I grew up decades back in the Middle East, when the American Empire was still nascent. Backed by the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), the Arab World was a formidable force. It was neither managed nor handled by the Soviet Union, but, rather, a partner with the USSR in an uneasy balancing act: maintaining the global balance of power.
In those days, it was not unusual for BBC World Service, radio then, to respectfully and professionally lead with news about this or the other Arab-bloc maneuver, in the service of pan-Arabic interests. These news Ledes were announcements—not imperial pronouncements, as they are today—about the Arab World as a global, oil-producing wielder of soft power.
OPEC Before AIPAC
Like Empire, the grubby influencers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were still on the ascendancy; AIPAC mattered far less than OPEC. In fact, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, largely Arab, routinely and energetically acted to disabuse the Anglo-American Oligopoly of its dominance, in the interest of the oil-producing countries. Scholarly foreign-service Arabists—the likes of ambassador Chas J. Freeman—exerted influence in American and British statecraft.
Naturally, no free-market libertarian would ever argue, as a matter of economic theory, for a cartelized commodity market. This OPEC certainly was. Every half-decent libertarian would, however, champion Arab national sovereignty in the control of Arab resources, over American ownership of these means of production, invariably achieved through the unceasing carnage of regime-change political subterfuge and economic sanctions.
Other members are Libya (1953); Sudan (1956); Tunisia and Morocco (1958); Kuwait (1961); Algeria (1962); Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (1971); Mauritania (1973); Somalia (1974);… Djibouti (1977); and Comoros (1993).
Count among them the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; 1976), too. Different times, indeed.
In addition to economic cooperation among signatory states, a little-known fact is that the Arab League was bound by a NATO-like commitment, signed on April 13, 1950, to mount a joint coordinated military defense in the case of an attack on a member.
Structures and alliances that were once de rigueur in the Arab world now lie in ruins, nixed or neutered by Israel and America. The Israel-America menage (well, it’s as though Americans and Israelis share a household) is joined by that pathetic poodle, Perfidious Albion—reliving an imperial moment in the sun. In-tow are the genocidal German State, which has reverted to historic character, and other western European vassal countries.
Co-opted as well has been the organization for Arab Cooperation. Founded later, in 1989, it no longer rates a mention. By 1989, it is fair to say, Pan-Arabism had been subordinated to Tel Aviv and Washington, the latter acting chiefly to make the Middle East safe for Israel. Persian Gulf countries, especially, had become puppet states, in thrall to the Anglo-American-Israel axis.
The maelstrom of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the country’s vertiginous expansion across the Levant, and the generous forbearance the Global North continues to lavish on it, funding, exculpating, and encouraging Israel to expand its evil endeavor—this must lead to an inescapable conclusion:
The Western Woke State has entered a new phase: Humanity now faces an out, loud-and-proud Genocidal State, and the supra-state structures, financial and military, that underwrite it. It is not hyperbolic to argue that humanity, whatever race, age and ethnic origin, is existentially imperiled by the openly Genocidal Western State.
By the same token, the narrative talent of American foreign policy is such that people are persuaded by the strut of it. Exceptionalism asserted rather than enacted rubs off. Curiously—and considering the centrality of good-vs.-evil, of a values-based pretense in U.S. foreign policy—if ever a clear, moral case for American military intervention presented itself; it is on the side of the civilians of Gaza as against the Israelis, who are armed with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
Yet Israeli mass murder has been fenced off from any outside intervention by no other than the United States of America, that global force for “good.” With American backing, Israel, you can say, has outwitted the world. Israelis continue to murder Arabs and destroy their lands and leaders as the fancy takes them.
Abandoned by Russia, parts of it purloined by the US and Türkiye, Syria has been practically annexed by Israel. ISIS-in-Syria, an internationalist group that has rebranded itself as Hay?at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and the Israeli-Jewish Jihadis, had made common cause in Syria. While they are not exact avatars of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—the motley crew of militants based in Syria is informed by similar, illiberal habits of mind. The IDF and HTS are, moreover, also underwritten by the same regime-changing foreign interests. Washington and its Wahhabis, if you will.
With an assist from Türkiye and the US, Isra-ISIS has, for now, collapsed the genocide-fighting Axis of Resistance, the supply routes for which ran from Iran, through Syria, to Hizballah in southern Lebanon, and the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and the West Bank.
Fifteen bloody months into a broadcasted genocide, in a markedly late, December 5, 2024 “landmark report”, Amnesty International has issued a ruling: It’s “genocide.”
