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Sunday, October 6, 2024
Saturday, October 5, 2024
Friday, October 4, 2024
Not Thinking of Nuclear War Pretty Much Guarantees It
Not Thinking of Nuclear War Pretty Much Guarantees It
Not Thinking of Nuclear War Pretty Much Guarantees It
by David Shavin (EIRNS) — Oct. 03, 2024
Today the Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces, Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, explained for anyone who cared to hear, what their Tuesday, Oct. 1 attack on Israel was about: “After Martyr Haniyeh’s assassination, Iran went through a tough period of self-restraint amid repeated requests by the Americans and Europeans, who would ask us to exercise self-restraint so they would establish a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” However, Israel’s constant provocations undermined the process, and the assassination of Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah was the last straw. So, Bagheri explained that Tehran took a measured action: Iran targeted the “center for terrorism,” the Mossad spy agency; the Nevatim air base, which houses Israel’s F-35s; and the Hatzerim base, which had enabled the assassination of Nasrallah. Further, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in the hours after Iran’s Oct. 1 launching of missiles, clearly explained to European foreign ministers that Iran had sent its message, a lawful response, and that they were finished—unless Israel “plans retaliation.”
U.S. President Joe Biden can be as exasperated as he chooses over his inability to corral Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu into a ceasefire, but Bibi and his “Eretz Yisrael” (Greater Israel) gang of racists never planned to conclude a peace deal or, for that matter, to retrieve the hostages. They planned to oppress their neighbors and take their land. The pattern was clear—provoke, provoke and provoke until the target can’t take it anymore. The inevitable explosion of violence occurs. Rinse and repeat.
The bully method works when applied against the relatively unarmed. Israel’s neighbors get bullied and then get to choose—either suffer the “slings and arrows,” hoping the bully will get tired, or strike back and get hit with massive firepower. And what is left of your population gets to rinse and repeat. It’s awful to watch—but that much more hellish to experience.
London and Washington can’t pretend innocence over this method. There are differences, but since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a similar game of provoking Russia, with NATO moving further and farther East, breaking promises and agreements, until the target cracks. The difference is that Russia has thermonuclear weapons, so there is no “rinse and repeat.” It is one relentless showdown—until it’s not.
President Joe Biden was asked yesterday whether Israel should retaliate by hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities. He’s against that, so his efforts are to get Israel to pick targets a level below that—striking oil fields and refineries, or military facilities. This is a man that evidently never learned to play chess, or perhaps checkers, more than one move at a time. Iran has been “played” by the U.S. while tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children were slaughtered and, for Iran, that deadly game is over. Iran just sent Washington a message that the days of their “unilateral self-restraint” are over. That next Israeli retaliation, even if below the level of hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities, simply means that Iran will counter and Israel’s follow up will be the nuclear facilities—and generalized war with direct U.S. involvement.
As Israel graduates from Gaza to Iran, the trigger for the direct involvement of the U.S. is imminent. Israel pretends that Iran carried out the classic “unprovoked” attack and retaliates, triggering Iran’s announced retaliation—and Israel’s now hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yet even this planned escalation may not unfold as planned. Overnight, the two worlds—the regional war and the intercontinental—sort of collided, as Israel carried out airstrikes in Syria, in very close proximity to the Russian air base at Latakia. The thermonuclear showdown is here—with only the particular trigger in question.
At an historic conference today in Lima, Peru, co-sponsored by sponsored by the Russian embassy in Peru, San Marcos University, and the Schiller Institute-Peru, founder of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed the ambassadors in Peru of BRICS nations of Russia, Brazil, China, Egypt, and India, with South Africa’s ambassador in Chile participating remotely. She opened:
“The tension in the world affairs has never been stronger in human history. On the one side, the genocide happening in front of the eyes of the world public and the terrifying threat of the possible extinction of mankind in a global nuclear war; and on the other side, the concrete perspective for the creation of a new economic system, where the aspiration of the Global South nations for development, prosperity and a fulfilled life for all of its citizens is about to come true. This tension characterizes the end of the epoch of colonialism, which started about 500 years ago, and is now about to end—one way or another.”
May the ears of the deaf be unstopped.
It’ll be an unhappy holidays for Congress and the next president | Semafor
It’ll be an unhappy holidays for Congress and the next president | Semafor
While the United States did not become Israel’s dominant arms supplier until after the 1967 war, it has been clear to all in the region since at least the Kennedy era that Washington was in Israel’s corner — despite strong Arab opposition, Israel’s wars on and with its neighbors, and its ongoing and often brutal struggle to deny the national aspirations of the Palestinian people in the name of ensuring its own security.
No matter the circumstances, from Tel Aviv’s secret nuclear weapons program in the early 1960s to the building of illegal settlements on the Golan Heights, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Washington has responded with more weapons, and more money for Israel — and has ensured Israel a Qualitative Military Edge
Despite this largess, Israeli leaders have often defied U.S. presidents and policy, raising questions about the balance in the relationship, or, as President Bill Clinton once indelicately put it after meeting with Israel’s longest-serving and current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “Who’s the f……. Superpower here?”
But after a year of war in which more than 41,000 Palestinians are dead, with more starving and homeless and a war now raging in Lebanon, with US feebly standing by, the relationship appears at a critical juncture. Or is it? We asked 16 historians, journalists and former diplomats the question: is the relationship permanently changed, if so, how, if not, why?
