Gaza health horror: Pregnancy is now a life-threatening condition / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Targeting moms and moms-to-be: Palestinian paramedics inspect damage in the patient rooms caused by Israeli strikes on the maternity ward at Nasser Hospital in the town of Khan Younis, Gaza, Dec. 17, 2023. | Mohammed Dahman / AP}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

U.S. laws require healthcare practitioners and anyone else who suspects they may have encountered a case of child abuse to report it to “the state.” But what is one to do when it is the state itself that’s doing the abusing?

The Lancet medical journal, published in Britain and read throughout the world, recently condemned the Israeli state and the “ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza” for causing “an unprecedented rise in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and stillbirths.”

Lancet asserts that the “violence is not just a consequence of the military assault—it is a deliberate outcome of policies that restrict access to health care.” And a “blockade, now in its second decade, and ever-tightened over the last few months, has compounded the suffering, with dire implications for future generations.”

Lancet’s report refers to “humanitarian catastrophe…the onset of famine…deterioration of maternal health services…[and the] near-total collapse of the health-care infrastructure.” It points to “a tragic surge in preventable maternal and neonatal deaths.”

Lancet adds that:

“Prenatal care is virtually non-existent in Gaza. The rise in premature labor is staggering, often triggered by the chronic stress of displacement, malnutrition, and the trauma of witnessing air strikes. As hospitals struggle to keep up with mass casualties, maternity wards are becoming non-functional. In some cases, women have had to deliver babies outside, in unsanitary conditions, without the assistance of midwives or doctors.”

The “targeting of maternity hospitals and the blockade that limits essential medical supplies…from entering Gaza have turned pregnancy into a life-threatening condition for thousands of women.”

Women “are forced to carry pregnancies through conditions unfathomable to the human conscience.” The report cites “malnutrition… a profound moral failure of the international community…[and] violation of international law.”

“Humanitarian principles dictate that civilians, particularly children and pregnant women, must be protected,” the report states. Moreover: “The world cannot remain silent any longer. The time for action is now—to restore access to health care, to protect women and children, and to uphold the sanctity of life.”

The enabling role of Israel’s partner in crime receives no mention. The United States supplies the tools for killing—the bombs, guns, ammunition, and planes.

Citing mothers, nurses and physicians, Gaza journalist Taghreed Ali points out that expectant mothers are experiencing more miscarriages, premature deliveries, and stillborn births than before. He notes an increased incidence of newborns born with congenital abnormalities.

These include deformed or absent limbs; neurologic malformations, especially hydrocephalus; cardiac defects; and digestive problems. Possible causes, according to experts whom he consulted, include:

malnutrition of mothers; no pre-natal care; stress provoked by the bombings, shooting, and forced moves to new localities; gases produced by explosions; self-administration of inappropriate medicines necessitated by the absence of care; and inhalation of dust from explosions and collapsed buildings. Ali tells of expectant mothers buried in rubble for hours and later giving birth to babies who died or were malformed.

In this war and earlier Gaza wars, Israel’s military violates international humanitarian law by using artillery shells containing white prosperous. A pregnant woman exposed to this incendiary agent risks delivering a baby with congenital abnormalities, according to Lancet.

Aggravating the lack of care for sick or malformed babies has been the denial of access to specialty services outside of Gaza. Israel continues with its lockdown of Gaza’s borders.

The Israeli state’s trashing of healthcare in Gaza parallels the sorry state of healthcare fostered by governments in power in the United States. Israeli and U.S. political leaders share an easy tolerance of preventable dying.

In his recent comprehensive analysis, reporter Peter Dolack asserts that U.S. healthcare “is by far the world’s most expensive while providing the worst results among the world’s advanced capitalist countries.” The system is “designed to extract maximum profits rather than deliver health care.” U.S. residents “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths…. More than 26,000 die in the United States yearly because of a lack of health insurance.”

Powerbrokers in both countries are dismissive, it seems, of healthcare for the poor, marginalized, and forgotten, and of their health. Such evident cruelty betokens an oppression that is widespread in both situations. Meanwhile, both leadership classes shore up power and privileges. This is one area of struggle.

According to academic Jason Hickel, “A liberated Middle East means capitalism in the core really faces a crisis, and they will not let that happen, and they’re unleashing the full violence of their extraordinary power to ensure it doesn’t.”

According to Lenin (State and Revolution), “The state is a special organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class.”

It’s a frame of mind that, reasonably enough, would have the victims of oppression in both the Middle East and United States casting about for ways for their own class to achieve political power.

Meanwhile, the Communists of Palestine and Israel, and their allies, meeting virtually on Oct. 7, agreed that, “Only by establishing a sovereign Palestinian state will there be peace and stability in the region.” Beyond self-determination, they also called for cessation of the siege on Gaza and the relief of suffering.

