Countercurrent – November 10, 2023
Israel bombs three hospitals after Biden says “no prospect” of ceasefire
by Andre Damon
On Thursday, as he was leaving for a campaign event in Illinois, US President Joe Biden again categorically reiterated his opposition to a ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Asked, “What are the prospects of a Gaza ceasefire?” Biden replied, “None. No possibility.”
Biden’s comments made clear that the United States is actively instigating Israel’s genocide in Gaza and working to inflame a wider war in the Middle East. They came just two days after White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated again that the United States has no “red lines” on the number of civilian casualties it will accept.
Biden’s remarks sparked worldwide outrage, with clips of his statement viewed or shared by millions of people on all social media platforms. He was met in Chicago by thousands of people demonstrating against US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The crowd chanted, “Genocide Joe” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
While Biden was speaking in Illinois, he was interrupted by a protester who yelled, “10,000 Palestinians have been killed. Half of them are children.”
Before Biden left for Chicago, he was asked whether Israel’s “retaliatory airstrikes” were working, he replied, “Yes,” adding, “they’re hitting the targets they’re seeking.”
Just hours after these remarks, the Israel Defense Forces made clear the targets they were “seeking” by bombing three hospitals. Israel bombed the al-Shifa Hospital complex, where tens of thousands are sheltering, with an experimental bladed missile, whose horrifying aftermath was shown in a widely shared video. The missile, believed to be an American Hellfire R9X, carried no explosives but dispersed blades throughout the area, slashing and amputating limbs and leaving pools of blood.
Gaza’s al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital was also attacked, with Dr. Mostafa al-Kahlout telling Al Jazeera of a “massive fire” at the hospital, which is sheltering 1,000 refugees. The area surrounding the Indonesian Hospital was struck by 11 missiles, damaging its buildings, the hospital director said.
“Israel is now undertaking these dangerous steps against the hospitals to put them completely out of commission and subsequently displace the people sheltering in them, as well as the patients and medics,” said Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesman of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.
This is the context in which National Security spokesman John Kirby, who is also a retired admiral, announced what he called “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s non-stop bombing of Gaza. Kirby said, “Israel will begin to implement four-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, with an announcement to be made three hours beforehand” and create “humanitarian corridors allowing people to flee the areas of hostilities in the northern part of Gaza.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear to other world leaders that his plan is to displace the population of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Desert. His plans, reported in the Financial Times, are consistent with a paper published by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry proposing to expel the population of Gaza.
Under these conditions, what the United States and the entire media are referring to as “humanitarian pauses” and “humanitarian corridors” are simply the means by which the Netanyahu government, with US support, is carrying out the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza.
In line with this plan, Israel said that 80,000 people have left northern Gaza on Thursday, the largest number yet. According to the United Nations, over 557,000 people are sheltering at UN facilities in southern Gaza, and the hospitals cannot accommodate any new arrivals. There is one toilet for every 160 people.
At least 10,812 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, according to the Health Ministry. Over 4,000 of the dead are children. In a statement Thursday, Human Rights Watch wrote, “Israeli ground forces are encircling and moving deeper into Gaza City, within 2 km of Gaza’s largest medical facility, al-Shifa Hospital, where staff are overwhelmed by the number of patients amid a month-long blockade & heavy bombardment.”
The statement continued, “With ongoing strikes and fighting nearby, we are gravely concerned about the well-being of thousands of civilians there, many children among them, seeking medical care and shelter, including people on life support, those who lost limbs in air strikes, and burn victims. … Hospitals have special protection under the laws of war, which they only lose if they are being used to commit ‘acts harmful to the enemy’ and after due warning. Evacuation of hospital patients and staff should only be a last resort.”
Meanwhile the US continues to expand the scope of the war raging in the Middle East. For the second time in almost two weeks, the US carried out airstrikes against what it claimed were forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria on Thursday. The strikes were carried out by two Air Force F-15E jets against a weapons warehouse in Deir al Zour Province, Syria. “The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
The United States has surged two aircraft carrier battle groups and an Ohio-class nuclear submarine to the Middle East, in what USNI (United States Naval Institute) news called the “largest mass of U.S. ships in the region in decades.”
