foreign affairs
Aid Wars
As Israel’s ground operation in Gaza nears its close, the next major struggle is coming into view. The battle over the provision of essential humanitarian aid, already so brutal over the past few months, will become increasingly central to the conflict. But for all the pacifying rhetoric from US, there is no reason to think […]
Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill
On March 13, U.S. lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill forcing TikTok’s foreign owner, ByteDance, to sell up or face a stateside ban. Its advocates claim the popular video-sharing app is a Chinese Communist Party-controlled national security threat that could be weaponized as a tool of surveillance and manipulation if it isn’t already. Yet, despite the anti-Beijing hysteria running wild, many haven’t swallowed the bait, with even some typically pliant mainstream outlets alleging a far darker rationale.
For a start, the ominous vision of TikTok as a CPC Trojan Horse is demonstrably absurd. While parent company ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and was founded by local internet entrepreneurs, court filings, financial returns, official submissions to Congress, and even Chinese government documents show the company is 60% owned by foreign investors, including many in the U.S., while a fifth is in the hands of its own employees, including thousands of Americans.
Despite this, the monolithic narrative of a CPC-run spying app maliciously taking over the phones of young Western citizens has long abounded. In January, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi Chew was subject to relentless McCarthyite grilling by Republican Tom Cotton on his loyalties and relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. A visibly bemused Zi Chew repeatedly explained he was a patriotic Singaporean, married to a U.S. citizen. These inconvenient facts did not deter the Senator’s bullying, xenophobic interrogation.
Now that the anti-TikTok “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” has passed, much of the media is fraudulently claiming the app is confirmed to be Beijing-owned and controlled. One might argue this is a deliberate smokescreen designed to obscure the true rationale behind the app’s Congressional attack, the individuals and organizations behind it, and who precisely benefits from TikTok being run by U.S. government-approved figures and entities.
In every case, the answer lies in plain sight and is the same. TikTok has long been in the crosshairs of powerful pro-Israel lobbying organizations due to the speed and ease with which content critical of Israeli atrocities and apartheid spreads on its platform. The risk younger users might question the concertedly concealed, horrific reality of Israel’s occupation has become all the graver throughout the Gaza genocide. Now, those same groups have corralled U.S. lawmakers into launching a fatal attack on free speech online.
‘A TikTok Problem’
In November 2023, a leaked recording of Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), appeared online. In it, he despaired over how much sympathy for the Palestinian struggle was apparent online in the wake of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood and inevitably disproportionate Israeli response. Expressing shock at how terms such as “Zionist entity,” a delegitimizing characterization applied to Israel, had proliferated, he singled out a particular social media app and demographic as responsible:
We have a major, major, major generational problem…all the polling I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling, suggests the issue of US support for Israel is not left and right, it is young and old…We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem.”
‘We have a major Tiktok problem.’
Leaked audio of ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/tzU02bSXAm
— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) November 16, 2023
It is indeed no coincidence that in the same month, several prominent Jewish celebrities and influencers sought to lobby TikTok behind closed doors to erase any “anti-Israel content” from its platform and generally “do more to address a surge of antisemitism and harassment” on the app following October 7. Among the assembled was Sasha Baron Cohen. As MintPress documented in January, his cinematic oeuvre is almost exclusively rabidly Islamophobic and rife with genocidal pro-Israel propaganda tropes.
Cohen is also a repeat ADL confederate, actively complicit in the organization’s online censorship connivances. In September 2020, he temporarily suspended his Instagram account to protest purported antisemitic “hate speech” on the platform and Facebook. The League led this action, which saw over 1,000 businesses suspend their ads on the social network for a month. At the secret TikTok meeting, he told Adam Presser, the app’s head of operations, and himself Jewish, “Shame on you.”
“What is happening at TikTok is it is [sic] creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Cohen fulminated, telling Presser:
If you think back to October 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” he continued, accusing TikTok “of feeding similarly incendiary content to young people.”
Reported unquestioningly in the Western media, dubious claims that Hamas committed a wave of rapes and beheaded infants on October 7, as the group conducted an extremely dangerous lightning strike mission behind enemy lines to kidnap hostages, all along hunted by Israeli Occupation Force soldiers, helicopters, and tanks, have come apart in the weeks and months since. Likewise, no evidence has to date emerged that TikTok is indeed a hotbed of antisemitic hate, let alone uniquely so in the digital realm.
‘Wonderful Vehicle’
On March 6, Nikki Haley suspended her Republican Presidential candidacy. The Israel lobby was no doubt crestfallen. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN from January 2017 to December 2018, she distinguished herself as perhaps the most aggressive and ardent advocate for Israel ever to fill the post—a highly competitive category indeed. During her tenure, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice hailed Haley’s “Zionist spirit,” an accompanying cartoon bizarrely depicting her as Xena: Warrior Princess.
On the campaign trail, Haley was given to frequent Israeli propaganda outbursts. A common occurrence in U.S. politics, most of these utterances flew under the radar. Nonetheless, in December 2023, she elicited much ridicule for unbelievably declaring during a primary debate:
We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.”
Nikki Haley: “For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas.”pic.twitter.com/ECCriiax80
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 7, 2023
It appears Haley was misrepresenting the results of a recent survey conducted by MarketWatch. Yet, her self-evidently ludicrous – and thoroughly discredited – claim was cited without irony in a statement published by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), applauding the passing of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The statement further charged:
TikTok’s parent company is beholden to the Chinese government, which has squarely positioned itself against Israel since October 7th. China has filled its state-controlled media and social media channels with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.”
That TikTok is antisemitic because it is controlled by the Chinese government is an entirely novel slander for both the app and Beijing. Yet, following Congressional ratification of the Act, JNFA would have every reason to talk a big game. As The Times of Israel reported in mid-March, the organization, along with the ADL, was at the forefront of public campaigning in support of the bill.
We want Congress to tell TikTok that their time is up: We’re done with the lies the platform spreads about the Jewish people and Israel. Click the link below to say #TimesUpTikTok: https://t.co/4IXoKMziiu pic.twitter.com/mmZR6N1r7m
— The Jewish Federations of North America (@jfederations) March 26, 2024
These efforts saw JNFA gather Jewish community leaders across the U.S. for “crucial” briefings on the pending legislation. Conspicuously, the organization’s New Jersey chapter explicitly referred to the Act as “aimed at antisemitism on TikTok,” with no reference to Chinese government influence at all. Meanwhile, Israeli media took aim at Jewish billionaires Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass over their 15% stake in ByteDance. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency lambasted Dantchik for failing to curb “anti-Israel content” on TikTok despite sitting on its board.
