Illusions of safety

On a Monday morning in March 2024, Professor Susan Levine, the head of the anthropology department at the University of Cape Town (UCT), received an email from a man who claimed to be “Benjy ‘Ben’ Steingold” of Tzfat, the famous “holy city” near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. Levine, who had never met or even heard of Steingold, was wary — the events of the previous weekend, when it came to the actions of her colleagues and fellow Jews, had shaken her badly. As she read from the top, her fears were confirmed.

“This may be the most important email you have ever received in your life,” the message began. “Please read to the end as it could give you the opportunity to change your eternal future.”

That “eternal future”, according to Steingold — or whatever the sender’s real name happened to be — would, unless Levine altered course, involve a particularly biblical form of punishment. Because she had allegedly “vilified Israel” by spreading “untruths and lies”, she was destined “in this incarnation or another reincarnation” to live under one of four enemy regimes: Hamas, Hezbollah, Isis or the Ayatollah’s Iran.

For the next 10 paragraphs, as payback for the motion that Levine had brought before the UCT senate the previous Friday, Steingold quoted a potent mix of Torah and American literature. Through it all, an undercurrent of menace flowed in a steady and self-assured stream, as exemplified in a citation from the Midrash (ancient commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures): “If you are kind to the cruel, in the end, you will be cruel to the kind.”

Two days later, on 13 March 2024, Levine would include these details in a sworn statement for the South African Police Service. At around the same time, the UCT authorities would deem the threat to her life significant enough to warrant full-time private security.

In the third paragraph of her statement, Levine would succinctly explain the motion that she had proposed to the university senate on 8 March:

“The motion was one which urged UCT to cut ties with Israeli institutions of higher education until such a time that they acknowledge the value of Palestinian lives in Gaza and [call] for an end to what the International Court of Justice calls ‘plausible’ [genocide].”

As it turned out, despite her refusal to rescind — aside from the Steingold threat, there was an attempt by UCT staff to place pressure on members of Levine’s family, with one colleague even passing on the message that her life would be “ruined” — the motion for an academic boycott did not win the requisite votes.

Still, although she could not know it at the time, Levine’s experience was fated to form a core part of one of the most significant court cases in the 195-year history of UCT.

Lodged by Professor Adam Mendelsohn on 22 August 2024, the Western Cape Division of the High Court application would attempt to overturn a pair of momentous resolutions that had been passed by the UCT council, the university’s highest decision-making body, on 22 June of that same year: first, the resolution not to adopt the international definition of anti-Semitism that encompassed anti-Zionism; and, second, the resolution to prohibit collaboration with academics or research groups affiliated to the Israel Defense Forces or the broader Israeli military establishment.

In its 150-page answering affidavit, the UCT council — represented by its chairperson, Norman Arendse — would refer to these resolutions jointly as the “Gaza resolutions,” thereby making it plain that they were a direct response to Israel’s ongoing military offensive and the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On page 17 of the affidavit, shortly after reiterating UCT’s “zero-tolerance attitude to anti-Semitism” and acknowledging that the Jewish people had in the past been “victims of gross atrocities and genocide” themselves, Levine’s experience was mentioned for the first time.

The context, as the UCT papers explicitly stated, was that “those who expressed views in support of the Gaza resolutions” were likely to face “threats, intimidation or reprisal” if their identities were revealed. Mendelsohn, the affidavit alleged, was “probably aware” of Levine’s experience, and therefore should not have disregarded the “safety and wellbeing” of council members by going public with the case.

As examples of Mendelsohn’s alleged breach, UCT cited the publication of his founding and supplementary affidavits on Politicsweb, “with council members’ identities disclosed … regardless of the request [for anonymity]”. Also cited was reporting on the case “in pro-Israel and right-wing media in the United States”, specifically an article in Breitbart Media by its senior editor Joel Pollak, dated 15 March 2025.

What was not cited was a lengthy feature published in Haaretz, Israel’s most progressive mainstream newspaper, on 24 September 2024. Titled “‘Scary Time to Be a Zionist’: Is Africa’s Top University No Longer a Welcoming Place for Jews?”, the piece, authored by South African journalist Tali Feinberg, quoted Mendelsohn extensively.

With a link to the original founding affidavit, published on Politicsweb on 29 August 2024, Feinberg noted that the resolutions (which were — and are — yet to be implemented) “should be seen within the broader context of South Africa’s fraught relations with Israel”.

Here, while Feinberg failed to mention the exceptionally close relationship in the 1970s and 1980s between the Israeli establishment and the white supremacist apartheid regime, she did observe that “the ruling African National Congress has long backed the Palestinians”. Likewise, while she failed to acknowledge the threats directed at Levine, the fears of certain members of UCT’s Zionist student body  — most of whom would only speak to her on condition of anonymity — were the central focus of her piece.

As graduate student Esther (not her real name) told Feinberg: “If someone assaulted me for wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ [‘The people of Israel live’], it wouldn’t be seen as anti-Semitic. It would be ‘anti-Zionist.’ The overlap between the two is no longer allowed to exist.”

In these inherently contested words, by Daily Maverick’s reckoning, lay the essence of the case. Levine, who in the interests of academic freedom allowed us access to her story and her name, was for us an archetypal local representative of a deeply disturbing global phenomenon — the split in world Jewry, between Zionists and anti-Zionists, that was now violently shaking the foundations of some of the most prestigious universities on Earth.

What if Einstein was an anti-Semite? 

“I am an academic, writer and member of the organisation South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), currently residing in Cape Town,” Jared Sacks testified. “I do not disclose my residential address because SAJFP members are often subject to harassment and threats from individuals who support Israel and the ideology of Zionism.”

As the opening paragraph of the application for the admission of the SAJFP as amicus curiae (friends of the court) in the case of Mendelsohn versus the UCT council, an affidavit that Sacks deposed on behalf of his organisation on 9 June 2025, the assertion — like Levine’s story — was far from hyperbolic. A mere six weeks before, as reported, Sacks had been physically assaulted by an attendee of the Jewish Literary Festival in Cape Town, for the apparent offence of protesting Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

The incident, it turned out, was nothing new to Sacks. As a PhD graduate in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University in New York, he had served as a teaching fellow on undergraduate courses that delved into the highly flammable terrain of Palestinian rights.

“I have first-hand knowledge of the current climate of political repression related to pro-Palestine activism at universities in the United States,” Sacks declared in his affidavit, “including at Columbia, where a number of former colleagues and former students have been subject to harassment, doxxing, assaults, institutional pressure, procedurally unfair disciplinary processes, and unjust termination of employment due to their research and speech on Palestine.”

By Daily Maverick’s understanding, this anchoring of the UCT case in the international context, a point that the affidavit would repeat from multiple angles, was one of the primary motivations for the SAJFP applying as amicus curiae — in disentangling the religion of Judaism from the ideology of Zionism, Sacks testified, his organisation aimed to “debunk the anti-Semitic notion” that there had ever been anything like a homogenous Jewish perspective, either globally or locally, on the actions of the State of Israel.

Clearly, in emphasising “the role that anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews have played in shaping discourse on [the UCT campus]”, the affidavit was not only rejecting the attempt by Mendelsohn — director of the university’s Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies — to speak on behalf of all Jewish students and staff; it was also affirming the SAJFP’s support for free speech and institutional autonomy, particularly in the form of the Gaza resolutions.

But as important, “with billionaire philanthropists and politicians running roughshod over protected speech” at universities in the United States, the SAJFP was drawing attention to the “distinct possibility” that what had been playing out “at places like Harvard and Columbia” would “become an issue at South African universities as well”.

The question for the Western Cape Division of the High Court, of course, would be whether the SAJFP was overstating its case. And here, to offset Mendelsohn’s opposition to the application, the organisation came armed with expert witnesses.

At the top end, aside from the testimonies of Professor Steven Friedman and Professor Isaac Kamola, two local academics with deep knowledge of the issues, the SAJFP submitted an expert affidavit from Professor Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey — the same institute that Albert Einstein had joined in the 1930s, after seeking refuge from Nazi Germany.

Scott, as Sacks well knew, had long been a leading global critic of the definition of anti-Semitism as laid down by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA — the very definition that the UCT council had rejected in its Gaza resolutions of June 2024, and the very definition, as articulated in his founding papers, that Mendelsohn appeared to be insisting upon.

In paragraph 14 of her supporting affidavit, somewhat remarkably, Scott invoked the spirit of Einstein himself.

“Under the IHRA definition,” she testified, “rejecting the idea of a Jewish state with borders and an army, as Einstein once did, could land even the most famous Jew of the 20th century in the position of being accused of anti-Semitism. Though he was sympathetic to Zionism, Einstein’s comparison of Menachem Begin’s Herut Party massacres during the Nakba to the Nazi Party would have fallen afoul of [the IHRA definition]. In today’s academic world, he could have been fired for making such a comparison.”

In other words, according to Scott, a celebrated Jewish scholar in her mid-80s who had witnessed — and commented upon — some of the worst anti-democratic impulses of 20th-century America, the Zionist radicals of 2025 would have burnt no less a luminary than Einstein.

It was for this reason, she continued in her affidavit, that one of the original authors of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, came to regret what he called the “weaponising” of the definition, arguing — in an opinion piece for the Guardian published in 2019 — that “its misuse undermines efforts to detect and combat real instances of anti-Semitism”.

In the same vein, Scott added, this was also why more than a hundred Israeli and international civil society organisations, in April of 2023 — as reported, again, in the Guardian — “urged the United Nations to reject this definition”.

Ultimately, for Scott — as for Friedman and Kamola — the IHRA definition had quickly become anathema to the very idea of academic freedom. Scott, however, had been watching its effects play out on US Ivy League campuses in real time. Republican politicians, she testified, “many of them anti-Semites themselves”, were now using the “expressions of discomfort” of Zionist students and faculty to foreground anti-Semitism at the expense of all other forms of racial discrimination.

“[Zionist] students express their discomfort in terms of feeling ‘unsafe’ or ‘threatened,’” she added, “when there is little or no evidence of any physical danger they have experienced.”

Was this also the reality of Zionist fears on the UCT campus, as reported by Feinberg in Haaretz? The answer, it appeared, would be for the Western Cape Division of the High Court to decide.

For the moment, what could not be disputed was how things were turning out in the US. “The IHRA definition is now a political test for enjoying rights of free speech and academic freedom,” Scott testified. “Those who support Israel have rights of free expression, those who criticise it are punished and banned.”

The money problem

On a Saturday morning in mid-March 2025, almost a year to the day after UCT had assigned full-time security to Professor Levine, the university council was asked to make a difficult decision. With the threat of US federal funding cuts looming, most likely in the form of an abrupt halt to grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the executive orders of President Donald Trump could no longer be ignored — for one thing, as the largest recipients of NIH grants outside of the US, the university’s medical researchers were now at serious risk.

For another thing, as every member of the council was keenly aware, pro-Israel donors had already withdrawn funding — and more were threatening to withdraw — on the back of the Gaza resolutions of the previous year.

Although it had not been placed on the agenda for discussion, a motion was therefore tabled that the university should rescind the resolutions and withdraw its opposition to Mendelsohn’s high court application. In a closely contested vote, the motion failed to pass.

A few short hours later, as stated in the council’s answering affidavit, Joel Pollak of the right-wing US outlet Breitbart Media ran an article under the title, “South African university votes to keep boycott of Israel despite losing two-thirds of donor funding”. Before the end of the following week, in a similarly alarmist piece in the local Jewish Report (authored, like the Haaretz feature, by Feinberg), Rolene Marks of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) would also note her concerns.

“This self-inflicted crisis threatens vital resources and undermines UCT’s global standing,” Marks stated on behalf of the SAZF. “It exposes the ideological capture of its leadership at the direct expense of academic freedom, financial stability and student welfare. Council members have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the university, yet some are wilfully disregarding this obligation. Their hatred of Israel outweighs their responsibility for UCT’s future.”

By Daily Maverick’s reading, this was an uncanny summary of one of the principal arguments from Mendelsohn’s founding affidavit of August 2024 — the notion that, by failing to take account of “UCT’s finances, existing relationships … and reputation”, the council had acted in an “irrational” manner.

But if Mendelsohn was indeed the source of the leaks, as alleged in the UCT answering papers, he would not admit as much to us. In response to a series of questions sent on 12 June, in which Daily Maverick also sought clarification on the publication of the names of council members, he noted his “surprise” at our email — we should “surely know”, he wrote, that it would be “improper” for him to respond while legal proceedings were pending.

Given Mendelsohn’s extensive interviews with Feinberg, we noted, we too were surprised. Still, irrespective of the source, the tenor of the media campaign against the UCT council was unmistakable — the underlying message was that the university had been financially punished for taking on the Zionists.

The SAJFP, for its part, was unimpressed. Referring in a footnote to an attendant statement from Mendelsohn’s supplementary affidavit, the organisation pointed out the obvious: “The assumption that ‘Jewish connected’ donors would have a homogeneous reaction to resolutions against Israel’s actions in Palestine is not only incorrect … it also panders to historical anti-Semitic tropes of a Jewish cabal working in unison and employing financial power to promote its political agendas.”

Of course, if the SAJFP was implying that there was no such cabal, the optics weren’t working in its favour.

Further down in its application, the organisation got at the heart of the matter, noting that since 7 October 2023 the “risk to university autonomy and academic freedom” from private donor money had become extreme, “particularly at Ivy League universities” in the US.

“Wealthy donors (with the support of politicians) have drawn on the IHRA’s conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism to pressure universities like Harvard and Columbia to ban student groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine,” Sacks testified. “Donor pressure has also forced the suspension and expulsion of students for peaceful protests, the militarisation of campuses by armed police and the resignation of university presidents that sought to push back on their demands.”

Unlike Harvard, the SAJFP noted, where philanthropic contributions “made up about 45 percent of all revenue in the 2024 financial year”, private donor funding made up “only ten percent” of UCT’s revenue in 2024. Still, with the overall trend in South Africa towards “increased reliance on such funding”, one of the dangers — as the SAJFP saw it — was that donors’ political views would soon play an outsized role at our universities too.

A major milestone, according to the SAJFP, had been passed in the signing of a contract between UCT and the Donald Gordon Foundation (DGF) in 2023, wherein the latter had agreed to fund the creation of a neuroscience institute (at a cost of R200-million over a 10-year period) on the proviso that UCT’s “zero-tolerance attitude to anti-Semitism” was anchored in the IHRA definition.

As the UCT council’s answering affidavit made clear, on 6 August 2024 — around six weeks after it had passed the Gaza resolutions — the DGF informed the university of its “decision to cancel … the donor agreement”. In total, the council devoted all of 24 paragraphs to the contract’s background, arguing that the IHRA clause had never been used or intended as a dealbreaker and expressing the hope that the relationship with the DGF could be restored.

But Mendelsohn, in his own papers, had left no room for doubt — not only had the UCT council sacrificed the neuroscience institute on the altar of its Gaza resolutions, he testified, it had burnt the chances of a mooted “R400- to R500-million from the DGF” for a new academic hospital too.

And likewise for the SAJFP (although from the diametrically opposed stance), there was nothing ambiguous about the DGF contract.

“If the DGF donor agreement were to be enforced,” Sacks testified, “this would mean that Zionism’s adherents on campus would be protected by the IHRA in the same way as a racial group or religion. Meanwhile, the agreement would institutionalise discrimination against those who oppose Zionism by branding them with the false label of anti-Semitism.”

The Western Cape Division of the High Court, then, was being asked to pass judgment on one of the most heated and divisive topics of the modern era — a touchpoint that was pitching students against professors, voters against politicians, Jews against Jews. For anti-Zionists like Levine and Sacks, the violence that their brethren were capable of was hardly a joke; but for Mendelsohn too, who in September 2024 had requested additional security from the university, the stakes were sky-high.

On 23 and 24 October 2025, the matter would be heard before a full Bench. Arguing for the admission of the SAJFP as amicus curiae would be Geoffrey Budlender, a graduate of UCT and one of the most respected senior counsels in South Africa. According to Sacks, Budlender had agreed to take on the case pro bono.

Given that Budlender, himself a Jew, had recently been honoured with the George Bizos Human Rights Award, it was likely to be an uncompromising show, a battle worthy of the oldest university in the country.

Would South Africa, as in the ICJ case, offer the world a lesson in moral courage?

Daily Maverick, for one, wasn’t betting against it.

• First published at Daily Maverick.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kevin Bloom.

That seems like a very long time in a case involving the daily killing of many people, including children. But it was not enough time for Israel, which on 27 March 2025 filed a request to extend the time.

In a very recent decision, the International Court of Justice has obliged and extended the time by six months. Israel can continue killing with impunity, and their defense to the International Court of Justice is not required until 28 January 2026.

There has been very little news of this decision.  The ICJ did not issue a press release, despite this being their most sensational case. Accordingly, the decision has not been reported in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian.  Meanwhile, Israeli media reported, “EXCLUSIVE: Israel secures six month delay in Hague Court proceedings.”

Another important story that has been largely ignored by Western media is regarding the sole Judge who voted in favor of Israel in every single decision so far in this case. That person, Judge Julia Sebutinde, has been revealed to have grossly plagiarized the writings of two ultra-zionists:  Douglas Feith and David Brog. Feith is a co-author of the infamous Netanyahu plan, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” and part of the Bush/Cheney team that campaigned for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.   Brog is Jewish but helped to found Christians United for Israel. He is currently the head of Miriam Adelson’s “Maccabee Task Force”.  Anti-zionist scholar Norman Finkelstein has discovered that 32% of the ICJ judge’s pro-Israel dissenting opinion was plagiarized from Feith, Brog, and others.

As the saying goes, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” And if nobody reports or knows about it, did it really happen?  Along with dead Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is trying and perhaps succeeding in killing the International Court of Justice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rick Sterling.

The 1981 Springbok Tour was one of the most controversial events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. For 56 days, between July and September, more than 150,000 people took part in more than 200 demonstrations in 28 centres.

It was the largest protest in the country’s history.

It caused social ruptures within communities and families across the country. With the National government backing the tour, protests against apartheid sport turned into confrontations with both police and pro-tour rugby fans — on marches and at matches.

• READ MORE: 100 children killed or wounded every day since Gaza ceasefire broken
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The success of these mass protests was that this was the last tour in either country between the two teams with the strongest rivalry among rugby playing nations.

This deeply rooted antipathy towards the racism of apartheid helps provide context to today’s growing opposition by New Zealanders to the horrific actions of another apartheid state.

Understanding apartheid
Apartheid is a humiliating, repressive and brutal legislated segregation through separation of social groups. In South Africa, this segregation was based on racism (white supremacy over non-whites; predominantly Black Africans but also Asians).

For nearly three centuries before 1948, Africans had been dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948, this oppression was upgraded to an official legal policy of apartheid.

Apartheid does not have to be necessarily by race. It could also be religious based. An earlier example was when Christians separated Jews into ghettos on the false claim of inferiority.

In August 2024, Le Monde Diplomatic published article (paywalled) by German prize-winning journalist and author Charlotte Wiedemann on apartheid in both Israel and South Africa under the heading “When Apartheid met Zionism”:

She asked the pointed question of what did it mean to be Jewish in a country that saw Israel through the lens of its own experience of apartheid?

It is a fascinating question making her article an excellent read. Le Monde Diplomatic is a quality progressive magazine, well worth the subscription to read many articles as interesting as this one.

Relevant Wiedemann observations
Wiedemann’s scope is wider than that of this blog but many of her observations are still pertinent to my analysis of the relationship between the two apartheid states.

Most early Jewish immigrants to South Africa fled pogroms and poverty in tsarist Lithuania. This context encouraged many to believe that every human being deserved equal respect, regardless of skin colour or origin.

Blatant widespread white-supremacist racism had been central to South Africa’s history of earlier Dutch and English colonialism. But this shifted to a further higher level in May 1948 when apartheid formally became central to South Africa’s legal and political system.

Although many Jews were actively opposed to apartheid it was not until 1985, 37 years later, that Jewish community leaders condemned it outright. In the words of Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

“The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given … We ask forgiveness.”

On the one hand, Jewish lawyers defended Black activists, But, on the other hand, it was a Jewish prosecutor who pursued Nelson Mandela with “extraordinary zeal” in the case that led to his long imprisonment.

Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s strongest allies, including militarily, even when it had become internationally isolated, including through sporting and economic boycotts. Israel’s support for the increasingly isolated apartheid state was unfailing.

Jewish immigration to South Africa from the late 19th century brought two powerful competing ideas from Eastern Europe. One was Zionism while the other was the Bundists with a strong radical commitment to justice.

But it was Zionism that grew stronger under apartheid. Prior to 1948 it was a nationalist movement advocating for a homeland for Jewish people in the “biblical land of Israel”.

Zionism provided the rationale for the ideas that actively sought and achieved the existence of the Israeli state. This, and consequential forced removal of so many Palestinians from their homeland, made Zionism a “natural fit” in apartheid South Africa.

Nelson Mandela and post-apartheid South Africa
Although strongly pro-Palestinian, post-apartheid South Africa has never engaged in Holocaust denial. In fact, Holocaust history is compulsory in its secondary schools.

Its first president, Nelson Mandela, was very clear about the importance of recognising the reality of the Holocaust. As Charlotte Wiedemann observes:

“Quite the reverse . . .  In 1994 Mandela symbolically marked the end of apartheid at an exhibition about Anne Frank. ‘By honouring her memory as we do today’ he said at its opening, ‘we are saying with one voice: never and never again!’”

In a 1997 speech, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela also reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights:

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

There is a useful account of Mandela’s relationship with and support for Palestinians published by Middle East Eye.

Mandela’s identification with Palestine was recognised by Palestinians themselves. This included the construction of an impressive statue of him on what remains of their West Bank homeland.

Comparing apartheid in South Africa and Israel
So how did apartheid in South Africa compare with apartheid in Israel. To begin with, while both coincidentally began in May 1948, in South Africa this horrendous system ended over 30 years ago. But in Israel it not only continues, it intensifies.

Broadly speaking, this included Israel adapting the infamously cruel “Bantustan system” of South Africa which was designed to maintain white supremacy and strengthen the government’s apartheid policy. It involved an area set aside for Black Africans, purportedly for notional self-government.

In South Africa, apartheid lasted until the early 1990s culminating in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Tragically, for Palestinians in their homeland, apartheid not only continues but is intensified by ethnic cleansing delivered by genocide, both incrementally and in surges.

Apartheid Plus: ethnic cleansing and genocide
Israel has gone further than its former southern racist counterpart. Whereas South Africa’s economy depended on the labour exploitation of its much larger African workforce, this was relatively much less so for Israel.

As much as possible Israel’s focus was, and still is, instead on the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homeland.

This began in 1948 with what is known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”) when many were physically displaced by the creation of the Israeli state. Genocide is the increasing means of delivering ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas by deporting or forcibly displacing people belonging to particular ethnic groups.

It can also include the removal of all physical vestiges of the victims of this cleansing through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.

This destructive removal has been the unfortunate Palestinian experience in much of today’s Israel and its occupied or controlled territories. It is continuing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Genocide involves actions intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

In contrast with civil war, genocide usually involves deaths on a much larger scale with civilians invariably and deliberately the targets. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

Today the Israeli slaughter and destruction in Gaza is a huge genocidal surge with the objective of being the “final solution” while incremental genocide of Palestinians speeds up in the occupied West Bank.

Notwithstanding the benefits of the recent ceasefire, it freed up Israel to militarily focus on repressing West Bank Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the current vulnerable hiatus of the ceasefire has shifted from military action to starvation.

The final word
One of the encouraging features has been the massive protests against the genocide throughout the world. In a relative context, and while not on the same scale as the mass protests against the racist South African rugby tour in 1981, this includes New Zealand.

Many Jews, including in New Zealand and in the international protests such as at American universities, have been among the strongest critics of the ethnic cleansing through genocide of the apartheid Israeli state.

They have much in common with the above-mentioned Bundist focus on social justice in contrast to the dogmatic biblical extremism of Zionism.

Amos Goldberg, professor of genocidal studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one such Jew. Let’s leave the final word to him:

“It’s so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained.”

This is a compelling case for the New Zealand government to join the many other countries in formally recognising the state of Palestine.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The attack on UNRWA also came with a contemporaneous legal effort, this time from South Africa.  Pretoria had already made its wishes clear on December 28, 2023 in filing an application in the International Court of Justice alleging “violations by Israel regarding the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide […] in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”  Acts and omissions by Israel, argued the South African government, were alleged to be of a “genocidal” nature, “committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

By May 10, South Africa had filed four requests seeking additional provisional measures with modifications to the original provisional measures laid down by the ICJ.  The momentum, and frequency of the actions, even gave certain commentators room to wonder: Was Israel’s own due process rights regarding judicial equality and the right to be heard compromised?  Israel had promised to submit written observations by May 15 to the ICJ when faced with the sudden announcement on May 12 that the court would be holding an oral hearing instead.

These debates have been taking place before the concerted, dedicated, enthusiastic pulverisation of Gaza, and the ongoing killing, terrorisation and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank.  In these cases, due process remains fantasy and distant speculation, especially concerning civilians.  With increasing regularity, there is chilling evidence that Israeli units have a programmatic approach to destroying a viable infrastructure and means of living on the strip.

On October 22, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem expressed horror at the sheer scale “of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left […] impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world.”

In a chilling overview of the exploits of the IDF’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion written by Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip for Drop Site News, a record of systematic elimination of cultural, structural and intellectual life in the Gaza Strip is evident.  As members of the battalion’s official D9 company stated: “Our job is to flatten Gaza.”  In an operation that saw the destruction of the Al-Azhar University, First Sergeant David Zoldan, operational officer of Company A of the battalion, delights with fellow soldiers on seeing the explosion: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, did you see?!”

Statements of this sort are frequent and easily found up the chain of command.  They are also uttered with ease at the highest levels of government.  On October 21, Israeli Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir had told a “settlement” conference held in a restricted military zone that Gaza’s inhabitants would be given the chance to “leave from here to other countries”.  His reasoning for this ethnic cleansing has remained biblically consistent: “The Land of Israel is ours.”

In a media statement from its Department of International Relations and Cooperation dated October 28, the South African government announced its filing of a Memorial to the ICJ pertaining to its ongoing case against Israel.  The Memorial itself runs into 750 pages, with 4000 pages of supporting exhibits and annexes.  (Its December 2023 application had run into 84 pages.)  “The problem we have is that we have too much evidence,” remarked South Africa’s representative to The Hague, Ambassador Vusimuzi Madonsela to Al Jazeera.

Zane Dangor, director- general of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, was more practical.  Israel might well inflate its dossier of bloody misdeeds, but some line had to be drawn in the submissions.  “The legal team will always say we need more time, there’s more facts coming.  But we have to say you have to stop now.  You [have] got to focus on what you have.”

While the formal contents of the Memorial remain confidential, the clues are thickly obvious.  It contains, for instance, evidence that Israel “has violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”

Despite that comprehensive assortment of alleged crimes, the legal commentariat wonder how far this latest effort will necessarily go in linking the decisions of Israeli officialdom with genocidal intent.  That Israel is committing war crimes and violating humanitarian law is nigh impossible dispute.  The threshold in proving genocide, as international jurisprudence has repeatedly shown over the years, is a high one indeed.  The dolus specialis – that specific intent to destroy in whole or in part the protected group – is essential to prove.

Cathleen Powell of University of Cape Town, for instance, has her reservations.  “If they can find genocidal statements from state officials and show that that directly led to a particular programme that led to the destruction on the ground, then that’s probably a very strong case,”.  But making that link would be “very difficult”.

Dangor has no doubts.  “Genocidal acts without intent can be crimes against humanity.  But here, the intent is just front and centre.”  Suffice to say that Israeli lawmakers and officials, aided by the exploits of the IDF, are making proving such intent an easier prospect with each passing day.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

South Africa’s legal team has submitted hundreds of documents containing what it calls “undeniable evidence” as part of its ongoing genocide case against the state of Israel, with the South African representative to The Hague telling Al Jazeera that “The problem we have is that we have too much evidence.”

The Israeli outlet Haaretz reports that IDF soldiers are actively blocking the return of Palestinians they have driven out of northern Gaza as part of the so-called “General’s Plan” — a land grab of Palestinian territory using ethnic cleansing by violent force.

Haaretz has been far more critical of Israel’s actions than western media outlets have been. It recently published an editorial titled “If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is.” Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken is now publicly advocating international sanctions on the Israeli government for its apartheid abuses and opposition to a Palestinian state, drawing an outraged response from the Netanyahu regime.

Last week there was a two-day rally attended by multiple Israeli government officials called the “Preparing to Resettle Gaza Conference,” which was exactly what it sounds like: high-profile Israelis gathering to discuss the agenda to drive Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and replace their territory with Jewish settlements.

Humanitarian aid in Gaza has reportedly fallen to its lowest level since Israel’s genocidal onslaught began, with just a few hundred truckloads entering the enclave from October 1 to October 22 and nothing getting through to the north. The UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs recently warned that “The entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying,” a warning that was issued shortly before the Israeli Knesset voted to cut off UNRWA aid throughout all the territories it controls.

According to a new report from the Washington Post, the US State Department has been inundated with hundreds of reports of US-supplied weapons being used to needlessly kill and harm civilians in Gaza, but in violation of its own rules it has failed to take any action on a single one of them. According to one WaPo source, investigations of these reports have tended to stall out at the “verification” stage, which consists of asking the Israeli government for its side of the story.

Israeli forces reportedly killed 109 Palestinians in a single massacre on Tuesday — including dozens of children — when Israel blew up an apartment building where hundreds of civilians were sleeping.

The IDF killed five journalists in a single day last Sunday, bringing the total number of journalists murdered in Israel’s genocidal assault to at least 180. This occurred shortly after Israel published a kill list of six Al Jazeera journalists who it claims are secret Hamas fighters, although no Al Jazeera reporters were among the five killed.

And this is just in Gaza. Israel has already killed some 164 healthcare workers in its ongoing assault on Lebanon, where the Netanyahu government is sabotaging ceasefire negotiations by inserting ridiculous non-starter demands like Israeli planes being allowed to enter Lebanese airspace and Israeli forces being allowed to police the ceasefire deal with military operations in southern Lebanon as they see fit.

Every day there’s more and more ugly news in the middle east, perpetrated by Israel and its powerful western backers who make its abuses possible. It’s getting harder and harder to stay on top of. There really is “too much evidence” to keep up with.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caitlin Johnstone.

Since the formation of the Government of National Unity there has been a huge increase in state attacks on shack settlements around Durban and elsewhere. This includes settlements in Belair and the Bluff, both formerly white suburbs, and the Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation in Johannesburg, which is near to a middle-class area. In all these cases settlements in middle class areas are being targeted. There have also been evictions in KwaDebeka in Durban.

We have also been resisting evictions along the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal where the super-rich lived in mansions in gated communities. They employ violent and militarized security companies to police the poor. The police follow the lead of these security companies. The Hlanganani occupation in Salt rock, the Sihlalangenkani occupation in Umhlali and the Ekuphumleni occupation in Ballito are all resisting evictions. The Phola and Magebhula settlements, also on the North Coast, under the KwaDukuza Municipality, have also suffered violent evictions.

It seems clear that two things are driving this general attack on the poor. One is that the DA, which has been viciously evicting in the Western Cape, has pressured the ANC to step up its attacks on the poor. Another is that the state is cynically responding to the public outcry about the frightening levels of violence in the country, including kidnapping and extortion, with violent attacks on the poor and on migrants in the name of ‘fighting crime’. They are criminalising and abusing vulnerable people instead of dealing with the real crisis of violence.

In the case of the evictions from land near the gated communities on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal the power of property, of wealth, is being mobilised to crush grassroots urban planning and decommodification of land organised via popular democratic power.

The ANC gives special preference to the super-rich in these gated communities. They were even given an exception for loadshedding. They have told us that we are living on ‘prime land’ and must be moved away to desolate human dumping grounds far from work and schools.

In our statement issued before the march in Ballito on 16 September we said that:

“The KwaDukuza Municipality is openly working with the rich to remove poor black people in Ballito and Umhlali. The ratepayers’ association and the ANC led municipality are working together to evict poor black people, to destroy our homes and communities.

They say that our presence reduces the value of the land, as if value is just a question of the price of the land and has nothing to do with the value of land for the human beings who live on it. They say that we must be removed because we are a health hazard as we must use the bush to relieve ourselves whereas the obvious solution to the lack of sanitation is to provide sanitation. They say that we are ‘chasing tourists away’. The strong element of racism driving all this is often openly displayed on the social media used by the white residents of the gated communities. The black elites who live in the gated communities are silent about this racism.”

Now the residents of the gated communities, the super-rich, have made their racism and contempt for the poor clear. The Dolphin Coast Residents & Ratepayers’ Association have released a viciously anti-poor and racist video in which we are said to be criminal, dangerous, unhygienic and polluting. These are old colonial stereotypes about impoverished black people, stereotypes that have long been used by governments and elites to justify state violence and the destruction of homes, communities and livelihoods.

The video aggressively criminalises impoverishment declaring that we are engaged in illegal occupation, illegal trading and illegal water electricity connections and demanding that the state ‘take action’ and that ‘the law be enforced’.

When it demands the enforcement of the law it is not demanding that the limited but important rights given to the poor in the Constitution are guaranteed. This is an open demand for violence against us by private security and the state, for the destruction of our homes, our community infrastructure and our livelihoods. It is a declaration of war against the poor by the rich, a declaration of war against the black poor by the white dominated elite in the area.

It is true that we are denied access to land, water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal. The solution to this is to provide land and services, not to incite state violence against us when we make our own arrangements to build viable lives and communities.

We would like to note that not all the wealthy residents of the area are taking this hostile, anti-poor and racist position. One resident has publicly stood up to make the important point that our living conditions are due to state failure and that this is the problem that needs to be fixed. No doubt he is not alone and there are other decent people who also recognise our humanity.

The racist and anti-poor video put out by The Dolphin Coast Residents & Ratepayers’ Association must be condemned in the strongest terms. It should be investigated by the Human Rights Commission.

It is also important for us to note that according to the KwaDukuza Speaker’s office the Mayor has refused to respond to the People’s Memorandum submitted on the 16 September march. She has long been failing to engage people with respect, to take the dignity of the poor seriously and to run an efficient administration. This anti-democratic refusal to respond to the Memorandum is provoking the anger of the people.

We will continue to defend our right to live on the North Coast and to demand that our occupations be recognised and provided with all the services required for a decent and dignified life.

Our humanity is not negotiable. South Africa belongs to all who live in it, including the poor. There can be no compromise with racism. We will hold the land.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

A South African company is reported to be the most probable bidder for shares in New Caledonia’s Prony Resources.

As part of an already advanced takeover of the ailing southern plant of Prony Resources, the most probable bidder is reported to be South African group Sibaneye-Stillwater, local new media report.

Just like the other two major mining plants and smelters in New Caledonia, Prony Resources is facing acute hardships due to the emergence of Indonesia as a major player on the world market, compounded with New Caledonia’s violent unrest that broke out in May.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia mining reports

Prony Resources has been trying to find a possible company to take over the shares held by Swiss trader Trafigura (19 percent).

The process was recently described as very favourable to a “seriously interested” buyer.

Citing reliable sources, daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes yesterday named South Africa’s Sibanye-Stillwater.

The Johannesburg-based entity is a significant player on the minerals world market (including nickel, platinum and palladium) and owns, amongst other assets, a hydro-metallurgic processing plant in Sandouville (near Le Havre, western France) with a production capacity of 12,000 tonnes per year of high-grade nickel which it bought in February 2022 from French mining giant Eramet for 85 million euros (NZ$153 million).

The ultimate goal would be, for the South African player, to become a leader on the production market for innovative electric vehicles batteries, especially on the European market.

Southern Province President Sonia Backès had already hinted last week that one buyer had now been found and that one bidder had successfully reached advanced stages in the due diligence process.

If the deal eventuated, the new entity would take over the shares held by Swiss trader Trafigura (19 percent) and another block of shares held by the Southern Province to reach a total of 74 percent participation in Prony Resources stock, as part of a major restructuration of the company’s capital.

Prony Resources, in full operation mode, employs about 1300 staff.

Another 1700 are employed indirectly through sub-contractors.

It has paused its production to retain only up to 300 staff, in safety and maintenance mode, partly due to New Caledonia’s current unrest.

New Caledonian consortium’s surprise bid for mothballed Northern plant
Meanwhile, a local consortium of New Caledonian investors is reported to have made an 11-hour offer to take over and restart activity for the now mothballed Koniambo (KNS) nickel plant.

The plant’s furnaces were placed in “cold care and maintenance” mode at the end of August, six months after major shareholder Anglo-Swiss Glencore announced it wanted to withdraw and sell the 49 percent shares it has in the project.

This caused close to 1200 job losses and further 600 among sub-contractors.

Other bidders still interested
KNS claimed at least three foreign investors were still interested at this stage, but none of these have so far materialised.

Talks were however reported to continue behind the scenes, with interested parties even ready to travel and visit on-site, KNS Vice-President and spokesman Alexandre Rousseau told Reuters news agency earlier this month.

‘Okelani Group One’
But a so-called “Okelani Group One” (OGO), made up of three local partners, said their offer could revive the project with a different business model.

They say they have made an offer to KNS’s majority shareholder SMSP (Société Minière du Sud Pacifique, New Caledonia’s Northern province financial arm).

OGO president Florent Tavernier told public broadcaster NC la 1ère much depended on what Glencore intended to do with the staggering debt of some US$13.7 billion which KNS had accumulated over the past 10 years.

Another OGO partner, Gilles Hernandez, explained: “We would be targeting a niche market of very high quality nickel used in aeronautics and edge-cutting technologies, especially in Europe, where nickel is now classified as ‘strategic metal’.”

Although KNS was designed to produce 60,000 tonnes of nickel a year, that target was never reached.

OGO said it would only aim for 15,000 tonnes per year and would only re-employ 400 of the 1200 laid-off staff.

New Caledonia’s third nickel plant, owned by historic Société Le Nickel (SLN, a subsidiary of French mining giant Eramet), which is also facing major hardships for the same reasons, is said to currently operate at minimal capacity.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

However, in 2022, Kenyan smallholder farmers launched a legal case against the government calling for reform of the 2012 seed law to stop criminalising them for sharing seeds. There is a hearing scheduled for 24 July 2024.

Agroecologist and environmentalist Claire Nasike Akello says that, in legal terms, the sharing and selling of indigenous seeds is a criminal offence in Kenya. In effect, Kenya’s Seed and Plant Varieties Act demolishes self-sufficiency among smallholder farmers who use indigenous seeds to grow food.

Writing on her website, she says that the legislation seeks to create a dependency on multinational companies by smallholder farmers for seeds thus giving an upper hand to these firms that continue to steal biological resources from local communities with a profit-driven mindset.

It is, in effect:

A move designed to impoverish smallholder farmers and lock them out of farming.

Gates, Rockefeller and big agribusiness

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) initiative, funded by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, has been intervening directly in the formulation of African governments’ agricultural policies on issues like seeds and land, opening up African markets to US agribusiness.

Around 80% of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA is supporting the introduction of commercial (chemical-dependent) seed systems, enabling a few large companies to control seed research and development, production and distribution.

