Tag: Palestinian Rights

After General Assembly Vote, UN Experts Demand All Nations Recognize Palestinian State / by Julia Conley

A long Palestinian flag is carried during a protest for Palestinian rights on June 1, 2024 in Rome, Italy | Photo: Stefano Montesi/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

“The recognition of the state of Palestine is not only a matter of historical justice with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestine people, but it is also an imperative need to achieve peace,” said a group of top rights experts.

Reposted from Common Dreams

After a United Nations General Assembly vote last month that made clearer than ever that global support for Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories is shrinking, top experts at the U.N. on Monday issued a demand for all nations to recognize Palestinian statehood and said such a move is a necessary step toward peace in the Middle East.

“All states must follow the example of 146 United Nations member states and recognize the state of Palestine and use all political and diplomatic resources at their disposal to bring about an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” said the experts as Israel’s bombardment of the blockaded enclave neared its eighth month.

Palestine’s bid to become a full member of the U.N. was supported by 143 member states on May 10, and was followed by announcements by Irish, Spanish, and Norwegian officials that the three countries now recognize the occupied Palestinian territories as a state.

Israel is now joined by just a handful of countries—mostly wealthy Western nations including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.—in refusing to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said last week that his government’s recognition of Palestinian statehood has “a single goal: to contribute to achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

“The recognition of the state of Palestine is not only a matter of historical justice with the legitimate aspirations of the [Palestinian] people, but it is also an imperative need to achieve peace,” said Sánchez.

The U.N. experts on Monday expressed agreement, saying the global recognition of a Palestinian state would be “an important acknowledgement of the rights of the Palestinian people and their struggles and suffering towards freedom and independence.”

“This is a pre-condition for lasting peace in Palestine and the entire Middle East—beginning with the immediate declaration of a cease-fire in Gaza and no further military incursions into Rafah,” said the experts, including George Katrougalos, independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order; Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; and Cecilia M. Bailliet, independent expert on human rights and international solidarity.

The experts’ statement came as the number of people forcibly displaced from Rafah, the southern Gaza city, surged past 1 million as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued its attacks there. The International Court of Justice—the top judicial body of the U.N.—ordered Israel to stop its military operations in Rafah on May 24, days before Israel killed at least 46 people by bombing a tent encampment that had been set up in a designated “humanitarian area.”

U.S. President Joe Biden last week endorsed an Israeli plan for a cease-fire in Gaza—one that was similar to a proposal made by Hamas earlier in May, which had been rejected by Israel—but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government would not agree to a permanent cease-fire until “the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities” is complete.

Netanyahu earlier this year said he would not agree to a Palestinian state, demanding control “of all territory west of the Jordan” River and reaffirming his opposition to the two-state solution that has long been the policy objective of the United States.

“A two-state solution,” said the U.N. experts, “remains the only internationally agreed path to peace and security for both Palestine and Israel and a way out of generational cycles of violence and resentment.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Israel ‘Has Gone to War Against the Entire Palestinian People’: Sanders / by Olivia Rosane

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2023 | Photo: Sen. Bernie Sanders/YouTube Screengrab

“Any objective observer knows Israel has broken international law, it has broken American law, and, in my view, Israel should not be receiving another nickle in U.S. military aid,” Sanders said.

Reposted from Common Dreams

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated his calls on Sunday for the U.S. to cut off military aid to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it continues its devastating war on Gaza.

Sanders spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in response to a U.S. State Department report released Friday, which found that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used U.S. weapons to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza but that the U.S. was “not able to reach definitive conclusions” as to whether U.S. weapons had been used in any specific incidents.

“Any objective observer knows Israel has broken international law, it has broken American law, and, in my view, Israel should not be receiving another nickle in U.S. military aid,” Sanders said.

Friday’s report came in response to National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), in which President Joe Biden tasked Secretary of State Antony Blinken with obtaining “certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments” that they use U.S. arms in line with international humanitarian law and will not “arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

The report, made to Congress, was criticized by human rights organizations who said it mischaracterized both the law and the facts in order to avoid imposing consequences on Israel for waging a war on Gaza that the International Court of Justice has determined could plausibly amount to genocide.

