Chris Nineham, Counterfire, 9 August 2023

Peace and security are central stated aims of the West’s operation in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has, supporters of the war argue, disrupted the ‘security architecture’ and raised tensions in the region. The result is somewhat paradoxical. For in the minds of the war’s supporters, all actual calls for peace must be opposed and all peace initiatives ignored. All in the interests of…peace.

‘Peace is something more than “not war”. We should not confuse the terms.’ So said Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in June referring to the war. ‘Of course we want peace’ he went on to say, ‘but unhappily, we have to face a situation where the war will continue.’

The deployment of the idea of peace to justify war is not new. It’s use reflects the fact that war is generally unpopular and that most people think that peace in general is preferable.

The knack here is twofold. First, ensure that the opponent is regarded as the aggressor. Second, create the idea that however belligerent your own side is, in a general sense, peace is one of your core values.

This explains why in war after war, the Western powers have been so desperate to portray the enemy as the fire starter. The Afghan Taliban were held to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We were told in 2003, with zero evidence, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was 45 minutes away from attacking the west. It was claimed Libyan leader, Muamar Ghaddafi, was about to unleash military terror on the rebel city of Benghazi when the British and French started their devastating 2011 aerial bombardment that ended with his killing. ‘We came, we saw, he died’ crowed US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, at the time.

In the case of Ukraine, Russia invaded in February 2022 and the anti-war movement rightly condemned that invasion and called for Russian troops to withdraw. The movement has consistently protested at continuing Russian aggression and done everything possible to support the Russian anti-war movement.

Two things however are absolutely crucial here. First, as argued in a previous instalment of this series, that invasion, while utterly wrong, was far from unprovoked. A long list of senior Western military experts and political commentators have repeatedly made clear that the eastern expansion of NATO, and particularly talk of incorporating Ukraine, was likely to lead to war.

To give just one example from 1995, Russian scholar and Moscow correspondent for The Times, Anatol Lieven, surveyed elite and popular opinion in Russia on just this question. After conducting interviews with senior political, military, and diplomatic figures from across the political spectrum, he concluded that “moves toward NATO membership for Ukraine would trigger a really ferocious Russian response,” and that “NATO membership for Ukraine would be regarded by Russians as a catastrophe of epochal proportions.” He quoted a Russian naval officer, who made it clear that preventing NATO’s expansion into Ukraine and its consequent control of Crimea was “something for which Russians will fight.”

There is no question that the Western leaders knew that plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, first publicly discussed in 2008, would be seen by Russia as an act of aggression.

A thought experiment helps reinforce the point. How would US elites react if Mexico were to invite Russia or China to station warships in its ports and bombers in its airfields?

As it happens, Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne writing for Harper’s magazine explain that a civilian military analyst who has worked at the Pentagon has put just this question to rising leaders in the U.S. military and intelligence services. Their reactions, unsurprisingly, ranged from cutting economic ties and exerting “maximal foreign policy pressure on Mexico to get them to change course” to “we need to start there, and then use military force if necessary,”

Secondly, does anyone really believe that the pursuit of peace has been at the heart of Western foreign policy over the last few decades? The fact is, the west’s recent wars fought across the Middle East and beyond in the name of confronting terror have, in the process of inflicting terrible suffering on the lives of millions, made the world a much more dangerous place. As well as creating a series of failed states, they have helped spread civil wars and proliferate terror groups around the Middle East, central Asia, and swathes of the African continent.

The briefest scan of US security documents over the last two decades make it crystal clear that behind the fine phrases about anti-terrorism, peace and prosperity lie the drive to defend US interests against economic competitors. As a key document of the neoconservative hawks argued in 2000, the priority was to use military power to defend the US’s position as the world’s unchallenged superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union

“Preserving the desirable strategic situation in which the United Sates now finds itself requires a globally preeminent military capability both today and in the future”.

After 9/11, this position indeed became official US policy. The national security strategy document for 2002 is explicit about the aim to stop emerging economic challengers becoming great powers:

“As we defend the peace, we will also take advantage of an historic opportunity to preserve the peace… We will strongly resist aggression from other great powers—even as we welcome their peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement…We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition. Several potential great powers are now in the midst of internal transition—most importantly Russia, India, and China.”

What then has the West’s response to the invasion of Ukraine done for peace? It has totally failed to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, but it has involved the biggest accumulation of weapons and troops in eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War. It has led to a situation in which great powers have publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

It has accelerated the expansion of NATO with Finland, which shares a border with Russia, joining and Sweden set to join. Both have abandoned long-term commitments to neutrality. Under pressure, German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has declared a historic sea change in Germany’s attitude to military spending and set aside €100 billion to modernise its armed forces.

