There are times in history when time seems to stands still and this is such a time. Israel is stuck in a cycle of killing it cannot seem to be able to – does not want to – stop. News items about negotiations never stop either. Netanyahu sends negotiating teams to every meeting called to end the conflict – in Washington, in Cairo, in Doha – but does so to prevent a successful outcome and to blame the failures in the negotiations on Hamas. Meanwhile, the United States colludes in prolonging the genocide.

Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya told the security council that the latest resolution proposed by the US was a ‘hypocritical spectacle’ that put no real pressure on Israel over its war crimes. He asked the Biden administration to save everyone the theatre.

What is patently undeniable is that Israel has committed – is committing genocide, and that Netanyahu’s cabinet have openly declared that genocide is indeed their intent. As much as it wants to dodge the issue, the United States is implicated in these crimes against humanity in virtue of its unlimited and technically illegal supplies of arms to Israel for the purpose of committing those crimes. Canada is pulling out of this cycle in fear of what the future consequences might be, and many other Western countries are thinking hard along those lines.

But Biden is unlikely to do any such thing. Even as his polls numbers plummet specifically because of his Gaza policy, and as a Trump presidency looms that promises an era of revenge and mayhem in domestic American politics, he simply voices anger, insisting that ‘he has done the right thing.’

Two and a half million people in Gaza are being squeezed to death in front of live TV. The Biden administration presides over a new régime of active censorship in America that is determined to deny information to the public. If it weren’t for the mass protests, the general public wouldn’t know anything. Meanwhile, the wheels of justice just keep turning.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, posted on her X account that the International Court of Justice has enough evidence on Israel’s crimes to keep it busy for the next fifty years. Albanese is a key witness in the cases brought against Israel. On 26 January, the ICJ had already confirmed that there was enough prima facie evidence of genocide to warrant issuing provisional measures. A charge of genocide sets a very high bar indeed, the highest of all mass crimes.

The United States dives headlong into the abyss of infamy. What an inglorious end to the most powerful empire in history. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence should be turning in their graves at even the thought of America as an empire. And if this became an empire with a Zionist ideology, we should remember what Thomas Jefferson said about the chapter on Revelations in the Bible on which Christian Zionists base their core beliefs. He said it was written by a madman.

Christian Zionists are travelling to Israel it seems to help out in the Israeli armed forces with menial tasks as the latter daily kill Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and everywhere. Mainstream Christians are faced with having to explain how this sits with Jesus’ message in the Gospel. The last article describes how millions of evangelical Christians became Zionists when televangelists hitched them to Pentagon capitalism’s reboot of the Cold War, after the Vietnam War debacle.

When the Soviet Union disbanded, Zionism provided the racist creed that justified the invasion of the Middle East and the destruction of its societies. This happened with America’s first efforts at empire. At the time the Northwest Ordinance was issued by the US Congress to incorporate territories around the Great Lakes, there existed a native tribal civilization with which white settlers of all origins had a constructive and mutually respectful relationship.

After the war of 1812, as the imperial mandate began to be implemented, attitudes changed and the native American became the “Other.” The same process of demonisation was set in train as occurred much later for Muslims. Neoconservative Zionist scholar Bernard Lewis’ ‘Roots of Muslim Rage’ would play essentially the same role in the Middle East in the early twenty-first century, as Lewis Cass’ ‘Removal of the Indians’ did in the Great Plains in the nineteenth century.    

But if time seems to be standing still, it is because there is a sense of unravelling. What unravels is the power that has so far supported the ideologies and belief systems of empire and paid the salaries of its defenders. They only know the language of power, and no argument from rationality, on which the concept of justice is based, can ever make headway against these apologists.

The saying goes that the lies are always loud, and the truth always quiet. Yet the truth is what remains in the end. The violence with which Palestinians have risen up to challenge their decades long repression and mistreatment has broken the spell and shaken Israel to the core.