“The people of our country do not want to be complicit in the starvation of hundreds of thousands of children.”

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director of government relations and advocacy, called it the “international version of ‘thoughts and prayers.'” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called it “woefully inadequate” and told reporters, “If this conduct complies with international standards, God help us all.”

Speaking before Sanders on “Meet the Press,” Blinken denied that the report was an attempt to get out of holding Israel accountable.

“What the report concludes is that, based on the totality of the harm that’s been done to children, to women, to men who are caught in this crossfire of Hamas’ making, it’s reasonable to conclude that there are instances where Israel has acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” Blinken said.

He added that both Israel and the U.S. would continue to investigate those incidents.

“When we can reach definitive conclusions, we will,” Blinken said, “but it’s very difficult to do that in the midst of a war.”

In response to Blinken’s remarks, Sanders countered that “the facts are quite clear.”

He said that Hamas was a “terrible, disgusting terrorist organization” and blamed it for starting the war. But he argued that Israel’s response had been beyond disproportionate.

“What Israel has done over the last seven months is not just gone to war against Hamas—it has gone to war against the entire Palestinian people, and the results have been absolutely catastrophic,” the senator told NBC.

Sanders went on to outline some of that catastrophe: a death toll that surpassed 35,000 on Sunday, with two-thirds of the dead women and children; the destruction of around 60% of all housing; the devastation of infrastructure such a as water and sewage as well as the healthcare and education systems; and the fact that hundreds of thousands of children are now at risk of starvation.

Sanders referred to Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act: “Any country that blocks U.S. humanitarian aid is in violation of law and should not continue to receive military aid from the United States,” Sanders explained. “That is precisely what Israel has done.”

Sanders’ remarks came as Israel escalated its assault on Gaza over the weekend, issuing new evacuation orders in both Rafah and areas in the north. Biden has said that a major ground invasion into Rafah would be a “red line” and threatened to withhold certain kinds of weapons if Netanyahu ordered such an invasion, but Palestinian and human rights advocates say that Israel’s current actions in Rafah should already count as a major ground operation.

Speaking on “Meet the Press,” Blinken acknowledged that the U.S. had not seen a “credible plan” from Israel to safely evacuate the more than 1.4 million civilians sheltering in Rafah ahead of an invasion.

Sanders told NBC that he thought many Republicans and also some Democrats wanted Israel to invade Rafah, but that this was not an opinion shared by the majority of people in the U.S.

“Poll after poll suggests that the American people want an immediate cease-fire. They want massive humanitarian aid to get in,” Sanders said. “The people of our country do not want to be complicit in the starvation of hundreds of thousands of children.”

Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

The Palestinians Are the Latest Victims of Empire to Be Dehumanized as ‘Others’ / by Ralph Nader

Palestinians flee after Israeli bombardment in central Gaza City on March 18, 2024 | Photo: AFP via Getty Images

“The Others” are always described with less charitable words by politicians and mass media.

Reposted from Common Dreams

Throughout history, military empires have reduced their victims, their subjugated, and their abducted to a state of “The Others.” The political and mass media institutions usually follow suit by supporting their empire’s predatory policies with slanted coverage.

Such is the case with the U.S. global and the Israeli regional empires. The U.S. federal government and the mainstream media often move in lockstep.

For example, take the word “terrorism.” TheNew York Times regularly refers to the Hamas regime as “terrorists,” while describing the far more extensive Israeli acts of state terrorism as “military operations.” Since October 7, the Israeli military superpower has killed over 500 times more children than Hamas killed in their raid through a still uninvestigated collapse of Israel’s vaunted multi-tiered border security.

The Intercept reported that the three newspapers mentioned antisemitism against Jews in the U.S. 549 times compared to 79 mentions of Islamophobia, notwithstanding, far more frequent, and violent, assaults on Muslims and Arabs.

Apart from a massively greater overall civilian toll inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza—the vast undercount stands at 34,000 Palestinian deaths compared to the deaths of 1,139 Israeli civilians, soldiers, and foreign workers. This staggering ratio—over 14,000 Palestinian children (with many thousands under the rubble) compared to 30 Israeli children—escapes proper reporting. “The Others” don’t get accurate coverage as was also the case with huge Iraqi losses during the Bush/Cheney criminal war. (See, the March 5, 2024, column: Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza).