Overall, it has led to the steepest rise in military spending in Europe for thirty years. For the first time, arms spending has surpassed that at the end of the Cold War in 1989. Some of the increases for countries not involved in the war are eye watering. Finland has boosted arms spending by 36 per cent, Lithuania by 27 per cent, Sweden 12 per cent and Poland 11 per cent.

As a result, the whole region is on high alert, the slaughter in Ukraine continues with no end in sight, borders have been progressively militarised, drones attacks on Moscow and Kiev are a regular occurrence, missiles, tanks, cluster bombs and other munitions continue to pour into the region, anti-war protestors on both sides are being arrested. No neutral observer could possibly claim that the militarised Western response has brought peace closer. Peace it turns out, does not equal war.

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Chris Nineham

Chris Nineham is a founder member of Stop the War and Counterfire, speaking regularly around the country on behalf of both. He is author of The People Versus Tony Blair and Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs.

The last time Washington put armed personnel on private vessels was during World War II. Does Biden know what he’s getting into?

Paul R. Pillar, Ressponsible Statecraft, August 7, 2023

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The last time the United States placed armament and military personnel, ready to fight, on ocean-going commercial vessels was during the world wars of the 20th Century.

In World War II, the U.S. Navy organized an Armed Guard that served on merchant ships — an unpopular duty, given how the freighters to which the sailors were assigned represented targets for the enemy at least as much as any offensive capability to inflict significant damage in return. Hundreds of these merchant ships were sunk despite their Navy contingent aboard, and some 2,000 members of the Armed Guard died.

The closest the United States has come to any similar arrangement since then was in escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers during the “tanker war” phase of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. This time the United States did not go so far as to place its own military personnel on the commercial vessels, although the tankers were reflagged as a legal nicety to go with the escorting by U.S. Navy warships.

The operation was only a partial success. Although it may have deterred some attacks by surface vessels, Iran still managed to inflict damage through the use of mines. In a humiliating revamping of the convoys, U.S. warships were not out in front providing protection. Instead, they meekly followed the tankers because they were more vulnerable than the much bigger oil carrier to being sunk by mines.

These previous instances occurred in wartime, within much larger conflicts in which combat was already raging. But now, according to U.S. officials speaking anonymously, the Biden administration is considering the placement of armed U.S. military personnel aboard commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and open ocean. Such an arrangement would go even beyond what the United States did in the 1980s.

The placing of troops on commercial ships is reportedly still only a proposal, but it comes amid actual escalation of the U.S. military presence in an around the Persian Gulf. Recent deployments increasing that presence have included Navy ships, Marines, and fighter aircraft.

These deployments run contrary to a stated intention of multiple U.S. administrations, of both parties, which is to reduce, not increase, U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and to pivot attention and resources elsewhere, especially to the East Asia and Pacific region. The continued — and now, increased — military involvement in the Middle East, notwithstanding that intention, perpetuates U.S. vulnerabilities. The newly deployed personnel may become, like the U.S. troops that are still in Iraq and Syria, targets of hostile fire. Their presence carries the added risk of drawing the United States into even bigger armed conflicts.

The deployments involve stepping into a zone of regional rivalries and is not a simple matter of protecting good guys against bad guys. Despite the perennial fixation on Iran, Tehran’s regional rivals — including ones that are the origin or destination of much of that commercial shipping that the administration wants to protect — are just as distant from American values and interests. Saudi Arabia, traditionally the principal rival, is at least as much of an authoritarian state as Iran and an oppressive violator of human rights whose actions and ideology have had lethal consequences for Americans both individually and on a larger scale.

The stated reason for considering the placement of U.S. troops on commercial ships, and part of the background to the other U.S. military deployments to the region, involves Iran’s interception, seizure, or other harassment of some oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. With different U.S. policies, this situation could have been avoided. Iran has not intercepted shipping because Iranians have some genetic malice that compels them to do such things. As with many other Iranian policies and actions, this practice is reactive.

It was the United States, not Iran, that began the latest round of going after another nation’s tankers and seizing its oil. The U.S. actions reflect a unilateral U.S. policy of trying to prevent Iranian oil exports. This policy is not grounded in international law, and Iran unsurprisingly has labeled the U.S. seizure and selling of Iranian oil as “piracy.” The U.S. government has not found a buyer for a tanker full of Iranian oil that it seized at sea in April and brought to Houston, because shippers and potential buyers fear repercussions.