Since the 1990s, national seed law reviews have taken place, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along with Gates and others, opening the door to multinational corporations’ involvement in seed production.

Regulations and ‘seed certification’ laws are often brought in by governments on behalf of industry that are designed to eradicate traditional seeds by allowing only ‘stable’, ‘uniform’ and ‘novel’ seeds on the market (meaning corporate seeds). These are the only ‘regulated’ seeds allowed: registered and certified. It is a cynical way of eradicating indigenous farming practices at the behest of corporations.

Thousands of seed varieties have been lost and corporate seeds have increasingly dominated agriculture as peasant farmers have been prevented from freely improving, sharing or replanting their traditional seeds. It amounts to the privatisation of a common heritage. The privatisation and appropriation of inter-generational farmer knowledge embodied by seeds whose germplasm is ‘tweaked’ and stolen by corporations who then claim ownership.

Seed has been central to agriculture for 10,000 years. Seeds have been handed down from generation to generation. Peasant farmers have been the custodians of seeds, knowledge and land.

The corporate control over seeds is also an attack on the survival of communities and their traditions. Seeds are integral to identities because, in rural communities, people’s lives have been tied to planting, harvesting, seeds, soil and the seasons for thousands of years.

The privatisation of seeds is a global issue, of course. In Costa Rica, for example, the battle to overturn restrictions on seeds was lost with the signing of a free trade agreement with the US, although this flouted the country’s seed biodiversity laws.

Seed laws in Brazil created a corporate property regime for seeds which effectively marginalised all indigenous seeds that were locally adapted over generations. This regime attempted to stop farmers from using or breeding their own seeds.

What we are seeing is a drive towards the corporate commodification of knowledge and seeds, the erosion of farmers’ environmental learning, the undermining of traditional knowledge systems and an increase in farmers’ dependency on corporations.

Such dispossession and dependency are sold by Gates and the agribusiness sector as meeting the needs of modern agriculture. What it really means is a system adapted to meet the demands of global agri-capital, institutional investors like BlackRock and corporate-controlled international markets and supply chains.

Meanwhile these vested interests try to depict Africa as a basket case in need of ‘intervention’.

It’s a convenient smokescreen that diverts attention from the political economy of food and agriculture, not least how contrived debt traps and predatory lending practices led African nations into succumbing to ‘structural adjustment’ programmes, turning the continent from being a net food exporter into a net food importer, undermining indigenous crop diversity and, with it, food security and food sovereignty.

Prof Walden Bello and John Feffer argue that, in this respect, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are key to understanding the processes involved in destroying African agriculture. Neoliberal shock therapy left poor African farmers more food insecure and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.

Bello and Feffer argue that the social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable:

… the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 – or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny.

And now we have AGRA stepping in to apparently save the day. But what we have seen thus far with that initiative is more of the same: according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, AGRA is failing Africa’s farmers

World Bank and the seeds of neocolonialism 

The UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90% of all the plant-based food consumed by humans.

In addition to this narrow genetic base putting global food security at serious risk, Graham Gordon, head of policy at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), also says that small-scale agriculture is central in reducing extreme poverty, since 80 per cent of people living below the global poverty line are based in rural areas, and the vast majority of these depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Farmers have been growing crops and selecting seeds from the plants that grow best in their fields for thousands of years. Gordon notes that this ‘farmer seed system’ or the ‘informal’ seed sector has contributed to a nutritious and diverse household diet.

However, this farmer seed system exists alongside the commercial seed system. Hybrid seeds are usually developed by large agricultural companies for commercial purposes, are often dependent on artificial fertilisers and, as already noted, are protected through patents, backed by seed certification legislation.

Indeed, CAFOD’s 2023 report ‘Sowing the Seeds of Poverty: How the World Bank Harms Poor Farmers’ describes how the farmer seed system is systematically being undermined by the concentration of power held by large-scale agribusiness and the promotion of the industrial agricultural model.

Gordon notes that seed markets are highly concentrated, with Bayer, Corteva, BASF and ChemChina/Syngenta controlling more than 50 per cent of the global commercial seed market. These same four companies also control more than 60 per cent of global agrochemical sales.

Gordon says:

Using their monopolies, these companies concentrate on producing seeds for crops with large markets – mainly staples such as maize, wheat, soy and rice. This is having devastating impacts on crop diversity. Of the more than 6,000 edible plant species that we have cultivated over centuries, just nine crops now account for more than 65 per cent of all crop production. This has led to increased prices, and has significantly reduced farmers’ choice, and the resilience of farmers to shocks such as climate change.

CAFOD found that the World Bank promotes the interests of global agribusiness and intensified industrial agriculture by linking subsidies to farmers buying hybrid seeds and corresponding chemical fertilisers and requiring the implementation of seed certification laws that limit small farmers’ ability to grow, save, share and sell seeds.

The solution is to shift funding away from industrial agriculture and abandon notions of a Green Revolution for Africa in favour of prioritising small-scale farmers, agroecology, and public investment in farmers’ seed systems to improve nutrition, increase food diversity and strengthen rural communities and local economies.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Visualizing Palestine.

Aisha Khalid and Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), Two Wings to Fly, Not One, 2017.

Half of the world’s population will have the opportunity to vote by the end of this year as 64 countries and the European Union are scheduled to open their ballot boxes. No previous year has been so flush with elections. Among these countries is India, where a remarkable 969 million voting papers had to be printed ahead of the elections that culminated on 1 June. In the end, 642 million people (roughly two-thirds of those eligible) voted, half of them women. This is the highest-ever participation by women voters in a single election in the world.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s 27 member states held elections for the European Parliament, which meant that 373 million eligible voters had the opportunity to cast their ballot for the 720 members who make up the legislative body. Add in the eligible voters for elections in the United States (161 million), Indonesia (204 million), Pakistan (129 million), Bangladesh (120 million), Mexico (98 million), and South Africa (42 million) and you can see why 2024 feels like the Year of Elections.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez (Mexico), Vendedora de Alcatraces (‘Calla Lily Vendor’), 1929.

Over the past few weeks, three particularly consequential elections took place in India, Mexico, and South Africa. India and South Africa are key players in the BRICS bloc, which is charting a path towards a world order that is not dominated by the US. The nature of the governing coalitions that come to power in these countries will have an impact on the grouping and will certainly shape this year’s BRICS Summit to be held in Kazan (Russia) in late October. While Mexico is not a member of BRICS and did not apply for membership during the expansion last year, the country has sought to relieve itself of the pressures from the United States (most Mexicans are familiar with the statement ‘Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States’, made by Porfirio Diaz, the country’s president from 1884 to 1911). The Mexican government’s recent aversion to US interference in Latin America and to the overall neoliberal framework of trade and development has brought the country deeper into dialogue with alternative projects such as BRICS.

While the results in India and South Africa showed that the electorates are deeply divided, Mexican voters stayed with the centre-left National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), electing Claudia Sheinbaum as the first woman president in the country’s history on 2 June. Sheinbaum will take over from Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who leaves the presidency with a remarkable 80% approval rating. As the mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023 and a close ally of AMLO, Sheinbaum followed the general principles laid out in the Fourth Transformation (4T) project set out by AMLO in 2018. This 4T project of ‘Mexican Humanism’ follows three important periods in Mexico’s history: independence (1810–1821), reform (1858–1861), and revolution (1910–1917). While AMLO spoke often of this 4T as an advance in Mexico’s history, it is in fact a return to the promises of the Mexican Revolution with its call to nationalise resources (including lithium), increase wages, expand government jobs programmes, and revitalise social welfare. One of the reasons why Sheinbaum triumphed over the other candidates was her pledge to continue the 4T agenda, which is rooted less in populism (as the bourgeois press likes to say) and more so in a genuine welfarist humanism.

George Pemba (South Africa), Township Games, 1973.

In May of this year, thirty years after the end of apartheid, South Africa held its seventh general election of the post-apartheid era, producing results that stand in stark contrast to those in Mexico. The ruling tripartite alliance – consisting of the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party, and Congress of South African Trade Unions – suffered an enormous attrition of its vote share, securing just 40.18% of the vote (42 seats short of a majority), compared to 59.50% and a comfortable majority in the National Assembly in 2019. What is stunning about the election is not just the decline in the alliance’s vote share but the rapid decline in voter turnout. Since 1999, less and less voters have bothered to vote, and this time only 58% of those eligible came to the polls (down from 86% in 1994). What this means is that the tripartite alliance won the votes of only 15.5% of eligible voters, while its rivals claimed even smaller percentages. It is not just that the South African population – like people elsewhere – is fed up with this or that political party, but that they are increasingly disillusioned by their electoral process and by the role of politicians in society.

A sober appraisal of South Africa’s election results shows that the two political forces that broke from the ANC – Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters – won a combined 64.28% of the vote, exceeding the vote share that the ruling alliance secured in 1994. The overall agenda promised by these three forces remains intact (ending poverty, expropriating land, nationalising banks and mines, and expanding social welfare), although the strategies they would like to follow are wildly different, a divide furthered by their personal rivalries. In the end, a broad coalition government will be formed in South Africa, but whether it will be able to define even a social democratic politics – such as in Mexico – is unclear. The overall decline in the population’s belief in the system represents a lack of faith in any political project. Promises, if unmet, can go stale.

Kalyan Joshi (India), Migration in the Time of COVID, 2020.

In the lead-up to the election in India, held over six weeks from 19 April to 1 June, incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that his party alone would win a thumping 370 seats in the 543-seat parliament. In the end, the BJP could only muster 240 seats – down by 63 compared with the 2019 elections – and his National Democratic Alliance won a total of 293 (above the 272-threshold needed to form a government). Modi will return for a third term as prime minister, but with a much-weakened mandate. He was only able to hold on to his own seat by 150,000 votes, a significant decrease from the 450,000-vote margin in 2019, while fifteen incumbent members of his cabinet lost their seats. No amount of hate speech against Muslims or use of government agencies to silence opposition parties and the media was able to increase the far-right’s hold on power.

An April poll found that unemployment and inflation were the most important issues for two-thirds of those surveyed, who say that jobs for city dwellers are getting harder to find. Forty percent of India’s 1.4 billion people are under the age of 25, and a study by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy showed that India’s youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are ‘faced with a double whammy of low and falling labour participation rates and shockingly high unemployment rates’. Unemployment among young people is 45.4%, six times higher than the overall unemployment rate of 7.5%.

India’s working-class and peasant youth remain at home, the sensibility of their entire families shaped by their dilemmas. Despair at everyday life has now eaten into the myth that Modi is infallible. Modi will return as prime minister, but the actualities of his tenure will be defined partly by the grievances of tens of millions of impoverished Indians articulated through a buoyant opposition force that will find leaders amongst the mass movements. Among them will be farmers and peasants, such as Amra Ram, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and All India Kisan Sabha (‘All India Farmers’ Union’) who won decisively in Sikar, an epicentre of the farmers’ movement. He will be joined in parliament by Sachidanandam, a leader of the All India Kisan Sabha and Communist Party of India (Marxist) from Dindigul (Tamil Nadu), and by Raja Ram Kushwaha, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation from Karakat (Bihar) and the convenor of the All-India Kisan Sangharsh (‘All India Farmers’ Struggle’) Coordination Committee, a peasant alliance that includes 250 organisations. The farmers are now represented in parliament.

Nitheesh Narayanan of Tricontinental Research Services writes that even though the Left did not send a large contingent to parliament, it has played an important role in this election. Amra Ram, he continues, ‘enters the parliament as a representative of the peasant power that struck the first blow to the BJP’s unquestioned infallibility in North India. His presence becomes a guarantee of India’s democracy from the streets’.

Heri Dono (Indonesia), Resistance to The Power of Persecution, 2021.

The idea of ‘democracy’ does not start and finish at the ballot box. Elections – such as in India and the United States – have become grotesquely expensive. This year’s election in India cost $16 billion, most of it spent by the BJP and its allies. Money, power, and the corrosiveness of political dialogue have corrupted the democratic spirit.

The search for the democratic spirit is at least as old as democracy itself. In 1949, the communist poet Langston Hughes expressed this yearning in his short poem ‘Democracy’, which spoke then to the denial of the right to vote and speaks now to the need for a much deeper consideration of what democracy must mean in our times – something that cannot be bought by money or intimidated by power.

Democracy will not come
Today, this year,
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
Listen, America—
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

A Washington Post “expert” (4/26/24) assured readers that divestment is “way more complicated” than protesters think.

In a piece on how the nationwide protest campaign against the Israeli slaughter in Gaza came to be, the Washington Post (4/26/24) explained that the central demand of the protests—university divestment from companies that support the genocide—is, well, stupid.

The article reported: “Experts say student requests for divestment are not only impractical but also are likely to yield little if any real benefit.”

“How universities invest their money makes disinvestment complicated,” declared one such expert—”Chris Marsicano, a Davidson College assistant professor of educational studies who researches endowments and finance.”

“First, it’s impossible to know just how and where universities’ endowments are invested,” he maintained, because “schools are notoriously close-mouthed about it, revealing as little as they can.” Yes, which is why, as the Post noted, investment transparency is the second of three demands from Columbia University protesters, and a key issue in many other encampments.

But not so fast, Marsicano warns: “Disclosing investments can lead to complications large and small,” including “the possibility that a university disclosing its decision to sell or buy stock could affect the price of that stock.”

Surely that will keep a lot of protesters up at night—the fear that their university’s sale of stock might cause Boeing’s stock price to drop.

Doing Israel’s supporters a favor?

The Wall Street Journal‘s James Mackintosh (4/30/24) compared the Gaza protests to “misguided demands to quit investments in fossil fuel companies to slow climate change.”

But they need not worry, assured James Mackintosh, senior market columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who offered some friendly advice in “Dear Columbia Students, Divestment From Israel Won’t Work” (4/30/24).  “The impact of even a lot of universities selling would be negligible,” he wrote. In fact, any financial impact from divestment would be counter-productive:

Selling the shares cheaply to someone else just leaves the buyer owning the future profits instead, at a bargain price. The university would have less money to spend on students, while those who are pro-Israel, pro-oil or just pro-profit would have more.

The economic logic is so compelling, you have to wonder why supporters of Israel aren’t supporting the divestment movement, rather than pushing for laws that make divestment from Israel illegal.

But, really, why is anyone even talking about divestment, when it can’t even happen? As former Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks told CNN (4/30/24):

The economy is so global now that even if a university decided that they were going to instruct their dominant management groups to divest from Israel, it would be almost impossible to disentangle…. It’s not clear to me that it’s really possible to fully divest from companies that touch in some way a country with such close political and trade ties to the US.

Helping spark a movement

Columbia Spectator (4/13/16): “During that fateful month in 1985, a protest movement in favor of divestment from the National Party of South Africa’s apartheid regime rocked Columbia to its core.”

So, divestment would be dangerous, self-defeating and impossible, is what we’re hearing from corporate media. Why are students even bothering?

At Columbia, protesters are well aware of the history there, where students blockaded Hamilton Hall for three weeks in April 1985 to protest the university’s investments in South Africa. A committee of the school’s trustees recommended full divestment in August 1985, a recommendation the board adopted in October 1985.

The first secret negotiations between the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the South African government about ending apartheid began in November 1985.

Obviously, this wasn’t just a result of Columbia’s protest—but the divestment campaign there helped spark a nationwide movement that spread beyond campuses, establishing a consensus that South Africa’s behavior was unconscionable and had to change.

It’s hard not to suspect that corporate media are telling us so firmly that divestment can’t work because they’re worried that it can.

The post Divestment Can’t Work, Media Tell Protesters—Even Though It Has appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Jim Naureckas.

People’s doors were kicked in and people were assaulted, insulted, and threatened by men wielding automatic weapons. Many people were kicked, including women. The police fired rubber bullets at the residents. Money was also stolen. People who tried to film the attack were threatened. The police boasted that they have been instructed by police minister Bheki Cele to shoot and kill. The residents were dehumanised and the whole community criminalised.

The residents of Sihlalangenkani refused to accept that they were now being policed by a private security company hired by the rich, demanded to know why they were under attack from a private security company, and why this company was taking over the work of the police. They successfully resisted the attack. After this they moved to the Umhlali police station where they protested against the attack and demanded to know why IPSS Security was now doing the work of the police. The IPSS website shows that the company is actively involved in “thwarting land invasions”.

In terms of the law the actions of IPSS and the police were unlawful and criminal but of course IPSS Security and the police will be treated as if they are above the law and poor black people are always treated as if we are beneath the law. Our mere presence on this land in an elite area is taken as a crime, a crime that legitimates unlawful and violent behaviour from IPSS Security and the police.

The real ‘crime’ of the Sihlalangenkani residents is that they have occupied and held ‘prime land’, land where very rich people, most of them white, live in gated communities.

On Friday 12 April the police returned to the community and arrested Fezile Gosa and Bongeka Gazu, the chairperson and deputy chairperson of the Abahlali baseMjondolo branch. Bongeka is pregnant and was kept in very bad conditions while she was under arrest. These were obviously political targeted arrests.

The community protested against the arrests while they were being carried out and then again outside the police station. Fezile and Bongeka were released on Monday. Their case was not even placed on the role in the court as there was no evidence against them and no case to make against them. Our lawyers expressed their shock at the conditions under which the Deputy Chairperson was detained.

We note that in both of the media reports in Independent Online on the attack on Sihlalangenkani and the arrests of the community leaders only IPSS Security and the police are quoted. Not a single resident of Sihlalangenkani is given an opportunity to speak in either of the two articles. We also not that both articles contain statements that are not true. Perhaps the most important of these is the claim that residents fired on IPSS Security and the police.

Both articles take the statements from IPSS security and the police as fact despite the long and well known history of both the police and security companies lying to the media after they have committed violence against poor black people, including murder.

We would like to remind the media that after the police murders of Nqobile Ngcobo in 2013 and Zamekile Shangase in 2021 the media uncritically repeated false claims by the police that they had had to open fire while under attack as if these claims were true. In the case of the murder of Zamekile Shangase the police claimed that they were “coming under fire from all sides” when, as was later shown, no shots were fired at them. In both cases the media did not ask eyewitnesses for comment or ask for comments from the communities that had come under police attack or from our movement. In both cases they did not withdraw or correct their articles when the facts came to light, or even make an apology.

We would like to thank the lawyers from the Right to Protest for representing our comrades in the KwaDukuza Magistrate’s Court on Monday.

Our comrades spent three days in police cells for the ‘crime’ of being elected leaders of the residents of a land occupation. The ‘crime’ of the residents of the occupation is being poor and black and residing on land near to where very rich people live.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Just as I have found my arguments ignored rather than rebutted, I have repeatedly found that the data upon which I have drawn for my research has been similarly ignored or discounted without any attempt to establish its accuracy or soundness. The reasons for this are not unrelated to the central argument of this book. Since the initiation of the Manhattan Project, the secret US program for developing the first atomic bombs, science has been progressively overwhelmed by a new sacerdotal class, enriched by the State and endowed with access to the plenitude of power and violence. This wholesale purchase of the institutions of learning and research and its subsequent devotion to the business of death first destroyed free inquiry in the natural science fields. The best funded and highest paid in the natural sciences—those developing the weapons of mass murder and destruction for the State—became the envy and the measure for aspirant scholars, researchers and students. In imitation and greed for a share of that largesse and access, the social sciences followed, as did the humanities, albeit at a slower pace. The peer review system as well as what Morse Peckham called “publish and perish” was nothing less than the proliferation of little House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAAC) throughout American and then Western academia. In a country whose culture has been notorious for its conformism, subjecting intellectual labour to group consensus was perhaps an inherent national trait. In any event the system has functioned very well. It has rigorously defended the elusiveness of the obvious.

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that such “revolutions” do not occur gradually or because some prevailing prejudice has suddenly been disproven or discredited. Instead there is a change in the questions being asked usually starting with those about all the data that does not fit in the current theoretical framework. Peckham, who also knew Kuhn from Princeton, said that any human response in the world requires distinguishing something from everything. Inevitably a lot more is left out than included when limiting one’s behaviour, i.e. responding to the environment. What changes is not the data but the interest. Some data previously deemed irrelevant becomes central. The scholar or researcher is no different from anyone else here. Attention must be restricted in order to respond. That is to say an interest must be followed in order to distinguish from all the data to which they judge it is appropriate to respond. Joseph Weizenbaum’s primary argument against the validity of artificial intelligence focuses on the verb to judge. Machines and those humans who prefer to behave like them (or consider humans to be mere machines) cannot distinguish between data and information because they cannot judge. From an ethical point of view Weizenbaum also insists that the function of such machines, digital or analogue, should not be treated as judgment.

The creation of a vast system of inspection and certification of intellectual product was a logical consequence of organizing the highest levels of scientific activity based on secrecy and loyalty. However it also applies to the laity. In the US it is virtually impossible to utter public criticism of the country or its institutions without first professing “love” for one’s country. (Needless to say, “love” for any other country is impermissible). Whether it was the adoption of the US version of the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) aka The USA Patriot Act in 2001 or the implementation of the mass incarceration and economic shutdown under the pretext of an alleged pandemic in 2020, even the most academically qualified and experienced critics have felt obliged to demonstrate that their scientific assertions have survived “peer review”. While the Soviet Union was extant Western scholars and scientists discounted or denounced all but the most technical work product as “under political control”. However, the semi-anonymous peer review is nothing less than the act of a collective political commissar with no personal responsibility.

As for the conforming student or scholar and researcher, everything works as if organized intellectual life (the university and its ancillaries) were centres of free inquiry. They are made and kept safe by one’s peers. The potential to become one of those peers depends on decisions taken early in one’s education. Some decisions, like what to write on a term paper or which thesis topic to choose, can make or break one’s career. Without peers there is no one to promote one’s work, whether merely incremental or potentially monumental. The work which never reaches the assent of peers may disappear utterly. The work from which assent has been withdrawn can perish. Lorie Tarshis’s The Elements of Economics is a case in point.

There is another reason I have decided to reissue Church Clothes. Not only did I argue in 1997 for recognition of the way mission, as a knowledge technology, transforms social formations, I also argued that the “land question” was fundamental for any serious political science and its systematic neglect a discredit to any politics claiming to serve human beings. To simplify the argument of the following pages: mission is the ecclesiastical expression of conquest. Church conquest is essentially the domination of souls (minds) and hence also culture. Since the soul or mind (a metaphor for the body of human responses) develops from the historical experience in the empirical world and reproduces the culture (instructions for performance), control over the material world is essential in order to produce culture. The Church (Christian mission in all its manifestations) engaged in mission to preach a culture it would create by conquering and dominating the space in which that culture was to be imposed. Following Kuhn, destroying the data sets and institutions for stabilizing responses to them was a prerequisite to conversion. The conquered population had to be redirected to other data and data structures—those preferred by the Church and those who own it. Kuhn’s scientific revolutions, at scale, are conversions not proofs. Expropriating the land, whether in North America, Australia or South Africa, to name but the most notorious, was not only a strategy for enrichment but for mass conversion. That mass conversion was essential to sustain what would otherwise have been transitory conquest.

Since the annexation of the German Democratic Republic, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demolition of the Yugoslav Federation, the official Western policy has been that all the pre-1989 borders were violations of the inherent national and ethnic identities of the peoples inhabiting those countries. National and ethnic, following long-standing British political warfare strategy, are assumed to be identical for the purposes of forced conversion. Two seemingly contradictory policies have been pursued vehemently for nearly forty years. On one hand, every ethnic group susceptible of recognition by either the US or EU is entitled to political self-determination. On the other hand, any nation that defends its territorial integrity against foreign intervention (overt or covert) can be denied its sovereignty regardless of ethnic composition. Thus although the dissolution of the Soviet Union was eased by the Union constitution that permitted (in contrast to the US Constitution) republics to secede, the vast distribution of large Russian majorities in those newly separate republics did not legitimate redefinition of the boundaries or guarantees for those who literally overnight had lost their Soviet citizenship, which had made them citizens wherever they lived in the USSR. The historical complexities of the Yugoslav Federation were irrelevant to the forces determined to destroy it and steal its resources, including the geographical advantages for trans-Eurasian rail and pipeline traffic.

In fact since 1947 only one nation-state has been able to guarantee by any means it deems necessary its territorial and “ethno-religious” homogeneity. The former POTUS Jimmy Carter even called the means by which its system of governance and territorial control—its land regime—are imposed, apartheid, after the original legal regime by that name had been abolished in South Africa. Although the title of my book refers to the “end of apartheid in South Africa” it did not suppose the end of apartheid as a policy per se. In 1948, the ethnic nationalist National Party was elected to govern South Africa. In the same year, the settler regime in Mandatory Palestine announced its independent statehood. South Africa declared itself a republic in 1961 and was practically expelled from the Commonwealth. The NP’s Afrikaner version of ethnic nationalism was offensive to the non-white Commonwealth members upon whom Britain’s material wealth depends. The National Party regime understood itself as a movement of ethnic national self-determination, antagonistic both to the Bantu and the British. It elaborated the Afrikaner identity but would have been incapable of dominating the country without including the British and other European “foreigners”. Thus its original ethnic base was diluted to establish a “white” nationalism while the “Bantu” majority was carefully segregated into language and tribal groups, later assigned by law to their own “national” territories, territories with no real sovereignty. This was the NP’s version of the “two state solution”. By 1991 there was an international consensus imposed upon the South African state. The Republic of South Africa was a unitary state and not a pseudo-confederation of white and black entities. After separation of amenities and other segregation measures were repealed, the acts creating the so-called Bantustans were also purged from the law. Meanwhile the other apartheid regime continues in force.

The persistence of apartheid and its fanatical violence in the West means the question “what is apartheid?” continues to be of the utmost importance. Furthermore, just as the South African state claimed an essentially Old Testament basis for its legitimacy until 1994, the surviving apartheid system in Palestine retains this rabbinical-scriptural foundation. Yet more importantly, the establishment and maintenance of apartheid today is inseparable from the land in dispute. There can be no doubt that apartheid is ultimately a strategy and justification for expropriation and exclusive control of land by the State, on behalf of those who own it.

Beyond the most obvious extant apartheid regime there are far greater forces at work. It is tempting to see the current seventy plus year war in Palestine as a local conflict. Even those who worry about world peace because of the failure to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict between the occupying state and the aboriginal population are often blinded by the fanaticism with which the war is waged by the occupying state actor. Their concerns range from humanitarian to pragmatic-economic. It is impossible to deny that the Middle East has been a strategic interface for global trade and communications for millennia. The Latin Church waged centuries of war in order to dominate what it called the Holy Land. Here the Latin Empire battled the forces of Islam before a European sect adopted the territory as a settler-colonial project—just at the moment when Woodrow Wilson’s liberal cant had established the principle of decolonization (if only for the colonies of one’s rivals). His Britannic Majesty’s government, masters of indirect rule and exploitation at arm’s length, needed little prodding to support some kind of settlement proposal for an economically influential cult. It has been credibly argued that the Balfour Declaration was actually a clever bit of subterfuge that was very unpopular among much of Britain’s ruling elite. However the decision-makers, some very powerful members of the Rhodes-Rothschild Round Table and some essentially bribed agents of the same forces were able to impose this new white settler colony even while other white colonies in Africa were collapsing. The terrorism conducted against all opponents to the realignment of Mandate Palestine has been interpreted by many as proof that the policy subsequent to the Balfour Declaration was not only a mistake but injurious to British interests.

Such arguments rely on an antiquated concept of British interests. It relies on a view of Britain propagated precisely by those historians from the Round Table (RIIA) tradition who continue to dominate the history profession on both sides of the Atlantic, and hence the derivative historical research on the Continent. The principal innovation of the Netherlands and Great Britain in the 18^th century was the amalgamation of the State and the joint stock company. Today this is called the “public-private partnership”. When the VOC and BEIC were formed, unlike their weaker counterparts in France and Denmark, they were not only stronger than the existing state apparatus, they had achieved quasi-personal union with the sovereign. The VOC was essentially a republic apparatus while the more advanced BEIC benefited by the patronage of a monarchy that was beholden to its financial class in the City of London. Although the British East India Company eventually went bankrupt and was dissolved as an entity, the piratical machine it has innovated—the precursor to the modern multinational corporation—survived and flourished as an instrument of empire. The geographical centre of that empire is the City of London, the Square Mile. In that enclave of financial adventurism, i.e. piracy or capitalism, the aim of all policy is the control over cash flow and risk throughout the world.

In other words it is necessary to look for the technology of social transformation in processes found in a variety of institutions. These may operate with different formal ideologies and organizational structures. Those structures provide constraints both as internal and external projections of power. In politics power is exercised by the ability to impose shared meaning. That in turn means the capacity to limit responses in ways that conform to a given culture. We tend to ignore power when politics succeeds in compelling consensus and marginalizing or eliminating dissent. That is as natural as the thoughtlessness by which a fork and knife are used to eat until one finds there is only soup.

If we recognize that apartheid did not end with the retirement of the NP regime and the adoption of the 1994 constitution, although its legal framework was largely abolished in South Africa, then we have to examine the phenomenon as something that is not specific to the Cape republic. We have to consider the South African experience just one historical example of a social formation and that there are other varieties that may share attributes but also exhibit differences from the system formally in place from 1948 until 1994. In 1997 I based my analysis of South African apartheid precisely on the premise that South Africa was a special case of a more general phenomenon.

One of the founding myths of the South African epic was the claim that whites and blacks migrated into the Southern tip of Africa more or less at the same time. Hence black tribes had no prior territorial claims with precedence over those of the Dutch settlers at the Cape. This myth also asserted that nations, at least those that had emerged after the Thirty Years War, were politically and socially more mature forms of social organization and culture than anything the black inhabitants could claim. Maturity meant innate superiority. Hence Afrikaner nationalism was hierarchically superior to any other emergent nationalism, although potentially comparable to the nationalism in Britain’s other African colonies. A derivative myth was the foundation of the Group Areas Act. Allowing that each population, racially-ethnically defined, was entitled to its own development in its own space, separate spaces had to be recognized and assigned in which that development could occur. Beyond those boundaries black South Africans had no legal rights or privileges since these were residual to their own areas. In order to reconcile this legal fiction with the facts on the ground, the South African government began the process of forced removal. Cape Town and Cape Province was particularly disrupted because of the population of people called “Coloured” for whom there were no natural areas or “tribal homelands” to which these descendants of white settlers could be assigned.

In 1989 a global realignment began. While this has been analysed in terms of great power politics, the so-called Cold War, and the various strategic decisions by the Anglo-American Empire, another form of realignment was also initiated that cannot be subsumed by the Cold War model or the proposed Unipolar vs. Multipolar debate. This realignment is multi-layered and multi-faceted. Since the end of the Soviet Union has meant the end of grand theoretical analysis in any of the sciences, there has been enormous fragmentation combined with simplification in the study of the political-social-economic changes. This is due in large part to the absence of credible cultural history. By cultural history I do not mean either the comparative cultural studies associated with anthropology or sociology. Nor do I mean the sophistry and mendacity embedded in such pseudo-disciplines like “critical race theory”.

Cultural history is an integration of humanistic research methods with other tools aimed at explaining human behaviour, both individually and collectively, in the present using all the artefacts and documents available from the Past. Every explanation implies an organization and every organization can be understood as an explanation. There is no meta-position from which to study culture. We are in it to the end, till death do us part.

We have been witnessing—at least into the far reaches of the Anglo-American Empire—unprecedented human migration. Millions of people have been driven from their homes by wars, conventional and counter-insurgency (terrorism) and mysteriously transported over oceans no armies could cross, past borders once guarded by men at arms, into countries whose economies are being driven to collapse by the empire’s ruling oligarchy. Very little of the public debate, whether by laity or government functionaries, addresses the scope of this migration in anything resembling a coherent way. These flows in the millions within very short periods of time are not being repelled, like Asians or Southern Europeans were once repelled from US shores. On the contrary all the leading functionaries and officeholders in the West are insisting that these millions be admitted into the country on terms not only more favourable than lawful immigration (for which waiting lists and quotas apply) but also more favourable than for native-born or previously naturalized citizens. There is strong, if ineffective, resistance to this wave. However it is condemned rather than analysed.

Historical records show that massive waves of human migration are not in themselves new. What is unique about these migrations is that they are entirely man-made. China, central Eurasia, and Africa all experienced waves of migration when famine or other natural disasters accumulated to force people in large regions to move from desolation to new sources of food and shelter. Nowhere was such migration wholly without conflict. Yet what we have seen since 1989 is another kind of enforced migration. In an era where the monopoly of armed force as well as commercial and manufacturing power is in the hand of a small band of pirates calling themselves hedge funds or investment banks, two parallel forms of globalization have been accelerating. Until now the lead form of globalization was the relocation of industrial capacity to low wage countries and continued capture of their natural resources. In this shape there was little difference from the old colonial model, except that local governments run by natives had replaced imperial administrators and governors. The almost complete de-industrialization of the metropolitan countries has steadily reduced their populations to consumers and service workers. Thus the value extracted from those countries is derived from cash flow and the traffic in intangibles (finance and intellectual property). Population declines have been compensated by increase in the cost of consumption in order to maintain high cash extraction rates.

As a rule there has never been any interest in developing a similar consumer-based extractive economy in the low-wage, resource-rich parts of the world. This has led those who profit from the international flows of cash and resources to speculate by creating a massive international flow of human resources. Hence there has been a systematic series of wars incited and waged throughout the world to make large swathes of the planet uninhabitable. These wars constitute essentially strategic deportation of indigenous populations, whether from Syria, Palestine, Central Africa, Ukraine, or any other place where the land is worth more than the people living on it.

It is certainly no accident that high representatives of hedge funds, armaments, digital technology and mass media sit annually in ecumenical council in the heights of the Swiss Alps to devise such ideas as The Great Reset or the Fourth Industrial Revolution for a world in which the vast majority of people will “own nothing and be happy”. It should surprise no one that policies to concentrate populations like battery chickens in the urban conurbations of the temperate zone are to be administered by the PPP World Health Organization with its program of regular pandemics and constant inoculation. Much speculation and hysteria has been spent divining the motives, intentions and secret plans at the pinnacle of the sacerdotal and neo-feudal estate in aspiration. Unfortunately much of that has been impaired by fixation on a worldview that sentimentalizes the political ideologies of the English and Scottish Enlightenment at the same time demonizing the ideas of the French.

Both positions distract from the underlying cultural historical phenomenon upon which the West is built: the Latin Church, the original totalitarian system in the West. It has mutated many times since the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, however it remains the single most important explanation and organization in the West. It is the core of what Samuel Huntington meant by “the superiority in applying organized violence.” The Fourth Crusade was an early climax in the “clash of civilizations”, better said the clash of the West with civilization. Philanthro-capitalism, especially that attributed to Bill Gates and George Schwartz Soros, is atomic-strength or a viral form of the mass conversion model propagated by the Latin Church. When the 14-year-old Soros adopted the “deport and confiscate” practice of enrichment, as a willing helper to the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, he was confessing to the business model upon which his entire Open Society and Quantum Fund organizations are based. The International Organization for Migration, a UN specialized agency (PPP), turned the UN relief to workers compelled to migrate as labourers after World War 2 into the service provider to permanently displaced people. The overall objective pursued by the World Economic Forum, as the college of cardinals in the Church of Finance Capitalism (what the medieval Latin Church was in essence), can be seen when these prelates convene to put their seal upon the covenants by which capital, humanity, and natural resources are maintained in continuous flow to be allocated wherever the hierarchy deems desirable or necessary. The land upon which people are born, from which they derive their nutrition and habitation, in which their cultures emerge and the humanity unfolds, is to be seized de facto where people are deported and de jure where they still live or arrive. The hedge funds or carcino-capitalists like Gates, Soros and those whose names we will never hear or read are already buying whatever is vacated by force of arms or destitution, both in the source countries and the new targets.

Deprived of land and affordable, safe homes in the places they were born and where there families have lived, often for centuries, these human flows will be dehumanized, too. Their material culture no longer either natural or self-produced, it too becomes the discharge of planned obsolescence. A mass conversion is underway in the West. Instead of “group areas” there will be no areas and no groups. The grand apartheid of the future is that separation between those who own nothing and those who own everything. Perhaps that is a good reason to rethink what one thought one knew about the apartheid in South Africa.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

There were three starting points to our engagement around this election, all agreed on in the General Assembly in February. They were as follows:

• The ANC has been assassinating our leaders since 2013 and in 2022 we lost three leaders to assassination and a fourth to a police murder. It is therefore imperative that the ANC be given a very strong message that repression will not be tolerated, and preferable that it be removed from power altogether. The new MK party is an off-shoot of the ANC in which some of its worst people and tendencies are present. It has taken some dangerously right wing positions. It must also be considered as a serious threat to society and to our movement.

• We are a socialist organisation committed to building socialism from below via the construction of popular democratic power. However there is no left party on the ballot and so we cannot vote for the programme of any party or with any confidence in its allegiance to the people and to progressive principles. It is not possible to vote for our key principles such as the full decommodification of land or the right to recall.

• Given the seriousness of the crisis of repression, a crisis that poses an existential threat to our movement, abstentionism is not a viable strategy and it is therefore necessary to make a purely tactical vote against the ANC and MK. No tactical considerations can enable a vote for the DA as it opposes land occupations, puts the commercial value of land before its social value and refuses to condemn the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Although the imperative to deal a serious blow to the ANC in this election is urgent, and a literal matter of life and death, there are limits to how far we can compromise with a tactical vote. In the past we have called on people to vote against the ANC according to their conscience but there is a possible benefit in voting as a bloc in that whichever party we collectively decide to give our tactical support will know that this support is conditional on accepting some key principles. We are aware, of course, of the risk that any party that we choose to support in this election with the tactical aim of weakening or removing the ANC may hand our votes back to the ANC, to the people who are assassinating us, during coalition negotiations.

These demands are not a statement of our full political vision or our political practices. They are a statement of the minimum criteria for us to be able to offer a party our tactical support as we take our struggle against political repression onto the electoral terrain.

The set of twenty minimum demands that emerged from two months of intensive discussions involving thousands of people are as follows:

Election 2024: The People’s Minimum Demands

4. There must be a clear and viable plan to provide either decent jobs or a liveable income for all. While youth unemployment is a particularly severe crisis for people over 35 must be included in this plan. Informal forms of work should be respected, supported and, where there is danger and exploitation, regulated to ensure safety and fair labour practices. This must include sex work.

20. There must be a clear commitment to oppose all forms of political violence and political repression in South Africa, no matter which person or organisation is suffering political violence or repression. This commitment cannot be limited to empty words and must be backed up with real action including mass mobilisation, media campaigns, legal action, etc. There must be a commitment to work against political violence and repression with all political forces opposed to political violence and repression.

There was also a clear demand addressed to the movement rather than to the existing political parties. Our members are clear that while they understand that electoral politics is just one terrain of struggle and that it should never replace or distract from the work of building popular democratic power from below, of building socialism from below, they do want to be able to vote for a left party in the next election, and that the movement should, working with like-minded membership based organisations, begin a process of considering how to build a political instrument for the people, a political instrument that aims to put the people in power rather than a new set of individuals.