Originally published in WSWS.ORG
Daily Sabah – November 9, 2023
Nukes: Israel's secret that everyone knows
Israeli Minister Eliyahu's 'objectionable' statements on nuking Gaza have raised questions about Tel Aviv's long-cryptic stance on its alleged possession of nuclear arms, the secret that everyone knows
BY MELIH ALTINOK
Amichay Eliyahu, member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and Israeli Heritage Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, is an incorrigible fan of violence. We remember him with his remarks on a video sharing the attacks on Gaza City: “The north of Gaza is more beautiful than ever. Blow up everything; it’s so nice.”
According to local sources, this fascist’s last statement is a serious confession, saying that he is enjoying “the hell in Gaza,” where more than 10,000 civilians, including 4,000 children, have been killed in Israel’s relentless attacks. Speaking in a radio interview on Israel’s Kol Barama, Eliyahu said that “one of Israel’s options in the war in Gaza is to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip.”
He added he was not fully satisfied with the military operation.
Naturally, these remarks set everyone in an uproar. After the backlash, the Israeli minister said in a social media post: “It is clear to anyone who is sensible that the nuclear remark was metaphorical.” However, the brick he dropped was not small. Eliyahu was later suspended from government meetings “until further notice.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office issued a statement describing Eliyahu’s statements as “disconnected from reality.”
“Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory,” Netanyahu’s office said.
‘Objectionable statement’
Currently, the situation is alarming. “Frankly, this was an objectionable statement,” a senior U.S. State Department official told Reuters.
So, in what way might this statement be “objectionable”? Because we know that the U.S. has not seen any serious harm in Israel’s open violation of human rights in Gaza.
Let’s hear the answer from Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova: she said these words have “raised a huge number of questions” about Tel Aviv’s long-cryptic stance on its alleged possession of such arms.
“Question number one is, are we hearing an official statement that Israel has nuclear weapons?” Zakharova asked in a live TV interview after Eliyahu’s comments.
Yes, Israel has never publicly confirmed the widespread claims that it has nuclear weapons. However, independent international experts say that Israel has nearly 100 nuclear warheads.
“Where are the international organizations? Where is the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)? Where are the inspectors?” she added.
Israel’s opposition to nuke-free zone
Zakharova also thinks that Minister Eliyahu’s statement sheds light on the real reasons Israel opposes the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Drawing attention to the U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear programs in Israel, the spokesperson asked: “If this program exists and existed, where were the tests carried out, at what test sites? Apparently not in the region, then where? And isn’t the U.S. behind all this?”
Okay, we are aware of what Iran is. We know Tehran’s expansionism policy in the Middle East, that it goes to the field wherever there is a conflict in the region and fuels the fire. Like many nations...
Nevertheless, despite Iran’s “means,” we have not yet witnessed Israel committing a crime on the scale of genocide as it did in Palestine.
Skip the Hollywood “tables.” Let’s talk with the concrete data before our eyes. Just like the demonized North Korea, Tehran is much more sensitive to international law compared to Tel Aviv, which has so far killed 4,000 children and hit the United Nations buildings, hospitals, schools, mosques and churches.
I do not even compare Iran with the U.S., which is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons, which the world is on edge to prevent anyone from using.
Yes, Zakharova is completely right in her reaction. Where are the international institutions? Where is the IAEA? Where are the auditors?
Is our civilization incapable of stopping this dangerous spoiledness that does not recognize any international control mechanism, from the U.N. to the International Criminal Court (ICC)?
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/nukes-israels-secret-that-everyone-knows
Asia Times – November 10, 2023
Gaza reaction shows growing West-Global South rift
Now the Global South seems able to speak with, if not one voice, at least a chorus that is not discordant
By JORGE HEINE
The lopsidedness was stark: 120 countries voted in favor of a resolution before the United Nations on October 26, 2023, calling for a “humanitarian truce” in the war in Gaza. A mere 14 countries voted against it.
But the numbers tell only half the story; equally significant was the way the votes fell. Those voting against the resolution included the United States and four members of the European Union. Meanwhile, about 45 members abstained – including 15 members of the EU, plus the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Japan.
Seldom has the isolation of the West been so apparent.
As a scholar who has written on the rise of the Global South – countries mainly, but not exclusively, in the Southern Hemisphere that are sometimes described as “developing,” “less developed” or “underdeveloped” – what strikes me is the degree to which this major fault line between the political North and South has risen again to the fore. It reflects long-in-the-making forces in world affairs.