This dynamic partly echoes the tanker war of the 1980s. It was the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein — who started the overall Iran-Iraq War, and toward whom U.S. policy was then tilting — who initiated attacks against tankers and other commercial oil facilities. Iran responded to those attacks on its own ships and infrastructure by targeting tankers of Iraq’s ally Kuwait.

The timing of some of the recent Iranian intercepts of shipping make the tit-for-tat nature of the Iranian actions obvious. In response to the U.S. seizure of the Iranian tanker in April, Iran just a few days later took control in the Gulf of Oman of a tanker carrying oil from Kuwait and chartered by Chevron.

Other Iranian interception of shipping has not had this immediate tit-for-tat nature but is a more general response to the U.S. economic warfare against Iran, which in effect continues the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy. Iran is sending a message that it cannot be ignored, that if it is not allowed to export its oil, then other oil producers will have difficulty exporting theirs, and that it needs the concentrated attention of the U.S. government in finding a replacement for the agreement that had restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in return for partial sanctions relief and that Trump junked in 2018.

Any consideration of the deployment of U.S. troops on commercial ships needs to address several important questions and risks. Foremost among these is the substantial danger of incidents at sea leading to wider warfare between the United States and Iran. This risk would ensue from any action in which American personnel were involved in exchanges of fire but would be especially high in the event of American casualties. In response to such an incident, strong domestic political pressure would push the administration toward even greater military escalation.

Further questions arise from the fact that the vessels to be protected are commercial operations associated with mostly non-U.S. crews, ship owners, and commodity traders. If the protection is to be afforded only to selected vessels, this would be a kind of industrial policy on steroids that would entail the usual questions surrounding any industrial policy about picking winners and losers.

If the protection is more comprehensive, then American personnel would be literally taken for a ride on many vessels whose mission is defined in terms of the interests of foreign companies and foreign states, which often will differ from the interests of the United States.

When one of these vessels gets into a dicey situation at sea, who exactly is in charge? Americans may be manning the guns, but a commercial captain is presumably still at the helm and still the master of the ship. Such questions matter because the occurrence or avoidance of a violent incident at sea may depend on immediate navigational decisions that would affect whether, say, a potentially hostile craft gets too close for comfort.

With commercial operations that have security risks, such as exporting oil through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, the scope of operations usually is defined by insurance rates and the decisions of operators in response to those rates—decisions that take into account wider considerations such as global demand for oil. U.S. intercession in this business would involve partly taking over functions that may be better left to the market and Lloyds of London.

More fundamentally, escalation of the U.S. military presence and military operations in the Persian Gulf region runs directly against a welcome recent trend toward de-escalation of tensions in that region. This trend has included the Chinese-mediated restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and a warming of relations between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. The smaller Gulf Arab states of Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman have been even more forward than the Saudis and Emiratis in expanding peaceful relations with Iran. 

U.S. policymakers need to think carefully about what mark the United States will leave on this region as an outside intervenor. It could be a positive mark, similar to what the Chinese have done, of greater peace and stability—which is in the interests of regional states, global energy supplies, and the United States. It would be unfortunate if the mark instead were one of increased tension and instability, by reversing the “pivot” and putting added military resources, with associated commitments, back into the region.

—Nasir Khan

As a peace activist, Rob Crighton’s views on the Ukraine war that is resulting in so much loss of life and suffering of Ukrainians and Russians, causing economic upheavals globally and increasing the dangers of turning the ongoing war into a nuclear inferno are relevant to understanding one of the major danger-spots. He asked David Grove, a political analyst, for his scholarly opinion on these matters.

Grove’s analysis offers some much-needed insights into this war that does not follow the official versions backed by the mainstream media. He quite rightly says that after the end of World War II, there has been no world war, but there have been many wars since then, mainly instigated by American imperialism. The Ukraine war is no exception, but an extension of the same hegemonic power that American imperialism embodies.

Putin is generally portrayed in the West as solely responsible for starting this war in 2022, but what is often ignored or not told openly is the fact that a limited war was going on in eastern Ukraine, in which many thousand Russian-speaking inhabitants were killed. Russia wanted this to stop, but the warnings were unheeded. Not unexpectedly, Russia intervened and the war expanded. Was this intervention only a madman’s adventure or was there something more sinister involved? In Grove’s view, American rulers wanted this war, a view with which this writer fully agrees.

The war led to the extension of American imperial power further. It consolidated its relationship in military spheres with Britain. Because of the war, NATO membership was extended to Finland and Sweden. Ukraine is on the waiting list; after the war, it will formally join NATO. The US has benefited enormously from this war, both economically and militarily. After cutting off supplies of cheap Russian gas, America is selling gas at high prices to Europe and other regions of the world. The supply and sale of weapons to Ukraine have reached unprecedented levels since 1922.