Equally slow to gather seemingly hard-to-find “findings”; Human Rights Watch has also said “genocide,” and documented methods deliberate and systematic to dehydrate Gazans to death, namely to deprive them even further of potable water.
Human rights reports do not militate against murder ongoing. Day after day, the word from Gaza is the same. ….
…. Unless stopped, Israel will continue to open up new fronts of evil. Emanations from the collective Israeli mind flow as freely as an open sewer and are as septic. They’ll seep and spread everywhere. …
“Haunting is the lonely figure of the sainted Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya making his way through the ruins toward his Israeli tormentors. The bulk of an approaching tank is ahead.
The lecherous, licentiousness Israelis, ‘brothers in the breed of Cain,’ had tortured to death a colleague, renowned surgeon Dr. Adnan al Bursh, at Sde Teiman, Israel’s rectal-rape center.
Already a fabled figure, Dr. Abu Safiya had refused to abandon his patients at Kamal Adwan, North Gaza’s last, listing hospital.
His belief undiminished, at one stage in this man’s heroic resistance; Dr. Abu Safiya had performed the rites of burial over his young son, murdered by the IDF, before returning to his patients.
Now the director of Kamal Adwan has vanished into the maw of Israeli torture centers, from which proud #Palestinian men emerge small, bent, traumatized, deformed, disabled or dead. …
Enough….”
If King Abdullah had the backbone, this is what he and the Arab Leaders would do. READ THE REST:
"Haunting is the lonely figure of the sainted Dr. #HussamAbuSafiya making his way through the ruins toward his Israeli tormentors. The bulk of an approaching tank is ahead.
The lecherous, licentiousness Israelis, 'brothers in the breed of Cain,' had tortured to death a… pic.twitter.com/H2wz6iIMCy
UPDATED (10/10): Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip are documented through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year-long genocide.
Named and shamed. All the International Criminal Court need do is start criminal proceedings.
The Nazis hid their systematic crimes; Israelis–a majority–celebrate them, even use their depraved exploits on dating apps. Israeli society has a sadistic pornographic edge to it.
One Year of Genocide. Courtesy of BBOBBY, Lowkey and DoubleDownNews. Take it from one who has a facility with words: this is powerful, brilliantly done. Not a word is misplaced. Not a rhythm in this calculated genocide is uncalculated.
UPDATE 10/1: The Arab world mourns the death of Hassan Nasrallah, a man Norman Finkelstein called, in conversation with Glenn Greenwald a week prior to Nasrallah’s murder, “The frankest most impressive leader on the world stage.” (“Gaza is Gone.”)
Via SEYMOUR HERSH
The munitions dropped on a city block in the south of Beirut, by the mad dog medinah, to murder Hassan Nasrallah, are described thus by the New York Times, otherwise known as Israel’s stenographer:
A video published by the Israeli military showed that planes it said were used in the attack that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday night carried 2,000-pound bombs, according to munitions experts and a New York Times analysis.
The video showed eight planes fitted with at least 15 2,000-pound bombs, including the American-manufactured BLU-109 with a JDAM kit, a precision guidance system that attaches to bombs, according to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. These bombs, a type of munition known as bunker busters, can penetrate underground before detonating.
UPDATE 9/30: Luckily I have Hebrew. Two versions do America’s overlords who are in Israel transmit to the world. The Hebrew Maariv lede reads, “The Americans got the message: ground invasion of Lebanon is not a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when.'”
UPDATE 9/28: As Mouin Rabbani reasons, the late Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizballah, did the principled thing: He stood foursquare with the Palestinians of Gaza against the mass murderers of Israel. The world stood by during the Jewish Holocaust, even though by 1942, the Final Solution was quite well-known among Allied powers.
Mad dog Medinah (=country in Hebrew) Israel dropped 85 tons of explosives on southern Beirut’s civilians to murder a major Arab political leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah? holds a majority seats in Lebanon’s Parliament. By the way, where do u think the Kirya, Israel’s major military compound, is located? In the heart of Tel Aviv
2:32 PM · Sep 28, 2024
Confirmed by Hizballah on Saturday, Nasrallah’s killing comes after a series of tactical successes in the early stages of Israel’s unfolding full-scale attack on Lebanon, an open-ended assault that may well equal in barbarity Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. These are terrible and difficult thoughts to absorb after almost a year of genocide. …
Nasrallah’s stature as a tactical and strategic thinker, as the most prominent and trusted leader of the Axis of Resistance, and as a personality capable of inspiring and reassuring supporters even in the worst of times, cannot be overstated.