Take the use of the term “hostage.” Hamas seized over 240 Israelis hostages on October 7. Since then, the Israeli army has seized about 9,000 Palestinians, including women and children, and taken them without charges, along with many more thousands languishing in these prison camps also without charges for years (it’s called Israel’s “administrative detention”). Many of the imprisoned Palestinians are being tortured. Who has gotten the far greater attention? Aren’t these Palestinian hostages also? Again “The Others.”

How about the application of the right to self-defense? Every state has the right to self-defense. Count the many times you have heard, “Israel has a right to defend itself” compared to “Palestine has a right to defend itself.” Members of Congress who bellow the former declaration daily can not get themselves to say the latter. It is a forbidden phrase. Yet, who is the violently occupying, colonizing, land- and water-stealing party? Israel. For over 50 years, more than 400 times more innocent Palestinians have been killed and injured compared to innocent Israeli civilians. Where is the detailed coverage of the loss of life from enforced destitution and denial of life-saving medicines, equipment, and emergency transport to health facilities? Again, it is “The Others.”

“The Others” are always described with less charitable words. In a meticulous content analysis by The Intercept of the Los Angeles Times, TheNew York Times, and TheWashington Post between October 7 and November 24, the use of the words “slaughtered,” “horrific,” and “massacre” in relation to Israeli and Palestinians killed was 218 to 9!

The Intercept said Israel’s war on Gaza is “perhaps the deadliest war for children—almost entirely Palestinian—in modern history.” There is scant mention of the word “children” and related terms in the headlines of articles in that span of time.

(Note, reporters from these papers are like the rest of the mainstream Western media reports, including Israeli journalists, who have been long banned by the Israeli government from freely reporting from inside Gaza, but have managed to write some exceptionally graphic stories from a distance.)

Palestinian Arabs are denied the description of armed-force antisemitism by the Israeli war machine. Arabs are Semites and have long been the victims of violent, racist, hate-filled antisemitism by brutal Israeli leaders. (See the “ Antisemitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org).

The Intercept reported that the three newspapers mentioned antisemitism against Jews in the U.S. 549 times compared to 79 mentions of Islamophobia, notwithstanding, far more frequent, and violent, assaults on Muslims and Arabs.

Western medical doctors spending a few weeks in bombed Gaza hospitals are personal witnesses of scenes beyond any level of deliberate slaughter they have ever experienced in their courageous service in troubled areas around the world. Ambulances, hospitals, and thousands of families—adults, children, women, and babies alike—huddling in areas outside these facilities are routinely bombed, and shelled by Israeli planes and tanks, and targeted by Israeli snipers. Courageous Israeli human rights groups and refuseniks will detail more of the mayhem over time.

Biden’s chosen humanitarian aid emissary David Satterfield did not mince words in his remarks during a virtual event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, “There is an imminent risk of famine for the majority, if not all, the 2.2. million population of Gaza.”

According to Satterfield, “This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, its experts assess and believe is real…”

Still, the duplicitous Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twirling the hapless U.S. President Joe Biden around his bloody fingers continues to obstruct the entry of hundreds of trucks with critical food, water, and medicine, sometimes paid for by U.S. taxpayers, that are lined up daily at the borders of Gaza. Netanyahu continues to enforce, whenever he can, the genocidal orders by his barbaric ministers on October 8—“No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water… We are fighting animals and will act accordingly.”

To the White House and the Netanyahu-dominated U.S. Congress, violating numerous federal laws, (See the April 19, 2024, Letter to President Joe Biden), the response is to make the American taxpayers continue to pay billions of dollars to unconditionally weaponize further the Israeli death machine in Gaza, right down to 2,000-pound bombs that destroy entire civilian neighborhoods. After all, Gazans are “The Others.”