A three day camp for leaders from all provinces was held from 22 to 24 March in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. At that camp it was resolved that we would:

(a) Invite interested political parties other than the ANC, MK and the DA to the Abahlali General Assembly to be held on 7 April. It was decided that at this General Assembly we would present the People’s Minimum Demands in order for parties to respond to the demands carefully developed by the people through a democratic process as opposed to Abahlali listening to the parties’ manifestos. The parties would then respond to the people rather than the people responding to the parties. We will then collectively consider their responses before formulating our final position on the election.

(b) Engage in mass mobilisation for the Unfreedom Day Rally to be held in Durban on 21 April. This mobilisation will include mobilising other progressive membership based organisations, progressive trade unions and other left organisations willing and able to work with organisations of the poor and working class on the basis of mutual respect.

(c) A public announcement of the final movement position on the election will be made at the UnFreedom Day rally.

We have just concluded the General Assembly at which the People’s Minimum Demands were presented to representatives from a number of political parties. The process of discussion in our movement, and engagement with other membership based organisations of the poor and the working class, will continue until 21 April.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

At that point 26,000 Palestinians had perished, much of Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.  Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

Israel was duly ordered to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Gaza populace; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within a month.  The balance sheet on that score has been uneven at best.

Since then, the slaughter has continued, with the Palestinian death toll now standing at 32,300.  The Israelis have refused to open more land crossings into Gaza, and continue to hamper aid going into the strip, even as they accuse aid agencies and providers of being tardy and dishonest.  Their surly defiance of the United States has seen air drops of uneven, negligible success (the use of air to deliver aid has always been a perilous exercise).  When executed, these have even been lethal to the unsuspecting recipients, with reported cases of parachutes failing to open.

On March 25, the UN Security Council, after three previous failed attempts, passed Resolution 2728, thereby calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan “leading to a lasting sustainable” halt to hostilities, the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, “ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs” and “demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain”.

Emphasis was also placed on “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip”.  The resolution further demands that all barriers regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance, in accordance with international humanitarian law, be lifted.

Since January, South Africa has been relentless in its efforts to curb Israel’s Gaza enterprise in The Hague.  It called upon the ICJ on February 14, referring to “the developing circumstances in Rafah”, to urgently exercise powers under Article 75 of the Rules of Court.  Israel responded on February 15.  The next day, the ICJ’s Registrar transmitted to the parties the view of the Court that the “perilous situation” in the Gaza Strip, but notably in Rafah, “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024”.

Throughout the following month, more legal jostling and communication took place, with Pretoria requesting on March 6 that the ICJ “indicate further provisional measures and/or to modify” those ordered on January 26.  The application was prompted by the “horrific deaths from starvation of Palestinian children, including babies, brought about by Israel’s deliberate acts and omissions … including Israel’s concerted attempts since 26 January 2024 to ensure the defunding of [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Israel’s attacks on starving Palestinians seeking to access what extremely limited humanitarian assistance Israel permits into Northern Gaza, in particular”.

Israel responded on March 15 to the South African communication, rejecting the claims of starvation arising from deliberate acts and omissions “in the strongest terms”.  The logic of the sketchy rebuttal from Israel was that matters had not materially altered since January 26 to warrant a reconsideration: “the difficult and tragic situation in the Gaza Strip in the last weeks could not be said to materially change the considerations upon which the Court based its original decision concerning provisional measures.”

On March 28, the Court issued a unanimous order modifying the January interim order.  Combing through the ghoulish evidence, the judges noted an updated report from March 18 on food insecurity from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC Global Initiative) stating that “conditions necessary to prevent Famine have not been met and the latest evidence confirms that Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”  The UN Children’s Fund had also reported that 31 per cent of children under 2 years of age in the northern Gaza Strip were enduring conditions of “acute malnutrition”.

In the face of this Himalaya of devastation, the Court could only observe “that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing a risk of famine, as noted in the Order of 26 January 2024, but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration”.  There were “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza strip over recent weeks, as well as the increasing risks of epidemics.”

Such “grave” conditions granted the Court jurisdiction to modify the January 26 order which no longer fully addressed “the consequences arising from the changes in the situation”.  In view of the “worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation”, Israel should take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.

The list of what is needed is also enumerated: food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, sanitation requirements, and “medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.

A less reported aspect of the March 28 order, passed by fifteen votes to one, was that Israel’s military refrain from committing “acts which constitute a violation of any rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group” under the Genocide Convention “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”

In this, the Court points to the possible, and increasingly plausible nexus, between starvation, famine and deprivation of necessaries as state policies with the intent to injure and kill members of a protected group.  It is no doubt something that will weigh heavily on the minds of the judges as they continue mulling over the nature of the war in Gaza, which South Africa continues to insist is genocidal in scope and nature.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

South Africans fighting alongside the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, where thousands of civilians have been killed since October, will be arrested when they return home, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has warned.

She reportedly made the statement at a Palestinian solidarity event in the South African capital, Pretoria, over the weekend. Pandor added that IDF troops with dual nationality would be stripped of their South African citizenship as punishment.

“I have already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and who are fighting alongside or in the Israel Defense Forces. We are ready. When you come home, we’re going to arrest you,” said the foreign minister, according to the Associated Press.

Pretoria previously warned South Africans against joining the IDF in the Israel-Hamas conflict last December, citing the risk of violating domestic and international law. According to the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation, people must obtain government approval before joining Israeli forces, and failure to do so will result in criminal prosecution.

More than 31,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli air and ground attacks in Gaza since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group’s cross-border attack on October 7.

Hamas launched raids on southern Israeli villages, killing more than 1,100 people and taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza. According to the UN, 570,000 people in the besieged Palestinian territory are starving, with up to 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced by Israel’s five-month-long bombing campaign.

The Israel-Hamas war has strained diplomatic relations between Israel and South Africa, which has long supported the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, comparing it to Pretoria’s own battle against Apartheid in the 20th century.

Pretoria has filed a legal action at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for allegedly committing “systematic” war crimes in Gaza. The top UN court has yet to issue a final ruling but it ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocide and improve humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population in January.

Last month, the South African government accused Israel of violating the ICJ order. Pandor also claimed that Israeli intelligence had been attempting to intimidate her in response to the genocide investigation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by RT.

A West Papuan pro-independence leader has accused Indonesia of new human rights atrocities this week while the republic has apparently elected a new president with a past record of violations in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto has declared victory in the presidential election on Wednesday after unofficial vote counts showed him with a significant lead over his rivals, reports Al Jazeera.

The 72-year-old former Kopassus special forces commander, who had run unsuccessfully for president twice before, was given a dishonourable discharge in 1998 after claims that his force kidnapped and tortured political opponents of Soeharto as his regime crumbled.

• READ MORE: Prabowo Subianto claims victory in Indonesian presidential election
• Other West Papua reports

He has also been accused of human rights abuses in East Timor, which won independence from Indonesia amid the collapse of the Soeharto regime, and also in West West Papua.

On the day that Indonesia went to the polls — Valentine’s Day, February 14 — Benny Wenda, president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), accused Jakarta’s military of continuing its “reign of terror” in rural West Papua.

“The latest tragedy they have inflicted on my people occurred in the Puncak regency,” Wenda said in a statement.

“Military raids on the February 3 and 4 devastated a number of highland villages.

‘Villagers tortured, houses burnt’
“Numerous houses were burnt to the ground, villagers were tortured, and at least one Papuan died from his wounds — though Indonesian control of information makes it difficult to know whether others were also killed.”

Wenda said that “as always”, the military had claimed the victims were TPNPB resistance fighters — “a grotesque lie, immediately denied by the villagers and their relatives”.

Wenda also accused Indonesia of “hypocrisy” over Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We have complete sympathy with [Palestinians over their suffering] in what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

“But Indonesian hypocrisy on Palestine cannot be ignored. They are bringing a legal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel’s occupation of Palestine while intensifying their own brutal and bloody military occupation of West Papua.

“They are supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ while conducting their own genocide in West Papua.

Denying West Papuan rights
“They are crying about Palestinians’ right to self-determination while continuing to deny West Papuans that same right.”

More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed since the occupation began in 1963, says the ULMWP.

In the past six years, more than 100,000 Papuans were estimated to have been displaced, made refugees in their own land as a result of Indonesian military operations.

“Genocide, ecocide, and ethnic cleansing — West Papuans are victims of all three. The world must pay attention to our plight.”

There were no reports of reaction from the Jakarta authorities.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The police were not violent to the protestors but some taxi drivers did assault comrades on the blockade.

This press statement is to explain the demands that led us to strike and will lead us to continue striking until they are met.

The Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation is now one year old. The land was occupied in early February last year. Most of the comrades who first occupied the land were renting in Extension Five of the Good Hope shack settlement in Germiston, which is nearby. They could no longer afford to rent and did not believe that land should be bought and sold or rented. Also the Good Hope settlement is between a busy road, a mine dump and a scrapyard and the dust from the mine dump and the scrapyard is toxic. The dust is making people sick. Shacks have been built there without any community planning and it is massively and dangerously overcrowded with all the shacks on top of each other. Living there is very stressful.

Other comrades have come from places like Soweto, Rosherville, Tembisa, Vosloorus, Katlehong, the Johannesburg CBD and the Germiston CBD. There are comrades from the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and other provinces as well as Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi.

We decided to find land where we could live well and safely and build a community. Dignity, community and homes all require land so occupying land is always the first step towards freedom. We prayed together asking God to show us the land that we needed to go to, the land where we could fight for our freedom and then we occupied together. Now we are working from this land with comrades across the country, Africa and the world to build a free, democratic and socialist society. Comrades from movements in countries like Swaziland and Argentina have visited the occupation to share ideas and experiences.

We choose the land that we have occupied because it is not far from where we used to stay, because it is close to where we work and because it is a beautiful and peaceful place that is full of trees. Although there is a mine dump on one side it is covered with trees and other plants so there is not much dust. The land is close to industrial areas and people living here are mostly working piece jobs or selling vegetables, fruit and amagwinya nearby. However, some of the children are going to school in Ekurhuleni and so we need scholar transport.

We named the occupation after Lindokuhle Mnguni, the leader of the eKhenana Commune in Durban who was assassinated on 20 August 2022. Lindo had a vision of freedom for the oppressed, led the building of the eKhenana Commune and died fighting for poor people, for the forgotten people of this country, for people who are not even recognised as human beings. His spirit is always with us.

The Eskom Rotek Industries head office is about 200 meters from the occupation but we do not have any electricity. We use wood fires to cook. We do have one people’s connection for water but the water comes very slow and residents of Elandspark keep sending Rand Water to disconnect us.

There are no political parties here. Our occupation is democratic and our elected council meets on Saturdays and on Sunday all residents are invited to a big meeting, an assembly.

There is no private ownership of land here and renting is not allowed. Shebeens and drug selling are also not allowed. Women led the decision to not allow shebeens as they are associated with rape, violence against women and robberies.

There are 150 homes in the occupation. There are a number of small gardens growing crops like spinach and mielies. We are doing careful grassroots urban planning and have included open spaces and streets in our planning. We have measured out spaces for building, including future projects such as a community garden and poultry project, creche, workshop, community hall and political school. This land will not get overcrowded like Good Hope. It will be carefully planned and well managed like the eKhenana Commune.

Our occupation is a democratic occupation that is moving towards becoming a commune.

We are facing a number of serious problems though.

The first serious problem is evictions. The City of Johannesburg has come to evict three times. The first time they came to evict us they didn’t talk to us. They came with metro police and red ants (private security). The metro police turned down their name tags. The red ants destroyed the homes on one side of the occupation. After the homes were demolished they destroyed the building materials. They destroyed many things in the homes and stole money, blankets and a phone. They stole our collective community money as well as money from individual comrades. We rebuilt.

The second time they came to evict us they demolished every shack. Again we rebuilt.

The third time they came to evict they engaged us. This time they destroyed 13 incomplete shacks.

Another very serious problem is that rich people from Elandspark, building contractors and businesses, especially fast food restaurants such as McDonalds and KFC, are dumping their rubbish here at a huge scale. The building contractors dump rubble here but also broken glass which is dangerous to our children. McDonalds dump here every Monday and Friday. Dumpers have threatened to shoot us when we tell them not to dump here.

They often dump building rubble on the road into the occupation and we have to continually work to keep the road open. We hired a grader to clear the building rubble but the guy took our money and ran away.

It is very painful that all these people and businesses continue to dump rubbish in our community. There are dumps where rubbish should be taken, and one is not far away, but they just continue to dump their rubbish in our community. We do not count as human beings to them. We do not count as human beings to the municipality which leaves the rubbish here and does not stop the dumping. We are staying here with small children and everyone can see that and yet they continue to dump. It is clear that we are seen as rubbish, that our community is seen as rubbish and that our struggle to free ourselves by building a commune on this land is seen as rubbish.

Another issue is that the zama zamas (informal miners) came to the occupation and offered money to be able to take the land to rent and sell it. They also dug holes, blasted rocks and threatened us. In Durban our comrades have been assassinated because local gangsterised ANC structures try to take over occupied land to rent and sell it. It is possible that there could be problems with the zama zamas in the future.

There was also a problem with establishing whether or not the Ekhuruleni or Johannesburg municipalities have a responsibility to provide services to the land we are living on. For almost a year we got contradictory information. In December the ward councillor Faeeza Chame, who is a DA councillor, told us that the land we have occupied belongs to Ekhuruleni. We went to city planning in Johannesburg and Ekhuruleni and confirmed that the land belongs to the City of Johannesburg. On Monday, after the first day of the strike, the councillor agreed that we belong in Johannesburg so this issue has been resolved.

We made the following demands during the two strikes:

• The land must be left under the democratic and collective management of the residents. There must be no more evictions.
• The municipality must provide electricity, water, sanitation and waste collection.
• We need scholar transport for our children to travel to and from schools
• The massive amount of rubbish that has been dumped on the land must be removed and the dumping must be stopped.
• We need to be given an address so that we can apply for grants, jobs and schools and register to vote.
• There must be an accessible voting station

On the second day of the strike Nokuthula Xaba from the Premier’s Office came. She is deployed in Ekurhuleni and said that she would refer us to the right person in the Johannesburg Municipality. The ward councillor Faeeza Chame refused to come.

We are going to continue the strikes until our demands are met. We are not going to stop the struggle.

When we came to this land it was bush. We opened the land. We brought ubuntu. We are no longer renting and we live peacefully here. We can live socialism here like in the eKhenana Commune.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Page 26 of the 29-page ruling has paragraph 85: “The Court deems it necessary to emphasize that all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law. It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.”

The 84-page South African document that had brought criminal charges against Israel, titled “Applications Instituting Proceedings,” said in the opening paragraph of its Introduction:

South Africa unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. No armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defence to, breaches of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (‘Genocide Convention’ or ‘Convention’),1 whether as a matter of law or morality. The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip (‘Palestinians in Gaza’).

So: the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks against Israelis was not an issue or topic in the case that South Africa had brought to the Court.

Nonetheless — and appealing to public sentiments instead of to the actual case that was supposed to be at hand — paragraph 85 of its decision on the case pandered by essentially accepting as true there what both South Africa and Israel agree upon — as-if it were even pertinent (relevant) to this case (which it is not). One isn’t supposed to bring up in a criminal trial — or any trial — a matter about which both the prosecution and the defense are in agreement. It distracts from the case-at-hand and can serve only to distort judgments.

So: right there, in the paragraph that comes immediately before the Court’s judgment in the case, which is paragraph 86, the Court makes clear that the decision isn’t entirely excluding pandering. That is pandering to Israel’s side of this dispute. But South Africa had already accepted that detail of Israel’s side. It was irrelevant and was brought up by the judges purely pandering to public opinion — in Israel’s favor. It had nothing to do with whether or not Israel is, in fact, genociding Gazans.

To what extent did the ruling pander, and was it fairly balanced in its (irrelevant but popular — among supporters of Israel) panderings?

The next paragraph (86) is the one that everybody talks about, and so it is merely linked-to here as being on pages 26-29 of the pdf if you want to read it.

As is indicated there, the two dissenting ‘Justices’ in the Court’s 6-part order to Israel were Julia Sebutinde (Uganda) and Aharon Barak (Israel), and Sebutinde dissented on all 6 whereas Barak dissented only on 3 out of those 6. In each of those two instances, the jurist summarized up-front in the decision what the supposed ‘reasoning’ for the dissent was. Here both of those two summaries are shown:

DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SEBUTINDE

[T]he dispute between the State of Israel and the people of Palestine is essentially and historically a political one, calling for a diplomatic or negotiated settlement, and for the implementation in good faith of all relevant Security Council resolutions by all parties concerned, with a view to finding a permanent solution whereby the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can peacefully coexist — It is not a legal dispute susceptible of judicial settlement by the Court — Some of the preconditions for the indication of provisional measures have not been met — South Africa has not demonstrated, even on a prima facie basis, that the acts allegedly committed by Israel and of which the Applicant complains, were committed with the necessary genocidal intent, and that as a result, they are capable of falling within the scope of the Genocide Convention — Similarly, since the acts allegedly committed by Israel were not accompanied by a genocidal intent, the  Applicant has not demonstrated that the rights it asserts and for which it seeks protection through the indication of  provisional measures are plausible under the Genocide Convention — The provisional measures indicated by the Court in this Order are not warranted.

SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE AD HOC BARAK

1. South Africa came to the Court seeking the immediate suspension of the military operations in the Gaza Strip. It has wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel. The Court rejected South Africa’s main contention and, instead, adopted measures that recall Israel’s existing obligations under the Genocide Convention. The Court has reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend its citizens and emphasized the importance of providing humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza. The provisional measures indicated by the Court are thus of a significantly narrower scope than those requested by South Africa.

2. Notably, the Court has emphasized that “all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law”, which certainly includes Hamas.

Sebutinde was treating this matter as-if it were a civil trial over something such as whether an international contract had been fulfilled according to its terms by both sides, only one side, or no side. Is that type of reasoning appropriate in a case that had been brought by a third party against one party in a war against the other party in that war — specifically by South Africa against Israel as allegedly perpetrating genocide against (not “Palestinians” but instead) the residents in Gaza? If not, then Sebutinde is a dangerously unqualified person to be sitting on this Court. Furthermore: her factual allegations (such as “the acts allegedly committed by Israel were not accompanied by a genocidal intent”) are either demonstrably false or almost certainly false, such as by this evidence cited in South Africa’s case, which evidence she entirely ignored:

The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents … This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”.446 The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxens and sheep, camels and asses”.448

— President of Israel: On 12 October 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media — in relation Palestinians in Gaza, over one million of whom are children: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”449 On 15 October 2023, echoing the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President told foreign media that “we will uproot evil so that there will be good for the entire region and the world.”450 The Israeli President is one of many Israelis to have handwritten ‘messages’ on bombs to be dropped on Gaza.451

— Israeli Minister of Defence: On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”452 He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had released all the restraints”,453 stating in terms that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”454 …:

— Israeli Minister for National Security: On 10 November 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir clarified the government’s position in a televised address, stating: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means … those who support … — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”456

— Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: ‘Tweeting’ on 13 October 2023, Israel Katz stated: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”457 On 12 October 2023, he ‘tweeted’: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. … And no one will preach us morality.”458

— Israeli Minister of Finance: On 8 October 2023, Bezalel Smotrich stated at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet that “[w]e need to deal a blow that hasn’t been seen in 50 years and take down Gaza.”459

— Israeli Minister of Heritage: On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on Facebook: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement].460 He later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”.461 He also posited a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.462

— Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On 11 November 2023, Avi Dichter in a television interview recalled the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of the new Israeli State was forced from or fled their homes, stating that “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.463 …

She ignored every one of those quotations — yet each one of them was core to South Africa’s case. It was core to the motivation for this genocide that is occurring in Gaza.

And the case isn’t merely about intention; it is very much also about what Israel is actually doing. For example: see this on that, which displays not the intent but instead the results of that genocidal intent.

Barak’s reasoning was different but almost as scandalously bad: blaming South Africa for having even brought the case. Furthermore: since this ‘judge’ in the trial was actually serving instead as a defense attorney for his country Israel, he can be expected to have been serving atrociously as a judge — the ICJ had brought in as judges both a South African and an Israeli jurist so as to get a ‘balanced’ instead of a fair verdict in it. They were, at least to a large extent, treating this criminal case as-if it were instead a civil one.

By contrast to Barack: Sebutinde, who is one of the 15 regular judges on that Court, is so scandalously inadequate that she ought to be fired post-haste. But clearly, the Court itself, from the top on down, simply cannot rationally be trusted. Its problems are deep and severe. The genocide case against Israel will drag on for years and yet even at its outset, South Africa had presented a more trustworthy verdict (its case) regarding Israel than the ICJ ever will be able to, unless the entire institution becomes radically changed so as to become decent.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Filed on December 29 last year, the South African case focused on its obligations arising under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and those of Israel. Pretoria, in its case, wished that the ICJ adjudicate and declare that Israel had breached its obligations under the Convention, and “cease forthwith any acts and measures in breach of those obligations, including such acts or measures which would be capable of killing or continuing to kill Palestinians, or causing or continuing to cause serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians or deliberately inflicting on their group, or continuing to inflict on their group, conditions of life calculated to bring out its physical destruction in whole or in part, and fully respect its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

The latter words derive from Article II of the Convention, which stipulate four genocidal actions: the killing of the group’s members; the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to those group’s members; the deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of that group and imposing measures to prevent births within the group.

The sheer extent of devastation being wrought by Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza, justified by the Netanyahu government as necessary self-defence in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, led the South African team to also seek immediate provisional measures under Article 41 of the Court’s statute. (The review on the case’s merits promises to take much longer.) They included the immediate suspension of the IDF’s military operations in and against Gaza, the taking of all reasonable measures to prevent genocide, and desisting from committing acts within Article II of the Convention. The expulsion and forced displacement of Palestinians should also stop, likewise the deprivation of adequate food, water and access to humanitarian assistance and medical supplies and “the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza.”

By 15-2, the court accepted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.” (Over 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, extensive tracts of land in Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.) Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

The grant of provisional measures was, however, more conservative than that sought by Pretoria. Conspicuously missing was any explicit demand that Israel pause its military operations. That said, the judgment did little to afford Israel’s leaders and the IDF comfort from the obligatory reach of the Genocide Convention, an instrument they had argued was irrelevant and inapplicable to the conduct of “innovative” military operations.

To that end, Israel was obligated to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and submit a report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within one month.

As is very much the form, the justice from the country in the dock, in this case, Israel’s Aharon Barak, could see nothing inferentially genocidal in his country’s campaign. South Africa, he insisted, had intentionally ignored the role played by Hamas in its October 7 attacks, and “wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel.”

Inevitably, the singular experience of the Holocaust survivor, the sui generis Jewish view of trauma, used as solid armour against any possibility that Israel might ever commit genocide, became a point of contention. Genocide “is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” Israel had a firm commitment to the rule of law, and to accept that it was committing genocide “is very hard for me personally”. Tellingly, he suggested that Israel’s campaign in Gaza be examined, not from the viewpoint of the Genocide Convention but international humanitarian law.

With classic casuistry, Barak did vote for the measure requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza strip”. But having identified nothing in the way of such intent, the issue became a moot one. With some relief, Barak could state that certain measures sought by South Africa, including an immediate suspension of military operations, were rejected by the ICJ, which preferred “a significantly narrower scope”.

From the other side of the legal aisle, the South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, wished that the ICJ had grasped the nettle to order a halt in military operations. But, with some deft reasoning, she was satisfied that the only way Israel could implement the provisional measures would be through a ceasefire. Much the same view was expressed by the Associated Press: “The court’s half-dozen orders will be difficult to achieve without some sort of cease-fire or pause in the fighting.” That logic is clear enough, but the actions, given the various statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his officials alleging slander and a blood libel against their country, are unlikely to follow.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. The court has imposed several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law.

In its order, the court fell short of South Africa’s request for a ceasefire, but this ruling, however, is overwhelmingly in favour of South Africa’s case and will likely increase international pressure for a ceasefire as a result.

On the question of whether Israel’s war in Gaza is genocide, that will still take more time, but today’s news will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts.

• READ MORE: ICJ ruling an ‘indirect’ order for Israeli ceasefire in genocidal war, says legal analyst
• World Court or­ders Is­rael to take steps to pre­vent acts of geno­cide in Gaza

This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions — not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of how it could delegitimiSe Israel internationally.

However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel’s legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved.

Just as much as Israel’s political system has been increasingly — and publicly — associated with apartheid in the past few years, Israel will now be similarly associated with the charge of genocide.

As a result, those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the US under President Biden, will be associated with that charge, too.

Significant implications for US
The implications for the United States are significant. First because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling.

Instead, the matter will go to the UN Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or allowing the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.”

I have deleted my previous posts on the ICJ ruling to ensure accurate representation of their decision.

Having read and listened to expert analysis of the ruling, it remains the case that the New Zealand government, a signatory to the Genocide Convention, now has a clear duty… pic.twitter.com/GOulkTJ4Kv

— Donna Miles دانا مجاب (@UnPressed) January 26, 2024

So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect ICJ’s decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Syria, the US and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented.

The double standards of US foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling.

It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since October 7.

It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bear-hugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct.

Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses — and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that could potentially fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t.

Unconditional support, zero criticism
Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel’s conduct and only limited push-back behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide.

This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances that such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around.

As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis.

This ruling may also boost those arguing that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation.

What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the US and UK’s military action against the Houthis?

The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The US is rather accustomed to and comfortable with setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not.

International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm.

Moderated war conduct
One final point: The mere existence of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct.

Any plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application.

If so, it shows that the court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done.

Trita Parsi is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. First published at Responsible Statecraft.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

However, the ICSGP also recognizes that Israeli and U.S. government officials have made repeated official declarations in the past week making clear their plan to ignore the ICJ’s legally binding ruling and rejecting the Court’s process as illegitimate, and that the U.S. has been threatening world governments with sanctions and war—a promise it is making good on already by bombing Yemen—for opposing the ongoing genocide. The ICSGP also recognizes that numerous powerful state allies of the U.S. and Israel, including Germany and Canada, have already made clear their intent to back Israel against an ICJ finding of genocide. The dangerous rejection by the United States, Israel and their allies of this process—which was set up through the United Nations precisely to prevent genocide—undermines the legitimacy of that institution and in particular the U.N. Security Council, where the U.S. has long used its veto power as a tool to promote war and genocide. The ICSGP calls upon social movements to demand that world governments uphold international law and protect the integrity of the United Nations by ensuring that the ICJ’s provisional measures are immediately enforced, and to hold Israeli war criminals and their powerful U.S. accomplices accountable for genocide.

The ICSGP stands in full solidarity with its Palestinian coalition members, who have emphasized in their own statements today the need for governments and social movements around the world to double down in their efforts to bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end. Dr. Luqa AbuFarah, North America Coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), an ICSGP member organization, states:

“It’s clear we have a moral obligation to take action and end our government’s complicity with Israel’s Gaza genocide. We must have the courage to speak out and take action to advance the struggle for justice. We must end US military funding to Israel which at $3.8 billion USD a year could instead provide more than 450,000 households with public housing for a year or pay for 41,490 elementary school teachers. I also hope that every person outraged with the blatant disregard for Palestinian life will join and escalate our BDS Campaigns and make sure companies know that complicity with Israeli apartheid and genocide is unacceptable. We must take action now more than ever!”

ICSGP, together with numerous legal and human rights organizations including coalition members The PAL Commission on War Crimes and The Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, held press conferences in New York and Chicago following the Court’s Order on the request for the indication of provisional measures this morning, expressing gratitude to South Africa for its steadfast support, and calling on all organizations and countries to support South Africa’s legal actions against the Israeli military campaign.

Lamis Deek, cofounder the PAL Commission on War Crimes and convener of the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, states:

“This historic decision changes international and domestic approaches—military, legal, and political—to stopping the genocide in Palestine. This verdict profoundly reshapes the geopolitical and legal topography, regardless of whether Israel complies or not. Following the Court’s decision we must issue calls on state parties to the ICJ and the Genocide Convention as regards their compliance obligations, and address our legal colleagues and our communities regarding the next steps we think will be most critical on the heels of this decision.

The brutal Israeli genocide and torture in Gaza, alongside the targeted assassinations, destruction of civilian infrastructure including all of Gaza’s hospitals and universities, blocking of aid, and use of starvation and spread of disease as a war tactic, constitute a grotesque series of the highest war crimes. We commend the Court’s positive decision. The question now is how to deal with the anticipated US-Israeli obstruction of that decision.”

Monisha Rios, president of SOLI PR, an international network of Puerto Ricans focused on growing solidarity with the Puerto Rican struggle for independence and ICSGP member organization, states:

As Puerto Ricans directly involved in the struggle against U.S.-led settler colonial violence, land grabs and the ongoing neoliberal assault, we have a special obligation to stand in firm, unwavering solidarity with our Palestinian cousins. Not only does the Zionist entity’s genocidal regime in Palestine owe its existence as such to U.S. financial and political backing since its inception, Israel has also directly contributed with military technologies, weapons and police training to the violent repression of peoples fighting for self-determination against the U.S. and its puppet regimes around the world, and of Indigenous Peoples and descendants of enslaved African Peoples subject to structural apartheid within the continental United States. Israeli Zionists themselves have recognized the parallels between Palestine and Puerto Rico, for example with the Minister of Heritage—who publicly called for using a nuclear bomb in Gaza—recently calling for a “Puerto Rican” solution to Palestine. The South African Case at the World Court, and the Court’s decision this morning provide Puerto Ricans and colonized peoples around the world a unique opportunity—in recognizing our common struggle and joining together to fight against Zionist fascism, we have tremendous power to both stop the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, and to contribute to our own liberation by shifting the balance of global power away from the U.S. and toward the Global South.

The ICSGP calls upon the over 2,000 organizational signatories to its original letter, and to social movements everywhere, to hold the profiteers and promoters of the Zionist genocide to account through concrete actions of boycott, divestment, and sanctions; to mobilize to demand the immediate enforcement of the ICJ’s Order of Provisional Measures and denounce accomplices to the genocide; and to continue to pressure all state parties to the Genocide Convention to issue Declarations of Intervention in support of the South African case at the ICJ.

Previous ICSGP press statements are available from January 17, January 8 and January 3, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must cease its warmaking in Gaza — cease committing and inciting genocidal acts — and that the case charging Israel with genocide must proceed.

This was a make or break moment for international law, or rather a break or make-a-first-step moment. There is hope for the idea and reality of international law, but this is only a beginning.

The president of the International Court of Justice, who read the ruling, is Judge Joan Donoghue, former top legal advisor under Hillary Clinton at the U.S. State Department during the Obama Administration. She previously was the lawyer for the United States in its unsuccessful defense before the ICJ against charges by Nicaragua of minining its harbor.

The court voted for portions of this decision by 15-2 and 16-1. The “No” votes came from Judge Julia Sebutinde of Uganda and Ad Hoc Judge Aharon Barak of Israel.

The case presented by South Africa was overwhelming (read it or watch a key part of it), and Israel’s defense paper-thin. And the case just grew more overwhelming during the bizarre delay (yes, courts are slow, but this genocide is swift).

People all over the world built the pressure to move South Africa to act and other nations to add their support. Over 1,500 organizations signed a statement. Individuals signed a petition by CODEPINK, and sent almost 500,000 emails to key governments’ United Nations consulates through World BEYOND War and RootsAction.org. Click those links because more emails are needed now. While several nations have made public statements in support of South Africa’s case, we need them to file papers officially with the International Court of Justice. To reach out to additional national governments, go here.

Governments that have made statement in support of the case against genocide include Malaysia, Turkey, Jordan, Bolivia, the 57 nations of the Organization of Islamic Countries, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Maldives, Namibia, and Pakistan, Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba.

Germany has backed Israel’s defense against the charge of genocide, which has been denounced by Namibia, victimn of a German genocide. Prominent Jews have denounced Germany’s shameful action.

Mass demonstrations in the streets of the world have continued in support of peace and justice, and to a far greater extent than major media outlets have reported.

Here’s a discussion of this campaign for justice with Sam Husseini on Talk World Radio.

Prior to today’s ruling from the International Court of Justice, the U.S. government pointedly refused to say whether it would comply with ruling, despite insisting that other nations comply with rulings by the ICJ.

Hamas said that it would cease fire if Israel does, and release all prisoners if Israel does

Germany, to its credit, reportedly said that it would comply.

Arming a genocide is complicity in genocide. While Israel gets most of its weapons from the United State, other weaponry comes from Germany, Italy, the UK, and Canada — at least some of which nations also provide parts to U.S. weaponsmakers that provide weapons to Israel. Italian opposition demanded an end to it. And then the Foreign Minister claimed Italy had stopped shipments on Oct 7. Meanwhile, Canada is coming under pressure to cease shipments and prevarications. In Canada, Members of Parliament are among over 250 people hunger striking for an arms embargo on Israel.

People in the United States can tell Congress to stop arming Israel here or here.

President Joe Biden already faces a lawsuit for aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. In November 2023, Palestinian human rights organizations, along with Gaza- and U.S.-based Palestinians, filed suit in a U.S. federal court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Biden Administration for failing to prevent genocide, and for aiding and abetting genocide. The plaintiffs seek an order to end U.S. military and diplomatic support to Israel. A hearing to address the government’s motion to dismiss will be held at 9 a.m. PT / 12 noon ET today, Friday. The hearing will be webstreamed to the public. You are encouraged to tune in and witness the U.S. government’s attempts at avoiding accountability and justify its support for the genocide that is happening in Gaza.

• First published at World Beyond War.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by David Swanson.

The South African example also shows that members of the nuclear club are an easily rattled lot.  The admission of new members is almost never allowed, tickets rarely granted.  If they do, they tend to be done in the breach of a perceived understanding, roguish challengers to the status quo of accepted nuclear-weapons states.

Such an understanding, for decades, has been one of the great confidence tricks of international relations, with the clubbable nuclear powers essentially promising the eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals on the proviso that non-nuclear weapon states resist the urge of acquiring them.  The result: club members retain their hideous arsenals, modernise and refurbish them with avid seriousness, leaving concerned non-club members either unilaterally defy the status quo (North Korea) or flirt with the prospect of doing so (Iran).

The parallels between South Africa and North Korea are disturbingly and relevantly cogent.  They also yield other lessons.  For example, if unpopular on the international stage or caught in the crosshairs of a dispute, never claim to have no weapons.  If anything, claim to have more, not fewer.  Keep such matters close to the chest.

On August 6, 1977, US President Jimmy Carter received a message from Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.  “According to information received, the Union of South Africa (USA) is completing work on the creation of a nuclear weapon and the carrying out of the first experimental nuclear test.”  To permit the apartheid state to acquire such weapons would “sharply aggravate the situation on the African continent and, as a whole, would increase the danger of the use of nuclear weapons.”  The policy of nuclear non-proliferation, he warned, would be imperilled, necessitating “energetic efforts toward the goals of preventing the emergence of new nuclear states and barring the proliferation of nuclear danger.”

On August 18 that same year, an interagency study coordinated by representatives of the US intelligence community considered the policy considerations of a South Africa nuclear test, suggesting that “domestic political concerns would argue in favor of testing; and that these concerns weigh more heavily than foreign policy considerations in a decision whether or not to test”.  That said, there was “no over-riding pressure” on the country’s leadership to test a weapon with any sense of urgency.  A more “flexible approach” was being countenanced.

This was not intended to give the non-proliferation sorts any cheer.  “While we thus ascribe some flexibility, or ‘give,’ to the South African position regarding the timing of a test, we do not see any circumstances which would lead to a termination of their long-standing program to develop a nuclear weapon.”  There was “no credible threat” posed by the West to discourage Pretoria from pursuing a test; indeed, they might have the opposite effect.

Brezinski, in a memorandum to Carter, advises that Washington should “get as much information about what the South Africans are really doing, as soon as possible, and before the Lagos Conference where this will be a key issue.”  Doing so would involve “a demand for an on-site inspection of the Kalahari site,” and carried out preferably as a joint US-French effort, and if not, unilaterally by the US.  “We will not however wait for the French.  It was judged useless to try to get IAEA participation.”  Such views reveal snatches of Brezinski’s prickly disposition towards international bodies, preferring, as other national security advisors before and after him have, a freer hand for US power.  Such agencies, when required, could be sneered at.

To show that he was also alert to the ceremonial deceptions that accompany diplomacy, Carter scrawled on the same document, “Zbig – what we want is: no test – If they have to lie about what their plans were, let them do so – Let them save face.”  The testing, and the lying, duly followed.

Another aspect of the South African nuclear weapons program was its near perfect conditions of secrecy – at least when it came to knowledge among members of the US intelligence community.  Throughout the phases of weapons development, there remained a persistent ignorance about how advanced the program was.  Pretoria was also insistent in not joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would have brought them into an international regulatory orbit.  Staying outside the NPT regime meant that the program could also flourish without harassment.

Through the 1980s, the apartheid state faced something of a paradox.  Domestically, its political-social system was proving increasingly unsustainable.  Internationally, Pretoria found Carter’s successor far more accommodating.  This was all part of President Ronald Reagan’s notion of “constructive engagement,” another term for calculated hypocrisy.  It was a hypocrisy that enabled smuggling to thrive, with outside companies and entities keen to make a buck with the apartheid regime.  But as the nuclear enterprise thrived, the political system was ailing.

In 1993, South Africa’s last apartheid President F.W. De Klerk announced that all six operational nuclear weapons had been dismantled.  This reassured Western intelligence officials that a country controlled by the revolutionary African National Congress would never benefit.  A nuclear-armed Apartheid South Africa, officially condemned for its racialist regime, retained often clandestine collaborative ties with the United States, Israel and a number of European states, including West Germany.  But a South African nuclear state run by a black administration was simply too horrendous a notion, an intolerable aberration to the club.  Imagine, for instance, the possibility, as the London Sunday Times (August 15, 1993) put it, of South Africa becoming a supplier of enriched uranium “either to Libya, Iran, or the Palestine Liberation Organization, all of which gave the movement support during the years in exile.”

The scenario is certainly worth imagining.  Libya would not have been attacked in 2011 under the feeble, fraudulent pretence of humanitarian intervention, leaving the rump state that it is today.  A terrified Israel, having ironically aided Pretoria’s own nuclear efforts (it takes one apartheid state to know another), would have been kept in check and compelled to make concessions as never before to the Palestinians.  Adding Iran to the mix would have fed the calculus of terror.

As things transpired, a small group of engineers and scientists who had links with the program, rather than any enterprising ANC official, did moonlight on the proliferation stage.  They included Gotthard Lerch, Gerhard Wisser, Daniel Geiges and Johan Meyer.  Between the mid-1980s and 2004, the group supplied centrifuge equipment to Pakistan, Libya, India, and, it is suggested, Iran and North Korea.

Subsequent studies have seen South African denuclearisation as a miracle, an exemplar of good, humane conscience.  “The case of South Africa shows that nuclear disarmament is possible even after a country has built nuclear weapons,” write David Albright and Andrea Stricker in their 2016 study on the program.  “Its extensive cooperation allowed a rigorous verification of denuclearization by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which were aided and supplemented by nations with a special stake in ensuring that all of South Africa’s weapons were dismantled and the highly enriched nuclear uranium accounted for.”  But other lessons of the project are equally significant: Why acquire these horrific yet mesmeric weapons in the first place, and under what conditions?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in South Africa’s case over the war on the Gaza Strip.