Walt, Bacevich, Levy, Aronson, Menon, Whitson, Suskind, Zogby, Hunter (s), DePetris, Slavin, Simon, Sheline, Pillar, Bessner: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/october-7-anniversary-israel/
Thursday, October 3, 2024
[Salon] A Tribute to the Last Congressional Lion: Congressmen Walter B. Jones -
A Tribute to the Last Congressional Lion: Congressmen Walter B. Jones
By Bruce Fein*
I knew the late Congressman Walter B. Jones (R-NC). He passed in February 2019 while serving his twelfth term in Congress. He was a friend of mine. We labored for years to arrest our extraconstitutional warfare state fueled by the bloated multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex against which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned.
Walter was the last congressional lion, fearless and selfless in doing the right thing. Juvenile, slanderous push back from leadership and defense contractors did not daunt him. Indeed, Walter was a profile in courage surpassing the glittering roster celebrated in President John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize Winning Profiles in Courage (with the fingerprints of Theodore Sorenson).
A tribute to Walter is timely. Like Cassandra, the Congressman foresaw the calamities of Congress extra-constitutionally surrendering the war power to the Presidency with its irresistible temptations to fabricate excuses to abandon peace to exercise unchecked executive authority. Among other things, he unswervingly opposed the executive branch’s indiscriminate, warrantless surveillance of the “not-yet-guilty,” and the President playing prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated speculation that the target might become a national security threat. And as elaborated anon, Walter pioneered a House Resolution in 2018 (H.Res.922), that would have declared presidential wars (which mushroomed beginning with Korea in 1950) impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors under Article 2, section 4 of the Constitution.
Walter blossomed after the administration of President George W. Bush, featuring megaphone Vice President Dick Cheney, flagrantly lied to him about Iraq’s alleged WMD and nexus to 9/11 to dupe him into voting for the 2002 AUMF unconstitutionally delegating to the President the authority to initiate war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The stupendous lies were Walter’s “Paul on the road to Damascus” moment. The curtain was raised on the stupendous deceit and constitutional lawlessness of the executive branch calculated to transform the nation into a permanent warfare-surveillance state earmarked by the crucifixion of liberty and justice on a national security cross. Walter saw in plain view Ceasars masquerading as presidents in the White House. Silence or submission was not an option for Walter. He stood virtually alone like Horatius at the Bridge after 2005 in opposition to pointless, illegal, unconstitutional presidential wars. He signed his own political death warrant.
On June 16, 2005, Walter co-sponsored a resolution with Congressmen Neil Abercrombie (D-Hi), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and Ron Paul (R-TX) urging withdrawal of United States troops in Iraq beginning by October 2006. More than eighteen (18) years later and expenditures exceeding $1 trillion, United States troops remain in Iraq defending a nation that has become a satellite of archenemy Iran, stupid diplomacy at its worst. Walter placed pictures on the wall outside his Raburn offices of photos of soldiers from his district who had died to satisfy the insatiable lust for war of the executive branch to aggrandize power. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) demanded the photos be removed. Walter stood firm on his First Amendment right to valorize those who had given that last full measure of devotion to their country at the bidding of the President with funding from Congress. The Speaker blinked
In 2007, Walter teamed with Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA) to introduce the Constitutional War Powers Resolution. It aimed to “prohibit the president from ordering military action without congressional approval, except when the United States or U.S. troops were attacked or when U.S. citizens needed to be evacuated.” On January 12, 2007, Walter also introduced H.J. Res. 14, “Concerning the use of military force by the United States.” It stipulated that absent a national emergency created by an actual attack or demonstrable imminent attack by Iran upon the United States or its armed forces, the President must both consult with Congress and obtain specific statutory authorization before initiating use of military force against Iran. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed the resolution from a military spending bill for the war in Iraq on March 13, 2007
On March 23, 2007, Walter was one of two Republicans to vote for legislation to require President Bush to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by September 1, 2008.
The President, however, wields the veto power over legislation. Walter discerned that impeachment, trial, and removal from office involves the legislative branch alone with no interference from the White House or the United States Supreme Court. It is the only politically viable safeguard against ruinous presidential wars.
Moreover, presidential wars unconstitutionally usurp the supreme prerogative of Congress to decide whether to abandon peace for war. It might be expected that institutional pride would provoke Congress to shut down presidential wars by impeaching and removing offenders, of which there have been many in modern times. (President Harry Truman in Korea; President John F. Kennedy in Laos; President Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam; President Richard Nixon in Vietnam and Cambodia; President Geroge H.W. Bush in Kuwait; President Bill Clinton in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia; President George W, Bush in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia; President Barack Obama in Libya, Syria, and Yemen; President Donald Trump’s continuing presidential wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen; and President Joe Biden in Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen).
Walter introduced H. Res. 922 on June 6, 2018. The resolution first assembled overwhelming and definitive proof that the Constitution’s authors intended to entrust to Congress alone the power to cross the Rubican from a state of peace to war. President George Washington, for instance, who presided over the constitutional convention, explained, “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated on the subject and authorized such a measure.” No dissent was heard.
