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Monday, September 30, 2024
[Salon] Netanyahu and Nasrallah - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Netanyahu and Nasrallah
Summary: the killing of Hassan Nasrallah was a bold tactical victory for Israel but one that begs the question what is the strategy behind it and where is Benjamin Netanyahu taking us?
The assassination of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has delivered a huge blow to the organisation, one that follows the successful pager and walkie-talkie attacks two weeks ago that left 14 dead and more than 3000 wounded. Many of the wounded were Hezbollah operatives and cadres but many too were civilians, among them children and health service workers. Those who survive have suffered catastrophic injuries blinded and with severe facial wounds and hands with fingers blown off.
The infiltration of Hezbollah’s communication systems was so complete that it was only a matter of time before the Israelis located Nasrallah and killed him. The timing was in itself a statement by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that nothing his friends and allies could say would stop him from the next step in his war to destroy Hamas and eradicate Hezbollah.
The prime minister was in New York at the UN General Assembly to deliver his message that there would be no ceasefire and no let up in the war when he gave the order to take out Nasrallah. His greatest ally America was not informed nor was the UK.
Netanyahu was saying again to Washington, London and all his Western backers and weapons suppliers that their entreaties were to be ignored, if not treated with disdain or outright contempt.
While it is clear that the IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad have scored great tactical victories over a powerful and well-armed enemy what is the strategy at play here? Will the IDF follow up with a land invasion into the south of Lebanon in a bid not simply to drive Hezbollah north of the Litani River but to utterly and completely destroy them? To do that the Israelis would need to seize control of all of Lebanon and most particularly lay siege to and then militarily secure Beirut.
To the first task that of driving Hezbollah north and creating a DMZ in order to allow for the return of the more than 60000 Israelis who fled from Hezbollah rocket attacks after the 7 October Hamas assault, that in itself will be a daunting military task. In the rugged terrain of the south Hezbollah is well dug in with tunnel systems built into mountains, rather like Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And like the jihadists there Hezbollah can use terrain to their advantage in a guerrilla war. The IDF will prevail but with casualties in all likelihood far higher than those it has already sustained in the Gaza war.
But if Netanyahu is serious about fully eradicating Hezbollah he will have to order the IDF to drive north. He will need to subdue the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut where Hezbollah is entrenched. That will necessitate urban warfare of the sort in Gaza the IDF has shown a ruthless capability at excelling at by targeting the homes of civilians, their schools, medical facilities, sewage, water and electricity infrastructure. The IDF will take casualties but of course civilian casualties will be on a scale that will run far higher than the already more than 40000 killed in Gaza. And this in a country that is on its knees economically, politically and with a population traumatised, terrified and with its health and social welfare systems already in tatters.
Benjamin Netanyahu approving an airstrike on Beirut targeting Hezbollah’s main headquarters [photo credit: Israeli prime minister's office]
Israel will win militarily. How could it be otherwise given the steady flow of weapons with which the US, the UK and other Western countries are providing Netanyahu as he continues his campaign to wipe out Hamas and Hezbollah and thus, in his eyes, end the threat of Iran by destroying its proxies in the Levant?
His is a vainglorious and self-serving war, one that keeps him in office while catering to his extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Netanyahu wants to be able to say that he has secured Israel’s future by crushing its enemies, that the massive security failures of 7 October that happened on his watch are now redeemed. On Sunday while continuing to pummel Lebanon the Israeli air force launched a heavy bombing raid on Red Sea ports held by Yemen's Huthis further widening the range and scope of the war.
But Netanyahu’s is a war without a clear strategy. He has pushed Hezbollah to the brink and threatens to do the same to Iran. Should the leadership that follows Nasrallah – who though ruthless was also astute in playing a calibrated tit for tat game with Israel – panic and decide to unleash their arsenals of missiles before the IDF destroys them the result for Israel’s civilian population will be catastrophic. That in itself will provoke a rage at the Iranians, the suppliers of the arsenals.
With their axis of resistance in the Levant largely destroyed Iran’s hardliners may well push through with securing nuclear weapons capability. Indeed they could be just weeks or a few months away from achieving that capability. The Saudis have said if Iran goes nuclear so will they. Israel is already nuclear armed. Three nations in the world’s most volatile region and one of them, Iran, with its stated policy to destroy Israel. This is a recipe that paves the way to a hellish landscape.
