncivil society” in the EU. One attempt tried to defeat the European Parliament reports on SRHR.
Realising the gravity of this situation, Rafaela and her team researched the funding sources and uncovered significant foreign interference, with considerable foreign funding involved.
“I raised this issue with the President of the European Parliament, urging for a review of our transparency and lobby register," she told Byline Times. "Until now, I haven’t seen the result of that request."
In ‘t Veld added: “These organisations are like Trojan horses – they are infiltrating political systems and mobilising far-right voters."
The European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights revealed in its 2021 research that $700 million has been spent on ‘anti-gender’ activities since 2009. About $430 million originated from European sources, $180 million from Russia and $80 million from the US.
The Anti-Gender Landscape in Europe
David Paternotte, a Belgian sociologist and gender studies academic, believes the landscape of anti-gender campaigns in Europe is “rapidly evolving and expanding".
“Countries that were not previously associated with such movements, especially those in northern Europe, like the Netherlands and Sweden, are now part of this phenomenon,” he told Byline Times.
Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, identifies three broad categories of anti-gender actors – European branches of US Christian-Right organisations, newly created European organisations and networks, and organisations directly linked to religious institutions.
According to Datta, the most vocal European branches of US Christian-Right organisations are the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ), the Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI), and the World Youth Alliance (WYA).
While ECLJ and the ADFI specialise in legal advocacy and strategic litigation, Brussels-based WYA represents young people's views on Catholic social doctrine, focusing on human dignity.
Investigations by OpenDemocracy 2019 revealed that the US Christian Right groups invested heavily in Europe, spending more than $98 million between 2007 and 2019, mainly on campaigns against women’s and LGBTIQ rights, sex education, and abortion.
Among home-grown anti-gender organisations are CitizenGo – an ultra-conservative, multi-lingual petition platform and advocacy group headquartered in Madrid, and One of Us Federation.
Another vocal organisation is the Ordo Iuris, created in 2013 in Poland and part of the transnational movement Tradition, Family, Property (TFP). It is behind policy initiatives such as the 2016 bill to ban abortion and the “Stop Paedophilia” law, which criminalises sex education and allows LGBTIQ-free zones.
Datta identifies two significant actors in the third category: the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), representing the Roman Catholic Church in European institutions; and the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), the only explicitly religious European political party.
In addition, these actors and organisations have established several forums where they meet regularly for networking and strategising. The most noteworthy are the World Congress of Families (WCF), Agenda Europe, and the Political Network for Values.
Why Are They Gaining Respectability and Power?
The MEPs and experts agree that anti-rights movements are becoming increasingly sophisticated, particularly through the use of online platforms and new technologies.
“This is a significant challenge for us,” said Rafaela. “The online environment gives these anti-rights movements the means to target progressive voices and spread false and biased information.”
David Paternotte added: “By constantly producing content and occupying online spaces, they can reach diverse audiences and shape public opinion.”
Paternotte mentioned the role of emerging media outlets, such as the Brussels Signal and the European Conservative, as offering an alternative perspective to what they perceive as “liberal” EU media.
“These platforms are open microphones for far-right leaders and actively support their agenda, especially in the run-up to elections,” he said.
Potential Election Scenarios
Currently, the European Parliament is composed of seven political groups. The largest five are: the European People's Party (EPP) on the centre-right, the Socialists and Democrats on the centre-left, Renew Europe in the liberal centre, the Greens on the far-left, and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) on the hard-right.
Datta predicts that the far-right could become the majority “unless something extraordinary happens”. However, he believes it is unlikely that it will reach an absolute majority.
“They may not have enough to block legislation outright, but they could have enough influence to hinder other political parties from pursuing their usual agenda," he said.
According to the expert, one possibility is that the far-right and hard-right factions perform well enough to prevent a majority between the centre-right and centre-left. Alternatively, the EPP might be tempted to form an alliance with the hard-right, or even the far-right, to establish a right-wing majority.
“This potential alliance is worrying because it could lead to stagnation or even roll-back of the progress made in these areas," Datta told Byline Times. "While the far-right may not make substantial gains, their influence on other political parties could be significant."
In’ t Veld believes the most significant risk lies in EPP, which could lean towards far-right ideologies to secure support and weaken the political centre.
Datta believes that EPP’s possible coalition with the hard-right – as seen in Sweden, Finland, and Italy – “poses a significant threat to the foundations of liberal democracy in Europe”.
How to Limit Far-Right Gain
Rafaela emphasised the need to organise multi-stakeholder dialogues, events, and campaigns to promote democratic values and ensure that citizens are well-informed and educated as many “still dismiss these concerns as conspiracy theories”.
She also stressed the importance of articulating their stance clearly.