Can this war be stopped? The answer is that without the mass mobilization and involvement of the peace movement, US imperialists who lead the West and control NATO would have free hands to continue the war and continue to reap rich dividends by selling more and more destructive weapons in this proxy war where the main target is Russia.

Those who want to see the war end by diplomatic means hope that peace activists will see the video and also spread David Grove’s clear-sighted views for peace and avoid further escalation of this war into a nuclear war.

.

ScheerPost, July 22, 2023

Despite its near complete failure, the Oslo Accords succeeded in one thing: it provided Israel with a Palestinian force whose main mission is to assist the Israeli occupation in its quest to maintain total control over the West Bank.

By Ramzy Baroud / MintPress News

This is the perfect opportunity for Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to exit the stage. But he will not.  Abbas’ brief visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on July 12 demonstrated the absurdity and danger of the PA and its 87-year-old leader.  As he walked, Abbas struggled to keep his balance in what was promoted as a ‘solidarity’ visit to the camp.

Thousands of frustrated Jenin residents took to the streets, hardly chanting Abbas’ name. Some looked on with disappointment; others asked where the President’s forces were when Israel invaded the camp, killing 12, wounding and arresting hundreds more.

The BBC reported on a “huge armed deployment” to secure Abbas’ visit, where “PA security forces joined a thousand-strong unit of Mr. Abbas’ elite presidential guard.” Their only job was to “clear a path” for Abbas into the camp.

On the initial and most deadly first day of the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Israeli media, citing military sources, said that 1,000 Israeli soldiers were taking part in the military operation.

Yet, it took more Palestinian soldiers to secure Abbas’ brief visit to Jenin.

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Indeed, where were those well-dressed and equipped PA soldiers when Jenin was fighting and dying alone?  And why does Abbas need to be protected from his own people?

To address these questions, it is important to examine recent contexts, three significant dates in particular:

On July 5, Israel ended its military operation in Jenin.

On July 9, despite protests by some of his security cabinet members, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would do its utmost to prevent the collapse of the PA. He stated outright that the PA “works for us.”

And finally, on July 12, Abbas visited Jenin with a stern message to Palestinian Resistance groups.

These three dates are directly related: Israel’s failed raid on Jenin has heightened the significance of the PA in Israel’s eyes. Abbas visited Jenin to reassure Israel that his Authority is up for the task.

To live up to Israel’s expectations and to ensure its survival, the PA is willing to clash directly with Palestinians who refuse to toe the line.

“There will be one Authority and one security force,” Abbas declared angrily, only days following the burial of Jenin’s victims. “Anyone who seeks to undermine its unity and security will face the consequences,” he added, further promising that “Any hand that reaches out to harm the people and their stability shall be cut off.”

The hand in reference is not that of Israel but any Palestinian who resists Israel.

Abbas knows that Palestinians outright despise him and his Authority. Just days earlier, Fatah party deputy Chairman, Mahmoud Aloul, was removed from Jenin by angry crowds.

The crowds chanted in unison, “Get out,” to Aloul and two other PA officials.

They did, but Abbas returned to the same scene. He was flown in a Jordanian military helicopter. Waiting for him below was a small PA army that had taken over the streets and the high buildings – or whatever remained of them – in the destroyed camp.

All of this happened through logistical arrangements with the Israeli military.

But why is Netanyahu keen on the PA’s survival?

Netanyahu wants the PA to survive simply because he does not want the Israeli occupation administration and military to be fully responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in the West Bank and the security of the illegal settlers.

Despite its near complete failure, the Oslo Accords succeeded in one thing: it provided Israel with a Palestinian force whose main mission is to assist the Israeli occupation in its quest to maintain total control over the West Bank.

Abbas’ trip to Jenin was intended to reassure Tel Aviv that the PA is still committed to its obligations to Israel.

Another message was sent to US President Joe Biden, who has, in a recent interview, cast doubts on the PA’s ‘credibility’.  “The PA is losing its credibility,” Biden told CNN, and that has “created a vacuum for extremism.”

The message to Washington was that the hands of the so-called ‘extremists’ will be “cut off” and that there will be “consequences” for those who defy the PA’s will.

Abbas seemed to speak not only on behalf of his Authority but that of Tel Aviv and Washington as well.

Even ordinary Palestinians understand this to be the case; in fact, they always have. The only difference now is that they feel strong and emboldened by a new generation of Resistance that has succeeded in reclaiming a degree of Palestinian unity amid factional politics and PA corruption.