The euphoria in Israel, Washington and some Arab capitals, will be exceeded only by the grief of Nasrallah’s supporters, who are far more numerous.
And there is no doubt that the loss is real and great from the perspective of a resistance that faces not only Israel’s formidable arsenal, but all the resources of the United States and the collective West.
Israel’s ability to carry out this series of attacks in quick succession will shake the confidence of many in Hizballah’s legendary prowess and operational security.
The attacks will go some way to restoring the prestige Tel Aviv has lost among its Western and Arab backers after a year of military failure in Gaza, and its failure to prevent the Hamas military offensive that wiped out the Gaza division of Israel’s army on 7 October 2023.
And although Hizballah has been hammering Israeli military assets and settlements in the north of historic Palestine with rockets, many in the region are asking why the resistance group’s response to Israel’s escalating aggression has not been harder and harsher – even as Israel intensifies its bombardment of civilians across Lebanon and within its capital.
Like others before him, Nasrallah gave his life on the road to liberate Palestine, and that struggle did not end today.
UPDATE 9/19: The long arc of the Israeli terroristic enterprise has expanded into Beirut, Lebanon, in the form of a staggered operation against civilians, which saw the yellow-bellied Mossad operatives (allegedly) booby trap thousands of pagers and other devices deployed by Hezbollah non-combatants in civilian life (Hezbollah is an elected Lebanese political party). The Israelis killed dozens and caused gruesome injuries to thousands, all to the whooping and cawing of their flaccid girly fanboys and groupies stateside. Need I say that all this is prohibited by the laws of armed conflict? (George Galloway’s “The Biggest Act of Mass terrorism” renders the best analysis of the biggest act of mass terrorism .)
A particularly disgusting aspect is the weaponization by Israel of electronic commodities. Let us hope that this malevolent tampering spurs local Lebanese industries. It will certainly lend the competition an edge.
Two things to bear in mind: First, Israeli mama’s boys opt for digital warfare because they lack the courage to fight combatants openly and up close like men would. Second, Israel is the proud promulgator of the “doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians.” Israel, the neighborhood bully, proudly named its killer creed “after an area of Beirut, Dahiya.” (MEI) All this occurred practically in the presence of US special envoy Amos Hochstein, which shows how Israel spits on its biggest benefactor, the US.
UPDATE 9/11: Murdering Animals and Owners, as in “mowing the lawn”; it’s all in a day’s work for Israel’s finest. I give you The Chosen People’s Settlers. What a mindset it takes to slaughter a helpless creature:
UPDATE (9/5/2024):‘Mowing the Lawn.’ The Devil and its handlers, IDF under Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday that the military has been “mowing the lawn” during an ongoing major operation” in the West Bank, which will require the need to “pull out the roots.”
The West Bank has now been invaded by IDF. The orgiastic destruction of built and natural habitat has begun there in earnest. Ethnic cleansing has commenced there too. Since October 7, one child has been killed in the West Bank every 2nd day
The “operation” dubbed “Summer Camps” now openly uses terms Israel had once denied were in use.
Suffer the children.
UPDATE (9/2/024): Genocidal impetus is underway in the West Bank courtesy of Satan’s forces on earth. Via Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur to the occupied territories, comes the news that the IDF is in the midst of a full military assault, destroying hospitals, roads, infrastructure already damaged in prior raids, replete with telling the Palestinians to evacuate en mass. (Drop Site)
Via Bashir Matahen, the director of Public Relations and Media at the Jenin Municipality: “The occupying (Israeli) forces have demolished more than 70% of the city’s streets completely (…) to a depth of approximately one to one-and-half meters, which has led to the destruction of water and sewage networks, as well as communication and electricity cables, in the areas that were demolished, initially estimated to cover 20 kilometers.” (Middle East Monitor)
UPDATE (8/29/024): Israel: What Moral Rot Looks Like: As Israel’s IDF death squads, Einsatzgruppen, murder, maim, starve and destroy all human life in Gaza, and increasingly the West Bank—where land and pitiful possessions are being stolen daily with impunity by armed settlers—the IDF’s auxiliaries, says Mouin Rabbani—Israelis party on. The picture of moral decadence:
According to UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), on average, “one Palestinian child [has been] killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, every two days since October 2023.”