These attacks were likely intended to ensure neither investor – both of whom give generously to Jewish and Zionist foundations – voiced any criticism of the Act. While successful, the Jewish news website The Forward acknowledged that several Jewish TikTok creators vehemently opposed its U.S. government takeover, including several rabbis. One told the newspaper that the app was “a wonderful vehicle” for teaching the Torah and “educating young people about Judaism,” arguing that “the platform’s value outweighs concerns about antisemitism that led some Jewish organizations to push for its ban.”
Of course, their entreaties fell on deaf ears. So, too, did the condemnations of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, who both denounced the legislation as state censorship. Their broadsides were particularly notable, as neither could be plausibly accused of holding even vaguely pro-China or anti-Israel sympathies. In Musk’s case, he has even collaborated with the ADL to suppress anti-Israel posts and users on ‘X,’ his rebranded version of Twitter.
‘A stranglehold on Congress.’
Despite its near-unanimous rapid passage through Congress, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act could run into trouble in the Senate. Republican Rand Paul has pledged to block the legislation on free speech grounds. U.S. citizens “choose to use TikTok to express themselves,” Paul argues, believing the Act would “take away the First Amendment rights” of 170 million users. The Washington Post quoted the Act’s Congressional architect, Mike Gallagher, as retorting:
[The Act] is about foreign adversary control of a social media application…not about shutting down speech. As long as the ownership structure has changed, TikTok can continue, and Americans can say whatever the heck they want on the platform.”
The newspaper did not mention that on March 13, Gallagher let slip the true motivation behind his anti-TikTok push. Namely, it is “becoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30.” This very much chimes with the concerns of ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt.
Also unmentioned is that Gallagher’s biggest political donor is the infamous American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress.”
The chief architect behind the TikTok bill is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose biggest donor is AIPAC
Since October 7, 2023, AIPAC has made no secret of its mission to rid Washington, DC, of any lawmaker even mildly opposed to or critical of Israel’s unrelenting war on Gaza, openly earmarking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, among others, for defenestration. Chillingly, the organization’s 2022 report on “policy and political achievements” that year brags that it provided $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” a staggering 98% of whom won their elections.
Questioning Israeli Influence Deemed ‘antisemitic’
Meanwhile, despite JNFA’s brazen public victory lap following the Act’s Congressional assent and its own central involvement in shilling for TikTok’s censorship, the ADL had the audacity to publish an investigation into how “antisemitic conspiracy theories” spread online after the vote. It charged that “influencers and extremists from across the political spectrum” framed the bill as “a product of Jewish or Zionist influence…an effort to infringe on free speech by limiting the reach of pro-Palestinian content.”
An example of an antisemitic remark about the TikTok bill published by the ADL
The ADL has published a relentless deluge of reports, uncritically amplified by the mainstream media, alleging “antisemitic incidents” throughout the Western world have reached record levels since the Gaza genocide began. Yet, as MintPress has revealed, the League produces these mindboggling figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants and signage at both as individual “antisemitic incidents.”
The anti-TikTok Act’s untrammeled passage is an epic testament to “Zionist influence” in the U.S. That such far-reaching, disturbing legislation was rubberstamped with virtually zero public, political or media debate or scrutiny, despite intense civil society and American Jewish community opposition, sets a terrifying precedent for future aggressive action being taken against digital platforms allowing inconvenient, brutal truths about Israel to escape into the public domain.
If the Act becomes law, it will undoubtedly be used to target other social networks, apps, and websites on similarly spurious grounds. Indeed, the legislation is explicitly not intended to be restricted to TikTok. Its wording openly states that any tech company “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the U.S.” can be in the White House’s firing line. Joe Biden has already made it abundantly clear that he will sign the moment it reaches his desk.
In December 2023, MintPress investigated The 10/7 Project, a new Zionist lobby entity founded by AIPAC, ADL, AJC, JFNA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The outfit was initially intended to be a very public affair, promoting human interest stories and atrocity propaganda generated by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the media while elevating its eponymous date to 9/11 levels in the American public mind.
The 10/7 Project has, to say the least, failed in this mission not least because citizen activists and journalists have challenged Israeli propaganda and exposed the realities of the Gaza genocide, with such devastating effect, on platforms such as TikTok. As such, it is only to be expected that the same lobbying organizations behind this effort have redoubled their quest for narrative control. If the information war cannot be won fairly, the only option is to nobble all opposition via straight-up censorship.
From Israel’s perspective, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Since October 7, 2023, as Jonathan Grimblatt bemoaned in that leaked recording, poll after poll has shown U.S. public support for Israel is almost exclusively restricted to older generations of Americans. For example, on March 21, Pew Research published a survey showing 46% of 18- 29-year-olds viewed Tel Aviv’s actions in Gaza as “unacceptable,” while 35% of 30 – 49-year-olds – a majority – agreed.
As the entire Zionist project – and the unending, slow-motion genocide it necessarily executes – is wholly contingent on U.S. support to endure, in the face of nigh-universal condemnation from citizens of the world and governments throughout the Global South, such an attitudinal shift could spell the end of Israel as we, unfortunately, know it. That is quite some “generational problem” that needs urgent rectification.
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.
The post Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill appeared first on MintPress News.
Chris Hedges: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Prosecutors representing the United States, whether by design or incompetence, refused — in the two-day hearing I attended in London in February — to provide guarantees that Julian Assange would be afforded First Amendment rights and would be spared the death penalty if extradited to the U.S.
The inability to give these assurances all but guaranteed that the High Court — as it did on Tuesday — would allow Julian’s lawyers to appeal. Was this done to stall for time so that Julian would not be extradited until after the U.S. presidential election? Was it a delaying tactic to work out a plea deal? Julian’s lawyers and U.S. prosecutors are discussing this possibility. Was it careless legal work? Or was it to keep Julian locked in a high-security prison until he collapsed mentally and physically?
If Julian is extradited, he will stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, which carries a potential sentence of 170 years. Another charge for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” carries an additional five years.
The court will permit Julian to appeal minor technical points — his basic free speech rights must be honored, he cannot be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality, and he cannot be under threat of the death penalty.
No new hearing will allow his lawyers to focus on the war crimes and corruption that WikiLeaks exposed, permit Julian to mount a public interest defense, or discuss the political persecution of a publisher who has not committed a crime.
The court, by asking the U.S. for assurances that Julian would be granted First Amendment rights in the U.S. courts and not be subject to the death penalty, offered the U.S. an easy out — give the guarantees and the appeal was rejected.