The PA is now seen by most Palestinians as the obstacle in the face of full unity. That position is fully fathomable. While Israel was ramping up its deadly operations in Jenin and Nablus, the PA police were arresting Palestinian activists, angering Resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza.

If this continues, a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility, especially as Abbas’ potential successors are equally distrusted, even by Fatah’s own rank and file. These men were also in Jenin, standing shoulder to shoulder behind Abbas as he was frantically trying to lay out the new rules.

This time around, Palestinians are unlikely to listen. For the Resistance, the stakes are too high to back down now. For the PA, losing the West Bank means losing billions of dollars of Western financial handouts.

A clash between the Resistance and their popular support, on the one hand, and the West-Israel-backed PA forces, on the other, will prove very costly for Palestinians.

Yet, for Tel Aviv, it is a win-win. This is why Netanyahu is anxious to help Abbas keep his job, at least long enough to ensure that the post-Abbas transition goes through efficiently.

Palestinians must find a way to block such designs, preserve Palestinian blood, and restructure their leadership so that it represents them, not the interests of the Israeli occupation.

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Ramzy Baroud

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA)

The Washington Post reports Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world and US cluster bombs will make the situation worse

by Dave DeCamp , Antiwar. com, July 23, 2023

Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world, and demining efforts could take decades or even hundreds of years, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

“The sheer quantity of ordnance in Ukraine is just unprecedented in the last 30 years. There’s nothing like it,” Greg Crowther, director of programs for the Mines Advisory Group, told the Post.

The report said about 30% of Ukraine, or 67,000 square miles, has been contaminated by mines and other ordnance and will require demining. The area is larger than the US state of Florida.

The situation will get worse as the US has provided Ukraine with cluster munitions, which the White House has said Ukrainian forces are already using. Cluster bombs spread small submunitions over large areas, and those that don’t explode can kill or maim civilians decades later.

According to UN numbers, between February 2022 and July 2023, 298 civilians in Ukraine were killed, and 632 were injured by mines and other ordnance. Both sides in the conflict have used anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Anti-personnel mines are more hazardous to civilians because they require much less pressure to detonate.

Ukraine is a signatory to a treaty banning anti-personnel mines, but there’s evidence that Ukrainian forces have used them. The US and Russia are not signatories to the treaty, known as the Ottawa Treaty.

The US has provided Ukraine with two known types of mines, including the Remote Anti-Armor Mine System, which uses 155mm artillery and is designed to eventually self-destruct. The other type, M21 anti-tank mines, do not self-destruct and will be needed to be cleaned up.

Russia laid extensive minefields along the frontlines, leading to heavy Ukrainian armor losses in the first few weeks of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Ukraine is relying on demining soldiers, known as sappers, to dismantle the minefields by hand.

The Post report said that some experts estimate clearing all of Ukraine’s contaminated areas would take the approximately 500 demining teams in the current operation 757 years to complete. The mine clearing will also come at a huge financial cost. The World Bank estimates that demining in Ukraine will cost $37.4 billion over the next 10 years.

–Fadwa Tuqan

My beloved home land

No matter how long the millstone

Of pain and agony churns you

In the wilderness of tyranny,

They will never be able

To pluck your eyes

Or kill your hopes and dreams

Or crucify your will to rise

Or steel the smiles of our children

Or destroy and burn,

Because out from our deep sorrows,

Out from the freshness of our spilled blood

Out from the quiverings of life and death

Life will be reborn in you again………

—

Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003) was a Palestinian poet known for her representations of resistance to Israeli occupation in contemporary Arab poetry. Sometimes, she is referred to as the “Poet of Palestine”. Wikipedia

International law forbids Israel from launching attacks on the territories it occupies, according to legal experts

Palestinians try to move a damaged car after Israeli army’s withdrawal from Jenin camp, in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on 5 July 2023 (Reuters)

By MEE staff

Published date: 13 July 2023 21:53 BST | Last update:1 day 18 hours ago

Legal experts have said that Israel’s military operation in Jenin earlier this month, which killed 12 Palestinians and wounded 100 others, fits into the parameters of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

Susan Akram, a clinical professor at Boston University’s School of Law, said the raid on Jenin clearly amounts to war crimes for a number of reasons, including intentionally attacking a civilian population and attacking medical units.

“The Geneva Conventions include as war crimes during occupation, willful killings, willfully causing great suffering to an occupied population and extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity,” Akram said during a webinar on Thursday hosted by the Arab Center Washington, DC.

