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No hay forma de alegrarse con la guerra defensiva de la República Islámica de Irán, provocada por los bombardeos criminales de Estados Unidos e Israel. Entiendo a quienes lloraron a las víctimas del genocidio en Gaza, pero ya es hora de ir más allá del llanto. Aunque Hamás haya impuesto duras derrotas e impedido la consecución de los planes sionistas para Palestina, la reacción de Irán al ataque que sufrió es mucho más devastadora para Israel y Estados Unidos, y eso solo puede animar a quienes se oponen a la esclavitud impuesta a los pueblos de Oriente Medio por la dominación imperialista.

De hecho, la guerra de los iraníes es una guerra por la independencia completa de su país y de la región, y esta guerra antiimperialista y popular es una guerra revolucionaria. Una guerra revolucionaria como la de Hamás en Gaza desde octubre de 2023, pero de proporciones mucho mayores. Al destruir la infraestructura militar de Estados Unidos en la región, Irán está dando una contribución sin precedentes a la expulsión de las fuerzas imperialistas de Oriente Medio y, por lo tanto, a la liberación de todos los países de la región del yugo colonial de la OTAN.

Es una guerra contra todo el sistema imperialista internacional. Y el imperialismo europeo lo sabe, lo que quedó demostrado en la declaración conjunta de Francia, Reino Unido y Alemania en apoyo a Estados Unidos y amenazando con intervenir directamente en el conflicto. O en el envío del portaaviones Charles de Gaulle al Mediterráneo, en el pronunciamiento público de Keir Starmer y en las declaraciones de Friedrich Merz. Existe un apoyo total de las llamadas “democracias” europeas a la acción ilegal, terrorista y colonial de Estados Unidos.

Teherán comprende que está librando una guerra contra todo el régimen imperialista. Y tiene el coraje de librarla. Bombardeó objetivos franceses (Camp de la Paix, en Abu Dabi), italianos (al servicio de la OTAN en la base de Ali Al-Salem, en Kuwait) y británicos (la base aérea de Akrotiri, en Chipre), además de instalaciones estadounidenses en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Arabia Saudita, Catar, Kuwait, Jordania, Irak, Baréin, Omán, Siria y Chipre. Creo que todavía no se puede garantizar que todos los ataques hayan ocurrido o que hayan sido realizados por Irán —como, por ejemplo, las acusaciones de que intentó atacar objetivos en Turquía—, pero es innegable que los iraníes tienen el objetivo de generar el máximo de daños a la presencia imperialista, si no expulsarla totalmente. Instalaciones civiles, como embajadas, pertenecientes a las potencias agresoras también están siendo alcanzadas —y es sabido que la infraestructura civil sirve de apoyo a la dominación colonial, que no es solamente militar, sino también política y económica.

Estos ataques tienen una serie de consecuencias potenciales extremadamente positivas. Si destruyen esa infraestructura, las naciones imperialistas no tendrán cómo operar plenamente en la región. No tendrán apoyo logístico para sus misiones de infiltración, espionaje, soborno, subversión y control militar y político. Su personal militar tendrá que ser trasladado fuera de Oriente Medio o, como mínimo, encontrar instalaciones improvisadas sin la infraestructura adecuada para su trabajo. Irán está desorganizando completamente la columna vertebral de la presencia imperialista en la región, que son sus bases militares. Las bases militares, con tropas, equipos, aviones y otros vehículos, son como un cuchillo en el cuello del país anfitrión: si su gobierno se sale de la línea impuesta por el imperialismo, será derribado por un golpe sin la menor dificultad. Ese instrumento de presión y chantaje está desmoronándose.

Otra consecuencia es que, dada la facilidad con que estas instalaciones civiles y militares están siendo alcanzadas, sectores de la élite política y militar de cada uno de estos países comiencen a cuestionar la eficacia de la tecnología comprada a Estados Unidos y a sus aliados —cuyas negociaciones son impuestas y cuyo precio es altísimo, perjudicial para las propias finanzas de estos países—. Irán está mostrando —como lo mostró el propio Hamás con los ataques a Israel y como lo mostró Teherán en la guerra del año pasado— que los sistemas de defensa vendidos por las naciones imperialistas son dinero tirado a la basura. Los dirigentes políticos de estos países títeres fueron engañados por Estados Unidos y engañaron a sus subordinados para poder realizar esos acuerdos multimillonarios.

Más importante aún que abrir la mente de las élites políticas y militares, que no pasan de ser lacayos de Estados Unidos e Israel, es concienciar y politizar a los pueblos de estos países oprimidos. E Irán está haciendo eso, como ya lo hizo la Resistencia Palestina desde 2023. Aquellos que oprimen a estos pueblos —las fuerzas de ocupación y sus títeres— no son invencibles. Son gigantes con pies de barro. O, como decía Mao Tse-Tung: el imperialismo es un tigre de papel. Aunque todavía consiga mantener un gran poder de destrucción y opresión, esa fuerza se está desgastando rápidamente desde la revolución talibán de 2021. La Operación Militar Especial de Rusia lo mostró muy bien. Incluso la Operación Diluvio de Al-Aqsa reveló las fragilidades del dominio imperialista. Y ahora la guerra liberadora de Irán.

El gobierno estadounidense está gastando casi mil millones de dólares por día en la guerra. ¿Quién recuerda lo que ocurrió tras años de la Guerra de Vietnam? Una bancarrota extraordinaria en la economía estadounidense y en el mercado internacional. Pero hace 50 años el sistema financiero imperialista todavía tenía algún margen. Hoy ya no es así. La deuda pública de Estados Unidos se está volviendo insostenible y los temblores en el mercado de materias primas y de algunos de los ítems más preciosos para la economía capitalista, como el petróleo y el gas, tienden a generar una crisis de mayores proporciones que aquella. La economía estadounidense no soporta otra guerra prolongada como la que la nación persa está dispuesta a imponer al imperialismo.

Ya se habla de una escasez inminente de armas, municiones y equipos para la agresión contra Irán. Estados Unidos perdió mucho incluso contra los descalzos y valientes hutíes; qué decir de lo que está por venir contra la poderosa Guardia Revolucionaria Islámica. Las guerras genocidas llevadas adelante por Estados Unidos e Israel y sus más abominables métodos criminales esconden que la presencia imperialista se está debilitando cada día en Oriente Medio. Esa tierra será la tumba del imperialismo mundial. Sobre todo cuando las organizaciones revolucionarias se adhieran abiertamente a la guerra de independencia, como están esbozando Hezbolá y las Fuerzas de Movilización Popular de Irak —o como se está gestando una rebelión dentro de los regímenes títeres del sionismo, como en Baréin.

La expresión es bien conocida, pero nunca está de más recordarla: Oriente Medio es un barril de pólvora. Y está a punto de explotar. Esa explosión hará saltar por los aires toda la dominación imperialista y liberará finalmente a los pueblos de esa región. Todo eso gracias a la acción revolucionaria de Irán.

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Existe un mito propagado por los principales medios de propaganda imperialista (el “periodismo”) según el cual Donald Trump es una anomalía fascista en un régimen democrático como el de los Estados Unidos. Y por eso esa anomalía sería repudiada por los representantes legítimos de la democracia, como Kamala Harris y el Partido Demócrata. O por los gobiernos de Europa Occidental. Emmanuel Macron se habría convertido en el gran baluarte de la democracia europea y de la crítica al unilateralismo norteamericano, del cual los supuestos antifascistas y antiautoritarios del mundo entero se declaran enamorados. El Partido Laborista británico ha sido presentado como un paradigma de gobierno de izquierda, que administra un imperio, combate los extremismos y aplica la “censura del bien” en Internet. Incluso el conservador Friedrich Merz sería un ejemplo de derecha civilizada. Todos se opondrían al autoritarismo del lunático Trump.