But it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in what is being seen as a historical ruling on emergency measures requested by the South African government which analysts say will put pressure on Tel Aviv and its Western backers.

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide, and also to take immediate, effective measures to enable provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the besieged enclave.

• READ MORE: The ICJ emergency measures ruling against Israel

Hailing the emergency measures, South African Minister of International Relations Dr Naledi Pandor said outside the court in The Hague that Israel would have to halt fighting in Gaza if it wanted to adhere to the orders of the United Nations’ top court.

“How else is it going to comply with the ruling?” she asked, adding that it was up to the global community to ensure the measures were applied to “stop the suffering of the Palestinian people”.

“How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire?” Dr Pandor said.

“If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen.”

In South Africa, government officials welcomed the ruling.

“It’s a watershed judgment for all those who want to see peace in Palestine,” Fikile Mbalula, secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress party, told reporters.

Palestinian human rights attorney @dianabuttu reacts to the ICJ ruling on Gaza: “This court has overwhelmingly decided in favor of South Africa, has overwhelmingly determined that there is plausible risk of genocide, and it becomes imperative upon the world community to now act.” pic.twitter.com/eXQuyIBlbA

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 26, 2024

Years to decide
The ICJ judges have not ruled on the merits of the genocide allegations, which may take years to decide. However, they ruled that South Africa had presented a “plausible case” with its genocide allegations that led to the emergency measures.

Since October 7 when Hamas launched a deadly raid on Israel, Tel Aviv’s military campaign has killed at least 26,083 people and wounded 64,487 others, according to officials in Gaza. Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.

Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara told the network that “Israel is on trial for genocide”, saying that the provisional ruling would cause a seismic split between the Global North and South depending on which side people aligned, even if the ICJ had not called for an immediate ceasefire.

He said Israel’s major backer, the United States, which had vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions seeking a ceasefire in recent months, now needed to “look in the mirror”.

“The UK, Germany and other countries who supported Israel in the past three months unconditionally also need to look in the mirror and reconsider their decision because the World Court has taken up the case of genocide against Israel for its actions in the past three months,” Bishara said.

The principle outcome was that the ICJ would take on the case and had put Israel “on notice” and demand that the state carry out a number of steps.

“I think that legally and morally sends a strong message to Israel and its backers that they need to cease and desist — even if the court did not spell it out.”

International Court of Justice preliminary ruling: “Israel’s actions in Gaza may constitute genocide.” pic.twitter.com/ArtpoFbZ3M

— PALESTINE ONLINE (@OnlinePalEng) January 26, 2024

Plausible case of genocide
Thomas Macmanus, director of international state crime initiative at Queen Mary University of London, stressed that the court had said there “is a plausible case of genocide in Gaza”.

“So, we now have a serious risk of genocide,” he said, noting that the law stipulated that once there is “a serious risk”, then states needed to do “everything they can to stop enabling that genocide and to start taking all action in their capacity to prevent it”.

Riyadh al-Maliki, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, issued a statement welcoming the ICJ’s provisional measures “in light of the incontrovertible evidence presented to the court about the unfolding genocide”.

“The ICJ ruling is an important reminder that no state is above the law or beyond the reach of justice. It breaks Israel’s entrenched culture of criminality and impunity, which has characterised its decades-long occupation, dispossession, persecution, and apartheid in Palestine.”

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir mocked the ICJ after the court ended its reading.

“Hague shmague,” the minister wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in the first comments by an Israeli official.

All of those genocidal statements including that of Palestinians being human animals. Well here they are being quoted again to the world by Judge Donoghue at the ICJ. #ICJGazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/RmBQRBInU3

— Ayesha Omar (@DrAyeshaOmar) January 26, 2024

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

We do not see the importance of this case as being restricted to proving to the ICJ that the Israeli state is committing genocide. It is also a statement of conscience to the people of the world, and encouragement to the huge numbers of people around the world who have taken to the streets in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

We welcome the support of progressive governments in Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia for the action taken by the South African government. We also support the very strong statement issued by the government of Namibia condemning the decision by the German government to support the Israeli state at the ICJ.

The western media continues to condone the attacks on civilians in Gaza with its obvious and crude biases towards the oppressors and against the oppressed. They continue to refer to the attacks as a war between Israel and Hamas. This is not a war, it is a cowardly and genocidal attack on civilians by a country with one of the most powerful armies in the world, an army backed by the United States, the most powerful and dangerous state in the world.

Our movement has always been on the side of the oppressed. Until the South African government opened the case against Israel at the ICJ we had never taken a position or issued a statement commending our government in almost twenty years of struggle. We have faced severe repression under the South African government, ranging from illegal and violent evictions to the jailing and assassination of our leaders. However, politics must be guided by principles and when the South African government took the decision to stand up for justice for Palestine we offered our full support for that decision. We will continue to support any further actions motivated by genuine solidarity with the people of Gaza, and with any other oppressed people anywhere in the world.

We have a long and great tradition of radical lawyering in South Africa. Our movement has worked with a number of brilliant and committed radical lawyers since 2005. We were so proud to see this tradition show itself to the world in the struggle to insist that the humanity of every person must be recognised and defended.

The great step that the South African government has taken on the global stage to end genocide must also be undertaken internally to end oppression. They must treat their own people with the same dignity. Brutal evictions, cuts to social spending, corruption and political repression cannot continue to be the order of the day. Singalingisi ihlamvu lona elishanela kude kube kungcolile eduze.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.

• READ MORE: ‘Criminal complaints’ filed against Israeli President Herzog in Switzerland
• War on Gaza: The US plan to revamp Palestinian Authority is doomed
• ‘Bombing all around us’ — Israeli assault hospital in Khan Younis

Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.

Chile and Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against civilians in the war and Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit in the ICJ against Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.

“The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.

“Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”

‘One holocaust not enough?’
Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.

“We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.

He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.

“More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.

“More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”

He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.

“The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”

24 massacres cited
Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.

He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.

Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.

“Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.

Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.

Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:

“It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.

“It is an unwinnable war.

“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.

“And they didn’t.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

While it’s near impossible to sidestep nationalist, imperialist and supremacist ideas, “leftists” should at least not promote prevailing anti-Palestinian ideological strictures. Despite the horrors Israel’s unleashed in Gaza, some who ‘stand with Palestine’ still prioritize Jewish sensitivities over opposing Canadian support for genocide.

In a hundred days 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, 60,000 seriously injured and 2 million displaced in Gaza. Half a million in Gaza are facing famine conditions and basically everyone is hungry. If Israeli-imposed hunger, disease and lack of medical care persists hundreds of thousands may end up dying. And the state perpetrating this genocide has long encaged, occupied and ethnically cleansed those it is slaughtering.

Amidst the genocide that Canada has enabled, some self-declared leftists still devote significant energy to smearing anti-genocide activists or trying to have their speaking events cancelled for purported “antisemitism”. Two months ago, some individuals associated with Independent Jewish Voices pushed to cancel my participation in a Palestinian Youth Movement and International League of People’s Struggles event in Ottawa. More recently, the anonymous X account Jane Austen Marxist posted, “In case there’s any doubt about Yves Engler’s antisemitism at this point (there isn’t)” atop a screenshot highlighting a passage from one of my articles. It noted, “With outsized influence in Hollywood and other domains, Jewish cultural influence is significant.” (Anyone interested in the broader context can read my full article here.) A hodgepodge of rightists and leftists liked or retweeted the statement.

There was no attempt to show how my statement was incorrect or even to explain how it was anti-Jewish. For them, stating that Jews have outsized influence in Hollywood can only be a “trope” or “dog whistle” and thus unmentionable. But my statement is factual, as this 2014 Globe and Mail article demonstrates. In a stunning 2008 Los Angeles Times article headlined “Who runs Hollywood? C’mon” Joel Stein writes:

How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah. The person they were yelling at in that ad was SAG President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment super-agent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents)… The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.

The demographic make-up at the top of the US entertainment/media industry would have had to shift dramatically for my innocuous “outsized influence” statement to be incorrect. Do those smearing me have alternative data or any coherent rebuttal? No. In fact, they would likely respond to my quoting Stein’s story about Jewish influence in Hollywood by doubling down on their smear. For them presenting any data that demonstrates “outsized Jewish influence” anywhere is another act of antisemitism. The effect is to be unable to describe how widespread and effective anti-Palestinianism is and why, which, of course, are necessary steps in combatting this form of racism.

A near universal, if undeclared, rule when discussing antisemitism in Canada is that one can only cite a single sociological indicator for status/oppression. Of the twenty most commonly employed categories in discussions of racism — income levels, incarceration rates, educational attainment, life expectancy, home ownership, positions on corporate boards, etc. — hate crime data is the only indicator one can mention. It’s no coincidence that hate crimes is the only widely used indicator of discrimination in which the Jewish community fairs poorly. While the genocide lobby exaggerates the scope of the problem, Canadian Jews are substantially over represented as victims of hate crimes. But they fare better (often significantly so) than other groups on the other indicators commonly employed to identify status/oppression.

A broader discussion of the community’s standing doesn’t excuse acts of hate or prejudice against Jews, but it does relativize the impact of antisemitism in Canada. This is important when the genocide lobby explicitly counterposes antisemitism with Palestine solidarity. In a stark example, the Trudeau government recently criticized South Africa’s case to the International Court of Justice against Israel for purportedly impacting Canadian Jews. The government statement noted, “We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster Antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses, and individuals.” So, an international legal case to end a genocide is objectionable because it may impact Canadian Jews!

When lobbyists, politicians and the media are explicitly counterposing antisemitism with stopping a genocide, internationalist and anti-racist minded individuals must avoid fueling the antisemitism panic and reinforcing the nationalist, imperialist and supremacist bias towards Canadian Jewish sensitivities. Even if one believed all the apartheid lobby’s most outlandish claims about the anti-genocide movement’s contribution to antisemitism, they barely register compared to the horrors Canada has enabled in Gaza. Let’s say Ottawa seriously pushing back against Israel’s atrocities — by calling it genocide, suspending arms permits and seeking to staunch the flow of subsidized charitable donations — restrained Israel’s barbarity by 1%. This would have saved 300 lives and led to 20,000 fewer Palestinians displaced and 5,000 fewer facing famine conditions. Anyone professing internationalist, humanist and anti-racist values would easily accept all (and some) of the apartheid lobby’s bigotry claims in exchange. But our political culture is highly nationalistic, imperialistic and supremacist. (In reality the Palestine solidarity movement is responsible for little antisemitism and there’s no reason why Canada couldn’t end its genocidal complicity with little spillover.)

Those implying that antisemitism is a major problem in Canada and that one must be hyper sensitive about “tropes” when discussing the Jewish community’s relations to Palestine are requiring those opposed to colonialism to fight with a hand tied behind their backs. They are saying we must be hyper sensitive to a form of discrimination, but can’t investigate the socioeconomic status of the community purportedly under threat. They are saying it’s illegitimate to cite “outsized Jewish influence” at the upper echelons of Hollywood even when it helps explain the cultural weight of antisemitism accusations and why few in the generally liberal movie industry have publicly denounced the genocide. They are saying mentioning Jewish wealth and power is antisemitic despite it contributing to the effectiveness of the apartheid lobby.

How many Palestinians have to be slaughtered before we stop prioritizing the sensitivities of a generally well-off Canadian group over a colonized people facing genocide?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

You have to hand it to the U.S. and its henchmen for brazenness.  In order to protect their client state Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the U.S., together with the UK, have in one week launched air and sea attacks on the Houthis in Yemen five times, referring to it as “self-defense” in their Orwellian lingo.  The ostensible reason being Yemen’s refusal to allow ships bound for Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza, to enter the Red Sea, while permitting other ships to pass freely.

To any impartial observer, the Houthis should be lauded.  Yet, while the International Court of Justice considers the South African charge of genocide against Israel that is supported by overwhelming evidence, the U.S. and its allies have instigated a wider war throughout the Middle East while claiming they do not want such a war.  These settler colonial states want genocide and a much wider war because they have been set back on their heels by those they have mocked, provoked, and attacked – notably the Palestinians, Syrians, and Russians, among others.

While the criminalization of international law does not bode well for the ICJ’s upcoming ruling or its ability to stop Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, Michel Chossudovsky, of Global Research, as is his wont, has offered a superb analysis and suggestion for those who oppose such crimes: that Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter – “The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S. soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” – should be used to supplement the South African charges and appeal directly to the moral consciences of those asked to carry out acts of genocide. He writes:

Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots “to abandon the battlefield”, as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.  

South Africa’s legal procedure at the ICJ should be endorsed Worldwide. While it cannot be relied upon to put a rapid end to the genocide, it provides support and legitimacy to the “Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield”  campaign under Nuremberg Charter Principle IV.

While such an approach will not stop the continuing slaughter, it would remind the world that each person who participates in and supports it bears a heavy burden of guilt for their actions; that they are morally and legally culpable.  This appeal to the human heart and conscience, no matter what its practical effect, will at least add to the condemnation of a genocide happening in real time and full view of the world, even though no one will ever be prosecuted for such crimes since any real just use of international law has long disappeared.  Yet there is a edifying history of such conscientious objection to immoral war making, and though each person makes the decision in solitary witness, individual choices can inspire others and the solitary become solidary, as Albert Camus reminded us at the end of his short story, “The Artist at Work.”

With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that Israel/U.S.A. and their allies do want a wider war.  Iran is their special focus, with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen targets on the way.  Anyone who supports the genocide in Gaza, explicitly or through silence, bears responsibility for the conflagration to come.  There are no excuses.

And the facts show that it is axiomatic that waging war has been the modus operandi of the U.S./Israeli alliance for a long time.  Just as in early 2003 when the Bush administration said they were looking for a peaceful solution to their fake charges against Sadam Hussein with his alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” the Biden administration is lying, as the Bush administration lied about September 11, 2001 to launch its ongoing war on terror, starting in Afghanistan.  Without an expanded war, President Biden – aka the Democrats, since he will most probably not be the candidate – and his psychopathic partner Benjamin Netanyahu, will not survive.  It is bi-partisan war-mongering, of course, internationally and intramurally, since both U.S. political parties are controlled by the Israel Lobby and billionaire class that owns Congress and the “defense” industry that thrives on never-ending war to such an extent that even the notable independent candidate for the presidency, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an anti-war candidate, fully supports Israel which is tantamount to supporting Biden’s expanding war policy.

Biden and Netanyahu, who are always claiming after the fact that they were surprised by events or were fed bad advice by their underlings, are dumb scorpions. They are stupid but deadly.  And many people in the West, while perhaps decent people in their personal lives, are living in a fantasy world of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” in MLK, Jr.’s words, as the growing threat of a world war increases and insouciance reigns.

Neither the Israeli nor American government can allow themselves to be humiliated, U.S./NATO by the Russians in Ukraine and the Israelis by the Palestinians.  Like cornered criminals with lethal weapons, they will kill as many as they can on their way down, taking their revenge on the weakest first.

Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the moneyed elites whom allegedly they oppose while pocketing their cash and ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence or the perfidy of their enemies is the retort to all those “nut cases” who conjure up conspiracy theories or plain facts to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.  And they can’t understand why those they have long abused reach a point when they will no longer impetrate for mercy but will fight fiercely for their freedom.

All signs point to a major war on the horizon.  Both the U.S.A. and Israel have been shown to be rogue states with no desire to negotiate a peaceful world.  Believing in high-tech weapons and massive firepower, neither has learned the hard lesson that anti-colonial wars have historically been won by those with far less weapons but with a passionate desire to throw off the chains of their oppressors.  Vietnam is the text-book case, and there are many others.  Failure to learn is the name of their game.

The Zionist project for a Greater Israel is doomed to fail, but as it does, desperate men like Biden and Netanyahu are intent on launching desperate acts of war.  Exactly when and how this expanded war will blaze across the headlines is the question.  It has started, but I think it prudent to expect a black swan event sometime this year when all hell will break loose.  The genocide in Gaza is the first step, and the U.S./Israel, “not wanting” a wider war, have already started one.

(For an excellent history lesson on the Zionist oppression of Palestinians and the current genocide, listen to Max Blumenthal’s and Miko Peled’s impassioned talk – “Where is the War in Gaza Going? – delivered from the heart of darkness, Washington D.C.  Two Jewish men who know the difference between Zionism and Judaism and whose consciences are aflame with justice for the oppressed Palestinians.)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: “Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”. This statement anchored Hassim’s presentation of South Africa’s 84-page complaint against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel as well as, crucially, the declarations of intent to conduct genocide made by senior Israeli officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list ‘expressions of genocidal intent’ made primarily by Israeli state officials, such as calls for a ‘Second Nakba’ and a ‘Gaza Nakba’ (Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the state of Israel). These chilling declarations of intent have appeared repeatedly in the Israeli government’s speeches and statements since 7 October alongside racist language about ‘monsters’, ‘animals’, and the ‘jungle’ to refer to Palestinians. In one of many such instances, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9 October 2023 that his forces are ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly’.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another advocate from South Africa, described these words as a ‘language of systematic dehumanisation’. This language, alongside the character of Israel’s assault – which has thus far claimed over 24,000 Palestinian lives, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, and plunged 90% of the population into acute food security – should provide a sufficient basis for the accusation of genocide.

It is fitting that Adila Hassim’s first name means righteousness or justice in Arabic and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi’s first name means trustworthy in Xhosa.

John Halaka (Palestine), Memories of Memories, 2023.

At the ICJ hearing, Israel was unable to respond credibly to South Africa’s complaint. Tal Becker, a legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spent his entire presentation trying to indict Hamas, which is not a party to the dispute. It was Hamas, Becker said, that created the ‘nightmarish environment’ in Gaza – not Israel.

After Israel made its case, the fifteen ICJ judges began their deliberations. The presentations on 11–12 January were merely the prima facie hearing to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a trial, which – if it happens – would likely take years. However, South Africa asked the court to apply ‘provisional measures’, namely an emergency order from the ICJ judges calling on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on Palestinians. This would be a significant blow to Israel’s already diminished legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of its major backer, the United States of America. There is considerable precedence for this measure. In 2019, Gambia was able to get the court to order provisional measures against the government of Myanmar for its attacks on the Rohingya people. The world awaits the court’s verdict.

Ibrahim Khatab (Egypt), Do What You Want Under the Trees, 2021.

The day before the hearings began, the US released a statement saying ‘allegations that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded’. Once more, the US government fully backed Israel, intervening on its behalf not only in words but by providing arms and logistical support for the genocide. That is why South Africa is now preparing a filing against the United States and the United Kingdom to be submitted to the ICJ.

In November 2023, when the genocidal character of the war was already widely accepted across the globe, US Congress passed a $14.5 billion package in military aid to Israel. While the ICJ held its hearing, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told the press that the US will ‘continue to supply [Israel] with the tools and capabilities they need’, which it did – again – as recently as 9 and 29 December, when it transferred additional arms to Israel. When asked about loss of life concerns within Congress, Kirby said that ‘we still see no indication that [Israel is] violating the laws of armed conflict’. Kirby, a former admiral, acknowledged that ‘there are too many civilian casualties’. However, rather than calling to end attacks on civilians, he said that Israel must ‘take steps to reduce that’. In other words, the US has given Israel the green light and carte blanche support, and arms, to do whatever it would like to Palestinians.

When the people of Yemen, led by Ansar Allah, decided to block the movement of ships to Israel through the Red Sea, the US formed a ‘coalition’ to attack Yemen. On the day of South Africa’s presentation at the ICJ, the US bombed Yemen. The message was clear: not only will the US provide unconditional support for the genocide; it will also attack countries that try to put a stop to it.

Shaima al-Tamimi (Yemen), So Close Yet So Far Away, 2018.

The atrocities perpetrated by Israel, as well as the resistance of the Palestinian people, have moved millions across the world to take to the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with content decrying Israel’s terrible actions. The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing, with 400,000 people marching on the US capitol last weekend in larger numbers than ever in the country’s history. The increasing fervour and scale of these demonstrations have provoked concerns in the Democratic Party that US President Joe Biden will lose not only the Arab American vote in such key states as Michigan, but that liberal-left activists will not support his re-election campaign.

Chie Fueki (Japan), Nikko, 2018

Over the course of the past two years, from the start of the Ukraine War until now, there has been a rapid decline in the West’s credibility. This drop in legitimacy did not begin with the Ukraine War or genocide in Palestine, though both events have certainly accelerated the decline in the authority of the NATO countries. Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti posted a video of a pro-Palestine march in New York that is perhaps indicative of the mood in most of the world and wrote: ‘We are not hostile to the American people, but rather to the American foreign policy that has caused the death of tens of millions of people, threatens the security and safety of the world, and also exposes the lives of Americans to danger. Let us struggle together to establish justice among people’.

Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, technology and science, and raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their ‘tax strike’, siphoning a large share of social wealth into tax havens and unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including the ability it once held to make investments in the Global South. Later this month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will release a new dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, and a study, Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage, which detail the maladies of the present and the new mood created by the rise of the Global South. The ICJ complaint filed by South Africa and backed by several Global South states is an indication of this mood.

Athier Mousawi (Iraq-Britain), A Point to A Potential Somewhere, 2014.

It is clear to most people in the world that the Global North has failed to address planetary crises, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute reality with euphemisms such as ‘democracy promotion’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘humanitarian pause’, and, from UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the ridiculous formulation of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’. Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’ while arming Israel or to speak of ‘democracy promotion’ while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.

On 12 January, the German government released a statement saying that it ‘firmly and explicitly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel’. In line with the new mood in the Global South, the government of Namibia reminded the Germans that they had ‘committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904–1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions’. This is known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide. Germany, said the government of Namibia, ‘is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil’. Therefore, Namibia ‘expresses deep concern with the shocking decision’ of the German government to reject the indictment of Israel.

Israel, meanwhile, says that it will continue this genocide for ‘as long as it takes’, though its already tenuous justifications continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity. Behind this violence is the waning legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

PS: Please do not miss the panel discussion based on our recent dossier, Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation, which widens the focus from South Africa to Palestine, featuring Wally Serote (poet laureate of South Africa and the founding chairperson of the Medu Art Ensemble), Judy Seidman (cultural worker and member of the Medu Art Ensemble), Clarissa Bitar (award-winning Palestinian oud musician and composer), and Niki Franco (cultural worker). The event will be hosted by our very own Tings Chak as well as Hannah Priscilla Craig of Artists Against Apartheid and livestreamed on 21 January via The People’s Forum YouTube page at 20:00 (Johannesburg), 18:00 (London), 15:00 (São Paulo), and 13:00 (New York). Register here.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

I find Westerners in general, and Europeans in particular, extremely indoctrinated and obsessed with perceptions of their own uniqueness. Many see themselves as chosen people, after going through a one-sided education and after relying on their media outlets, without studying alternative sources.

— André Vltchek, Soviet-born US political writer, 1963-2020.

On 20 March 2006, on the third anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall declared on the Six O’Clock News:

‘There’s still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?’

The supposed ‘justification’ claimed by Prime Minister Tony Blair was the ‘serious and current threat’ posed by Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The BBC’s false notion of ‘balance’ was to present ‘disastrous miscalculation’ as the counterargument. In fact, as we detailed at the time in media alerts and in our books, the invasion was considered by many legal experts to be a ‘war of aggression’, the ‘supreme international crime’ as judged by the standards of the post-WW2 Nuremberg trials.

But such a view is deemed too extreme for respectable BBC discourse. Even today, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg glibly notes:

Labour nerves still jangle over what went so terribly wrong in Iraq, even after all these years.

The implication, endlessly channelled by the BBC, is that a ‘disastrous miscalculation’ occurred, rather than an international war crime leading to the deaths of over one million Iraqis; a crime for which no western leader, or their media cheerleaders, has ever been tried in court. That outcome, in any serious responsible society, would have been more fitting than mere ‘jangling nerves’ among politicians.

But such narrative control is an endemic feature of state-corporate media, wrongly labelled ‘mainstream’. It is a fundamental requirement of political journalists and editors that they magically transform the crimes of ‘our’ governments into ‘miscalculations’, ‘mistakes’ or ‘misguided’ attempts to do good. This transformation is a power-serving alchemy turning the base metal of brutal realpolitik into the gold of benign intention, all for public consumption.

Noam Chomsky succinctly explained the ideological underpinning of ‘mainstream’ news coverage:

In discussion of international relations, the fundamental principle is that “we are good” – “we” being the government, on the totalitarian principle that state and people are one. “We” are benevolent, seeking peace and justice, though there may be errors in practice. “We” are foiled by villains who can’t rise to our exalted level.

— Chomsky, Interventions, Penguin Books, London, 2007, p. 101.

It does not matter how frequently, or how horrifically, this benevolent claim is violated by Western countries, journalists can be relied upon to perform the necessary whitewashing: the Gulf War in 1990-91, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Iraq sanctions from 1990-2003, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the destruction of Libya in 2011, the US-sponsored toppling of the Ukrainian government in 2014, US-Nato air strikes against Syria, participation in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, and now the attacks on ‘Iran-backed’ Houthi rebels. (Of course, convention decrees that the Houthi are always described as ‘Iran-backed’, whereas Israeli forces are not routinely labelled ‘US-backed’.)

The list goes on and on. You might well ask: at what point do supposedly astute, well-informed, senior editors and political correspondents simply stop regurgitating government propaganda; even start challenging it? How much blood has to be spilled, how many lives lost, how much vital infrastructure – homes, hospitals, power plants – destroyed by ‘our’ weaponry, with ‘our’ diplomatic, political and economic support?

But, of course, serious media challenge of elite power is highly unlikely. ‘Successful’ media professionals are fed through an industrial filter system that rewards steady adherence to state-approved narratives. As Chomsky once so memorably told a discombobulated Andrew Marr:

I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.’

Misleading The Public Is State Policy

In several powerful books, based on careful research of formerly secret UK government documents, historian Mark Curtis, co-founder of Declassified UK, has laid bare the motivations and reality of British foreign policy. Ethical concerns and morality are notable in these internal state records by their absence. Curtis observed:

a basic principle is that humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy. In the thousands of government files I have looked through for this and other books, I have barely seen any reference to human rights at all. Where such concerns are evoked, they are only for public-relations purposes.

— Curtis, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage, London, 2004, p. 3.

He added:

in every case I have ever researched on past British foreign policy, the files show that ministers and officials have systematically misled the public. The culture of lying to and misleading the electorate is deeply embedded in British policy-making.

— Ibid., p. 3.

This is especially true when it comes to Western terrorism. But what exactly is terrorism? The definition from a US army manual is:

The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.

— Chomsky, ‘The new war against terror’, talk given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on 18 October 2001.

By this definition, the major source of international terrorism is the West, notably the United States, supported by its ‘special relationship’ ally, the UK. Curtis wrote:

The idea that Britain is a supporter of terrorism is an oxymoron in the mainstream political culture, as ridiculous as suggesting that Tony Blair should be indicted for war crimes. Yet state-sponsored terrorism is by far the most serious category of terrorism in the world today, responsible for far more deaths in many more countries than the “private” terrorism of groups like Al Qaida. Many of the worst offenders are key British allies. Indeed, by any rational consideration, Britain is one of the leading supporters of terrorism in the world today. But this simple fact is never mentioned in the mainstream political culture.

— Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, Vintage, London, 2003, p. 94.

The US-UK-supported genocidal attacks by Israel on the people of Gaza, now extending to over 100 days, have made it ever more difficult for politicians and managers of public perception to maintain the myth of western benevolence and a ‘global rules-based order’.

The Financial Times reported last October:

Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned.

The FT article continued:

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost…Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

The senior G7 diplomat added:

What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility. The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?

Why indeed.

Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s foreign minister, observed recently that:

I think this notion of international rules is very comfortable for some people to use when it suits them but they don’t believe in international rules when it doesn’t suit them. Because they don’t apply international rules or law equally in all circumstances.

She added:

You can’t say because Ukraine has been invaded, suddenly sovereignty is important, but it was never important for Palestine.

To put it bluntly, the notion of the West upholding a rules-based international system is a blood-drenched myth.

Gaza – A War ‘To Save Western Civilisation’

Last week, South Africa presented a detailed 84-page submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – essentially the UN’s global law court – arguing that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The case was brought under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The South African legal team showed ample evidence of Israeli genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as the stated intention to commit genocide, indicated in public statements by numerous senior Israeli political and military leaders. On 28 October last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in which he compared the Palestinians to the Biblical people of Amalek. In the first Book of Samuel, God commanded King Saul to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel:

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

We could find no reference to Netanyahu’s genocidal comparison of the Palestinians to the Amalekites on the BBC News website.

Around 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October last year, including over 10,300 children and 7,100 women. There may be another 7,000 buried under the rubble. In other words, over 70 per cent of those killed are women and children. Around four per cent of Gaza’s population has either been killed, wounded or is missing under rubble.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, by the end of 2023, 1.9 million people – nearly 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza – had been internally displaced under Israel’s attacks. These include many families who have been displaced multiple times, forcibly and repeatedly moved to try to flee Israel’s bombardment. But, as the UN has warned, there is no safe place in Gaza. Oxfam reported that Israel’s military is killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, exceeding the daily death toll of any other major 21st century conflict. Many more lives are at risk from hunger, disease and cold, warned Oxfam.

As of 30 December, about 65,000 residential units in Gaza had been destroyed or made uninhabitable and over 290,000 housing units had been damaged, meaning that over half a million people will have no home to return to. Thirty out of Gaza’s thirty-six hospitals are not functioning, and the remaining six are only partially functioning.

Jonathan Cook noted that the West is now standing in the dock alongside Israel at the ICJ:

Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

Cook pointed out that it is significant that South Africa has brought the case of genocide against Israel. Both countries ‘bear the trauma of Europe’s long history of racial supremacism, but each has drawn precisely opposite lessons.’ As Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, said:

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

Israel’s most brutal assault in Gaza’s history is a continuation of its long war of oppression against the Palestinians. Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the genocidal attacks on Gaza as a war ‘to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilisation.’ As the political writer Caitlin Johnstone pointed out, Herzog was right; but not in the way he intended. She explained:

The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and is itself a perfect embodiment of western values. Not the western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they don’t want you to look at.

Johnstone continued:

For centuries western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy — all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.

She added:

What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school.

A BBC News report on the ICJ proceedings was titled, with fake balance, ‘South Africa’s genocide case against Israel: Both sides play heavy on emotion in ICJ hearing’. This was a distortion of the truth: the South African case was presented with dignity, clarity and forensic detail. As the BBC conceded deep in its report, it was Israel who made a strong appeal to emotions, displaying the images of 132 missing Israelis – most of them still being held hostage in Gaza. But, as Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, noted of Israel’s legal case:

Its repeated invocation of Hamas’s horrible 7 October attack and alleged genocidal aspirations are irrelevant because atrocities by one side do not justify genocide by another. Its argument of self-defence is beside the point because a legitimate defence does not allow genocide.

BBC News marked one hundred days of the current phase of the Israel-Palestine crisis with a classic example of propaganda bias. The BBC website headlined a major 3,000-word piece on the October 7 attacks. Underneath, there was a tiny link to a one-minute video of footage from Gaza that clearly underplayed the level of destruction. This is called BBC ‘impartiality’.

True to form, Washington is doing its utmost to protect Israel. During a press briefing, US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters:

South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel is “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

Interviewed by Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and law professor, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University responded to Kirby’s dismissive remark:

I just wish there were grown-ups in power. Grown-ups who are responsible, who are honest, who are decent, who would read an 84-page detailed complaint and give a serious answer, rather than a one-sentence smack-off like that.

He added:

I wish, at the same time, that the White House press corps would follow up more seriously. Actually, if I remember correctly, that question started with a few words, “Just a quick one”. And then the question was asked and Kirby responded in this utterly disgusting way when the most important issue on the planet is in front of him, and couldn’t do more than one dismissive, phony and false statement. But then there’s no follow-up [by the journalists at the press briefing]. Then they move on to the next topic. And the next topic.

Sachs continued:

Why don’t the journalists do their job, rather than feeding us the propaganda from the White House? They should be questioning the propaganda. That’s why I was grateful for today’s [ICJ] court proceedings because there were hours to put forward the evidence. There is a detailed legal complaint. There are dozens of countries that have supported this. But the US government is all spin, all propaganda, and all attempt at narrative control.

This is, of course, standard behaviour for the world’s major perpetrator of terrorism.

The Language Of Genocide

Media academics have analysed Israel-Palestine coverage and found that Palestinian perspectives are given ‘far less time and legitimacy’ than Israeli views in the British media. Last month, Greg Philo and Mike Berry of the highly-respected Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November, 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. Philo and Berry noted that:

The same pattern could be seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).

But more importantly:

The Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage, in how they understand the reasons for the conflict and the nature of the occupation under which they are living.

Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, once observed that what is routinely missing from BBC coverage is that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land:

demeans and degrades people: not just the killing and the destruction, but the humiliation, the attempt to crush the human spirit and remove the identity; not just the bullet in the brain and the tank through the door, but the faeces Israel’s soldiers rub on the plundered ministry walls, the trashed kindergarten; the barriers to a people’s work, prayers and hopes.

Emre Azizlerli, a former senior BBC producer, said recently via X (formerly Twitter):

I worked there for over 20 years. Internal boards determine who gets promoted by a panel of the applicant’s superiors. The political likes and dislikes of those at the very top easily trickle down in this chain mechanism all the way down to how producers behave, since everyone wants to please their boss to move ahead.

No wonder that a Morning Star tribute to the late John Pilger, who reported on Palestine over many years, noted that his death ‘leaves a void’, adding:

There are few investigative journalists of his courage or integrity. And designedly so. From the censorship of “hostile” voices across the internet to the outrageous incarceration of Julian Assange, every effort is being made to stamp out independent journalism.

Throughout his career, Pilger drew attention to the role of the media as ‘an appendage of established power’. Addressing a conference last March, organised by the Morning Star, he called for:

urgent debate and activism around the issue of the media… the media was rarely a friend of working people, but there were spaces for independent journalists in the mainstream.

He continued:

My own career is testament to that. Until a few years ago I worked in mainstream newspapers — in later years the Guardian mainly — but the Guardian like the others is now closed to independent thinking and honest journalism… we need to understand that the media is now fully integrated into an extremist state, and that working people must look elsewhere — to the Morning Star, yes, and to oases on the internet where good journalism flourishes.

Pilger often cast a sceptical eye on those whom we are supposed to regard as the best journalists working in the major news media. They are nevertheless performing a propaganda role by demarcating the permissible limits of reporting. For example:

BBC reporter, Jeremy Bowen, who talks about a war between Israel and Hamas. Bowen knows that’s wrong. It’s an attack on an occupied people by the occupier, Israel, backed by great powers.

State-corporate journalism – BBC News is a prime example – is far removed from the mythical notion of reporting the truth to the public. As the playwright John McGrath once wrote:

The gentlemen at the head of the powerful opinion-forming corporations do not wish to have their articulate mediation of reality disturbed by a group of people going around with a different story, seeing events from a different perspective, even selecting different information. Still less do they wish to have the population at large emerging from their mental retreat – the inner exile of the powerless and alienated – and demanding a share of power, of control, of freedom.’

— McGrath, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form, Nick Hern Books, 1981, pp. 89-90.

We should all reject the output of ‘the powerful opinion-forming corporations’ and look elsewhere, to those internet oases of real journalism, in order to understand the world and to radically change it for the better.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

In 2023, the world witnessed a sustained attack on the very foundations of the international legal order.

Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, continued its illegal invasion in Ukraine. Israel’s response to the deadly October attack by Hamas exceeded its legitimate right to self-defence. And Venezuela threatened force against Guyana over an oil-rich area of disputed territory.

But is it all bad news for the international legal order?

• READ MORE: South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next
• Myanmar charged with genocide of Rohingya Muslims: 5 essential reads

There are six ongoing international court cases initiated by states or organisations seeking to clarify the law and hold other states to account on behalf of the international community.

These cases offer smaller countries, such as New Zealand, an opportunity to have a significant role in strengthening the international legal order and ensuring a pathway towards peace.

A departure from the legal norm?
Normally, cases are brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when a state’s direct interests are impacted by the actions of another state.

However, six recent court cases reflect a significant departure from this tradition and mark an important development for international justice.

These cases argue the international community has a collective interest in certain issues. The focus of the cases range from Israel’s actions in Gaza (brought by South Africa) through to the responsibility of states to ensure the protection of the climate system (brought by the United Nations General Assembly).

South Africa’s justice minister Ronald Lamola outlined the country’s genocide case against Israel, as a landmark hearing opened at the International Court of Justice pic.twitter.com/AvlM8BwhQI

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Holding states accountable for genocide
Three of the six cases seek to hold states accountable for genocide using Article IX of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Put simply, Article IX says disputes between countries can be referred to the ICJ.

In late December, South Africa asked the court to introduce provisional measures — a form of international injunction — against Israel for genocidal acts in Gaza.

These proceedings build on the precedent set by a 2019 case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya people.

In 2022, the ICJ concluded it had jurisdiction to hear The Gambia’s case on the basis that all parties to the Genocide Convention have an interest in ensuring the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide.

According to the ICJ, The Gambia did not need to demonstrate any special interest or injury to bring the proceedings and, in effect, was entitled to hold Myanmar to account for its treatment of the Rohingya people on behalf of the international community as a whole.

South Africa has made the same argument against Israel.

In the third case, Ukraine was successful in obtaining provisional measures calling on Russia to suspend military operations in Ukraine (a call which has been reiterated in several United Nations General Assembly resolutions).

While Ukraine is directly impacted by Russia’s actions, 32 states, including New Zealand, have also intervened. These countries have argued there is an international interest in the resolution of the conflict.

In November 2023, following the example of intervention in Ukraine v Russia, seven countries — Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (jointly) and the Maldives — filed declarations of intervention in The Gambia v Myanmar, in support of The Gambia and the international community.

States can apply for permission to intervene in proceedings where they have an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the decision in the case (in the case of the ICJ, under Article 62 of the ICJ Statute). That said, intervening in judicial proceedings in support of the legal order or international community more generally was relatively rare until 2023.

South Africa is taking Israel to the ICJ, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s @nabilabana explains what’s behind the case pic.twitter.com/Hv9R4orEa8

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Climate change obligations under international law
But it is not just acts of genocide that have attracted wider international legal involvement.

In 2023, three proceedings seeking advisory opinions on the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change under international law have been introduced before the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

These cases can be similarly characterised as having been brought on behalf of the international community for the international community. New Zealand has intervened in the Law of the Sea case.

Collectively, these six cases comprise actions taken on behalf of the international community with the overarching purpose of strengthening the international legal order.

They demonstrate faith in and support for that legal order in the face of internal and external challenges, and constitute an important counter-narrative to the prevailing view that the international legal order is no longer robust.

Instituting proceedings does not guarantee a positive outcome. But it is worth noting that less than three years after the ICJ issued an advisory opinion condemning the United Kingdom’s continued occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, the UK is quietly negotiating with Mauritius for the return of the islands.

New Zealand’s support for the global legal order in 2024
The international legal order underpins New Zealand’s security and prosperity. New Zealand has a strong and internationally recognised track record of positive intervention in judicial proceedings in support of that order.