“There’s no doubt that what Israel carried out in Jenin constitutes war crimes.”

The other panelists on the webinar, Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project and journalist Dalia Hatuqa, agreed that Israel’s actions in the West Bank amount to war crimes.

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Israel’s latest military raid on the Jenin refugee camp began on 3 July and saw Israeli forces utilise air power with drones and Apache attack helicopters. In addition to the death toll, more than 3,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes.

The raids on Jenin and other Palestinian cities like Nablus have become routine over the past year. The Jenin refugee camp is home to almost 14,000 refugees, including many who were expelled from their homeland in 1948, and their descendants.

Israel has stated that the raids are an attempt to root out groups responsible for attacks on Israeli citizens, and the United States has also come to defend the latest raid, with the White House expressing support for “Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups”.

But Akram said that the narrative used by Israel does not stop its actions from being illegal under international law, noting that the West Bank is an occupied territory.

“Israel’s attacks on an occupied population are criminal in and of themselves because occupation law forbids the occupier to use military attacks against civilian targets in the territory it occupies,” she said.

Limits of international law

In the immediate aftermath of the raid on Jenin, several United Nations experts, including special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, stated that Israel’s actions might appear to constitute war crimes.

“Israeli forces’ operations in the occupied West Bank, killing and seriously injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands, amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime,” the experts said in a statement.

Still, while the experts laid out the evidence for war crimes, holding Israel legally accountable on the international stage has proven difficult in the past.

‘No red lines’: US response to West Bank assault underlines Israel’s free hand

Read More »

At the end of last year, the UN passed a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to weigh in on the Israeli occupation.

The UN resolution asked the court for an opinion on how Israeli policies and practices “affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations from this status?”

Palestinian policy experts and academics previously told Middle East Eye that while any ICJ decision critical of Israel would help Palestinians in terms of raising awareness, it would do little to hold Israel accountable.

The ICJ last weighed in on the issue of Israel’s occupation in 2004, when it ruled that Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal.

Israel rejected the ruling, and while the ruling has been included in numerous reports about Israel’s occupation, the wall remains intact to this day.

In December 2022, Al Jazeera also took a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court regarding the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during an Israeli raid on Jenin in May 2022.

Since then, the court has acknowledged receipt of the complaint, but no further steps have been taken.

–Nasir Khan

Religion is one thing and the followers of a religion are another thing. The difference between the two is important, and they should not be equated as the same in this age when much harm is still being done in the name and under the cover of religions.

What some (not all) followers of a religion do or may do in the name of their religion can be much different from the teachings of that religion. They are the people who transform their religions. Sensible people make something good and noble out of the basic teachings of their religions, but brainwashed and indoctrinated fanatics concentrate only on the negative and destructive sides they create in disfiguring their religions. For their nefarious activities, both religions and their good followers also get a bad name.

However, I am not discussing how religions arise or what roles they play in class societies. What I say has more to do with some practical aspects of religions that we face in different parts of the world. Whether religions have/had an independent base in society or not is a theoretical and academic issue, which is not the theme of this short article.

There are billions of people who believe in and practise organized religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, etc. etc. without harming each other or causing harm to others. They follow the rites and rituals of their respective religions and follow the age-old traditions attached to their religions.

In a multi-religious and multi-ethnic world we live in, we have to accept other people’s right to their faith, religion and world outlook, including the views of the non-religious people. We cannot force others to believe what we believe as being the only Truth. In reality, to persist in doing so as some do is a crime against human beings, a violation of the rule of law and all norms of civilized behavior. We have to stand against all barbarian fanatics and reject what they do or stand for.

At the same time we should bear in mind that only a small number of people from some religions, and I emphasise their small numbers, who resort to violence in the name of religions and thus misuse their religions. For instance, in a country like Pakistan that has a population of about 190 million people, of whom 97% are Muslims, how many Muslims resort to religious violence and kill people in the name of Islam? Their numbers are small but they can terrorize the whole country and its peaceful people.

So is the case with some militant Burmese Buddhists who have targeted Muslims, especially the Rohingya, and also in Sri Lanka where some Buddhists have used violence against Muslims. As a humanist and a student of the history of religions, I find the malpractices of religious violence also as a grave infringement of basic religious consciousness, which largely seeks the welfare and improvement of human beings, not their destruction.

The court has made it clear that its concern is in toto with determining whether what the Modi government did on August 5,2019 was constitutionally tenable or not.

