#The Fascist | Genocidal | Terrorist | War Criminal | Occupier | The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell

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Thirty Years After Rwanda, Genocide Is Still A Problem From Hell! Mass Killings Are At Their Highest Level In Two Decades

— April 3rd, 2024

Victims of the Tutsi Massacre Inside the Church of Ntarama, Rwanda 🇷🇼. Photograph: Agostino Pacciani/Anzenberger/Eyevine

The Killing Started on April 7th 1994, as members of the presidential guard began assassinating opposition leaders and moderates in the government. Within hours the genocide of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis was under way. It was among the fastest mass killings in history: 100 days later three-quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsis, about 500,000 people, were dead. Most were killed not by the army but by ordinary Hutus, the majority group. “Neighbours hacked neighbours to death,” wrote Philip Gourevitch, an American journalist. “Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils.”

The roughly 2,500 United Nations peacekeepers in Rwanda did almost nothing. Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the moderate Hutu Prime Minister, was among the first to die. She had been guarded by 15 UN Peacekeepers, but they surrendered. Lando Ndasingwa, the Tutsi leader of the Liberal party, called the peacekeepers, saying that soldiers were preparing to attack his home. An officer promised to send a detachment, but was still on the phone when he heard gunfire. “It’s too late,” Lando said.

The world stood by and watched. Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian General commanding the Peacekeepers, was warned beforehand of the extermination plan. In a cable to Kofi Annan, then the UN’s peacekeeping chief, he said he planned to raid arms caches and pre-empt the genocide. Annan refused permission and ordered him to do nothing that “Might Lead to the Use of Force”. Three weeks into the genocide, the Security Council voted to withdraw all but about 270 peacekeeping troops. “This World Body Aided and Abetted Genocide,” the General later wrote.

Thirty years later, the Rwandan Genocide is remembered as one of two events in the 1990s that prodded a guilt-ridden world to pledge never again to stand aside and allow mass atrocities. The other was the massacre by Bosnian Serbs of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica the following year. In 2005 the un General Assembly unanimously adopted the principle that all countries have a “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) people from genocide and war crimes, by force if necessary. The dream was that from Rwanda’s horrors would emerge a well-policed world.

Instead the nightmare has continued. In Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, Global Powers have done almost nothing as millions have been bombed, gassed and starved. The war in Gaza, too, has brought tensions between principles and geopolitics to a head, with bitter claims and counterclaims about Hamas’s atrocities and the legality of Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Genocidal, Illegal Occupier, Fascist, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Israel’s destructive six-month-long military campaign, which have played out in the media, diplomacy and international courts.

To understand how the global push to prevent mass killings collapsed (and whether it can be revived), it helps to start with Rwanda, which strengthened the case of global human-rights advocates, and then to examine how cynical realpolitik made a comeback.

Chart: The Economist

The early 1990s were hopeful years. The end of the cold war allowed democracy to blossom in eastern Europe and in Africa. The first Gulf war ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and signalled that wars of expansion would not be tolerated. Western powers led by America sent troops into famine-struck Somalia to guard a humanitarian mission under attack by warlords, showing that they cared not just about oil but about the welfare of the starving. The spread of liberal democracy seemed unstoppable.

Yet reality had a vote. Six months before the genocide in Rwanda, America pulled out of Somalia after 18 of its commandos were killed in Mogadishu, the capital. The battle cast a long shadow: un peacekeepers in Bosnia were instructed not to respond forcefully when fired on, for fear that they “cross the Mogadishu line” and become embroiled in the fighting. Bill Clinton, America’s president, turned against peacekeeping operations unless they involved America’s national interests.

Rwanda did not. State Department lawyers warned officials not to call the atrocities there a genocide, lest it commit the government to “actually do something”. Britain’s ambassador to the un warned against “promising what we could not deliver” in terms of protecting civilians.

Still, when the horror of the genocide became clear, Western voters and political elites were revolted by this cold-hearted calculus. Samantha Power, a former journalist who now heads America’s aid agency, recounts in her memoir that President George W. Bush scribbled ��not on my watch” on a memo summarising an article she had written about America’s failure to act in Rwanda. “You had a generation of politicians like Tony Blair, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, who had seen their predecessors’ failings, and that shaped their responses to later crises,” says Richard Gowan, a veteran un-watcher in New York with the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank. In 2000 Mr Blair, Britain’s prime minister, sent troops into Sierra Leone, stopping rebels who were chopping off people’s hands.