In 2012 New Zealand intervened in the case brought by Australia against Japan for whaling in the Antarctic. Following our contributions to cases before the ICJ and ITLOS in 2023, we are well placed to continue that intervention in future judicial proceedings.

Calls have already been made for New Zealand to intervene in South Africa v Israel. Contributing to this case and to The Gambia v Myanmar proceeding provides an important opportunity for New Zealand to make a proactive and substantive contribution to strengthening the international legal order.

Dr Karen Scott is professor in Law, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In 2023, the world witnessed a sustained attack on the very foundations of the international legal order.

Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, continued its illegal invasion in Ukraine. Israel’s response to the deadly October attack by Hamas exceeded its legitimate right to self-defence. And Venezuela threatened force against Guyana over an oil-rich area of disputed territory.

But is it all bad news for the international legal order?

• READ MORE: South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next
• Myanmar charged with genocide of Rohingya Muslims: 5 essential reads

There are six ongoing international court cases initiated by states or organisations seeking to clarify the law and hold other states to account on behalf of the international community.

These cases offer smaller countries, such as New Zealand, an opportunity to have a significant role in strengthening the international legal order and ensuring a pathway towards peace.

A departure from the legal norm?
Normally, cases are brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when a state’s direct interests are impacted by the actions of another state.

However, six recent court cases reflect a significant departure from this tradition and mark an important development for international justice.

These cases argue the international community has a collective interest in certain issues. The focus of the cases range from Israel’s actions in Gaza (brought by South Africa) through to the responsibility of states to ensure the protection of the climate system (brought by the United Nations General Assembly).

South Africa’s justice minister Ronald Lamola outlined the country’s genocide case against Israel, as a landmark hearing opened at the International Court of Justice pic.twitter.com/AvlM8BwhQI

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Holding states accountable for genocide
Three of the six cases seek to hold states accountable for genocide using Article IX of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Put simply, Article IX says disputes between countries can be referred to the ICJ.

In late December, South Africa asked the court to introduce provisional measures — a form of international injunction — against Israel for genocidal acts in Gaza.

These proceedings build on the precedent set by a 2019 case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya people.

In 2022, the ICJ concluded it had jurisdiction to hear The Gambia’s case on the basis that all parties to the Genocide Convention have an interest in ensuring the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide.

According to the ICJ, The Gambia did not need to demonstrate any special interest or injury to bring the proceedings and, in effect, was entitled to hold Myanmar to account for its treatment of the Rohingya people on behalf of the international community as a whole.

South Africa has made the same argument against Israel.

In the third case, Ukraine was successful in obtaining provisional measures calling on Russia to suspend military operations in Ukraine (a call which has been reiterated in several United Nations General Assembly resolutions).

While Ukraine is directly impacted by Russia’s actions, 32 states, including New Zealand, have also intervened. These countries have argued there is an international interest in the resolution of the conflict.

In November 2023, following the example of intervention in Ukraine v Russia, seven countries — Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (jointly) and the Maldives — filed declarations of intervention in The Gambia v Myanmar, in support of The Gambia and the international community.

States can apply for permission to intervene in proceedings where they have an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the decision in the case (in the case of the ICJ, under Article 62 of the ICJ Statute). That said, intervening in judicial proceedings in support of the legal order or international community more generally was relatively rare until 2023.

South Africa is taking Israel to the ICJ, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s @nabilabana explains what’s behind the case pic.twitter.com/Hv9R4orEa8

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Climate change obligations under international law
But it is not just acts of genocide that have attracted wider international legal involvement.

In 2023, three proceedings seeking advisory opinions on the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change under international law have been introduced before the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

These cases can be similarly characterised as having been brought on behalf of the international community for the international community. New Zealand has intervened in the Law of the Sea case.

Collectively, these six cases comprise actions taken on behalf of the international community with the overarching purpose of strengthening the international legal order.

They demonstrate faith in and support for that legal order in the face of internal and external challenges, and constitute an important counter-narrative to the prevailing view that the international legal order is no longer robust.

Instituting proceedings does not guarantee a positive outcome. But it is worth noting that less than three years after the ICJ issued an advisory opinion condemning the United Kingdom’s continued occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, the UK is quietly negotiating with Mauritius for the return of the islands.

New Zealand’s support for the global legal order in 2024
The international legal order underpins New Zealand’s security and prosperity. New Zealand has a strong and internationally recognised track record of positive intervention in judicial proceedings in support of that order.

In 2012 New Zealand intervened in the case brought by Australia against Japan for whaling in the Antarctic. Following our contributions to cases before the ICJ and ITLOS in 2023, we are well placed to continue that intervention in future judicial proceedings.

Calls have already been made for New Zealand to intervene in South Africa v Israel. Contributing to this case and to The Gambia v Myanmar proceeding provides an important opportunity for New Zealand to make a proactive and substantive contribution to strengthening the international legal order.

Dr Karen Scott is professor in Law, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The world is split between those who have crafted a self-serving global and regional order that guarantees them impunity whatever their crimes, and those who pay the price for that arrangement.

Now the long-time victims are fighting back at the so-called World Court.

Last week, each side presented its arguments for and against whether Israel has implemented a genocidal policy in Gaza over the past three months.

South Africa’s case should be open and shut. So far Israel has killed or seriously wounded close to 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has damaged or destroyed more than 60 percent of the population’s homes. It has bombed the tiny “safe zones” to which it has ordered some two million Palestinians to flee. It has exposed them to starvation and lethal disease by cutting off aid and water.

Meanwhile, senior Israeli political and military officials have openly and repeatedly expressed genocidal intent, as South Africa’s submission so carefully documents.

Back in September, before Hamas’ break-out from the Gaza prison on 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shown the United Nations a map of his aspiration for what he termed “the New Middle East”. The Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank were gone, replaced by Israel.

Despite the mass of evidence against Israel, it could take years for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to reach a definitive verdict – by which time, if things carry on as they are, there may be no meaningful Palestinian population left to protect.

South Africa has therefore also urgently requested an interim order effectively requiring Israel to stop its attack.

Opposing corners

They are in opposite corners because each drew a different lesson from their respective traumatic historical legacies.

Israel raised its citizens to believe that Jews must join the racist, oppressor nations, adopting a “might makes right” approach to neighbouring states. A self-declared Jewish state sees the region as a zero-sum battleground in which domination and brutality win the day.

It was inevitable that Israel would eventually spawn, in Hamas and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed opponents who view their conflict with Israel in a similar light.

South Africa, by contrast, has aspired to carry the mantel of “moral beacon” nation, that western states so readily ascribe to their top-dog, nuclear-armed Middle Eastern client state, Israel.

South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela, famously observed in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Israel and apartheid South Africa were close diplomatic and military allies until apartheid’s fall 30 years ago. Mandela understood that the ideological foundations of Zionism and apartheid were built on a similar racial supremacist logic.

He was once cast as a terrorist villain for opposing South Africa’s apartheid rulers, much as Palestinian leaders are by Israel today.

Jackboot of colonialism

It should also not surprise us that lined up in Israel’s corner is most of the West – led by Washington and Germany, the country that instigated the Holocaust. Berlin asked last Friday to be considered a third party in Israel’s defence at The Hague.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s case is backed by much of what is called the “developing world”, which has long felt the jackboot of western colonialism – and racism – on its face.

Notably, Namibia was incensed by Germany’s support for Israel at the court, given that at the outset of the 20th century, the colonial German regime in south-west Africa herded many tens of thousands of Namibians into death camps, developing the blueprint for the genocide of Jews and Roma it would later refine in the Holocaust.

The Namibian president, Hage Geingob, stated: “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

The panel of judges – 17 of them in total – do not exist in some rarified bubble of legal abstraction. Intense political pressures in this polarised fight will bear down on them.

As former UK ambassador Craig Murray, who attended the two days of hearings, observed: most of the judges looked as if they “really did not want to be in the court”.

‘Nobody will stop us’

The reality is that, whichever way the majority in the court swings in its decision, the crushing power of the West to get its way will shape what happens next.

If most of the judges find it plausible that there is a risk Israel is committing genocide and insist on some sort of interim ceasefire until it can make a definitive ruling, Washington will block enforcement through its veto at the UN Security Council.

Expect the US, as well as Europe, to work harder than ever to undermine international law and its supporting institutions. Imputations of antisemitism on the part of the judges who back South Africa’s case – and the states to which they belong – will be liberally spread around.

Already Israel has accused South Africa of a “blood libel”, suggesting its motives at the ICJ are driven by antisemitism. In his address to the court, Tal Becker of the Israeli foreign ministry argued that South Africa was acting as a legal surrogate for Hamas.

The US has implied much the same by calling South Africa’s meticulous amassing of evidence “meritless”.

On Saturday, in a speech littered with deceptions, Netanyahu vowed to ignore the court’s ruling if it was not to Israel’s liking. “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anybody else,” he said.

On the other hand, if the ICJ rules at this stage anything less than that there is a plausible case for genocide, Israel and the Biden administration will seize on the verdict to mischaracterise Israel’s assault on Gaza as receiving a clean bill of health from the World Court.

That will be a lie. The judges are being asked only to rule on the matter of genocide, the gravest of the crimes against humanity, where the evidential bar is set very high indeed.

In an international legal system in which nation-states are accorded far more rights than ordinary people, the priority is giving states the freedom to wage wars in which civilians are likely to pay the heaviest price. The gargantuan profits of the West’s military-industrial complex depend on this intentional lacuna in the so-called “rules of war”.

If the court finds – whether for political or legal reasons – that South Africa has failed to make a plausible case, it will not absolve Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indisputably, it is carrying out both.

Foot dragging

Nonetheless, any reticence on the part of the ICJ will be duly noted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), its heavily compromised sister court. Its job is not to adjudicate between states like the World Court but to gather evidence for the prosecution of individuals who order or carry out war crimes.

It is currently gathering evidence to decide whether to investigate Israeli and Hamas officials over the events of the past three months.

But for years, the same court has been dragging its feet on prosecuting Israeli officials over war crimes that long predate the current assault on Gaza, such as Israel’s decades of building illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and Israel’s 17-year siege of Gaza – the rarely mentioned context for Hamas’ break-out on 7 October.

The ICC similarly baulked at prosecuting US and British officials over the war crimes their states carried out in invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.

That followed an intimidation campaign from Washington, which imposed sanctions on the court’s two most senior officials, including freezing their US assets, blocking their international financial transactions and denying them and their families entry to the US.

Terror campaign

Israel’s central argument against genocide last week was that it is defending itself after it was attacked on 7 October, and that the real genocide is being carried out by Hamas against Israel.

Such a claim should be roundly dismissed by the World Court. Israel has no right to defend its decades-long occupation and siege of Gaza, the background to the events of 7 October. And it cannot claim it is targeting a few thousand Hamas fighters when it is bombing, displacing and starving Gaza’s entire civilian population.

Even if Israel’s military campaign is not intended to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza, as all statements by the Israeli cabinet and military officials indicate, it is nonetheless still directed primarily at civilians.

On the most charitable reading, given the facts, Palestinian civilians are being bombed and killed en masse to cause terror. They are being ethnically cleansed to depopulate Gaza. And they are being subjected to a horrifying form of collective punishment in Israel’s “complete siege” that denies them food, water and power – leading to starvation and exposure to lethal disease – to weaken their will to resist their occupation and seek liberation from absolute Israeli control.

If all of this is the only way Israel can “eradicate Hamas” – its stated goal – then it reveals something Israel and its western patrons would rather we all ignore: that Hamas is so deeply embedded in Gaza precisely because its implacable resistance looks like the only reasonable response to a Palestinian population ever more suffocated by the tightening chokehold of oppression Israel has inflicted on Gaza for decades.

Israel’s weeks of carpet bombing have left Gaza uninhabitable for the vast majority of the population, who have no homes to return to and little in the way of functioning infrastructure. Without massive and constant aid, which Israel is blocking, they will gradually die of dehydration, famine, cold and disease.

In these circumstances, Israel’s actual defence against genocide is an entirely conditional one: it is not committing genocide only if it has correctly estimated that sufficient pressure will mount on Egypt that it feels compelled – or bullied – into opening its border with Gaza and allowing the population to escape.

If Cairo refuses, and Israel does not change course, the people of Gaza are doomed. In a rightly ordered world, a claim of reckless indifference as to whether the Palestinians of Gaza die from conditions Israel has created should be no defence against genocide.

War business as usual

The difficulty for the World Court is that it is on trial as much as Israel – and will lose whichever way it rules. Legal facts and the court’s credibility are in direct conflict with western strategic priorities and war industry profits.

The risk is the judges may feel the safest course is to “split the difference”.

They may exonerate Israel of genocide based on a technicality, while insisting it do more of what it isn’t doing at all: protecting the “humanitarian needs” of Gaza’s people.

Israel dangled just such a technicality before the judges last week like a juicy carrot. Its lawyers argued that, because Israel had not responded to the genocide case made by South Africa at the time of its filing, there was no dispute between the two states. The World Court, Israel suggested, therefore lacked jurisdiction because its role is to settle such disputes.

If accepted, it would mean, as former ambassador Murray noted, that, absurdly, states could be exonerated of genocide simply by refusing to engage with their accusers.

Aeyal Gross, a professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, told the Haaretz newspaper he expected the court to reject any limitations on Israel’s military operations. It would focus instead on humanitarian measures to ease the plight of Gaza’s population.

He also noted that Israel would insist it was already complying – and carry on as before.

The one sticking point, Gross suggested, would be a demand from the World Court that Israel allow international investigators access to the enclave to assess whether war crimes had been committed.

It is precisely this kind of “war business as usual” that will discredit the court – and the international humanitarian law it is supposed to uphold.

Vacuum of leadership

As ever, it is not the West that the world can look to for meaningful leadership on the gravest crises it faces or for efforts to de-escalate conflict.

The only actors showing any inclination to put into practice the moral obligation that should fall to states to intervene to stop genocide are the “terrorists”.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is putting pressure on Israel by incrementally building a second front in the north, while the Houthis in Yemen are improvising their own form of economic sanctions on international shipping passing through the Red Sea.

The US and Britain responded at the weekend with air strikes on Yemen, turning up the heat even higher and threatening to tip the region into a wider war.

With its own investments in the Suez Canal threatened, China, unlike the West, seems desperate to cool things down. Beijing proposed this week an Israel-Palestine peace conference involving a much wider circle of states.

The goal is to loosen Washington’s malevolent stranglehold on pretend “peace-making” and bind all the parties to a commitment to create a Palestinian state.

The West’s narrative is that anyone outside its club – from South Africa and China to Hezbollah and the Houthis – is the enemy, threatening Washington’s “rules-based order”.

But it is that very order that looks increasingly self-serving and discredited – and the foundation for a genocide being inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza in broad daylight.

• First published in Middle East Eye

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Pacific Media Watch

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Israel’s legal team “started off weak” but made a few strong points near the end.

Bishara said the lawyers’ efforts at the genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague yesterday to deflect blame for Israel’s attacks and ignore the context of Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine came across as “illogical”, the Al Jazeera video clip reports.

Their claims that Israel’s forces are “trying to protect, rather than harm”, civilians were also unconvincing, he said, given the toll of the war: 23,357 Palestinians, including 9,600 children, since October 7.

• READ MORE: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza ‘chilling’ in detail
• ICJ genocide case: What are Israel’s arguments and do they hold up?

However, Bishara said Israel’s lawyers did well to zero in on the jurisdiction of the ICJ — pointing out that the court must specifically prove Israel was guilty of genocidal intent, not any other violations.

“You can claim Israel has committed heinous crimes, but if they do not fall under the framework of genocide, the court has no jurisdiction,” Bishara said.

Speaking to reporters outside the ICJ in The Hague, Palestinian Foreign Ministry official Ammar Hijazi said Israel’s legal team was not “able to provide any solid arguments on the basis of fact and law”.

“What Israel has provided today are many of the already debunked lies,” he added, referring to, among others, Israeli clams that hospitals in Gaza were being used as military bases.

“Additionally, we think that what the Israeli team today has tried to provide is the exact thing that South Africa came to the court for — and that is, nothing at all justifies genocide.”

Thomas MacManus, a senior lecturer in state crime at Queen Mary University of London, said the ICJ was likely to see a “massive disconnect” between the picture Israel painted of its humanitarian concern for Gaza and “the reality on the ground where UN agencies say people are starving, lacking water, and seeing attacks on hospitals, schools, and universities.”

‘Nothing can ever justify genocide’
South Africa’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola told media “Self-defence is no answer to genocide”.

Here are the main points from his interaction:

• “”Israel failed to disprove South Africa’s compelling case that was presented;
• Israel tells the court that statements read out by senior Israeli political, military and civilian society leaders are simply rhetorical, and we shall not ascribe them any importance;
• “There is no debate about what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s term ‘Amalek’ means and how it is understood by soldiers fighting on the ground and by the Israelis;
• “How can you ignore Netanyahu’s statement, the statement of the defence minister and the ground forces? That is a clear implementation of policy.
• “Israel chose to focus extensively on the events of October 7. South Africa has not ignored this event as Israel alleged because it has unequivocally condemned and continues to condemn October 7; and
• “Self-defence is no answer to genocide. Nothing can ever justify genocide.”

Marwan Bishara comments on the Israeli ICJ defence. Video: Al Jazeera

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign.

Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

South Africa’s 84-page brief argues that Israel’s bombing campaign and siege breaches the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead.

The Biden administration led the way late last week in dismissing South Africa’s detailed legal brief as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

That would sound patently ridiculous to western audiences had they been provided with serious coverage of Gaza. But Israel has been heavily restricting access to the enclave, while killing Palestinian journalists there at an unprecedented rate to stop their reporting.

In addition, western media are willingly – and secretly – submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

Incitement to genocide

Israel’s “strategic goal” at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack.

Israeli officials will argue, Axios reports, that its sustained assault on Gaza fails to reach the threshold of genocide, which requires “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population, together with the intent to annihilate it”.

Israel will try to convince the judges that it has been seeking to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and minimise the toll on civilians.

Its argument flies in the face of the evidence South Africa has amassed.

Its brief contains nine pages of declarations by Israeli leaders showing clear genocidal intent, including statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior figures in the cabinet, President Isaac Herzog and many serving and former Israeli military commanders.

Giora Eiland, an adviser to war council minister, Benny Gantz, has called Israel’s goal the creation of “conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable”. An Israeli military spokesman stated from the outset that the aim was to inflict “maximum damage” on Gaza.

Herzog suggests the entire civilian population is a legitimate military target, while Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians as “Amalek”, a biblical enemy. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites, putting “to death men and women, children and infants”.

One of the provisions of the Genocide Convention is an absolute prohibition on incitement to genocide. Israel’s most senior politicians and military commanders have indisputably breached that section of the convention.

A letter to Israel’s attorney general last week from a group of Israeli academics, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists underscored that point. They warned that incitement to genocide had become “an everyday matter in Israel”.

The letter added: “Normalised discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers [in Gaza] conduct themselves.”

Taking the gloves off

But dehumanisation – the precursor to genocide – is not the only problem.

Israel’s prosecution of what it terms a “war to eradicate Hamas” has fully met its own definition of genocide. “Conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population” were already being created long before the onslaught Israel unleashed immediately after Hamas broke out from Gaza on 7 October. Some 1,140 Israelis and other nationals were killed in the ensuing carnage.

The BBC and other media outlets keep revisiting the crimes Hamas committed on October 7, but have failed to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens that day, often in grotesque fashion.

My latest article can be read here: https://t.co/MHxdUxRrCV

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 15, 2023

Mostly forgotten in the back and forth about what is unfolding in the enclave is the context: United Nations officials warned nearly a decade ago that Israel’s siege of Gaza – now 17 years in duration – was designed to make the enclave “uninhabitable”.

In other words, Israel was precisely “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

Even before its current, extended assault, Israel had placed severe restrictions on access to water for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. As a direct result, overstretched aquifers under Gaza were allowing in seawater, making the enclave’s drinking water unfit for human consumption.

Food was similarly in short supply. Back in 2012, Israeli human rights groups managed to make public a secret document showing that the army had been tightly controlling food going into Gaza from 2008 onwards. As a result, two-thirds of the population was food insecure, and every 10th child was stunted by malnutrition. The aim was to induce long-term food poverty, effectively putting the population on a starvation diet.

Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the past 15 years – what Israel calls “mowing the grass” – destroyed many of its homes and much of the infrastructure, creating ever greater overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

Israel’s repeated bombing of Gaza’s only power station, and its chokehold on supplying additional energy, limited electricity to a few hours a day.

The Israeli siege blocked medicines and medical equipment from entering the enclave, often making serious health conditions difficult or impossible to treat. And given the Israeli-imposed restrictions of goods in and out of Gaza, the economy was already in ruins, with nearly half the population unemployed.

Long ago, back in 2016, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Herzi Halevi, warned that the catastrophe Israel was engineering in Gaza could blow up in its face – as indeed it did on 7 October.

Israel’s three-month rampage has simply accelerated and intensified all the genocidal policies that had long been established. Hamas’s break-out simply gave Israel licence to take the gloves off.

Gaza ‘uninhabitable’

This is why the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared last week that Gaza had reached the point where it was indeed “uninhabitable”.

He added: “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”

With the vast majority of the population homeless and most hospitals no longer functioning, infectious disease was spreading.

Israel’s “complete siege” policy meant aid could not get in. According to Griffiths, Israel had destroyed roads, blocked communication systems, and was shooting at UN trucks and killing aid workers.

Returning from a visit to the border crossing with Egypt, two US senators observed at the weekend that Israel had imposed unreasonable conditions creating endless delays that prevented aid from reaching the people of Gaza.

In other words, Israel has now successfully “created conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

The aim of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted in the immediate wake of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, was not simply to punish those who carry out genocides.

It was designed to help identify a genocide in its early stages, and create a mechanism – through the rulings of the International Court of Justice – by which it could be halted.

In other words, the purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.

Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee.

Israeli leaders have encouraged this assumption. In an interview on Sunday, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, noted of Gaza’s population that – after being bombed, made homeless, starved and left vulnerable to disease – “hundreds of thousands will leave now”. Duplicitiously, he termed this a “voluntary” mass emigration.

But such an outcome – itself a crime against humanity – entirely depends on Egypt opening its borders to allow Palestinians to flee the killing fields. If Cairo refuses to submit to Israel’s violent blackmail, it will be Israel’s bombs, the famine it inflicted, and the lethal diseases it unleashed that decimate Gaza’s population.

The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or “only” ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

Line in the sand

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties.

A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide.

That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it.

Leaders in the UK such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer have steadfastly opposed a ceasefire and thrown their weight behind a central pillar of Israel’s genocidal policy: the “complete siege” of Gaza that has left the population starving and facing lethal epidemics.

The British and US governments have rejected all calls to stop the flow of arms. The Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including indiscriminate “dumb” bombs that are laying waste to civilian areas.

Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has regularly been featured by British media making genocidal statements. Just last week, when an interviewer noted that she appeared to be calling for the destruction of the whole of Gaza – every school, mosque and home – she answered: “Do you have another solution?”

British and US media have given airtime to Israeli officials who openly incite genocide.

All that would have to stop immediately after a ruling. The police in western nations would be expected to investigate and the courts prosecute those inciting genocide or providing a platform for incitement.

States would be expected to deny Israel weapons and impose economic sanctions on Israel – as well as on any states that collude in the genocide.

Israeli officials would risk arrest for travelling to western countries.

Double standards

In practice, of course, none of that is likely to happen. Israel is far too important to the West – as a projection of its power into the oil-rich Middle East – to be sacrificed.

Any effort to enforce a genocide ruling through the UN Security Council will be blocked by the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the UK, along with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have already demonstrated how unabashed they are about their own double standards.

Weeks ago they submitted formal arguments to the International Court of Justice that Myanmar was committing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group. Their central argument was that the Rohingya were being subjected “to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes, and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement”.

But none of these western states is backing South Africa’s genocide submission to the same court – even though conditions in Gaza engineered by Israel are even worse.

The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too.

Israel has been at the forefront of efforts to unravel international law in Gaza for more than a decade. Now it is ostentatiously flaunting its perpetration of the crime of genocide, as if daring the world to stop it.

Perversely, it is reversing the very international safeguards put in place to stop a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.

Will the West defy Israel or the court? The post-war consensus that serves as the foundation for international law – already shaken by the failure to address the West’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – is on the verge of complete collapse.

And no one will be happier with that outcome than the state of Israel.

• First published in Middle East Eye

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

On January 11th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is holding its first hearing in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The first provisional measure South Africa has asked of the court is to order an immediate end to this carnage, which has already killed more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel is trying  to bomb Gaza into oblivion and scatter the terrorized survivors across the Earth, meeting the Convention’s definition of genocide to the letter.

Since countries engaged in genocide do not publicly declare their real goal, the greatest legal hurdle for any genocide prosecution is to prove the intention of genocide. But in the extraordinary case of Israel, whose cult of biblically ordained entitlement is backed to the hilt by unconditional U.S. complicity, its leaders have been uniquely brazen about their goal of destroying Gaza as a haven of Palestinian life, culture and resistance.

South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ includes ten pages (starting on page 59) of statements by Israeli civilian and military officials that document their genocidal intentions in Gaza. They include statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, five other cabinet ministers, senior military officers and members of parliament. Reading these statements, it is hard to see how a fair and impartial court could fail to recognize the genocidal intent behind the death and devastation Israeli forces and American weapons are wreaking in Gaza.

The Israeli magazine +972 talked to seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials involved in previous assaults on Gaza. They explained the systematic nature of Israel’s targeting practices and how the range of civilian infrastructure that Israel is targeting has been vastly expanded in the current onslaught. In particular, it has expanded the bombing of civilian infrastructure, or what it euphemistically defines as “power targets,” which have comprised half of its targets from the outset of this war.

Israel’s “power targets” in Gaza include public buildings like hospitals, schools, banks, government offices, and high-rise apartment blocks. The public pretext for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is that civilians will blame Hamas for its destruction, and that this will undermine its civilian base of support. This kind of brutal logic has been proved wrong in U.S.-backed conflicts all over the world. In Gaza, it is no more than a grotesque fantasy. The Palestinians understand perfectly well who is bombing them – and who is supplying the bombs.

Intelligence officials told +972 that Israel maintains extensive occupancy figures for every building in Gaza, and has precise estimates of how many civilians will be killed in each building it bombs. While Israeli and U.S. officials publicly disparage Palestinian casualty figures, intelligence sources told +972 that the Palestinian death counts are remarkably consistent with Israel’s own estimates of how many civilians it is killing. To make matters worse, Israel has started using artificial intelligence to generate targets with minimal human scrutiny, and is doing so faster than its forces can bomb them.

Israeli officials claim that each of the high-rise apartment buildings it bombs contains some kind of Hamas presence, but an intelligence official explained, “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Yuval Abraham of +972 summarized, “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.”

Two days after South Africa submitted its Genocide Convention application to the ICJ, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich declared on New Year’s Eve that Israel should substantially empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and bring in Israeli settlers. “If we act in a strategically correct way and encourage emigration,” Smotrich said, “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million, the whole discourse on “the day after” will be completely different.”

When reporters confronted U.S. State Department spokesman Matt Miller about Smotrich’s statement, and similar ones by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Miller replied that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have reassured the United States that those statements don’t reflect Israeli government policy.

But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s statements followed a meeting of Likud Party leaders on Christmas Day where Netanyahu himself said that his plan was to continue the massacre until the people of Gaza have no choice but to leave or to die. “Regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem with that,” he told former Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon. “Our problem is not allowing the exit, but a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in. And we are working on it. This is the direction we are going in.”

We should have learned from America’s lost wars that mass murder and ethnic cleansing rarely lead to political victory or success. More often they only feed deep resentment and desires for justice or revenge that make peace more elusive and conflict endemic.

Although most of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, Israel and the United States politically justify the massacre as a campaign to destroy Hamas by killing its senior leaders. Andrew Cockburn described in his book Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins how, in 200 cases studied by U.S. military intelligence, the U.S. campaign to assassinate Iraqi resistance leaders in 2007 led in every single case to increased attacks on U.S. occupation forces. Every resistance leader they killed was replaced within 48 hours, invariably by new, more aggressive leaders determined to prove themselves by killing even more U.S. troops.

But that is just another unlearned lesson, as Israel and the United States kill Islamic Resistance leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, risking a regional war and leaving themselves more isolated than ever.

If the ICJ issues a provisional order for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanity must seize the moment to insist that Israel and the United States must finally end this genocide and accept that the rule of international law applies to all nations, including themselves.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

Such a judgment would require Israel to comply with the cessation of very specific terms regarding the offending actions and policies, and with positive remedial actions and reparations to the damage already done, such as provision of food, medicine, shelter, fuel and other requirements of survival that Israel has taken from the population of Gaza. The judgment is also binding on all nations that enable the genocidal actions, such as (and especially) the US. Furthermore, all leaders and individuals who participated in genocidal actions and policies, as well as those who aid and abet, are prosecutable under the Genocide Convention.

A lot of hope is being placed in the ruling of the ICJ. But even if the decision is, as expected, a powerful one, the only enforcement mechanism is the agreement of the parties to the convention that they will take all necessary actions to end the culpable actions and prosecute the perpetrators.

Will Israel comply with the court’s decision? Will the US? Neither nation has much respect for international law, so we may assume that neither country will do anything but denounce the ICJ and South Africa as antisemitic and offer angry excuses for refusing to comply with the convention to which they both agreed. Nevertheless, the ruling may be effective in ending the genocide, in other ways, as follows:

1.     The South African complaint contains massive amounts of evidence, the most damning of which have not been widely reported by the western mainstream press, which is sympathetic and/or beholden to Israel. The publicity surrounding the court case will help to expose these facts and bring them to the attention of a wider audience.

2.     Legislators and policy makers that have thus far followed the dictates of the powerful Israel Lobby may detect weakness in Israel’s position, and simultaneously their own vulnerability before their constituents if they do not back the ICJ ruling, challenging the “special relationship” between Israel, the US and other NATO countries.

3.     There will be great public agitation to hold Israel accountable. Demonstrations will become larger and more widespread. Calls and letters to legislators and other public officials will increase in number and frequency.

4.     Tainted by the ICJ decision, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party will feel increasingly threatened by loss of seats and power in the 2024 elections. Already, seventeen staffers of Biden’s reelection committee have published a letter, calling on him to use US power to create a ceasefire now in Gaza or face disastrous consequences in the November elections.

5.     In the face of an ICJ conviction of Israel, nations that have until now not taken a strong position will feel empowered to respect their obligations under the convention, and engage more fully in a concerted effort to pressure Israel through sanctions and diplomatic measures. China, Russia, India and the Arab monarchies, in particular, may find it untenable to maintain normal relations, and will participate in a growing consensus to compel Israel to end the genocide.

I did not include in the above points any consequences from within Israel itself, whether at the political or popular level. This is because I do not expect that an ICJ conviction per se will cause a change. The Israeli government, armed forces and even the population have become so radicalized and bloodthirsty that only practical measures such as suspension of arms deliveries, economic aid and loss of markets for Israeli products and services (mainly military in character) are capable of effecting a halt to Israeli determination to continue the genocide to its conclusion.

But the results that I describe above are by no means certain. They are only the best case that we can realistically hope for. They depend upon principled actions in great numbers around the globe, and we don’t even know if that will be enough, only that it will not happen without such action.

Furthermore, the most that the ICJ ruling is likely to produce in the short run is an indefinite (but not necessarily permanent) ceasefire and humanitarian aid to the Gaza population. There is increasing discussion in Israel, the US and the UN about what Gaza will look like after the fighting ends. As usual, the voices of the people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine will be disregarded. Israel wants the population to disappear, but its fallback position is to eliminate Hamas, install a compliant puppet government and return to a sealed concentration camp that will impoverish and crush the hopes of the people.

The US and Europe will undoubtedly accept this “solution”, after halfheartedly arguing for better economic opportunity and more freedom. But it is totally unrealistic, because the Palestinians themselves will never accept the status quo ante. Neither is it feasible to eliminate Hamas, because its goals and methods will remain with unlimited replacements for the leaders, fighters and adherents. You can’t kill an idea. Any solution that denies them the freedom enjoyed by all countries, to travel to and trade directly with other nations and to provide for their own defense, among other normal rights of nations, will most definitely be rejected. They expect and will demand these rights, and reparations as well, for the crimes committed against them.

Some have suggested a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli agreement that finally creates two states, which has eluded negotiators for many decades. But there is no reason to suppose this will be any more achievable now than with the Oslo Agreement. The Israelis will readily agree to such negotiations, with the interim solution being a return to the Palestinian concentration camp, with continuing encroachment by Israeli settlements. israel loves endless negotiations that go nowhere, but the Palestinians are not fools. They will never accept it, even if the puppet Palestinian Authority does.

Even if the fanciful possibility of a two-state solution is achieved, with a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one, the problem will not end. How and why did the genocide come about in the first place? The answer is simple: it’s because genocide is at the core of the Zionist objective: a Jewish state. Such a state must be founded on genocide, because it is impossible to create or maintain it without removing or eliminating most or all of the non-Jews. Since the founding of the Zionist movement in the 19th century, this has been a foundational principle, set forth in its formative documents.

That principle is not going to go away with the creation of two states. In the ideology of Zionism, two states would be a temporary accommodation on the road to its mission. If there are two states, the Jewish one will continue to repress and expel its 20% Palestinian minority in order to prevent it from becoming too large, which many Israelis think it already is. It will still have plans to retake Sinai, south Lebanon, the East Bank, and of course the West Bank and Gaza, and to use forms of genocide in all of the territory that it controls.

Legal scholar Daniel Machover, who predicts and sees the need for an ICJ ruling of genocide against Israel, nevertheless fails to see this source of the problem. He insists on preserving the existence of a racist Zionist state that will ultimately destroy the two-state solution that he foresees. So do many other shortsighted scholars, analysts and politicians.

But don’t worry. The two-state “solution” will never see the light of day. Palestinians will insist on the same rights and privileges as all persons in all countries, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. and they will continue to resist until they get them. The only workable alternative to annihilation of one side by the other is most likely the South African model of a single state with equal rights for all, in which case the destructive, self-destructive, racist and supremacist ideology of Zionism will vanish into the dustbin of history.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

Two years ago New Zealand joined 22 other countries in supporting the Ukrainian case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its invasion of Ukraine.

We sent a legal team to The Hague where the ICJ is based and our representatives spoke directly to the court on New Zealand’s behalf. We used international law to argue the Russian invasion was illegal and warranted sanction by the ICJ.

Successive New Zealand governments for as long as I can remember have said we believe in an “international rules-based order” of which the ICJ and the ICC are an important part.

• READ MORE: A textbook case of genocide
• Jordan backs South Africa ICJ genocide file against Israel over Gaza atrocities

This makes sense because we are a small country without the economic or military clout to take unilateral action to protect our interests. Like other small countries we rely on international rules to provide a measure of protection when bigger countries, like Russia in this case, break the rules.

We have used such rules ourselves by making applications to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when our trade interests have been threatened. Without such rules the biggest bully will win every time.

Last week South Africa filed papers at the ICJ alleging Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 12 weeks amount to genocide.

South Africa said it “is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants”.

It described its case saying “acts and omissions by Israel . . .  are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . .  to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

Their court papers go on to claim that, “the conduct of Israel — through its state organs, state agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

This case is important because Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and South Africa are all signatories of the Genocide Convention and are bound to abide by any decision made by the court.

The most important part of South Africa’s case is its application for an interim injunction to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killing immediately. If this interim injunction is successful it could put in place an immediate ceasefire to end the war and Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

It would allow unfettered humanitarian aid to enter Gaza where the need for food, water, fuel, medicine and vaccinations is desperate.

This is the outcome the majority of people in New Zealand, and across the world, want to see. New Zealand should back up the South African case which is most likely to get a first hearing on January 11.

Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised at claims of genocide.

Genocide always begins with words and there is a wealth of reporting on the dehumanising language being used by Israel’s political and military leaders to set the scene for what has followed.

For example, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, and two days after the attack Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant spelt out genocidal intentions saying:

“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

Israelis more generally have taken up this talk across social media with calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed”. More tragic is a social media post showing Israeli children singing “we will annihilate everyone” in Gaza.

Israel’s Defence Minister’s statement matches the UN Convention closely to the point where Israeli scholar of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal, has described Israel’s rhetoric and actions as “a textbook case of genocide”.

It is clear Israel’s political and military leaders have a case to answer before the International Court of Justice, just as Russia does for its invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa has filed a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. International law expert Francis Boyle, who has argued successfully at the ICJ, says he believes “South Africa will win an order against Israel.” pic.twitter.com/4Ebz02vxVc

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 2, 2024

As well as backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice we should also call for a swift, well-resourced International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes committed in the October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response.

This investigation should include examining the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

Palestinians deserve our support as much as the people of Ukraine.

John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The campaign started two weeks ago with an open call for people to join in a petition and letter-writing campaign urging countries to invoke the genocide convention and charge Israel with genocide in the International Court of Justice. Since then, over 30,000 people signed the petition, accompanied by an impressive 118,290 letters sent to various countries urging support of the cause.

The nationwide delegations of “grassroots diplomats” took on this campaign because officially appointed U.S. diplomats continue to insist on supporting Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, rejecting the sentiments of a majority of people in the U.S. and around the world who want a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby calls South Africa’s 84-page suit accusing Israel of genocide “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Notably, the United States supported Ukraine invoking the Genocide Convention last year in the International Court of Justice with far less evidence.

In the first week of January, delegations of grassroots diplomats embarked on a petition and letter delivery campaign across the United States, urging missions, consulates, and embassies to support South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the U.N. Convention on Genocide. While the visits and deliveries varied from city to city, the overall reception by staff and representatives in each U.N. Mission, Embassy, and Consulate was encouraging and supportive, with some delegations able to meet directly with country representatives.

The NYC delegation visited around 30 U.N. missions, engaging in significant diplomatic efforts. They had a positive meeting with Colombia’s U.N. Ambassador, Arlene Tickner, exploring the potential for a Declaration of Intervention to support South Africa’s legal action. Another meeting took place with the Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the U.N. At the Bolivia Mission, the delegation received a warm reception, providing a letter and petition. A productive meeting occurred with the Bangladesh U.N. Consul, who expressed interest in connecting with legal experts. The NYC team met African Union diplomats who offered support and suggested additional efforts for South Africa. A meeting at the South Africa Mission involved discussions with the counselor and Deputy Permanent Representative. The delegation expressed their gratitude and support to the South African government. The South African representative acknowledged and appreciated the delegation’s work in their peace work.

The D.C. team engaged in diplomatic efforts, meeting with the Deputy Minister at the Colombian Embassy to encourage the Colombian government’s continued stance against Israeli actions and to join South Africa’s case. They visited and submitted their petition to the Ghanaian, Chilean, and Ethiopian Embassies, urging support for South Africa’s case against Israel. The team also had discussions with the Bolivian Embassy. Currently, they are arranging a meeting with the Turkish ambassador to further their diplomatic initiatives.