Security personnel place a barricade on a street during the restrictions imposed on the first anniversary of revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, in Srinagar, August 5, 2020. Photo: PTI/File

—Badri Raina, The Wire, 11 July, 2023

How tenuous the Narendra Modi government’s legal/constitutional case with respect to the reading down of Article 370 may be is suggested by the fact that, at the last minute before the beginning of the hearings of the constitution bench of the top court, it chose to submit a fresh affidavit, detailing its political argument.

The said affidavit sings praises of how much betterment has been brought to the erstwhile state after the reading down of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.

The attempt thus to shift goal post from the legal/constitutional aspect of the matter to an administrative/political one seems a dead giveaway of how weak it knows itself to be on the constitutional aspect.

It is most heartening that the honourable judges on the constitution bench have instantly pronounced on the irrelevance of the new affidavit, affirming that issues related to how conditions in the state were before and are claimed to be after the abrogation are redundant matters to the challenges made to the government’s fraught decision.

The court has made it clear that its concern is in toto with determining whether what the Modi government did on August 5,2019 was constitutionally tenable or not.

The fact that the Supreme Court has determined to take up the case after an interregnum of some four years may also be suggestive of the merit in the challenges made to the government’s contested/controversial decision.

As also the fact that over these years the Modi government made no move to persuade the top court to take up the matter for quick disposal – something this government would surely have chosen to do had it been certain of the strength of its case.

Let it be said that in recounting what it considers to be great improvements made as a litany of so-called positive consequences of its decision, the Union government understandably did not mention the shaming fact that the gravest consequence has been the unconscionably long suspension of representative government in Jammu and Kashmir.

We recall that Hitler also had great autobahns constructed after the death of democracy under the Third Reich regime.

Those who consider the reading down of the impugned article – literally as a fiat pushed in a few minutes in parliament – as having been unconstitutional remind us that such a measure could have been taken only with the consent of the Jammu and Kashmir constituent assembly, and, in its absence, by the elected state assembly.

None of this happened.

On the contrary, the Modi government chose to dissolve the Jammu and Kashmir assembly to make its fiat possible, since, had the matter gone to the elected representatives of the state’s people, no concurrence to the guillotine of the “special status” would have been forthcoming.

Many will understandably be on tenterhooks to see how the case proceeds in the Supreme Court.

The reason for this uncertainty flows from the memory of the erstwhile case on the Babri Masjid-Ram temple title dispute.

In that matter, we recall, the honourable court, after laying down that the demolished structure had indeed been a mosque, that induction of idols into its sanctum sanctorum was an act of “desecration,” that demolishing it was a “criminal” act, determined to award the site to the litigants who believed a temple to Lord Ram had to be built on that very spot.

That court of course cited due powers vested in it to make such a determination.

That the forthcoming decision on challenges to the reading down of Article 370 will not but be of the greatest import in shaping the future both of the present Union Territory and of national politics overall in the days to come goes without saying.

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

Andre Damon, WSWS.org 8 July 2023

On Friday, the Biden administration said it would send cluster munitions—weapons that scatter unexploded bomblets across a wide area, killing and maiming civilians for decades—to Ukraine.

Facing the failure of Kiev’s military offensive, the United States is desperately seeking to use the provision of ever more destructive and indiscriminate weapons to reverse its setbacks on the battlefield.

Critically, the announcement precedes next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, at which the United States and NATO are planning to massively expand their involvement in the war. Driven into a corner by its miscalculations, the Biden administration is compelled to take ever more drastic measures.

The aim of the decision to use cluster bombs—regardless of its long-term impact on civilians—is to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. The reasoning that led in the past to the use of Agent Orange and Napalm—and which will be used to sanction the use of tactical nuclear weapons—is presently at work.

The US, on the eve of Vilnius, is clearly sending a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin. NATO will stop at nothing.

In a briefing Friday announcing the move, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan justified the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine as a means of staving off military disaster.

“There is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery,” he said.

Sullivan made this statement a little over one month after Ukraine launched its spring offensive, which the American press had touted as an “Endgame for Ukraine,” leading, in the words of retired Gen. David Patraeus, to “significant breakthroughs.”

Instead, the offensive has produced a bloody debacle. Far from inflicting a crushing defeat on Russia, the Biden administration has been driven to one escalatory move after another in an effort to shore up the Ukrainian military.

“We recognize the cluster munitions creating risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance,” Sullivan said. “But we had to balance that against the risk” that Ukraine might “not have sufficient artillery ammunition.”

In other words, the Biden administration weighed the cost of killing and maiming generations of Ukrainian civilians against the benefits of killing more Russian troops. It decided that the deaths of Ukrainian children from unexploded ordnance was a sacrifice America’s oligarchy was willing to make.Donate to the WSWS 25 Year FundWatch the video of workers internationally explain why you should donate to the WSWS.Donate today

Managing to outdo himself in total callousness, Sullivan added that Ukraine would have to be “de-mined regardless.”