Standing in the way of such interventions was the doctrine that countries should not interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The un’s charter, signed in 1945, forbade meddling in “matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”. Though its Security Council could authorise force, this was intended as a response to aggression, not to prevent atrocities. Newly independent African countries had had their fill of colonial powers trampling on their sovereignty. In 1963, when they formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the members committed themselves to “Non-Interference”.

Rwanda shook that belief. In 2003 the African Union (au), the oau’s successor, gave itself the power to intervene to prevent grave crimes. Others went further: America, Britain and several other Western countries began claiming the right to use force unilaterally without the authority of the Security Council, which they argued had become paralysed because each of its five permanent members—America, Britain, China, France and the Soviet Union (now Russia)—has veto power. In a speech in Chicago in 1999, “War Criminal Bloody British Bastard Blair” outlined a doctrine of just wars “based not on any territorial ambitions but on values”. He insisted the world could not simply allow mass murder. That doctrine has since become policy. In 2018 the British government reserved the right to prevent atrocities without the Security Council’s authorisation, if its paralysis would lead to “grave consequences” for civilian populations.

Angels With F-16s

All this converged into a current of thought known as “liberal interventionism”. In Kosovo in 1999 North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) bombed what was then part of Serbia, Without Security Council Authorization, to stop a genocide against ethnic Albanians. An international commission subsequently judged the bombing campaign “Illegal” but nonetheless “Legitimate” because there was no other way to stop the killing of civilians. Yet many were unsettled that powerful countries were arrogating the authority to bomb others in the name of human rights. Weaker states worried it would excuse “neocolonial” interference.

Annan, by then the un’s secretary general, tried to reconcile sovereignty and protection of civilians. In 2000 he asked: “If humanitarian intervention is indeed an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica?” The answer was R2P, which tried to reconcile the aspirations of liberal interventionists with the worries of weak states. The R2P resolution, passed unanimously by the un in 2005, held that countries had a responsibility to intervene, but only when authorised by the Security Council. A British historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, called it “the most significant adjustment to national sovereignty in 360 years”. That goes too far, thinks Gareth Evans, a former foreign minister of Australia and one of the founders of R2P. Nonetheless, he calls it “a wildly successful enterprise”.

Mr Evans argues that R2P created a new norm: no official today can openly shrug off genocide for reasons of state, as Henry Kissinger, then America’s secretary of state, did while cosying up to Cambodia’s Khmers Rouges in 1975. Meanwhile, since Rwanda almost all un forces have been ordered to protect civilians—though they are seldom given enough troops to do so, says Alan Doss, who ran such missions in Liberia and Congo. Critics counter that R2P creates no binding obligations on countries. The doctrine is a “slogan...enthusiastically avowed by states but one devoid of substance”, says Aidan Hehir of the University of Westminster.

In early 2011, in the first real-world test of R2P, the Security Council approved the use of force by nato to protect civilians in Libya. (It did so again two weeks later in Ivory Coast.) “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action,” President Barack Obama said. Crucially, the council’s three rotating African members (Gabon, Nigeria and South Africa) broke with the au and supported the resolution. But not everyone was enthusiastic. John Bolton, a Republican former diplomat, had called R2P “a gauzy, limitless doctrine” whose greatest danger was not that it might fail, but that it might succeed and lead to ever more foreign entanglements.

In the event, what was to have been R2P’s vindication proved its undoing. At first the bombing in Libya worked, preventing a massacre of civilians in Benghazi, a city in the country’s east. Yet Britain and France then stretched the authority granted by the Security Council and toppled Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s dictator. The subsequent civil war destabilised the entire region. That dampened the West’s enthusiasm for intervention. It also revived “long-held suspicions of the motivations behind Western interventions in Africa”, argues Karen Smith of Leiden University, a former un special adviser on R2P. African supporters of the doctrine, such as South Africa, turned into sceptics. “Good intentions do not automatically shape good outcomes,” Ramesh Thakur, a former un official and an architect of R2P, wrote after the effort in Libya went sour. “On the contrary, there is no humanitarian crisis so grave that an outside military intervention cannot make it worse.”