Since the Demon State began its genocide in Gaza, young Bisan, a heroic reporter, chronicler of life under Genocide, has prefaced each of her many transmissions from Gaza like this: “This is Bisan in Gaza, and I am still alive.” In what universe is a young woman forced into such a reality for close on a year? Now Bisan’s skin is ulcerating. Due to the absence of sanitation infrastructure (bombed) and products (aid delivery halted by the Satan State) in Gaza; a human being’s largest organ and barrier to pestilence—the skin—is losing its capacity to protect internal organs. This is very dangerous, since all roads lead, via Israel, to sepsis and organ damage, even death.
Oren Ziv from +972, August 19, 2024, reports on the latest Settler Pogroms. IDF soldiers watch on as settlers rampage through West Bank villages, burning, looting and, yes, murdering. Arrests? Nah. For what? Nothing to see. Move on. Jewish supremacy; Jews über alles. “If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’”.
Watch this Twitter video, via the Human Rights organization, B’Tselem. “Rape in the name of God,” threatens a Settler named Shem Tov Luski . And Christians defend these people and alienate me. I’ve added “Christian Ethics” to my skill set on LinkedIn.
In the latest essay, I had also mused about the Israeli sexual prurience:
“When they are not fantasizing and embellishing about mass rape by their enemies (read Ali Abunimah’s ‘Debunking ‘Screams Before Silence,’ Sheryl Sandberg’s 7 Oct. ‘mass rape’ film‘), and raping Palestinian prisoners—the Israel defense Forces (IDF), and Israel’s other policing agencies, in conjunction with the societal structures that support them, are striving to codify their de facto daily criminal conduct in law.”
As do I mention the temperamental difference between the peoples, Israeli and Palestinian. You can see it in the video. The Palestinian man is embarrassed at the sexual brazenness. Not the Settler.
Essay was cancelled here, author dismissed, for adhering to Christian, not AIPAC, ethics. We know what Jesus would have done. Actually, as one Christian told me, Christ did inveigh exactly against what he termed “The Synagogue of Satan.”
The totem words and adjectives we use to describe Israel, a perverse and pornographically murderous society, fail. One day flows into the next, each indistinguishable in the level of sadistic torture and carnage dreamed up by the IDF Einsatzgruppen.
As televised vignettes at July’s end showed, the Israelis, a “bizarre specimen of moral laxity,” in the 1728 words of Southern gentleman William Byrd, had been openly rationalizing the need to codify in law the rape of Palestinian hostages.
The crimes of genocide, the making and mass-marketing of online snuff films featuring murdered Palestinians, and the commission of extra-judicial assassination the globe over—these Israel has already de facto legalized in what passes for law in that thugocracy.
By the Middle East Monitor’s telling, “A Gaza detainee allegedly sexually abused by Israeli soldiers at Sde Teiman … suffered ‘a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs’ as a result of the immense torture he was subjected to by Israeli occupation soldiers. …One of the nine Israeli soldiers arrested for abusing him was released without charge. Deliberations about the other eight are continuing.”
Like Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the rape in Sde Teiman was captured on camera. Watch! Have an emesis dish close by. ……
A deception embedded deep in this lattice of lies is that, contrary to most criminal enterprises and individuals, a spectacular democracy like Israel has the absolute ability to investigate itself. Indeed, a new report authored by the aforementioned +972 Magazine, “for the human rights group Yesh Din, shows how the main role of Israel’s military law-enforcement system is to maintain the appearance of internal accountability in order to shield itself from external criticism.”
In this case, the greater goal of Israel’s legal apparatus and jurisprudence is to fend off charges of genocide and war-crimes in international courts of law. Be mindful, then, that any investigation ever launched or any arrests made by Israeli authorities are symbolic, cursory and inconsequential, part of a well-established strategy to safeguard the greater criminal enterprise. …
Essentially, expect the Jewish State’s stooges (Alan Dershowitz in the lead) to be trotted out to huff and puff indignantly at the very notion that a manifestly lawless thug of a state, whose justice system is complicit in minting maniacal laws in support of unfathomable thuggery and cruelty, is incapable of investigating itself. Antisemitism.
Let us not commit the Sin of Abstraction—the sin of escaping into theory, and in so doing, avoiding reality—the reality of Israel’s real sins, real crimes, the crime of all crimes ~ilana
If you did nothing and said nothing during the genocide of the Gazans, we know exactly what you would have done during the genocide of the Jews.
Nothing. …
Historically, Mr. Abunimah’s aphorism tracks with the manner in which most of conservatism’s celebrity pundits had comported themselves during the ramp-up to the war on Iraq, for that war’s duration, and with how most have been conducting themselves in the course of Israel’s unimpeded genocide against Gazans (the Ghazzawi?).