The resolution next defined as impeachable offenses the initiation of war against state or non-state actors by presidents without prior congressional declarations of war, leaving the President with authority to respond in self-defense to sudden attacks against the United States that had already broken the peace. War was also defined to include co-belligerency, i.e., the systematic supply of military assistance to a belligerent that exposes the United States to attack under international law.
Walter recognized that returning the war power to Congress by impeaching and removing presidential offenders was not an academic exercise. Indeed, it was the path to peace except for wars in self-defense. In 235 years, Congress has declared war in only five (5) conflicts: the War of 1812; the Mexican American War; the Spanish American War; World War I, and World War II. In each case, Congress found that a foreign aggressor had broken the peace. Congress thus declared that the nation was at war and that the President, as commander in chief, should respond accordingly.
Congressional resistance to initiating war is institutional, as James Madison, farther of the Constitution, anticipated. During wartime, unchecked power crowns the President and Congress shrinks like Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Madison elaborated:
“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."
In 2013, even Senate super hawks Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), balked at President Barak Obama’s request for a declaration of war against Syria over President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Walter encountered political headwinds for his courage. He was denied chairmanships of subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee. He was denied funds for international travel. He incurred the wrath of the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex, which tirelessly sought primary challengers against him without result.
Walter and I explored impeaching House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan for frustrating his responsibility for voting on war and peace in lieu of handing the ball to the President and scampering away like a watchdog that retreats to its kennel when danger appears.
Walter was the last best hope in Congress to arrest the epidemic of ruinous, extraconstitutional, presidential wars that is leading the collapse of the American. Empire Since his passing five (5) years ago, extraconstitutional presidential wars have accelerated with Congress cheerleading its self-diminishment to a White House poodle.
When Walter passed, he joined Mr. Madison as a bright ornament in heaven in the cause of peace—the deliverance of our species.
*Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and is author of American Empire Before The Fall and Congressional Surrender and Presidential Overreach
[Salon] Further Netanyahu War Crimes Using Palestinian Human Shields in Gaza - Guest Post by Ralph Nader
From the desk of Ralph Nader
Back from Gaza, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa had the following to say on the September 28, 2024 episode of The Ralph Nader Radio Hour:
“So, yeah, there are no rules of engagement. The use of Palestinians as human shields by the Israeli military is something else that just—it's just—someone at some point will write a history of American media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and no rational person will believe that it could have been this mendacious. The use of human shields by Israel, even just in the past year, including children and not even only in Gaza, especially including, in fact, in particular in the West Bank, is shocking. It's on video.
It's oftentimes on Israel's own body cam videos, which for some reason, I don't know how they've actually been released. I'm not sure about that. And beyond that, it's not just sending, say, a Palestinian to go knock on the neighbor's door, the so-called neighbor procedure. The Israeli military is actually dressing up. And again, this is all video documented.
There is no question about it, whatsoever. The Israeli military is putting Palestinians in Israeli military uniforms and marching them through buildings to see if someone will shoot at them, see if they'll trigger a booby trap. This is outrageous. It's crazy. I mean, and then on the flip side, when they say Hamas or whoever is using human shields, it's almost laughable because why would the Palestinians think that the presence of Palestinian civilians will stop the Israeli military from blowing something up? It's just ridiculous. It doesn't stop anywhere else. They drop these huge bombs on tents. They shoot children in the head constantly. Why would they be hesitant about blowing up this or that civilian?”
By way of historical verification, consider the following authoritative Israeli statement on Israel’s long practice of targeting civilians:
Former UN Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote of Israel under then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel "is wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name."
[Salon] Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich
Summary: two powerful ministers in the Netanyahu government have used war to further their dream to drive all Palestinians out of Palestine and achieve their messianic vision of a theocratic Jewish state ‘from the river to the sea.’
Writing in Haaretz last week Rabbi Eric H Yoffie, a leader of more than 1.5 million Reform Jews in North America, called for the United States to sanction two senior ministers in the government of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The two in question are the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The rabbi had this to say about Ben-Gvir and Smotrich:
Let us be clear: Itamar Ben-Gvir has been indicted countless times and convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. He is a dangerous criminal and an inciter with fascist inclinations, given to infantile outbursts of racist bile. Bezalel Smotrich is also a racist and a hater of Arabs, and author of a 2017 article entitled "Decisive Victory," which proclaims that there is no Palestinian people and that Arabs in the territories are to be encouraged to emigrate and denied the vote if they remain.
While the agony of the Gazans continues (as movingly captured in last week’s podcast with Hasan Ramadan) and the aerial bombardments and on Monday the IDF ground incursion into Lebanon together with Hezbollah’s and now Iran's rocket and missile responses are driving the Levant towards all-out war the ethnic cleansing of the Occupied West Bank continues unabated.
Indeed since the beginning of the 7 October war Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have seized the opportunity to arm and encourage vigilante settlers to harass, attack and drive Palestinians from their homes and land. As of the end of August 11 Palestinians had been murdered by the vigilantes.
Two weeks after Hamas struck and killed 1200 Ben-Gvir was handing out assault rifles to the settlers. 10,000 were distributed along with body army. At the time the minister boasted that “we will turn the world upside down.” He has been true to his word encouraging the settler violence, in one instance applauding the killing of a young Palestinian on private Palestinian land. The killer he said “should get a medal of honor.”