It is hard to see how the U.S. can refuse the two-judge panel, composed of Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, which issued on Tuesday a 66-page judgment accompanied by a three-page court order and a four-page media briefing.
The hearing in February was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel, and many of the rulings of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in 2021.
If Julian is denied an appeal, he can request an emergency stay of execution from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is possible the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction, or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard there.
Julian has been engaged in a legal battle for 15 years. It began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad.
Julian took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for seven years, fearing extradition to the U.S. He was arrested in April 2019 by the Metropolitan Police, who were permitted by the Embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh, a high-security prison in southeast London.
The case against Julian has made a mockery of the British justice system and international law. While in the embassy, the Spanish security firm UC Global provided video recordings of meetings between Julian and his lawyers to the CIA, eviscerating attorney-client privilege.
The Crucifixion of Julian Assange | Mr. Fish
The Ecuadorian government — led by Lenin Moreno — violated international law by rescinding Julian’s asylum status and permitting police into their embassy to carry Julian into a waiting van. The courts have denied Julian’s status as a legitimate journalist and publisher. The U.S. and Britain have ignored Article 4 of their Extradition Treaty, which prohibits extradition for political offenses. The key witness for the U.S., Sigurdur Thordarson — a convicted fraudster and pedophile — admitted to fabricating the accusations he made against Julian in exchange for immunity for past crimes..
Julian, an Australian citizen, is being charged under the U.S. Espionage Act, although he did not engage in espionage and was not based in the U.S. when he was sent the leaked documents. The British courts are considering extradition, despite the CIA’s plan to kidnap and assassinate Julian, plans that included a potential shoot-out on the streets of London, with involvement by London’s Metropolitan Police.
Julian has been held in isolation in a high-security prison without trial, although his only technical violation of the law is breaching bail conditions after he obtained asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador. This should only entail a fine.
Finally, unlike Daniel Ellsberg, Julian did not leak the documents. He published documents leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
The judges accepted three of the nine legal grounds as potential points for appeal, and they denied the other six. The two-judge panel also rejected Julian’s lawyers’ request to present new evidence.
Julian’s legal team asked the court to introduce into the case the Yahoo! News report that revealed, after the release of the documents known as Vault 7, that the then-director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, considered assassinating Julian. Julian’s lawyers also hoped to introduce a statement from Joshua Dratel, a U.S. attorney, who said that Pompeo’s use of the terms “non-state hostile intelligence service” and “enemy combatant” were phrases designed to give legal cover for an assassination. The third piece of evidence Julian’s lawyers hoped to introduce was a statement from a Spanish witness in the criminal proceedings underway in Spain against UC Global.
The CIA is the engine behind Julian’s extradition. Vault 7 exposed hacking tools that permit the CIA to access our phones, computers and televisions, turning them — even when switched off — into monitoring and recording devices. The extradition request does not include charges based on the release of the Vault 7 files, but the U.S. indictment followed the release of the Vault 7 files.
Justice Sharp and Justice Johnson dismissed the report in Yahoo! News as “another recitation of opinion by journalists on matters that were considered by the judge.” They rejected the argument made by the defense that Julian’s extradition would be in violation of Section 81 of the U.K. Extradition Act of 2003, which prohibits extraditions in cases where individuals are prosecuted for their political opinions. The judges also dismissed the arguments made by Julian’s attorneys that extradition would violate his protections under the European Convention of Human Rights — the right to life, the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, the right to a free trial and protections against punishment without law respectively.
The U.S. largely built its arguments on the affidavits of U.S. prosecutor Gordon D. Kromberg. Kromberg, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, has stated that Julian, as a foreign national, is “not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.”
Ben Watson, King’s Counsel, who represented the U.K. government during the two-day hearing in February, conceded that if Julian is found guilty under the Espionage Act, he could receive a death penalty sentence.
The judges urged the U.S. and the U.K. Secretary of State to offer the British court assurances on these three points by April 16.
If the assurances are not provided, the appeal will proceed.
If the assurances are provided, lawyers for both sides have until April 30th to make new written submissions to the court. At that point, the court will convene again on May 20 to decide whether the appeal can proceed.
The goals in this Dickensian nightmare remain unchanged. Erase Julian from the public consciousness. Demonize him. Criminalize those who expose government crimes. Use Julian’s slow-motion crucifixion to warn journalists that no matter their nationality, no matter where they live, they can be kidnapped and extradited to the U.S. Drag out the judicial lynching for years until Julian, already in a precarious physical and mental condition, disintegrates.
This ruling, like all of the rulings in this case, is not about justice. It is about vengeance.
Feature photo | The Crucifixion of Julian Assange – Partial | Mr. Fish
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
The post Chris Hedges: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange appeared first on MintPress News.
Complicit in Genocide: Where Israel Gets Its Weapons
Over 9,000 Palestinian women have been killed since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. Mothers have been the largest share of Israeli killings, with an average of 37 mothers per day since October 7.
The numbers above, from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza and the Red Crescent Society, respectively, only convey part of the suffering experienced by 2.3 million Palestinians in the Strip.
There is not a single section of Palestinian society that has not paid a heavy price for the war. However, women and children are the ones who have suffered the most, constituting over 70% of all victims of the ongoing Israeli genocide.
True, these women and their children are killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers, but they are murdered with U.S.-western supplied weapons.
Now, however, we are told that the world is finally turning against Israel and that the West’s nod of approval to Tel Aviv to carry on with its daily massacres may soon turn into a collective snub.
This claim was best expressed in the March 23 cover of the Economist magazine. It showed a tattered Israeli flag attached to a stick and planted in an arid, dusty land accompanied by the headline “Israel Alone.”
The image, undoubtedly expressive, was meant to serve as a sign of the times. Its profundity becomes even more apparent if compared to another cover from the same publication soon after the Israeli military conquered massive Arab territories in the war of June 1967. “They did it,” the headline, back then, read. In the background, an Israeli military tank was pictured, illustrating the west-funded Israeli triumph.
Much has changed Between the two headlines in the world and the Middle East. But to claim that Israel now stands alone is not entirely accurate, at least not yet.
Though many of Israel’s traditional allies in the West are openly disowning its behavior in Gaza, weapons from various Western and non-Western countries continue to flow, feeding the war machine as it, in turn, continues to harvest more Palestinian lives.
This compels the question: Does Israel truly stand alone when its airports and seaports are busier than ever, receiving massive shipments of weapons coming from all directions? Not in the least.