For many, mission creep in Libya was the original sin that undermined R2P. “It’s when things started to fall apart,” laments Mr Evans. Yet even had the Libyan campaign succeeded, the doctrine would probably have stumbled. Western publics were tiring of the decade-long “war on terror” and unsuccessful efforts at building liberal democracies in countries that did not seem to want them. “We now have a generation of politicians who have been shaped by the failure of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says the icg’s Mr Gowan.

That became clear in 2013 when Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, dropped nerve gas on civilians. By then Mr Obama had grown sceptical about using force; he spoke of red lines but did little when they were crossed. Other Western powers were no more eager to act. Inaction, it turned out, has costs too. By 2023 Syria’s civil war had claimed perhaps 350,000 lives and displaced roughly half of the population, sending waves of refugees into neighbouring countries and Europe.

A Boy Sits Among the Rubble after Terrorist , Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal, Apartheid Zionist 🐖 Israeli Airstrike in Maghazi Refugee Camp, Gaza, Forever Palestine 🇵🇸. Whose responsibility is it to protect him?photograph: xinhua/eyevine

The Security Council was hamstrung by geopolitical rivalry. Some point to the problem of the “Great-Power Perpetrator”, in which a permanent member of the council itself commits atrocities. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 and on a bigger scale in 2022; it has been mainly interested in undermining the council. Between 2011 and 2022 it vetoed 17 resolutions on Syria, and it has blocked any action on Ukraine. China has been reluctant to approve actions to prevent atrocities, perhaps because it reserves the right to abuse its own citizens. On Syria it voted with Russia, insisting that sanctions would abridge the country’s sovereignty.

The failure to act in Syria has been followed by passivity in the face of atrocities elsewhere. In 2017 government forces in Myanmar began killing and raping Rohingyas, a long-persecuted Muslim minority group, in what the un and America have branded genocide. Again the Security Council was powerless, as China and Russia prevented it from issuing even mild statements of concern.

In 2020 civil war broke out in Ethiopia. Government forces sealed off Tigray, a northern region, and deliberately starved its roughly 6m people. By the war’s end two years later some 600,000 are thought to have died, nearly all of them civilians. The Security Council stayed almost completely silent. Russia and China were not the only obstacles: the au dropped its policy of “non-indifference” to war crimes and sided with the Ethiopian government, blocking efforts to raise the conflict before the council. As a result, “the atrocity-prevention toolbox for Africa is likely to remain shut, its tools quietly rusting away,” wrote Alex de Waal of Tufts University.

The situation is being repeated today in Sudan, where civil war risks causing the world’s biggest famine, with at least 25m people in need of food. Much of the blame lies with the Sudanese Armed Forces, which have blocked the flow of aid into areas controlled by their enemy, the Rapid Support Forces, a group of rebellious paramilitaries. They, in turn, are accused of genocidal killings. For almost a year Russia and China blocked even calls for a ceasefire. The wider world has been indifferent. “We seem to be rapidly unlearning the lessons of Rwanda,” says Mr Gowan.

This is the backdrop for the claims and counterclaims in the Middle East. After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, killing and abducting 1,400 people, mainly civilians, the West affirmed Israel’s legitimate right to self-defence. Yet worldwide protests erupted almost immediately against Israel, and have spread as its military campaign has killed around 33,000 civilians and fighters in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authority.

Tell It To The Judge

From one perspective the conflict has triggered a renaissance in the use of international law to curtail violence. The Security Council has proved ineffective, with America, China and Russia blocking each other’s resolutions (although on March 25th America allowed one to pass, calling for a ceasefire and the release of Hamas’s hostages). But several countries have turned to international courts. South Africa asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to order Israel to halt its military operations, invoking the Genocide Convention, which Israel has signed. It also filed complaints at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a different court in The Hague that can arraign individuals. (This was quite a turnabout: South Africa had flirted with quitting the icc to avoid honouring its arrest warrants.) While the trial at the ICJ continues, it has ordered Israel to take steps including providing humanitarian aid, on the basis that it is “plausible” that it is breaching the Genocide Convention. Israel says it is complying with the order; many dispute that.