_{We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!}

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, and lives in rural Maine.}

Ending the Gaza healthcare horror (and the US one) requires working class power / by W. T. Whitney

_{^{The infant intensive care unit of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Image: Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu via Getty Images}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

U.S. laws require healthcare practitioners and anyone else to report to “the state” their suspicion of abuse of any child they’ve encountered. But the state abuses too.

The Lancet medical journal, published in Great Britain and read throughout the world, recently condemned the Israeli state and the “ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza” for causing “an unprecedented rise in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and stillbirths.”

Lancet asserts that the “violence is not just a consequence of the military assault—it is a deliberate outcome of policies that restrict access to health care.” And a “blockade, now in its second decade, and ever-tightened over the last few months, has compounded the suffering, with dire implications for future generations.”

Lancet’s report refers to “humanitarian catastrophe … the onset of famine … deterioration of maternal health services … [and the] near-total collapse of the health-care infrastructure.” It points to “a tragic surge in preventable maternal and neonatal deaths.”

Lancet adds that:

“Prenatal care is virtually non-existent in Gaza. The rise in premature labor is staggering, often triggered by the chronic stress of displacement, malnutrition, and the trauma of witnessing air strikes. As hospitals struggle to keep up with mass casualties, maternity wards are becoming non-functional. In some cases, women have had to deliver babies outside, in unsanitary conditions, without the assistance of midwives or doctors.”

The “targeting of maternity hospitals and the blockade that limits essential medical supplies … from entering Gaza have turned pregnancy into a life-threatening condition for thousands of women.”

Women “are forced to carry pregnancies through conditions unfathomable to the human conscience.” The report cites malnutrition … a profound moral failure of the international community … [and] violation of international law.” “Humanitarian principles dictate that civilians, particularly children and pregnant women, must be protected,” the report states. Moreover, “The world cannot remain silent any longer. The time for action is now—to restore access to health care, to protect women and children, and to uphold the sanctity of life.”

The enabling role of Israel’s partner in crime receives no mention. The United States supplies the tools for killing – the bombs, guns, ammunition, and planes.

These include deformed or absent limbs; neurologic malformations, especially hydrocephalus; cardiac defects; and digestive problems. Possible causes, according to experts whom he consulted, include:

Aggravating the lack of care for sick or malformed babies has been the denial of access to specialty services outside of Gaza. Israel continues with its lockdown of Gaza’s borders.

In his recent comprehensive analysis, reporter Peter Dolack asserts that U.S. healthcare “is by far the world’s most expensive while providing the worst results among the world’s advanced capitalist countries.” The system is “designed to extract maximum profits rather than deliver health care.” U.S. residents “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths … More than 26,000 die in the United States yearly because of a lack of health insurance.”

Another is the decades-long striving of Palestinians to restore land and liberty. Any headway with struggle along such lines promises to fire up oppressed peoples throughout the Middle East – and not so much minders of the region’s status quo. According to academician Jason Hickel, “A liberated Middle East means capitalism in the core really faces a crisis, and they will not let that happen, and they’re unleashing the full violence of their extraordinary power to ensure it doesn’t.”

Under these circumstances, Israeli and U.S. strategists are looking ahead and seeking to waylay progressive change, while tuning into their counter-revolutionary instincts. They apparently have latched onto a notion of power put forth earlier by one of their ideological enemies. According to Lenin (State and Revolution), “The state is a special organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the suppression of some class”.

It’s a frame of mind that, reasonably enough, would have the victims of oppression in both the Middle East and United States casting about for ways for their own class to achieve political power.

Meanwhile, the Communist Parties of Palestine and Israel, and their allies, meeting virtually on October 7, agreed that, “Only by establishing a sovereign Palestinian state will there be peace and stability in the region.” Beyond self-determination, they also called for cessation of the siege on Gaza and the relief of suffering.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

How US imperialism causes death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon / By W. T. Whitney

_{^{Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, as seen from Tyre, southern Lebanon on 23 September, 2024 (Reuters)}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

The Israeli military’s horrendous massacres in Gaza extend now to Lebanon. Housing, schools, and hospitals are destroyed. Residents of Northern Gaza are being herded south, again. People starve. The U.S. government supplies the bombs, planes, and weapons.

The war’s continuation relates to U.S. strategic interests in the region and U.S. pretensions to world domination. War and humanitarian catastrophe will end with stopping U.S. assistance. Some of the war’s critics present views and emphases that distract and offer little toward ending it.

They commonly ascribe the carnage to the expansionist nature of Zionism. For a century and more, Zionism has indeed visited grief and loss upon Palestinians. But criticizing that record is more likely to reinforce intransigence than alter the course of events.

Highlighting unprecedented humanitarian disaster will not by itself stop the killing, or bring about repair. It needs to be the object of international consensus and cooperation, as mediated through the United Nations. Underfunding and Security Council vetoes are impediments.

Peace advocates may insist that the more humanitarian norms are violated, the more impactful moral, legal, and/or ethical criticism will be and the more telling will be personal witness or civil disobedience. Without mass pressure to accompany expectations, they become wishful thinking.

The war won’t end just because the war should end. It continues as long as vital interests are being served. Israel’s interests are her own. Criticism from afar is likely ineffectual. U.S. interests do warrant attention, because the war serves U.S. purposes.

According to peoplesworld.org, “Israel is completely dependent on the U.S. It would be incapable of carrying out its campaigns of aggression without U.S. help.”

The United States is bound to Israel. The two major political parties support military aid for Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress on July 24 to rapturous applause. The U.S. tie to Isreal is worth a lot.

U.S. commitment to Israel, and to assisting with Israel’s war, is measured in money: $251.2 billion (adjusted for inflation) in military aid to Israel during 66 years, $18 billion in the year prior to October 2024, and $20 billion approved by President Biden in August 2024 and being voted on in Congress in November. These are funds “that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.”

Commitment is such that U.S. military aid flows despite the Leahy Act (1997) requirement to “vet any foreign military unit to ensure it has a clean human rights record before it can receive U.S. assistance.”

Support for Israel is a crucial part of U.S. strategy for the entire Middle East. That strategy is one aspect of U.S. plans for arranging international affairs to its liking. U.S. backing of Israel and its war coincides with U.S. imperialist purposes.

Formerly, U.S. reactions to the Holocaust were foremost in determining U.S. support for a Jewish state. Later, relations with Israel took on an additional transactional aspect. The U.S. government would indeed support Israel’s dealings with Palestinians. But Israel would facilitate U.S. policy objectives for the Middle East.

They are: control and supervision of the region’s production and distribution of oil and natural gas, maintenance of the Middle East role as “transit hub connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa,” military force ready to intervene against so-called terrorism, and pushback against “the influence of rival great powers.”

There are other favors. Israel serves as proxy warrior for the United States, for example, in Syria and Iraq, and in the UN General Assembly provides a yearly vote for the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba (there’s usually only one other such vote).

Israel furnishes U.S. rightwing allies in Latin America with military aid, training and equipment. Israel offers attractions: a proposed canal through the Negev Desert bypassing Egypt and offshore deposits of oil and natural gas.

A side note: money is also the measure of U.S. commitment to imperialism. Because imperialism involves conflict, military capabilities are crucial, and they cost. Overall U.S. military spending is exorbitant, dwarfing outlay for the U.S. population’s social needs. In the government’s discretionary budget for fiscal year 2023, military funding amounted to 62% of the $1.8 trillion total; 38% sufficed for everything else, including housing, education, healthcare, and restoration of infrastructure.

Another side note: unfathomable human suffering will not likely deter United States from enabling Israeli massacres in Gaza. The U.S. government has returned to a nuclear arms race. Doing so signals tolerance for the worst kind of catastrophe. According to the New York Times: “General Dynamics will have “produced 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion … [and] the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its [nuclear] arsenal.”

The U.S. government, with Israel’s help, pursues a new kind of imperialism. Distant from enslaved labor, die-offs of indigenous peoples, and occupation of foreign territories, it relies on debt dependency and cheap labor. Under neoliberalism, wealth is still being drained from the world’s peripheral regions to metropolitan centers.

Conflict remains. Rival powers are ever threatening, and the United States needs a hard-boiled and militarily competent factotum at its side. The U.S. government pays in-kind, with bombs, guns, planes and missiles.

Neither war nor U.S. weaponization of Israel will end soon. What happens will depend on priorities serving U.S. imperialism. U.S. young people and others actively demanding justice for Palestinians would do well, it seems, to prepare themselves for the long haul. They are looking at U.S. imperialism now and would come to understand its origins and know what needs to be done.

They would learn, first, that capitalism consolidated, turned aggressive, and then thrust modern-day imperialism upon the world. They would study worker exploitation and how it led to the profit-taking abundance fueling the growth of capitalism. They would explore division by social class, the necessary condition for exploitation.

Others, socialists in particular, reversed this sequence, and it doesn’t matter. Beginning with Marx and Engels’ reflections on the factory system under capitalism, they learned that workers lose out on the surplus value of the labor they provide. The inquirers became familiar with labor mobilizations and working-class struggles for political power. They arrived at Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), a study of capitalists monopolizing and making war.

Bernard Lown’s political activism and medical achievements are celebrated in Maine / by W. T. Whitney

_{^{Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Bernard Lown was honored June 7 in Lewiston, Maine. The place was the massive Bates Mill, the former workplace for migrants mostly from Quebec who made textiles. The minting of the “American Innovation $1 Coin” in Lown’s honor had been announced in May. It was Lown’s birthday; he was born in Lithuania in 1921 and died in 2021.

The occasion featured the unveiling of a portrait of Lown painted by Robert Shetterly. Lown joins others honored by Shetterly in the series of portraits he calls “Americans Who Speak the Truth” (AWTT).

The event, attended by the writer, offered ample recognition of Bernard Lown’s medical accomplishments and his dedication to collective struggle for justice. A prime concern here is that celebration of Lown’s successes may have obscured how and why Lown did engage with the mass social and political movements of his era. Insight on that score may contribute to an understanding of how individuals now might involve themselves in big political and social catastrophes of our own time.

Maine-resident Shetterly explained to the gathering that individuals being honored through his portraits were, or are, heroes who exemplify creativity, courage, and/or passion for justice. Exhibitions of Shetterly’s portraits and educational programs based on his subjects have circulated throughout the country.

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Murphy, reported that Lown participated in and provided support for programs of the University’s Honors College. Doug Rawlings, a founder of the Veterans for Peace organization and head of its Maine chapter, praised Lown as an inspiration for peace advocacy.

Lown had strong connections with Maine. He arrived in Lewiston in 1935, attended high school there – at first not speaking English – and studied at the University of Maine. City officials of Lewiston and Auburn in 1988 renamed a bridge connecting the cities as the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge. Maine VFP staged a rededication of the Peace Bridge to Bernard Lown on the 2022 anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

Lown’s accomplishments were many: invention and introduction of the DC cardiac defibrillator (he chose not to apply for a patent), introduction of hospital cardiac care units, establishing that sick cardiac patients remain active, and urging physicians to be caring and empathetic with patients.

He founded the group Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1961.With Soviet cardiologist Evgeni Chazov, he founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1980. In 1985 they won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lown became politically engaged with mass movements early, on the side of working people, and against headwinds.

He and his family had confronted the Hitlerite danger in Lithuania. High-school student Lown, according to AWTT, “was outraged at the sight of policemen arresting the unconscious, bleeding striker, while allowing his strike-breaking assailant walk free. Lown jeopardized his relationship with his family and joined the striking workers …The striking French-Canadian workers were accused of being part of an international communist conspiracy.”

This was the Lewiston–Auburn shoe strike of 1937. The Maine Army National Guard was called out. There was confrontation between strikers and police on what is now the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge.

Lown was briefly expelled from Johns Hopkins Medical School for violating the rule that no sick white person would receive a Black donor’s blood. He earned a suspension for inviting a Black physician to speak at the medical school.

He belonged to the Association of Internes and Medical Students (AIMS), a U.S. organization associated with the International Union of Students (IUS). Soviet Bloc students were members of the IUS, which weighed in on post-war peace, anticolonialism and more. In 1947 Lown wrote “an effusive write-up of IUS’s founding” in the AIMS magazine The Interne.

Lown, an officer with the U.S. Army Reserve, was called up for the Korean War. He defied the requirement that he indicate political affiliations. The Army allowed him an honorable discharge and drafted him as a private. He recalled that after receiving an undesirable discharge in 1954, “I was without a job and couldn’t get a job …wherever I’d go the FBI was one jump ahead.”

Then, reports the Harvard Crimson, “[Frederick] Stare, [nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health,] won notoriety for hiring … [Lown] who had been accused of holding communist sympathies.”

Lown’s attitude toward Cuba is revealing. He told an interviewer that, ““I have been to Cuba six times and learned much about doctoring in Cuba … If impoverished Cuba can provide first-class health care for its people so can other developing countries. Perhaps it is even possible for rich USA, if only it ceases viewing medicine as a marketable commodity.”

To return to the question posed at the start here: how do citizens focusing on their own lives and their own reactions to political happenings become part of mass movements the way Bernard Lown did? Do they identify as members of a social class?

New York Times columnist David Brooks, remarkably, seems qualified to explain. The U.S. mainstream media barely acknowledges the existence of social class. For a representative writer actually to examine the origins of class consciousness suggests he may know something.

Brooks stated recently that, “students at elite universities have different interests and concerns than students at less privileged places,” also that “the elite universities are places that attract and produce progressives.” Therefore, “American adults who identify as very progressive skew white, well-educated and urban and hail from relatively advantaged backgrounds.”

(We hold back on critiquing Brooks’ notion of “very progressive” and his idea that working-class and oppressed people are unlikely to identify as such.)

Brooks, continuing, cites an authority who argues that, “[J]ust as economic capitalists use their resource — wealth — to amass prestige and power, people who form the educated class and the cultural elite … use … resources — beliefs, fancy degrees, linguistic abilities — to amass prestige, power and … money.” Brooks, presuming that the excluded may be resentful, envisions “a multiracial, multiprong, right/left alliance against the educated class.”

He describes a progression: individuals experience their own political awakenings, realize their perceptions are shared, and think of themselves as a larger whole. He pictures two sets of people, two social classes, who find they are at odds with each other. He provides a roadmap of sorts showing that politically-engaged individuals, in large numbers, may well become part of mass political and social movements.

In any case, Bernard Lown, involved with struggles that continue now, lauded for achievements that were extraordinary, does matter, and not least for the model he is now of dedicated political engagement.

U.S. military appears to favor Israeli plan for permanent Gaza occupation / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Israeli soldiers eye their targets at the Israel-Gaza border on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. | AP}}

_{Reposted from the People’s World}

Nearly 20,000 Gaza civilians, mostly children and women, have died from bombs and gunfire in Israel’s war so far. Many more will be dying soon from lack of medical care, food, water, and the spread of infectious diseases. Healthcare and social service facilities—along with the homes of a million or more—have been reduced to rubble.

The U.S. government provides the support for all of this to happen, as it continues to financially and militarily back Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for the latter’s attacks of Oct. 7.

Prospects for Gazans who survive the war are grim, or worse. The families of many are gone, and international aid agencies have mostly disappeared. Dire shortages of necessities are on the horizon. Repairing the physical damage won’t happen anytime soon, and Israeli settlers are already eyeing prime Gaza lands.

_{With humanitarian disaster on full display, Human Rights Watch points out that, “by continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities…the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes.”}

Either the charge or the fact of complicity will very likely bedevil the United States for as long as Gazan civilians are dying in large numbers or being removed to camps somewhere else and, all the while, the U.S. goes on supplying Israeli occupiers with weapons.

A recently released Israeli military analysis raises the possibility that the U.S. government courts very serious condemnation if it provides material support for a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza.

Dr. Omer Dostri, the study’s author, is associated with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Israel Defense and Security Forum. Each is oriented to Israel’s military establishment. His study appeared Nov. 7 in the Military Review, the self-described “Professional Journal of the U.S. Army.”

As reported by journalist Dan Cohen, Dostri declared on social media that, he “authored [the study] on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army’s Military Review journal.” For the Military Review’s editors to have invited Dostri’s submission suggests they already knew about and were at least tolerant of, Dostri’s iron-fist approach toward Gaza.

The author and editors alike presumably expected their respective military superiors to accept some or all of the views expressed in the paper. Perhaps, then, the two military leaderships have common ground regarding Gaza. Publication of this Israeli analysis becomes a straw in the wind as to future U.S.-Israel military collaboration on Gaza, and, on that score, to U.S. war crimes.

The title of Dostri’s article reads in part, “The End of the Deterrence Strategy in Gaza.” He notes the failure of Israeli military intelligence, Israel’s lack of combat readiness, and Hamas’s “exceptional military and professional approach.” Referring to Israel’s “disregard for the fundamentalist religious dimension of Hamas as an extreme Islamic terrorist organization,” he diagnoses faulty “political perception”

Dostri reviews options for control of Gaza following the envisioned defeat of Hamas. They are: a local Gazan administration, the Palestinian Authority taking charge, a mandate exercised by another government or an international agency, or occupation and governance by Israel’s military. He favors the latter, “from a security perspective.”

The main reason for establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza, he states, is that “seizing and securing land constitutes a more substantial blow to radical Islamist terror groups than the elimination of terrorist operatives and high-ranking leaders.”

Summarizing, Dostri indicates that:

“[A] robust ground campaign in the Gaza Strip, encompassing the occupation of territories, the creation of new Israeli settlements, and the voluntary relocation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Egypt with no option for return will greatly fortify Israeli deterrence and project influence throughout the entire Middle East.”

Dostri examines Israel’s conduct in the ongoing Gaza war. He calls for a military strategy aimed at securing “a swift surrender of the enemy” that would allow “political maneuverability to make decisions.” The goal “is to defeat Hamas and assume control of the Gaza Strip for the benefit of future generations.”

Israel, he says though, runs “the risk of a multifront war.” Planners are “in the process of altering…policy and military strategy, not only concerning Gaza but also across other fronts.” The Gaza experience is instructive: “Successive Israeli governments…regarded Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate governing entity that could be managed and engaged through diplomatic and economic means. Not anymore.”

Now “Israel should shift from a strategy of deterrence…[to a] strategy of unwavering decisiveness and victory.” In particular, “Israel will have no choice but to invade Lebanon and defeat Hezbollah.” In addition, “Israel cannot afford to allow the Houthis [in Yemen] to significantly bolster their military strength over time.”

U.S. political leaders for the most part have yet to weigh in on the fate of Gazan civilians in the post-war period. Dostri’s view of Gaza’s future, seemingly acceptable, more or less, to the militaries of the two countries, leaves no room for the niceties of civilians being abused and dying as part of the coming occupation.

By Dec. 1, the U.S. Congress was considering a proposal for assisting Israeli forces as they clear Gaza of Gazans: Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and Iraq would receive U.S. monetary support for taking in Gazans fleeing from Israeli attacks.

_{The next day, however, Vice President Kamala Harris indicated that “Under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.”}

At issue for U.S. policymakers are competing realities: the suffering of Gaza civilians, obligations to U.S. ally Israel, the prospect of a region-wide war, and the control of oil, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

Reporting on counterpunch.org, Charlotte Dennett cites “oil and natural gas, discovered off the coast of Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon in 2000 and 2010 and estimated to be worth $500 billion.” The Palestinians in 2000 claimed that the “gas fields…belonged to them.”

Yasser Arafat, the then-President of the Palestinian National Authority, “learned they could provide $1 billion in badly needed revenue. For him, this [was] a Gift of God for our people and a strong foundation for a Palestinian state.”

Dennett adds that “In December 2010, prospectors discovered a much larger gas field off the Israeli coast, dubbed Leviathan.” In addition, “work has already begun on…the so-called Ben Gurion Canal, from the tip of northern Gaza south into the Gulf of Aqaba, connecting Israel to the Red Sea and providing a competitor to Egypt’s Suez Canal.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to “convince international lenders to support his long-held scheme of turning Israel into an energy corridor.”

With such riches at stake, does anyone really believe that a truly free Palestinian state will be allowed to come into existence?

_{We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!}

How Skewed Access to Land Has Fostered War in Gaza / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{This infographic is by visualizing Palestine. It is published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED. Fair use.}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

The humanitarian disaster of war in Gaza shows in both the wreckage of hospitals and the dying in and around hospitals. The need, said Dr. Hammam Alloh, an internist, is “First, we need this war to end, because we are real humans … We have the right to live freely.”

Healthcare workers at Al-Shifa hospital buried over 180 dead patients. Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert reported that, “Twenty out of the 23 ICU patients had died. Seventeen other patients died because of lack of supplies, oxygen and water. And three, if not five, of the 38 premature newborns have died because of this slow suffocation.”

Asked why he remains at Al-Shifa Hospital, despite the invaders’ orders to leave, Dr. Alloh explained that he didn’t choose to be a physician “to think only about my life and not my patients.” And, “who treats my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper healthcare.” Alloh subsequently died from a bomb attack on his living quarters.

Expressions of outrage have circulated widely in the independent media. World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the UN General Assembly that, “You must act and you must act now … there are no words to describe the horror.”

The plight of Dr. Shadi Issam Radi is appalling. He is standing in a corridor of the hospital during his interview. Two little children are at his side. “I have worked in the intensive care department for seven years,” he says. “My wife was killed while I was working. I am obliged to bring the children with me. I am still working. Thank God for everything.”

Condemnations and revulsion are not enough. Fixation on the dire situation of the Gaza doctors contributes little to ending the war, just as treating the symptoms of sick people doesn’t cure them. But knowing about cause helps to achieve peace and to find curative treatments.

The plan here is to go scientific, to investigate a historical reality that, having fostered relations mired in lethal conflict, may someday usher in more promising realities.

The Palestinian people’s circumstances for living and for communal existence have long been unsustainable. Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal recently explained why that is so:

“[W]ar between Palestine and Israel … is not a war around religion or between faiths or gods. It’s a war for that which is no longer being produced — land … The Palestinians are the Indigenous people of the region. They are thus equivalent to the Navajo, Apache and Seminoles of the West.”

Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan in 1956 spoke about land and the fight for land:

“What can we say against [the Palestinians’] terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home … Without the steel helmet and the cannon’s maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home.”

Immigrants who were part of the Zionist movement, whose mission was to form a Jewish state, began to arrive in Palestine in the earliest years of the 20^th century, mostly from Europe. A burgeoning population needed land for sustenance, land with its topsoil, vegetation, crops, trees, space for living, and access to water in rivers, springs, and aquifers.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe estimates that during the 400-year period of Ottoman rule, from 1517 on, Jewish people made up only two to five percent of the region’s population. A census in 1878 showed that 87% of inhabitants were Muslim, 10% Christian, and 3% Jewish.

Zionist publicists have portrayed pre-immigration Palestine as a “desert,” empty of people. However, Pappe indicates that in the 18^th century, “[T]he coastal network of ports and towns boomed through its trade connections with Europe, while the inner plains traded inland with nearby regions.” Palestine “was part of a rich and fertile eastern Mediterranean world that in the 19th century underwent processes of modernization and nationalization. It … was a pastoral country on the verge of entering the 20th century as a modern society.”

He adds that, “By 1945, Zionism had attracted more than half a million settlers to a country whose population was about 2 million …The settlers’ only way of expanding their hold on the land…and of ensuring an exclusive demographic majority was to remove the natives from their homeland.”

Antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere stimulated emigration to Palestine, more so after the Holocaust and Israel’s formation. That government in 1950 instituted its Law of Return which grants “every Jew in the world” the right to settle in Israel.

British rule over Palestine from 1920 to 1948, under a League of Nations “Mandate,” fit with imperialist ambitions, according to Pappe. The United States and France would be joining Britain in a joint venture with the new Israeli state to control the region and assure access to oil and gas. Likely expectations were that Israel would become powerful and its population would grow. Absorption of Palestinian land was part of the package.

In 1945, 84.7% of cultivatable land in Palestine was “Arab-owned.” The “newly established Israeli [military] forces in 1948 launched a major offensive” after Israel declared its independent statehood and after the surrounding Arab nations attacked. This was the setting for the “Nakba” (catastrophe); hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from homes and land.

According to one report (Journal of Palestine Studies,1979), “Israel thus began its life with a vast stock of abandoned farmland and in the early years of statehood, when immigrants were pouring in, this land was ‘reclaimed’ for agriculture at an impressive rate. In the four-year period from 1948-49 to 1952-53, the physical area under cultivation in Israel almost doubled.”

Moreover, “About 80 percent, and probably more, of the 2,185,000 dunums (539,925 acres) brought into cultivation since 1948 thus constitutes farmland belonging to the Palestinian refugees.”

A study appearing in 2000 reports on the shrinking of agricultural acreage due to Israeli occupations: “The loss of large stretches of agricultural land, after 1967, due to land confiscation and closures, and limitations on water supply and product markets, has led to a substantial decline in the production of this sector.”

Ultimately, the reality of reduced access to land has left Palestinians with precarious living conditions and has forced them into a toxic relationship with Israel. An accompanying reality is that the international community’s arrangements for the partition of Palestine in 1947, and for enforcement, were flawed.

Other troublesome real-life phenomena include: competing Palestinian claims to oil and gas deposits off-shore and in the West Bank, and the continuous, death-dealing supply of U.S. weaponry to Israel.

Meanwhile, appeals to international law, moral principles, human rights, and common decency don’t move the mountain. The conflict continues. Personal or collective grief at the suffering and deaths of the Gaza doctors and their patients has little impact.

Gaza Healthcare Workers Refuse Israeli Orders to Evacuate Hospitals / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Photo credit: Ministry of Health, Occupied Palestinian territory}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Imagine there’s war where you live. A week of bombing has killed thousands. The enemy has ordered evacuation of all civilians in anticipation of more bombing and possibly an invasion. Everyone has to leave the hospital where you provide care – patients, nurses, doctors, even intensive care patients, babies in incubators, and bodies in the morgue. You may leave or else join fellow nurses and doctors who are determined to stay.

This is how it is at the Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia in northern Gaza. On Saturday, Oct 14, calls arrived from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) saying that the hospital must be vacated by 10 AM the next day, that it was going to be bombed.

The day before, day seven of the Israeli-Hamas war, the IDF had ordered that the entire population of northern Gaza, 1.1 million people, head to southern Gaza within 24 hours. Observers say an Israeli ground offensive is imminent.

Al Awda Hospital, established in 1997, is a general hospital and the main provider of maternity services in the northern part of Gaza. It’s a training hospital for nurses. An Israeli assault damaged the hospital in 2015.

Dr Nisreen al-Shorafa, who heads the emergency room at the hospital, received a call from the IDF. She told the official of the “inhumanity and impossibility” of moving people out of the hospital and sending them elsewhere. “We decided not to leave,” she told Aljazeera, indicating also that she had slept only ten hours in seven days. In all, 35 nurses and doctors are staying.

According to CNN, Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila “blamed Israel for killing 28 health care workers and damaging medical centers.” He indicated that a general hospital and a children’s hospital have been closed, the latter having been hit by “internationally prohibited white phosphorus bombs.”

Dr. Abdullah Al-Qishawi, head of renal diseases at the Al-Shifa Hospital, warned that some 1200 patients with kidney failure may die soon due to the lack of medications and electricity.

The Israeli military also on October 13 ordered that the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City be evacuated. The deadline of 6:00AM on October 14 was later extended to 4:00 PM. Hospital officials insist that the facility will not be emptied.

UN Condemns US Blockade as Crisis Builds in Cuba / by W. T. Whitney Jr

_{^{Cuba thanks universal support against the US blockade | Image: Prensa Latina}}

A long-running show played out in the United Nations General Assembly once more on November 3 as nations of the world for the thirtieth year voted overwhelming to approve a Cuban resolution calling for an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. The vote was 185 nations favoring the resolution, two nations opposing (The United States and Israel, as usual), and Ukraine and Brazil abstaining.

Cuba has withstood the blockade for 60 years, so long as to equal one fourth of the years of U.S. national existence. In that time, Cuba has lacked the resources and powerful allies that might have forced the U.S. government to backtrack.

Cuba instead has had to rely on ideals, high principles, and widespread consensus in its favor, epitomized by the yearly votes in the General Assembly The blockade is cruel, immoral, unfair, and illegal the under international law. Even so, an opportunistic and powerful U.S. ruling class has not budged.

The U.S. blockade will not end soon inasmuch as U.S. law assigns that task to the Congress. Another way for the blockade to go is for outcomes envisioned by U.S. State Department official Lester Mallory in April 1960 to have worked their way. The U.S. government, through the blockade, was seeking “economic dissatisfaction and hardship,” “hunger,” “desperation,” and “overthrow of government.”

Except for the last one, these policy goals are far advanced in being realized and a crisis may be at hand in Cuba.

Disruption

At a press conference on October 19, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez explained how the workings of the blockade led to those results. He noted that Cuba had suffered the loss between August 2021 and February 2022 of $3.8 billion, which “is a historical record for such a short time.” Losses over six decades amount to $154 billion. With inflation, that’s $1.391 trillion.

The U.S. government designates Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation. That means foreign companies and financial institutions face severe U. S. penalties if they handle dollars in transactions with Cuba. Dollars are the principal currency used in international monetary transactions. As a result, Cuba’s income from exports is reduced and international loans are largely unavailable.

Without much money to pay for imports, Cuba experiences shortages of food, spare parts, raw materials for drug manufacture, and all kinds of supplies and equipment. Rodriguez mentioned long lines and “anxiety among the population.” The blockade affects “every Cuban family” and the government cannot “guarantee medicines that an ill person requires.”

“Cuba can in no way … buy technologies, equipment, spare parts, digital technologies or software containing more than 10 per cent US components.” The blockade has aggravated difficulties caused by “international crises,” inflation, and lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Blockade restrictions “gravely hinder our fuel purchases by making them … [up to] 50 percent more expensive.” Electrical power generation “is going through an extremely serious situation” because of unavailable replacement parts. Blackouts bedevil Cubans every day and restoration of electrical power in hurricane-damaged Pinar del Rio has been slow.

First hand report

Richard Grassl, friend and political colleague, visited Cuba recently with his wife, who is Cuban. He recalls conversations touching on shortages, distress, and uncertainty as to who is to blame.

10/16 Talked to first cousin of wife … He told me I will learn the real Cuba this time. He says not to believe what the Cuban government says about the US blockade. There are many lies. My wife’s nephew says the economy is “nothing. Many Cubans think the blockade [itself] is secondary to issues of daily living like [shortages of] food, medicine, water and lack of opportunity because there is no money.

10/17 I asked him from where most food for Cubans comes from and about food imports. He said most food comes from Miami. [President] Diaz-Canel gets some blame for the situation.

10/18 There is not much social distancing as the times are urgent. Food, consumer goods, fuel, construction materials are very expensive. Eggs are $8USD / dozen. The exchange rate is 80 CUP / USD which is 4x higher than before Covid-19. No one talks about the blockade. The problem is scarcity of money.

10/19 I talked with a friend. He says the US has so much and we have so little. He asks why cannot there be trade? … At several bodegas and public markets, many people, perhaps hundreds, waited all day for cooking oil, rice, beans, chicken etc. at prices subsidized by government.

10/20 I talked to another cousin from Matanzas who said the economy is “on the floor”. It is very hard with little money. A round trip from Matanzas to Havana (500 km) was $500 CUP/person one way or $2000 round trip for both persons by bus.

Corruption and blockade

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro delivered wide-ranging speech on November 17, 2005 notable for his highlighting of corruption: “This country can self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself, but they can never destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.”

Similarly, President Miguel Díaz-Canel on October 26 convoked a meeting of Cuba’s Council of Ministers at which a plan was unveiled with “more than 40 directives aimed at confronting crime, corruption, and lack of social discipline.” The report appearing on the presidential website characterized the President’s remarks as “a forthright analysis of illegalities, stealing and price-gouging imposed on a population with no economic means.”

Both earlier and now, the toxic mixture of shortages of goods and money has led to stealing and lawlessness. The progression suggests that shortages of both are sufficient to exert a destabilizing effect on society. That evolution of blockade effects, which have reached crisis proportions, is consistent with how the blockade was supposed to operate.

President Díaz-Canel explained to the Council that, “neither the Party or the government can remain on the sidelines of what’s happening in society.” Therefore, “we must not allow those who neither work nor contribute, and are beyond the law, to acquire more and have more possibilities for life than do those who actually contribute. We have it backwards now and are breaking with the ideas of socialism.”

He pointed out that, “Many of these things are the result of us not attending to the powers and responsibilities assigned to our institutions.” [Corrupt activities] “take place in full view of the Party centers, the administrative institutions, and leadership bodies.”

The President asserted that anyone able to work who is not doing so is not so vulnerable as to require “welfare assistance.” In fact, “the building of socialism does not depend upon a welfare system. What we have to seek out, instead, is social transformation.”

Díaz-Canel observed that, “We don’t do away with taxes here so that the rich get richer and poorer people have less. Here, we do have taxes so that those who have more give something up so that those who have less are better off.” “That’s socialism,” he explained.

While celebrating another Cuban victory in the UN General Assembly, supporters of revolutionary Cuba, we think, ought to recognize that

the survival of Cuba’s government is now at unprecedented risk, thanks to the U.S. blockade. U.S. supporters of Cuba’s revolutionary project would do well to elevate actions of resistance against their own government to a new level, with new intensity. That’s because realities in Cuba appear to have altered, ominously so.

Already new mobilization may be underway. In the days prior to the General Assembly’s vote on November 3, dozens of rallies for ending the blockade took place in cities and towns throughout the United States (two of them in Maine, the author’s home state), with particularly big ones in Los Angeles, Portland Oregon; and New York. There, an impressive march took place between Times Square and the United Nations Plaza.