Every line employed by the White House to justify sending these weapons of terror to Ukraine could be used to justify the deployment, or even use, of tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict. Yes, the White House would argue, nuclear fallout poses a risk to civilians, but this risk must be “balanced” against the risk of Russian military advances.

The stationing of US tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has already been directly raised by an American think tank. Moreover, the deployment and possible use of nuclear weapons in the conflict will no doubt be on the agenda at the upcoming summit in Vilnius.

Every official statement by the United States about its involvement in the war is justified on the basis that it is once again “saving” a country through military violence—this time Ukraine. But in sending cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine, the United States has made clear that this is nothing but a hollow pretext for pursuing its aim of prevailing over Russia and China in “great power competition.”

The very words used by the United States and its allies to condemn Russia’s alleged use of cluster bombs in Ukraine now fully apply to the US decision to send this weapon to Ukraine.

In February 2022, the US envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, accused Russia of using “cluster munitions” in Ukraine, “which are banned under the Geneva Convention” and have “no place on the battlefield.”

In March 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We have seen the use of cluster bombs… which will be in violation of international law.” He added, “We also have to make sure the International Criminal Court really looks into this.”

In fact, all of these denunciations of Russian actions on the part of the US and NATO were merely hypocritical pretexts for escalating US involvement in the war.

The decision by the United States to send cluster bombs to Ukraine exposes all of the pseudo-left defenders of US involvement in the war in Ukraine, including those in the Democratic Socialists of America who condemn “preemptive hostility to US imperialism,” as shameless apologists for the US military’s war crimes.

In fact, the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine is a war for American global hegemony, in which Ukrainians are mere cannon fodder. This is entirely in line with the series of criminal wars of aggression waged by the United States over the past half-century.

During the Vietnam War, the US dropped approximately 413,130 tons of cluster bombs in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Many of these submunitions failed to explode on impact and continue to pose a significant threat to civilian populations, leading to countless injuries and deaths decades after the end of the war.

During the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States regularly used cluster munitions to attack civilian areas, in what Amnesty International called “an indiscriminate attack and a grave violation of international humanitarian law.”

In Iraq, the devastation of cluster bombs was compounded by the use of depleted uranium munitions, which, according to one study, led the people of Fallujah to experience higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bombs in 1945.

During the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, cluster bombs killed and injured hundreds of civilians and littered the countryside with deadly unexploded ordnance. The United States has been implicated in the use of cluster munitions via its support for Saudi-led forces in the Yemen conflict.

Over 110 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which prohibits the use, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions. The United States, which has killed more people with cluster munitions than any other country, is not a signatory.

A 2008 report by the United Nations explains the devastating impact cluster munitions have on the populations where they are used by the United States and its allies:

Over three decades after cluster munitions were used in Laos and Vietnam, they continue to cause death and injury, disrupt the economic activities of ordinary people, and hamper the implementation of development projects there. Even rapid large-scale clearance efforts, such as those that have been implemented in Kosovo and Lebanon, cannot prevent cluster munition contamination from having an impact. In Kosovo, civilian casualties from cluster munitions are still being reported, and in Lebanon, despite clearance beginning immediately after the 2006 conflict, it could not prevent casualties among the population as they returned to their homes and livelihoods.

The report continues:

Submunitions can prevent or hinder the safe return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and hamper humanitarian, peace-building, and development efforts. Unexploded cluster munitions also pose a physical threat to humanitarian workers and peacekeepers.

The White House claims to have discussed and deliberated the move with the utmost care. The decision-makers would have been fully briefed on these known consequences of cluster munitions, and proceeded with them regardless.

Reporting on the decision by Biden to send the weapons, the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Biden has come under steady pressure from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who argues that the munitions—which disperse tiny, deadly bomblets—are the best way to kill Russians who are dug into trenches and blocking Ukraine’s counteroffensive to retake territory.”

The role of Zelensky in promoting a decision to send weapons that will maim Ukrainian children for generations sums up the role of his government, which serves as an instrument in enforcing the will of the NATO powers over the Ukrainian population.

This latest escalation by the United States must be seen as a warning. Washington will stop at nothing to prevent further military setbacks for its proxy force in Kiev and achieve its military goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. The same homicidal logic that justifies the deployment of depleted uranium rounds and cluster bombs will be used to justify even greater and more reckless crimes, from the direct entry of NATO into the war to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons.