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Thursday, October 31, 2024
(538) Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will BRICS Change Russia? - YouTube
(538) Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will BRICS Change Russia? - YouTube
‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 31 October 2024: a review of the BRICS Summit
The lighting and perhaps the sound of the recording from my Petersburg apartment may have left something to be desired, but I believe the content may provide food for thought, particularly among those who yesterday saw many of the same questions addressed by the roving journalist Pepe Escobar in his exchange with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
This allowed us to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of physical presence at an event like the BRICS Summit which takes place largely behind closed doors and where the big news is released in set speeches or at the closing press conference, which are covered in full by television and so are accessible from remote.
The main point I was trying to make is that the Summit revealed some very unexpected decisions by the BRICS team on how to prioritize its future activities and expansion. They are not planning a frontal assault on the existing world financial structures. They are not building an alternative global system to rival SWIFT. The reason for this, as I see it is not just the technical difficulties but the practical consideration that they do not want to coerce existing and future members of the BRICS inner club and outer circle of Partners to jump with both feet into their camp and to deprive themselves of the proven advantages of SWIFT as if they were under sanctions like Russia and Iran.
Similarly, de-dollarization is going to proceed as an indirect, not direct consequence of BRICS activities. The main mover is the consolidation of oil and gas trading in BRICS Members and Partners. That Nigeria and Algeria have been invited to join as Partners is one more proof of this. The relevance is that the single largest commodity in global trade is hydrocarbons, which have traditionally been priced in dollars – hence the ‘petrodollar’ as a global force underpinning the strength of the dollar as a reserve currency. Among the BRICS members there is a strong shift to the Yuan and other of their own national currencies, all of which is progressively dethroning the dollar in this key sector.
The same tendency will result from the grain, precious metals and other commodity exchanges that BRICS now plans to set up. All of these goods have been priced in dollars or pounds sterling due to their being traded in the USA or UK. Now, presumably they will be priced in one of the BRICS national currencies.
Are any of these plans having an effect on Washington? I believe that today’s news from the US Treasury on sanctions being imposed and sanctions being lifted suggest that Yellen and her team are listening.
We all heard in Western mainstream reporting today on the imposition of secondary sanctions today on companies and individuals in various countries who are accused of helping Russia to evade the bans on shipping various military application goods and components to Russia. What I have not seen in these reports is what Russian news said tonight: that the Treasury has just suspended sanctions on a dozen major Russian banks until April 2025 to facilitate trading in oil!
If this is correct, it may be the first indication that the BRICS threat to dollar dominance is finally understood by Washington as being real and present.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
[Salon] U.S. inundated with claims that American arms killed Gaza civilians - Guest Post By Abigail Hauslohner and Michael Birnbaum
U.S. inundated with claims that American arms killed Gaza civilians
The State Department has received hundreds of reports that Israel’s use of U.S. weapons is responsible for excessive casualties. It has yet to take action, officials say.
Washington Post
October 30, 2024
By Abigail Hauslohner and Michael Birnbaum
The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip, but it has failed to comply with its own policies requiring swift investigations of such claims, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least some of these cases presented to the State Department over the past year probably amount to violations of U.S. and international law, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
The reports are received from across the U.S. government, international aid organizations, nonprofits, media reports and other eyewitnesses. Dozens include photo documentation of U.S.-made bomb fragments at sites where scores of children were killed, according to human rights advocates briefed on the process.
Yet despite the State Department’s internal Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which directs officials to complete an investigation and recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry, no single case has reached the “action” stage, current and former officials told The Washington Post. More than two-thirds of cases remain unresolved, they said, with many pending response from the Israeli government, which the State Department consults to verify each case’s circumstances.
Critics of the Biden administration’s consistent provision of arms to Israel, now 13 months into a war that has killed 43,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities, say the handling of these reports is another illustration of the administration’s unwillingness to hold its close ally accountable for the conflict’s staggering toll.
“They’re ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the Netanyahu government,” said John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy adviser focused on U.S. security assistance and arms sales at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “When it comes to the Biden administration’s arms policies, everything looks good on paper but has turned out meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel.”
The State Department declined to detail the volume of incidents under investigation.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under guidelines set by the administration, said the government closely tracks the incidents referred to the State Department and questions the Israeli government about them. Even when cases aren’t resolved, the official said, the investigations help to inform policy.
On Tuesday, an Israeli strike on an apartment building killed more than 90 people, including 25 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the United States was “deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life” and that Washington was seeking a “full explanation.” The Israeli military said it was “aware of reports that civilians were harmed.”
Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declined to discuss the U.S. inquiries or Washington’s efforts to limit civilian harm. “As part of the close alliance between Israel and the United States, there is continuous and close contact with the American administration regarding Israel’s struggle against terrorist attacks against its citizens,” Marmorstein said in a statement.
The Israeli military says it makes “significant efforts” to avoid civilian harm but has cited the presence of Hamas fighters hiding among civilians as justification to carry out bombings on schools, hospitals, mosques and tent encampments. Gaza’s Health Ministry says the majority of the dead have been women and children.