Almost every time a Western country announces its suspension of arms exports to Israel, a news headline appears shortly afterward indicating the opposite. Indeed, this has happened repeatedly.
Last year, Rome had declared that it was blocking all arms sales to Israel, giving false hope that some Western countries are finally experiencing some kind of moral awakening.
Alas, on March 14, Reuters quoted the Italian Defense Minister, Guido Crosetto, as saying that shipments of weapons to Israel are continuing, based on the flimsy logic that previously signed deals would have to be ‘honored.’
Another country that is also ‘honoring’ its previous commitments is Canada, which announced on May 19, following a parliamentary motion that it had suspended arms exports.
The celebration among those advocating an end to the genocide in Gaza was just getting started when, a day later, Ottawa practically reversed the decision by announcing that it, too, would honor previous commitments.
This illustrates that some Western countries, which continue to impart their unsolicited wisdom about human rights, women’s rights and democracy to the rest of the world, have no genuine respect for any of these values.
Canada and Italy are not the most significant military supporters of Israel. The U.S. and Germany are.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the decade between 2013 and 2022, Israel received 68% of its weapons from the U.S. and 28% from Germany.
The Germans remain unperturbed, even though five percent of the total population of Gaza has been killed, wounded or missing due to the Israeli war.
Yet, the American support for Israel is far greater. However, the Biden Administration is still sending messages to its constituency – the majority of whom want the war to stop – that the president is doing his best to pressure Israel to end the war.
Though only two approved military sales to Israel have been announced publicly since October 7, the two shipments represent only two percent of the total U.S. arms sent to Israel.
The Washington Post revealed the news on March 6. It was published when U.S. media reported a widening rift between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time,” a former senior Biden Administration official told the Post. Jeremy Konyndyk concluded that the “Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.”
For decades, the U.S. military support for Israel has been the highest anywhere in the world. Starting in 2016, this unconditional support exponentially increased during the Obama Administration to reach $3.8 billion per year.
Immediately after October 7, however, the weapons shipments to Israel reached unprecedented levels. They included a 2,000-pound bomb known as 5,000 MK-84 munitions. Israel has used this bomb to kill hundreds of innocent Palestinians.
Though Washington frequently alleges to be looking into Israel’s use of its weapons, it turned out, according to the Washington Post, that Biden knew too well that “Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.”
In some ways, Israel ‘stands alone,’ but only because most countries and peoples around the world reject its behavior. However, it is hardly alone when its war crimes are being executed with Western support and arms.
For the Israeli genocide in Gaza to end, those who continue to sustain the ongoing bloodbath must also be held accountable.
Feature photo | An Israeli child plays with a heavy machine gun on top of an Israeli Army tank in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Teqoa. Kevin Frayer | 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 Complicit in Genocide: Where Israel Gets Its Weapons appeared first on MintPress News.
Israel is ‘Disappearing’ Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza – and Their Families May Never Get Answers
In December 2023, grim photographs began emerging from the rubble-strewn streets of the city of Beit Lahi in the Gaza Strip. In them were Palestinian men and boys surrounded by Israeli soldiers, stripped and kneeling beneath bombed-out buildings, some blindfolded and others bound, ready to be taken away.
During the winter, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) claimed they were detaining only “Hamas-affiliated” Palestinians. Many of the people in these images, along with thousands of others detained in raids across Gaza, have vanished into Israeli detention centres with their families unable to find them.
Those who have disappeared include human rights defenders, Gazan workers with Israeli work permits, medical personnel, and journalists. “We haven't seen this before in terms of the scale and numbers,” says Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and researcher at Amnesty International. “The disappearances are systemic and unprecedented.”
Cases of enforced disappearances in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not new but they were never this widespread. Throughout its decades-long occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the Israel Defence Forces and Israeli Prison Services (IPS) have held onto bodies of Palestinian militants and activists, burying many in the infamous ‘cemetery of numbers’ with families lacking the means to exhume, locate and identify their loved ones. Palestinian militants have practiced enforced disappearances with the Palestinian Authority disappearing six Palestinian men in 2002 and Hamas using it to intimidate and repress political rivals.
However, since Hamas launched its attack on 7 October 2023, enforced disappearances have become state policy in Israel and are soaring. On 18 December, the Israeli government quietly introduced a temporary provision for four months to the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. Among these amendments included the extension of the number of days required by military commanders to issue a detention order for a person defined as an illegal combatant from 96 hours to 45 days.
The amendments were partly practical as the IDF initially struggled to respond to Hamas’s atrocities and the sudden influx of Palestinian prisoners captured in the chaotic aftermath. “Israel did not announce under which legal framework it would adjudicate suspected Hamas combatants captured on October 7 and afterward,” Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), told Byline Times. “In response, the amendment may be ‘buying the state time’ to hold detainees in custody without proceeding to trial.”
But it has been systematically abused by IDF commanders across the occupied territories, disregarding the basic human rights of Palestinian prisoners. “45 days is not a short-term enforced disappearance,” said Dr Grażyna Baranowska, an international legal scholar at the UN Working Group on Involuntary and Enforced Disappearances. “Even if those who disappeared for weeks or months reappear, it still constitutes an enforced disappearance.”
In the 45 days of initial detention, thousands of prisoners often seized at random, whether or not they are affiliated with Hamas, technically do not exist. In the absence of accountability, prisoners are held in secret facilities in grim conditions described by Israeli human rights groups as "tantamount to torture".
“In Gaza, everyone is considered a target for enforced disappearance,” said Ms Hassan. “The abductions are random, meant to instil fear and intimidate the population. Even those who disappear and then reemerge carry stories of terror and scars from the ordeal.”
Dozens have already died in detention with several fatalities at locations where disappeared people are being held. Families trying to locate loved ones have been systematically obstructed by the IDF and IPS and the law upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court which has dismissed several petitions to reveal the whereabouts of the disappeared, dead or alive. “Given the blanket refusal of the IDF to give out any information on the number, identity, and location of the detainees they are holding, the situation of detainees is a form of enforced disappearance,” said Mr Steiner.
The abuses of the amendment has sowed terror but had little impact on negotiations to release Israeli hostages still held by Hamas who are trying to secure both a ceasefire and the release of valuable prisoners held by Israel. “For the Israelis, it is not much the number of Palestinian prisoners they will have to release to get back their hostages but mainly the ‘quality’ of the released prisoners,” Dr. Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, explained. “It will be difficult for the Israeli government to release prisoners with ‘blood on their hands’, but they will have to, meaning that Israel's attempt to uproot Hamas is unlikely to happen.”