While the leaders of countries like the US, the UK and Germany have been among the most strident supporters of Israel during the crisis, the same is not true for non-Western nations.
Key rising powers from the Global South have been among the most adamant nations outside the Arab world in their criticism of this unwavering Western support of Israel.
Indonesia and Turkey – both with large Muslim populations – have been heavily critical of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, a response to 1,400 Israelis being killed by Hamas militants on October 7.
But they have been joined by the leaders of Brazil, South Africa and other Global South nations in taking a firm stand. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil went so far as to label the campaign in Gaza a “genocide” – a comment echoed by South Africa’s government when, on November 6, 2023, it recalled its ambassador to Israel in protest.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/gaza-reaction-shows-growing-west-global-south-rift/
Countercurrents – November 10, 2023
How the War on Gaza Has Stalled the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)
by Vijay Prashad
On September 9, 2023, during the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the governments of seven countries and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding to create an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Only three of the countries (India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates or the UAE) would be directly part of this corridor, which was to begin in India, go through the Gulf, and terminate in Greece. The European countries (France, Germany, and Italy) as well as the European Union joined this endeavor because they expected the IMEC to be a trade route for their goods to go to India and for them to access Indian goods at, what they hoped would be, a reduced cost.
The United States, which was one of the initiators of the IMEC, pushed it as a means to both isolate China and Iran as well as to hasten the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It seemed like a perfect instrument for Washington: sequester China and Iran, bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together, and deepen ties with India that seemed to have been weakened by India’s reluctance to join the United States in its policy regarding Russia.
Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza has changed the entire equation and stalled the IMEC. It is now inconceivable for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enter such a project with the Israelis. Public opinion in the Arab world is red-hot, with inflamed anger at the indiscriminate bombardment by Israel and the catastrophic loss of civilian life. Regional countries with close relations with Israel—such as Jordan and Turkey—have had to harden their rhetoric against Israel. In the short term, at least, it is impossible to imagine the implementation of the IMEC.
Pivot to Asia
Two years before China inaugurated its “One Belt, One Road” or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the United States had already planned a private-sector-funded trade route to link India to Europe and to tighten the links between Washington and New Delhi. In 2011, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Chennai, India, where she spoke of the creation of a New Silk Road that would run from India through Pakistan and into Central Asia. This new “international web and network of economic and transit connections” would be an instrument for the United States to create a new intergovernmental forum and a “free trade zone” in which the United States would be a member (in much the same way as the United States is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC).
The New Silk Road was part of a wider “pivot to Asia,” as U.S. President Barack Obama put it. This “pivot” was designed to check the rise of China and to prevent its influence in Asia. Clinton’s article in Foreign Policy (“America’s Pacific Century,” October 11, 2011) suggested that this New Silk Road was not antagonistic to China. However, this rhetoric of the “pivot” came alongside the U.S. military’s new AirSea Battle concept that was designed around direct conflict between the United States and China (the concept built on a 1999 Pentagon study called “Asia 2025” which noted that “the threats are in Asia”).
Two years later, the Chinese government said that it would build a massive infrastructure and trade project called “One Belt, One Road,” which would later be called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the next ten years, from 2013 to 2023, the BRI investments totaled $1.04 trillion spread out over 148 countries (three-quarters of the countries in the world). In this short period, the BRI project has made a considerable mark on the world, particularly on the poorer nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the BRI has made investments to build infrastructure and industry.
Chastened by the growth of the BRI, the United States attempted to block it through various instruments: the Am￩rica Crece for Latin America and the Millennium Challenge Corporation for South Asia. The weakness in these attempts was that both relied upon funding from an unenthusiastic private sector.
Complications of the IMEC
Even before the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, IMEC faced several serious challenges.
First, the attempt to isolate China appeared illusory, given that the main Greek port in the corridor—at Piraeus—is managed by the China Ocean Shipping Corporation, and that the Dubai Ports have considerable investment from China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port and the Zhejiang Seaport. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now members of the BRICS+, and both countries are participants in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Second, the entire IMEC process is reliant upon private-sector funding. The Adani Group—which has close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has come under the spotlight for fraudulent practices—already owns the Mundra port (Gujarat, India) and the Haifa port (Israel), and seeks to take a share in the port at Piraeus. In other words, the IMEC corridor is providing geopolitical cover for Adani’s investments from Greece to Gujarat.