Pues bien, todos se abrazaron con Trump y se pusieron a sus órdenes. “Tomaremos medidas para defender nuestros intereses y los de nuestros aliados en la región, potencialmente lanzando misiles y drones contra su origen” —dice la declaración conjunta de los tres patetas en respuesta a la guerra defensiva de Irán contra la agresión criminal desencadenada por Estados Unidos y por su apoderado apodado “Israel”. “Acordamos trabajar conjuntamente con EE. UU. y aliados en la región sobre este asunto”, completó la nota del trío europeo.

Está claro que uno de los pretextos centrales de esa alianza con el líder antidemocrático, misógino y extremista de Estados Unidos es derrocar al régimen antidemocrático, misógino y extremista de Irán.

“Jamenei era un dictador sanguinario que oprimió a su pueblo, humilló a mujeres, jóvenes y minorías, y fue recientemente responsable de la muerte de miles de civiles en su país y en la región. Por lo tanto, solo podemos satisfacernos con su muerte”, declaró la portavoz del gobierno francés —el mismo gobierno que hasta ahora buscaba presentarse como amigo de las naciones africanas, asiáticas y latinoamericanas, fingiendo oponerse a las agresiones de Estados Unidos para reciclar su imagen colonial después de que las tropas francesas fueran expulsadas del Sahel.

Sir Keir Starmer condenó a Irán por atacar países vecinos donde hay ciudadanos británicos, ignorando los ataques iniciales de EE. UU. e Israel y a los ciudadanos británicos que se encuentran en Irán. El guion ya está listo, el viejo guion de las agresiones imperialistas a gran escala: el culpable es Irán, por bombardear a sus vecinos, matar inocentes y violar los intereses de los países imperialistas en la región, que responderán en autodefensa y en defensa de sus aliados. “La única manera de detener la amenaza es destruir los lanzadores y depósitos de misiles” de Irán, dijo el primer ministro.

El político laborista, en el colmo de su hipocresía, aseguró que el Reino Unido no participará en ninguna “acción ofensiva”, sino que solo permitirá la utilización de sus instalaciones militares en Oriente Medio a pedido del gobierno estadounidense. La retórica de los halcones imperialistas —a ambos lados del Atlántico— es conocida desde hace décadas: bombardear a Irán, que se está defendiendo de la agresión de Estados Unidos e Israel, no es “acción ofensiva”, sino mera “autodefensa colectiva”. Y esa “autodefensa” será ejercida con participación directa de Londres únicamente si sus instalaciones son atacadas por Teherán.

Pero Irán ya declaró públicamente que cualquier instalación utilizada por Estados Unidos para atacarlo es un objetivo legítimo. Y si Irán ataca una instalación militar británica, Starmer tendrá una excusa para modificar su supuesto plan inicial y entrar de lleno en la guerra de agresión. Por eso, en su discurso a la nación, escogió bien las palabras: “no nos uniremos a acciones ofensivas AHORA”.

Esa misma noche llega la noticia de un ataque con drones contra la base aérea británica de Akrotiri, en Chipre. Puede ser el Pearl Harbor o el Tonkín de Starmer.

Esa postura, natural y previsible, de las tres grandes potencias imperialistas de Europa, demuestra de manera irrefutable y por enésima vez que no es solo el gobierno de Estados Unidos ni tampoco únicamente Donald Trump el gran enemigo de los pueblos del mundo.

Demuestra también la inexistencia de la dicotomía entre democracia y fascismo. Los supuestos demócratas son los gestores y sostenedores del fascismo. La década de 1930 lo demostró, con todo el apoyo financiero, político y propagandístico de los grandes capitalistas mundiales a Hitler y con la copia de sus métodos por Churchill en la India o por Roosevelt y sus campos de concentración para japoneses en EE. UU., así como la aniquilación instantánea de cientos de miles en Hiroshima y Nagasaki mediante las bombas atómicas autorizadas por Truman.

Pero Stalin celebraba la “victoria de la democracia y de la paz” contra el fascismo.

Pasados ochenta años, se sigue difundiendo el viejo mantra de la lucha existencial de la democracia contra el fascismo, incluso después de que la democracia haya instalado dictaduras fascistas en América Latina, empleado una guerra terrorista en Argelia y destruido Vietnam, Irak y Afganistán.

El genocidio en Gaza, llevado a cabo por el fascista Netanyahu con la total complicidad, armamento, financiamiento e incentivo de los demócratas estadounidenses y europeos, ha abierto los ojos de mucha gente en todo el mundo. La guerra imperialista colectiva de demócratas y fascistas estadounidenses y europeos derribará ese mito de una vez por todas. Sobre todo cuando los pueblos oprimidos de todo el mundo, empezando por los de Oriente Medio, se levanten en armas contra los verdaderos tiranos sanguinarios que los esclavizan en nombre de la defensa de las minorías, de los derechos humanos y de la democracia.

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Tech giant Apple has quietly paid nearly $2 billion for a ‘pre-speech’ tech company whose employees helped Israel commit genocide in Gaza.

And Apple has paid this money, the second-biggest deal in its history, for a company that doesn’t have a product, doesn’t have any revenues and whose website is a single page containing 15 words.

The company, Q.ai, is developing sensors which map the imperceptible movements of a human face to determine the words someone is thinking before they’re spoken.

They call it silent speech.

Or pre-speech.

And it’s exactly as sinister as you think it is.

Q.ai was founded by Aviad Maizels, Avi Barliya and Yonatan Wexler, all of whom honed their skills by testing technologies of apartheid on Palestinians. Maizels is a former commander of Unit 81, the IDF division which builds Israel’s offensive cyber weapons. Barliya, according to his LinkedIn, was an intelligence officer in the Israeli air force, while Wexler is a former Unit 8200 agent.

Apple’s genocide intake

In a blog post announcing the deal, Tom Hulme, an executive at Google Ventures, one of the company’s early investors, revealed that 30% of Q.ai’s more than 100 staff were called up to participate in the genocide of Gaza.

This admission means dozens of people implicated in genocidal acts who served under the political command of Yoav Gallant, an ICC indicted war criminal, are now Apple employees.

It should be a huge scandal. The biggest company in the US, one of the world’s most recognisable names, has folded into its staff dozens of people who served in a military during the period it committed genocide, according to all of the world’s most acclaimed rights experts.

But every single mainstream article which covered news of the deal, from Reuters to the FT, ignored this fact.

Mainstream coverage also ignored a number of other extremely cogent elements to the story, including the nature of the deal and the technology itself.

Apple has paid two billion dollars for something that barely appears to exist.

Q.ai’s website consists of just 15 words.

To find out exactly what the company does you have to look beyond the press releases to the patents Q.ai and its founders have filed.

And these patents read like plot lines from the bleakest dystopian futures.

Sensing silent speech

Q.ai’s technology centres around silent speech.

This is the idea that before we vocalise words and move our mouths to emit sounds, our brain has already sent signals to muscles in our throat and face determining what we’re going to say. Q.ai claims to have invented infrared sensors that can pick up these pre-speech micro-movements.

One filing talks about a “sensing device configured to fit an ear of a user, with an optical sensing head which senses light reflected from the face and outputs a signal in response. Processing circuitry processes the signal to generate a speech output.”