Under international law, the IDF's systemic use of enforced disappearance could constitute war crimes and a crime against humanity, adding to the mounting evidence of alleged atrocities committed. Questions surrounding the fate of the disappeared will not go away and for the families of the missing, the fight for answers is only beginning.
Most will learn about the fate of their missing loved ones, at best, only after the end of the war - a process that could play out for years after a ceasefire. But for some, stonewalled by IDF’s bureaucracy and trapped in a hellish personal and legal limbo, answers may never arrive.
New Alliances and Military Strength Surge Amid Yemen’s Unwavering Support for Gaza
In his traditional Tuhamian clothing, Ali, a Yemeni fisherman from the coastal city of Hodeidah, stands in a gathering of thousands of Yemenis and chants, “With you, with you, O Al-Qassam Brigades… until victory or martyrdom.”
Ali told MintPress News that with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, he feels the suffering of his brothers in Gaza more than ever, so he decided to participate in today’s demonstration for the first time out of sympathy with Gaza and in rejection of what he described as the hideous practices carried out by the invaders in the Red Sea against fishermen.
At the beginning of Ramadan, he quit fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters for fear of his life. “Since the scary ships came, whoever goes out to fish will be killed or arrested, and whoever survives will not return with enough fish.”
Ali, a member of the Al-Hammadi family, who depend on fishing as their only source of income, says that one of his relatives, Qasim, was killed by foreign forces protecting Israeli ships at sea near the shores of Hodeidah. But Ali says he is happy that he now shares the suffering with the residents of Gaza.
Fishermen Rally Against Foreign Aggression
Qasim and seven other fishermen, all from the Al-Khawkha District in the coastal governorate of Hodeidah, lost their lives to the Western forces in the Red Sea while fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters. On January 26, 2024, a month after their disappearance, their bodies were found on the Dhu al-Harab Islands overlooking the waterway in the sea. The coalition allies control these islands. At that time, the Ministry of Fisheries, based in Sana’a, accused American coalition forces of the crime.
The murder of the eight fishermen: Qasim Hammadi, Ibrahim Mahnish, Zakaria Mansoub, Hamza Abdel Hafeez, Majed Bahidar, Ibrahim Salem, Ahmed Shaif, and Anwar Hattab is not an isolated case, but rather one of the dozens of incidents in which fishermen either lost their lives were injured or were arrested and disappeared, forcing other fisherman to stay in their homes starving rather than risk death or imprisonment.
The Ministry of Fisheries in Sana’a, which recorded dozens of violations against fishermen, including kidnapping and arrests carried out by the U.S. Navy, said in a previous statement that the U.S. Navy’s activity near the Yemeni coast and territorial waters threatens Yemeni fishermen, puts their lives in danger and causes them to lose their only source of income.
It mentioned that U.S. forces and their allies resort to the use of force and threats to prevent fishermen from exercising their right to fish, pointing to the tragic conditions experienced by thirty thousand Yemeni fishermen, who depend on the fishing profession as the only source of income for their families, due to the presence of American forces in the Red Sea.
It added that foreign forces also deplete and plunder fish stocks, leading to declining stocks and fishermen’s wages. “Sometimes we and our brothers in Gaza share the same suffering, siege, and killing,” Ali says.
Ali supports Ansar Allah’s blockade of Israeli ships from the Red Sea and likens his suffering to that of Palestinians. He does not hide his support for the targeting of American and British ships, describing it as a resistance operation against forces that came from the high seas, not to prevent them from fishing and polluting their waters, but rather to kill the people of Gaza. He says Israel, America and Britain should “drink from the same cup.”
Like the fishermen, residents still suffer from the repercussions of ten years of Saudi-led war and the U.S.-backed blockade, despite the relative cessation of bombing from 2022 until the start of the war on Gaza. Yemen is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than 21 million Yemenis in need of assistance and suffering from inadequate food, health care, and infrastructure and 6.1 million facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch.
The situation has become much worse since the onset of the U.S. bombing campaign on the Yemeni mainland, the continuation of the blockade, and the prevention of any political settlement between warring factions in Yemen. The local population, however, does not appear ready to abandon Gaza and supports Ansar Allah’s operations against Israel, U.S. and British ships, even if it makes their own situation worse.
Residents in Hodeidah Governorate were not the only ones who took to the streets in massive demonstrations on Friday to express this sentiment. A massive demonstration took place in more than 140 governorates, cities, and regions, the most important of which was in the Al-Sabeen area in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the cities of Saada, Dhamar, Al-Bayda, Hajjah, Al-Mahwit, Amran, Al-Dhale’, Taiz, Al-Jawf, and Marib governorates. The theme of the protests was “Our operations continue. Stop your aggression.”
Escalating Tensions: The Yemeni Response
Most Yemenis see the aid airdropped by the U.S. in Gaza and the construction of a floating port as little more than a hoax, and Yemen’s leadership intends to escalate its blockade of the Red Sea further. This week, an Israeli ship, the Pacific 1, was targeted for the first time since November 19, 2023, when Yemen announced military operations in support of Gaza.
Recently, the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, announced that Israeli or Israeli-linked ships would not only be prevented from crossing the Red and Arabian Seas but would also be prevented from crossing the Indian Ocean and Cape of Good Hope until the war against Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesperson of Ansar Allah, confirmed that Yemen has moved towards escalation by targeting Israeli ships in the Indian Ocean and preventing them from sailing towards the Cape of Good Hope. International shipping companies linked to Israel, he said, “must take this escalation very seriously and know that any Israel-linked ship will be exposed to Yemeni missiles.”
Ansar Allah’s Pursuit of Strategic Superiority
In response to U.S. attacks on Yemen, Ansar Allah has not only upgraded their missile and drone capabilities, modifying explosive warheads to double their destructive power but has now manufactured hypersonic missiles with high destructive capability. High-ranking military sources within Ansar Allah told MintPress that Yemen is close to adding hypersonic missiles to its arsenal following testing against sea targets. In early March, Yemeni rocket scientists tested a solid-fuel hypersonic missile that can reach speeds of up to 10,000 kilometers per hour (Mach 8).
In a recent interview with MintPress News, ِMohammed Ali al-Houthi, Ansar Allah’s second-in-command, gave explicit hints about a “surprise” that could change the equation in the Red Sea, even against targets inside of the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a televised speech, which he usually delivers every Thursday to announce the latest developments in Gaza and Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Ansar Allah, said, “There is a noticeable development in Yemeni missiles, among these developments is a missile that arrived to Eilat this week without being detected or intercepted by the enemy. Others reached to the Indian Ocean, however, behind these developments is something more advanced, but we leave it for action first.