“For instance, we must specify that we’re advocating for the right to safe and legal abortion access," she said. "Otherwise, anti-rights movements can easily distort our message.”
In 't Veld said the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade has emboldened some European governments and highlighted the need to anchor rights in constitutional frameworks to prevent them from being easily undone. She mentioned the recent parliamentary vote in favour of including access to abortion in the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.
According to the law-maker, another key strategy is raising awareness about foreign interference in debates on abortion, gender equality, and LGBTIQ rights.
But she acknowledged the challenges: “While general awareness is rising, it’s a slow process."
How Jewish Extremists Became the New Face of Israel
Throughout history, fringe religious Zionist parties have had limited success in achieving the kind of electoral victories that would allow them an actual share in the country’s political decision-making.
The impressive 17 seats won by Israel’s extremist religious party, Shas, in the 1999 elections was a watershed moment in the history of these parties, whose ideological roots go back to Avraham Itzhak Kook and his son Zvi Yehuda Hacohen.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé referred to the Kooks’ ideological influence as a “fusion of dogmatic messianism and violence.”
Throughout the years, these religious parties struggled on several fronts: their inability to unify their ranks, their failure to appeal to mainstream Israeli society and their inability to strike the balance between their messianic political discourse and the kind of language – not necessarily behavior – that Israel’s western allies expect.
Though much of the financial support and political backing of Israel’s extremists originate in the United States and, to a lesser extent, other European countries, Washington has been clear regarding its public perception of Israel’s religious extremists.
In 2004, the United States banned the Kach party, which could be seen as the modern manifestation of the Kooks and Israel’s early religious Zionist ideologues.
The founder of the group, Meir Kahane, was assassinated in November 1990 while the extremist rabbi – responsible for much violence against innocent Palestinians throughout the years – was giving another hate-filled speech in Manhattan.
Kahane’s death was only the start of much violence meted out by his followers, lead among them an American doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down on February 25, 1994, dozens of Palestinian Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
Prayer mats covered in blood in the aftermath of the massacre carried out by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, February 25, 1994. Photo Al-Khalil
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers while protesting the massacre was nearly as many as those killed by Goldstein earlier in the day, a tragic but perfect representation of the relationship between the Israeli state and the violent settlers who operate as part of a larger state agenda.
That massacre was a watershed moment in the history of religious Zionism. Instead of serving as an opportunity to marginalize their growing influence by the supposedly more liberal Zionists, they grew in power and, ultimately, political influence within the Israeli state.
Goldstein himself became a hero, whose grave, in Israel’s most extremist illegal settlement in the West Bank, Kiryat Arba, is now a famous shrine, a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Israelis.
It is particularly telling that Goldstein’s shrine was built opposite Meir Kahane’s Memorial Park, which indicates the clear ideological connections between these individuals, groups, and funders.
In recent years, however, the traditional role played by Israel’s religious Zionists began to shift, leading to the election of Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Israeli Knesset in 2021 and, ultimately, to his role as the country’s National Security Minister in December 2022.
Ben-Gvir is a follower of Kahane. “It seems to me that, ultimately, Rabbi Kahane was about love. Love for Israel without compromise, without any other consideration,” he said in November 2022.
But, unlike Kahane, Ben-Gvir was not satisfied with the role of religious Zionists as cheerleaders for the settlement movement, almost daily raids of Al-Aqsa and the occasional attacks on Palestinians. He wanted to be at the center of Israeli political power.
It is an interesting debate whether Ben-Gvir achieved his status as a direct result of the successful grassroots work of religious Zionism or because the political circumstances of Israel itself have changed in his favor. The truth, however, might be somewhere in the middle. Israel’s historic failure of its so-called political left—namely the Labor Party—has, in recent years, propelled a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon—the political center.
Meanwhile, Israel’s traditional right, the Likud party, grew weaker, partly because it failed to appeal to the growing, more youthful religious Zionism constituency and also because of the series of splits that occurred after Ariel Sharon’s breaking up of the party and the founding of Kadima in 2005 – a party that has been long disbanded.
To survive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has redefined his party to its most extremist version of all time and, thus, began to attract religious Zionists with the hope of filling the gaps created because of internal infighting within the Likud.
By doing so, Netanyahu has granted religious Zionists the opportunity of a lifetime.
Soon, following the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood operation, and in the early days of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Ben-Gvir launched his National Guard, a group which he tried, but failed, to compose before the war.
Thanks to Ben-Gvir, Israel, now, per the words of opposition leader Yair, has become a country with a “private militia.”
By March 19, Ben-Gvir announced that 100,000 gun permits had been handed over to his supporters. It is within this period that the US began imposing ‘sanctions’ on a few individuals affiliated with Israel’s settler extremist movement, a slight slap on the wrist considering the massive damage that has already been done and the tremendous violence that is likely to follow in the coming months and years.