Third, the sea lane between Haifa and Piraeus would go through waters contested between Turkey and Greece. This “Aegean Dispute” has provoked the Turkish government to threaten war if Greece goes through with its designs.
Fourth, the entire project relied upon the “normalization” between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an extension of the Abraham Accords that drew Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel in August 2020. In July 2022, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the I2U2 Group, with the intention, among other things, to “modernize infrastructure” and to “advance low-carbon development pathways” through “private enterprise partnerships.” This was the precursor of IMEC. Neither “normalization” with Saudi Arabia nor advancement of the I2U2 process between the UAE and Israel seem possible in this climate. Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza has frozen this process.
Previous Indian trade route projects, such as the International North-South Trade Corridor (with India, Iran, and Russia) and the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (led by India and Japan), have not gone from paper to port for a host of reasons. These, at least, had the merit of being viable. IMEC will suffer the same fate as these corridors, to some extent due to Israel’s bombing of Gaza but also due to Washington’s fantasy that it can “defeat” China in an economic war.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Countercurrent – November 10, 2023
Century-long Palestinian Genocide From British-ruled Palestine
To Apartheid Israel’s Present Gaza Massacre
by Dr Gideon Polya
Genocidally racist Zionists from Zionism’s psychopathic founder Theodor Herzl to present war criminal Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu have explicitly stated that they want all the land of Palestine but not its Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. Below is a convenient Summary for peace and human rights activists of the century-long Palestinian Genocide from British-ruled Palestine to neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel’s present US Alliance-backed and genocidal Gaza Massacre.
By a macabre coincidence 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the League of Nations grant of a Palestine Mandate to Britain in 1923, and the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (or Catastrophe) in which 800,000 Palestinians (60% of the Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants) were forcibly expelled from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3 millennia [1-4]. Now in 2023 the 2.3 million utterly impoverished, besieged and bombed inmates of the Gaza Concentration Camp and mostly descending from refugees in the 1948 Nakba are facing and indeed undergoing a genocidal second mass population expulsion by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Unfortunately the World did not listen to Gandhi when he stated (1938): “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred” [5].
(1). Palestinian Genocide start: 1880, Palestinian population 500,000 Arabs (90% Muslim, 10% Christians) and 25,000 Jews (half immigrants); 1914, Britain invaded the 400-year Ottoman Turkish Caliphate in 1914 for oil and hegemony; 1916, Sykes-Picot Anglo-French Agreement to carve up the Middle East for themselves; mid-WW1, Palestinian Famine (100,000 dead); 31 October 1917, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) defeated Turks at Beersheba, Palestine; 2 November 1917, British Balfour Declaration to Zionist Lord Rothschild granting Palestine as a Jewish Homeland (actually devised to get Zionist Russian Communists to keep Russia in the war); 1917, Britain conquered Palestine, ending 400 years of peaceful Turkish rule; 10 December 1918, ANZAC Surafend Massacre of 100 Palestinian men and boys (100 killed); 1923, League of Nations grant of Palestine Mandate to Britain that encouraged European Jewish settler-colonialist immigration.
(2). Palestinian Genocide under British rule (1917-1948). 1920s, 1930s, Arab tenant farmers and labourers displaced, Arab resistance to Zionist immigration and the resultant Arab Revolt; the British and British-trained and British-armed Zionist terrorists killed 10% of the adult male Palestinian population; 1939 White Paper stopped Jewish immigration to placate British Empire Arabs and Muslims during WW2; 1944, British War Cabinet secretly decided to Partition Palestine (causing the John Curtin Labor Government to veto a plan for Jewish settlement of NW Australia; 1945, Jewish immigration resumed, Zionist terrorists targeted Palestinians and British; 1947, UN Partition Plan, population 1,970,000 comprising 630,000 Jews (32.0%), 143,000 Christians (7.3%) and 1,181,000 Muslims (59.9%) i.e. two thirds were Indigenous Palestinians.