Last Thursday, al-Houthi announced that Ansar Allah has used new weapons in recent operations in the Red and Arabian Seas, which “surprised the United States and the United Kingdom.” He added, “Our enemies, friends, and our people will see a level of achievement of strategic importance that will place our country in terms of its capabilities among the few countries in this world.”
Brigadier Abdul-Ghani Al-Zubaid, Brigadier in the Yemeni Army and researcher in political and military affairs said that al-Houthi’s allusion to missile development and failure of Israel’s advanced air defense systems, such as the Hatz system, confirmed that hypersonic missiles are already available, perhaps in significant quantities. He continued, “We may witness qualitative operations targeting the enemy’s depth in the coming days, American and British ships in the Indian Ocean and South Africa.”
Israel acknowledged in a statement released on Monday that “a cruise missile” coming from the direction of the Red Sea from Yemen circumvented Israeli anti-air systems and struck territories in southern occupied Palestine near Eilat.
Ballistic missiles fly on a trajectory, allowing anti-missile systems to anticipate and intercept their path. The more irregular a missile’s flight path, the more difficult it becomes to intercept. Hypersonic missiles fly at speeds greater than Mach 5 and can change directions during flight. Undoubtedly, Ansar Allah’s new hypersonic missiles could pose a formidable challenge to air defense systems employed by the U.S. and Israel due to their speed and maneuverability. Another development that was met with less fanfare but was no less significant than Ansar Allah’s hypersonic missiles was the development of its diplomatic relationship with Russia and China.
Yemen’s Geopolitical Rebalancing Act
Growing feelings of hostility towards the United States and the United Kingdom following their attacks on Yemen and support for Israel’s war in Gaza have not only prompted major countries such as Russia to strengthen their relationship with Ansar Allah to mire the U.S. in the Red Sea swamp, they have also prompted the group to enhance relations with Russia and China in a bid to bring about a strategic defeat for the U.S. in the region.
Member of Ansar Allah’s Political Bureau, Ali al-Qahoum, told MintPress that,
There is already development in relations between Yemen, Russia, China, and the BRICS countries, exchanging experiences and expertise in various fields. This serves a common interest with the goal of letting America, Britain, and the West sink into a quagmire in the Red Sea so that their unilateral polarity sinks, fades, and weakens.”
Al-Qahoum added,
This is not just my analysis but a clearly visible fact. Yemen is a state that has already succeeded in supporting Palestine and has been able to stabilize the Red Sea with great efficiency, representing a major strategic victory in the military, security and political spheres.”
“Thanks to God and our brave leader, Yemen was able to achieve this with unparalleled strength and pride,” he added, “To the point that major countries began coordinating and building relations with us on an equal footing, paving the way for the foreseeable future and laying the groundwork for the historic defeat of the United States, Britain and the West, and by extension, the collapse of the colonial project and Western hegemony over the region and the world.”
With the West, led by America and Britain, attacking Yemen and continuing to weave colonial conspiracies and preparing to expand their ongoing aggression against Yemen, and their failure to provide protection for Israel in the Red Sea, there is intensive work and movement by Yemen to support Palestine and continue useful and effective strategic military operations.”
Strategic Coordination: Palestinian Resistance
The strengthening of diplomatic ties with Russia, China, and the BRICS countries is no exception. Ansar Allah is also strengthening its relations with various Palestinian resistance factions, specifically the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement.
Nasr al-Din Amer, a leader in Ansar Allah and deputy head of the Ansar Allah Media Authority, told MintPress that Ansar Allah had given authority over the Israeli ship, the “Galaxy,” detained off of the coast of Yemen as well as its crew, to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Amer emphasized Ansar Allah’s cooperation and coordination with Palestinian resistance movements, most notably Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Feature photo | Asnar Allah recruits march during a rally of support for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and against the U.S. strikes on Yemen outside Sanaa, Jan. 22, 2024. Photo | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
The post New Alliances and Military Strength Surge Amid Yemen’s Unwavering Support for Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.
Israel Killed My Mother! Lowkey interviews Dalloul Neder from Gaza
Editor’s Note: Dear Readers, MintPress News’ YouTube channel was recently demonetized, and many of our videos made age-restricted. We would greatly appreciate your support by becoming a member of our Patreon page so that we can continue to bring you important stories like this one. Much of the work that we do is supported by viewers like you.
The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. “The Watchdog” goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
One of the most sickening aspects of the continued Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza is the near-total support it is receiving from Western governments. That is what our guest today on “The Watchdog” tells Lowkey.
“Gaza has also exposed the true hypocritical face of the Western countries and those Western values which they have been claiming for years and years,” Dalloul Neder said, adding:
Values such as human rights, the wartime protection of civilians, the rights of patients, doctors, protection of hospitals and of civilians. Gaza was enough to expose Western hypocrisy and complicity – whether it is the United Kingdom or the United States – all such values fell like leaves in Gaza.”
Dalloul Neder is a Palestinian man living in Manchester, U.K., who lost five members of his family in a December Israeli attack. He still has many relatives trapped in Gaza, including some who have the right to live in the U.K., but, despite their requests for help, have heard nothing from British authorities. A recent clip of him confronting senior Labour Party MP Angela Rayner went viral as he interrupted her public event, showing the room images of his murdered relatives before he was assaulted and detained by British police.
Today, he told Lowkey that his intention was to put pressure on the Labour Party to abandon its near-total support for the Israeli project of destroying and colonizing Gaza. However, as the pair discussed today, that is easier said than done, given that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer built his career on purging left-wing, anti-war activists from the party, framing their opposition to Israeli aggression as anti-Semitism. Starmer’s predecessor as leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for example, was kicked out of the party, along with many of his supporters. “Who is more deserving of a suspension from the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn or [Iraq War architect] Tony Blair,” Neder asked Lowkey, who noted that the years of dehumanization Corbyn received from the British establishment was an extension of the dehumanization Palestinians receive to this day.
While there have been other genocides in the past, Neder said, the sheer level of documentation of Israeli actions set this one apart, adding:
In this day and age, you can see these massacres in 4k high definition. We are watching live broadcasts of these massacres, and what we are seeing surpasses what we can see in Hollywood movies. But in the movies, it takes hours, even months to produce these scenes similar to what we see constantly. Now Israel is capable of creating those awful scenes in mere seconds, continuously killing us for almost six months.”