With a portrait of late Rabbi Meir Kahane on the wall, left, a Jewish settler walks inside a building taken from a Palestinian family in Hebron, Nov. 16, 2008. Dan Balilty | AP
Unlike Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir’s thinking is not limited to his desire to reach a specific position within the government. Israel’s religious extremists are seeking a fundamental and irreversible shift in Israeli politics.
The recent push to change the relationship between the judicial and exclusive branches of government was as crucial to those extremists as it was to Netanyahu himself. However, the latter has championed such an initiative to shield himself against legal accountability. Ben-Gvir’s supporters have a different reason in mind: they want to dominate the government and the military with no responsibility or oversight.
Israel’s religious Zionists are playing a long game, which is not linked to a particular election, individual or government coalition. They are redefining the state, along with its ideology. And they are winning.
Ben-Gvir and his threats to topple Netanyahu’s coalition government have been the main driving force behind the genocide in Gaza.
If Meir Kahane were still alive, he would have been proud of his followers. The ideology of the once marginalized and loathed extremist rabbi is now the backbone of Israeli politics.
Feature photo | An Israeli hardline nationalist supporter of Israeli army medic Sgt. Elor Azaria, wears a t-shirt with a drawing of Rabbi Meir Kahana, who founded extreme right wing Jewish movements, the Jewish Defense League and the ultranationalist Kach political party, outside the Israeli military court in Tel Aviv. Oded Balilty | AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth.’ Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
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‘Ireland is No Longer Immune to the Far-Right’
The far-right movement has been gaining political ground electorally across Europe for decades. There are few events in recent history which better exemplify the disastrous risks posed by such ideologies than the fall-out from Brexit, following years of slow corrosion in UK regional politics.
Amid increasing occurrences of political self-sabotage, a notable outlier has been Ireland: a nation of emigrants, and a country that appeared by many metrics almost immune to anti-immigrant sentiment. Until now.
Burning buses, riots, threats to political representatives, arson – all betray a worrying trend of violence and intimidation fuelled by far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Over the course of five years, more than 26 buildings suspected of housing asylum seekers have been subjected to arson attacks, most of which have occurred within the past 18 months. In November last year, some 500 rioters rampaged through Dublin, looting and setting fire to vehicles as well as attacking police officers – nothing short of thuggery.
Typical of far-right movements across history, self-appointed representatives of the so-called real, 'native’ population weaponise socioeconomic deprivation and political alienation by circulating disinformation and mistruth. As if read from the pages of the 20th Century populist handbook, these figures claim vehemently that every societal ill is caused or inflamed by immigration. No job opportunities? No housing? Long waiting lists for healthcare? Migrants are the eternal bogeymen.
Last year 13,227 people sought international protection in Ireland, down 400 from the previous year – Ireland accounted for just 1.3% of the EU total of asylum applicants in 2022. It is estimated that migrants contribute 3.7 billion to the Irish economy every year through taxes, immigration fees, and work permits.
The potential for far-right agitators to influence national politics has been largely dismissed by Ireland’s major political parties.
Fringe far-right parties have emerged including the Irish Freedom Party and the National Party, neither of which have managed to achieve a single elected representative. However, with both local and European elections set to take place in June, fringe politicians will be hoping for a breakthrough – and both the media and major political parties are doing little to counter the potential threat.
Placating anti-immigrant protests by adopting their language or making ad hoc ill-considered statements about changing Ireland’s immigration system, leading political parties appear complacent and rudderless about the potential far-right breakthrough.
To date, the far-right in Ireland has not coalesced around one personality or party – Ireland doesn't have a Nigel Farage, Giorgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen. Yet. Plenty are auditioning for the role.
While serving as a growing vector for public disorder, the far-right in Ireland is splintered into intersecting groups with varying priorities. Anti-immigration is often the central pillar but a cursory interrogation of the 'Ireland is Full’ hashtag on social media will reveal a mismatch of anti-choice, racist, anti-trans, and COVID-denying accounts.
As with other countries experiencing a growth in far-right support, Ireland is also subject to outside interference, with US and UK far-right social media figures and personalities parroting anti-immigrant content about Ireland across the internet.
Put simply, Ireland is no longer immune to the far-right. It has been infected by the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been corroding democracy on a global scale.
How do you stop the spread of the far-right? Tackling issues of inequality would be a good start as these leads to political marginalisation, providing fertile ground for the far-right to take root.
The 2022 survey on income and living conditions demonstrated an increase in the number of those living in consistent poverty, those at risk of poverty, and those in enforced deprivation in Ireland. Homelessness is at a record high despite more than 166,000 properties languishing vacant in the state.