(3). 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and mass Indigenous population expulsion: 1948, British withdrew and Zionists declared State of Israel, seizing 78% of Mandated Palestine; 1947-1948, 800,000 Palestinians (60% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were violently expelled by British-trained and British-armed Zionist terrorists (76 massacres, 15,000 Palestinians killed, 530 villages ethnically cleansed, 120 mosques eventually destroyed); the racist US-dominated World, including genocidally racist White Australia from Australian Dr H.V. Evatt (UN President, 1948-1949) onwards, recognized the State of Israel but not a State of Palestine; UK- and US-involved mass immigration of Yemeni, Iraqi and Moroccan Jews from convert communities that had co-existed peacefully with the Muslim World for 1400 years; 1956, Israel showed its raisond’être by joining the UK and France invasion of Egypt that was stopped by a not yet Zionist-dominated America; 1960, impoverished Palestinians inside Israel “granted” citizenship albeit under Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws.
(4). 1967 Naksa (Setback), Zionist seizure of all of Palestine plus territory of all its neighbours with further mass Indigenous population expulsions. By mid-1967 Israel had developed nuclear weapons with French, UK, US and Apartheid South African help; 1967, Israel attacked all its neighbours, seized all of Palestine plus territory of all its neighbours, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Syria; 400,000 Arabs expelled from the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.
(5). US-backed Palestinian Genocide, Arab Genocide and population expulsions in 1967-2005. 1967, increasing Zionist-domination of the US dates from Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons by mid-1967; 1973, Egypt attempted to regain its Sinai territory (part of Egypt for over 5,000 years but seized by 19 years old neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel in 1967 ); 1974, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly; 1979, return of Sinai to Egypt and enforced peace with Egypt; 1982-2000, Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon; 1982, Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre of 3,000 Palestinians by Christian Falangist militia in Israeli-occupied Beirut, and 7,000 Palestinians forced to leave; large emigration of Lebanese during the Lebanon civil war (1970s-1990s); 1987, First Palestinian Intifada (Uprising); 1988, PLO recognized Israel; 1993, Oslo Agreement for Palestinian self-government under Israeli Occupation; 1967 onwards, highly abusive subjugation of Occupied Palestinians under violent Israeli military rule, with continued expulsion from land, and large-scale home demolitions; 2,000-2005, Second Intifada (Al-Aqsa Intifada); 2004, Yasser Arafat died (likely murdered by the Israelis using polonium poisoning ).
(6). US-backed Palestinian Genocide, 2005 from -September 2023. 2006, Hamas won the Occupied Palestinian elections but was declared a terrorist organization by the serial war criminal US Alliance and Israel and fled to rule the Gaza Concentration Camp from 2007, leaving Fatah to rule the Occupied Palestinian West Bank; Apartheid Israel imposed a savage blockade on the Gaza Concentration Camp from 2005, allowing for bare survival and some day labourers allowed to work in Israel. Exercising the legal right of self-defence of subjugated people as acknowledged by the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter, over 20 years Gazans fired about 30,000 ineffective rockets into Israel that were mostly stopped by the US-supplied Iron Dome defence system and killed about 50 people. However the Israelis responded with sniper fire and unstoppable high explosive missiles from air, land and sea that killed about 6,407 Gaza Palestinians in some 5 major deadly episodes in 2006, 2008-2009, 2014, 2018-2019, and 2021 [6]. Thus in the Gaza Great March of Return following the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem in 2017 about 180 Gaza Palestinians were killed and 9,200 wounded by Israeli snipers.
(7). Palestinian subjugation and Palestinian Genocide prior to October 2023. Prior to the present ghastly and ongoing Gaza Massacre by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel, the century-long Palestinian Genocide was associated with 0.1 million deaths from violence and 2 million deaths from imposed deprivation [1-4]. Of about 15 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians, there are 7 million Exiled Palestinians (deriving from prior mass population expulsions and illegally prevented by the Zionazis from returning to the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3 millennia); presently 5.7 million Occupied Palestinians (unable to vote for the government ruling them, and denied all human rights specified in the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [7] and highly abusively confined under brutal Israeli military rule to ever-diminishing West Bank ghettoes (3.4 million) or to the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2.3 million)); and 2 million Israeli Palestinians (able to vote for the government ruling them, albeit as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws).