And yet Netanyahu drives us all to that landscape while our Western governments call for restraint and diplomacy, whistling in the wind of a greater war that is blowing ever closer to becoming reality.
Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website
Sunday, September 29, 2024
The Pentagon Goes to School - TomDispatch.com
The Pentagon Goes to School - TomDispatch.com
William Hartung, Bringing the Militarization of University Research Back to Earth
September 29, 2024
Pentagon expert William Hartung first wandered into TomDispatch in March 2008, less than seven years after this country's Global War(s) on Terror were launched, full-scale disasters that were already costing the American taxpayer a fortune and a half -- or perhaps, given the subject, all too literally an arm and a leg. As he wrote then, "How much, for instance, does one week of George Bush’s wars cost? Glad you asked. If we consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together -- which we might as well do, since we and our children and grandchildren will be paying for them together into the distant future -- a conservative, single-week estimate comes to $3.5 billion. Remember, that’s per week! By contrast, the whole international community spends less than $400 million per year on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the primary institution for monitoring and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; that’s less than one day’s worth of war costs."
Only $650 million or so of that weekly sum, he estimated, was "spent on people." So, he wondered, "where does the other nearly $3 billion go?" The answer he offered then: "It goes for goods and services, from tanks and fighter planes to fuel and food. Most of this money ends up in the hands of private companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root." And knowing about that expense of $3.5 billion a week "and counting" on America's wars, he added sarcastically, "Doesn’t that make you feel safer?"
Ever since then, Hartung, a Pentagon expert, has focused on this strange reality of ours: no matter how many wars the United States loses, it only pours yet more taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon budget and into the coffers of those giant weapons-making companies of the military-industrial-congressional complex. Even the titles of a few of his pieces over the years catch the grim spirit of his all-too-striking analysis: "There's No Business Like the Arms Business, Weapons 'R' Us (But You'd Never Know It)" (July 2016); "The Urge to Splurge, Why Is It So Hard to Reduce the Pentagon Budget?" (October 2016); "The American Way of War Is a Budget-Breaker, Never Has a Society Spent More for Less" (May 2017); "Merger Mania, The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids" (July 2019); "America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales), And Again... and Again... And Again" (May 2021); "Fueling the Warfare State, America's $1.4 Trillion 'National Security' Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe" (July 2022); "Spending Unlimited, The Pentagon's Budget Follies Come at a High Price" (March 2024).
And of course, that's just a small dip into the pieces he's written for TomDispatch. Yet, after all these years, what couldn't be more striking today is that, in the same spirit as those older pieces, Hartung focuses (as he so often has) on a different aspect entirely of the Pentagon's distinctly over-funded world, one that, amid all the news coverage in this country, gets little or no attention: how the Pentagon, as he puts it, "goes to school" to enlist American science in the battle to create yet more horrific weaponry. And so it goes, again and again and again. Tom
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Friday, September 27, 2024
[Salon] Oil: throwing in the towel? - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Oil: throwing in the towel?
Summary: press reports suggest that Saudi Arabia will start to unwind its voluntary cuts in output from 1 December despite Brent having broken through its US$75pb ‘floor’. In the absence of a sustained geopolitical shock expect the ppb to settle below US$70 per barrel until at least mid-2025.
We thank our regular contributor Alastair Newton for today’s newsletter. Alastair worked as a professional political analyst in the City of London from 2005 to 2015. Before that he spent 20 years as a career diplomat with the British Diplomatic Service. In 2015 he co-founded and is a director of Alavan Business Advisory Ltd. You can find Alastair’s latest AD podcast, Of peak oil, grey rhinos and $70 a barrel here.
In the 30 August Newsletter I argued that the long-standing ‘floor’ of US$75 per barrel (pb) for Brent crude was seriously under threat and that OPEC+ would therefore have to think seriously in the coming days about its proposed unwinding of voluntary cuts from 1 October. Since then we have seen three important developments, as follows:
At the start of September investors did indeed throw in the towel on the US$75-85pb range in which Brent had been pretty much stuck since the start of the year, to the point where the price per barrel (ppb) even dipped (briefly) below US$70;
On 5 September OPEC+ members ‘rolled the barrel down the road’ (i.e. the oil producers’ equivalent of kicking the ball into the long grass) until — provisionally — December to start unwinding the voluntary cuts; and
The sharp uptick in Hezbollah/Israel tensions at the start of last week pushed the ppb up by around US$4pb which, allowing for some prior pricing in of geopolitics, suggests that the risk premium currently sits at around US$6pb.