Evidence demonstrates that those impacted by poverty during childhood are more likely to experience income poverty and deprivation in adulthood; 89,000 children were living in poverty in 2022 – a more than 40% rise since 2021.
The Irish Government must tackle the growing inequality in Ireland through a multi-pronged approach, flooding areas of deprivation with increased resources for educational attainment, counselling, infrastructure, services, and opportunities. This approach should be coupled with national plans to address the housing crisis, labour market, and poverty. Ireland needs a social safety net capable of protecting those who are most vulnerable.
When it comes to disinformation and misinformation, it is essential that the Irish Government provides readily available and accessible information on immigration – an information campaign launch is well overdue.
In the long-term, digital literacy has to become a key focus in education in order to equip the next generation with the skills necessary to identify fake news and deepfakes. We are in the era of AI, the wider effects of which can be neither fully understand nor predicted yet.
With elections in a little over six weeks, the Irish Government and political parties are on the back foot with dwindling time to gain ground. An Ireland Thinks poll in February revealed that 35% of those surveyed would consider voting for a party or candidate with anti-immigrant views – and it appears they will have plenty of candidates to choose from.
In the past week, Ireland has experienced more protests, a minister’s personal home was covered in threatening anti-immigrant signs, six people were arrested in violent scenes on Thursday night, and a debate centred on immigration carried out on national radio opined “Is our Government ‘at war’ with its own people?” – a grotesque appropriation of language of war when the world is witnessing the daily slaughter of innocent people and children in Gaza.
Ireland is a nation of emigrants with generations of citizens forced to flee due to war, famine, and more recently the recession. To be anti-immigrant in Ireland is to be ignorant of one’s own history.
If the far-right succeeds in its aims in June – whether that’s gaining elected representatives or fundamentally destabilising the political agenda in Ireland – it will be a blight on Ireland’s history and a catalyst for further division. Those of us directly impacted by the sociopolitical failings of the UK, and the ongoing damage caused by Brexit, know only too well where this path may lead.
Shockwaves to Shattered Defenses: The Myth of Israeli Supremacy Crumbles
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, which forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army. Yet the strikes launched by Iran on April 13 and 14 are also truly historic.
For the first time, the backbone of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one as all the taboos have now been broken, and new equations have been established.
Israel’s deterrence capacity no longer exists. Since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah and the Iraqi Resistance have shattered it. Still, these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose. This direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while Iran very quickly carried out its threats.
Iran launched its strike despite U.S. and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war and directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of interference. This audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance.
Iran’s military prowess was clearly demonstrated. Despite the fact that this attack was known in advance and that the capabilities – both aviation and anti-missile defenses of no less than five military powers directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) were unable to stop Iran from striking Israeli territory. Israel’s defense systems were saturated, sirens sounded from north to south for hours, and yet at least twenty direct hits were recorded.
Iran demonstrated its moral superiority. It strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (two air bases that were destroyed according to Iran and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the countries affected to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region.
Finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel’s five layers of defense was compensated for by a sixth layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles. Given the impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the Western data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to allow Israel to save face and enable it to claim victory as it supposedly was able to intercept 99% of the projectiles.
Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said in 2007,
“Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions.”
While his statement has been mocked many times, particularly given the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion. When its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, stated following Iran’s attack, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution,
“We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy.”
This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence. Those who play down the importance of the attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran’s vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran, the Campaign Director of Avaaz, pointed out following the attack,
“The scale of Iran’s attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the U.S. and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had; it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defense system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the U.S. has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds…etc.
This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes are now being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the U.S. and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly.”
While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself, at an exorbitant cost of over a billion dollars no less, against an attack that was limited in scope, lacked the element of surprise and cost Iran a measly 35 million dollars, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel’s defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the depopulation process that has already cost it hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.
For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the world and Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite. Gaza experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the hearts of those responsible for their mass slaughter.
Not unlike the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 will forever be engraved in people’s consciences. It will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of “reverse migration” of Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them.
With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the inevitable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite six months of genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel’s illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what he likely expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever.
Israel now has only one choice: to end the war in Gaza or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the region ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire. The question now is whether Netanyahu’s instinct for self-preservation (his political survival) will take over the general interest. This scenario would put the very existence of Israel at risk.
Editor’s Note: The author of this article has chosen to publish under a pseudonym. This decision stems from residing in a European country where expressing criticism of Israel has become increasingly challenging. Sadly, governmental crackdowns on activism have compelled the author and others to take this precaution to safeguard their ability to contribute to public discourse. We believe it is crucial to respect their decision while valuing the insights and perspectives they offer in their writing.
Feature photo | A woman walks past a banner showing missiles being launched, in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP
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