Tech bloggers have suggested Apple has bought the company to enable non-verbal control of an iPhone and other devices via its airpod earphones or smart glasses. An annotated diagram included with the patent shows a person wearing glasses and an earpiece integrated with the technology.

Indeed Apple is no stranger to adopting the technologies of Israeli apartheid, and in fact the company is extremely familiar with Maizels himself.

In 2013, Apple bought Maizels’s first company, PrimeSense, a developer of 3D sensing technology. PrimeSense technology went on to become the foundation for Apple’s Face ID system on its newer iPhone and iPad models.

Nonetheless, two billion dollars for a non-existent technology and a three-year old company, is unprecedented. What isn’t unprecedented, however, is a US tech giant overpaying for an Israeli company.

Overpriced Israeli tech

At this price, however, Israel received a huge $5 billion tax windfall. At the time Zionists crowed it would help the country buy more warplanes and missiles to commit genocide.

The deal for Q.ai, while a lot smaller, will still generate significant tax income for Israel’s struggling economy.

And Israel is critical to Apple.

The company has a large R&D campus in the country, its second-biggest outside the US, into which large numbers of Unit 8200 and Unit 81 graduates are funnelled. Apple CEO Tim Cook is a devoted Zionist, has visited Israel on numerous occasions, and in 2018 received an award from Zionist lobby group the ADL for his efforts to censor anti-Israel speech. Apple has made good on that promise over the last two years, sacking staff for expressing pro-Palestine, anti-genocide views. Cook has never spoken about Gaza.

The price for a ghost company with a few patents, then, looks as much about politics as it does about technology.

That’s not to say Q.ai’s technology won’t be commercialised for consumer applications. It probably will be. And if the tech is realised, the implications for privacy and data collection are frightening.

As are the security state and military applications.

A pre-crime future

A few days after the Q.ai deal, the head of neurotechnology at Israel’s directorate of defense research and development, the country’s equivalent to the US’s DARPA programme, gave her first-ever interview to Israeli media. In the interview she referenced Q.ai and said the Israeli military is working on similar technology. The US has a DARPA project known as Silent Talk which is also working to develop pre-speech sensing and non-verbal control technologies.

Once the technology is developed, and pre-speech established as a legitimate biological human function, how far behind will pre-crime be?

Given the frenzied efforts we’ve seen to shut down and criminalise criticism of Israel under the guise of antisemitism, one can easily imagine a future of pre-speech sensing technology being rolled out to identify would-be critics of Israel. Or the US. Or Europe. Or imperialism in general.

You can imagine it now. “Based on our silent speech detector we have determined you were going to say something hateful or antisemitic or un-American and are therefore under arrest.”

The most dystopian technologies continue to flow out of Israel. And they continue to flow because Israel is empowered by the US and Europe to maintain a system of apartheid built upon invasive and authoritarian technologies of control.

It is therefore no surprise that the creators of Q.ai are veterans of Israel’s genocidal military security state, or that the largest company in the US sees these technologies as essential to its AI future.

And while this story may be no surprise, we should never get used to, and must resist, technologies of apartheid and genocide, and their creators, becoming embedded in our devices, our economies and our lives.

Original article: donotpanic.news

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Amid the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, two prominent Jewish historians believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable, writes Stefan Moore.

Two prominent Jewish historians have recently written from different perspectives — one economic and political; one largely theological and moral — that the state of Israel is doomed and living on borrowed time.

Despite coming in the midst of the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, they believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable.

In his latest book, Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps for a Better Future, llan Pappé writes that Israel is self-destructing economically, militarily and politically as it finds itself abandoned internationally.

According to Pappé, the farcical two-state solution is “a rotting corpse” and the only way forward is decolonisation, the return of Palestinian refugees to their land, accountability for those who have committed crimes and a new model of statehood for Palestine and the region.

A corollary to Pappé is the moral and religious critique of Zionism by Canadian Jewish historian and biblical scholar Yakov Rabkin who holds that the Zionist movement is a death trap for Jews, the region and the world.

In his recent book, Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Zionism and his earlier work, What is Modern Israel, Rabkin relates how the Jewish state represents a complete repudiation of the most fundamental values of Judaism.

In Israel, he says, values such as tolerance, morality and humility have been replaced with a new muscular Jewish identity that extols nationalism, aggression, violence and conquest. Traditional Jewish culture is looked upon with contempt.

Rabkin recounts how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the terrorist Jewish militia Irgun, described transforming the “Yid” from the shtetels of Eastern Europe into the New Hebrew:

“Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine a diametrical opposite…because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. … The Yid has accepted submission and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command.”

If you hear echoes of Nazi master race philosophy, it’s no accident. Jabotinsky is channeling the views of early Zionist eugenicists such as Arthur Ruppin who sought “the purification of the [Jewish] race” and “maintained his ties with the German theoreticians of racial science even after the National Socialist regime took power.”

As for the Jewish religion, Rabkin dismantles the Zionist myth that the land of Israel was a God-given promise to the Jews – a claim “based on a literal interpretation of the bible that diverged drastically from the teachings of Rabbinical Judaism.”

Yakov M. Rabkin, 2017. (Alexandr Shcherba /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

To begin with, he explains, Palestine was never a homeland for Jews who, in fact, came from Mesopotamia and Egypt and migrated to Canaan (Palestine).  There, according to the Talmud (the foundational source of Jewish theology) Abraham and his descendants were instructed by God to disperse to the four corners of the earth and never to return “en masse and in force” to the land of Israel until they had become spiritually purified.

In other words, until the coming of the messiah, Jews should stay where they are, which, in fact, is exactly where they have been.

Ashkenazi Jews have lived in Europe since Roman times and had been thoroughly assimilated into European culture.  In the 19th century, many were socialists, communists and members of the Jewish Labour Bund which emphasized the right to thrive in their own culture, speak their own language (Yiddish) and fight for justice in the countries they inhabited, Rabkin says.

As a result, when Zionism emerged as a movement at the end of the 19th century, most Jews viewed it as a reactionary cult and a bourgeois adventure opposed to the interest of the Jewish working class, the author argues.

But some of the strongest opposition, Rabkin writes, came from religious Jews who believed Zionism is in direct conflict with the values of Judaism, which teaches that the Torah (the Jewish bible), and not a nation, is what binds Jews together. In the words of one Orthodox Jewish scholar, Zionism was “a spiritual corruption…that borders on blasphemy,” Rabkin says.

The opposition to Zionism, of course, was muted with the Holocaust — a genocide that Zionists immediately seized upon as an opportunity for nation building in Israel.  Not only did Zionists actively thwart Jews from emigrating to other countries during and after the war, they used the Holocaust as a lever to bolster the Jewish population in Palestine, argues Rabkin.

In fact, Nazi anti-Semites and Zionists became joined at the hip. “The anti-Semites wished to be rid of the Jews, the Zionists sought to gather the Jews in the Holy Land,” writes Rabkin.

Leopold von Mildenstein in Palestine in 1933. (Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)

In 1933, Rabkin recounts, the high-ranking Nazi SS officer Baron Leopold Elder von Mildenstein travelled to Palestine with his good friend German Zionist Federation leader Kurt Tuchler. After his return, Mildenstein wrote laudatory articles about the Zionist enterprise and a special medal was coined to commemorate his visit.  On one side was a Swastika, on the other, The Star of David.

Today, the Zionist ideology first espoused by Theodore Herzl in 1896 and transmitted through every Israeli leader from David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin, Ariel Sharon and onward has morphed into the most right-wing, militant and genocidal government in Israel to date.

The rabidly racist cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are now followers of a new messianic movement called National Judaism – what Rabkin describes as “the dominant ideology of vigilante settlers who have harassed, dispossessed and murdered Palestinians in the West Bank and encourage the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Since its inception in the late 19th century, critics of Zionism warned that the Zionist state would become a death trap, endangering both the colonisers and the colonised alike,” writes Rabkin. “For those voices…the Zionist experiment was seen as a tragic mistake [and] the sooner it ended … the better for humanity as a whole.”

Concluding with his own reflection as an observant Jew he writes:

“Jewish teachings frequently attribute the root causes of communal suffering to internal moral failings. In this light, Israel’s current trajectory –- marked by impunity, hubris and cruelty, all of which contradict Jewish values –- appears destined for moral and political ruin.”

One Democratic, Multiethnic State

Ilan Pappe at the University of Exeter, April 2023. (Fjmustak/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pappé shares Rabkin’s view that Israel is in a suicidal spiral that will ultimately lead to its collapse. But, then, he takes a giant leap into the future to look at what he envisions emerging from the ruins – one democratic, multiethnic state in Palestine.

Israel on the Brink starts with the disastrous events from the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 to the rise of the religious right settler movement in recent years.

Like a building engineer surveying a crumbling structure, Pappé points out the fatal cracks in the foundations of the Israeli state that will ultimately widen and lead to the collapse of the Zionist project – an event that he believes “could well change the course of world history in this century.”

Crack No. 1 — a very big one, according to Pappé — is the rise of messianic Zionism — the belief the Holy Land was given to the Jewish people by God to hasten redemption. Pioneered by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865-1935) it was

“the most extreme form of Zionism: a fusion of messianic ideas with unashamed racism towards the Palestinians and contempt for secular and Reform Judaism.”

Kook’s disciples form a direct line from his son, Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook to today’s far-right West Bank settlers and the dominant political coalition including ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

This movement, writes Pappé, represents one of the most serious cracks in Israel’s unstable political foundations –- a schism between religious right and political Zionists that, ironically, despite their differences, shares the same goal of maintaining Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

Other foundational cracks exposed by Pappé are: the “unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause around the world,” deepening economic troubles as the wealth gap widens, investment dries up and the most affluent professionals flee the country (estimated to be over half a million since 2023).

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook with Israeli forces at the Western Wall shortly after Israeli forces captured it in 1967. (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Added to the list are the “glaring inadequacy” of the Israeli military that, while capable of bombing Gaza to rubble, is not trained for real combat and unable to defeat Hamas; and the crumbling civilian apparatus that is incapable of adequately housing the thousands of Israelis displaced by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Finally, there’s the biggest crack of all – the rise of a new Palestinian Liberation Movement at the same time that the Zionist project “is careening towards a cliff edge.” This is a movement of energised young Palestinians who, “instead of pursuing a two-state solution, as the Palestinian Authority has done fruitlessly for several decades, … are seeking a genuine one-state solution.”

The challenge, according to Pappé, will be to meld youthful fervour with a clear political agenda. “Every successful revolution in history arrived when the creative energy of the masses met the programmatic vision of a confident organisation that could voice their demands,” he writes, “what Leon Trotsky described as ‘the inspired frenzy of history.’”

The guiding principle at the centre of this revolution is justice —transitional justice which involves legally addressing systemic human rights violations and holding the guilty accountable and restorative justice to provide restitution to their victims, Pappé says .

First and foremost, this means giving the 6 million Palestinian refugees who were driven off their land since 1948 the right of return to their towns and villages.

Next, is the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Isolated outposts occupied by fanatical settlers will require total demolition but the sprawling urban settlements built since 1967 will present bigger challenges.

In any case,

“transitional justice will involve deconstructing the legal framework of the apartheid state and supplanting it with one that does not discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in property ownership, urban planning and land use.”

But perhaps Pappé’s most sweeping vision of all is reconnecting Palestine with the entire Eastern Mediterranean, the Mashreq, “which were organically linked to each other by cultural, social, economic, historical and ideological ties dating back centuries.”

This entire region, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in relative harmony for thousands of years before the European colonial powers carved it up with artificial boundaries, could be reconnected with Palestine inspiring “a wider revolution in all the Mashreq.”

In regard to the millions of Jews who will remain living in post-Israel Palestine, Pappé believes they will be willing to contribute to the building of this new future: “The way other Jewish communities elsewhere in the world view themselves as part of their respective countries can be replicated in post-Israel Palestine.”

Envisioning a Future

Gaza solidarity demonstration in Berlin on Nov. 4, 2023, organized by Palestinian and Jewish groups. (Streets of Berlin – Free Palestine will not be cancelled/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

Israel on the Brink concludes by conjuring up a post-Israel Palestine in the form of a fictional diary where Pappé is both observer and participant in the building of a future society — beginning in 2027 and culminating in 2048, 100 years after the founding of the Israeli State.

Over this time, he witnesses Israel becoming increasing isolated internationally; the nations of the world imposing crippling sanctions and cutting off diplomatic relations; the mass exodus of Israeli citizens; towns and streets being given back their Arab names; new political coalitions being formed between Palestinian and Jewish parties; fears that the capitalist model will leave power in the hands of an affluent Jewish and Palestinian elite creating a new form of apartheid; the creation of a new educational system and the recognition of returning Palestinian refugees as full citizens.

Is this just wishful thinking to imagine the brutal, racist stain of Zionism will be washed away in the foreseeable future and a new democratic state emerge in its place?

The roadblocks are formidable  –-  from the continued military occupation of Gaza under Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace to the massive 82 percent support among Jewish Israelis for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, making Israel what American political scientist Norman Finklestein calls “a whole society that has been effectively Nazified.”

Neither Ilan Pappé nor Yakov Rabkin are under illusions about the obstacles; they only believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a tragic historical mistake and, in the interest of the Palestinian people and all humanity, it must come to an end.

One way, as Palestinian author Ghada Kharmi has written is that, “The U.N. that made Israel must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state.”

This would certainly be a first step on the road to the one-state solution that Pappé and Rabkin envision – one that we can only hope to see the beginnings of in our lifetime.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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“We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera based on evidence collected by the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has concluded that nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been “evaporated” by Israel through the use of thermal weapons—some of them supplied by the US.

As reported by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the investigation found that 2,842 Palestinians were killed due to Israel’s “systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].”

The heat generated by these weapons is so intense, investigators noted, that they leave behind almost no detectable human remains other than blood stains or pieces of flesh.

Israel’s use of such weapons was flagged last year in a social media post by Omar Hamad, a Gaza pharmacist who posted a video purportedly showing a thermobaric bomb being detonated in Beit Hanoun.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense, said hat the investigation was not a mere estimate of Palestinians incinerated by thermal and thermobaric weapons, but the result of painstaking forensic work.

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Israel’s government is completely evil

It is not for nothing that most of the world both abhors and condemns Israeli behavior, whether it be measured by the never-ending genocide in Gaza or the similarly driven terrorizing and deportation of the Palestinian population on the West Bank. Israel is intent on taking full control of historic Palestine and is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about and unfortunately the United States has been its all too often enthusiastic accomplice in that effort. Beyond that, Israel has bombed and otherwise killed its neighbors in Lebanon and Syria while also enticing Washington to join in the effort to attack Iran and bring about regime change in Tehran. Apartheid Israel, which has declared itself legally and ethnically a Jewish state, intends to become that in reality by eliminating all non-Jews from its ever expanding territory and it is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about.