There was a time in 2018-19 when Gazans engaged in peaceful protests in the Great March of Return. The demand was for a lifting of the inhuman siege that had lasted since 2006. No Israeli or American state official sought to find a way of responding to the demands, or even talking to the protesters. Israeli soldiers shot them instead with live ammunition as they approached the border fence. The Israeli public watched, laughed and cheered each time a Palestinian individual fell and had to be lifted up and carried away.

But it isn’t just Israel’s might and power that is unravelling. Pentagon capitalism has met its nemesis. In Ukraine we have seen how a resurrected Russia has returned to be the greatest military power on land. This is quite apart from its nuclear dominance, and has only now started to sink in, in NATO capitals.

America, however, traditionally prided itself on being the greatest naval and air power, defender of the world’s sea lanes, equipped as it is with large numbers of aircraft carriers with fighter jets and helicopter carriers. When the 7 October 2023 attack occurred in Israel, and Hezbollah independently began its limited support operations against Israel on 8 October in illegally held Lebanese territory (the Shebaa Farms), an American aircraft carrier and battle group drew up in the East Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon, in support of Israel. When American and European diplomats shuttled to Beirut and began threatening military action on Hezbollah, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah made a speech on 3 November in which he said that ‘American aircraft carriers don’t frighten us. We have the tools to deal with them.’

No-one knew what he meant, but soon after they would. By February this year, unmanned underwater vehicles UUVs, or submarine drones, made their appearance, simultaneously in the Black and Red Seas. Russia had to pull the majority of its Black Sea fleet to the safety of ports on the eastern shore as Ukraine deployed UUVs against it. In the same period the American navy spotted UUVs being used by Ansar Allah off the Yemeni coast.

This was a surface drone that the US operator was lucky to spot. Underwater drones travelling in a sawtooth pattern are undetectable. Used in swarms they are hard to defend against and can sink large naval vessels.

The digital revolution in the US armed forces which William Perry had spearheaded in the late 1980s had brought the guided missile into warfare. Its use in the 1991 Gulf War led to the reputation of the US army as invincible and able to minimise collateral damage at will. The new military doctrine Defense Planning Guidance DPG 1992 developed by Paul Wolfowitz under Dick Cheney at the Defense Department leveraged this new found power. The DPG announced America’s post-Soviet arrival as the world’s hegemon and laid the ground for NATO expansion.

Now, digital technology, guided missiles and drones have become the toolkit of not only of regular armies, but also well-organised militias across the Middle East.

Ansar Allah is one such militia. However, it is one that has demonstrated a capacity for taking control of the sea lanes around the Indian Ocean from the American (and British) navies, who find they are now tasked full time with the defence of their own vessels. These warships have changed overnight from being lethal weapons to being anxious targets.

Ansar Allah is, furthermore, a revolutionary religious movement, that makes it a duty for its 30 million supporters to join regular million-man marches. Its support for Palestinian rights and sovereignty, and the rights and sovereignty of every individual, has infected the whole region at it boasts strings of victories both in the nine year Yemen War and in the current conflict against the imperialist powers. Its revolutionary message rings as powerfully in the ears of Gulf rulers as the increasingly hollow threats of the receding hegemon.

As Israel leads the United States and the empire into the abyss, the blind leading the blind, obsessed with the ‘beachfront property’ in Gaza that must –  in the view of Zionist slum landlords – be vacated for incoming Jewish settlers from America, little heed is paid to the fundamental changes taking place around them during this conflict. For the first time, the defenders of Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab sovereignty test their new skills and weapons under conditions of stress and find them, and their mastery of them, more than adequate to the tasks ahead.

Even as Netanyahu tightens the noose around Gaza, he can’t see, and his transfixed mentors can’t see, the noose tightening around them. Their adrenaline rush prevents them from feeling their mortal wounds. The world has changed radically during this conflict. The spirit of Gaza, even as Israel seeks to snuff it out, now fills the mountains and the high seas, the minds of free citizens, and the courtrooms of the United Nations.