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the Israeli government threatening vague policy “implications” if Israel did not immediately allow more aid into Gaza, where doctors and analysts say thousands have starved to death. The warning was widely interpreted to mean Washington may consider withholding arms transfers unless the humanitarian situation markedly improves.
In their letter, Blinken and Austin also acknowledged the failure of U.S. efforts to mitigate Israel’s civilian causalities. “It is vitally important that our governments establish a new channel through which we can raise and discuss civilian harm incidents. Our engagements to date have not produced the necessary outcomes,” they wrote. They gave Israel 30 days to deliver results, which would delay any action until after next week’s U.S. presidential election.
The State Department’s civilian harm guidance, unveiled by the Biden administration in August 2023 in response to congressional concerns about Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ bombardment of Yemen, instructs the agency in how to assess whether a foreign military has violated any one of an assortment of U.S. laws and make clear recommendations for action.
By investigating such cases, officials should be able to “identify, recommend, and document what actions the Department can and will take in response to such incidents,” according to the 21-page policy document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post but has not been made public.
Current and former U.S. officials described a process that, while detailed and deliberate on paper, has become functionally irrelevant with more-senior leaders at the State Department broadly dismissive of non-Israeli sources and unwilling to sign off on action plans.
Some U.S. officials and congressional Democrats have been frustrated by the State Department’s apparent tendency to rely on Israel to substantiate the allegations against it.
Mike Casey, who worked on Gaza issues at the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem, said senior officials routinely gave the impression that their goal in discussing any alleged abuse by Israel was to figure out how to frame it in a less negative light.
“There’s this sense of: ‘How do we make this okay?’” said Casey, who resigned in July. “There’s not, ‘How do we get to the real truth of what’s going on here?’”
Senior officials, he said, often dismissed the credibility of Palestinian sources, eyewitness accounts, nongovernmental organizations, official accounts from the Palestinian Authority, and even from the United Nations.
The U.S. official who addressed questions about the administration’s handling of these reports said that the State Department considers both Palestinian and Israeli voices as it assesses allegations of civilian harm.
People familiar with the process said that at least one-quarter of cases have been dismissed in the first of three investigative stages, either because they are deemed not credible or because there was no indication of U.S. weapons use. The majority have proceeded to the “verification” stage, whereby, “We ask the [government of Israel] about the cases: Did you forewarn? Why did you hit this school or safe road or safe zone?” said one former official.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who has met with administration officials on several occasions to discuss the issue, said he has been deeply frustrated by what he called a lack of follow-through. “There’s no set timeline for getting responses to the many ad hoc inquiries that have been made,” Van Hollen said.
The Biden administration is intensely focused on “making sure that the norms of international humanitarian law are upheld,” Blinken said in Qatar last week.
“Everything that we’re focused on involves making sure, to the best of our ability, that those norms are upheld, and that we’re maximizing the ability both to protect people and to make sure that they’re getting the help that they need,” Blinken said.
Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military aid since World War II, and the Biden administration has provided it with at least $17.9 billion in U.S. military assistance in the past year alone, according to a recent study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
But despite deepening alarm among administration officials and lawmakers over Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, nearly all military assistance, apart from a delayed shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, has continued to flow without interruption. The pace and volume of weaponry has meant that U.S. munitions make up a substantial portion of Israel’s arsenal, with an American-made fleet of warplanes to deliver the heaviest bombs to their targets, analysts say.
William D. Hartung, a co-author of the Watson Institute report and an expert on the arms industry and the U.S. military budget at the Quincy Institute, said “it’s almost impossible” that Israel is not violating U.S. law “given the level of slaughter that’s going on, and the preponderance of U.S. weapons.”
Among the cases submitted to the State Department, according to people familiar with the matter, are the January killing of a 6-year-old girl and her family in their car, with pieces of a U.S.-made 120mm tank round purportedly found at the scene. There were shards of American-made small diameter bombs photographed at a family’s home and at a school sheltering displaced civilians after airstrikes in May killed dozens of women and children. And there was the tail fin of a Boeing-manufactured Joint Direct Attack Munition on the scene of a July airstrike that killed at least 90 Palestinians.
“The U.S. is the biggest donor to Israel with these weapons,” said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “And it’s a year in. When is the United States going to put its foot down?”
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Tuesday, October 29, 2024
[Salon] UNRWA USA Condemns Israeli Knesset Vote Banning UNRWA, Calls for Immediate US Action to Protect Humanitarian Lifeline for Palestine Refugees - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
UNRWA USA Condemns Israeli Knesset Vote Banning UNRWA, Calls for Immediate US Action to Protect Humanitarian Lifeline for Palestine Refugees
Oct 29
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Washington DC – UNRWA USA National Committee (UNRWA USA) unequivocally condemns the Israeli Knesset’s appalling October 28th vote to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating in Israel “including the areas of annexed East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank” within 90 days. Israeli lawmakers also voted to declare UNRWA a “terror group,” effectively banning any direct interaction between the UN Agency and the State of Israel.