There is something that is a tad peculiar about the Jewish state’s sense of identity in that it does not regard killing those who are non-Jews by any means possible as either a crime, or, more to the point, as a sin in spite of the prohibition included in its own Ten Commandments. Nor does Israel consider any agreements it enters into with other countries to be in any way binding on it and its leaders, witness the regular violation of the two ceasefires that Tel Aviv has entered into over Gaza, or its behavior regarding similar arrangements with neighbors Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon and Syria, Israel is currently spraying “unidentified” though apparently toxic chemicals on farmland near the border to drive away local residents through destruction of their livelihoods. Israel does what Israel does and the United States, which was a guarantor of all the ceasefires as well as of the ongoing peace process, never says a word when Israel breaks the agreements and goes about killing more local inhabitants.

Israel’s latest ploy is to bring about a United States attack on Iran to destroy that country’s ability to strike Israel, making the Jewish state by default the regional dominant military and political power. Israel reportedly convinced Donald Trump not to attack Iran several weeks ago because there was concern that Iran would, as part of its defense, attack targets inside Israel that had the ability to support the American effort. In other words, Israel was seeking a solution to Iran that would not put itself at risk and would instead put the onus on the United States. One might point out that this is hardly the appropriate behavior for a country that is repeatedly praised as Washington’s “best friend and closest ally.” It is anything but that while Trump and the politicians are either too stupid or corrupted to realize that, or too intimidated by the Lobby, to respond as they should if the US interest were truly their priority in relationship to an Iran which does not threaten America in any way.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called for a meeting with Donald Trump for later this week, which would be the ninth meeting between the two since Trump’s inauguration, far more than with any other foreign politician. Netanyahu has asked to meet with Trump to discuss options for the ongoing indirect discussions with the Iranians. Netanyahu’s office released a statement that “The prime minister believes that all negotiations must include limiting the Iranian ballistic missiles, and ending support for the Iranian axis” of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, which Israel perceives at the principal threats against it.

In any event, it is generally conceded that Trump will do what Israel wants. Netanyahu will also be seeking a plan of action whereby the US will attack and bring about regime change in Iran while also neutralizing its offensive capabilities. Israel meanwhile will stay out of the fight to avoid any damage from the Iranian arsenal. Neat, and any dead Americans resulting from that formula, most probably on US bases in the Persian Gulf region, will just be the cost of doing business with Netanyahu who will be leaving from his sessions with Trump with a smile.

Netanyahu is smiling because he always wins when dealing with American presidents while simultaneously treating the United States like a bit of dirty laundry that can easily be discarded or ignored whenever it is is not useful as a source of money, weapons and protection. Note the disregard for the damage done to the United States by the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy which was without question a major blackmail operation up to the US presidential level run by Mossad to favorably influence policies towards the Jewish state. Even now with many incriminating documents revealed there is total resistance on the part of the Trump regime and the opposition Democrats to honestly expose what was done by our “good friends” in Israel.

But I have described Israel as uniquely evil and there is plenty of evidence for that outside of its treatment of the United States of America as some kind of vassal state that is a source of money and political and military support. As observed above, Israel has never complied with any agreement that it makes with foreign countries. During the course of the current ceasefire it has blocked the entry of food or medicines while also continuing to bomb and shoot Gazans, killing close of 600, including many children. Meanwhile, far from withdrawing its army from Gaza it has increased its foothold in the Strip, occupying close to 60% of the total area as a “Yellow” security zone, presumably leaving the rest as eventually intended for the Trump Gaza Resort or for Israeli settlers who have been appearing in the area in increasing numbers and even staking out new settlements.

As a gesture to indicate some measure of compliance with the ceasefire, last week Israel agree to partially open the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt which it controls, and the first to pass through were supposed to be those Gazans suffering from injuries and wounds requiring advanced medical treatment. Something like 22,000 Gazans were registered or lined up seeking passage and a long line of ambulances from the Egyptian side were waiting to help. Israel then closed the Crossing in spite of its commitment to open it and reportedly only let 150 injured Gazans pass through it with 50 Gazans who were already in Egypt allowed to return home from the other side.

Another story making the rounds is how the Israeli military has now conceded that its multi year offensive in Gaza has killed approximately 70,000 Gazans, a number that is being praised in some circles because it is considered an honest, though unfortunately brutal, appraisal. Some believe, however, it is meant to throw out a lower number so the real number will never be revealed. The 70,000 number is much higher than what has appeared in the Zionist controlled western media up until now but it is far below other estimates from reliable sources like the British medical journal The Lancet that place the deaths at 186,000, with most of the bodies still buried under the rubble. Some other conservative estimates believe that fully 12% of the original 2 million Gazan population has been killed, meaning close to 240,000.

And when one speaks of how evil Israel is, there is another issue which might be considered. Israel is sometimes described as the leading country in providing resources for organ replacements, a procedure sometimes euphemized as “organ harvesting.” That appears to be true because the thousands of Palestinians who are held without charges in Israeli prisons are treated abominably, to include having their organs removed for marketing purposes if they die and even when they are still living. The evidence for that horrific behavior consists of the bodies of Palestinians that are released from prisons and given to their families for burial. Those bodies frequently have what are presumed to be their viable body organs as well as corneas or even skin removed prior to being returned. The organs are then marketed worldwide. The result is that organ donation in “Israel” is among the highest in the world, despite some religious restrictions and a relatively small population.

So I rest my case. These are not the sorts of things that countries with any sense of morality or respectability embrace. And unfortunately Israel is able to drag Donald Trump and the US Congress along with it, even making Washington do the real dirty work when it comes to confronting nations like Iran. But there are signs that the American public has become tired of the whole charade and Israel’s role in it. The litmus test will come with the handling of the situation with Iran and we should be seeing what will happen there in the next week or two.

Original article:  www.unz.com

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Shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma—whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse—to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted. According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy—from Iraq to Haiti—Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement. Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theaters, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.

Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground.

In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon. The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.

Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance.

These operations were rationalized through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence.” The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.

What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.

Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes—previously rare in the West Bank—the widespread deployment of armored vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.

The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: Roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted. Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water. Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.

Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically driven—willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries. This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.

History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely. Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.

Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganize and push back against imposed conditions of domination.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground—one that enables formal annexation, normalizes permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.

For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential. Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.

Original article: commondreams.org

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I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143.

I read in a BBC report that the victims of the Dec. 14 shooting at Bondi Beach, along the coast a few miles from central Sydney, were “generous, joyful and talented.”

These were Jews who had gathered, a sizable group, to celebrate Hanukkah under Australia’s summer sun. Immediately this is cast across the West as a case of out-of-control, come-from-nowhere anti–Semitism having nothing to do with the conduct of “the Jewish state.”

Two of the victims, Sofia and Boris Gurman, “were people of deep kindness, quiet strength and unwavering care for others,” the family said in a statement the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published Tuesday.

I read that Reuven Morrison, another of the 15 victims, was “the most beautiful, generous man who had a gorgeous smile that would light up the room.” I read that the friends of Dan Elkayam, a French Jew marking the holiday in Australia, “described him as a down-to-earth, happy-to-lucky individual who was warmly embraced by those he met.”

You can read about these victims of the Bondi Beach shooting, too. The ABC published commemorations of 12 of the 15. There are photographs, the intimate remembrances of those who knew the deceased, some boilerplate describing how Australia’s state broadcaster is reporting the story. The New York Times published similar items on 13 of the victims under the headline, “What to Know About the Victims of the Bondi Beach Shooting.”