Kelly Conservatives (Bonus Material & Background)
I am not here speaking of unserious conservatives, like podcaster Megyn Kelly, for example, who deserves mention if only because, dear reader, you deserve some levity and laughter occasionally.
If nothing else, it is amusing to hear the Kelly vanity production call out America’s campus kids, selfless souls protesting a holocaust, for being unattractive, ugly. To an empty vessel, there is nothing worse than forgetting your facial fillers and falsies.
Myself, I think that Mohammad Khatami, a software engineer arrested at the sit-in at Google’s office in New York, is beatifically beautiful. Techie Ray Westrick, arrested in California, also in protest of Project Nimbus—some kind of killer-Cloud-AI collaboration with IsraHell—is supermodel lovely. (Roll the tape or scroll down this text to look.)
How about the pampered LA Zionist thugs who took metal rods to the sculls of peaceful encampment protesters? How about those doing their evil utmost to logistically hamper “humanitarian aid deliveries at scale” to Gaza? How about the sated Jewish settlers and their doughy offspring, fat families, instructing their larded young on how to help starve other human beings? How about the observant IDF soldier, tooting, during a telephone interview, his religious platoon’s acts of murder and torture in Gaza, all in fluid, contempt-dripping, American-accented English?
Bombastic without and barren within: The IDF collective might wear fatigues, but it does nothing to camouflage its libertine, licentious, sexually depraved, pornographic culture.
The culture comes from the top:
His flesh softer than sin, Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim, the head of the military rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces, had indicated, in 2016, that “as part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers’ morale during fighting, it is permitted to …satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will… .” News of the rabbinical rape-injunction came courtesy of Israel’s YnetNews.com.
Back to the point: To the extent they oppose the genocide in Gaza; conservatives, some with enormous populist and political sway, have confined themselves to disinterested mumblings about the national interest: Gaza is of no national interest to the United States of America. Bye-bye. Off to distract the masses with prattle about the wokerati. …
“Where are you going, my dear,” a tiny, determined Ghazzawi child is asked. She is striding along purposefully, holding her dad’s hand. She is very busy. No time to dawdle: Stray cats are starving.
Despite relentless Israeli bombardment and the scarcity of food in the Strip due to Israel's inhumane blockade, Palestinians dedicate their time to feeding the starving stray cats in the devastated streets of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/mlZJxFYHfR
Juxtapose this precious child with this poisonous cabal: Settlers, in collaboration with IDF soldiers, reports ABC’s Matt Gutman, blocking with boulders the aid trucks from reaching Gaza’s starving.
An ABC journalist reports on Israeli settler mobs establishing checkpoints to hinder humanitarian aid trucks destined for starving Palestinians in Gaza. In some instances, these mobs have attacked trucks, assaulted drivers, and destroyed aid and medicine intended for Gaza's… pic.twitter.com/X3QnXLxo94
Update II (6/25): “Synagogue of Satan” did this: Starve the children: Middle East Eye, one of my favorite news sources, reports: “… caused by the ongoing Israeli siege blocking the delivery of basic life-saving food and medical items.”
Read: MEE, Electronic Intifada, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, Mondoweiss for real news.
The title is self-explanatory. In this new essay I comprehensively show Israel to be In violation of all laws of war and much of Customary International Humanitarian Law. God’s Law and
Natural Justice are close corollaries.
I go through the US ceasefire farce and lies—the ceasefire is BINDING!–I exposit the laws of war all violated, and expound on at least four laws that make up the genocide standard, flouted by Israel. Rafah appears to be a Final Solution of sorts.
I visualize what a Super Power could and should do. The visual of the essay’s coda is that of a patriot. Alas, and sadly, there is not much to be patriotic about.
Please share, for truth-tellers on Israel’s war of annihilation against Gaza’s Palestinians are being banned and excommunicated. Go figure: WE CANNOT BE BOUGHT OR SILENCED.
Short excerpt:
AMERICA’S CEASEFIRE DECEPTION
America has conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that right ~ilana
For throwing-up clouds of obfuscating sepia over its abstention vote on the United Nations Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, March 25, the Biden Administration and its UN representative must be exposed.
“Ceasefire” in previous U.S. drafts amounted to Orwellian News Speak. Having never once called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the U.S. had perfunctorily predicated temporary ceasefireresolutions on the return of Israeli hostages.