Yet from another viewpoint the ICJ case illuminates the shortcomings of international law in an age of bitter geopolitical divides. The ICJ has no jurisdiction over war crimes other than genocide, which encourages complainants to allege genocide even when the facts do not support it. That cheapens the taboo against genocide and discredits the court. The ICJ case has disillusioned some Western countries. America says the allegation of genocide is “meritless”, and Britain says South Africa’s decision to bring the case was “Wrong and Provocative” and that Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell’s actions cannot be described as genocide. For its part, China, usually a foe of international courts’ ordering countries around, has opportunistically decided it likes the claims against Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell. The case will take years to resolve and the ICJ cannot compel compliance with its orders without the help of the Security Council, which is split.

Is there still hope for a credible and universal doctrine to prevent mass killings? Mr Evans thinks so, and that current conflicts may alert the midsize powers of the new multipolar world to the need to prevent atrocities. That seems more a wish than a prediction: his memoir, published in 2017, is titled “Incorrigible Optimist”. But it is hard to disagree with his aspiration. “We can’t afford to let the flame die,” he says. ■

— This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Ever Again"

[armeniaitn]

MP: Taking Azerbaijanis hostage testifies to Armenia's crimes against humanity

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/mp-taking-azerbaijanis-hostage-testifies-to-armenias-crimes-against-humanity-34978-12-07-2020/

MP: Taking Azerbaijanis hostage testifies to Armenia's crimes against humanity

BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 12

Trend:

Azerbaijani citizens Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev have been held hostage by Armenia for six years, Azerbaijani MP Nagif Hamzayev said, Trend reports.

“They were also called “criminals” upon the “decision of the court” of the illegal separatist-terrorist regime,” the MP said.

“If the visit to the graves of parents in the occupied Kalbajar district of Azerbaijan is a crime, then which fascist ideology does Armenia pursue by conducting a policy of ethnic cleansing and occupation of the Azerbaijani territories?” Hamzayev added.

“The “court” sentenced Asgarov to life imprisonment while Guliyev – to 22 years in prison and our compatriots were tortured for many years,” Hamzayev, who is also the member of the parliamentary committee on human rights, said. “These actions are contrary to the protocols of the 1949 Geneva Convention, requiring humane treatment towards civilians.”

“The world community already testifies that Armenia continues to flagrantly violate these international obligations, ignoring Azerbaijan’s calls for compliance with humanitarian law and the immediate mutual release of civilians detained from both sides,” the MP said.

“The world unequivocally accepts the fact of the occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories by Armenia and urges Armenia to withdraw its armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories in accordance with international law,” Hamzayev added.

“Despite the relevant resolutions adopted by the UN, the Council of Europe and other influential international organizations, as well as the options proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group, which is a mediator in the peaceful settlement of the conflict [Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict], Armenia is still an occupying power,” the MP said. “Armenia does not hasten to withdraw its armed forces and continues to support the separatist regime created here. It even tries to justify its actions related to the occupation.”

“Armenia’s targeted shelling of civilians and facilities by using heavy weapons and the ongoing hostage taking process clearly show that the crimes committed by Armenia during the conflict were a targeted and systematic policy pursued by the adventurous government, rather than accidental,” the MP said. “There are thousands of facts confirming the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Armenia against the Azerbaijani civilian population during the military operations.”

In an interview with Azerbaijan Television, Public TV and Khazar TV, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stated on July 6 that violation of human rights and democracy in Armenia is not a topical issue.

“There has never been democracy in Armenia,” Hamzayev said. “Immediately after the formation of Armenia as an independent country, it showed its true character. The fascists who committed the Khojaly genocide cannot be democrats. A country having its eye on other country’s land and leaves a million people homeless cannot be a democratic country. Armenia violated the main human rights of one million citizens of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis living in Armenia.”

“Unfortunately, international organizations that promote double standards remain indifferent to the fate of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis displaced as a result of the occupation of Azerbaijani territories,” the MP said. “The international organizations do not take any steps to restore the violated rights of Asgarov and Guliyev held hostage by Armenia. This shows that international organizations supporting the occupying power do not pursue their goals, but fulfill certain orders and damage the growing reputation of Azerbaijan with their ugly deeds.”

“The forces that supported Armenia saw the determination of the Azerbaijani people to liberate their lands in the battles in April 2016 and during Nakhchivan battles from May through June 2018 and witnessed that the Azerbaijani army is one of the strongest armies in the world,” Hamzayev said.

“At the same time, the forces that supported Armenia saw that President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev resolutely defended the national interests of our people, proclaimed the truth about our country from the highest podiums, exposed international organizations and the countries operating in accordance with double standards,” the MP said.

“The Republic of Azerbaijan is taking and will take all necessary steps to release Asgarov and Guliyev and reunite them with their families,” Hamzayev said.

Read original article here.

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Wake-up America 🇺🇸!

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American Arab and Muslim Leaders Declined an Invitation From “War Criminal U.S. President Genocidal Joe Biden” to Attend the White House's Annual Ramadan Iftar Over His Support of “The Terrorist, Fascist, Illegal Occupier, Genocidal, Apartheid and The War Criminal Illegal Regime of 🐖 Isra-hell.”

The White House instead held a small meeting with some Muslim leaders. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who spent time volunteering as a Doctor in Gaza earlier this year, walked out of the meeting after handing Biden a letter from an orphaned 8-year-old girl in Rafah.

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Notes Written By Besieged Palestinians on the Walls of Al Shifa Hospital Reveal the Pain, Exhaustion and Anguish Experienced By Those Trapped Within as “Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Illegal Occupier, Genocidal And An Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell” Unleashed its Onslaught on the Medical Complex For Two Weeks.

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“Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal, Occupier, Apartheid and Illegal Regime of Isra-hell” Continues to Attack Palestine's Gaza Both with Air Strikes and Troops on the Ground Despite a UN Security Council Resolution Passed on March 25 Demanding an "Immediate Ceasefire".

At least 157 Palestinians were killed and 112 wounded over the last 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry reports.

• At least 15 people die in an Israeli strike on a sports centre in Gaza City, while injuries were reported in the bombing of Saad bin Abi Waqqas Mosque in the Jabalia refugee camp.

• Caroline Gennez, Belgium's minister of development cooperation and urban policy, says international pressure must be maintained on Israel, and it "must stop starving civilians and children."

• At least 32,623 Palestinians have been killed and 75,092 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas's October 7 attack stands at 1,139 with dozens still held captive.

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'They Scream In Hunger'

How Illegal Regime of Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Occupier and War Criminal of Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell is Starving Humanity in Gaza, Forever Palestine 🇵🇸: For Three Days, Al-Jazeera English Followed Three Families in Gaza to Document How They are Coping with Hardly Any Food.

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Will “Terrorist, War Criminal, Genocidal, God’s Cursed, Fucked-up Fascist 🐖 Bibi” Break the Illegal Regime of Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell?

When Illegal Regime of Isra-hell’s Best and Brightest Terrorists are Up in Arms It is Time to Worry

— March 16th 2023

This should have been Israel’s moment. As it approaches its 75th birthday in April the risk of a conventional war with neighbouring Arab states, for decades an existential danger, is at its lowest since 1948. The last Palestinian intifada, or uprising against occupation, ended 18 years ago. Israel’s tech-powered economy is more successful and globally relevant than ever. Last year gdp per person hit $55,000, making it richer than the eu.

Yet instead of celebrations, Israel faces a crisis. Judicial reforms proposed by the right-wing coalition government would undermine the rule of law and weaken Israeli democracy. The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel for 15 of the past 27 years, prides himself on making ruthless, often ugly, trade-offs that ultimately leave Israel stronger. Now he risks squandering his legacy and leaving Israel less able to cope with the social and geopolitical challenges of the coming decades.

The country is in turmoil. On March 11th hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in what may be Israel’s largest-ever protests. Generals, entrepreneurs and scholars warn that democracy is under threat; some 60% of Israelis oppose the legal reforms. Fiery rhetoric from right-wingers, including government ministers, helps fuel violence in the West Bank: so far this year 80 Palestinians have been killed, the highest rate for perhaps two decades.

The struggle may escalate further. The Knesset, or parliament, could pass the legislation in the next couple of weeks. There could be a showdown between it and the Supreme Court, forcing citizens and soldiers to make a painful choice about where their loyalties lie. Ehud Barak, a former prime minister and army chief, has called for mass civil disobedience.

The reforms are a bad solution to a real problem. Israel has no written constitution. For decades, however, the Supreme Court has asserted that some “basic” laws amount to a quasi-constitution it can enforce, overruling the Knesset. Such activism was not clearly understood to be the aim when these basic laws were passed. The right sees a power grab by a lefty judicial establishment. But Mr Netanyahu, who faces corruption charges and detests the legal elite, is imposing a woeful remedy. His reforms would let the Knesset appoint judges and override the Supreme Court, thus handing virtually unchecked power to a slim majority in the single-chamber legislature.