The streets of America have come alive with valiant Jewish, Muslim, and Christian protestors joining together and showing up wherever Biden and other callous politicians speak such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) who said, “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”

After 76 years of Congress blocking testimony by leading Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates, more lawmakers are starting to listen. But many more in Congress are still mired in their clenched-jaw obeisance to the AIPAC lobby. It is time to stop the rubble “bouncing” over decomposing bodies in the besieged tiny Gaza Strip.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

Israel Ministers Call for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza at Settler Conference / Olivia Rosane

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir speaks during a convention calling for Israel to resettle Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank at the International Convention Center on January 28, 2024 in Jerusalem, Israel | Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images

“The colonial meeting in Jerusalem poses a blatant challenge to the International Court of Justice decision, accompanied by public incitement to forcibly displace Palestinians,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

Reposted from Common Dreams

Members of the Israeli government—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—attended a far-right conference on Sunday calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza and increased Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The conference, at which both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich repeated calls for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, came days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent its military from committing genocide in Gaza.

“The colonial meeting in Jerusalem poses a blatant challenge to the International Court of Justice decision, accompanied by public incitement to forcibly displace Palestinians,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry wrote on social media.

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

Sunday’s conference, titled “Conference for the Victory of Israel—Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria,” was organized by the right-wing Nahala organization, according to Haaretz and Al Jazeera. The group argues for an expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even though these settlements are illegal under international law, as Reuters explained.

Israel also held settlements in Gaza for 38 years before withdrawing them in 2005. At Sunday’s conference, Smotrich said that settlers who had left Gaza as children had returned as soldiers during Israel’s ongoing bombardment and invasion of the enclave.

“We knew what that would bring and we tried to prevent it,” Smotrich said of the 2005 withdrawal. “Without settlements, there is no security.”

Ben Gvir also said that he and others had warned against leaving Gaza.

“If we don’t want another October 7, we need to return home and control the land,” he said, as Reuters reported further. He also called for Israel to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir have made similar statements in the past, with Smotrich saying in December, “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” as Al Jazeera reported at the time.

In early January, Ben Gvir said the war presented an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” according toThe Times of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel does not plan to establish permanent settlements in Gaza, as Al Jazeera reported, but he has also dismissed calls for a Palestinian state at the end of the war, which is the favored policy of the United States, arguing that Israel needs “security control over all territory west of the Jordan River.”

A National Security Council spokesperson said the U.S. was “troubled” by Sunday’s event, as The Times of Israel reported.

“We have also been clear, consistent, and unequivocal against the forced relocation of Palestinians outside of Gaza,” the White House said in a statement. ‘This rhetoric is incendiary and irresponsible, and we take the prime minister at his word when he says that Israel does not intend to reoccupy Gaza.”

In addition to Smotrich and Ben Gvir, 12 ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud party were also present at Sunday’s event, as Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.

One, Likud Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, said of calls for voluntary migration out of Gaza that, during a war, “‘voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent,” as Haaretz reported.

Conference organizer Daniella Weiss outlined a plan to use starvation to force population transfer in a video from the event posted on social media.

“So we don’t give them food. We don’t give the Arabs anything. They will have to leave,” she said. “The world will accept them.”

United Nations workers and doctors warned this month that famine in Gaza imposed by Israel’s blockade was already causing children to die of starvation.

Palestinian-American expert and advocate Mariam Barghouti told Al Jazeera, that 15 Knesset members were also present at Sunday’s conference, adding that it was “not a joke.”

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza,” Barghouti said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth pointed out on social media that there was a “consistency problem” among Israel’s allies such as the U.S., who continue to fund Israel after ministers call for “a war crime” but cut funds to the United Nations Relief and Public Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after it fired 12 of its workers over reports from Israel that they were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The October 7 attack killed around 1,100 Israelis and led to the taking of around 240 hostages into Gaza. Israel’s subsequent campaign against Gaza has now killed 26,637 people and wounded 65,387, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced on Monday.

Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption / by Jeffrey D. Sachs

US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstains during a vote to approve a resolution that “demands” all sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict allow the “safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale” at UN headquarters in New York on December 22, 2023 | Photo by Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images

Reposted from Common Dreams

The $1.5 trillion in military outlays each year is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.

On the surface, US foreign policy seems to be utterly irrational. The US gets into one disastrous war after another — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. In recent days, the US stands globally isolated in its support of Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians, voting against a UN General Assembly resolution for a Gaza ceasefire backed by 153 countries with 89% of the world population, and opposed by just the US and 9 small countries with less than 1% of the world population.

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.

To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders.

Despite these remarkable and costly debacles, one following the other, the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades, including Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton.

What gives?

The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family members. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money.

As a result, the American people are losing big. The failed wars since 2000 have cost them around $5 trillion in direct outlays, or around $40,000 per household. Another $2 trillion or so will be spent in the coming decades on veterans’ care. Beyond the costs directly incurred by Americans, we should also recognize the horrendously high costs suffered abroad, in millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars of destruction to property and nature in the war zones.

The costs continue to mount. US Military-linked outlays in 2024 will come to around $1.5 trillion, or roughly $12,000 per household, if we add the direct Pentagon spending, the budgets of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the budget of the Veteran’s Administration, the Department of Energy nuclear weapons program, the State Department’s military-linked “foreign aid” (such as to Israel), and other security-related budget lines. Hundreds of billions of dollars are money down the drain, squandered in useless wars, overseas military bases, and a wholly unnecessary arms build-up that brings the world closer to WWIII.

Yet to describe these gargantuan costs is also to explain the twisted “rationality” of US foreign policy. The $1.5 trillion in military outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.

To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA.

Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays. Interestingly, the Health Industry division rivals the Foreign Policy division as a remarkable financial scam. America’s health outlays totaled an astounding $4.5 trillion in 2022, or roughly $36,000 per household, by far the highest health costs in the world, while America ranked roughly 40th in the world among nations in life expectancy. A failed health policy translates into very big bucks for the health industry, just as a failed foreign policy translates into mega-revenues of the military-industrial complex.

The more wars, of course, the more business.

The Foreign Policy division is run by a small, secretive and tight-knit coterie, including the top brass of the White House, the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, and the major military firms including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. There are perhaps a thousand key individuals involved in setting policy. The public interest plays little role.

The key foreign policy makers run the operations of 800 US overseas military bases, hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, and the war operations where the equipment is deployed. The more wars, of course, the more business. The privatization of foreign policy has been greatly amplified by the privatization of the war business itself, as more and more “core” military functions are handed out to the arms manufacturers and to contractors such as Haliburton, Booz Allen Hamilton, and CACI.

In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, there are important business spillovers from the military and CIA operations. With military bases in 80 countries around the world, and CIA operations in many more, the US plays a large, though mostly covert role, in determining who rules in those countries, and thereby on policies that shape lucrative deals involving minerals, hydrocarbons, pipelines, and farm and forest land. The US has aimed to overthrow at least 80 governments since 1947, typically led by the CIA through the instigation of coups, assassinations, insurrections, civil unrest, election tampering, economic sanctions, and overt wars. (For a superb study of US regime-change operations from 1947 to 1989, see Lindsey O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change, 2018).

In addition to business interests, there are of course ideologues who truly believe in America’s right to rule the world. The ever-warmongering Kagan family is the most famous case, though their financial interests are also deeply intertwined with the war industry. The point about ideology is this. The ideologists have been wrong on nearly every occasion and long ago would have lost their bully pulpits in Washington but for their usefulness as warmongers. Wittingly or not, they serve as paid performers for the military-industrial complex.

There is one persistent inconvenience for this ongoing business scam. In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth. (A similar contradiction of course applies to overpriced healthcare, government bailouts of Wall Street, oil-industry perks, and other scams). The American people rarely support the machinations of US foreign policy when they occasionally hear the truth. America’s wars are not waged by popular demand but by decisions from on high. Special measures are needed to keep the people away from decision making.

In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth.

The first such measure is unrelenting propaganda. George Orwell nailed it in 1984 when “the Party” suddenly switched the foreign enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia without a word of explanation. The US essentially does the same. Who is the US gravest enemy? Take your pick, according to the season. Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Hamas, have all played the role of “Hitler” in US propaganda. White House spokesman John Kirby delivers the propaganda with a smirk on his face, signaling that he too knows that what he is saying is ludicrous, albeit mildly entertaining.

The propaganda is amplified by the Washington think tanks that live off of donations by military contractors and occasionally foreign governments that are part of the US scam operations. Think of the Atlantic Council, CSIS, and of course the ever-popular Institute for the Study of War, brought to you by the major military contractors.

The second is to hide the costs of the foreign policy operations. In the 1960s, the US Government made the mistake of forcing the American people to bear the costs of the military-industrial complex by drafting young people to fight in Vietnam and by raising taxes to pay for the war. The public erupted in opposition.

From the 1970s onward the government has been far more clever. The government ended the draft, and made military service a job for hire rather than a public service, backed by Pentagon outlays to recruit soldiers from lower economic strata. It also abandoned the quaint idea that government outlays should be funded by taxes, and instead shifted the military budget to deficit spending which protects it from popular opposition that would be triggered if it were tax-funded.

It has also suckered client states such as Ukraine to fight America’s wars on the ground, so that no American body bags would spoil the US propaganda machine. Needless to say, US masters of war such as Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, and McConnell remain thousands of miles away from the frontlines. The dying is reserved for Ukrainians. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) defended American military aid to Ukraine as money well spent because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” somehow not dawning on the good Senator to spare the lives of Ukrainians, who have died by the hundreds of thousands in a US-provoked war over NATO enlargement.

This system is underpinned by the complete subordination of the U.S. Congress to the war business, to avoid any questioning of the over-the-top Pentagon budgets and the wars instigated by the Executive Branch. The subordination of Congress works as follows. First, the Congressional oversight of war and peace is largely assigned to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which largely frame the overall Congressional policy (and the Pentagon budget). Second, the military industry (Boeing, Raytheon, and the rest) funds the campaigns of the Armed Services Committee members of both parties. The military industries also spend vast sums on lobbying in order to provide lucrative salaries to retiring members of Congress, their staffs, and families, either directly in military businesses or in Washington lobbying firms.

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon.

The hacking of Congressional foreign policy is not only by the US military-industrial complex. The Israel lobby long ago mastered the art of buying the Congress. America’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid state and war crimes in Gaza makes no sense for US national security and diplomacy, not to speak of human decency. They are the fruits of Israel lobby investments that reached $30 million in campaign contributions in 2022, and that will vastly top that in 2024.

When Congress reassembles in January, Biden, Kirby, Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, McConnell, Blumenthal and their ilk will tell us that we absolutely must fund the losing, cruel, and deceitful war in Ukraine and the ongoing massacre and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, lest we and Europe and the free world, and perhaps the solar system itself, succumb to the Russian bear, the Iranian mullahs, and the Chinese Communist Party. The purveyors of foreign policy disasters are not being irrational in this fear-mongering. They are being deceitful and extraordinarily greedy, pursuing narrow interests over those of the American people.

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more funding for the disastrous Ukraine War and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Peacemaking, and diplomacy, not military spending, is the path to a US foreign policy in the public interest.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

Behind Israel’s Brutal Genocidal Attack on Gaza Stand Joe Biden and Congress / by Ralph Nader

Senior Campaign Manager at Amnesty International Isra Chaker speaks during a press conference on the delivery of close to 1 million supporters calling on President Biden to help bring about a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza at the White House on November 29, 2023 in Washington, DC |  Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn

Reposted from Common Dreams

Biden can get more humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza simply by enveloping them with the American flag and daring Israel to delay, obstruct or destroy these carriers of live-saving food, water, fuel and medicine. But he is too weak and too cowardly to do so.

A letter to President Joe Biden, dated October 24, 2023, on the Israel-Hamas war by international law specialist, Bruce Fein and me, prompted this form letter Biden response.

Apart from the usual saying one thing and doing the opposite (e.g., standing for the protection of civilians and a two-state solution while fully arming and backing Israel’s genocidal destruction of everything in Gaza—children make up nearly half the population of Gaza) — Biden’s letter completely ignores key issues in our letter.

We asked why he wants Congress to make U.S. taxpayers pay another $14.3 billion for a prosperous country’s colossal military and intelligence operations, especially since Israel’s leadership failed to protect its people on October 7th.

We cited David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who said: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country.’ … Why would they accept that?”

In response to Biden’s repeated urging that Israel comply with the “laws of war” we described how Benjamin Netanyahu and his regime are doing just the opposite with its brutal terror campaign against defenseless Palestinian civilians and their critical public support structures.

Biden knows that the Israeli government is implementing what its ministers ordered on October 8th – a total siege with no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, and no medicine which meets the definition of the crime of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Israeli videos provide the grisly evidence of over 20,000 bombs and missiles striking homes, apartment buildings, schools, markets, water mains, bread bakeries, hospitals, clinics, ambulances and places of worship. After many days, the terror-stricken civilians, fleeing from one place to another in Gaza while being attacked, are also dying of disease, hunger, thirst, and a lack of critical medicines, such as insulin, with the bodies of infants and children still under the rubble in numbers too many to be counted.

Israel’s extremist right-wing politicians use words such as “human animals,” “annihilation” and “extermination” as declared objectives of their mass terrorism. (See, Amy Goodman’s interview with Yuval Abraham this week on Democracy Now!).

Biden can get more humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza simply by enveloping them with the American flag and daring Israel to delay, obstruct or destroy these carriers of live-saving food, water, fuel and medicine. But he is too weak and too cowardly to put strong U.S. leverage behind his sugarcoating wishes for saving the civilian mothers, fathers and children of Gaza.

He has made the U.S. a co-belligerent by unconditionally supplying abundant weapons, military intelligence and political cover, including vetoes of United Nations resolutions.

Biden has another apprehension—the near total control of Congress by the “Israel’s government can do no wrong” lobby. The indentured rubber-stamping Senators and Representatives have no problem supporting Israel’s violent repression and land dispossession in what is left of the original Palestine and its five million encircled Palestinians. Would these politicians deploy such eagerness in helping poor American children and their families in our country?

These callous legislators know little of this history, and little of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s long support for funding of Hamas to break up any two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, they and their predecessors have blocked any Congressional public hearings featuring prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates. Congress is importing censorship of those who wish to wage peace. (For the full list of our letters to Joe Biden, see nader.org).

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

Calls for a Two-State Solution Provide a Distraction—Not Hope / by Awad AbdelFattah

A Palestinian man sits on the rubble of a destroyed house in the Gaza Strip after 11 days of violence in May, 2023 | Photo: Mahmoud Issa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Reposted from Common Dreams

What does invoking the two-state solution really mean after so many years of neglect, and the ensuing destruction and suffering inflicted on a colonized people? Will it translate into a real shift in U.S. policy?

For many Palestinians, talk of a two-state solution, or any other political resolution to the ongoing colonial conflict, sounds like a luxury given the urgent necessity of saving 2.3 million people in Gaza from Israel’s massive onslaught.

Stopping Israel’s genocidal war is a top priority for the Palestinian people, and for all people of conscience. They have thus received new talk from US President Joe Biden on the two-state illusion as little more than a distraction from the unprecedented atrocities being perpetrated by Israel, with Washington’s backing.

The revived U.S. rhetoric on this subject, framed as a vision to be pursued the day after the genocidal war ends, is conditioned on the achievement of Israel’s military plan to root out Hamas from Gaza, no matter how many civilians are killed or forcibly displaced in the process, or how much devastation is unleashed on the territory.

We are moving from a phase in which the mantra of the two-state solution has been used as cover for Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to one involving the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza, which has become the world’s biggest open-air concentration camp.

All of this is being justified by the need to remove the purported greatest obstacle to peace.

It is absurd to join together two such contradictory trajectories—one that talks of peace, and another that entails the ongoing process of exterminating a group of people who are supposed to benefit from the peace process.

But such a proposition is by no means unfamiliar within the context of US history, which began with the extermination of the indigenous population and extended to Iraq and Afghanistan by the 21st century. It is by design, based on the assumption that this is an opportune time to go ahead with a plan whose main goal is to guarantee the security of Israel and rebuild Washington’s regional alliances.

Real policy shift?

The American administration, stunned by the “shock and awe”-style Hamas operation, wants to take advantage of the mounting weaknesses of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, given his failure to defend his own citizens and to dismantle Hamas, in order to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) back to the negotiating table.

But what does invoking the two-state solution really mean after so many years of neglect, and the ensuing destruction and suffering inflicted on a colonized people? Will it translate into a real shift in U.S. policy?

And is the two-state solution still a serious or viable option, given the entrenched settler project in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the deepening fanaticism and trend towards fascism exacerbated by the current war? Is Washington’s version of the two-state solution the same one that the Palestinian leadership aspires to, and is the U.S. willing to put real pressure on Israel?

The prevailing atmosphere amid the Gaza war, and the spike in hatred between Palestinians and Israelis, are extremely discouraging. It is difficult to estimate just how much deeper the divide has grown, or whether any talk of a political solution that delivers even a bare minimum of rights to the Palestinian people is even relevant in such times.

Even after the current war ends, the broader conflict will continue so long as there is no just solution

Israeli society will likely emerge from this war with even less willingness to accept any compromise with Palestinians, especially since the Israeli regime has framed the 7 October attack as being disconnected from the grave historical injustices that it has inflicted on Palestinians.

Worse still has been the remobilization of Israeli society, misled into endorsing a blatantly genocidal mindset rooted in Zionist ideology. Israel’s settler-colonial policies dehumanize the Palestinian people, with the erasure of Palestinian culture and history since 1948 viewed as the fulfillment of a divine promise, or a national imperative.

In recent years, parts of Israeli society and mainstream media have become increasingly racist and insensitive to Palestinian suffering. This is why Palestinians have escalated their resistance struggle, despite having to make huge sacrifices. This fight for justice, decolonization, and liberation will never end; this is why Palestinians in Gaza refuse to abandon their homeland, even after 16 years of a cruel Israeli siege.

Biased broker

Even after the current war ends, the broader conflict will continue so long as there is no just solution. When this round of fighting subsides, the diplomacy will begin—but this process will be difficult and prolonged, and a great challenge for Palestinians because the U.S. has never been an unbiased broker.

If Israel succeeds in weakening Hamas and removing it from power in Gaza, as it seeks to do, the U.S. will need to guarantee the replacement of the far-right Israeli government with an administration willing to deal with the PA, which has been acting as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.

But it is difficult to foresee a genuine change in Israel’s position on Palestinian rights, amid looming internal strife over a planned judicial overhaul, which will likely be exacerbated after Netanyahu’s massive failure on 7 October. Such a change will come only after continued internal pressure, namely Palestinian and progressive co-resistance, and genuine international pressure.

Palestinians will emerge from this war having endured another horrific humanitarian catastrophe, unprecedented in scale since the 1948 Nakba. Yet, thanks to their resistance and remarkable steadfastness, they will also have made significant gains in terms of support and sympathy for their cause globally – most importantly in Western countries whose governments disgracefully gave full support to Israel’s genocidal war. Israel’s standing in the world has been further undermined, its lies and myths largely demolished.

A new generation has arisen with a new consciousness and knowledge of the justness of the Palestinian cause. This younger generation will continue to question their governments on their failures, imperialism, and complicity with war crimes.

The world is witnessing another wave of grassroots, alternative politics, with a focus on justice, liberation, and equality. Leaders and activists in this ever-expanding global movement see the Palestinian struggle as an extension of their own battles for justice at home.

Palestinians will again find themselves facing the challenge of how to unite and capitalize on these gains. Most Palestinians no longer believe in the two-state solution, as the Zionist regime has repeatedly proven its genocidal, settler-colonial intentions. The slogan “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” will become an integral part of the Palestinian discourse, and attempts to criminalize it will fail.

This is not a genocidal slogan, but a noble goal that calls for the liberation of Palestinians from brutal apartheid, and the liberation of Israeli society from Zionism—allowing both Palestinians and Jews to live together in an egalitarian entity.

© 2023 Middle East Eye

Awad Abdelfattah is a political writer and the former general secretary of the Balad party. He is the coordinator of the Haifa-based One Democratic State Campaign, established in late 2017.