[Ref: Prt 14 Post-Script 22; info@globalshiffft.com; © 2024]

P.S. 25 March 2024

Ceasefire resolution UNSC 2728

–  The UN Security Council adopts a resolution tabled by its 10 non-permanent members (E-10) which ‘demands‘ a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan to be respected by all parties, leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, by a vote of 14 in favour to none against, with one abstention (United States).

–  Resolution 2728 also ‘demands‘ the immediate and unconditional release of all hostage and for ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs, and further ‘demands‘ that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain.

– Resolution 2728 also emphasized the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip and reiterates its ‘demand‘ for the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale, in line with international humanitarian law as well as resolutions 2712 (2023) and 2720 (2023).

–  The Council rejected a Russia-proposed amendment that would have called for a permanent ceasefire.

–  The French ambassador said that at the end of Ramadan the UNSC must work to renew the ceasefire.

–  The US ambassador said her delegation “fully supports” the critical objectives of the draft.

–  Hamas accepted the resolution stressing the necessity of reaching a permanent ceasefire that leads to the withdrawal of all Israeli occupation forces from the Gaza Strip and the return of the displaced Palestinians to the homes they were forced from. The movement’s leaders affirmed their readiness to start an immediate prisoner exchange process leading to the release of both sides’ detainees and captives.

–  The E-10 are Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland.

– The 4 permanent members who voted with them are China, Russia, France, United Kingdom.

P.P.S. 26 March 2024

Israel ignores UNSC resolution 2728, which in virtue of its ‘demands‘ is an obligation in international law.

P.P.P.S. 28 March 2024

The International Court of Justice passes additional measures, as the ‘catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further,’ since the first order on January 26.

“The Court notes that the most recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and in Rafah in particular, ‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences’, as stated by the United Nations Secretary-General (Remarks to the General Assembly on priorities for 2024 (7 Feb. 2024)). This perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024, which are applicable throughout the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, and does not demand the indication of additional provisional measures.

The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, by:
(a) immediately suspending its military operations in Gaza;
(b) lifting its blockade of Gaza;
(c) rescinding all other existing measures and practices that directly or indirectly have the effect of obstructing the access of Palestinians in Gaza to humanitarian assistance and basic services; and
(d) ensuring the provision of adequate and sufficient food, water, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, alongside medical assistance, including medical supplies and support.

The link above provides access not only to the full order, but to legal opinions of the judges in the court, which indicate that, although the court’s has its work cut out and a final decision will take time, there is no doubt in their minds that a genocide is occurring under the terms of the Geneva Convention.

P.P.P.P.S. 8 April 2024

On 1 April Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Syria on Monday in a strike that Iran said killed seven of its military advisers, including three senior commanders, marking a major escalation. The United States immediately entered negotiations with Iran to avert a direct attack on Israel.

Today, Iranian FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke from Damascus pinning the blame for the attack on the United States, indicating that the ceasefire in Gaza that was being offered for Iranian restraint was nowhere near high enough a price.

On 2 April Israeli forces killed seven people delivering aid in Gaza for World Central Kitchen, a U.S. based charity with connections to Congress. Forty members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, spoke out against further unconditional support for Israel, and that is after Chuck Schumer’s demand of 14 March that Netanyahu go.

The Democratic Party establishment as a whole has thus woken up from its Gaza hypnosis. Three of the killed were British nationals linked to the country’s security services, prompting the UK’s FM, David Cameron, to state that support for Israel wasn’t unconditional.

Yesterday 7 April, Israel withdrew most of its forces from Gaza, after many losses in Khan Younis. Although this was spun as a preparation for a new phase of the war, even Netanhayu’s extreme right cabinet members interpreted it as admission of defeat.

One of them, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, demanded a meeting to review the war policy as a consequence. It is unlikely that Israel will immediately stop its murder and mayhem, but an unstoppable momentum towards an unravelling seems to have begun with all the events since 1 April.