The ABC report is here, and The New York Times’s is here. If you study them briefly you find the themes common to both. Individuation is the essential point. We must know the names and see the faces of all of those killed. Innocence and virtue are the other running themes.

The Times ran a similar feature after Sept. 11, 2001. Under the headline, “Profiles in Grief,” it published thumbnail biographies of the 2,977 victims of the World Trade Center attacks, a half-dozen or so a day all through that strange autumn. I studied those short pieces carefully, and it is the same now as then: Everyone is uniquely himself or herself, everyone innocent, everyone generous, everyone happy and caring. Every life precious, in a word.

I do not know how to continue writing this commentary other than bluntly and honestly. The Bondi Beach killings bring us to a transformative moment and warrant no less.

The 15 people who perished at Bondi last Sunday — and there may be more casualties to come among those hospitalized with wounds — did not deserve to die at the hands of a father-and-son act reportedly inspired by the remnants of the Islamic State. These were senseless murders by any conceivable judgment — so senseless I am stating the obvious by saying so.

The Dishonesty of Official Grief

Palestinians mourning relatives killed by an Israeli airstrike of Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jan. 12, 2024. (UNRWA /Ashraf Amra/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

But I cannot enter into the responses officials and the media serving them have urged incessantly since last weekend. Out of the question for any number of reasons, chief among them the dishonesty at the core of what I may as well call “official grief.”

Read in the larger context of these awful events, the obsessive humanization of the Bondi Beach victims is an upside-down exercise in dehumanization. This is first, straight off the top. Jewish lives count, white lives count, names, faces, generous smiles — all this counts.

But the names, faces and lives of those the Zionist regime has terrorized and brutalized for the past two years or eight decades, depending on how you reckon history:  No, no need for any of this because they do not count.

This is an obscenity, in my view — obscene for what it is and because it has a 500-year history. Since the opening of the imperial era in the late 15th century, the West has aggrandized itself with its never-to-be-questioned claims to civilization, decency, law and moral superiority, while the rest of the world consists of unruly, racially inferior, not-quite-human barbarians. The horrors of the mission civilisatrice — inhumanity in the name of humanity — were the inevitable outcome and so they remain.

Indulge in official grief as it is now more or less forced upon us and you are a 21st century participant in this self-serving… as I say, this obscenity. I do not see that it is any more complicated.

The New York Times published an especially egregious case in point a day after the attacks. “I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together,” Sharon Brous, a rabbi in Los Angeles, wrote in the paper’s opinion section. “I don’t want platitudes and pieties. I want justice…. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency. I want reform” — reform, that is, to combat the anti–semitism she understands to be the beginning and the end of the Bondi Beach story.

Rabbi Brous went on to explain that, post–Bondi, she struggles against despair. But she found great humanity, on the other hand, in “the vibrancy of the worldwide Jewish community that immediately rallied in solidarity, reminding us that when one limb is struck the whole body is unwell.”

Simply typing these brief passages leaves me incredulous. Justice, reform, rallies in solidarity with the 15, nothing for the 71,000 (the Gaza Health Ministry’s count at this writing), who evidently do not even enter Rabbi Brous’s head. And the Zionist terror machine’s daily strikes in Gaza and the West Bank as we speak? No, nothing, for they are not part of any “whole body,” however this is conceived.

Yes, I can grieve for those who died last Sunday, but it is a question of recognition, of keeping things in proportion. Here is my admittedly simplified formula: I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143 and this is the extent of my grief for the 15.

Victims of Israeli massacre of Al-Tabieen school where Palestinian refugees had come to seek refuge, Aug. 10, 2024. (Hussam Shabat/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)

I have called the Bondi Beach attack transformative. Two reasons.

One, these awful events mark a major step in the erasure not only of history and memory but of sheer cognition. I have heard or read no mention from any mainstream quarter of the campaign of terror and dehumanization the Zionist state now wages not just in Gaza and in the West Bank but against Muslim populations across much of West Asia.

This is hardly new. Apartheid Israel and its too-numerous, too-powerful enablers   have sought to erase and otherwise obscure the truth of the Zionist project since there was a Zionist project to speak of. But Bondi Beach looks set not merely to normalize the human mind’s incapacity to see, think and judge but to enforce this damage to the collective consciousness by means of those “reforms” Rabbi Brous proposes.

Two, Zionists and their fellow travelers instantly began to use the events of last Sunday to condemn the Palestinian cause altogether. This is again nothing new.

Utter “From the river to the sea…” or “Globalize the intifada,” and you risk your job, your professorship, your visa; arrest in Britain; profess support for Palestine Action, the British protest group, and you will be arrested and tried under the U.K.’s draconian terrorism laws.

But Bondi Beach already serves to license Zionists to advance a blanket condemnation of the Palestinian cause. Predictably enough, the Zionist-supervised New York Times gives us another case in point.

Immediately after last Sunday’s attack the inimitable (thank goodness) Bret Stephens published “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like.” In the preposterous but predictable piece that follows Stephens finds peril and fear in the prospect that the father-and-son shooters took seriously such thoughts as “resistance is justified” and “by any means necessary.”

I read Stephens as stating aloud what is otherwise implicit in an emergent orthodoxy on the Palestine question. In his denunciations, Stephens is no better than Itamar Ben–Givr, Bezalel Smotrich and all those other Israeli monsters calling for the extermination of the Palestinian people — the “sub-human animals,” in the words of Yoav Gallant, defense minister at the time of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Stephens puts their shockingly bald racism on the Times’s opinion page: This is all that makes his copy important. To condemn the Palestinians’ cause in this manner, including their legally recognized right to armed resistance against an occupying power, is to condemn the Palestinian people to genocide, ethnic-cleansing or some combination of both.

Judaism Versus  Zionism 

Yakov M. Rabkin, 2017. (Alexandr Shcherba /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Just as I was thinking through the events at Bondi Beach and wondering why my sympathies came to 0.0002143 percent of what they were officially supposed to be, I began reading the book Yakov Rabkin, the distinguished professor of history at the University of Montreal, just published.

Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Palestine (Aspect Editions), is a brief, superbly lucid essay on the difference between Judaism and Zionism — the former embodying an excellently humanist tradition and the latter its violent perversion into a limitlessly vicious ethno-nationalist ideology.

Some pages in I came to this sentence:

“Across Israel and worldwide, Jews grapple with contradictions between the Judaism they profess and the Zionist ideology that has in fact taken hold of them.”

This simply stated reality landed squarely. I immediately went back to those brief biographies the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and The New York Times just published. Yes, I thought.  Generous, kind toward others, compassionate: They put the victims exactly in the Judaic tradition as Rabkin described it.

Rabkin gives an excellent précis of the long history of animosity most Jews felt toward Zionism during its emergent phase in the late 19th and early 20th century. They, especially Jews residing in Palestine prior to the arrival of the first Zionist settlers, who lived peaceably side-by side with indigenous Arabs, wanted nothing to do with it.

Then came some questions.

Did the Jews killed at Bondi Beach grapple with the sharp contradictions between Judaism and Zionism, as Rabkin asserts? Did they stand with the majority in history and reject Zionism’s perversions of Judaism’s honorable tradition? Did they profess their Judaism but in fact support the Zionist project?

There is no indication — none made public, in any case — that the Bondi Beach victims had denounced Zionism in the name of Judaism. I count this a very key point. It is another way last Sunday’s events are transformative.