Press reports suggest that Saudi Arabia will start to unwind its voluntary cuts in output from 1 December despite Brent having broken through its US$75pb ‘floor’ [photo credit: Saudi Ministry of Commerce]
As has been the case since October 2023, events underpinning this risk premium are the principal ‘known unknown’ in play. In the 26 April Newsletter immediately following the tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and Israel, I argued there was:
…a non-negligible probability that [Israeli] hardliners will, in due course, pressure Israel’s prime minister into trying to neutralise Iran’s most important source of deterrence once and for all.
By explicitly making the return of displaced residents to northern Israel a war aim, the Israeli cabinet seemingly took a major step in that direction last week. However, the possible timing of any major escalation remains far from clear. Indeed, that Israel’s crippling of Hezbollah’s communications was not followed up immediately by a major assault has caused some experts to speculate that an extension in the established pattern of the conflict is more likely than a land invasion. Furthermore, even if an invasion were to materialise it is not inevitable that Iran would get directly involved. And, even if it were to, this would not necessarily affect the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
This being said, in April I did acknowledge that:
Although even a major land invasion of Lebanon…would have no direct bearing on oil supply, a shift in market sentiment consequent to a marked escalation on Israel’s northern front could see sustained higher prices.
However, the pattern since then has been that any politics-driven uptick in the price of crude has quickly faded. This suggests that it would now take a major disruption in supply to see Brent firmly back in its US$75-85pb range, let alone any higher.
Turning to the dilemma with which OPEC+ is grappling, as Bloomberg’s commodities expert Javier Blas wrote on 5 September:
…looking at the 2025 balance of supply and demand, OPEC+ is simply kicking the can down a very uphill road. In two months, the group will have to take another fateful decision. If it wants higher oil prices in 2025, it will have to do far more than delaying the almost 2 million barrels a day of extra production that it penciled in by the end of next year. It will need to cut output outright. Without curbing production, further price drops loom.
This is consistent with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest monthly Oil Market Report, the key points in which were as follows:
Growth in global demand for oil continued to decelerate thanks principally to sustained contraction in consumption in China;
Growth in demand through 2024 was forecast to be below one million barrels per day (bpd), taking total demand to an average of just short of 103mbpd;
Growth in demand through 2025 was forecast to be only marginally higher;
Output globally in August averaged 103.5mbpd despite disruption in Libya, Norway and Kazakhstan; and,
Non-OPEC+ output is set to increase by 1.5mbpd this year and by the same through 2025.
As the report concluded:
…with non-OPEC+ supply rising faster than overall demand…OPEC+ may be staring at a substantial surplus, even if its extra curbs were to remain in place.
Bloomberg’s Blas again:
Tactically, OPEC+ is also sending the worst possible message to the market. First, the deal speaks about the gymnastics the group is doing to preserve unity…. Second, it's a belated admission the market doesn't need the oil the group had anticipated…. And third, it doesn't address the surplus of the first half of 2025, which would continue to stoke bearish bets.
As if Mr Blas’s second point were not bad enough, the cartel’s credibility is called further into question by the OPEC secretariat’s insistence in its 10 September Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) that global growth in demand this year would hit 2mbpd. This appears to be based principally on continuing bullishness over economic activity in China. However, that assessment is not shared either by the IEA or by the investment community at large which is increasingly minded that, in addition to sustained economic weakness, we may be seeing a structural shift in Chinese demand for oil underpinned by the increasing number of electric vehicles on the road and high speed rail eroding demand for air travel.
What is clear is that it is not in OPEC+’s power to significantly change the market dynamic other than in the — in my view, unlikely — event that it agrees to a further sizeable and permanent cut in its total output, not only surrendering more market share but also seriously risking breaking up the cartel in the process. However, on 26 September the FT reported that, in an effort to protect its market share, Saudi Arabia is set to begin unwinding its voluntary cuts from 1 December by a minimum of 83,000bpd per month. Although what would amount to a major shift in policy by Riyadh has yet to be confirmed, the immediate downtick in the price of crude is confirmatory that, absent a major and sustained geopolitical shock, Brent crude now looks very likely to settle below US$70pb well into 2025.
Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website
Thursday, September 26, 2024
[Salon] The Pager Attack - Guest Post by Adam Shatz
Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Lebanon-Israel border, on September 23, 2024.
Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Lebanon–Israel border, on Sept. 23, 2024. Photo: Rabih Daher/AFP/Getty Images. (Photo inserted)
Adam Shatz
19.9.2024
Since 7 October, the Biden administration has given Israel virtually everything it has asked for, from F-15 fighter aircraft and white phosphorous bombs to diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Joe Biden and Antony Blinken have underwritten the destruction of Gaza, and the ‘Gazafication’ of the West Bank, where Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than six hundred people in the last year, including a 26-year-old American citizen, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead at a peaceful protest near Nablus. (Eygi’s parents have yet to receive a phone call from the Biden administration, which claims to be ‘gathering the facts’.) With apparent carte blanche from Washington, the Netanyahu government has also escalated its long-running shadow war with Iran, carrying out assassinations of Iranian officials in Damascus and of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
The Americans did, however, have one red line, and that was an Israeli war against Lebanon, for which the Netanyahu government reportedly sought approval within days of 7 October. Netanyahu wanted to open a second front in the hope of destroying the Lebanese Shia organisation Hizbullah, an ally of Hamas, but the Americans were opposed, so the Israelis shelved their plans. The low-intensity border war with Hizbullah continued, but within limits largely respected by both parties. Hizbullah launched rockets against border towns in the north of Israel, killing two dozen civilians and forcing nearly a hundred thousand to evacuate their homes. Israel killed hundreds of people in southern Lebanon, many of them civilians, and displaced more than a hundred thousand. But, until this week, both Hizbullah and Israel appeared to calibrate their responses to each other’s attacks to avoid full-scale war. As Israel’s assault on Gaza dragged on, its enthusiasm for a second front seemed to wane: how could its army confront Hizbullah if it couldn’t even defeat Hamas?
Hizbullah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, too, has had good reason to avoid escalation. He does not want a repetition of the 2006 war, which led to the devastation of parts of Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, and the killing of well over a thousand Lebanese civilians; after the war Nasrallah made an extraordinary apology for having provoked Israel’s offensive. He also knows that Iran, his major patron and ally, does not want Hizbullah’s missiles, which are intended as a shield against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear programme, to be wasted on Gaza: solidarity with Palestine has its limits, even for the leader of the ‘axis of resistance’.
Why, then, has Hizbullah stepped up its rocket attacks on northern Israel since 7 October? Israeli commentators have argued that Hizbullah bears responsibility for this conflict because it has failed to withdraw to the Litani river, and because Gaza is supposedly not its war. But Nasrallah insists that he is holding up his end of Hizbullah’s alliance with Hamas, Iran and the Houthis (the so-called ‘unity of arenas’ strategy), and offering a modicum of support for the besieged people of Gaza, who have been all but abandoned by other Arab regimes. He has also made plain that the rockets will stop as soon as a ceasefire is reached. As Amos Harel, Haaretz’s military correspondent, has noted, Nasrallah has exhibited considerable restraint in the face of repeated Israeli provocations, notably the assassination of Fuad Shukr, one of Hizbullah’s senior leaders, in Beirut.
It’s hard to see how Nasrallah’s prudence will survive the pager and short-wave radio attacks of this week, which have killed at least 37 people, including four children, and injured thousands. With this operation – which has been in the works since 2022, according to the New York Times; long before 7 October – Israel has succeeded, if nothing else, in carrying out one of the most spectacular simultaneous attacks in recent history. Israel struck twice, in consecutive days; it did not lose any of its own men; and it forced its enemies to surrender what no one in the modern world wants to give up: their electronic devices. (There were scenes in Lebanon of people crushing their own phones.) The short-term psychological blow is incalculable.