These outrageous and reprehensible decisions threaten millions of Palestine refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory who are already enduring unbearable and unspeakable suffering, with many experts calling the situation in the Gaza Strip, in particular, genocide. This ban, if implemented, will sever essential lifelines—healthcare, mental health counseling, food assistance, water, education, and more—for millions of people living in the occupied Palestinian territory, a great majority of whom are children and youth.
“The human cost of this ban is immeasurable. This Israeli Knesset vote banning UNRWA is not merely an attack on the UN Agency; it’s an attack on the fundamental rights and dignity due to all human beings. The consequences of this ban could result in the loss of tens of thousands, if not more, precious Palestinian lives. Where is the humanity?” says Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA.
If UNRWA operations are halted in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, tens of thousands of refugees could die due to the lack of life-saving services and resources.
The international community, including the United Nations, recognizes there is no alternative to UNRWA, particularly in Gaza, which has suffered under more than 12 months of relentless assault by the Israeli military.
As Matthew Miller, department spokesperson, stated yesterday at the US Department of State Press Briefing, UNRWA “plays an irreplaceable role right now in Gaza, where they are on the front lines getting humanitarian assistance to the people that need it. There’s nobody that can replace [UNRWA] right now in the middle of the crisis.” In fact, UNRWA is the backbone of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, providing essential services in healthcare, shelter operations, food and water, education, sanitation, and logistics that support the entire international operation. Without UNRWA, Gaza will deteriorate into an even greater catastrophe, with unimaginable and irreversible consequences for its people.
As a UN agency, UNRWA requires unimpeded humanitarian access to protect lives and deliver necessary assistance. The staff, facilities, and installations of UNRWA—and all UN personnel—must be protected and never be targets for military aggression.
The international community is rightly outraged by this inhumane decision, as shown by the widespread condemnation from humanitarian organizations, state governments, and advocates worldwide. Many Americans, including UNRWA USA’s over 100,000 supporters, are expressing their rage and dismay. Now is the time for leaders, especially here in the United States, to intervene and take decisive action to defend UNRWA’s mandate and ability to protect and save Palestine refugee lives.
UNRWA USA remains fully committed to funding UNRWA’s critical life-saving humanitarian operations in the besieged Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for as long as UNRWA remains operational. UNRWA USA unequivocally condemns the Israeli government’s ban and encourages leaders here in the United States and around the world to ensure that this ban will never be implemented.
UNRWA USA urges everyone to stand in solidarity with Palestine refugees and declare: Hands off UNRWA.
###
UNRWA USA National Committee (UNRWA USA) is an independent nonprofit organization that provides support for the humanitarian work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). UNRWA USA lifts up the voices, experiences, and humanity of Palestine refugees to secure American support for resources essential to every human being, for the promise of a better life. US taxpayers are eligible for tax deductions for donations made through UNRWA USA.
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic, with the entire population facing famine-level starvation as well as constant bombardment, blockades, and limited access to fuel, electricity, and medical supplies. UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip and a lifeline for millions of Palestine refugees across the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Media Contact: For more information, contact Laila Mokhiber, Senior Director of Communications, UNRWA USA, by phone at (202) 223-3767 or via email at laila@unrwausa.org.
Monday, October 28, 2024
[Salon] Patrick Lawrence: Israel and Its Neighborhood, An Interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman
Patrick Lawrence: Israel and Its Neighborhood, An Interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman
October 28, 2024
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
Why have West Asian nations that long ago pledged their support to the Palestinian cause remained so silent amid Israel’s terrorizing assaults on Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon? Where have the Russians and Chinese been? Is this not the time for a display of solidarity among non–Western nations? Can we not look to them as a counter to the inexcusable support the U.S. and its clients extend to the Zionist regime? What can we expect, looking forward, of the BRICS whose members [there are now 10, with 13 “partner” nations now added] just concluded a summit in Kazan?
These are my questions a year on from the events of Oct. 7, 2023. On the assumption others may ask them, too, I put these matters to Chas Freeman, the distinguished former diplomat. Who better? Freeman, among much else, is a former assistant secretary of defense, ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and chargé d’affaires ad interim at Bangkok and Beijing. He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon’s 1972 opening of U.S. relations with China.
Andrew Bacevich, “the dissident colonel,” as I call him, once told me—this was during the 2016 political campaigns—he thought Freeman ought to be the next secretary of state. He is, you will not be surprised to learn, the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica article on “diplomacy.”
Our extended exchange via email follows.
—P.L.
PL: A German newspaper recently published an interview with the Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, who expressed his profound frustration with the Americans as Israel continues its assault in Gaza—and now the West Bank and Lebanon. You can’t work with the Americans, he complained in so many words. They say one thing, they rarely mean it, and typically do something else altogether.
It prompts my first question in the context of the enlarging crisis in West Asia, please comment on the diplomatic positions of America’s allies in the region. What, generally, is going through their minds? Why haven’t they reacted more vigorously to the Israeli assault? Are they simply “bought,” in one or another way? Or is there more to it?