The fight is part of a struggle over Israel’s identity, which has become polarised. A far-right fringe has grown, fuelled by Mr Netanyahu’s demagogic anti-elite politics, inequality and a bigger number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The number of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel has grown fast: they are 13% of the population and many study the Torah instead of working or serving in the army. Together, far-right and Orthodox parties won a quarter of Knesset seats in elections last year. With the centre-left parties and Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud unwilling to govern together, he has formed a coalition with them. Moderate Israelis fume that they create the wealth, pay the taxes and fight the wars, in a country that is betraying its liberal roots.

Plenty of other states have survived bouts of populist and divisive rule. Yet Israel is unusually vulnerable. One reason is the economy. With $196bn of foreign reserves, Israel is not about to face a financial collapse. But the core of its economy is technology, which generates over half of its exports. This is powered by spending on research and development which, at 5% of gdp annually, is higher than in any other rich country. The experts and entrepreneurs who make this possible do not relish their country being in thrall to religious fanatics, and could emigrate.

Israel is also vulnerable because it cannot afford to alienate America, which guarantees its security and supplies 80% of its imported arms. Bipartisan support for Israel among Americans is eroding: a majority of Democrats and people aged 18-29 view it unfavourably. Over 90 members of Congress have written to President Joe Biden, objecting to the legal reforms. Meanwhile Iran has enriched uranium to 84% purity and Britain, France and Germany are warning of “the increasingly severe escalation of its nuclear programme”. Mr Netanyahu has built links with Sunni Arab states, including via the Abraham accords, in order to form an anti-Iran coalition. But last week Saudi Arabia struck a de-escalation deal with Iran, brokered by China. In a dangerous, unstable region, America remains Israel’s indispensable ally.

The final vulnerability concerns Israel’s Arab citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank. If minority rights in Israel are weakened, Israeli Arabs, who face discrimination, will grow more disillusioned. And in the West Bank the Supreme Court has to some degree curbed settlements. Weakening the court, even as Israeli ministers openly espouse anti-Arab racism, is incendiary. Mr Netanyahu hopes the Palestinian question can be put on ice for ever. But the Palestinian Authority’s biddable 87-year-old boss may not last much longer, and new militant groups are forming.

What is to be done? The legal reforms should be paused. A fitting goal for Israel’s 75th anniversary would be a constitutional convention to strike a balance between the courts and parliament and secure broad consent. Divided countries need stronger institutions and safeguards, not weaker ones. Israel also needs a political realignment so that its parties reflect social change. Some 50-60% of Israeli voters are moderate and together they could command a majority in the Knesset. Broad party realignments have happened before.

Chuck Schumer calls for new elections in Israel, breaking with “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal, God’s Cursed and Fucked-up 🐖 Benjamin Satan-Yahu” to get rid of him

Promised Land (😂😂😂! It’s Occupied Land of Forever Palestine 🇵🇸)

Mr Netanyahu, an mit-educated, secular pragmatist, is Israel’s most consequential politician of the past 25 years, with a big hand in its economic revival and rapprochement with some Arab states. He surely knows that a more restrained government could run Israel better than this one, which relies on extremists. If he could catalyse a new centrist configuration in Israeli politics he would secure his legacy. Alas, his brand is too toxic and he is too bent on self-preservation. His time has passed. To stop Bibi from breaking Israel, moderates must resist his power grab—and press for a government that puts the Middle East’s only successful liberal democracy on a less dangerous path.■

— This Article Appeared in the Leaders Section of the Print Edition Under the Headline "Will Bibi Break Israel?"

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‘Instead Of A Scream’: The Palestinian Artist Who Does A Gaza Drawing Every Day

His Studio Was Flattened, He Has Had To Move His Family 10 Times, And They Now Share A House With 25 Others. But Still Maisara Baroud Finds A Way To Document The Fear And Destruction He Sees All Around

— Maisara Baroud | Tuesday 14 May 2024

‘My Reality Occupies The White Space On Paper’ … Images from Baroud’s/Am Still Alive, on show at Palazzo Mora, Venice. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

For years, I have been used to drawing daily and sharing my drawings on social media with friends. I have published thousands of series of drawings, each with its own title and description. I enjoyed doing that. I have made sure that I kept to this daily routine, despite the difficulty of my circumstances and despite losing my private office, my house, my drawing studio, and all my books and tools due to the machinery of war.