Let’s imagine a militant organisation, such as Hizbullah, had carried out a similar attack in Israel, detonating explosives in the phones of soldiers and reservists, and murdering Israeli children. The Americans would not have waited to ‘gather the facts’ before denouncing the attack. The response of much of the Western press has been striking, too, full of fascination for Mossad’s cloak-and-dagger ingenuity. What you won’t see in these accounts is the word ‘terrorism’, which is as taboo as the word ‘genocide’ when the perpetrator is Israel.
Terrorism, the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political aims, is a form of propaganda, a message both to the enemy and to one’s own constituency. What, then, is the message of the pager attacks? To the Israeli Jewish public, still traumatised by 7 October, and particularly to Israelis who’ve fled their homes in the north, the message is that Israel is restoring ‘deterrence’, the third pillar of the ruling ideology (the others are instrumentalised remembrance of the Holocaust and consolidation of the settlements). To Hizbullah and the people of Lebanon, the message is that Israel can hit you anywhere, at any time, and that it cares little about civilian casualties (that message is redundant, since Israel is already notorious in Lebanon for its indifference to Lebanese lives).
Some Lebanese citizens hostile to Hizbullah at first took vicarious pleasure in the attacks: Hizbullah effectively controls much of Lebanon, notably Beirut airport, and its influence is often resented. But once it became clear that this was an attack on Lebanon, and that it could be the prelude to an Israeli invasion – like the destruction of the Egyptian air force on 5 June 1967, which preceded the Six-Day War – people stopped laughing at Hizbullah’s expense. Still reeling from its financial collapse and the 2020 port explosion, Lebanon is less likely to survive an Israeli invasion than Hizbullah is.
Nasrallah is in a bind. Hizbullah’s communications system has been badly damaged and there may be leaks within the organisation. Building back that system and rooting out spies will be his priorities. But he cannot respond with the patience of the Iranians, whose style is to promise retaliation and then wait years to deliver, because Hizbullah is in the front lines of the battle with Israel. If Nasrallah fails to respond, his restraint will look like cowardice –hardly the message he wants to send to his supporters. But if he miscalculates, or responds in a way that offers the Israelis a pretext for invasion, he could have a war on his hands that far eclipses the catastrophe of 2006, imperilling Hizbullah’s position in Lebanon.
Israel hasn’t taken official responsibility for the attacks, but it is gloating. The short-term success can hardly be denied. The pager attacks have put Hizbullah and Iran on the defensive. They have distracted attention from the horrors Israel continues to visit on Gaza and the West Bank, from the obscenity of Sde Teiman, a torture and rape centre in the Negev where dozens of prisoners from Gaza have been murdered, and from the hostage ordeal, the biggest threat to Netanyahu’s premiership. But what next? Is Netanyahu betting on a Hizbullah overreaction? Is he trying to open a second front and to drag the Iranians – and the Americans – into war? Are the attacks part of his effort to return Donald Trump to the White House, or is he simply trying to stay in power with a show of military force? The war in Gaza has made him more popular than ever, in spite of mass protests in favour of a ceasefire.
Whatever his motivations may be, Netanyahu has made war much likelier, and it would be a much harder war than Gaza has been for Israel’s already exhausted and demoralised troops. Hizbullah, which emerged in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, is a formidable antagonist, probably the most effective Arab fighting force the Jewish state has confronted since its founding. Its fighting force of roughly 45,000 may be outnumbered and outgunned, but, unlike the Israelis, they would have the advantage of fighting on their own land. Israeli soldiers spent two decades under fire in southern Lebanon before Hizbullah forced them to withdraw unilaterally in 2000. The pager attack, a tactical success by any measure, appears at first glance to be a reckless escalation, without a strategic horizon.
But the line between tactics and strategy may not be so useful in the case of Israel, a state that has been at war since its creation. The identity of the enemies changes – the Arab armies, Nasser, the PLO, Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas – but the war never ends, because Israel’s entire existence, its search for what it now brazenly calls ‘living space’, is based on a forever war with the Palestinians, and with whoever happens to support Palestinian resistance. Escalation may be precisely what Israel seeks, or what it is prepared to risk, since it views war as its destiny, if not its raison d’être. Randolph Bourne once remarked that ‘war is the health of the state,’ and that is certainly the view of Israel’s leaders. But it is civilians, Arab and Jewish, who end up paying the price for the state’s addiction to force. The region will continue to be engulfed in flames so long as Israel’s intelligence and creativity are dedicated to the pursuit of war rather than peace.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/september/the-pager-attack?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240925Blog&utm_content=20240925Blog+CID_28e83e86a1e44e0f6f262536ba258ffd&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=The%20Pager%20Attack
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
[Salon] Let's talk about genocide - Arab Digest.org Guest Post
Let's talk about genocide
Summary: while politicians and commentators have no qualms about describing the Sudan war as a genocide, the word causes unease and anxiety when applied to what the IDF is doing in Gaza.