CF: The United States no longer has any “diplomatic allies” in the region. Popular anger at American support for the Israeli effort to rid Palestine of its Arab population and expand into Gaza and Lebanon makes alignment with Washington too politically costly for Arab rulers to risk.
Israel’s depravity has ended any prospect of normalized relations by Arab states with it. Those that have normalized relations with Israel are now under popular pressure to suspend or reverse it. More importantly, the Gulf Arabs have declared that they will be neutral in any conflict between Iran, Israel, and the United States. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has created a state of war between it and Yemen and fostered a rapprochement between previously estranged Egypt and Turkey.
PL: It has been said that neighboring nations had more affinity with the PLO in times past than with Hamas now because the former was a secular organization, the latter not. Is this accurate, and if so, does the distinction matter now?
CF: Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist democratic movement. It came to power in Palestine by winning an election in 2006. Hamas’s leaders take the position that Arab societies should be governed by those with support at the ballot box rather than by princes, generals, dictators, or thugs. Arab rulers who fall into these authoritarian categories naturally find this position threatening.
Religion is not a major factor in Arab and Muslim states’ relations with Hamas. Like Arab rulers, Hamas is Sunni Muslim. The differences of Arab rulers with Hamas are far less than they were with the atheist leadership of the PLO. Iran, which is Shi`a, has been the main supporter of Hamas — not on religious grounds but in support of Palestinian self-determination.
PL: Can you talk about some specific nations in this context? Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, asserted just recently there can be no question of a Riyadh–Tel Aviv rapprochement until the Palestinians have a state with East Jerusalem as its capital. What is behind this? Where are the Emirates, Qatar in particular, on the Israel–Palestine question?
CF: The Gulf Arab states all affirm that Palestinians are entitled to self-determination and support a two-state division of Palestine. They face mounting criticism from their publics for having done nothing concrete to advance this goal. The last poll of Saudi opinion on normalization with Israel that I saw showed 94 percent opposed to it. Most now argue that those Arab states that have established diplomatic relations with Israel should now break them.
The status of Jerusalem is an important issue for the world’s two billion Muslims. The intrusions into the Al–Aqsa Mosque and the calls of fanatic members of the Israeli cabinet for its Judaization are deeply offensive to Arab Muslims and Christians alike.
PL: I was very pleased, I admit even delighted, to see a video of the en masse walkout at the U.N. General Assembly when Netanyahu took the podium at the General Assembly on Sept. 27. I take this to be a moment of some importance, and so I have a few questions for you about it. How did you read that occasion and what was your reaction to it?
CF: The hateful things Israel is doing have made it the most hated society on the planet. Netanyahu is seen as the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler and Israel is a pariah everywhere outside the West. No one other than a dwindling band of American politicians now wants to be seen in Israel’s or Netanyahu’s company. The walkout was a virtual inevitability, only slightly offset by Netanyahu’s importation of Israeli fans of his to applaud his many inversions of truth and falsehood.
PL: I wonder, actually, who was in that group. Was it a broad gathering of non– Western powers that walked out? Almost the entire membership of the new “global majority”—the so-called “Global South”—seems to have walked out, leaving only an isolated contingent from the West behind.
Also, U.N. ambassadors do not generally act without the authorization of their ministries. Can we assume this was the case with the walkout? It was understood in advance what would be done, perhaps with a measure of coordination? And does this tell us something?
CF: You are probably correct that there was prior consultation with capitals, but Israel is now so thoroughly despised internationally that this would hardly have been necessary. Anti–Zionism has become good politics almost everywhere outside the West.
PL: Can you talk about West Asian nations that are neither allies nor clients of the Americans? Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey: How have they responded to the Gaza crisis — or not — and how do you see them reacting as it expands?
CF: Israel’s actions in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and now Lebanon, and its efforts to produce a widening regional war in West Asia, have accomplished the previously impossible. They have united Shi`a with Sunni and consolidated the Saudi–Iranian rapprochement. The greater Israeli cruelty to its captive Arab populations and neighbors, the stronger the coalition against it becomes. [The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic reopened ties, after a lengthy breach, following talks sponsored by the Chinese in March 2023.]
PL: The big question for a lot of people is why there has been so little effective reaction, even diplomatically, to Israel’s barbaric conduct since the events of 7 October.
The Arab League has issued some strong statements, but these have not come to much. As Israel’s savagery became evident last autumn, a few Latin American nations withdrew their ambassadors or cut relations altogether. The South Africans have gone the legal route, very honorably. But other than this, there’s not much going on.
Why the silence, the timidity, whatever you are inclined to call it? It seems a case of “the whole world watching” but the whole world not doing anything. Does this come down to the question of American power?
CF: It is proof, I believe, that, as the saying has it, no one wants to get into a pissing contest with a skunk. That is especially the case when the skunk is backed by a country as powerful and prone to coercive actions as the United States. The supporters of Zionism have a well-deserved reputation for the vicious slander of their critics and determination to ostracize them. This intimidates most people and governments.
Tactically, with a few honorable exceptions, countries have opted to wring their hands while sitting on them. But the strategic (i.e., the long-run) implications of Israel’s self-delegitimization will be far-reaching. International law and the global majority may have temporarily been set aside by risk-averse governments, but tolerance of Israel by their publics as a practitioner of evil is clearly wearing ever thinner.
There is a widening gap between entrenched political elites and outraged mass opinion that is destabilizing politics in democratic and undemocratic societies alike. Demands for the re-democratization of Western societies, as well as punishment of Israel, are becoming ever louder. The “BDS” movement—boycott, disinvest, and sanction—is gaining ground, much as it eventually did against the far milder form of apartheid earlier condoned by the West in South Africa.
PL: Turning to the Europeans, especially the British, French, and Germans: Do we have to conclude these nations are simply vassal states, or is there more complexity to their positions?
CF: Each is different. The Germans are consumed with guilt for their conduct of the antisemitic Holocaust and overcompensate by conferring immunity on Israel, which came into being as a result of that European atrocity. The British and French, like the United States, have politics that are policed by very effective Zionist lobbies and media that self-censor in favor of Israel. Ironically, some European countries with fascist, antisemitic pasts and current affinities for xenophobic authoritarianism see contemporary Israeli political culture as similar in some respects to their own. And Islamophobia is a rising factor in European Christendom.
PL: We come to the big non–Western powers: The Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, if you want to include them the Brazilians. I would have expected more of them by now. The Chinese convened that meeting of various Palestinian factions—this shortly before Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination on 31 July. It struck me as a typical gesture of the nation purporting to live by Zhou Enlai’s Five principles.
What are your thoughts on how the major non–Western powers have so far responded to the West Asia crisis?
CF: These countries are engaged in building an alternative to the increasingly impotent United Nations structure and its sidelined regulatory agencies, like the WTO. The BRICS group began as a protest movement against American and G–7 global primacy by major non–Western powers. It is now developing the potential to convene ad hoc assemblies that can make rules outside the U.N. framework, pending the reform and reorganization of the U.N. to restore its effectiveness.
Chinese efforts at peacemaking in West Asia and Eastern Europe have the backing of its fellow members of BRICS. It is significant that South Africa—the “S” in BRICS—brought the cases against Israeli genocide in both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. We are seeing the gradual growth of willingness on the part of decolonized countries to hold the West to its hypocritically professed ideals.
PL: What do you see out front on the diplomatic side? One is forced to wonder, the Israelis having opened a new front in Lebanon and no sign the Western powers will respond any differently, whether we are looking at what I’ve taken to calling limitless impunity, impunity with no end. What influence, what impact, can other nations have on the West Asia crisis at this point?
If you would, please consider the non–West in particular. Can we expect anything more of these nations than we’ve so far seen? The question is especially important, it seems to me, because it bears on the larger matter of “a new world order” and just what any such notion may or may not eventually mean.
CF: I do see the world beyond the West becoming more insistent on respect for global norms by the West as it becomes more powerful and prosperous. The “rise of the rest,” as Fareed Zakaria put it, is a reality. The global center of gravity has left the Euro–Atlantic region.
Middle-ranking powers are becoming more independent and assertive in defense of their own interests and less deferential to the club of imperialist powers that makes up the G–7. And, while the politics of formerly colonized countries are often dominated by the tremors of post-colonial hangovers, their demands, like their struggles for independence, have been inspired by ideas they absorbed from the West.
For the most part, they seek to affirm rather than dispense with the global norms enacted in the period of Western dominance. Thus, they do not seek to overthrow the inherited order but to restore compliance with its ideals. The U.S. perception that they are “revisionist” has a basis, but U.S. antagonism to their demands is founded on a desire to retain a hegemonic role in the global political economy and the ability to use force to override the very norms Americans helped compose and still claim to support.
PL: Just one more question in this line. There is renewed talk now of fundamental reform at the U.N., and, while this is hardly a new topic, the discourse seems more serious now — more promising. You had a plain and simple demonstration of one big problem at the General Assembly this past week: The G.A. can recommend, but all executive authority lies with the five Security Council powers. This, a structural flaw if you like, goes back to the U.N.’s founding.
Richard Falk and Hans–Christof von Sponeck, two authoritative figures with long experience as senior U.N. officials, just published Liberating the United Nations: Realism with Hope (Stanford). I count this an important book.
Can you think out loud about the spreading crisis in West Asia and what might be done about it in the context of this new movement for U.N. reform?
CF: A bit of diplomatic imagination is much needed. There is nothing in international law that would prevent the ad hoc gathering of like-minded countries to concert policies and practices without regard to the United Nations. The U.N. is demonstrating a level of political impotence that resembles that of the League of Nations in the face of fascist actions in the 1930s in China, Ethiopia, and Central Europe. We must hope that the reform or replacement of the U.N. will not require a world war, which is what it took to replace the League with a new and — for a time — more effective organization.
As I suggested, the BRICS seems to be developing into an institution that might give birth to new and more just systems of global governance. But whether it does or not, the need to focus on shared objectives and devise collective measures to pursue them is pressing. Falk and von Sponeck are onto something important.
PL: As it happens, the BRICS just concluded a summit in Kazan, along the Volga in southwestern Russia. I found the timing suggestive, if only vaguely, of a world order to come as it prepares to replace a declining order. The Western press coverage, was, of course, almost farcically resentful, and I always read this kind of thing as a measure of the West’s insecurities. Do you have a read on the summit and its significance?
The big news that was supposed to come out of the Kazan gathering—so I thought, anyway—was a formal announcement of a strategic partnership, maybe even an alliance, between Russia and the Islamic Republic. This would have huge implications for the West Asia crisis. But I didn’t see anything on the Moscow–Tehran relationship. Do you have a thought on this?
CF: Those with militarized foreign policies not surprisingly think of the BRICS as a “bloc” like the G–7 or a potential alliance like NATO, but it is neither. It is an alternative to Western domination of international institutions and rulemaking, but it is a forum, like the United Nations, not an anti–Western coalition. Treating it as anti–Western could, however, provoke it to become anti–Western.
If Russia and Iran wanted to formalize their defense relationship, the BRICS meeting at Kazan would have provided a place to do so, but the timing was not opportune, given the uncertainties created by Israel’s threats to attack Iran to restore escalation dominance and thus achieve the regional hegemony to which it aspires. Russia does not need a formal alliance to be able to help Iran or others in the region to defend themselves against Israeli aggression. It will do so to the extent this serves Russian interests, as it has in Syria. Iran will continue to sell drones and transfer technology to Russia in return.
One important difference between the fading world order post–Cold War and the new international system toward which we are transitioning is the diminished role of alliances and the return of classic diplomacy. The emerging system is one dominated by ententes (limited partnerships for limited purposes) based on common interests, some of which may be transient, rather than by alliances embodying shared values as well as interests.
All five of the original BRICS member states are nonaligned and regard “alliances” as liabilities rather than unalloyed strategic assets. They are prepared to defend their own interests, which they privilege above those of other nations. They will agree to help others defend themselves when contingencies make this expedient but not otherwise.
The reasoning behind this view is straightforward. Commitments to defend other sovereign states subject those who make them to the risk of becoming embroiled in fights that are not their own to advance interests they may not share. George Washington understood this well, which is why he counseled Americans to avoid entangling alliances as well as passionate attachments to other nations. Our current leadership does not understand the wisdom of such a self-interested and flexible approach to foreign affairs. It seems incapable of realizing that the BRICS member states are prioritizing diplomatic dialogue and cooperation over military deterrence. BRICS members seek to safeguard their sovereignty not just by freeing themselves from Western hegemony but by enhancing cooperation among each other based on give and take that serves common interests.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Friday, October 25, 2024
[Salon] UNWRA and Israel - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
UNWRA and Israel
Summary: with the war in Lebanon expanding and the killing of civilians intensifying in Gaza UNRWA faces looming expulsion from the Strip and the Occupied West Bank as Israel continues its anti-UN campaign.
We thank Joshua Levkowitz for today’s newsletter. Joshua is a Middle East analyst and researcher based in Istanbul. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and Al-Monitor, among others.
On 8 October United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres raised the alarm in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over draft Israeli legislation that would block the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from being able to carry out its crucial humanitarian work in the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank. Guterres warned that “it would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” A week earlier he had been banned from entering Israel in an extraordinary attack by the foreign minister Israel Katz who claimed the secretary general had not been forceful enough in condemning Iran’s missile assault on 1 October. Guterres, Katz said, had displayed "his anti-Israel policy since the beginning of the war.”
On the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee had approved two bills that would cut all ties between UNRWA and Israeli authorities. Since its founding in 1949, UNRWA has been responsible for Palestinians who were displaced from their homes in the wake of Israel’s creation. It is the sole UN agency with a mandate specific to a group of refugees. But the two draft laws, which passed initial approval by an overwhelming margin in the Knesset in July, seeks to evict the agency from territories under Israeli control and to remove its privileges and immunities. The EU has expressed its “grave concern” while the US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield says she is “deeply concerned” by the initiative.
For years, Israel has accused UNRWA of not being neutral. For example, they have argued that UNRWA-run schools support militancy through lesson plans on Palestinian figures whom Israel considers terrorists. Israel’s primary concern, however, is that UNRWA enables Palestinians to pass their refugee status to each generation which they see as an existential threat.
Activists protest against UNRWA outside its offices in Jerusalem, March 27, 2024 [photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90]
In the months after the Hamas attack that saw 1,200 people killed (with a still unknown number by Israeli counter-fire) and 255 taken back to Gaza as hostages, the Israeli government accused some of UNRWA’s employees of collaborating with Hamas in the attack. The claim was devastating and led to the United States freezing funding for the agency, with 17 other countries joining the Americans in suspending their support just as UNRWA was grappling with the massive humanitarian crisis, the worst in its history, that the war was creating. With the exception of the US - which provided roughly 30 % of the UNRWA budget in 2023 and historically was its biggest donor - every other country that had halted funding resumed its support once a UN investigation found that Israeli authorities had not provided “any supportive evidence” to back up its allegations of UNRWA links to Hamas.