Neder and Lowkey contrasted the duplicitous actions of the West with those of nations in the Global South, especially those of South Africa, which has led the way in attempting to hold Israel accountable for its crimes at the International Court of Justice.
“The whole world decided to let us down and kill many more women just like my mother. My mother was part of a wider structure in Gaza: we are now talking about more than 31,000 martyrs, among them 12,000 innocent children killed… God willing, we shall see more examples like South Africa, and justice will be served,” Neder said.
Watch the whole interview exclusively at MintPress News.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
The post Israel Killed My Mother! Lowkey interviews Dalloul Neder from Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.
Cognitive Dissonance: Perplexed US Foreign Policy is Prolonging Gaza Genocide
When the foreign policy of a country as large and significant as the United States is governed by a case of cognitive dissonance, terrible things happen.
These terrible things are, in fact, already taking place in the Gaza Strip, where well over 100,000 people have been killed, wounded or are missing, and an outright famine is currently ravaging the displaced population.
From the start of the war on October 7, the U.S. mishandled the situation, although recent reports indicate that Biden, despite his old age, has read the overall meaning of the October 7 events correctly.
According to the Axios news website, Biden had argued in a meeting with special counsel Robert Hur on October 8 that the ‘Israel thing’ – the Hamas attack and the Israeli war on Gaza – “has changed it all.”
By ‘change it all,’ he meant that the outcome of these events combined would “determine what the next six, seven decades look like.”
Biden is not wrong. Indeed, everything that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government and war council have done in Gaza points to a similar Israeli reading of the significance of the ‘world-altering’ events.
Netanyahu has proven his willingness to carry out genocide and starve millions of Palestinians because he still feels that the superior firepower of the Israeli army is able to turn back the clock and restore Israel’s military standing, geopolitical influence and global position.
He is wrong, and over five months of war and senseless killing continue to demonstrate this claim.
However, the American political gamble in the Middle East and the global repercussions of Washington’s self-defeating foreign policy make far less sense.
Considering Washington’s historic support for Israel, the U.S. behavior in the early days of the war was hardly a surprise.
The U.S. quickly mobilized behind Netanyahu’s war cabinet and sent aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, indicating the U.S. was ready for a major regional conflict.
Media reports began speaking of U.S. military involvement, specifically through the Delta Force, although the Pentagon claimed that the 2,000 U.S. soldiers were not deployed to fight in Gaza itself.
If it was not obvious that the U.S. was a direct partner in the war, U.S. mainstream media reports ended any doubt. On March 6, The Washington Post reported that “the United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began”.
With time, however, U.S. foreign policy regarding Gaza became even more perplexing.
Though in the early weeks of the war-turned-genocide, Biden questioned the death toll estimates produced by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the casualties count was no longer in doubt later on.
Asked on February 29 about the number of women and children killed by Israel during the war, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin answered without hesitation: “It’s over 25,000”.
Yet, the numbers are in constant growth, as well as U.S. shipments of weapons to Israel. “We continue to support Israel with their self-defense needs. That’s not going to change,” John Kirby, U.S. National Security Advisor, told ABC News on March 14.
This particular statement is worth a pause since it came after many media leaks regarding Biden’s frustration, in fact, outright anger in the way that Netanyahu is handling the war.
ABC News reported in early February that Biden has been “venting his frustration” over his administration’s “inability to persuade Israel to change its military tactics in Gaza.” Netanyahu, the outlet quoted Biden as saying, is “giving him hell”.
This is consistent with other recent reports, including one by Politico, claiming that Biden has privately “called the Israeli prime minister a ‘bad f*cking guy,’” also over his Gaza war stance.
Yet Netanyahu remains emboldened, to the extent that he appeared in a Fox News interview on March 11, openly speaking about ‘disagreements’ not only between Biden and Netanyahu’s governments but also between the U.S. President “and the entire Israeli people.”
It is glaringly obvious that, without continued U.S. military and other forms of support, Israel would not have been able to sustain its war on the Palestinians for more than a few weeks, thus sparing the lives of thousands of people.
Moreover, the U.S. has served as Israel’s vanguard against the vast majority of world governments who, daily, demand an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Strip. If it had not been for repeated U.S. vetoes at the UN Security Council, a resolution demanding a ceasefire would have surely been passed.
Despite this unconditional support, the U.S. is struggling to stave off a wider regional conflict, which is already threatening its political standing in the Middle East.
Therefore, Biden wants to regain the initiative by renewing discussions—though without commitment to real action—about a two-state solution and Gaza’s future.
Netanyahu is disinterested in these matters since his single greatest political achievement, from the viewpoint of his rightwing constituency, is that he has completely frozen any discussions on a political horizon in Palestine. For Netanyahu, losing the war means the unceremonious return to the old American political framework of the so-called “peace process.”
The embattled Israeli Prime Minister also knows that ending the war would constitute an end to his own government coalition, mostly sustained by far-right extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. To achieve these self-serving goals, the Israeli leader is willing to sustain a clearly losing war.
Though Biden has completely “lost faith in Netanyahu,” according to the Associated Press, he continues to support Israel without openly questioning the disastrous outcomes of the war, not just on the Palestinian people, but also on the region and the world, including his own country.
Americans, especially those in Biden’s Democratic Party, must continue to increase their pressure on their administration so that it resolves its cognitive dissonance in Palestine. Biden must not be allowed to play this deadly balancing act, privately demanding for the war to stop while openly funding the Israeli war machine.
Though the majority of Americans already feel that way, Biden and his government have yet to receive the message. How many more Palestinians would have to die for Biden to hear the chants of the people, ‘Ceasefire now’?
Feature photo | March 2, 2024, Embassy of Israel, Washington, DC, USA. Thousands gathered in front of the Israeli Embassy calling for a ceasefire and demands for hands off Rafah. Robyn Stevens Brody | Sipa via 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’.
The post Cognitive Dissonance: Perplexed US Foreign Policy is Prolonging Gaza Genocide appeared first on MintPress News.
Will the US Intervene in Haiti? With Jake Johnston
Haiti is in crisis. As armed groups come together and storm the island nation’s institutions, leading to mass prison breaks, U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ariel Henry – who was abroad at the time, desperately trying to negotiate some kind of foreign intervention – has resigned.
Henry’s departure has left a power vacuum on the island. Will an alliance of armed groups seize power in a revolution? Will factions of the old government hang on? Or will the United States intervene to reassert control over the Caribbean nation?
On today’s MintCast, Jake Johnston joins Alan MacLeod to discuss the turbulent situation in Haiti. Johnston is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. He is the lead author for CEPR’s Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog and author of the book, “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.”