With concern growing about the extent to which a new genocide is taking place in Sudan - as the country’s devastating civil war between two generals vying for power grinds on - what does constitute genocide?
The term was coined in 1944 by a Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He used it in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe to describe both the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and other historical actions that were aimed at destroying particular groups of people. His subsequent efforts ensured that the term was recognised and codified in international law.
The UN recognised genocide as a crime in 1946 and it was subsequently codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention. As noted by the UN Offfice on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility:
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law.
The convention has been either ratified or acceded to by 153 states. Israel ratified in 1950, the UK acceded in 1970 and the US ratified in 1988.
Here then is the UN definition as detailed in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Nikki Hailey in Israel scribbling "FINISH THEM" on the shells that the IDF is about to fire into Rafah in defiance of the International Court of Justice
As noted by the Office of Genocide Prevention:
The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The Convention is at pains to note that “there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This intent, dolus specialis, makes the crime of genocide unique. Further clarification is as follows:
Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”
While both Sudanese generals, Burhan who heads up the Sudanese army and Hemedti who leads the Rapid Support Forces, may have already committed acts that could constitute genocide in the current war it is the latter who is receiving much of the current media attention for the actions of his soldiers in Darfur. There consistent and credible reports of the mass killings of civilians by the RSF has resulted in President Biden being pushed to pressure the UAE, Hemedti’s chief foreign backer, to desist from supplying weapons to his troops.
No such concern would appear to exist for the Palestinians who, as the death toll in Gaza passes 41,000 are suffering a genocide perpetrated by the IDF. As per the above definition what Israel has done in the now nearly year-long war is to show in the mental element "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and in the physical element three of the five criteria, excluding only the forcible transfer of children to another group and the imposition of measures designed to prevent births (though it could be argued that the killing of women and newborns in the ongoing IDF offensive, the destruction of hospitals and other health facilities and the trauma caused by daily bombardments from land, air and sea on women of child bearing age achieves that objective.)
Now as the war continues widening in the northern border region and the likelihood of a land invasion of southern Lebanon increases with each passing day a minister in the Netanyahu government has spoken openly about the “annihilation” of the country. Speaking on the right wing outlet Channel 14 Education Minister Yoav Kisch stated there was no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. The country he said “will be destroyed. Lebanon is heading toward annihilation.” When the interviewer gently interposed suggesting annihilation was perhaps an unfortunate word in the context of Hebrew terminology the minister clarified with a smile “I will correct my words. Not annihilation. Lebanon as we know will not exist. Lebanon will pay the heavy price because of Hezbollah. I correct my words. I am being precise.”
Kisch’s words have proved chillingly and brutally precise as yesterday Israel launched massive air raids on Lebanon killing at least 492 and wounding more than 1600.
Members can leave comments about this newsletter on the Arab Digest website
Thousands Flee Israeli Attacks
link.foreignpolicy.com/view/644279f41a7f1f1e29de6831lxd8h.dbw/5b629eae
https://link.foreignpolicy.com/view/644279f41a7f1f1e29de6831lxd8h.dbw/5b629eae
Monday, September 23, 2024
[Salon] [Mbrenner] FORBIDDEN TRUTHS - Guest Post by MBrenner - TRUTHS WE ARE NOT PERMITTED TO PRONOUNCE
[Salon] [Mbrenner] FORBIDDEN TRUTHS - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
TRUTHS WE ARE NOT PERMITTED TO PRONOUNCE
· Kamala Harris is an exceptionally attractive woman
· The transcendent reality of the 2024 Presidential election is that half of America favors or accepts to place the country’s fate in the hands of a vulgar criminal psychopath who has stated boldly that he is committed to destroying our constitutional democracy – to be replaced by an autocracy with Fascist characteristics. Hence, it is a referendum on whether we trade our current system of government for the MAGA alternative
· A rogue Supreme Court that has arrogated to itself the authority to rewrite the Constitution in accordance with the majority’s dogmatic, doctrinal beliefs – and to superimpose its judgment on the expressed will of the Congress and the Executive – represents a manifest, insidious threat to American democracy. It will continue to do so whatever the outcome of the election.
· If the MAGA takeover of the U.S. government to occur, we should not expect that we would be buffered from its worst abuses by the powerful financial and commercial interests. History tells us that they nearly always align themselves with the autocrats; this was so during the Fascist wave of the 1930s and 1940s. More generally, established economic interests are far more fearful of the ‘Left’ (however mild) than of the autocratic Right. Witness England, France, Germany, Italy, and today in the United States as the tech barons (e.g. Eldon Musk) cozy up to Trump. We should recall the warning issued by Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs in 2020 that were the Democrats to nominate Bernie Sanders, he would give all-out support to Donald Trump
· Fascism may be the natural default position of failed liberal democracies
· The deeply personal animus toward Vladimir Putin by Presidents Bush, Obama and Biden (as well as a wide swarth of our political elites) goes well beyond conflicting politics. It is rooted in their envy of a man manifestly superior to them in intellect, in detailed knowledge of diverse subjects, in historical perspective, in articulateness, in diplomacy. It even irritates them that he can sing Blueberry Hill in English as well as Russian since that debunks the notion that Putin is a brutal ruthless tyrant. The crude caricatures of Putin pervasive in the West are a significant obstacle to realistic policy and productive diplomacy.
The wisdom of Sun Tzu admonishes the strategist to “know thy enemy, and know thyself.” Western leaders cultivate their ignorance of Putin, and of today’s Russia, because of their reluctance to understand the sources of their own penchant for caricature.
· Donald Trump’s policies in regard to Russia were no different in nature than Bush/Obama/Biden’s: sanctions, arming Ukraine. The seeming difference in attitude toward Putin the man derives from Trump’s abiding faith in and relishing of deal-making. To do so with somebody as formidable as Putin serves his voracious narcissistic ego.
We are experiencing two hallmark developments of the 21st century that will have lasting consequences for Western societies: the collapse of their ethical foundations; the nullification of the civilizational compact that ensconced social justice as a central feature of our collectivity. The former is expressed both in: 1) the comprehensive strategy to attenuate all manner of social programs, to facilitate the transfer of national wealth to the upper strata of the citizenry, and to degrade public services/amenities; and 2) its participation as accomplices in crimes against humanity in Palestine and elsewhere. Their common denominator is a callous disregard for the welfare of the weak, the vulnerable and the poor. They are related. Each is a regression from the path of a more enlightened management of our public affairs.
· American society has abandoned public higher education by increments over the past 50 years. In the 1960s, the University of California system required no tuition from state residents (residency was liberally defined). 90% of its operating budget was financed by direct appropriations by the legislature. Much the same held for other state systems. Today, tuition at these institutions ranges between $12,000 and $16,000. Consequently, a majority of students work and/or acquire debt. It is a self-serving fantasy to believe that they can derive the same benefit from their higher education, under those conditions, as did their counterparts in the earlier era.
· “Equal opportunity” as the proposed answer to widening wealth and education gaps is a devious cop-out. All it means is that everybody should have a chance to ‘make it.’ Nothing is implied about the standard of living of the vast majority who logically don’t ‘make it.’ According to this philosophy, social justice simply means that a supposedly meritocratic elite can revel in their success while ignoring the wellbeing of their fellows since they came out on top in a ‘fair’ Darwinian competition
· The greatest wealth transfer upwards in modern history has taken place over the last 25 years. First, the so-called “Third Way” launched by Bill Clinton et al had deregulation and privatization as its twin pillars. Tax breaks for corporations and the rich followed under Bush and Trump. Exceeding them has been the massive largess in trillions extended to financial institutions by Central Banks post-2008 collapse – with the Federal reserve providing the lion’s share.
· Virtue, as an inherited trait in the American body politic, is now akin to a pseudogene.