The Netanyahu government’s efforts to evict UNRWA if successful would further worsen the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza with the potential to cause a second catastrophe in the already besieged Occupied West Bank. In Gaza UNRWA would be unable to provide shelter, food, and healthcare to people in need. Children there would lose their chance of ever returning to school. "It is part of a broader campaign to dismantle the Agency, seeks to strip Palestinians from their refugee status, and change – unilaterally – the parameters for a future political solution,” said UNRWA’s head Philippe Lazzarini in a UN Security Council briefing. But even with these efforts to dismantle UNRWA, the right of return for Palestinian refugees is still enshrined in international law, including UN Resolution 194.
The legislation also hamstrings UNRWA’s ability to provide services. For example, UNRWA is currently a key part of the ongoing vaccination campaign amid the polio epidemic in Gaza. Should the legislation become law Israel, as the occupying force, would be responsible for the remainder of the campaign something it is highly unlikely the IDF would undertake.
More generally, the legislation would set a dangerous precedent for international law, as it violates Israel’s obligation under the UN Charter to which it is a member state. In other conflicts governments may cite the Israel precedent and call to eliminate any UN presence that proves to be against their interests further weakening the organisation.
The Knesset winter session begins on 28 October where it is anticipated the bills will become law with consequences that will further immiserate the Palestinian people as Israel continues to show its disdain for international norms and the rule of law.
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Thursday, October 24, 2024
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Tareq S. Hajjaj (@Tareqshajjaj) / X Guest Post - The Struggle Never Ends
Tareq S. Hajjaj (@Tareqshajjaj) / X
The struggle never ends
Palestinians mourn relatives killed by Israeli attacks at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza on October 11, 2024. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Filed by Tareq Hajjaj
I have been writing ever since I was a child in school. I wrote short plays on national occasions like Land Day and Independence Day about the suffering of Palestinians. When I was 13, I wrote a play about a martyr. In one act, his family is saying goodbye to him as he is wrapped in a Palestinian flag and a black-and-white keffiyeh covers his head. His mother cries shortly after he is buried in her home, screaming that her son was murdered by Israeli soldiers in cold blood.
The funeral procession turns into a march as they make their way to the cemetery, and the crowds chant in fervent unison, repeating phrases of heroism and martyrdom.
“Rest, rest, our martyr. We will continue the struggle.”
يا شهيد ارتاح ارتاح واحنا نواصل الكفاح
The scene was not the product of my imagination, but of what I’ve seen my entire life, the dozens of martyrs who parted with their loved ones and were sent off to their final resting place from their homes.
The mothers and sisters who sent off their martyred loved ones with ululations that typically accompany weddings and joyous occasions surprised me when I was young. I couldn’t understand why one would rejoice at the death of their beloved. But one time, my mother went to offer her condolences to our neighbor whose son was martyred. I was young, and she took me with her. My mother sat next to Umm Shadi, the martyr’s mother, and told her about how her son Fadi was a sweet boy and that he had always brought my mother the best pigeons to raise on the roof of our house. At that moment, Umm Shadi burst into tears that did not stop the entire visit.
I knew that behind the walls of strength and power that the families of the martyrs show, there is an ocean of sadness over their loss. But I did not understand at the time that we Palestinians lived in a totally abnormal reality.
Palestinian novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah wrote about this in his novel, Safe Weddings, offering us an explanation of why we engage in ululations of joy on the worst days of our lives:
“Those who force us to rejoice at the funerals of our martyrs are their killers. We rejoice aloud so as not to give them, even for a moment, the illusion that they defeated us. I will remind you that after we are liberated, if we live to see it, we will cry long! We will mourn those at whose funerals we were forced to rejoice…We are not heroes, no, I’ve thought about it at length. I’ve told myself; we are not heroes, but heroes we have been forced to become.”
Throughout my entire life, the scenes of martyrs’ funerals, the bombing of homes, the burning of houses, the bulldozing of farmers’ lands, and the transformation of citrus orchards into Israeli military sites never stopped.
Writing for school at that time was the only window of freedom through which I could breathe a sigh of relief. I wrote about what I saw — sometimes as it was, and sometimes as I would like to see it.
But after the war of extermination reminded all Palestinians that the genocide would not stop, I could no longer write about things as I wanted them to be. All I could do was bear witness to the horror around me, first from up close, and now from exile as northern Gaza is being exterminated and wiped out. I watch on in disbelief as the massacres in Jabalia, in Beit Lahia, in Beit Hanoun exceed the horrors that I experienced in the early days of the war. Children are dismembered, animals eat the decomposing bodies of martyrs, unidentified bodies arrive in trucks sent over by the Israeli authorities before being buried in mass graves. Even the bitter ululations at martyrs’ funerals are no longer possible.