Whereas it was obligated morally to compel Israel to forthwith cease and desist its systematic and sustained onslaught on Gaza’s civilians; the US had opted, until March 25, to merely condition the temporary cessation of immoral and illegal mass murder of innocent Palestinians on the release of Israeli hostages, in effect tethering a “ceasefire” to the return of the Israeli hostages.
Against the wishes of citizens of our country and the world, America has deployed its veto power, repeatedly and reliably, in previous United Nations Security Council votes, so as to prevent an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Gaza.
By so doing, America had conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that inalienable right.
Recognizing that the right to life of innocent men, women and children is unconditional; Security Council member states, aside the United States and its protégé Israel, had refused to tether the fate of Gaza to hostage negotiations.
With pellucid logic, Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N and the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member, had stated, February 20, 2024, that, “A vote in favor of [an unconditional ceasefire] is a support to the Palestinians’ right to life.” With its prior vetoes and current abstention, the US had nullified Palestinian right to life independent of the rights of Israeli hostages to the same.
You can say that Gaza’s innocent civilians are being held hostage by Israel enablers Blinken, Biden and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
The general run of people around the world, however, are having none of this. We have been chanting “ceasefire” with catechetical promptness. The West’s “smart” set is belatedly getting the message that their constituents, decent citizens, are revolted by Israel’s acts and are in-revolt against supporting it.
In response, and oh-so cynically, all Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield did on March 25 was to abstain from using American veto power to stop the good guys—China, Russia, Algeria and the rest of the 15-member UN Security Council—from demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. That’s all.
Expect the Biden Administration and its bi-partisan backers to keep gently cajoling brief lulls—conditional breaks—in the IDF’s bloodletting of a helpless, cornered civilian population.
For moral compass scrambled; it’s hard to beat former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. In this protracted foreign-policy mirage, Blinken, Biden, Thomas-Greenfield and their political posse do Nikki Haley, a Republican, proud, for Trump’s appointee to the UN would have done nothing different.
CEASE AND DESIST! WHERE’S THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT?
A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed! ~ilana
IDF soldiers vaporize young men picking their way through rubble as though in a video game; they mock their victims, invade their homes; filch from their businesses, and rummage through the piteous intimate effects of people dead and dispossessed ~ilana
In the world of patronage, it doesn’t get much worse. The United States is at Israel’s elbow—it is a cobelligerent: In actively sustaining Israel’s armed forces, and running diplomatic interference for its politicians; America is acting as Israel’s “principal sponsor,” complicit in war crimes, signaling to the Jewish State that it will let it continue to its evil endgame.
As I ventured in January, the issuance of the equivalent of a legal cease-and-desist or a restraining order against a violent offender, Israel, is urgent and long overdue. It’s already too late for Gaza as a habitable landmass.
While progressives lauded the International Court of Justice (ICJ), my perspective about the Court’s indecision, some months back, was dimmer. (Disgust, actually.) Unfocused as I was on legalistic definitions of genocide; it was obvious to me that, what was indubitably mass murder and ethnic cleansing—crimes that are in process and ongoing—had to be stopped right away. A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed!
Were the International Court of Justice an effective and just organization it would have issued some sort of binding cease and desist order, some manner of restraining order, if you will, instructing the Israel Defense Forces, the Devil’s emissaries on earth, to stop its depredations.
Another international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), had “issued, in March of 2023, warrants of arrest, no less “for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine,” one of whom was Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, who was being sought for war crimes.
With respect to Israel, the inept International Court of Justice appears compromised.
For in a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also extend to the collective. Immoral acts that are forbidden severally cannot be sanctioned collectively. If the citizen must not murder; neither should The State, any state.
UN SECURITY COUNCIL CEASEFIRE IS BINDING
A Security Council resolution not defanged by the US could have included a call for diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution ~ilana
In its uncontested superiority, the United States has asserted, moreover, that the UN ceasefire resolution is “non-binding.” “Completely false,” fumes international law expert Graig Mokhiber, in an interview, March 26, with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” And I paraphrase Mr. Mokhiber:
It is black-letter law in the U.N. Charter that all members of the United Nations are bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. The Charter, in Article 25, and in subsequent decisions of the International Court of Justice, has made it indisputable that Security Council resolutions are binding for all member states.
Not only is the last ceasefire resolution binding, but it opens up an opportunity, given that Israel is in breach of it, to table a resolution for enforcement under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which “empowers the Security Council to orchestrate … collective actions … through a Military Staff Committee.”
A Security Council resolution not defanged by the United States could include a call for corporeal action: diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution. …