Henry, Johnston said, has faced a “legitimacy crisis from day one.” Firstly, he was named prime minister in July 2021, just two days before the assassination of dictatorial president Jovenel Moïse. Secondly, many Haitians have never accepted the way he came to rule, either. As Johnston explained:
What brought Henry to power was basically a tweet; a press release from the Core Group, this group of international diplomats that has functioned as a de facto fourth branch of government since the 2004 coup against [President Jean-Bertrand] Aristide, that urged Henry to form a government. And lo and behold, he became prime minister and formed a government the next day.”
Many in the West are now openly calling for another U.S.-led intervention on the Caribbean island nation. “This time, Haiti really is on the brink. The US and UN must act to restore order,” wrote the influential think tank Chatham House. Meanwhile, The Washington Post called for a more “robust” and “broader” intervention than the one the UN has suggested, which could see American boots on the ground for the third time in 30 years.
Johnston was dead against the idea, instead suggesting that we:
Let Haitians determine their own future, for a change. This is something we haven’t allowed to happen through our interventions for a long time. But also, we have to be having a real conversation about reparations, about this debt, the debt that the world owes to Haiti.”
But far from paying debts to Haitians, the current government in Washington D.C. is concentrating on stopping Haitian immigration and is reportedly even considering using its notorious detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to lock up Haitian migrants and refugees.
The United States has an extremely long history of torturing Haiti. From refusing to recognize its independence for decades to invading and occupying it for two decades in the early twentieth century to supporting dictators and organizing coups on the island, Haiti’s current predicament is, in no small part, down to Washington.
Today, MacLeod and Johnston discuss the history, present and future of American imperialism in Haiti and what Haiti’s short-term future looks like.
MintPress News is a fiercely independent media company. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and subscribing to our social media channels, including YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.
Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.
Also, check out rapper Lowkey’s video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post Will the US Intervene in Haiti? With Jake Johnston appeared first on MintPress News.
What Leo Varadkar’s Resignation Means for Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, and the Future Of Ireland
Leo Varadkar was once Fine Gael’s rising star. Serving as Ireland’s youngest Taoiseach and the first to be openly gay or from an ethnic minority background, Varadkar was the manifestation of a changing Ireland when he was elected head of government in 2017.
Now, at only 45, the Fine Gael leader has called time on both his premiership and leadership of the party. The announcement of Varadkar’s resignation has been referred to as a political earthquake, but harbingers of this seismic shift were evident for some time.
Earlier this week Galway East TD Ciaran Cannon confirmed his exit from politics at the end of this term – he became the tenth sitting Fine Gael TD to opt out of running in the general election, representing almost a third of the party’s parliamentary representatives.
This is a party that knows the tide has gone out, and after 13 years in government a new star is cresting: Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin has emerged as a dominant political force across the island of Ireland; the only major all-island party now holds the office of First Minister in Northern Ireland and is the largest party of local government.
In the 2020 general election in the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Féin had a ten-point increase in its first preference vote share, besting both of its conservative counterparts, Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil.
Despite these results, Sinn Féin was iced out of a coalition government, and a tripartite agreement between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green party became the new – or rather not-so-new – ruling parties.
Ireland has taken enormous strides in shirking off its conservative shroud, but conservatism has maintained its grip on politics. It is widely considered that Sinn Féin underestimated its potential for growth in 2020, with more first preference votes than candidates, it won’t make the same mistake this time.
The party has held the top spot in every poll since 2020, often with a 10-point lead on its closest rival. Breaking the cycle of conservatism is the logical next step in Ireland’s journey to being a more progressive society.
The restructuring of Fine Gael represents a recalibration of Irish politics, when a comparable number of Fianna Fail TDs opted not to run for re-election in 2011 the party’s vote collapsed, losing 51 seats, and coming in at third place.
Fine Gael is preparing for a change, the ascension of Sinn Féin – will leave Fine Gael with two options; the opposition benches, or a coalition with a party it has long detested.
A leadership contest was anticipated with several runners and riders in the mix, but over the course of just twelve hours a coronation has taken place. Current Education Minister Simon Harris will be elevated to Taoiseach for the remaining term of this government, a little less than twelve months. He will snag Varadkar’s title as youngest Taoiseach by a matter of months.
Harris will play the youth card, but what gains did Varadkar make as the youngest Taoiseach for Ireland’s young people? They still face a crippling lack of opportunities, and housing. An October General election had been mooted, that now seems unlikely, a new Taoiseach will prolong this term of government with Harris needing as long as he can get in order to make his mark on the party, and the public, before the next election.
An analysis of Varadkar’s time in office will naturally get underway, for those of us in Northern Ireland his efforts to limit the impact of Brexit and increase focus and investment in the North did not go unnoticed.
Of his predecessors Varadkar was the most “green”, he moved the party further into its United Ireland credentials, albeit not enough. How might a new leader fair on the biggest question of the last century? Current Education Minister Simon Harris is the bookie’s favourite. At 37 – should he succeed – he would snag Varadkar’s title as youngest Taoiseach by a matter of months.
Speaking in 2021 on a border poll, Harris said, “My generation has never really been given an opportunity to get involved in a discussion about the future of our island and what a new Ireland would mean to us and our families and communities.”
What steps would Harris take to change that? Harris will play the youth card, but what gains did Varadkar make as the youngest Taoiseach for Ireland’s young people? They still face a crippling lack of opportunities and housing.
Another contender in the mix is Rural Affairs Minister Heather Humphreys, a Presbyterian from border county Monaghan. If successful, she would be the first woman to be elected Taoiseach – a milestone Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald has been vying for at the next election. Other runners and riders include Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe, and Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
As for Varadkar, being the first at anything can carry higher levels of scrutiny and pressure. With his hat-trick, Varadkar faced a constant barrage of abuse and harassment, particularly across social media, often more personalised as well as racist or homophobic in nature.
Public life comes with a cost, in the era of social media, that cost is becoming increasingly higher. Varadkar’s departure may have been a shock, particularly after a strong US visit during St Patrick’s week, in which he spoke frankly about the horrors unfolding in Gaza, and the need for international intervention, but it might not be the last. I wouldn’t be surprised if his coalition partner, Michael Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil, follows suit in stepping down.
If he does, expect a strong pro-United Ireland candidate like Jim O’Callaghan to step in; That’s the undercurrent here, politics in Ireland is changing.
This next decade will be about the constitutional question, all of Ireland’s political parties aspire to unite the Island, what remains to be seen, is which party has the leadership to make it happen.