When I was in Gaza during the genocide, writing was difficult. Nothing was available to me, no electricity or internet. Everyone was busy securing safety and food for their families.
But even though my circumstances did not help me, the fact that I was part of the Mondoweiss team did. I had the opportunity to document dozens of stories during the war without being able to write them.
I would sit in the car for hours, recording stories on my phone and sending them as voice notes to the team. I would tell them what was happening around me as I saw and heard it. I would walk dozens of meters and stand in the street to connect to the internet so that I could send what I recorded for the day and then read on the site what I had sent the day before.
Every time I read a story, I would cry as if I were learning about it for the first time.
I was eager to read the stories the team was preparing, and I felt proud that even in such circumstances, I could bring the stories I saw to the world through the help of my colleagues.
I have worked as a journalist for ten years, but when I started working with Mondoweiss my stories started reaching more people. Palestinian organizations began to quote my stories during their speeches before the United Nations and decision-making bodies. Now I know why they say to the martyrs, “Rest, rest, and we will continue the struggle.” All of us, no matter where we are, have been engaged in this struggle, and when we are gone there will be those who will pick it up after us.
Tareq Hajjaj, Gaza Correspondent
Tareq Hajjaj, Gaza Correspondent
Articles / X
[Salon] Sudan is starving - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Sudan is starving
Summary: as Sudan’s forgotten civil war drags on its people are caught between two rival generals in a catastrophic situation that has seen millions displaced and millions more facing famine.
While the world’s attention remains fixed on Israel’s ever-expanding war in Lebanon and further killings of civilians in Gaza another war receives only fleeting consideration. Sudan’s civil war being fought between two generals has brought the country of 50 million to its knees. The figures are staggering: between 7 and 10 million displaced both internally and externally, 1.5 million facing starvation, 25 million in dire need of humanitarian assistance and much of the capital Khartoum in ruin.
Efforts to end the war have consistently failed with the two belligerents - Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – each believing that he can better the other through a military conquest that takes no heed of civilians.
Both sides stand accused of committing war crimes. Both sides have powerful international backers. In Hemedti’s case it is the United Arab Emirates while General Burhan is backed by Egypt.
One of the cruel ironies of this war was brought to light in an investigation this past summer by the NGO GRAIN which describes itself as working on behalf of “small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.”
1.5 million people are facing starvation in Sudan [photo credit: Norwegian Refugee Council]
The report focussed on the UAE’s growing power in the global food system. The Emiratis have been involved for more than two decades in efforts to ensure food security for their small and wealthy Gulf state. That quest led them into Africa where they reportedly have 14 land acquisitions in progress and 56 deals already done. One was signed with Sudan as early as the mid-70s and the country remains a high priority target for further land acquisitions.
As the report notes:
In the pursuit of its own food security, the UAE, like other Gulf states, has been getting control of land to develop farm operations in Sudan. Right now, two Emirati firms –International Holding Company (IHC), the country’s largest listed corporation, and Jenaan – are farming over 50,000 hectares there. In 2022, a deal was signed between IHC and the DAL group – owned by one of Sudan’s wealthiest tycoons – to develop an additional 162,000 ha of farmland in Abu Hamad, in the north. This massive farm project, backed by the UAE government, will connect to a brand-new port on the coast of Sudan to be built and operated by the Abu Dhabi Ports Group. The economic stakes around this project are mammoth. But so are the political ones. The current port of Sudan, which the project will completely bypass, is run by the Sudanese government.
The deal worth US$ 6 billion will see the Abu Amama port built north of the Port of Sudan and will include an industrial zone, an international airport, and the agricultural land in Abu Hamad. The deal was signed before the civil war broke out so it is still nominally under the aegis of the government. But the UAE continues to arm Hemedti’s RSF and is heavily invested in him emerging as the winner.
He already has extensive engagements with the Emiratis through the gold trade. Almost all of Africa’s gold both legal and smuggled is transited through the Emirates. Hemedti’s family control the Jebel Amer gold mines in Darfur where soldiers under his command carried out massacres from 2003 -2005 that have been recognised as genocidal. The RSF is carrying out similar massacres today.
As the GRAIN investigation notes the Abu Amama port project is a partnership between the Abu Dhabi ruling family and Sudan’s wealthiest businessman Osama Daoud Abdellatif the founder and chairman of the DAL group. The conglomerate has five divisions including DAL Agriculture and DAL Food.
The new port will see no expense spared in building a state of the art facility, one that will provide intense and potentially lethal competition to Port of Sudan: a win for Hemedti, Abdellatif and the Emiratis and a blow to al-Burhan and his backers. Thus while the people of Sudan are already plunged into food insecurity and famine as the two generals battle for power one of the key outside players in the civil war is busy achieving food security for itself while it enables the war to continue. The GRAIN investigation ends with these words:
The mass starvation being waged in Sudan should be a terrible reminder of why agricultural land deals meshed with geopolitical agendas must end. It’s time to call the UAE, and its allies, to account.
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