We do not know with certainty the motivations of the shooters. John Whitbeck, the international lawyer with long experience in the Israel-Palestine crisis, pointed out:

“Islamic State ideology has always been focused on intra–Muslim issues and particularly on establishing its ‘caliphate’ in the portions of Iraq and Syria under its control. Islamic State has never shown any significant interest in the Palestinian cause and its leaders have even attacked Hamas and other Palestinian factions as ‘apostate’ groups because they operate within national boundaries and engage in political and diplomatic activities.”

Various accusations of culpability have been floated these past few days. While the Australian government assigns guilt and motivation to followers of the Islamic State, the Netanyahu regime instantly blamed Iran. Again, there is little sense here: The Islamic State was comprised of Sunni Salafists, ideological enemies of the Islamic Republic, which is Shi`a.

Now I read suggestions that the Bondi attack was another of the merciless false flags for which the Zionists are infamous. In the cause of blunt honesty I confess this was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind on hearing news of the shootings.

There is absolutely no certainty on this point, of course, and it is unlikely there ever will be. But the possibility of a Mossad provocation cannot be dismissed. The historical record suggests this. (Mossad is now assisting Australian investigators into the attack). And given the use Zionists make of the Bondi Beach events, the cui bono argument cannot be thrown out of court. .

Already there are Zionists in Australia and elsewhere asserting that anyone who has until now stood for the Palestinian cause bears responsible for the gruesome events at an Australian beach last Sunday. Reflecting this sentiment—and the political influence of militant Zionism in Australia—federal and state governments are now considering legislation that would, among much else, allow authorities to ban demonstrations and even speech in support of a free Palestine.

I take the opposite view as to where responsibility lies: Mossad op or no Mossad op, it is fairer to say it is Zionists who are responsible, directly or by way of the war they wage against Palestinians — and against morality and ordinary decency, against our public discourse, our laws and civil liberties, our consciences, our faculties of reason — for the deaths at Bondi Beach.

Post–Bondi, it follows immediately, it is ever more imperative that Jews the world over declare themselves either as Jews in the Judaic tradition or as Zionists. The urgency of mass denunciations of Zionism could hardly be more evident.

The precise count of the dead in Gaza as I write this is 70,669. As I type this number my mind goes to Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, written after a bombing raid shortly before World War II ended. What the lyrical Welshman refused was cheap sentiment and condolence-card clichés in favor of the larger truths inherent in any death:

I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

“After the first death, there is no other,” is the poem’s celebrated concluding line. Yes, altogether so. After the first 70,669, there is no other.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

Roberto IANNUZI

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El alto el fuego corre el riesgo de crear la peligrosa ilusión de que la vida en Gaza está volviendo a la normalidad. Pero […] el mundo no debe dejarse engañar. El genocidio israelí no ha terminado.

Quien pronunció estas palabras fue Agnès Callamard, antigua relatora especial de la ONU y actual directora de Amnistía Internacional.

El historiador israelí Raz Segal, profesor de estudios sobre el Holocausto y los genocidios en la Universidad de Stockton, en Nueva Jersey, expresó una opinión similar.

Segal afirmó que los líderes israelíes siguen haciendo declaraciones con una clara intención genocida.

Un informe de la UNCTAD (Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo) ha revelado que Israel ha causado en la Franja “el peor colapso económico jamás registrado”.

El PIB per cápita en el enclave palestino se ha desplomado hasta los 161 dólares al año, menos de 50 céntimos al día. Uno de los más bajos del mundo. Más del 92 % de los edificios residenciales han sido destruidos y dañados.

Según Callamard,

las autoridades israelíes persisten en sus políticas despiadadas, limitando el acceso a la ayuda humanitaria vital y a los servicios esenciales, e imponiendo deliberadamente condiciones calculadas para destruir físicamente a los palestinos en Gaza.

Amnistía afirma que los israelíes siguen impidiendo la reconstrucción de infraestructuras esenciales para el sustento de la vida.

Según la ONU, desde el 10 de octubre (fecha de inicio de la tregua) hasta el 1 de diciembre, entraron efectivamente en la Franja poco más de 100 camiones al día, en lugar de los 600 estipulados en el acuerdo de alto el fuego.

Los alimentos son insuficientes e Israel no permite la entrada de tiendas de campaña y prefabricados, que serían muy necesarios con la llegada de las lluvias y la temporada de frío.

Más de un millón y medio de palestinos en Gaza viven en tiendas de campaña y otros refugios improvisados. Las últimas lluvias torrenciales han destruido más de 22 000 tiendas. El hacinamiento y la exposición a las aguas residuales, debido al sistema de alcantarillado destruido, agravan aún más la situación.

Como ha afirmado el exministro israelí Yossi Beilin, en realidad no existe un plan de paz porque no hay acuerdo sobre ese plan.

Este habla de un Estado palestino al que el primer ministro israelí, Benjamin Netanyahu, ha declarado oponerse irrevocablemente. Tampoco hay acuerdo entre las partes sobre el desarme de Hamás.

Como mucho, hay un alto el fuego, sostiene Beilin, que se viola continuamente. Desde el 10 de octubre, fecha de inicio de la tregua, Israel ha matado a al menos 360 palestinos.

Aunque afirma que quiere atenerse al plan de Trump, el Estado judío sigue llevando a cabo operaciones militares en la Franja. Durante años, Israel ha declarado que respeta el proceso de paz, mientras imponía “hechos sobre el terreno” que han determinado su fracaso. El Gobierno de Netanyahu ha “importado” ahora el mismo modelo a Gaza.

La entrada en la Franja de la fuerza internacional de estabilización prevista en el plan de Trump corre el riesgo de agravar la crisis del enclave palestino en lugar de aliviarla, apoyando de hecho la ocupación israelí.

Casi toda la población palestina se aglomera en menos de la mitad de la Franja, la controlada por Hamás. La parte ocupada por Israel está despoblada. En el enclave palestino existe una partición de facto.

La administración Trump prevé la construcción de “comunidades alternativas seguras” solo en la denominada “zona verde” controlada por Israel, con el objetivo de atraer a los palestinos con la promesa de comida, medicinas y refugios.

Pero estas comunidades corren el riesgo de convertirse en campos de concentración controlados por muros, cámaras de vigilancia y puestos militares israelíes.

Los palestinos que deseen acceder a ellas podrían ser detenidos incluso por haber trabajado en la administración pública de Hamás, y aquellos a los que se les permita entrar corren el riesgo de no poder salir.

Por su parte, la zona controlada por Hamás seguirá sin reconstruirse y expuesta a las incursiones militares israelíes.

En la gestión de la Franja dividida en dos participa el llamado Centro de Control Civil-Militar (CCCM) creado por Estados Unidos en Kiryat Gat, en el sur de Israel.

En la dirección del centro colaboran 40 países y al menos dos empresas estadounidenses especializadas en la creación de software y sistemas de vigilancia basados en la inteligencia artificial (IA): Palantir y Dataminr.

Palantir colabora estrechamente con Israel y está acusada de complicidad en los crímenes de guerra cometidos por las fuerzas israelíes en Gaza en los últimos dos años.

La presencia de estas dos empresas en el CCCM sugiere que el control israelí sobre Gaza, ahora en colaboración con Estados Unidos, seguirá siendo férreo y se centrará en los sistemas de armas y vigilancia gestionados por IA.

Estos sistemas son capaces de controlar los movimientos y las comunicaciones de la población de Gaza, supervisando las redes sociales, los chats, los contactos telefónicos e Internet.