“A pseudogene is a segment of DNA that structurally resembles a gene but is not capable of coding for a protein. Pseudogenes are most often derived from genes that have lost their protein-coding ability due to accumulated mutations that have occurred over the course of evolution”.
· The IMF is so addicted to its dogmatic neo-liberal dogma that it tells Kiev that, in order to qualify for a new loan, Ukraine must raise taxes and cut its budget. Those steps are stipulated as the immediate measures in a long-term IMF authored program entailing 130 reform milestones on the road to membership in the European Union. Yet, the country is bankrupt without Western cash handouts, its population has shrunk by 40%, inflation is mounting, the largest part of its industrial capacity has been occupied or destroyed, 80% of its electrical power generating capacity is destroyed, household incomes have nosedived, and it tops the world list of corrupt countries. We all have ways of amusing ourselves. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith on 19th Street N.W., though, remains devoted to its sacred liturgy - disconnected from reality as it is
· The assault on free speech has two vectors: 1) restrictions on access to outlets for disseminating thoughts – i.e. blanket censorship; 2) punishing the dissemination of thoughts. The latter, of course, is itself a form of censorship since it inhibits free expression through intimidation, i.e. a form of deterrence. Censorship via restricted access is imposed by non-government entities, social media being the outstanding case in point; public-private collaboration as now occurs routinely through institutionalized consultation/guidance between state agencies and corporations such as Facebook/X, Google, YouTube etc.; and those agencies by denying media outlets they cannot control from operating in the United States: Tik Tok (China based), Telegram (Russia based). The last is reinforced by criminal investigation of persons who work with them (the Scott Ritter case). All of these actions constitute violations of the First Amendment guarantees. Yet, no legal defense or legislative remedy is available at present. In post-Constitutional America, they are highly unlikely to emerge.
· A similar pattern is evident in regard to the right to assembly. Severe restrictions on where a group may demonstrate are coupled with severe punishments of those who violate the strict rules. These measures are being imposed in their most draconian form in American universities. There, both the imposition of controls and the doling out of penalties in done in an arbitrary manner – often on a selective basis - without the slightest bow to due process.
· The West generally – and Europe in particular - clearly has a big problem with matters of religion, race and ethnicity. It is multiform, it mutates, it waxes and wanes, it shifts focus and fixation - but it remains lodged in the collective psyche. While this obviously is not universal among Europe’s population of 400 million, it is manifestly prevalent and deep-seated. When the stimulus is strong and acute, it flares like a gas field when the drill hits paydirt.
· Europe has an obsession about Jews. For nearly 2 millennia, it shunned them, despised them and persecuted them. Now, after a respite of a few decades, it condemns and abuses Muslims in a similar way - all in the name of protecting Jews. The very words 'Jewish' and 'Israel' have the power to paralyze European minds and consciences - most strikingly among the political class. Thus, the current exaltation of the Jews of Israel - honored and cosseted - is matched by the dehumanization of Palestine's Muslims.
· The spectacle of Western societies’ perverse, immoral conduct on Palestine/Israel stems from two principal sources: their twisted, incestuous history with Judaism and Jews; and their ingrained sense of superiority relative to other peoples whom they dominated and exploited for nearly 500 years. The latter shapes thinking today even among those who consciously have abandoned its racist corollary. Imperative acts of atonement ‘no matter what’ follow from the former; devaluation of the lives of “the other” follows from the latter. Together, they are fracturing the moral foundations of European and North American nations.
· An unnatural feature of the West’s behavior re Palestine/Israel is the near unanimity of attitude and action displayed by the political class. The same holds for Russia/Ukraine – and increasingly China. We have seen nothing of this sort since WW II. Yet, these matters are notable for being multifaceted, entailing complex interactions, evocative of wrenching moral issues, and do not engage directly core national interests. The entire panoply of institutions - public and private - rise up as if choreographed to vent the same emotions, make the same harsh, unqualified judgments, use the same crude slogans, drape themselves in the same banners of self-righteousness and self-proclaimed moralism. Government leaders, politicos, media, pundits, make the same cacophonous noises, aggressively impose the same uniformity of opinion, and punish the few dissenters. This is the sign of an infirmed democracy.
· The New York Times editors have compiled a selected list of the 21st Century’s 100 ‘best’ books. Only two addressed any of the matters noted above.
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