Smotrich has used his ministry to block taxes collected by the Israelis on behalf of the PA with the aim of creating as much chaos and misery as he can in a bid to render the already highly dysfunctional West Bank government totally inoperative. He has refused to issue work permits to Palestinians to work in Israel and is using his de facto position as West Bank administrator to deny building permits to Palestinians while opening up the floodgates to illegal settlements.
As Rabbi Yoffie writes:
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not simply peddlers of racist theories. They are doers. After the prime minister and defence minister, they are the most powerful officials in Israel's government, using their influence to achieve two goals: rapid expansion of settlements in the territories and undermining and collapsing the Palestinian Authority.
Two powerful ministers in the Netanyahu government have used war to further their dream to drive all Palestinians out of Palestine and achieve their messianic vision of a theocratic Jewish state ‘from the river to the sea’ [photo credit: Times of Israel]
Greatly assisting their efforts the IDF has mounted significant new attacks in the West Bank using ground troops and air strikes to hit refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm. Al Jazeera which has been reporting on the ground from the West Bank had its bureau in Ramalllah raided and shuttered by the IDF on 22 September.
On 25 September the New York Times carried a detailed account, illustrated with videos, about the way in which the military was using bulldozers to destroy homes and businesses in the two towns and to block emergency vehicles and ambulances from coming to the aid of the wounded.
The NYT website quoted a local senior government official saying:
“We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road. What was the point of all of this?”
The videos show streets and water and sewage mains being destroyed, a garden roundabout ploughed under and homes and businesses including a jewellery shop being bulldozed. The IDF claims it was carrying out necessary anti-terrorism actions. In response to a list of questions from the NYT it said it followed international law and “undertakes all feasible precautions to avoid damaging essential infrastructure,” a claim the videos in the article clearly challenge.
Rabbi Yoffie calls Smotrich and Ben-Gvir “the fanatic, messianic duo leading Israel to disaster.” The pair believe their racist vision of a theocratic Jewish state from ‘the river to the sea’, one that is ethnically cleansed of Palestinians, is within reach. (The theocratic underpinnings go beyond what Netanyahu’s Likud Party in its 1977 founding platform decreed but not that far beyond. The original party platform states “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”)
Prior to the Second World War neither America nor Britain sanctioned Nazi ministers but perhaps they should have. And while it is most unlikely that Joe Biden or Kamala Harris should she win in November will heed the rabbi’s call and sanction Ben-Gvir and Smotrich what about the UK?
Thus far the Foreign Secretary David Lammy has played a timid hand. When asked about settler violence he insisted "we are very worried about escalatory behaviour, very worried about inflamed tensions" adding "I'm absolutely clear: if we have to act, we will act.”
Given the Balfour Declaration and its historic role in the Arab-Israeli conflict perhaps Lammy should step out from under the shadow of his American counterpart Antony Blinken and take a bold step. After all it was his predecessor as Foreign Secretary David Cameron who took the first step by sanctioning four violent settler thugs. Why not take the next one and sanction Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the ministers spewing racist hate whilst enabling and empowering the thugs? Why not send a signal that Netanyahu's messianic duo endanger not just the Middle East but the world?
Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
[Salon] Israel's Ideology of Genocide Must Be Confronted and Stopped - Guest Post by Jeffrey Sachs
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Israel's Ideology of Genocide Must Be Confronted and Stopped
Jeffrey D. Sachs | September 30, 2024 | Common Dreams
Israel’s violent extremists now in control of its government believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people.
When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world.
Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.
The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.
To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal. The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.
It is worth recalling that when the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted around 90% of the population. At the time of the 1947 U.N. partition plan, the Palestinian Arab population was approximately 67% of the population, though the partition plan proposed to give the Arabs only 44% of the land. Now Israel asserts the claim to 100% of the land.
There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power. Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power. Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.
Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is the religious fundamentalism purveyed fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir. These fanatics hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land "from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west." (Joshua 1:4).
At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”
What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):
[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”
Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people. Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10):
Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.
There is a deep irony to this genocidal account. It almost surely is not historically accurate. There is no evidence that the Jewish kingdoms arose from genocides. Most likely they arose from local Canaanite communities adopting early forms of Judaism. Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics. The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda.
Israel’s violent fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law. Israel is duty bound to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, not to the Book of Joshua. According to the recent ICJ ruling and UN General Assembly resolution backing it up, Israel must withdraw in the coming twelve months from the occupied Palestinian lands. According to international law, Israel’s borders are those of June 4, 1967, not the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea.
The ICJ ruling and U.N. General Assembly vote is not a ruling against the state of Israel per se. It is a ruling only against extremism, indeed against extremism and malevolence on both sides of the divide. There are two peoples, each with roughly half the overall population (and with no shortage of internal social, political, and ideological divisions within the two communities). International law calls for two states, living side by side, in peace.
The best solution, which we should strive for and hope for sooner rather than later, is that the two states, and the two peoples, get along, and actually draw strength from each other. Until then, however, the practical solution will be peacekeepers and fortified borders to protect each side from the animosity of the other, but with each having the chance to prosper. The utterly intolerable and illegal situation is the status quo, in which Israel rules brutally over the Palestinian people.