Three delegations from Miami divided their efforts to visit ten consulates, including those of Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, France, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, and Turkey. The delegations had the opportunity to meet with consular generals from Bolivia, Honduras, and Turkey, all notably welcoming and receptive. In addition, the Miami team reached out to the Turkish ambassador in Washington, D.C., further extending their diplomatic efforts. The Türkiye Consulate in Miami emphasized the visit on their social media platform, underscoring the significance of the engagement.

The Tampa team focused on a single visit to the Greek Consulate, accompanied by a representative from CAIR Florida, based in Tampa. CAIR is a nationwide federation of legally independent chapters dedicated to safeguarding the civil liberties of Americans. The Greek Consulate warmly received the delegation, expressing appreciation for a gift of olive oil. Furthermore, they assured the team they would forward the petition and letter to the Embassy of Greece in Washington, D.C., indicating a positive reception and willingness to address the delegation’s concerns.

Orlando engaged with five consulates representing Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, and Colombia. The meeting at the Haitian Consulate was mainly positive, with a productive discussion with an Assistant Consul urging support for South Africa’s case against Israel. Similarly, the delegation met with the Vice Consular of Colombia, delivered a petition, and urged their support for South Africa’s case against Israel, indicating a proactive approach in advancing their diplomatic efforts.

In Houston, the delegation reported successful engagements during their visits. They met with the Consulate of Belize staff and spoke with Consulate General Francisco Leal of Chile. The Honduran consulate staff extended kindness during their visit. The delegations also visited the Pakistan consulate as part of their diplomatic efforts.

The San Francisco delegation visited three consulates – Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. They engaged with the staff at the Chilean and Brazilian consulates, delivering the petition and letter at the Colombian Consulate, situated in the same building as the Israeli Consulate. Security at the building instructed the delegation to wait outside for a representative. However, the doors were subsequently locked, preventing entry. In response, the delegation affixed the petition and letter to the building’s door to convey their message.

The delegation in Los Angeles visited nine foreign consulates in the city, including Belize, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, Colombia, and Kuwait. The delegation expressed gratitude to the staff at the South African Consulate for South Africa’s filing in the ICJ that charges Israel with genocide. As a goodwill gesture, the activists brought flowers, a simple yet well-received token of peace and unity. They also had an encouraging meeting with Bolivian Consulate Gabriella Silva, who supported the delegation’s effort.

Delegations from Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and San Antonio also made visits to their local Consulates. Prior to deliveries, Turkey, Malaysia, and Slovakia publicly came out in support of South Africa’s filing. Since then, Jordan announced that they will file a “Declaration of Intervention” supporting South Africa’s case.

This grassroots diplomatic effort represents a unified plea for justice, demanding global solidarity against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tireless advocacy seeks to bridge nations in support of South Africa’s pursuit of justice in the International Court of Justice.

Deliveries will continue into the first of next week with the hopes of engaging with as many missions, consulates, and embassies as possible before the start of the ICJ hearing on Jan. 11.

The oral argument of South Africa will take place on Thursday 11th January 2024 and Israel’s oral argument on Friday 12th January 2024. The hearings will be streamed live and on demand on the ICJ’s Website and on the UN Web TV.

The oral argument of South Africa will take place on Thursday 11th January 2024 and Israel’s oral argument on Friday 12th January 2024. The hearings will be streamed live and on demand on the ICJ’s Website and on the UN Web TV.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Melissa Garriga.

Flying Fijians head coach Simon Raiwalui says facing England in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals will be different from when they met last month in Twickenham.

The match in London saw Fiji topple the tier one nation 30-22 for the first time, two weeks away from the World Cup and was described as one of the lowest moments in English rugby history.

The two sides will face-off at Stade de Marseille in a week’s time at 3am.

• READ MORE: Fiji scrapes through to Rugby World Cup quarterfinal despite loss to Portugal
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

“They [England] play rugby to win. They’re very talented. They’ll put a lot of pressure on us at set-piece time as well,” Raiwalui said.

“Tactically, they’ll look to take advantage of some of the things we’ve been doing, so they’re a very good team. It’s going to be a big challenge.”

He said he expected England to change their game a little bit.

“It’s a totally different match [to when Fiji beat England in August], playing a different team. There will be aspects of how they play that are similar but they will bring new stuff as well.

“It’s about us being efficient and doing the things we do well and giving ourselves the best chance to compete.

“We’ve played the team, the boys are comfortable. It’s not the first time, so I think it will be a good match.”

Pacific RWC results
Fiji just scraped into the quarter-finals losing to Portugal 24-23 in their final and deciding pool match in Toulouse on Monday morning.

Other quarter-finals will see Wales battle Argentina in Marseille on Sunday morning, before Ireland and New Zealand clash in Saint Denis the same day.

The fourth semi-final will be between France and South Africa in Saint Denis on Monday morning.

Samoa are out of the World Cup after Sunday’s 18-17 defeat to England and Tonga also had an early exit after ‘Ikale Tahi scored seven tries for a bonus point 45-24 win in Lille to record their only cup win.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In the years following the demise of South Africa’s National Party regime, I watched and waited to see what would happen to the social and economic order that the Anglo-Afrikaner elite had created since the end of the 19th century. As I predicted none of the grand land reform measures, not even those stated in the new constitution or the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Plan were implemented in more than token ways. One of the reasons for this was the victory of neo-liberalism in 1989 over every other form of economic programme. Another was, and remains, the absence of any social-political-economic praxis aimed at social transformation to counter the neo-liberal paradigm. Finally the nature of the NP’s withdrawal was to surrender form without surrendering power.

Actually my interest in these problems goes back to 1986, when by accident I was on a study trip to Brazil. It was the year after the formal end of the military dictatorship instigated by the US in 1962 and executed in 1964. During that trip I was able to interview numerous people involved in the drafting of a new civilian constitution to replace the Atos Institucionais that had formed the basis of military rule for two decades. It was by coincidence that I found myself in a similar position in 1991 when I arrived in Johannesburg.

All that said: I have been studying social engineering for more than thirty years. In the West—to apply a thoroughly worn and yet useful cliché—the DNA of social engineering is the Latin Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church. Since the 18th century but even more in the 20th century there has been a largely successful effort to conceal the extent to which the Latin Church remains the model for effective conquest. Wishful thinking, mendacity, and propaganda have obscured the mechanisms by which the West’s oldest transnational corporation shaped what is today often called the “globalized world”—a euphemism for the planet’s susceptibility to the central ecclesiastical technology—missionary conquest.

In The Art of War (5 BCE), Chinese general, Sun Tzu, explained, “to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” The method of mission is to break the enemy’s resistance.

Colonialism and imperialism over the past four centuries were not merely the extension of high lethality belligerence and larceny by Western barbarians. Numerically the population of the Western peninsula, aka Europe, was always far too small to fight and conquer the world that came to embody the British and now Anglo-American Empire. In fact, this inability of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and later Belgian forces to conquer and fully occupy all the territories they claimed is often used to explain the failures of imperialism and the ultimate victory ascribed to independence movements after 1945. In today’s comparison between empires supposed to have waned or atrophied, like the British or French, and the imperial quality ascribed to the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, invidious and fallacious distinctions are made. The persistence of the multi-ethnic quality of both great continental states is treated as evidence that they are imperial in nature—for which they are regularly condemned in popular and scholarly venues. These states whose alleged empires comprise immediately contiguous territory in which culture and populations have integrated over centuries are compared with the occupation of India, Africa, Indonesia and the Americas by small tribal kingdoms, like Spain, Portugal, France or the Netherlands, Belgium or Great Britain. These kingdoms and republics have supposedly withdrawn to their core principalities and liberated once subjugated peoples. Thus these states, which now constitute the EU, the Commonwealth and the USA, have attained the moral status entitling them to condemn other states for sins they committed and meanwhile allege to have confessed.

This is the general political context in which the empire of the West constitutes itself as the “international community” and the promulgator of “rules”. Those who are not part of this “community” are obliged to follow. Certainly there is a tiny, barely audible voice in that community that tries to assert the primacy of international law or the Law of Nations, as it was once known. Both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China make every effort to remind the world that the Law of Nations, as opposed to the “rules-based” order is the genuine foundation of human civilization and commerce between states.

There are several clear reasons why these efforts have failed to date. First, the historic balance of political-economic forces, including military, had remained for the better part of the 20th century and into the 21st century in the hands of the barbarian West. (For readers who may wonder why I consistently use the term “barbarian”, let me say that it has been these countries, the collective West, that have constituted the most warlike and destructive forces on the planet for the past five hundred years, including the only state to have deployed atomic weapons.) Second, the control of nearly two thirds of the world’s land mass and the inhabitants of those areas has magnified the impact of the barbarian tribes reinforced by naval and air power developed to dominate those territories. This has had the effect of isolating the two huge Asian nations of Russia and China. Third, and probably most importantly, the West developed the most powerful psychic technology for conquest of hearts and minds throughout the planet. This technology is cultural, proprietary and, above all, religious.

It is on this last aspect of Western barbarism that I will focus.

The Latin Church bequeathed to its semi-secular partners in conquest the technology of mission. Previously religion was based either on geography or ethnicity. There were no universal gods and monotheism was a rarity at best. Sigmund Freud offered an explanation for the latter in a late and brief essay called Moses and Monotheism (1939). However, it is not his thesis that concerns me here. In the course of recorded history, to the extent we can rely on it, deities were confined to places and peoples. Travellers, even armies, brought their religions with them while paying due respect even homage to the deities they met on their travels and campaigns. Of course, what this meant was that the sacred places of others were generally treated respectfully even if they did not coincide with one’s own religious worship. When people moved they either brought their own deities or adopted the ones they found in their new homes.

The establishment of cults based on a universal deity was the product of global imperial expansion. However, it first only supported the imperial conquerors by granting that the local god now was free to accompany the soldiers of a marauding army far from its own cultural and ethnic community. The next stage of development was for the universal deity to be adopted by soldiers recruited from territories that had been invaded and conquered. This left the peoples dominated by military conquest possessed of their local and ethnic deities while integrating the foreign troops into an ideologically (religiously) uniform command structure.

When the Latin Church was founded by what was essentially a coup against Hellenistic Christianity based in the Balkans, Black Sea basin and Asia Minor, monotheism acquired a virulence inconsistent with what we know about original Christian praxis and aggressiveness which arguably triggered the militancy of Islam, too. That virulence and aggressiveness was disproportionate to the numbers actually following the Latin deviation. Yet within less than a thousand years this Christian deviation led to the global dominance of the business corporation and the missionary propaganda technology as means of psychological conquest independent of territorial occupation.

How does mission really work?

If one reads any of the standard histories describing the expansion of Christianity in the Western peninsula of Eurasia, the Americas or Africa, great attention is given to the preachers of the Gospel. In some narratives they travelled alone preaching; i.e., orally transmitting—from Scripture and working miracles; i.e., performing acts deemed supernatural or divinely supported. Then there were the preachers accompanying invading armies who not only preached to the soldiers but also construed the results of battle either as divine victories or punishing defeats. Hagiography, the stories of saints, is replete with accounts of wonders that led to conversion of princes and nations to the Holy Church. The precise mechanics of these conversions is generally omitted because it is expected that the readers already accept the divine attributes of the Church and the will of god to increase his flock.

However, the core of the technology of conversion is already recognisable in the myth of Christ, itself. In fact, the true intent of this myth has been marvellously characterised by Jose Saramago in his scandalous novel The Gospel according to Jesus Christ (1991). In a dialogue between the god in question and Jesus of Nazareth, Saramago recounts how this god, aware of all the other competing gods and determined to be the top god, needs people to fight for him against the other gods. He explains to Jesus that people would not fight just for a god—but they would fight for him. Jesus is furious at this revelation and refuses to participate in the god’s plan for domination. The god replies that Jesus is powerless to resist. He can refuse to perform miracles but he will be unable to prove that he did not perform the miracles god stages.

Saramago uses this fable or interpretation of the Gospel to explain the dynamics of “victimhood”. The god sets up Jesus as an ordinary man who suddenly can perform miracles, which draw a following. Then he creates the conditions by which Jesus is persecuted and killed by the State. This galvanizes the cult around Jesus the miracle-worker. The cult angered by the murder of its divine leader seeks revenge. This it can only do by the threat of, or use of, armed force. To exact revenge it must align with those who have the necessary force and win them over to the cult. As members of the vengeful cult they are now in a position to exact revenge or alternatively conversion to the cult. It is this basic materialistic contradiction that fuels the cult’s expansion.

As a rule, and this can be found throughout the missionary activity of Western churches (the Latin Church and its reformed derivatives), local cults and their deities are not easily abandoned. First of all, under the conditions of ethnic or geographic religion there is no reason for an established ethnic group or the traditional inhabitants of a region to “change gods.” Sedentary peoples who remain together as tribes or occupy agricultural and pastoral regions for centuries do not “evolve” their religious beliefs into monotheism. This notion of monotheism as an evolutionary product is part of the 19th century myth of progress many associate with Charles Darwin and sociological followers of his historical interpretations.

As said before military expansion or nomadic barbarism are the social formations from which monotheism emerges as soon as territorial and population conquest require.

The expanding Latin Church overcame this inertia by the refinement of the “victimhood” and its transformation into a method of psychological warfare. The invading Church, let us call it the Church militant, sought and isolated minorities in the targets of conquest. These minorities had little or no power in the communities to which they were attached. Thus they were amenable to preaching—if for no other reason than the allied power to which they were then joined. The adoption of the cult by these minorities endowed them with “purity” compared to the complex majority communities with their geographic and ethnic deities, now viewed as corrupted and sullied by mundane practices. The pure status insinuated virtues proclaimed to be absent among the majority. Naturally in any established community there are various sources of discontent. No system functions perfectly. The longer any system has been in place the more incoherence is certain to have appeared. Hence the first tactic of the new “pure” is to find and recruit the discontented among the majority. It is not necessary that these discontents join the cult of the pure. In fact, it may be detrimental to the overall strategy if they do.

What is important is the capacity of the discontents to be sacrificed for purity. They must be sufficiently dissatisfied that they will act in concert with the pure, wittingly or unwittingly. Here a number of options are possible but to keep it simple we will stick to the “Jesus model”. The potential “Jesus” has to be perceived as a member of the community as a whole. Then he has to articulate grievances that all but the most hard-core defenders of the status quo will admit—even if this admission has no immediate consequences. Then this “Jesus” has to be sacrificed. That means the “Jesus” has to conspicuously suffer and perhaps even die at the hands of the supporters of the status quo. This does not by itself trigger a revolt or overthrow of the prevailing system. In fact, that is not the aim of this strategy. Instead it creates a breach in the perceived legitimization of the extant religion. That breach arises from the fear that the insignificant “Jesus” becomes more than exemplary of the threat to everyone else who harbours the doubts or critiques for which this “Jesus” was persecuted. A latent choice is introduced into an inertial system: align with the pure or risk punishment.

It is important to say that this only works when the pure already enjoy a preponderance of force, even if that force has not yet been applied. Therein lies the difference between missionary conversion and revolutionary mobilisation. For example, it is also the fundamental difference between Maoism and “Sharpism”.

The Christianisation of the western hemisphere and Africa relied on this model. Sometimes this was simplified by the mass extermination of Western barbarian conquest, like in the Americas. Another argument used to explain the effect of missionary conquest is that the defeat of the besieged population on the battlefield discredited the extant religion and deities, leaving the survivors to convert to the “winning god”. However, this argument is insufficient to explain conversion where no such massive battlefield annihilation occurred. Nor does it explain the continued success of the “Jesus” model without explicit armed force.

In this brief essay I would like to apply the “victimhood” or “Jesus” model and by implication its 20th century adaptation in the wake of the “second thirty years war” that was interrupted in 1945.² For more than 30 years—to keep it simple starting in 1989—the world has been subject to an accelerated conversion or social engineering process, euphemistically called “globalisation”. The acceleration or metastasis was made possible by the defeat of the Soviet Union. Every history book one can find today will recount that the Soviet Union failed due to what might be called the errors of its underlying religion; i.e., Marxism-Leninism. Those with less antagonism toward that body of theory will argue that the Soviet Union was bankrupted into collapse. Then ridiculously sentimental will say that “communism failed because even communists realised it was wrong”.

An objective examination of the economic conditions of the two superpowers in 1989 would demonstrate that the Soviet Union did not collapse because it was bankrupt and its economy no longer able to function. The Soviet Union and its antagonist the United States were both in demonstrably ruinous economic condition. In fact, the economic condition of the US never improved after 1989—only the FIRE sector did.³ Moreover there was no military defeat of the Soviet Union. The war started under President Jimmy Carter in Afghanistan was far shorter (for the Russians) than the thirty some years that the US waged war throughout Indochina. The Soviet Union had none of the debt the US accumulated carpet-bombing and murdering millions in Korea between 1950-53.

Three factors led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The first was the accumulated damage done by a century of economic and armed war against the country. US “experts” like George Kennan wrote accurately that it would take the Soviet Union at least twenty years to recover the lost population and economic capacity destroyed by the West’s German-led war against it.⁴ That was with all things being equal—which they were not. Despite the non-stop war against the Soviet Union the country was able to reach nearly its full pre-war capacity by the mid-1960s. Scarcely a common source in the West explains that the occupation of Europe east of the rivers Elbe and Danube was conceded by the West to the Soviet Union in Yalta as an alternative to reparations from Germany. To the extent this is mentioned at all the excuse given was to prevent a situation arising like the one when the West drained Germany like a vampire after the 1918 armistice. The conditions at the end of World War 2 were quite different. Namely, the Western “allies”, mainly the Americans, had encouraged the destruction or theft of every useful capital asset in what became the Soviet zone of occupation and the transfer of anything of future economic value to the West.

The subsequent, at first secret, re-arming of Germany under command of American and Nazi general officers and continued brain drain led to the erection of the fortified border between the Soviet zone and the rest of the Western peninsula. Thus the Soviet Union had to fortify and subsidize the countries ruined by the Wehrmacht campaigns while trying to reconstruct its own economy and restore the 20 million plus killed during World War 2. While the Soviet Union was working to recover a relatively weak status quo ante, the United States was able to expand its markets and power over the rest of the globe. Thus from 1945 until 1989 the United States economy was fuelled by the elimination of every other meaningful competitor whether it was for sales or purchases. It is worth noting—given the recent release of an atomic bomb hagiography called Oppenheimer—that this weapon was devised under the leadership of rabid anti-communists/anti-Soviets for use in wiping the Soviet Union off the face of the Earth after it was clear that the Wehrmacht had failed. At no time during World War 2 was Anglo-American aerial bombardment directed to support the Soviet Union’s self-defence. It was explicitly waged to destroy economic competitors to the British and American Empires.

The third factor was the missionary strategy. I have always found it bitterly amusing when Americans or the natives of the Western peninsula complain about Soviet (or Chinese) propaganda. The first thing I ask them is how much Russian or Chinese they have learned? Then I ask if they can name a Russian or Chinese pop musician or film star or what Chinese or Russian clothing items they most prefer? The only food and drink they can associate with Russia are vodka and caviar. How effective could their propaganda be?

Coca Cola and Pepsi (thanks to negotiations by Richard Nixon on behalf of his friends) are known throughout the world and were imported or bottled in the Soviet Union. Denim trousers (Levis) were coveted goods from Magdeburg to Vladivostok. Despite technical countermeasures there was little that could be done to suppress the vast global propaganda machine combining films, music, and consumer goods of every kind. This all served to amplify the ideology of consumerism as a pure form of economic and social well being. This pure form—available only to the “middle class” countries on any scale—was presented and seen everywhere as the virtue which a struggling economy and political system was expected to produce for young people. There was no question of converting the heroes of the Soviet Union, the survivors of the civil war and non-stop foreign invasions since 1918.

However, the young, the desperately needed replacements to rebuild the Soviet Union, could not simply be inculcated in the moral sacrifices of their parents and grandparents. There had to be space and a future for these people. The capacity to compete for the hearts and minds of the generations that by 1989 had no immediate recollection of the Great Patriotic War was not only challenged within the Soviet Union but throughout the countries it had occupied since 1945. These countries, especially the GDR, Hungary and Poland, were able to benefit from overt and covert support from the West. Moreover there had been an intensive and to date still largely unacknowledged level of penetration and sabotage under the guise of technology transfer agreements that in the final years weakened the system considerably. Defective control technology for industrial infrastructure led to serious destruction of pipelines.⁵ It takes no fantasy to imagine that intentionally defective control components—merely improperly calibrated meters would have done the trick—led to the Chernobyl meltdown.

The Helsinki Accords (1975), still considered naively as an important step toward peace, were a major propaganda victory for the West. Despite the creation of NGOs in the West, the only governments consistently subjected to its conditions were those in the “Soviet bloc”. By treating the conflict between the US and the USSR as competition when, in fact, it was covert aggression by the United States, every international treaty presented the US as the generous human rights and peace defender and the Soviet Union as conceding its power both domestically and abroad. To this day there is no general admission in the West that no later than 1945, it was the US that waged non-stop war against the Soviet Union, making all these treaties essentially acts of extortion against the country and its people all of whom were aware of the US first strike and second strike atomic warfare strategy and what it would mean for any reconstruction and development.

By the time a wholly compromised Mikhail Gorbachev gave his country to the US raiders under Yeltsin, the moral legitimacy of the Soviet Union had been so seriously undermined that no party or military effort could rescue it from the locust swarms that devastated the country after 1990. With the borders open, the government in disgrace, and the youth able to join what they thought would be the saving purity of the cult held back for seventy years, the potential for converts was enormous. The cost was immeasurable. Only with the election of Vladimir Putin did the bleeding stop.

The conversion of the Soviet Union into the neo-liberal Russian Federation was made possible not by some catastrophic failure of Marxism – Leninism or even the inadequacy of the CPSU government. It was accomplished by 44 continuous years of covert war against a country struggling to recover from the previous decades of war waged against it. It may be added that Russia has always had a conflict between its Russian (Slavic Orthodox) and its Francophile/ Anglophile partisans.⁶ The October Revolution did not overcome this contradiction. Before 1917 there were also factions that believed that the Russian economy should rely on Germany, France and Britain for its industrial products and export its raw materials (like any third world country). Lenin’s vision for the October Revolution was to transform Russia into a self-sufficient industrialised nation capable of using its own resources for development. As a result the conflicts in revolutionary Russia were very much like those that persisted in the so-called Third World where leaders like Nkrumah wanted national electrification to make the country capable of producing and exporting aluminium for hard cash instead of just cheap bauxite for peanuts. The Generalplan Ost was not just an expression of Hitler’s attitude toward the Soviet Union but also the West’s plans that had been frustrated by Stalin’s “socialism in one country”, so poorly understood by ultraorthodox Marxists in the West. Altogether then the constant war, covert, diplomatic and economic waged against the Soviet Union, directly and through the Comecon states, combined with the global propaganda campaign directed at the vulnerable youth to undermine the last pillars of an independent Soviet Union. And for the Russian Federation the war is far from over.

The Woke and the Dead

Just as the war against Russia did not end with the destruction of the Soviet Union, the war against humanism, whether liberal or Marxist, has continued.  No one doubts that the end of the Soviet Union also meant that the independence struggles that began in earnest and seemed promising until 1975 were going to be reversed wherever possible. Absent the military or diplomatic challenge from Moscow or Beijing, every liberation movement that was not subdued was forced to reach a neo-liberal compromise to avoid being neutralised. While the US economy was just as much in tatters as that of the Soviet Union, the US could use the IMF, World Bank, and UN (also NATO) to transfer the costs to Rest of World. That was an option always unavailable to Moscow.

However, the unimaginable concentration of wealth that has continued since 1989 would have to consume what was left of the US economy too. The Chinese strategy for accelerated industrialisation using what was essentially a modified treaty port system permitted the Anglo-American financial oligarchy to relocate all its meaningful industrial capacity—whatever had not already been moved to Indonesia or some other client state—to China.⁷ This deindustrialisation—following the British model—left the US with only one industry of any size: weapons systems.⁸ The steady impoverishment of the US since the 1970s has always been concealed behind a wall of credit cards and second mortgages. Thus the illusory American standard of living is maintained by charging the difference between 1973 salaries and 2023 prices. Already by the time the Bush-Clinton dynasty obtained control over the presidency and the electoral machinery to deliver congressional majorities, popular resistance was growing. Initially deceived by the Reagan-Thatcher shell games, the inability to continue debt payments and the rising cost of everything, aggravated by massive privatization in a system already dominated by business corporations, were pushing increasing numbers of conservative, church-going, Americans into opposition to what they identified as the status quo.

This presented a serious problem for the country’s ruling oligarchy. It was the Christian, moral majority that had put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Despite wars initiated by both Bush presidents and Clinton to stir that majority’s patriotic fervour, both the wars’ failures and the fallout in terms of major wealth transfers and obvious corruption were threatening to alienate that core upon which the nation’s owners depend for consent. A revolt in the Republican rank and file, also known as the Tea Party, not only articulated some of this resentment but also led to upsets in the previously comfortable GOP election machinery. Attempts were made to stigmatise the Tea Party as a fanatical right-wing minority. In fact, it looked for a while like some self-appointed Tea Party leaders in the Establishment would perform some rhetorical moves and vent the steam that threatened to dislodge the mainline Republican Party.

This appeared to work until out of the “red,” the New York City real estate mogul, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for the 2016 general elections.⁹  Worst of all, Donald Trump won the election, soundly defeating the anointed successor from the Bush-Clinton gang. It should be remembered this implosion was delayed by the CIA’s invention of Barack Obama as a candidate to defuse all the opposition to George W Bush. Obama had dutifully served/ saved the financial oligarchy when its massive financial derivatives scam collapsed in 2008. Together with Hillary Clinton, Obama kept the US at war for eight years so that the patriotic majority had to swallow its antipathy to the polyester POTUS.

The panic that ensued among the Establishment was clearly not really aimed at Trump, since his personality and ignorance of the bureaucratic system he was entering posed no immediate threat. Rather it was the conservative, populist core that his election empowered which the Establishment had to check. For the better part of a century this majority of the population could be relied upon to support the Establishment in the cause of anti-communism. However, after 1989 this cry was inconsistent with the proclamation that the West had won and communism along with the evil Soviet Union had been destroyed. A new strategy was needed.

Until the Six Day War (1967) not much attention had been paid to Israel and certainly nothing significant to the forced labour, slave labour and mass murder perpetuated in Germany and those territories it had occupied during the Second World War.¹⁰ Obvious reasons included the need to avoid shining the light on perpetrators the US had installed in West Germany or in cushy jobs stateside; the need to focus attention on the evils of the Soviet Union, and more subtly because the massive death toll of the Soviet Union alone would have tarnished the on-going campaigns to destroy it. With the Israel attack of Egypt, a relatively benign public opinion was at risk of turning into outright hostility toward the Euro-Zionist colony under British administration in Palestine that had declared itself the State of Israel in 1948. Israel not only launched surprise attacks but also occupied territory in every direction more than doubling the area under its control.

In the wake of this public relations disaster, a campaign, which became massive in scope and continues to this day, resurrected the stories and history of the Second World War and retold it as the war by Germany to exterminate world Jewry and the centre of this war, “the holocaust” was the mass murder of an estimated six million Jews in concentration camps run by the German Nazi regime. Since the Second World War had been fought to defend Jews from extermination, Israel could not be blamed even for pre-emptive measures since these all served to prevent another “holocaust”. The fact that even were one certain of the numbers of deaths and could be convinced by data, the figure of six million pales in comparison to the twenty plus million killed in the Soviet Union alone and another twenty million that died in China during the war. So without diminishing any deaths whether due to slave labour or mass murder, the re-writing of the history of World War 2 as the prologue to the foundation of Israel required heavy-duty propaganda and convincing political force. All of this was brought to bear. The scope of distortion and outright mendacity needed to establish the state of Israel as the “Victim” par excellence and its Jewish citizens, living and dead, as the ultimate victims, have been treated extensively elsewhere. The point here is that this is probably the greatest example of the “victim” strategy for social engineering since the “Jesus” strategy as deployed by the Latin Church.

The structural analogy I propose is as follows: It is not sufficient that there is a victim. This victim must be chosen; must be the ultimate victim. This victimhood also means that the victim is the embodiment of purity in comparison to which all other victims are imperfect or not victims at all. A veritable hierarchy of victims follows with the chosen victim at the top. This victim is entitled to reverence, even adoration, and the victim’s purity must be defended absolutely. The cult of this victim endows the true believers with the charisma of purity—even if they are not, in fact, pure in any meaningful sense. The cult then reaches into the majority of the impure from which it recruits or implicates those either aspirant to purity or touched by the guilt of the “impure”. Together these two elements when combined with material force, whether political, economic, military or combinations thereof, create a minority of the pure positioned to defend purity and the victimhood even from imputed threats by the majority who are by definition impure or victims of lower status. The aim of this strategy is to subjugate an indigenous majority by creation of a morally pure and hence powerful minority. This minority cannot show the physical force upon which its attack relies without creating a majority reaction that could repel it. The moral-psychological power is expressed through the implication of guilt or sympathy among unorganised members of the majority who in dispersion seek confirmation of their moral position. Thus latent outliers may work to strengthen the minority assault or undermine any emerging consensus to defend the indigenous culture.

This is essentially pre-emptive counter-insurgency. That is why Gene Sharp was so interested in dissecting national liberation movements. He wanted to know how to re-engineer them to oppose mass movements. Before he published his infamous From Dictatorship to Democracy he published a study for the US Department of Defense on how to create popular forces that would effectively combat national liberation struggles by imitating them.¹¹

By 1975 the national liberation movements in all of the countries in the Western Empire had been either subdued or compromised. Their radical leaders, including those in the US, were murdered or driven underground. In their place came the civilian defence organisations Sharp had conceived now in the form of NGOs.¹²  These became the seeds for so-called astro-turf grassroots movements, collectively called “civil society”. Civil society replaced the mass movements with qualified experts able to promote agendas in the system. What that meant, in fact, was that mass politics and struggle were replaced by political management conducted by cadres modelled on Sharp’s understanding of the political commissar. Key positions were filled with the members of movements who could be rewarded after their unfortunate leaders had been eliminated. With time civil society became a career path for academically trained managers in social engineering. The financial support of the oligarchy either directly or through various conduits compounded with access to all the Establishment media outlets, not least of which are the educational institutions, would raise civil society to the supreme force for articulating purity and victimhood. Civil society became the cover for the merger of missionary technology and brute economic, political and military force in a world where the ecclesiastical model had become a vehicle for the popular movements; e.g., in the 80s liberation theology and in the 90s Christian revivalism. The papacy had succeeded in crushing the mass movements’ efforts to use the Church for the liberation struggle.¹³ However, there was no such central force capable of subduing the Protestant denominations. Although Pentecostalism had been very effective in Latin America for neutralising the popular church, the US was a far more complicated terrain than the Catholic countries. ¹⁴ Scandals had decimated the most reliable agents in the Fundamentalist movement already in the late 1980s. ¹⁵

This was the challenge that gave rise to the Fourth Awakening—or Woke, a tasteless appropriation of an expression from Black American dialect meaning “aware”. The term awakening is more appropriate because Woke is really another crusade. Awakenings were the Protestant equivalents of the Catholic Crusades, usually in some way also just as fanatical and bloody as well as profitable for the promoters. ¹⁶ Following the model applied after the Six Day War and working from the basis of Gene Sharp’s NGO-based counter-insurgency strategy, the Establishment through its extensive control over all mass media and educational institutions, accelerated the moral campaign to create a movement of purity and victimhood to be directed against the core working class population of the United States and other middle class countries in the empire. By appropriating the academically modified liberation jargon developed in the university and NGO labs, armed propaganda units like BLM and Antifa could be deployed in ways that thirty years ago would have been prosecuted as communist terrorism. This use of reconstituted liberation jargon was calculated to antagonise the majority as well as trigger reactions which moderately critical or liberal members of the majority would find difficult to defend.

This counter-insurgency campaign is being waged by the civil society cadre organisations and the kind of armed propaganda units conceived in the CIA’s Phoenix Program for Southeast Asia during the wars against Vietnam and subsequent wars in Central America. ¹⁷ The difference is that since the target is the conservative, patriotic majority, the language has to be that of the movements they had been indoctrinated to oppose since 1945. Combined with the very real corporate power behind this “moral minority” or pure (vicarious) victims and the effective use of legislation and police power (or its absence), the Woke Crusade aims to divide the majority of the American population, not only whites since conservative Christianity is foundational among Blacks and Latinos too. The Woke crusade is a carefully synthesised missionary project to completely re-engineer the conditions under which the vast majority of American citizens live in the mistaken (and insincere) belief that this serves social justice. This war against popular majorities is not limited to the United States. It is being waged throughout what was once called Christendom. In fact, that is why it is so effective thus far—it is derived from the modus operandi of the institution upon which all Christendom was based.

• First published at Seek Truth From Facts Foundation

END NOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

On the last day of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The BRICS partnership now encompasses 47.3 percent of the world’s population, with a combined global Gross Domestic Product (by purchasing power parity, or PPP,) of 36.4 percent. In comparison, though the G7 states (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) account for merely 10 percent of the world’s population, their share of the global GDP (by PPP) is 30.4 percent. In 2021, the nations that today form the expanded BRICS group were responsible for 38.3 percent of global industrial output while their G7 counterparts accounted for 30.5 percent. All available indicators, including harvest production and the total volume of metal production, show the immense power of this new grouping.  Celso Amorim, advisor to the Brazilian government and one of the architects of BRICS during his former tenure as foreign minister, said of the new development that ‘[t]he world can no longer be dictated by the G7’.

Certainly, the BRICS nations, for all their internal hierarchies and challenges, now represent a larger share of the global GDP than the G7, which continues to behave as the world’s executive body. Over forty countries expressed an interest in joining BRICS, although only twenty-three applied for membership before the South Africa meeting (including seven of the thirteen countries in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC). Indonesia, the world’s seventh largest country in terms of GDP (by PPP), withdrew its application to BRICS at the last moment but said it would consider joining later. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo’s comments reflect the mood of the summit: ‘We must reject trade discrimination. Industrial downstreaming must not be hindered. We must all continue to voice equal and inclusive cooperation’.

Tadesse Mesfin (Ethiopia), Pillars of Life: Waiting, 2018

BRICS does not operate independently of new regional formations that aim to build platforms outside the grip of the West, such as the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Instead, BRICS membership has the potential to enhance regionalism for those already within these regional fora. Both sets of interregional bodies are leaning into a historical tide supported by important data, analysed by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research using a range of widely available and reliable global databases. The facts are clear: the Global North’s percentage of world GDP fell from 57.3 percent in 1993 to 40.6 percent in 2022, with the US’s percentage shrinking from 19.7 percent to only 15.6 percent of global GDP (by PPP) in the same period – despite its monopoly privilege. In 2022, the Global South, without China, had a GDP (by PPP) greater than that of the Global North.

The West, perhaps because of its rapid relative economic decline, is struggling to maintain its hegemony by driving a New Cold War against emergent states such as China. Perhaps the single best evidence of the racial, political, military, and economic plans of the Western powers can be summed up by a recent declaration of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU): ‘NATO and the EU play complementary, coherent and mutually reinforcing roles in supporting international peace and security. We will further mobilise the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic, or military, to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens’.

Alia Ahmad (Saudi Arabia), Hameel – Morning Rain, 2022

Why did BRICS welcome such a disparate group of countries, including two monarchies, into its fold? When asked to reflect on the character of the new full member states, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, ‘What matters is not the person who governs but the importance of the country. We can’t deny the geopolitical importance of Iran and other countries that will join BRICS’. This is the measure of how the founding countries made the decision to expand their alliance. At the heart of BRICS’s growth are at least three issues: control over energy supplies and pathways, control over global financial and development systems, and control over institutions for peace and security.

Houshang Pezeshknia (Iran), Khark, 1958

A larger BRICS has now created a formidable energy group. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are also members of OPEC, which, with Russia, a key member of OPEC+, now accounts for 26.3 million barrels of oil per day, just below thirty percent of global daily oil production. Egypt, which is not an OPEC member, is nonetheless one of the largest African oil producers, with an output of 567,650 barrels per day. China’s role in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in April enabled the entry of both of these oil-producing countries into BRICS. The issue here is not just the production of oil, but the establishment of new global energy pathways.

The Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative has already created a web of oil and natural gas platforms around the Global South, integrated into the expansion of Khalifa Port and natural gas facilities at Fujairah and Ruwais in the UAE, alongside the development of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. There is every expectation that the expanded BRICS will begin to coordinate its energy infrastructure outside of OPEC+, including the volumes of oil and natural gas that are drawn out of the earth. Tensions between Russia and Saudi Arabia over oil volumes have simmered this year as Russia exceeded its quota to compensate for Western sanctions placed on it due to the war in Ukraine. Now these two countries will have another forum, outside of OPEC+ and with China at the table, to build a common agenda on energy. Saudi Arabia plans to sell oil to China in renminbi (RMB), undermining the structure of the petrodollar system (China’s two other main oil providers, Iraq and Russia, already receive payment in RMB).

Juan Del Prete (Argentina), The Embrace, 1937–1944

Both the discussions at the BRICS summit and its final communiqué focused on the need to strengthen a financial and development architecture for the world that is not governed by the triumvirate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Wall Street, and the US dollar. However, BRICS does not seek to circumvent established global trade and development institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF. For instance, BRICS reaffirmed the importance of the ‘rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation at its core’ and called for ‘a robust Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced [IMF] at its centre’. Its proposals do not fundamentally break with the IMF or WTO; rather, they offer a dual pathway forward: first, for BRICS to exert more control and direction over these organisations, of which they are members but have been suborned to a Western agenda, and second, for BRICS states to realise their aspirations to build their own parallel institutions (such as the New Development Bank, or NDB). Saudi Arabia’s massive investment fund is worth close to $1 trillion, which could partially resource the NDB.

BRICS’s agenda to improve ‘the stability, reliability, and fairness of the global financial architecture’ is mostly being carried forward by the ‘use of local currencies, alternative financial arrangements, and alternative payment systems’. The concept of ‘local currencies’ refers to the growing practice of states using their own currencies for cross-border trade rather than relying upon the dollar. Though approximately 150 currencies in the world are considered to be legal tender, cross-border payments almost always rely on the dollar (which, as of 2021, accounts for 40 percent of flows over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or SWIFT, network).

Other currencies play a limited role, with the Chinese RMB comprising 2.5 percent of cross-border payments. However, the emergence of new global messaging platforms – such as China’s Cross-Border Payment Interbank System, India’s Unified Payments Interface, and Russia’s Financial Messaging System (SPFS) – as well as regional digital currency systems promise to increase the use of alternative currencies. For instance, cryptocurrency assets briefly provided a potential avenue for new trading systems before their asset valuations declined, and the expanded BRICS recently approved the establishment of a working group to study a BRICS reference currency.

Following the expansion of BRICS, the NDB said that it will also expand its members and that, as its General Strategy, 2022–2026 notes, thirty percent of all of its financing will be in local currencies. As part of its framework for a new development system, its president, Dilma Rousseff, said that the NDB will not follow the IMF policy of imposing conditions on borrowing countries. ‘We repudiate any kind of conditionality’, Rousseff said. ‘Often a loan is given upon the condition that certain policies are carried out. We don’t do that. We respect the policies of each country’.

Amir H. Fallah (Iran), I Want To Live, To Cry, To Survive, To Love, To Die, 2023

In their communiqué, the BRICS nations write about the importance of ‘comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council’. Currently, the UN Security Council has fifteen members, five of which are permanent (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US). There are no permanent members from Africa, Latin America, or the most populous country in the world, India. To repair these inequities, BRICS offers its support to ‘the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including Brazil, India, and South Africa to play a greater role in international affairs’. The West’s refusal to allow these countries a permanent seat at the UN Security Council has only strengthened their commitment to the BRICS process and to enhance their role in the G20.

The entry of Ethiopia and Iran into BRICS shows how these large Global South states are reacting to the West’s sanctions policy against dozens of countries, including two founding BRICS members (China and Russia). The Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter – Venezuela’s initiative from 2019 – brings together twenty UN member states that are facing the brunt of illegal US sanctions, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Many of these states attended the BRICS summit as invitees and are eager to join the expanded BRICS as full members.

We are not living in a period of revolutions. Socialists always seek to advance democratic and progressive trends. As is often the case in history, the actions of a dying empire create common ground for its victims to look for new alternatives, no matter how embryonic and contradictory they are. The diversity of support for the expansion of BRICS is an indication of the growing loss of political hegemony of imperialism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

On the last day of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The BRICS partnership now encompasses 47.3 percent of the world’s population, with a combined global Gross Domestic Product (by purchasing power parity, or PPP,) of 36.4 percent. In comparison, though the G7 states (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) account for merely 10 percent of the world’s population, their share of the global GDP (by PPP) is 30.4 percent. In 2021, the nations that today form the expanded BRICS group were responsible for 38.3 percent of global industrial output while their G7 counterparts accounted for 30.5 percent. All available indicators, including harvest production and the total volume of metal production, show the immense power of this new grouping.  Celso Amorim, advisor to the Brazilian government and one of the architects of BRICS during his former tenure as foreign minister, said of the new development that ‘[t]he world can no longer be dictated by the G7’.

Certainly, the BRICS nations, for all their internal hierarchies and challenges, now represent a larger share of the global GDP than the G7, which continues to behave as the world’s executive body. Over forty countries expressed an interest in joining BRICS, although only twenty-three applied for membership before the South Africa meeting (including seven of the thirteen countries in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC). Indonesia, the world’s seventh largest country in terms of GDP (by PPP), withdrew its application to BRICS at the last moment but said it would consider joining later. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo’s comments reflect the mood of the summit: ‘We must reject trade discrimination. Industrial downstreaming must not be hindered. We must all continue to voice equal and inclusive cooperation’.

Tadesse Mesfin (Ethiopia), Pillars of Life: Waiting, 2018

BRICS does not operate independently of new regional formations that aim to build platforms outside the grip of the West, such as the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Instead, BRICS membership has the potential to enhance regionalism for those already within these regional fora. Both sets of interregional bodies are leaning into a historical tide supported by important data, analysed by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research using a range of widely available and reliable global databases. The facts are clear: the Global North’s percentage of world GDP fell from 57.3 percent in 1993 to 40.6 percent in 2022, with the US’s percentage shrinking from 19.7 percent to only 15.6 percent of global GDP (by PPP) in the same period – despite its monopoly privilege. In 2022, the Global South, without China, had a GDP (by PPP) greater than that of the Global North.

The West, perhaps because of its rapid relative economic decline, is struggling to maintain its hegemony by driving a New Cold War against emergent states such as China. Perhaps the single best evidence of the racial, political, military, and economic plans of the Western powers can be summed up by a recent declaration of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU): ‘NATO and the EU play complementary, coherent and mutually reinforcing roles in supporting international peace and security. We will further mobilise the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic, or military, to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens’.

Alia Ahmad (Saudi Arabia), Hameel – Morning Rain, 2022

Why did BRICS welcome such a disparate group of countries, including two monarchies, into its fold? When asked to reflect on the character of the new full member states, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, ‘What matters is not the person who governs but the importance of the country. We can’t deny the geopolitical importance of Iran and other countries that will join BRICS’. This is the measure of how the founding countries made the decision to expand their alliance. At the heart of BRICS’s growth are at least three issues: control over energy supplies and pathways, control over global financial and development systems, and control over institutions for peace and security.

Houshang Pezeshknia (Iran), Khark, 1958

A larger BRICS has now created a formidable energy group. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are also members of OPEC, which, with Russia, a key member of OPEC+, now accounts for 26.3 million barrels of oil per day, just below thirty percent of global daily oil production. Egypt, which is not an OPEC member, is nonetheless one of the largest African oil producers, with an output of 567,650 barrels per day. China’s role in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in April enabled the entry of both of these oil-producing countries into BRICS. The issue here is not just the production of oil, but the establishment of new global energy pathways.

The Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative has already created a web of oil and natural gas platforms around the Global South, integrated into the expansion of Khalifa Port and natural gas facilities at Fujairah and Ruwais in the UAE, alongside the development of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. There is every expectation that the expanded BRICS will begin to coordinate its energy infrastructure outside of OPEC+, including the volumes of oil and natural gas that are drawn out of the earth. Tensions between Russia and Saudi Arabia over oil volumes have simmered this year as Russia exceeded its quota to compensate for Western sanctions placed on it due to the war in Ukraine. Now these two countries will have another forum, outside of OPEC+ and with China at the table, to build a common agenda on energy. Saudi Arabia plans to sell oil to China in renminbi (RMB), undermining the structure of the petrodollar system (China’s two other main oil providers, Iraq and Russia, already receive payment in RMB).

Juan Del Prete (Argentina), The Embrace, 1937–1944

Both the discussions at the BRICS summit and its final communiqué focused on the need to strengthen a financial and development architecture for the world that is not governed by the triumvirate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Wall Street, and the US dollar. However, BRICS does not seek to circumvent established global trade and development institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF. For instance, BRICS reaffirmed the importance of the ‘rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation at its core’ and called for ‘a robust Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced [IMF] at its centre’. Its proposals do not fundamentally break with the IMF or WTO; rather, they offer a dual pathway forward: first, for BRICS to exert more control and direction over these organisations, of which they are members but have been suborned to a Western agenda, and second, for BRICS states to realise their aspirations to build their own parallel institutions (such as the New Development Bank, or NDB). Saudi Arabia’s massive investment fund is worth close to $1 trillion, which could partially resource the NDB.

BRICS’s agenda to improve ‘the stability, reliability, and fairness of the global financial architecture’ is mostly being carried forward by the ‘use of local currencies, alternative financial arrangements, and alternative payment systems’. The concept of ‘local currencies’ refers to the growing practice of states using their own currencies for cross-border trade rather than relying upon the dollar. Though approximately 150 currencies in the world are considered to be legal tender, cross-border payments almost always rely on the dollar (which, as of 2021, accounts for 40 percent of flows over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or SWIFT, network).

Other currencies play a limited role, with the Chinese RMB comprising 2.5 percent of cross-border payments. However, the emergence of new global messaging platforms – such as China’s Cross-Border Payment Interbank System, India’s Unified Payments Interface, and Russia’s Financial Messaging System (SPFS) – as well as regional digital currency systems promise to increase the use of alternative currencies. For instance, cryptocurrency assets briefly provided a potential avenue for new trading systems before their asset valuations declined, and the expanded BRICS recently approved the establishment of a working group to study a BRICS reference currency.

Following the expansion of BRICS, the NDB said that it will also expand its members and that, as its General Strategy, 2022–2026 notes, thirty percent of all of its financing will be in local currencies. As part of its framework for a new development system, its president, Dilma Rousseff, said that the NDB will not follow the IMF policy of imposing conditions on borrowing countries. ‘We repudiate any kind of conditionality’, Rousseff said. ‘Often a loan is given upon the condition that certain policies are carried out. We don’t do that. We respect the policies of each country’.

Amir H. Fallah (Iran), I Want To Live, To Cry, To Survive, To Love, To Die, 2023

In their communiqué, the BRICS nations write about the importance of ‘comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council’. Currently, the UN Security Council has fifteen members, five of which are permanent (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US). There are no permanent members from Africa, Latin America, or the most populous country in the world, India. To repair these inequities, BRICS offers its support to ‘the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including Brazil, India, and South Africa to play a greater role in international affairs’. The West’s refusal to allow these countries a permanent seat at the UN Security Council has only strengthened their commitment to the BRICS process and to enhance their role in the G20.

The entry of Ethiopia and Iran into BRICS shows how these large Global South states are reacting to the West’s sanctions policy against dozens of countries, including two founding BRICS members (China and Russia). The Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter – Venezuela’s initiative from 2019 – brings together twenty UN member states that are facing the brunt of illegal US sanctions, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Many of these states attended the BRICS summit as invitees and are eager to join the expanded BRICS as full members.

We are not living in a period of revolutions. Socialists always seek to advance democratic and progressive trends. As is often the case in history, the actions of a dying empire create common ground for its victims to look for new alternatives, no matter how embryonic and contradictory they are. The diversity of support for the expansion of BRICS is an indication of the growing loss of political hegemony of imperialism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both in need of affordable drugs for patients infected with HIV as well as a host of other treatable ailments. But these three countries were barred from easily trading with each other because of strict intellectual property laws established by the World Trade Organisation. Just a few months prior to their meeting, the three countries formed a grouping, known as IBSA, to discuss and clarify intellectual property and trade issues, but also to confront countries of the Global North for their asymmetrical demand that the poorer nations end their agricultural subsidies. The notion of South-South cooperation framed these discussions.

Interest in South-South cooperation dates back to the 1940s, when the United Nations Economic and Social Council established its first technical aid programme to assist trade between the new post-colonial states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Six decades later, just as IBSA was formed, this spirit was commemorated by the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation on 19 December 2004. At this time, the UN also created the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (ten years later, in 2013, this institution was renamed as the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation), which built upon the 1988 agreement on the Global System of Trade Preferences Among Developing Countries. As of 2023, this pact includes 42 member states from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, that are collectively home to four billion people and have a combined market of $16 trillion (roughly 20% of global merchandise imports). It is important to register that this longstanding agenda to increase trade between Southern countries forms the pre-history of the BRICS, set up in 2009 and presently made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Madhvi Parekh and Karishma Swali (India), Kali I, 2021–22

The entire BRICS project is centred around the question of whether countries at the nether end of the neo-colonial system can break out of that system through mutual trade and cooperation, or whether the larger countries (including those in the BRICS) will inevitably enjoy asymmetries of power and scale against smaller countries and therefore reproduce inequalities rather than transcend them. Our latest dossier, on Marxist dependency theory, calls into question any capitalist project in the South that believes it can somehow break free from the neo-colonial system by importing debt and exporting cheap commodities. Despite the limitations of the BRICS project, it is clear that the increase in South-South trade and the development of Southern institutions (for development financing, for instance) challenges the neo-colonial system even if it does not immediately transcend it. At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been closely following the developments and contradictions of the BRICS project from its inception and continue to do so.

Later this month, the fifteenth BRICS summit will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 22–24 August. This meeting comes as two of the group’s members, Russia and China, are facing a New Cold War with the United States and its allies, while the other members face immense pressure to be drawn into this conflict. Below, you will find briefing no. 9, published in collaboration with No Cold War, which offers a brief but necessary primer of the upcoming BRICS summit. You can read the briefing below.

The upcoming fifteenth BRICS Summit (22–24 August) in Johannesburg, South Africa, has the potential to make history. The heads of state of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will gather for their first face-to-face meeting since the 2019 summit in Brasilia, Brazil. The meeting will take place eighteen months since the beginning of military conflict in Ukraine, which has not only raised tensions between the US-led Western powers and Russia to a level unseen since the Cold War but also sharpened differences between the Global North and South.

There are growing cracks in the unipolar international order imposed by Washington and Brussels on the rest of the world through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the international financial system, the control of information flows (in both traditional and social media networks), and the indiscriminate use of unilateral sanctions against an increasing number of countries. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently put it, ‘the post-Cold War period is over. A transition is under way to a new global order’.

In this global context, three of the most important debates to monitor at the Johannesburg summit are: (1) the possible expansion of BRICS membership, (2) the expansion of the membership of its New Development Bank (NDB), and (3) the NDB’s role in creating alternatives to the use of the US dollar. According to Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, twenty-two countries have formally applied to join the group (including Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Algeria, Mexico, and Indonesia) and a further two dozen have expressed interest. Even with numerous challenges to overcome, the BRICS are now seen as a major driving force of the world economy and of economic developments across the Global South in particular.

Lygia Clark (Brazil), O Violoncelista (‘The Violoncellist’), 1951

The BRICS Today

In the middle of the last decade, the BRICS experienced a number of problems. With the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India (2014) and the coup against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (2016), two of the group’s member countries became headed by right-wing governments more favourable to Washington. Both India and Brazil retreated in their participation in the group. The de facto absence of Brazil, which from the outset had been one of the key driving forces behind the BRICS, represented a significant loss for the consolidation of the group. These developments undermined and hampered the progress of the NDB and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), established in 2015 – which represented the greatest institutional achievement of the BRICS to date. Although the NDB has made some progress it has fallen short of its original objectives. To date, the bank has approved some $32.8 billion in financing (in fact, less than that has been issued), while the CRA – which has $100 billion in funds to assist countries that have a shortage of US dollars in their international reserves and are facing short-term balance of payments or liquidity pressures – has never been activated.

However, developments in recent years have reinvigorated the BRICS project. The decisions of Moscow and Beijing to respond to escalations of aggression in the New Cold War by Washington and Brussels; the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency of Brazil in 2022 and the consequent appointment of Dilma Rousseff to the presidency of the NDB; and the relative estrangement, to varying degrees, of India and South Africa from the Western powers have resulted in a ‘perfect storm’ that seems to have rebuilt a sense of political unity in the BRICS (despite unresolved tensions between India and China). Added to this is the growing weight of the BRICS in the global economy and strengthened economic interaction between its members. In 2020, the global share of the BRICS’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in purchasing power parity terms – 31.5 percent – overtook that of the Group of Seven (G7) – 30.7 percent – and this gap is expected to grow. Bilateral trade among BRICS countries has also grown robustly: Brazil and China are breaking records every year, reaching $150 billion in 2022; Russian exports to India tripled from April to December 2022, year-on-year, expanding to $32.8 billion; while trade between China and Russia jumped from $147 billion in 2021 to $190 billion in 2022, an increase of nearly 30 percent.

Ayanda Mabulu (South Africa), Power, 2020

What’s at Stake in Johannesburg?

Faced with this dynamic international situation and growing requests for expansion, the BRICS face a number of important questions:

In addition to providing concrete responses to interested applicants, expansion has the potential to increase the political and economic weight of the BRICS and, eventually, strengthen other regional platforms that its members belong to. But expansion also requires having to decide on the specific form that membership should take and may increase the complexity of consensus building, with a risk of slowing the progress of decision making and initiatives. How should these matters be dealt with?

How can the NDB’s financing capacity be increased, as well as its coordination with other development banks of the Global South and other multilateral banks? And, above all, how can the NDB, in partnership with the BRICS’ network of think tanks, promote the formulation of a new development policy for the Global South?

Since the BRICS member countries have solid international reserves (with South Africa having a little less), it’s unlikely that they will need to use the CRA. Instead, this fund could provide countries in need with an alternative to the political blackmail of the International Monetary Fund, which requires developing countries to enact devastating austerity measures in exchange for loans.

BRICS is reported to be discussing the creation of a reserve currency that would enable trade and investment without the use of the US dollar. If this were established, it could be one more step in efforts to create alternatives to the dollar, but questions remain. How could the stability of such a reserve currency be ensured? How could it be articulated with newly created trade mechanisms which do not use the dollar, such as bilateral China-Russia, China-Brazil, Russia-India, and other arrangements?

How can cooperation and technology transfer support the re-industrialisation of countries like Brazil and South Africa, especially in strategic sectors such as biotech, information technology, artificial intelligence, and renewable energies, while also fighting poverty and inequality, and achieving other basic demands of the peoples of the South?

Leaders representing 71 countries of the Global South have been invited to attend the meeting in Johannesburg. Xi, Putin, Lula, Modi, Ramaphosa, and Dilma have a lot of work to do, to answer these questions and make progress on the urgent matters in global development.

Peter Gorban (USSR), Field Camp. The Izvestiya., 1960

Our institute continues to track these developments, neither with the belief that the BRICS project offers global salvation, nor with the cynicism that dismisses it as nothing new. History is moved, not by purity, but by the world’s contradictions.

As these major countries of the South meet in Johannesburg, they will confront the vast inequities in South Africa. These fissures are the grist for the poems of Vonani Bila, whose voice rises out of Shirley Village (Limpopo) and reminds us of the long walk ahead, through the BRICS project and beyond:

When the sun recedes
into the Soutpansberg,
Giyani Block puts on a
black adder coat;
a mirror of death and despair.

Doctors and nurses stand on their feet.
They shall not rest when the workers’ strike
ignites its furious flame.
They’re on tiptoe, looking up,
wrestling the faceless, tailless monster.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

An event featuring U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib commemorating the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland during Israel's War of Independence 75 years ago—went ahead as scheduled Wednesday evening, despite an attempt by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to derail it.

Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian-American in the House of Representatives—is the featured speaker at the event, "Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People," which as of press time was underway in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Hearing Room in a Senate office building in Washington, D.C. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) chairs the panel.

"May 15th marks 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, which means 'catastrophe,'" the event's organizers said in an Eventbrite invitation. "Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel."

"The Nakba is not an antisemitic trope, it's a historical fact."

On Tuesday, McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that "the event in the U.S. Capitol has been canceled" and replaced with "a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship."

"It's wrong for members of Congress to traffic in antisemitic tropes about Israel," the congressman toldTheWashingtonFree Beacon. "As long as I'm speaker, we are going to support Israel's right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion."

However, Tlaib issued a statement Wednesday clarifying that the event was still on.

"We fully plan on moving forward with this event and we will continue to ensure that Palestinian voices are heard," the congresswoman asserted. "We will not be silenced."

"Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history and erase the existence and truth of the Palestinian people, but he has failed to do so," Tlaib continued. "This event is planned to bring awareness about the Nakba and create space for Palestinian-Americans who experienced the Nakba firsthand to tell their stories of trauma and survival."

"The Nakba is a well-documented historical event that is recognized by the United Nations," Tlaib added. "We cannot allow the same people who want to ban books and erase history simply because they're uncomfortable with the truth to silence Palestinian voices."

More than 750,000 Arabs from hundreds of cities, towns, and villages fled or were expelled from Palestine—sometimes by massacre, "death march," and other violence—during the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed to make way for newcomers whose only prerequisite for Israeli citizenship is being Jewish.

The militarized segregation of Israelis and Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and elsewhere is considered a crime of apartheid by numerous Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights groups, as well as by prominent international figures including United Nations officials, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other Nobel laureates, and South African leaders who lived under apartheid during the 20th century.

Meanwhile, more than 7 million Palestinian refugees have been denied the right of return guaranteed under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Co-hosts of Wednesday's event include: the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, Project48, Democracy for the Arab World Now, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, American Friends Service Committee, Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, Emgage Action, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action.

"This month, Palestinians will mark 75 years since the Nakba. Understanding the truth of the Nakba is not only about acknowledging historical facts, but also vital to understanding the ongoing violence of Israeli apartheid," JVP Action executive director Stefanie Fox said in a statement Wednesday. "We are proud to be part of the massive and growing number of Jews facing painful truths as part of working toward a shared future of justice, equality, and freedom."

For the second straight year, Tlaib on Wednesday reintroduced a resolution recognizing the Nakba and calling on Congress to "condemn all manifestations of Israel's ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people," particularly the "illegal theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; Israel's displacement of Palestinians by destroying their homes and forcing them from their land; and the daily brutality and violence inflicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians."

Reps. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—all of whom endorsed Tlaib's 2022 resolution—co-sponsored this year's version.

Tlaib's resolution was published as Israeli military forces continued to bombard Gaza in retaliation for earlier rocket fire by Palestinian resistance fighters responding to the death of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian activist imprisoned in Israel without charge or trial, during an 87-day hunger strike in an Israeli prison.

At least 21 Palestinians, no less than a dozen of whom were civilians—including at least six women and six children—have been killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes.

On Wednesday, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor urged the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for the "leaders of apartheid Israel" who are "supporting the massacre of the people of Palestine."

"South Africa is a longstanding partner in solidarity with the people of Palestine given that they supported our own struggle for freedom," Pandor said. "We call on the world to be as concerned about the deaths of Palestinians as they are concerned about deaths of [people in] any other nation of the world."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

We are not free because we are assassinated and murdered by the izinkabi and the police.

We are not free because our homes are attacked and destroyed by the state.

We are not free because we are denied the right to well-located urban land and thereby our right to a place in the cities.

We are not free because we are forced into government shacks (so called ‘transit camps’) and left to rot there.

We are not free because our attempts to build autonomous and democratic communities in which access to land and housing is decommodified are repressed with violence from the state and the ruling party, including murder.

We are not free because the food system remains in the hands of capital and our struggle to build food sovereignty from below is met with a denial of access to land and violent repression, including murder.

We are not free because a whole range of elite forces, including the ruling party, the state and some NGOs and academics do not accept our right to think, decide and act for ourselves.

We are not free because the economic system that makes some people to be rich and other people to be poor continues to destroy our lives, and leave millions of us to suffer the fear, pain and indignity of poverty.

We are not free because the demand for radical democracy – for a bottom up system based on worker and community control – made by the trade unions and community organisations in the 1980s was denied.

We are not free because the state is an instrument for capital and the political class to exploit and repress us rather than an instrument of the people to build a just society.

We are not free because people born in other countries live under constant pressure and in constant fear.

We are not free because woman are not respected and safe.

We are not free because LGBTQI+ people are not respected and safe.

We are not free because society is becoming more and more violent.

We are not free because we live in a society that denies our humanity and vandalises our dignity every day, year after year.

We will not be free until land, wealth and power are shared fairly, every person has the right to organise freely and safely and to participate in all decision making that affects them and the humanity and dignity of every person is respected.

Our movement has marked UnFreedom Day since 2006. In the beginning the ANC tried to ban UnFreedom Day and sent out police in armoured vehicles and helicopters to try and supress our right to gather in rejection of fake freedom.

Seventeen years later we still live under a fake freedom. Last year four of our comrades were murdered, one by masked police officers and the other three by the izinkabi, while a number of our leaders were jailed on fake charges.

Today the worsening economic crisis, exacerbated by the electricity crisis, is crushing our lives and our hopes. Most young people are without work and most families can’t afford to eat healthy food. Many people are going hungry. It is a very painful thing for any parent to put their child to bed on an empty stomach. The ANC has such contempt for us that even in this crisis it is failing to provide nutrition for schools in KwaZulu-Natal.

This economic crisis hits the poor and marginalised the hardest. Our government does not have the political will to solve the issues that the country is facing. It is a government of capital and corruption, not the people. Grants must be defended and extended but a life on grants is not a full life. Land and wealth must be fairly shared among the people, among all the people.

The wealth controlled and regulated by the state was not built by the politicians. It is not their private property. The wealth of the few comes from the dispossession and exploitation of the many. We were made poor so that others could be made rich and we are kept poor so that others can remain rich. The wealth of society belongs to the people. It is public wealth.

Public funds must be used for the public good. Corruption is theft from the public, theft that hits and hurts the poor the hardest. Corruption is always an attack on the people. It always robs our communities of the potential to improve our living conditions and to thrive.

Society is becoming more and more violent and politically connected mafias are taking over more and more institutions and communities. Corruption is the order of the day. The state has become an instrument of accumulation rather than an instrument of the people. We are not safe. We are ruled by violence.

The state does not treat us like other people. We are regularly ignored, insulted, harassed, assaulted and robbed by state officials. The state regularly destroys our homes and our street stalls at gunpoint. Some of our neighbours and comrades have been murdered by the state. Across the country the state regularly abuses and murders poor black people. Bheki Cele has made no effort to deal with the assassinations of our members and must be removed from office with immediate effect.

The councillor system has not only become a system of top down political control. Many councillors see their position as nothing but an opportunity to grow rich from public funds, from the wealth of the people. Some councillors are a danger to our democracy and our communities. In some wards people are terrorised by the councillors and their committees.

This democracy was not won by the politicians and it does not belong to them. It was won by the struggles of the people including organisations like the ICU, Fosatu, the UDF, Cosatu and others, organisations with members who were poor and working class people like us. This democracy belongs to the people, and we are part of the people. Today democracy is defended by the courage and struggles of the people, people like us, and people like Babita Deokoran, Tebogo Mkhonza, Nokuthula Mabaso, Thuli Ndlovu and many, many others who have given their lives in the struggle against fake freedom.

The counter-revolution against the struggles of the people by the ANC has to be faced. The ANC cannot ‘self-correct’. Its twenty-nine years of rule have been a disaster for the poor. Incredibly the poor are now both greater in number and poorer than in 1994 while the rich have been getting richer and richer. The ANC has no concern for the people and it cannot be trusted. In fact the ANC is now the enemy of the people.

We are left to live in shacks, including so called government ‘transit camps’. We are left to burn in the shacks and to be murdered in the shacks. We are left to die alone. We are in very difficult times. We have no one but ourselves.

Under these circumstances it would be highly irresponsible to accept the lie that we are now free, that the ANC brought freedom to us and that we should obediently celebrate our freedom.

The decision to mark UnFreedom Day 2023 was taken in open general assemblies, in free and public discussions. Events will be held in three provinces. The schedule of events is as follows:

• KwaZulu-Natal: On 26 April there will be a march in Durban from Curries Fountain to the City Hall.
• Mpumalanga: On 28 April there will be a march from Vukuzakhe Location to the Volksrust townhall.
• Gauteng: On 29 April there will be a rally in the Goodhope Settlement in Germiston.

All events are scheduled to start at 9 am.

Land. Dignity. Freedom.

Organise, mobilise and build towards a movement of communes!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Unequal access to clean water in cities around the globe—an injustice poised to grow worse this century as the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis intensifies droughts—can be attributed in large part to "unsustainable consumption" by high-income residents, according to peer-reviewed research published Monday in Nature Sustainability.

"Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use," the study says. "Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged."

"Social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the production and manifestation of such crises," the paper continues. "Specifically, due to stark socioeconomic inequalities, urban elites are able to overconsume water while excluding less-privileged populations from basic access."

Through a case study of the deeply unequal metropolitan area of Cape Town, South Africa, the five authors show how "unsustainable water use by the elite can exacerbate urban water crises at least as much as climate change or population growth."

As the authors stress, "Cape Town's urban form and features are not unique to this city but rather are common to many metropolitan areas across the world. Thus, the model is flexible and can be adjusted to analyze urban water dynamics in other cities characterized by socioeconomic inequalities, uneven patterns of water consumption, and varied access to private water sources and public water supply." Moreover, they add, "this model opens up possibilities for more just and sustainable approaches to managing and distributing water in cities."

Using the Socio-Economic Index created by the Western Cape Province, the scholars sorted Cape Town's population into five classes strewn across "a starkly segregated urban space": elite (1.4% of city inhabitants), upper-middle-income (12.3%), lower-middle-income (24.6%), lower income (40.5%), and the residents of informal settlements on the city's edges (21%).

Elite and upper-middle-income households were combined into the broader category of "privileged groups." These people "usually live in spacious houses with gardens and swimming pools and consume unsustainable levels of water," the paper points out, "while informal dwellers do not have taps or toilets inside their premises."

"The only way to preserve available water resources is by altering privileged lifestyles, limiting water use for amenities, and redistributing income and water resources more equally."

The authors' model of class-based water consumption patterns in Cape Town found that elite and upper-middle-income households respectively consume 2,161 liters and 988 liters per day, on average. Meanwhile, lower-income and informal households respectively consume an estimated average of 178 and 41 liters per day.

"In addition, the results show that most of the water consumed by privileged social groups (elite and upper-middle-income) is used for non-basic water needs (amenities) such as the irrigation of residential gardens, swimming pools, and additional water fixtures, both indoor and outdoor," the paper notes. "Conversely, most of the water consumed by other social groups (lower-middle income, lower income, and informal dwellers) is used to satisfy basic water needs such as drinking water, hygiene practices, and basic livelihood."

Despite constituting just 13.7% of Cape Town's overall population, elite and upper-middle-income households together consume over half (51.4%) of the city's water resources. By contrast, lower-income and informal households represent 61.5% of the city's total population but collectively consume only 27.3% of its water.

As the paper explains: "Privileged groups have access to private water sources in addition to the public water supply. Although we use the term 'private' to identify the additional sources used mostly by privileged social groups, these sources become private only after a process of enclosure and dispossession of common water resources (mostly groundwater) for the sole disposal and benefit of privileged users."

Cape Town's grossly unequal water consumption patterns are "rooted in" capitalist social relations, according to the scholars. "While benefiting a privileged minority, this political-economic system is unsustainable because it reduces the availability of natural resources for the less-advantaged population and causes various forms of environmental degradation."

"Domestic water consumption in unequal urban areas such as Cape Town is likely to become unsustainable as a result of excessive consumption among privileged social groups," the paper warns. "Specifically, privileged water consumption is unsustainable because in the short term, it disproportionally uses the water available for the entire urban population. In the long term, privileged consumption constitutes an environmental threat to the status of local surface- and groundwater sources."

The scholars also simulate how Cape Town's socio-spatially uneven patterns of water consumption changed in response to droughts and ensuing water crises.

According to the paper, "The model's results indicate that water management strategies to cope with droughts can seriously affect the water security of poor households by reducing their access to water."

As the authors explain:

The model reproduces the various droughts that occurred between 2008 and 2019 across the metropolitan area of Cape Town. Besides the 2011 drought, the most significant event occurred between 2015 and 2017 and engendered one of the most extreme urban water crises ever recorded. Towards the end of that meteorological drought, the dams of the Cape Town Water Supply System had reached the alarming level of 12.3% of usable water. In response, the municipality imposed severe water restrictions and other measures to avoid 'Day Zero,' the day in which the entire city would have run out of water. The restrictions included water rationing to [350 liters per household per day, or 50 liters per person per day], increased water tariffs, fines for overconsumption or illicit water uses, withdrawal of the free water allocation for households classified as non-indigent, and other measures to enforce the compliance of such restrictions.

The increasing block tariff, designed to charge incrementally higher rates to heavier consumers and cross-subsidize light users, was only partially successful in meeting the needs of the poorest population. Indeed, low-income users could not afford the revised tariff. Very often, these residents live in overcrowded units where more than eight people share the same tap and end up being charged unaffordable water bills and fines.

Ultimately, the authors observe, "low-income residents are significantly more vulnerable to the demand-management measures enforced by the city than are more-affluent inhabitants, who can afford tariff increases and can access and develop alternative water sources."

"Throughout the drought period of January 2015 to July 2017, the lower-income group had to reduce their already limited daily consumption from [197 liters per household per day to 101 liters per household per day], a reduction of 51%," the study notes. "These results indicate that drought-related restrictions can leave lower-income households without enough water to meet their basic water demands for bathing, laundry, cooking, and sustaining their livelihoods. Conversely, the consumption trends of the elite and upper-middle-income groups show that these households have sufficient water for their basic needs even during drought restrictions."

"Current policies aimed at tackling drought and urban water crises focus mostly on building resilient cities through additional as well as more-efficient water infrastructure and technologies, alongside progressive water pricing," the study points out. "Yet such techno-managerial solutions are insufficient to address future water crises because they overlook some of the root causes."

"Urban water crises can be triggered by the unsustainable consumption patterns of privileged social groups," the authors emphasize. "These patterns are generated by distinctive political-economic systems that seek capital accumulation and perpetual growth to the exclusive benefit of a privileged minority."

"The only way to preserve available water resources," they conclude, "is by altering privileged lifestyles, limiting water use for amenities, and redistributing income and water resources more equally."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Unequal access to clean water in cities around the globe—an injustice poised to grow worse this century as the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis intensifies droughts—can be attributed in large part to "unsustainable consumption" by high-income residents, according to peer-reviewed research published Monday in Nature Sustainability.

"Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use," the study says. "Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged."

"Social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the production and manifestation of such crises," the paper continues. "Specifically, due to stark socioeconomic inequalities, urban elites are able to overconsume water while excluding less-privileged populations from basic access."

Through a case study of the deeply unequal metropolitan area of Cape Town, South Africa, the five authors show how "unsustainable water use by the elite can exacerbate urban water crises at least as much as climate change or population growth."

As the authors stress, "Cape Town's urban form and features are not unique to this city but rather are common to many metropolitan areas across the world. Thus, the model is flexible and can be adjusted to analyze urban water dynamics in other cities characterized by socioeconomic inequalities, uneven patterns of water consumption, and varied access to private water sources and public water supply." Moreover, they add, "this model opens up possibilities for more just and sustainable approaches to managing and distributing water in cities."

Using the Socio-Economic Index created by the Western Cape Province, the scholars sorted Cape Town's population into five classes strewn across "a starkly segregated urban space": elite (1.4% of city inhabitants), upper-middle-income (12.3%), lower-middle-income (24.6%), lower income (40.5%), and the residents of informal settlements on the city's edges (21%).

Elite and upper-middle-income households were combined into the broader category of "privileged groups." These people "usually live in spacious houses with gardens and swimming pools and consume unsustainable levels of water," the paper points out, "while informal dwellers do not have taps or toilets inside their premises."

"The only way to preserve available water resources is by altering privileged lifestyles, limiting water use for amenities, and redistributing income and water resources more equally."

The authors' model of class-based water consumption patterns in Cape Town found that elite and upper-middle-income households respectively consume 2,161 liters and 988 liters per day, on average. Meanwhile, lower-income and informal households respectively consume an estimated average of 178 and 41 liters per day.

"In addition, the results show that most of the water consumed by privileged social groups (elite and upper-middle-income) is used for non-basic water needs (amenities) such as the irrigation of residential gardens, swimming pools, and additional water fixtures, both indoor and outdoor," the paper notes. "Conversely, most of the water consumed by other social groups (lower-middle income, lower income, and informal dwellers) is used to satisfy basic water needs such as drinking water, hygiene practices, and basic livelihood."

Despite constituting just 13.7% of Cape Town's overall population, elite and upper-middle-income households together consume over half (51.4%) of the city's water resources. By contrast, lower-income and informal households represent 61.5% of the city's total population but collectively consume only 27.3% of its water.

As the paper explains: "Privileged groups have access to private water sources in addition to the public water supply. Although we use the term 'private' to identify the additional sources used mostly by privileged social groups, these sources become private only after a process of enclosure and dispossession of common water resources (mostly groundwater) for the sole disposal and benefit of privileged users."

Cape Town's grossly unequal water consumption patterns are "rooted in" capitalist social relations, according to the scholars. "While benefiting a privileged minority, this political-economic system is unsustainable because it reduces the availability of natural resources for the less-advantaged population and causes various forms of environmental degradation."

"Domestic water consumption in unequal urban areas such as Cape Town is likely to become unsustainable as a result of excessive consumption among privileged social groups," the paper warns. "Specifically, privileged water consumption is unsustainable because in the short term, it disproportionally uses the water available for the entire urban population. In the long term, privileged consumption constitutes an environmental threat to the status of local surface- and groundwater sources."

The scholars also simulate how Cape Town's socio-spatially uneven patterns of water consumption changed in response to droughts and ensuing water crises.

According to the paper, "The model's results indicate that water management strategies to cope with droughts can seriously affect the water security of poor households by reducing their access to water."

As the authors explain:

The model reproduces the various droughts that occurred between 2008 and 2019 across the metropolitan area of Cape Town. Besides the 2011 drought, the most significant event occurred between 2015 and 2017 and engendered one of the most extreme urban water crises ever recorded. Towards the end of that meteorological drought, the dams of the Cape Town Water Supply System had reached the alarming level of 12.3% of usable water. In response, the municipality imposed severe water restrictions and other measures to avoid 'Day Zero,' the day in which the entire city would have run out of water. The restrictions included water rationing to [350 liters per household per day, or 50 liters per person per day], increased water tariffs, fines for overconsumption or illicit water uses, withdrawal of the free water allocation for households classified as non-indigent, and other measures to enforce the compliance of such restrictions.

The increasing block tariff, designed to charge incrementally higher rates to heavier consumers and cross-subsidize light users, was only partially successful in meeting the needs of the poorest population. Indeed, low-income users could not afford the revised tariff. Very often, these residents live in overcrowded units where more than eight people share the same tap and end up being charged unaffordable water bills and fines.

Ultimately, the authors observe, "low-income residents are significantly more vulnerable to the demand-management measures enforced by the city than are more-affluent inhabitants, who can afford tariff increases and can access and develop alternative water sources."

"Throughout the drought period of January 2015 to July 2017, the lower-income group had to reduce their already limited daily consumption from [197 liters per household per day to 101 liters per household per day], a reduction of 51%," the study notes. "These results indicate that drought-related restrictions can leave lower-income households without enough water to meet their basic water demands for bathing, laundry, cooking, and sustaining their livelihoods. Conversely, the consumption trends of the elite and upper-middle-income groups show that these households have sufficient water for their basic needs even during drought restrictions."

"Current policies aimed at tackling drought and urban water crises focus mostly on building resilient cities through additional as well as more-efficient water infrastructure and technologies, alongside progressive water pricing," the study points out. "Yet such techno-managerial solutions are insufficient to address future water crises because they overlook some of the root causes."

"Urban water crises can be triggered by the unsustainable consumption patterns of privileged social groups," the authors emphasize. "These patterns are generated by distinctive political-economic systems that seek capital accumulation and perpetual growth to the exclusive benefit of a privileged minority."

"The only way to preserve available water resources," they conclude, "is by altering privileged lifestyles, limiting water use for amenities, and redistributing income and water resources more equally."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Arnold Bo?cklin (Switzerland), Isle of the Dead, 1880.

What constitutes a crisis worthy of global attention? When a regional bank in the United States falls victim to the inversion of the yield curve (i.e., when short-term bond interest rates become higher than long-term rates), the Earth nearly stops spinning. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – one of the most important financiers of technology start-ups in the United States – on 10 March presaged wider chaos in the Western financial world. In the days after the SVB debacle, Signature Bank, one of the few banks to accept cryptocurrency deposits, faced bankruptcy, and then Credit Suisse, an established European bank set up in 1856, fell due its longstanding poor management of risk (on 19 March, UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse in an emergency deal seeking to halt the crisis). Governments held emergency Zoom conferences, financial titans called the heads of central banks and of states, and newspapers warned of system failure if safety nets were not quickly sown underneath the entire financial architecture. Within hours, Western governments and central banks secured billions of dollars to bail out the financial system. This crisis could not be allowed to escalate.

Other serious developments in the world might be called a crisis, but they do not elicit the kind of urgent response undertaken by Western governments to shore up their banking system. Three years ago, Oxfam released a report that found that the ‘world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa’. That fact, which is more shocking than the failure of a bank, has moved no agenda despite the evidence that this disparity is caused largely by the predatory, deregulated lending practices of the Western banking system (as we will show in our April dossier, Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives).