Some shocking indicators: (a) poverty kills and the GDP per capita is $1,000 (Gaza), $3,500 (Occupied Palestinian Territory), and $55,500 (Apartheid Israel); (b) according to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) more than 131,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) since 1947 with huge numbers threatened by “lack of permits” and “collective punishment by home demolition”; (c). before WW2 Palestine exported nearly 40 million oranges annually and was also famed for olive oil, but since 1948 about 3 million citrus and olive trees have been destroyed by the Zionazis; (d) the life expectancy gap between Apartheid Israel and the OPT is 10 years; (e) on average in the 21st century Israelis have violently killed about 500 Occupied Palestinians per year with a further 4,000 killed annually by imposed deprivation [3], and in the 21st century prior to October 2023 this carnage totalled about 11,500 violent Palestinian deaths and about 90,000 deaths from imposed deprivation (contrast the average domestic Israeli homicide rate for Israelis killing fellow Israelis that has been about 20 per million per year i.e. about 190 per year and 4,300 in the 21st century).
(8). The genocidal killing continues with an ongoing Third Nakba from northern Gaza and a Fourth Nakba and even a Final Nakba looming.
(a). Apartheid Israel has promised to “annihilate” Hamas (16,000 fighters) and Islamic Jihad (1,000 fighters) and this promises an Occupied/Occupier reprisals Death Ratio of (17,000 /1,400 = 12.1, already greater than that of 10 ordered by Nazi mass murder Adolph Hitler in 1944 and immediately carried out in the Ardeatine Cave Massacre [8-10].
(b). As of 8 November 2023, just over 4 weeks after the commencement of the Israeli Palestinian Genocide in Gaza on 7 October, confirmed Palestinian casualties in Gaza total 10, 468 deaths with 27,000 wounded. A further 1,500 Palestinians were killed in Israel as compared to the 1,400 Israelis killed in the 7 October Gaza Breakout The Occupied Palestinian /Occupier Israel reprisals Death Ratio is presently (10,468 + 1,500)/1,400 = 11,968/1400 = 8.5 as compared to the Hitler-ordered Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio of 10.
(c). Respected journalist Jonathan Cook: “Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza. To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day” [11]. Indeed it appears that no Israeli troops were killed in the killing of 1,500 Palestinian fighters in Israel after the Breakout from Gaza. If we assume that three quarters of the 1,400 Israelis killed on 7 October were killed in the Israeli response as described by Jonathan Cook then the present Death Ratio would be 11,968/1,050 = 11.4.
(d). The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has provided year-by-year statistics for the Occupied Palestinian/Occupier Israeli reprisals Death Ratios from 2008, the worst years being2008/2009: 1,965/44 = 44.7, : 2,329/68 = 34.3, 2018: 300/13 = 23.1, and 2021: 349/11 = 31.7 [6]. The average Occupied Palestinian/Occupier Israeli reprisals Death Ratio for 1 January 2008 – 19 September 2023 was 6,407/308 = 20.8, which predicts 20.8 x 1,400 = 29,000 Palestinian deaths in the present atrocity.
(e). Humans can survive only 3 days without water and 4 weeks ago neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel immediately cut water, food, fuel, and electricity (needed for hospitals and water desalination) to impoverished Gaza. Half the population are already homeless. Only a trickle of aid has been allowed in from Egypt for only a few days so far, and the World is watching an ongoing Palestinian Genocide in Gaza that will worsen with Israel’s horrendous land invasion. If half the population of Gaza perishes the Death Ratio will be 1,150,000/ 1,400 = 821 i.e. neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel would be valuing Palestinian lives as 821 times less than Israeli lives, and would be applying a reprisals Death Ratio 82 times bigger than the 10 ordered by Nazi mass murderer Adolph Hitler.
(f). Zionist leaders from its proto-Nazi founder Theodor Herzl (unfortunately related to my esteemed Jewish Hungarian great-great grandmother) to the present genocidal psychopaths running neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel have been explicit in advocating removal of the Indigenous Palestinians from Palestine. Indeed in the present Gaza Massacre Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently invoked the demand by the Israelite “God” in the Old Testament for the total extermination of the Amalekites: “They [IDF soldiers] are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world. You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember” (the Holy Bible: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” [12]. Tom Pickering (a former US Ambassador to Apartheid Israel and the UN) (2021): “The Palestinians who clearly suffered a 20 to 1 death rate and who clearly are vastly overwhelmed by the Israelis in terms of military power… I think it is an extremely high mountain to cross… It doesn’t appear there is a 1 state solution to this problem and there is no multiple state outcome to this problem… Israel for a very long period of time under Netanyahu has kind of narrowed down the goal for the Palestinians to something like 20% of what is currently believed to have been the Palestinian state under the 2 state solution [i.e. to 4.4% of Palestine] … And if in fact there is no agreement and the status quo is continued with interruptions for violence as we have seen, it is quite possible that over years – and I am talking about a long time – you will see a removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and quite possibly Gaza to other parts of the world and a no-state solution if I can put it that way. Israel triumphant covering it all”. Indeed an Israeli report favouring an expulsion of all Gaza Palestinians to the Sinai (the 2014 Greater Gaza Plan) was exposed last week (for an alphabetical compendium of this and other horrendous genocidal Zionist quotes see [12]).