El enclave palestino parece trágicamente destinado a seguir siendo un laboratorio distópico de experimentación de estas tecnologías, en un laberinto espectral de escombros y desesperación aparentemente sin salida.

En este infierno, la agonía provocada por la falta de ayuda y la imposibilidad de reconstruir podría desembocar en cualquier momento en nuevas masacres provocadas por la reanudación de las operaciones militares israelíes.

Pero sobre la ininterrumpida tragedia de Gaza ha vuelto a caer el silencio. El mundo parece haber vuelto a apartar la mirada.

Publicado originalmente por Intelligence for the people

Traducción:  Observatorio de trabajadores en lucha

Segue nostro Telegram.

A oltre due anni dall’inizio del genocidio in Palestina, il Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite è intervenuto. Tuttavia, invece di far valere il diritto internazionale, tutelare le vittime e assicurare responsabilità ai colpevoli, ha approvato una risoluzione che contraddice apertamente i principi fondamentali della legalità internazionale, risulta priva di reale efficacia, infligge ulteriori sofferenze ai palestinesi e consolida la posizione dei responsabili.

Ancora più grave è il trasferimento del controllo di Gaza e dei suoi abitanti sopravvissuti agli Stati Uniti, attori considerati complici del genocidio, con la previsione di un coinvolgimento diretto del governo israeliano nei processi decisionali. Secondo il piano, ai palestinesi non viene riconosciuto alcun ruolo nelle decisioni che riguardano i loro diritti, la loro amministrazione e la loro stessa esistenza.

Con questa scelta, il Consiglio di Sicurezza si configura di fatto come uno strumento della politica statunitense di dominio, contribuendo al mantenimento dell’occupazione illegale della Palestina e rafforzando il genocidio perpetrato da Israele.

È una organizzazione che accondiscende a tempi alterni alle peggiori nefandezze della storia.

Dalla partizione della Palestina nel 1947, imposta contro la volontà del popolo autoctono e preludio a decenni di Nakba, l’ONU non aveva mai manifestato in modo tanto esplicito un approccio coloniale, oltrepassando in modo irresponsabile i limiti giuridici e violando i diritti di un intero popolo.

Il 17 novembre, invece, il Consiglio di Sicurezza ha adottato una proposta promossa dagli Stati Uniti che attribuisce la gestione di Gaza a un organismo di natura coloniale guidato da Washington, il cosiddetto “Board of Peace”, affiancato da una forza di occupazione indiretta, l’“International Stabilization Force”, anch’essa sotto direzione statunitense. Entrambe risponderebbero, in ultima istanza, a Donald Trump e opererebbero in costante coordinamento con il governo israeliano.

La configurazione resta chiara: l’ONU è una organizzazione americanocentrica.

Questo giorno resterà nella memoria come uno dei più umilianti per l’ONU: né la Russia né la Cina hanno esercitato il veto, e nessun membro del Consiglio ha dimostrato il coraggio o il rispetto del diritto internazionale necessari per opporsi a quella che appare come una legittimazione del colonialismo statunitense e una palese rinuncia ai principi fondativi della Carta delle Nazioni Unite. La risoluzione ignora implicitamente le recenti pronunce della Corte Internazionale di Giustizia, nega il diritto del popolo palestinese all’autodeterminazione e rafforza l’impunità israeliana, nonostante il genocidio sia ancora in corso.

Sebbene la Corte abbia riconosciuto il diritto dei palestinesi a governare la propria terra, la risoluzione lo sopprime autorizzando forze esterne ostili ad amministrarla. Nonostante sia stato stabilito che Gaza, Cisgiordania e Gerusalemme Est siano territori illegalmente occupati, il documento non solo prolunga tale occupazione, ma la duplica con una supervisione statunitense. La Corte ha inoltre chiarito che i palestinesi non sono tenuti a negoziare i propri diritti con i loro oppressori e che nessun processo politico può annullarli; la risoluzione, al contrario, li subordina alla discrezione degli Stati Uniti e dei loro alleati.

In tutto il testo non si trova alcun riferimento ai crimini di genocidio, apartheid o colonizzazione, né ai detenuti palestinesi né a principi di giustizia e riparazione. Israele non viene neppure chiamato a rispondere legalmente, trasferendo l’onere economico su donatori e istituzioni internazionali, configurando un vero e proprio salvataggio finanziario del regime israeliano. La risoluzione integra e legittima il piano Trump, seppur controverso, invitandone l’attuazione completa. Essa conferisce al Board of Peace il ruolo di autorità transitoria con pieni poteri di governo su Gaza: gestione dei servizi, degli aiuti, dei movimenti, delle infrastrutture e della ricostruzione, arrivando a prevedere incarichi indefiniti e discrezionali. Viene inoltre contemplato un organismo palestinese collaborazionista composto da tecnocrati subordinati al consiglio guidato da Trump. Ai palestinesi viene negato il controllo territoriale finché non vengano soddisfatte condizioni imposte unilateralmente, senza alcuna garanzia di sovranità o indipendenza.

La possibilità di un percorso verso l’autodeterminazione viene relegata a una formula vaga e non vincolante, subordinata a criteri indefiniti stabiliti dagli stessi attori che negano tale diritto, di fatto concedendo agli Stati Uniti un veto permanente sulla statualità palestinese. Anche la questione umanitaria viene trattata in modo superficiale: anziché imporre l’accesso libero e incondizionato agli aiuti, la risoluzione si limita a sottolinearne genericamente l’importanza.

Il documento istituisce una forza militare per procura incaricata di mantenere l’ordine, collaborare con Israele e controllare la popolazione palestinese. I suoi compiti includono la “stabilizzazione” di Gaza, la repressione di qualsiasi resistenza, la smilitarizzazione unilaterale e il controllo delle forze di sicurezza palestinesi, senza alcuna limitazione per l’apparato militare israeliano. Pur proclamando la protezione dei civili, tale forza risulta subordinata alla volontà statunitense e complice dell’aggressione israeliana, fungendo principalmente da strumento di controllo piuttosto che di tutela. Viene inoltre autorizzata la permanenza indefinita delle truppe israeliane a Gaza, con la creazione di un “perimetro di sicurezza” e la possibilità di prorogare il mandato senza consultare le autorità palestinesi, rafforzando ulteriormente la logica coloniale.

La risoluzione è stata respinta da gran parte della società civile palestinese, da movimenti politici e da esperti internazionali. Essa contravviene ai principi fondamentali del diritto internazionale, inclusi il diritto all’autodeterminazione e il divieto di acquisizione territoriale con la forza.

Il Consiglio di Sicurezza, vincolato dalla Carta ONU e dalle norme di jus cogens, ha oltrepassato i propri limiti, agendo al di fuori della sua legittima autorità. Così facendo, ha dimostrato come, se non sottoposto al diritto internazionale, possa divenire uno strumento di oppressione.

Il progetto statunitense di imporre un nuovo colonialismo alla Palestina è destinato a fallire, perché privo di legittimità giuridica, consenso popolare e sostenibilità politica. Anche qualora sostenuto da una maggioranza formale, difficilmente potrà essere applicato contro la volontà delle popolazioni locali.

Per chi sostiene i diritti umani e la giustizia, il compito resta chiaro: opporsi a questo schema in ogni sede, promuovere l’isolamento del regime israeliano, rafforzare le campagne di boicottaggio, chiedere embargo militare e perseguire i responsabili in ogni tribunale.

Quando questo sistema coloniale crollerà, dovrà emergere un’alternativa fondata su giustizia e autodeterminazione.