Silence greeted the publication of a key report this past January on the regression of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being met on the African continent. The 2022 Africa Sustainable Development Report, produced by the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the UN Development Programme, showed that, because of the failure to finance development, African countries will not come anywhere near abolishing extreme poverty. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 445 million people on the continent – 34% of the population – lived in extreme poverty, with 30 million more people being added to that number in 2020. The report estimates that, by 2030, the number of people in extreme poverty on the continent will reach 492 million. Not one alarm bell was rung for this ongoing disaster, much less the rapid apparition of billions of dollars to bail out the African people.

Alexander Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopia), The End of the Beginning, 1972–1973.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that women in Africa are more likely to be struck hard by the pandemic. The data, the IMF reported, is camouflaged by the prevalence of self-employment amongst women, whose economic difficulties do not always appear in national statistics. Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past year to question their governments about the cost-of-living crisis, which has evaporated most people’s incomes. As incomes fall, and as social services collapse, women take up more and more of their households’ workload – tending to children, to elders, to those who are sick and hungry, and so on. The African Feminist Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery Statement, written by a pan-African feminist platform, offered the following assessment of the situation:

the absence of social safety nets needed by women due to their greater fiscal precarity in the face of economic shocks has exposed the failures of a development trajectory currently prioritising productivity for growth over the wellbeing of African people. Indeed, COVID-19 has made evident what feminists have long emphasised: that the profits made in economies and markets are subsidised by women’s unpaid care and domestic work – an essential service that even the current pandemic has failed to acknowledge and address in policy.

Nike Davies-Okundaye (Nigeria), Beauty Is Everywhere, 2013.

On 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, protests across Africa focused attention on the general decline in living standards and on the specific impact this has had on women’s lives. That evocative statement from Oxfam – the world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa – and the realisation that these women’s living conditions appear to be deteriorating have not provoked a crisis response in the world. There have been no urgent phone calls between the world’s capitals, no emergency Zoom meetings between central banks, no concern for people who are slipping deeper and deeper into poverty as their countries forge a path of austerity in light of a more and more permanent debt crisis. Most of the protests on 8 March focused their attention on the inflation of food and fuel prices and on the precarious conditions that this is creating for women. From the Landless Workers’ Movement’s public action against slave-like labour practices in Brazil to the demonstration against gender-based violence by the National Networks of Farmers’ Groups in Tanzania, women organised by rural and urban trade unions, by political parties, and by a range of social movements took to the streets to say, with Josie Mpama, ‘make way for women who will lead’.

At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been tracking how the pandemic has hardened the structures of neocolonialism and patriarchy, culminating in CoronaShock and Patriarchy (November 2020), which also presented a list of the people’s feminist demands to confront the global health, political, social, and economic crisis. Earlier that year, in March 2020, we released the first study in our feminisms series, Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle, in which we pointed out how economic contraction and austerity cause more women to be unemployed, put more pressure on women to care for their families and communities, and lead to increased femicide. In response to these horrendous conditions, we also wrote about the rise of protests by women across the world. At that time, we decided that one of our contributions to these struggles would be to excavate the histories of women within our movements who have been largely forgotten. Over the past three years, we have published short biographies of three women – Kanak Mukherjee (India, 1921–2005), Nela Martínez Espinosa (Ecuador, 1912–2004), and now Josie Mpama (South Africa, 1903-1979). Each year, we will publish a biography of a woman who, like Kanak, Nela, and Josie, fought for a socialism that would transcend patriarchy and class exploitation.

Protests against lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom in the late 1920s often confronted authorities at the town hall, pictured in the distance.

In the early 1920s, Josie Mpama, born into South Africa’s Black working class, joined the informal workforce, washing clothes, cleaning homes, and cooking. When the racist regime tried to enforce policies and laws to restrict the movement of Africans, she entered the world of politics and fought the oppression that came with decrees such as the lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom (in the country’s northwest). The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), established in 1921, provided shape to the myriad protests against segregationist laws, teaching the workers to use their ‘labour and the power to organise and withhold it’, as their flyers declared. ‘These are your weapons; learn to use them, thereby bringing the tyrant to his knees’.

In 1928, Josie joined the CPSA, finding support both for her organising work and for her desire for political education. In the 1930s, she moved to Johannesburg and opened a night school for ideological training as well as for basic mathematics and English. Later, Josie became one of the first Black working-class women to enter the senior leadership of the CPSA and eventually travelled to Moscow using the pseudonym Red Scarf to attend the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Under Josie’s leadership as the head of the party’s women’s department, more and more women joined the CPSA, largely because it took up issues that spoke to them and encouraged women to struggle alongside men and fight for more radical conceptions of gender roles.

The Federation of South African Women held its inaugural conference on 17 April 1954 at the Trades Hall in Johannesburg, where Josie chaired the session ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’.

So much of this history is forgotten. In contemporary South Africa, there is a focus on the importance of the Freedom Charter (adopted on 26 June 1955). But there is less acknowledgement that the year before, the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) passed a Women’s Charter (April 1954), which – as we say in the study – ‘would eventually become the basis for certain constitutional rights in post-apartheid South Africa’. The Women’s Charter was passed by 146 delegates who represented 230,000 women. One of those delegates was Josie, who attended the conference on behalf of the Transvaal All-Women’s Union and became the president of FEDSAW’s Transvaal branch. The Women’s Charter called for equal pay for equal work (yet to be attained today) and for the right of women to form trade unions. Josie’s leadership in FEDSAW caught the eye of the South African apartheid regime, which banned her from politics in 1955. ‘Josie or no Josie’, she wrote to her FEDSAW comrades, ‘the struggle will go on and ours will be the day of victory’.

On 9 August 1956, 20,000 women marched to South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and demanded the abolition of the apartheid pass laws. That date – 9 August – is now celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa. As the women marched, they chanted: wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, uzokufa (‘you strike the women, you strike the rock, you will be crushed’).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

Arnold Böcklin (Switzerland), Isle of the Dead, 1880.

What constitutes a crisis worthy of global attention? When a regional bank in the United States falls victim to the inversion of the yield curve (i.e., when short-term bond interest rates become higher than long-term rates), the Earth nearly stops spinning. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – one of the most important financiers of technology start-ups in the United States – on 10 March presaged wider chaos in the Western financial world. In the days after the SVB debacle, Signature Bank, one of the few banks to accept cryptocurrency deposits, faced bankruptcy, and then Credit Suisse, an established European bank set up in 1856, fell due its longstanding poor management of risk (on 19 March, UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse in an emergency deal seeking to halt the crisis). Governments held emergency Zoom conferences, financial titans called the heads of central banks and of states, and newspapers warned of system failure if safety nets were not quickly sown underneath the entire financial architecture. Within hours, Western governments and central banks secured billions of dollars to bail out the financial system. This crisis could not be allowed to escalate.

Other serious developments in the world might be called a crisis, but they do not elicit the kind of urgent response undertaken by Western governments to shore up their banking system. Three years ago, Oxfam released a report that found that the ‘world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa’. That fact, which is more shocking than the failure of a bank, has moved no agenda despite the evidence that this disparity is caused largely by the predatory, deregulated lending practices of the Western banking system (as we will show in our April dossier, Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives).

Silence greeted the publication of a key report this past January on the regression of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being met on the African continent. The 2022 Africa Sustainable Development Report, produced by the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the UN Development Programme, showed that, because of the failure to finance development, African countries will not come anywhere near abolishing extreme poverty. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 445 million people on the continent – 34% of the population – lived in extreme poverty, with 30 million more people being added to that number in 2020. The report estimates that, by 2030, the number of people in extreme poverty on the continent will reach 492 million. Not one alarm bell was rung for this ongoing disaster, much less the rapid apparition of billions of dollars to bail out the African people.

Alexander Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopia), The End of the Beginning, 1972–1973.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that women in Africa are more likely to be struck hard by the pandemic. The data, the IMF reported, is camouflaged by the prevalence of self-employment amongst women, whose economic difficulties do not always appear in national statistics. Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past year to question their governments about the cost-of-living crisis, which has evaporated most people’s incomes. As incomes fall, and as social services collapse, women take up more and more of their households’ workload – tending to children, to elders, to those who are sick and hungry, and so on. The African Feminist Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery Statement, written by a pan-African feminist platform, offered the following assessment of the situation:

the absence of social safety nets needed by women due to their greater fiscal precarity in the face of economic shocks has exposed the failures of a development trajectory currently prioritising productivity for growth over the wellbeing of African people. Indeed, COVID-19 has made evident what feminists have long emphasised: that the profits made in economies and markets are subsidised by women’s unpaid care and domestic work – an essential service that even the current pandemic has failed to acknowledge and address in policy.

Nike Davies-Okundaye (Nigeria), Beauty Is Everywhere, 2013.

On 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, protests across Africa focused attention on the general decline in living standards and on the specific impact this has had on women’s lives. That evocative statement from Oxfam – the world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa – and the realisation that these women’s living conditions appear to be deteriorating have not provoked a crisis response in the world. There have been no urgent phone calls between the world’s capitals, no emergency Zoom meetings between central banks, no concern for people who are slipping deeper and deeper into poverty as their countries forge a path of austerity in light of a more and more permanent debt crisis. Most of the protests on 8 March focused their attention on the inflation of food and fuel prices and on the precarious conditions that this is creating for women. From the Landless Workers’ Movement’s public action against slave-like labour practices in Brazil to the demonstration against gender-based violence by the National Networks of Farmers’ Groups in Tanzania, women organised by rural and urban trade unions, by political parties, and by a range of social movements took to the streets to say, with Josie Mpama, ‘make way for women who will lead’.

At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been tracking how the pandemic has hardened the structures of neocolonialism and patriarchy, culminating in CoronaShock and Patriarchy (November 2020), which also presented a list of the people’s feminist demands to confront the global health, political, social, and economic crisis. Earlier that year, in March 2020, we released the first study in our feminisms series, Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle, in which we pointed out how economic contraction and austerity cause more women to be unemployed, put more pressure on women to care for their families and communities, and lead to increased femicide. In response to these horrendous conditions, we also wrote about the rise of protests by women across the world. At that time, we decided that one of our contributions to these struggles would be to excavate the histories of women within our movements who have been largely forgotten. Over the past three years, we have published short biographies of three women – Kanak Mukherjee (India, 1921–2005), Nela Martínez Espinosa (Ecuador, 1912–2004), and now Josie Mpama (South Africa, 1903-1979). Each year, we will publish a biography of a woman who, like Kanak, Nela, and Josie, fought for a socialism that would transcend patriarchy and class exploitation.

Protests against lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom in the late 1920s often confronted authorities at the town hall, pictured in the distance.

In the early 1920s, Josie Mpama, born into South Africa’s Black working class, joined the informal workforce, washing clothes, cleaning homes, and cooking. When the racist regime tried to enforce policies and laws to restrict the movement of Africans, she entered the world of politics and fought the oppression that came with decrees such as the lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom (in the country’s northwest). The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), established in 1921, provided shape to the myriad protests against segregationist laws, teaching the workers to use their ‘labour and the power to organise and withhold it’, as their flyers declared. ‘These are your weapons; learn to use them, thereby bringing the tyrant to his knees’.

In 1928, Josie joined the CPSA, finding support both for her organising work and for her desire for political education. In the 1930s, she moved to Johannesburg and opened a night school for ideological training as well as for basic mathematics and English. Later, Josie became one of the first Black working-class women to enter the senior leadership of the CPSA and eventually travelled to Moscow using the pseudonym Red Scarf to attend the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Under Josie’s leadership as the head of the party’s women’s department, more and more women joined the CPSA, largely because it took up issues that spoke to them and encouraged women to struggle alongside men and fight for more radical conceptions of gender roles.

The Federation of South African Women held its inaugural conference on 17 April 1954 at the Trades Hall in Johannesburg, where Josie chaired the session ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’.

So much of this history is forgotten. In contemporary South Africa, there is a focus on the importance of the Freedom Charter (adopted on 26 June 1955). But there is less acknowledgement that the year before, the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) passed a Women’s Charter (April 1954), which – as we say in the study – ‘would eventually become the basis for certain constitutional rights in post-apartheid South Africa’. The Women’s Charter was passed by 146 delegates who represented 230,000 women. One of those delegates was Josie, who attended the conference on behalf of the Transvaal All-Women’s Union and became the president of FEDSAW’s Transvaal branch. The Women’s Charter called for equal pay for equal work (yet to be attained today) and for the right of women to form trade unions. Josie’s leadership in FEDSAW caught the eye of the South African apartheid regime, which banned her from politics in 1955. ‘Josie or no Josie’, she wrote to her FEDSAW comrades, ‘the struggle will go on and ours will be the day of victory’.

On 9 August 1956, 20,000 women marched to South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and demanded the abolition of the apartheid pass laws. That date – 9 August – is now celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa. As the women marched, they chanted: wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, uzokufa (‘you strike the women, you strike the rock, you will be crushed’).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

Arnold Bo?cklin (Switzerland), Isle of the Dead, 1880.

What constitutes a crisis worthy of global attention? When a regional bank in the United States falls victim to the inversion of the yield curve (i.e., when short-term bond interest rates become higher than long-term rates), the Earth nearly stops spinning. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – one of the most important financiers of technology start-ups in the United States – on 10 March presaged wider chaos in the Western financial world. In the days after the SVB debacle, Signature Bank, one of the few banks to accept cryptocurrency deposits, faced bankruptcy, and then Credit Suisse, an established European bank set up in 1856, fell due its longstanding poor management of risk (on 19 March, UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse in an emergency deal seeking to halt the crisis). Governments held emergency Zoom conferences, financial titans called the heads of central banks and of states, and newspapers warned of system failure if safety nets were not quickly sown underneath the entire financial architecture. Within hours, Western governments and central banks secured billions of dollars to bail out the financial system. This crisis could not be allowed to escalate.

Other serious developments in the world might be called a crisis, but they do not elicit the kind of urgent response undertaken by Western governments to shore up their banking system. Three years ago, Oxfam released a report that found that the ‘world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa’. That fact, which is more shocking than the failure of a bank, has moved no agenda despite the evidence that this disparity is caused largely by the predatory, deregulated lending practices of the Western banking system (as we will show in our April dossier, Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives).

Silence greeted the publication of a key report this past January on the regression of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being met on the African continent. The 2022 Africa Sustainable Development Report, produced by the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the UN Development Programme, showed that, because of the failure to finance development, African countries will not come anywhere near abolishing extreme poverty. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 445 million people on the continent – 34% of the population – lived in extreme poverty, with 30 million more people being added to that number in 2020. The report estimates that, by 2030, the number of people in extreme poverty on the continent will reach 492 million. Not one alarm bell was rung for this ongoing disaster, much less the rapid apparition of billions of dollars to bail out the African people.

Alexander Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopia), The End of the Beginning, 1972–1973.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that women in Africa are more likely to be struck hard by the pandemic. The data, the IMF reported, is camouflaged by the prevalence of self-employment amongst women, whose economic difficulties do not always appear in national statistics. Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past year to question their governments about the cost-of-living crisis, which has evaporated most people’s incomes. As incomes fall, and as social services collapse, women take up more and more of their households’ workload – tending to children, to elders, to those who are sick and hungry, and so on. The African Feminist Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery Statement, written by a pan-African feminist platform, offered the following assessment of the situation:

the absence of social safety nets needed by women due to their greater fiscal precarity in the face of economic shocks has exposed the failures of a development trajectory currently prioritising productivity for growth over the wellbeing of African people. Indeed, COVID-19 has made evident what feminists have long emphasised: that the profits made in economies and markets are subsidised by women’s unpaid care and domestic work – an essential service that even the current pandemic has failed to acknowledge and address in policy.

Nike Davies-Okundaye (Nigeria), Beauty Is Everywhere, 2013.

On 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, protests across Africa focused attention on the general decline in living standards and on the specific impact this has had on women’s lives. That evocative statement from Oxfam – the world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa – and the realisation that these women’s living conditions appear to be deteriorating have not provoked a crisis response in the world. There have been no urgent phone calls between the world’s capitals, no emergency Zoom meetings between central banks, no concern for people who are slipping deeper and deeper into poverty as their countries forge a path of austerity in light of a more and more permanent debt crisis. Most of the protests on 8 March focused their attention on the inflation of food and fuel prices and on the precarious conditions that this is creating for women. From the Landless Workers’ Movement’s public action against slave-like labour practices in Brazil to the demonstration against gender-based violence by the National Networks of Farmers’ Groups in Tanzania, women organised by rural and urban trade unions, by political parties, and by a range of social movements took to the streets to say, with Josie Mpama, ‘make way for women who will lead’.

At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been tracking how the pandemic has hardened the structures of neocolonialism and patriarchy, culminating in CoronaShock and Patriarchy (November 2020), which also presented a list of the people’s feminist demands to confront the global health, political, social, and economic crisis. Earlier that year, in March 2020, we released the first study in our feminisms series, Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle, in which we pointed out how economic contraction and austerity cause more women to be unemployed, put more pressure on women to care for their families and communities, and lead to increased femicide. In response to these horrendous conditions, we also wrote about the rise of protests by women across the world. At that time, we decided that one of our contributions to these struggles would be to excavate the histories of women within our movements who have been largely forgotten. Over the past three years, we have published short biographies of three women – Kanak Mukherjee (India, 1921–2005), Nela Martínez Espinosa (Ecuador, 1912–2004), and now Josie Mpama (South Africa, 1903-1979). Each year, we will publish a biography of a woman who, like Kanak, Nela, and Josie, fought for a socialism that would transcend patriarchy and class exploitation.

Protests against lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom in the late 1920s often confronted authorities at the town hall, pictured in the distance.

In the early 1920s, Josie Mpama, born into South Africa’s Black working class, joined the informal workforce, washing clothes, cleaning homes, and cooking. When the racist regime tried to enforce policies and laws to restrict the movement of Africans, she entered the world of politics and fought the oppression that came with decrees such as the lodger’s permits in Potchefstroom (in the country’s northwest). The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), established in 1921, provided shape to the myriad protests against segregationist laws, teaching the workers to use their ‘labour and the power to organise and withhold it’, as their flyers declared. ‘These are your weapons; learn to use them, thereby bringing the tyrant to his knees’.

In 1928, Josie joined the CPSA, finding support both for her organising work and for her desire for political education. In the 1930s, she moved to Johannesburg and opened a night school for ideological training as well as for basic mathematics and English. Later, Josie became one of the first Black working-class women to enter the senior leadership of the CPSA and eventually travelled to Moscow using the pseudonym Red Scarf to attend the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Under Josie’s leadership as the head of the party’s women’s department, more and more women joined the CPSA, largely because it took up issues that spoke to them and encouraged women to struggle alongside men and fight for more radical conceptions of gender roles.

The Federation of South African Women held its inaugural conference on 17 April 1954 at the Trades Hall in Johannesburg, where Josie chaired the session ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’.

So much of this history is forgotten. In contemporary South Africa, there is a focus on the importance of the Freedom Charter (adopted on 26 June 1955). But there is less acknowledgement that the year before, the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) passed a Women’s Charter (April 1954), which – as we say in the study – ‘would eventually become the basis for certain constitutional rights in post-apartheid South Africa’. The Women’s Charter was passed by 146 delegates who represented 230,000 women. One of those delegates was Josie, who attended the conference on behalf of the Transvaal All-Women’s Union and became the president of FEDSAW’s Transvaal branch. The Women’s Charter called for equal pay for equal work (yet to be attained today) and for the right of women to form trade unions. Josie’s leadership in FEDSAW caught the eye of the South African apartheid regime, which banned her from politics in 1955. ‘Josie or no Josie’, she wrote to her FEDSAW comrades, ‘the struggle will go on and ours will be the day of victory’.

On 9 August 1956, 20,000 women marched to South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and demanded the abolition of the apartheid pass laws. That date – 9 August – is now celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa. As the women marched, they chanted: wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, uzokufa (‘you strike the women, you strike the rock, you will be crushed’).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

South African lawmakers voted Tuesday to downgrade the country's embassy in Israel in response to its apartheid, illegal occupation, and other crimes against Palestinians—a move welcomed by human rights advocates around the world.

The resolution to downgrade the status of South Africa's embassy in Ramat Gan, just east of Tel Aviv, to a liaison office was introduced by the center-left National Freedom Party (NFP), which hailed the measure's passage as "a historic moment for our country and a demonstration of our unwavering commitment to justice, human rights, and freedom."

Holding just two seats in the Parliament, the NFP secured the resolution's passage with the support of parties including the dominant African National Congress (ANC), Economic Freedom Fighters, United Democratic Movement, African Independent Congress, Al-Jama-ah, and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania.

"We can no longer stand by while Palestinian human rights are being trampled on."

While Israel's Foreign Ministry called the vote "shameful and disgraceful," NFP Member of Parliament Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam, who introduced the resolution, said after its passage that "this is a moment Madiba would be proud of."

Emam was referring to former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who advocated for Palestinian rights and for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

"He always said our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians," Emam said of Mandela, who died in 2013. "Today we took a step closer to the attainment of that freedom for Palestinians."

"We can no longer stand by while Palestinian human rights are being trampled on," Emam asserted. "By passing this resolution, we are sending a powerful message to the world that South Africa remains a beacon of hope and a shining example of what is possible when we come together in pursuit of a more just and equitable world."

Emam continued:

This resolution demands accountability from Israel. It is a courageous move that demonstrates our commitment as a country to justice, human rights, and freedom. The state of Israel was built through the displacement, murder, and maiming of Palestinians. And to maintain their grip on power, they have instituted apartheid to control and manage Palestinians. This institution of apartheid by the state of Israel contravenes international law and is a violation of the human rights of Palestinians.

"As South Africans," he added, "we refuse to stand by while apartheid is being perpetrated again."

Israel—like the United States, United Kingdom, and other Western democracies—supported South Africa's apartheid regime and even helped it develop nuclear weapons. After the fall of South African apartheid and the return to majority rule, the ruling ANC has vocally opposed Israeli crimes against Palestine.

For example, in May 2018 the party responded to Israeli forces' killing of scores of Palestinian protesters by excoriating the actions of "people who continuously remind us all about the hate and prejudice Jews went through during Hitler's anti-Semitism reign [and yet] exhibit the same cruelty less than a century later."

More recently, the ANC last month cheered the expulsion of a senior Israeli diplomat from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Senior South African officials have consistently condemned Israeli apartheid, which is being acknowledged by a growing number of human rights groups around the world, including in Israel.

Echoing former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Baleka Mbete—who served as South Africa's deputy president, National Assembly speaker, and head of the ANC—in 2012 called Israel "far worse than apartheid South Africa."

Like Carter and other Nobel Peace laureates including Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchú, Jody Williams, Betty Williams, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the late South African anti-apartheid activist and religious leader Desmond Tutu condemned Israeli apartheid.

The new NFP-led resolution follows last year's call by the South African government for the United Nations General Assembly to declare Israel an apartheid state.

The measure was also passed on the same day that the Palestinian National Authority called on the world "to take immediate, concrete measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for their crimes and continual incitement and threats to commit crimes against the Palestinian people."

"Only the end of Israel's occupation and the dismantling of its apartheid regime will end this violence, racism, and fascism against the Palestinian people," the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said in a statement.

"If not accompanied by action, statements of condemnation will not suffice," the ministry added. "Urgent international intervention is needed to curb Israel's dangerous aggressions against the Palestinian people and to provide necessary protection."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The Fijiana are one step away from reaching the quarterfinals of the Women’s Rugby World Cup — but they have to beat favourite France first.

To qualify, they need to overcome the in-form French team at the Northland Events Centre in Whangārei on Saturday.

It is an opportunity that has arisen as a result of a thrilling 21-17 last-gasp upset over favourites South Africa last weekend, with Fijiana stealing the game with a try scored in the final minute.

• READ MORE: France lose star half back Laure Sansus
• Fijiana survive scare from South Africa to win 21-17 in dying seconds
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

Most commentators did not expect Fijiana to win, having entered the game off the back of an 84-19 thrashing at the hands of England in their opening game.

“I have no words for it. I am just so grateful for the girls. We talked about leaving everything on the field and playing with our hearts,” Fijiana captain Asinate Serevi said.

“One thing that Fijians are known for is that even with three or one minute left on the clock, we can still win a game — and that’s what we did,” Asinate added.

“As a captain they made me look good, so I’m forever grateful for the game they put on.”

First Pacific qualifier
Being the first Pacific Island nation to qualify for the Women’s Rugby World Cup is an accomplishment, but for Fijiana, qualifying for the quarterfinals is the driving goal.

Despite a disheartening loss to England, Senirusi Serivakula said Fijiana’s winning ambitions have never faltered.

“The message was clear from the beginning, which was that we must beat South Africa. That was the message, that we are not going to walk away without a win over South Africa,” coach Senirusi Seruvakula said.

“I’m proud that the girls stuck to it, and they played as a team to the last minute.”

That message was delivered in a stunning fashion, with a last-minute try scored right between the posts by forward Karalaini Naisewa. The number eight had to crash through three tacklers to get the ball over the line.

That try has since gone viral and Fijiana players have now become overnight celebrities in Fiji.

The star of the team, prop forward Siteri Rasolea, was awarded player of the match. She relentlessly ploughed through South Africa’s forwards from beginning to end.

Public admiration
Rasolea had already won public admiration in Fiji after she turned down an offer to play for her home nation Australia, opting to represent her heritage nation Fiji.

Rasolea said the team were still coming to terms with their accomplishment.

“Our girls had to dig deep and really fight for each other,” said Rasolea.

“I’m still in awe of it now. I want to dedicate this to everyone who supported me at home. It wasn’t easy leaving Australia to go to Fiji, so I fulfil my dreams.”

Like Rasolea, many of Fijiana’s players flocked from overseas with the purpose of representing their heritage.

Fijiana captain Asinate Serevi, who is the daughter of 7s legend Waisele Serevi, represented the United States for three years before switching to Fiji.

“It means the whole world to me. I can’t thank God enough for all the support. My plan was just to play for Fiji and represent my country. And being named captain is honestly beyond dreams,” Serevi said.

‘Huge step to win’
“It’s a huge step for us to win one game in the World Cup means to us like we’ve won the world cup already. We know France is going to be tougher and we have things to work on.”

Regardless of Fijiana’s big win, France remains the overwhelming favourite, having easily defeated South Africa 40-5 and narrowly losing to England 13-7.

However, they have been weakened by the loss of their staff halfback Laure Sansus, who is out if the World Cup due to a knee injury in the first quarter of the game against England.

Sansus, the 2022 Women’s Six Nations Player of the Championship tore her anterior cruciate ligament and will be replaced by centre Marie Dupouy. However, she will stay on in New Zealand as France’s “chief fan”.

Coach Seruvakula is optimistic that Fijiana can win if they play a perfect game.

“I believe in the girls, that they’ll play to the last minute,” said Seruvakula.

“If we want to play in the quarterfinals, we have to do right during training and through the process everything will take care of itself come game day against France.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Fijiana 15s defeated 13th ranked South Africa 21-17 today to get their first win at the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Fiji struck first through winger Ilisapeci Delaiwau in the 12th minute after some broken play and her try was successfully converted by Lavena Cavuru.

A couple of missed opportunities where the 16th ranked Fijiana could have extended their lead, but luckily the South Africans were not able to capitalise on this.

• READ MORE:  Red Roses hot favourite to win 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cup
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

Zintle Mpupha sliced through the Fijiana defence and dotted down between the sticks making the conversion easy for Janse van Rensburg to level the score.

Akanisi Sokoiwasa cruised over for a try on the stroke of half-time with Cavuru getting the conversion to take a 14-7 lead at the break.

In the 59th minute, South Africa won a penalty and they powered over on their second attempt after recycling the ball quickly with Aseza Hele diving over to level the score 14-all.

Janse van Rensburg struck with a penalty goal to give the South Africans the lead with 40 seconds left, but the Fijianas had the last say with No 8 Karalaini Naisewa brushing aside the defence to score under the sticks.

Fijiana will face France at Northland Events Centre, Whangarei, next Saturday at 6.15pm in their final pool game.

Alipate Narawa is a Fiji Village reporter.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Blacks Ferns 41-17 win over the Wallaroos on the field at Auckland’s Eden Park last night was good, but the one off it was better.

There had been a lot of conjecture going into the Rugby World Cup about just how people would respond, given the team’s recent history and the fact that women’s rugby has never really been a priority for those running the game in Aotearoa New Zealand.

But it took a World Cup to finally get one thing right.

• READ MORE: Red Roses hot favourite to win 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cup
• Black Ferns overcome horror start to beat Australia 41-17
• Favourites England hand Fiji 14-try mauling at World Cup
• France score six tries to win Rugby World Cup 2021 opener

The people in charge knew that the most important ones at a sporting event aren’t the players. They’re not the volunteers, or the entertainers, or even the guy cooking Fritz’s Wieners.

It’s the ones who are there for the first time ever, most usually children but occasionally adults who are giving something new a go.

They’re the most important because their entire experience could well mean they come back next time, and again and again until they call themselves true fans. They will bring their friends, their family and eventually their own children.

If the sporting event can get it right, they lock in that person for life.

Lacklustre experiences
It’s something rugby hasn’t been very good at lately. Lacklustre game day experiences have played a huge role in crowds for everything below (and sometimes including) the All Blacks gradually declining, to the point where NPC attendances are pretty much non-existent. There is nothing unique, very little that’s special.

Last night at Eden Park flipped that notion on its head. While there is a conversation to be had around just exactly how many fans were in attendance (43,000) and whether a clearly not full stadium can be described as “sold out”, in the end it didn’t really matter.

Looking around showed a different sight than an All Black test match, far more children and families. Groups of people who were clearly drawn to women’s rugby and its World Cup for reasons they’d arrived at themselves.

It was up to the day itself to carry them further.

If it was their first time at a rugby game, what they got most definitely ensured that they’d be coming back. The wave ridden by new fans of a fixture that, for a while there, the Black Ferns had no right to win, is a wonderful and unique experience of its own.

It was an evening of making sure the fan experience was paramount: from Rita Ora’s performance to affordable tickets to the Black Ferns making sure every single kid got a photo after the game – even if it meant they didn’t get into the sheds until well after 10pm.

The energy of the crowd was clearly different too to one usually found at Eden Park. For a start, there were no massive howls of protest at refereeing decisions. No one was getting rotten drunk either, despite it being Saturday night.

Happy and safe
The general feel was that this was an environment that you could feel happy and safe in, something that is less directly quantifiable than numbers but infinitely more valuable in the broader context.

Does it mean that every Black Ferns test can be assured of a big crowd if they are held in a big stadium? Probably not, as the World Cup factor plays a huge role in getting people along.

But it’s a new dawn for women’s rugby, this time with an actual professional NZ Rugby competition to follow it up and a commitment by World Rugby to continue the momentum in test matches. It is proof that if you do things right and invest properly, people will show up in numbers.

From an elite level perspective, this all makes sense as it should have all happened years ago. But there was a sign during the week that the penny had finally dropped in regard to what it will mean in the long term.

When asked about how the Black Ferns would inspire player numbers, coach Wayne Smith said that “the future generations will be inspired to play rugby, be fans and follow the game”.

That’s the nail on the head, because it’s not going to matter whether those future fans are girls or boys. They will grow up and fill the seats at Eden Park and other stadiums.

While the World Cup opener should rightfully be held up as a celebration of women’s rugby right now, years from now it will be remembered as an important day for the national game of New Zealand in general.

• In the first two games of the World Cup yesterday, France beat South Africa 40-5 and England crushed Fiji 84-19 at Eden Park. Today Italy beat USA 22-10, Canada overwhelmed Japan 41-5 and Wales beat Scotland 18-15 at Whangārei’s Northland Events Centre.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Not all the reflections were rosy. In South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighters party admitted no mourning for the passing of the monarch of seven decades, “because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history.  Britain, under the leadership of the royal family, took over control of this territory that would become South Africa in 1795 from Batavian control, and took permanent control of the territory in 1806.”  From then, the native populace knew no peace, nor “enjoyed the fruits of the riches of this land, riches were and still are utilized for the enrichment of the British royal family and those who look like them.”

Negative commentary, notably of the brisk too-soon mould, caused sparks and retributive anger.  When news of Elizabeth II’s deteriorating condition reached critical race theorist and Carnegie Mellon academic Uju Anya on September 8, she jumped on Twitter with menacing enthusiasm.  “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying.  May her pain be excruciating.”  In the room next door, grant applications for future funding were probably being written.

The comment, even if academically toothless, was enough to stir empire building types such as the amoral Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.  In confounded fashion, he asked whether this was “someone supposedly working to make the world better […] I don’t think so.”  Anya, unrepented, suggested that the Queen had “supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family”.  As for Bezos, the bilious academic hoped that those who had suffered harm from his “merciless greed” would “remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.”  On that score, many would agree.

In India, the historical site of controversial debates about the British monarchy, responses varied between lukewarm recognition to tangy irritation.  The government of Narendra Modi declared a day of mourning on Sunday, with flags to fly at half-staff.  But on closer inspection of social media chatter, Sucheta Mahajan of Jawaharlal Nehru University could detect little by way of effusive tear-filled adoration.  There was “a lot of discussion but not much concern”.  The passing was not treated as one of “an important world leader.  After all, she did not call the shots.”

In 1997, when the late Queen made her third and last visit to India, much debate was provoked by the visit to Jallianwala Bagh.  In April 1919, this site in the northern city of Amritsar was bloodied by the actions of the British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, who ordered troops to fire upon a gathering of thousands of Indians that resulted in the deaths of, according to an official report, 379 men, women and children.

Did such a visit amount to an apology for the past sins of empire?  Hardly, if we are going by the remarks she made at a New Delhi state banquet held just prior to the visit.  “It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our pasts – Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example.  But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise.  It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness.  We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.”

The statement is strikingly bereft of sorrow and filled with understatement.  Build on gladness; forget the sadness.  British rule over India offered more than just “distressing” examples.  And “sadness” is certainly one numbing way of looking at an atrocity, not to mention various decisions made with telling consequences.

Indian historian and politician Shashi Tharoor is one who has elaborated an extensive laundry list of British sins, noting how the empire imposed a system of rule and economy on a pre-existing, rich society of agrarian sophistication largely for self-enriching goals. Far from civilising native subjects, British rule was marked by impoverishment, its trains decidedly governed by military self-interest, its governing policy one of constipated, selective inclusion.

Distinctions, however, are drawn between the occupant of a constitutional monarchy, and the government that used her name to prosecute a policy.  Specific to Elizabeth II, Tharoor noted a “largely ceremonial” reign executed with “uncommon grace, her conduct on the throne marked by a selfless serenity, a total self-abnegation and devotion to the public trappings of her position.”  In her rule, she seemed to be a consummate expression of Walter Bagehot’s formulation of a constitutional monarch’s three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.

Indians had tried to learn and forgive, for the most part, the “cruelties of colonialism”, with some even valuing the British connection.  But the Queen could be faulted for never once acknowledging, let alone apologising, for “those centuries of colonial plunder and cruelty that made her position and wealth possible.”

Where, then, did she figure in the Bagehot scheme of consulting, encouragement and warning regarding British actions in Kenya in the use of concentration camps to break the Mau Mau rebellion, or the suppression of Communists in the Malaysian Emergency?  The Westminster shroud, in this regard, is thick indeed, a layer of forced exculpation.

In that curious sense, the constitutional monarch could derive the profits of plunder yet disclaim responsibility.  Monarchs, Tharoor noted, “did not actually order any of these things”.  It followed that the Queen did not have to apologise for them, though a sovereign’s good sense might have demanded it.

As to what’s left of any republican sentiment, the Irish politician Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, put it well in expressing her “deepest sympathies and solidarity with republicans living under British rule.”  The forthcoming weeks would prove hard, “but it will pass.”  Maybe a bit wistfully, she suggested that the “day will come.”  Those days always do, but Queen Liz has made it that much more difficult.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

A Gisborne councillor has called into question the mayor’s ability to lead the region forward, saying her background makes it hard to understand issues affecting Māori.

Third-term councillor Meredith Akuhata-Brown made the comments about Mayor Rehette Stoltz following questions about her intention to stand for the top position at the next election.

Akuhata-Brown, who unsuccessfully contested the mayoralty in 2019, said she was not sure if she would run against Stoltz in October.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Māori leadership

Part of the reason was she felt her chances were impacted on by not fitting the stereotype of what power looked like.

“When Rehette first ran for council, she was elected duly based on ‘that’s what councils look like across the nation’,” Akuhata-Brown said.

“She’s the deputy mayor within a couple of terms … she’s formidable … she’s young. There’s no fight for the position, it’s handed to her.”

First elected to council in 2010, Stoltz was appointed deputy mayor by Meng Foon in 2013.

Made interim mayor
When Foon left his position to become the Race Relations Commissioner in 2019, she was made mayor in the interim.

Stoltz then cruised to mayoral victory later that year with 10,589 votes, ahead of second-placed Akuhata-Brown who secured 3845 votes.

Akuhata-Brown believes the mayor had an easy run because she fit the bill of what people were used to in the make-up of councils around the country.

“We go through an election campaign when the position has already been filled.”

On her website, South African-born Stoltz shares her journey to the top elected position at Gisborne District Council.

Arriving in New Zealand in 2001 for her OE, she took a “holiday job” as the laboratory manager for a wine business before deciding to commit to Tairāwhiti long term with partner Deon.

It wasn’t until a conversation with former councillor Kathy Sheldrake in 2009 that she decided to run for council the following year.

Little debate over mayoralty
Her background is in cardiovascular physiology and she also ran a recruitment business.

Akuhata-Brown argues Stoltz was handed the mayoral chains without much debate among councillors when Foon left prematurely.

“It’s really easy for people from overseas. They come to our place highly qualified, and they are looked upon favourably, and they get the position without fighting for it.

“If you are a certain look, that is particularly not Māori, you are highly probable to get that position.”

Akuhata-Brown said she was being a “vocal local” because she was invested in the region and wanted to highlight the issues that came with integrating governance styles from overseas.

Tairāwhiti was still fraught with racial inequalities and relationships were key for connecting with those who were still trying to eek out a living in the middle and lower classes, she said.

“Those who have money and wealth and governance roles, they can just get on with their lives and not be bothered by any of that because they can just put up higher fences.

No voice for Māori and Pasifika
“For Māori and Pasifika, the voice hasn’t been there for centuries.”

Akuhata-Brown’s final criticism of Stoltz’s leadership was she had been left alone with no extra jobs and it felt like there were low expectations.

Hoping to be made a committee chair in her third term, Akuhata-Brown said positions had instead gone to people who supported the mayor 100 percent.

“There’s a real sense that to get position and acknowledgement you have to be very much on side.

“We don’t even talk, it’s just a non-relationship.”

Mayor Rehette Stoltz responded to the criticisms, saying Gisborne had been her home for 21 years and she had made a concerted effort to get a deeper understanding of the multicultural community.

Tikanga Māori course
That included completing a year-long Tikanga Māori course and becoming a member of the council’s waiata group.

She said that under her leadership, Māori wards had been unanimously voted in and memorandums of understanding signed with hapū.

“I have good working relationships with our iwi leaders and regularly meet to discuss and make decisions in regard to issues that are important to us as a region.”

Appointment to committees and chair positions were made on interest expressed by councillors, experience and merit, she said.

“I won the mayoralty with more than a 7000-vote majority. Mayoralties are not handed down, they are voted on by the community.”

The upcoming local body election is set for October 8.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.