(g). Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has been explicit in word and in sustained genocidal deeds in wanting all the land of Palestine but not the Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants [12]. Impelled by genocidally racist Zionists, for 75 years neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has grossly violated numerous International laws and conventions, notably the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [13], the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid [14], the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” (an Occupier must try to keep its Occupied Subject alive “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”[15], and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [16].
(h). As of 10 November 4,200 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israelis in reprisals for the Gaza Breakout in which 35 Israeli children died. About 1,300 Palestinian children are buried under rubble and presumed dead. This gives a Palestinian/ Israeli Child Death Ratio of 5,500/35 = 157 (with an unknown number of Israeli children killed by Israelis in the Israeli armed response that killed 1,500 Palestinians fighters).
(9). The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth but both are comprehensively violated by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and its complicit Western Mainstream politician and media supporters. The worst of crimes is the killing of children as measured by “children killed per year per million of population” and one can calculate this by Apartheid Israel in the Gaza Concentration Camp over the last 34 days = (5,500 deaths / 34 days) x (365.25 days/ year) / 2.3 million Gazans = 25,689 “children killed per year per million of total territory population” . This horrifying number of 25,689 is 3,380 times greater than for the World (7.6) and 339 times greater than for crime-wracked Honduras (75.7). In order to be exquisitely “fair” to the child-killing Israelis one should estimate the average from 2008 onwards of “children killed per year per million of the total Occupied Palestinian Territory population”. Children killed in this period totalled 859 + 5,500 = 6,359, this giving “children killed per year per million of total Occupied Palestinian Territory population” = 6,359 Children killed / 16 years)/ (average population of 5.15 million) = 77.2, bigger than that Honduras (75.7), worst in the world and set to rise enormously in coming days, weeks. and months in the deadly absence of water, food, medicine, medical services, fuel and electricity [9, 17]. Indeed neo-Nazi Israeli forces have targeted 58 health care facilities in Gaza, with 132 medics dead, 25 ambulances destroyed, and 58 hospitals and 32 primary care centres forced out of service due to bombing and fuel shortage. 1 million Gazans are homeless [18]. The number of Gaza children killed to date totals 5,500 i.e. 157 times more than the 35 Israeli children killed on 7 October 2023.
As for Zionist perversion of truth one only has to turn to the all-European, US Alliance-backed and Zionist-promoted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that promulgates a definition of anti-Semitism that has been used to falsely defame anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes, and has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations [19, 20]. In horrible reality the IHRA is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israel, and holocaust denying by ignoring all WW2 Holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and indeed ignoring about 70 genocide and holocaust atrocities [19, 21]. Zionism is genocidal racism in awful theory and appalling practice. Indeed Zionism is Nazism without gas chambers but with a huge high technology war machine, huge war and subjugation industries, and with 100 nuclear weapons plus delivery systems including Germany-supplied submarines. Indeed there is a shocking list of 52 Zionist- and Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany comparisons [22], and I have made a detailed and documented Submission to the Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission over the Australian Labor Government extensively lying for Apartheid Israel [23].
Final comments and conclusions.
The genocidal Gaza Massacre of innocents continues. 47% of the inmates of the Gaza Concentration Camp are children and over 72% are women and children. The World contains 2 kinds of people, those who condemn the killing of innocents, and the others.