Hopefully, there will soon be a State of Palestine, sovereign and independent, whether the Knesset wants it or not. This is not Israel’s choice, but the mandate of the world community and of international law. The sooner the State of Palestine is welcomed as member state of the U.N., with the security of both Israel and Palestine backed by U.N. peacekeepers, the sooner will peace come to the region.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-s-policy-of-genocide
[Salon] Iran Attacked Israel Only After U.S. Rejected Its Moderate Stance - Guest Post
Iran Attacked Israel Only After U.S. Rejected Its Moderate Stance
October 02, 2024
Yesterday a massive barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles hit Israel. It came after months of serious Iranian efforts (vid) to achieve better relations with the U.S. had failed. Israel had managed to sabotage those efforts to the detriment of its U.S. ally.
To understand what has happened - and, more importantly, why this attack was launched today - we need to look back.
On May 20 2024 then President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter accident.
New elections were held in Iran and, to the astonishment of many, Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, won with a decent majority. Pezeshkian is a specialist in cardiac surgery with no experience in foreign policy. He had campaigned on reconnecting with the 'West', the lifting of sanctions on Iran and a generally more liberal policy.
On July 30:
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an apparent Israeli attack. Haniyeh was killed in his accommodation in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.
The assassination of Haniyeh was a major offense against the sovereignty of the the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also was a personal offense against Masoud Pezeshkian's presidency.
The Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini and the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) wooed to retaliate for the strike. But the new president still argued to not retaliate but to seek accommodation through negotiations. He, at that time, still hoped that the U.S. would arrange for a ceasefire in Gaza and wanted to avoid that Iran would be blamed for a failure of those negotiations.
President Pezeshkian continued his moderate course. On September 23, during a his participation in the UN General Assembly in New York, he again put out feelerstowards a new accommodation with the U.S. over Iran's nuclear program:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday emphasized his openness to a new international agreement over his country’s nuclear program — a subject that has fueled global tensions for years, risking potentially catastrophic warfare between Iran and the U.S.
...
Asked about restoring nuclear negotiations, Pezeshkian said through a translator: “I do hope we can ... reach an agreement.”
...
He said Iran upheld its end of the nuclear deal unlike the U.S. — an assessment most outside experts share, though there are some long-standing concerns about Iranian compliance — and pointed to American diplomats saying time and again that a cease-fire deal in Gaza that can boost stability across the Middle East is just a week away.
Within Iran the moderated course was seen with suspicion:
The lack of trust specifically affects the calculus of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he continued, in a tacit acknowledgment that the unelected Khamenei has the final say on Iran’s policies.
“His Eminence says, ’They say one thing, do another,” Pezeshkian said. The president promoted engagement with the outside world as he sought votes from Iranians, noting that easing sanctions could boost the economy amid popular unrest in the country, and in August, Khamenei gave him a cautious green light to bargain with the U.S. Another power center in the country — the elite Revolutionary Guard — is extremely leery of such talks.
Four days later Israeli air-strikes killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah and a major architect of the Iran led Axis of Resistance. Several other Hizbullah leaders as well as the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), General Abbas Nilforoushan, were also killed in the strike.
Pezeshkian noted rather bitterly that the order by the Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahoo to kill Nasrallah had been given from New York:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the international community will not forget that the order for Israel’s terrorist act to assassinate Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was issued from New York.
...
In a message of condolences on Saturday, Pezeshkian said the United States cannot absolve itself of complicity with the Zionists in the terror attack against the Hezbollah chief.
The assassination of Nasrallah demonstrated that Pezeshkian's politics of moderation had failed.
After arriving back in Tehran Pezeshkian's tone had changed:
President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran says the world should know that the blood of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his companions will continue to boil and turn into a bulwark against tyranny and oppression.
...
Addressing a cabinet session on Sunday, Pezeshkian said it is imperative for Tehran to give a “decisive” response to the criminal Israeli regime.
Iran's plans for retaliating against Israel required coordination with its allies. On Monday, September 30, Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin happened to be in Tehran for long planned talks about economic cooperation:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the implementation of critical projects between Iran and Russia will produce a huge capacity to counter cruel Western sanctions against the two countries.
...
in his remarks, the Iranian president warned that Israel is intensifying tensions with the direct support of the United States in order to prepare the ground for increasing the presence of the United States in the region.
This poses a “common threat to the interests of the regional countries and nations," he said.
...
The Russian premier expressed concern over the escalation of tensions in the region and said the US supports mounting conflicts in different parts of the world with the purpose of securing its own interests.
Therefore, he emphasized, independent countries like Iran and Russia, should accelerate cooperation to counter such measures.
Moscow was thereby likely informed of upcoming strikes against Israel. China was likewise assured and informed:
President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran says the traditional friendship between the Iranian and Chinese nations has evolved into “deep, stable, and strategic” relations.
“I express my desire to work alongside Your Excellency to further develop comprehensive relations between Iran and China,” President Pezeshkian stated in his message to President Xi Jinping, written on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
A few hours later, after Mishustin had left, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a volley of some 250 ballistic missiles towards Israel:
Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces:
Among our targets were Israel’s 3 main airbases, Mossad’s terror HQ, Radar sites, and gathering sites of armoured vehicles around the Gaza Strip, responsible for the genocide in Gaza.
Israel's 'Iron Dome' missile defense was unable to interdict a significant number of Iran's missiles.
Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 @ejmalrai - 17:06 UTC · Oct 1, 2024
Over 250 Iranian ballistic hit #Israel. Many buildings in Israel are damaged. The possibility of a regional war is growing. Israelis expected to retaliate and Iran will retaliate to the retaliation. ...
Verified videos show dozens of impacts of Iranian missiles against targets in Israel. Several strikes hit near the Mossad headquarter in Tel Aviv. Allegedly a gas platform of the coast of Ashkelon was also hit. Video shows that it is engulfed in fire.
Other targets were likewise destroyed:
A massive Iranian ballistic missile strike on targets in Israel launched on October 1 has targeted Nevatim Air Base, among other key targets in the country. The facility hosts both of the Israeli Air Force’s F-35 fifth generation fighter squadrons, and was previously intended to host a third squadron of the fighters after they were delivered. Iranian media sources have reported that the facility was “completely destroyed” in the attack. Footage from Israel has confirmed the impact of dozens of ballistic missiles which Israel’s air defence network failed to shoot down, with targets impacted including the headquarters of the intelligence agency Mossad, located in Tel Aviv which was levelled by the attack.
Remarkably there are no reports of any civilian casualties.
Israel and Iran have now issued threats and counter-threats of further escalation.
But most importantly will be the stand the U.S. government is going to take.
Joining Israel an open war against Iran, which Netanyahoo has wanted to achieve for some time, would bog down the U.S. in another unwinnable war in the Middle East that would hurt its interests for years to come.
It would give time to China and Russia to expand their multilateral coalition to the further detriment of U.S. supremacy.
Posted by b on October 2, 2024 at 7:43 UTC | Permalink
[Salon] Israel at War—In Gaza and Elsewhere - Guest Post by Rajan Menon, Unherd
Israel at War—In Gaza and Elsewhere
Rajan Menon
Unherd
October 2, 2024
Israel’s armed forces and intelligence services, admired by the
country’s friends and allies, feared by its adversaries, were
stunned by Hamas’s October 7 assault that killed 1,200 people,
mainly civilians, and spirited away at least 230 hostages. The
worst attack on Israel’s soil since the country’s creation in 1948,
it occurred on the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
who, for decades has touted himself as the leader Israelis could
count on more than any other to keep them safe—Mr. Security,
if you will. The ferocity of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza owes to
the shock and horror that swept the country but also to
Netanyahu’s desperation to redeem his reputation.
Even before the Gaza war, there were massive demonstrations
against Netanyahu. The protestors denounced him as a threat to
Israeli democracy and the rule of law, and his embroilment in
various corruption charges added to their anger. But to many
others, Israelis Netanyahu is a peerless leader, even a savior. The
war has increased the polarization within Israel, especially over
the fate of the remaining hostages—to the point that former
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert warned in a late July
interview the that country could descend into civil war, a view
shared by nearly half the respondents in an August poll.
Netanyahu’s future and the outcome of the war are inseparable;
hence his determination to continue it all costs—not just to
Gazans, more than 40,000 of whom have been killed and
another 1.9 million (90% of the population) displaced, but the
Israeli hostages as well.
Yet Netanyahu’s vow to destroy Hamas has proven chimerical.
And his refusal to abandon it has created a rift between him and
the most hawkish members of his cabinet—National Security
Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich, who lead far right religious parties—and senior Israeli
military officers and intelligence officials who insist that it
cannot be achieved.
Netanyahu has yet to explain what it would mean to destroy
Hamas. The IDF’s overwhelming superiority in soldiers,
military technology, and firepower, may well demolish Hamas’s
fighting force, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and eliminate
its senior commanders. (The Brigades’ leader, Mohammed Deif,
has most likely already been killed.) And even if the Brigades
won’t disappear, they will have been battered badly, though for
now Hamas’s refusal to surrender or even accept a ceasefire on
Israel’s terms attests to its combatants’ continuing resolve to
resist.
But destroying Hamas altogether is all but impossible. Hamas is
a political movement with a distinctive ideology, which includes
ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and control of Gaza
through a draconian blockade. So long as both continue it will
have a cause for which it can rally support (though its refusal to
relinquish the goal of eliminating Israel will never succeed but
will surely bring more suffering to Gazans). The IDF will
deplete Hamas’s ranks and kill several senior leaders, such as
Ismail Haniyeh, assassinated in Tehran in July. And many
Gazans may blame Hamas for the October 7 attack that turned
their lives upside down. Yet many others will direct their anger
at Israel. Thousands of vengeful young men whose mothers,
fathers, and siblings have been killed by Israel’s war machine
will join Hamas or a successor movement, the suffocating Israeli
blockade adding to their resentment.
No matter Hamas’s future, once the war ends Israel will have to
arrange for Gaza’s governance. None of the available choices
are workable. Netanyahu has ruled out a coalition government
containing the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas or even
one run solely by the PA. As for the possibility of a government
staffed by Gazan’s notables, after what Israel has done to Gaza,
any who step forward will be condemned as quislings and may
even jeopardize their lives: the more acceptable they are to
Israel, the more they will be mistrusted by Gazans. Israel could
run Gaza through a military occupation but that, sooner or later,
will restart the familiar cycle of repression and resistance.
It is in this context that the prominent Yedioth Ahronoth
columnist Nahum Barnea asked recently, “There is technology
[Israel’s military power]. Is there a strategy?” The answer:
There isn’t.
To complicate matters, Israel is waging a war of sorts on a
second front, the West Bank, where tension and violence are
increasing. State-sanctioned seizures of land there have
accelerated: the largest single authorization in three decades
occurred in July. The government also greenlighted three times
as many settlement housing units last year than in 2022, marking
“a 180 percent increase over a period of five years” according to
the EU. Then there are the “outposts” (though illegal under
Israeli law, many eventually gain legal status, plus even more
land), nearly 200 altogether, the number created last year
unmatched in any other. Settlers’ attacks on Palestinians have
surged: 1,270 between last October and this August alone
compared to 856 in all of 2022. Add to this the settlers’
destruction of Palestinians’ olive groves, gardens, and orchards;
the killing and stealing of sheep and cattle; the demolition and
defacement of schools; and the takeover of water sources,
sometimes assisted by the IDF—all with the state’s
encouragement or complicity and refusal to intervene.
Worse, as Israel’s +972 Magazine reports, the security forces
and settlers killed nearly 700 West Bank Palestinians between
October 7 and this September. Israel’s far-right parties, and
notably their leaders like Ben Gvir and Smotrich, cabinet
members both, have praised attacks and denounced foreign
criticism as smears; the government they are part of cares not a
whit about marauding settlers. Ben Gvir has even given
violence-prone settlers leeway by relaxing gun ownership laws:
within the first two months of Hamas’s attack 250,000 firearm
applications were filed, more than in the past 25 years.
West Bank Palestinians, though powerless, are seething.
Unsurprisingly, support for armed resistance has increased and
Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and to a lesser
extent Hamas, plus similar groups, have sunk deeper roots in the
territory. The bomb attack in Tel Aviv this August may be a
harbinger. Israel’s army and security forces have increased their
raids, laid siege to the towns of Jenin and Tulkarm, and resumed
air and drone strikes—46 between October 7 and June,
compared to five in 2016-2023. Violence—by the IDF, settlers,
and militant Palestinian groups— had increased by 50% even in
the 12 months preceding the Gaza war. Current trends could
culminate in a third Intifada.
Criticism of Israel’s actions in the West Bank often evoke
accusations of opposition to the country’s very existence, anti-
Semitism, or whitewashing terrorism, so it’s important to
understand that the abuses occurring in the West Bank are
covered routinely in Israel’s press—a far more reliable source of
information on the occupation than the most prominent Western
media outlets—and discussed by prominent Israeli intellectuals.
Here’s what one of the latter, David Shulman, a renowned
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Indologist and a staunch
believer in the necessity and legitimacy of a Jewish state but
also of Palestinian self-determination, observed recently:
“Stealing Palestinian sheep has become a habit of the outpost
settlers throughout the Jordan Valley and the Central West Bank,
along with nocturnal raids, burning homes and vehicles,
destroying solar panels and wind turbines, shooting live
ammunition at the villagers, breaking anything breakable, and
beating anything beatable.” Left unchecked, he warned, these
acts “will lead to Hamas and Islamic Jihad taking control of the
West Bank.”
The relentless, accelerated approval of settlements has all but
destroyed the already-dim prospects for a two-state solution,
which in any event Netanyahu has flatly rejected despite
American entreaties. His stance has been reinforced by the
“basic law” passed in 2018 by the Knesset, which declares that
national self-determination is “unique to the Jewish people.” If
Hamas views Israel as illegitimate, Smotrich believes that the
very idea of a Palestinian people “is an invention.”
The campus protests against the Gaza war prompted many
American politicians to condemn the “From the River to the
Sea,” rallying cries, heard during some rallies, as an anti-Semitic
call for Israel’s destruction, and the House of Representatives
even passed a resolution characterizing it as such. Lost amidst
the passion was any awareness that Israel’s far-right uses this
same catchword as a call for denying Palestinians living
between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea basic rights
and even expelling them from Gaza en masse.
This same refrain appears in the 1977 founding charter of
Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud (“between the Sea and the
Jordan there be only Israeli sovereignty”) and on the social
media site of Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister's son. And it
underlies the even more expansive Eretz Israel trope of the far-
right (included in the platform of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit
party), a claim to rightful possession of the entire land of biblical
Israel.
To complicate matters, Israel now faces an all-out war on a third
front: in its north, against the Lebanese Shiite political party and
paramilitary force, Hezbollah. Each has been attacking each
other since October 7, Hezbollah has aimed missiles and drone
at northern Israel, Israel has retaliated with air strikes on
Hezbollah redoubts in southern Lebanon. More 100,000 Israelis
and Lebanese have fled their homes in the border regions,
Hezbollah vows to continue its attacks so long as the Gaza war
persists, and Israel is bent on enabling the return of people
displaced from their homes.
As Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s rocket
attacks on northern Israel increased, Netanyahu decided to take
off the gloves. Israel’s boobytrapped pagers, and later walkie-
talkies, used by senior Hezbollah commanders, killing a number
of them as well as some civilians. Then the Israeli air force
struck Hezbollah’s strongholds using bunker-busting bombs,
killing the movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as
twenty or of its top military commanders, aided by a covert
operation by Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, which
after more after more than decade of effort, had managed to
hack the mobile phones used by Hezbollah’s senior leaders and
top echelons, track their movements, and pinpoint their
locations.
Hezbollah has suffered a massive blow, but if Israel follows up
with a full-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon, it will
still face a foe far more formidable than Hamas, something
seasoned Israeli military veterans understand. As retired Maj.
Gen. Yitzhak Brik wrote recently in Haaretz, “The IDF, which
failed to destroy Hamas, certainly won't be able to destroy
Hezbollah, which is hundreds of times more powerful than
Hamas. Because the IDF's high command slashed the ground
forces by 66 percent compared to what they were 20 years ago,
it doesn't have enough troops to remain for long period of time
in any territory it conquers, nor does it have troops to relieve
those who are fighting.”
We don’t yet know how Israel will respond to Iran’s barrage of
missiles fired yesterday evening or whether the United States
will limit itself to helping Israel shoot down Iran’s missiles, as it
did in April, or decide to strike Iran directly. In response to a
full-on attack by Israel (whether with or without American
participation), Iran could go so far as to close the Straits of
Hormuz, a step whose ripple effects would course rapidly
through the networks of the global economy.
One year on from October 7, the combination of increasing
violence in the West Bank, an Israeli war in Gaza and ground
invasion of southern Lebanon, and an Iran that feels pressure to
shore up its credibility given Israel’s attacks against its allies —
Hamas and Hezbollah but also the Houthis of Yemen —
amounts to a tinderbox. The consequences of an explosion are
impossible to predict with precision. But this much is clear: we
will only see more death, destruction and suffering. Wars are
easy to start but hard to end — and quickly spiral out of the
control of those who initiate them.
Hurricane Helene’s Devastation In North Carolina Could Disrupt The World’s Semiconductor Industry—Here’s Why
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/10/01/hurricane-helenes-devastation-in-north-carolina-could-disrupt-the-worlds-semiconductor-industry-heres-why/
Hurricane Helene’s Devastation In North Carolina Could Disrupt The World’s Semiconductor Industry—Here’s Why
[Salon] Veterans for Peace asking for Biden to be indicted
News from:
VETERANS FOR PEACE
For immediate release September 30, 2024
Contact: Terry Lodge 419-205-7084 lodgelaw@yahoo.com
Mike Ferner 314-940-2316 mike@veteransforpeace.org
Josh Shurley 559-512-9469 joshuashurley@gmail.co
VETERANS GROUP TO D.O.J.: IMPANEL GRAND JURY, INDICT BLINKEN
Department of State officials call him out for lying to Congress
“That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”
A national veterans’ organization today called for a grand jury to indict Department of State (DOS) Secretary Antony Blinken and the U.S. Ambassador to Israel for lying to Congress, violating the Export Control Act, the Genocide Prevention Act and the U.S. War Crimes Act.
In a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, Veterans For Peace (VFP) cited published reports showing that internal DOS emails and the statements of two senior State Department officials showed Blinken lied when he issued his “Report to Congress” stating, “…we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” (p. 32)
ProPublica revealed a series of State Department emails, internal memos and meeting notes in which officials agreed Israel was blocking humanitarian aid which should trigger Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act which prohibits weapons shipments to any country the President has been told is blocking humanitarian aid.
In addition to the internal documents ProPublica included, from previous reports, that Samantha Power, Director of USAID and Stacy Gilbert, a former USAID bureau head had both voiced objections to Blinken’s findings as the report was being prepared.
Power stated that the looming famine in Gaza was the result of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance” and called it “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”
Gilbert, former senior civil military adviser in USAID’s refugees bureau, resigned in May after the DOS “Report to Congress” was released. She said then, “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid. To deny this is absurd and shameful. That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”
VFP human rights counsel Terry Lodge said, "The Israeli military continues detonating massive bombs in southern Beirut – bombs they would not possess but for Antony Blinken’s repeated violations of federal laws aimed at halting human rights and war crimes violations. Members of the Biden administration unwilling to rein in Israel and furthering its genocide in Gaza need to go to jail."
VFP President Susan Schnall stated, "Just last week, the U.S. gave Israel another $8.7 billion in weapons to kill and wound innocent Palestinians – in addition to the $3.8 billion we give them every year. This ‘Genocide Tax’ is a theft from millions of Americans who have none of the health insurance every Israeli enjoys; from millions of Americans living in horrific housing while Israel builds thousands of upscale homes on land stolen from Palestinians; from millions of young Americans can't afford college because America's top priorities are weapons and death, not human needs."
VFP’s letter seeking an indictment of Blinken follows one to the DOS Inspector-General February 9, 2024, alleging that Blinken and DOS officials had already violated a series of existing U.S. laws and international treaties by transferring arms to Israel, by quoting a sworn declaration from Josh Paul. Mr. Paul, former Director of Congressional and Public Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, attested to significant failures by the Department in a declaration filed in the Defense for Children International—Palestine lawsuit.
VFP’s February letter was never responded to nor acknowledged
ProPublica also reported that
·The head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel,
·DOS Deputy Assistant Secretary, Mira Resnick, and the DOS acting legal adviser, Richard Visek, pressured that bureau and others to agree that Israel was not withholding U.S. humanitarian aid
Veterans For Peace has one hundred chapters in the U.S. Since 1985 VFP has exposed the true cost of war and advocated to abolish war as an instrument of national policy.
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
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