Those complicit in the Gaza Massacre include not just the Israeli perpetrators but also the Western Mainstream politicians and media who overwhelmingly fervently support neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Thus 120 mainly non-European nations supported the UNGA Resolution for a Ceasefire in Gaza but this was opposed by 59 countries, mostly European US Alliance countries with a minority of poor and easily “bought” non-European countries [24]. The big BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa voted Yes but Modi’s India disgraced India’s fine record of leading the World in the fight against Apartheid by opposing the Ceasefire Resolution (ideological reasons for this betrayal of Humanity by pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Modi India become apparent when one reads Arundhati Roy’s book “Azadi. Fascism, Fiction and Freedom in the Time of the Virus” [25].
What can decent people do to stop the war criminal carnage inflicted by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel on the besieged, bombed and devastated Gaza Concentration Camp? Unfortunately my own country, Australia, like most Western countries is a craven US lackey. Australia, is second only to the US as a fervent supporter of Apartheid Israel and hence of the utterly evil crime of Apartheid. Australia has an excellent compulsory and preferential voting system and is presently ruled by a Rightist Labor Government with a much worse, Right to extreme Right Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition, Until this latest Gaza Massacre progressive people like me would say “Vote 1 Green, put the Coalition last and put Labor second last”. However Labor is in government and, like the unspeakably awful Coalition, is a fervent supporter of genocidal and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel, opposes a Gaza Ceasefire and via diplomacy, military deals and global electronic spying (from the US-Australian Pine Gap base in Central Australia) supports the ongoing Israeli Gaza Massacre. The Zionist-subverted Australian Labor Government should be massively defeated at the next election and replaced by a civilized Green Government or a Greens-led coalition opposed to Apartheid and the mass murder of women and children. Ditto other US Alliance and Western countries.
Decent people around the World must (a) inform everyone they can of these ongoing atrocities, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against child-killing, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations, and countries supporting this genocidally racist and child-killing Apartheid rogue state.
References.
[1]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .
[2]. Palestinian Genocide:ﾠhttps://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home .
[3]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021 (that contains a succinct history of every country from ancient times).
[4]. 2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide:ﾠhttps://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .
[5]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”:ﾠhttps://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .
[6]. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) , “Data on casualties”: https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties .
[7]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .
[8]. Gideon Polya, “Stop Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian genocide in Gaza”, Green Left, 18 October 2023: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/stop-apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-gaza .
[9]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Death Ratios, Child Deaths & Palestinian Genocide Demand Immediate Cessation Of Gaza Massacre, Countercurrents, 30 October 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/horrendous-death-ratios-child-deaths-palestinian-genocide-demand-immediate-cessation-of-gaza-massacre/ .”
[10]. “Ardeatine massacre”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeatine_massacre .
[11]. Jonathan Cook, “What our Media fails to tell you about October 7”, Pearls & Irritations, 6 November 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/what-the-bbc-fails-to-tell-you-about-october-7/ .
[12]. “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .
[13]. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cerd.aspx .
[14]. “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, UN, 1976: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf .
[15]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .
[16]. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf .
[17]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World Leaders For Killing Children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .
[18]. Mohamed Majed, “Gaza’s death toll from Israeli assault climbs to 8,796”, AA, 1 November 2023: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-s-death-toll-from-israeli-assault-climbs-to-8-796/3040221 .
[19]. Gideon Polya, “US-backed IHRA Definition Of Antisemitism Is Anti-Arab Anti-Semitic & Anti-Jewish Anti-Semitic”, Boycott Apartheid Israel, 9 March 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/2021-03-09 .
[20]. Jewish Voices for Peace, “First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english .
[21]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/ .
[22]. Gideon Polya, “A Shocking List of 52 Zionist- & Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany Comparisons”, Countercurrents, 7 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/a-shocking-list-of-52-zionist-apartheid-israeli-nazi-germany-comparisons/ .
[23]. Gideon Polya, “Submission To National Anti-Corruption Commission: Australian Labor Government’s Lying For Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 22 July 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/07/submission-to-national-anti-corruption-commission-australian-labor-governments-lying-for-apartheid-israel/ .
[24]. Gideon Polya, “491 Sins & Gaza Genocide: Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel Leads World In Killing Children & Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 November 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/491-sins-gaza-genocide-neo-nazi-apartheid-israel-leads-world-in-killing-children-journalists/ .
[25].Arundhati Roy’s book “Azadi. Fascism, Fiction and Freedom in the Time of the Virus”, Penguin, 2022.
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2023). He has recently published “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ﾠ .
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