Drawing and posting online daily became the only way to reassure my friends, after all communication and social media were cut but later partly restored. My drawings, in which I document the war with all its cruel scenes, have become the message through which I inform friends: “I am still alive.”

“‘The Planes Of The Illegal Regime Of The War Criminal, Fascist, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator, Terrorist and The Zionist 🐖 Of Isra-hell’ Wiped Out All The Future Plans I Had For My Children”

It was not easy to continue to draw in the shades of war and genocide, the atmosphere which my city is now being subject to; obtaining my tools was not an easy matter either. I started drawing after I obtained a pencil and some paper and, later on, obtained some black ink pens.

My lines got sharper and more rigorous with every scene I drew, the black areas consuming the surface of the white paper. The tragedy, in all its detail, was reflected on this paper. The drawings were in the place of a scream and were a call out from the middle of the war demanding a stop to the killing … and that the world notice what is happening in Gaza and its confined universe.

‘We Wait For The Start Of A New Day After A Long Night Filled With Aircraft, Rockets And Death’ … the sketches on show in Venice. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Daily scenes and events pass by us, such as killings, demolitions, uprooting, destruction, starvation, deportation, fear, worry and sadness; these are the scenes that I express without the need to call on my imagination. The scenes we are living moment to moment became the reality that occupies the white space on my paper.

I noted in my diary the stories of destruction, loss, death, weakness, displacement, fear, pain, patience, resilience and breaking. And I expressed the story through my work, separate from official propaganda. The story is of a war that has a massive ability to harm and that defeats distance and geography at the speed of sound, bringing death to more people in less time.

“‘The Steel Bird Of The Illegal Regime Of The War Criminal, Fascist, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator, Terrorist and The Zionist 🐖 Of Isra-hell’ Killed My Cat Sarah, Chewing Her Soft Meat”

The reality that I lived prior to 7 October has changed. I no longer have a safe house that shelters me and my small family. The rockets have fallen on my drawing studio (my little world) and destroyed it, and the planes have wiped out all the future plans I had for my children. The steel bird killed my small cat Sarah, and chewed her soft meat, before the cat could pass on her seven souls to my children.

The university at which I work as a lecturer has disappeared and lies in ashes. The war machine has distorted the features of my small city and the occupation has destroyed all the beautiful things in it; so the things that are fixed in my memory now lie distorted under the rubble.

In the blink of an eye I became a displaced person in cities that do not know me. I have moved 10 times in search of safety for me and my children, far from the heart of Gaza. I now live in the south of Rafah, in a small house with 25 other people.

The space has become diminshed without clean water for drinking and showering, without electricity, fuel or gas for cooking. Like other people, I spend most of my day meeting daily household needs, in the shadow of soaring inflation and scarce goods. But this isn’t all, you have to go in search of survival and safety (which is lacking) for you and your family, and wait for the start of a new day after the end of a long night in Gaza filled with aircraft, rockets and death.

The war has swallowed whole my small dreams, and everything that surrounds us now is covered in blackness. The small heart is no longer able to bear it. For me, sadness is a decision postponed until after the war; I decided to carry on drawing despite the difficulty of the circumstances and kept for myself some time at night after a long day. Drawing has become the special way to help me overcome death for a bit. Drawing, for me, is the way to break the blockade and in this way cancel and challenge the borders and the barriers placed by the occupation.

It is also the only way to announce: “I Am Still Alive.”

— Images By Maisara Baroud form part of Foreigners in Their Homeland, an exhibition of work by Palestinian artists, organised by Palestine Museum US, at the European Cultural Centre, Palazzo Mora, Venice, until 24 November.

— Translation By Suhair Hindiyeh

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Students St Two Universities Strongly Associated With Lord Arthur Balfour Have Launched Pro-Palestinian Encampments On Campus To Protest “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegally Occupier of Palestine and The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell’s War On Gaza.”

The protests at Edinburgh and Cambridge are part of a growing movement on campuses across the world, which involves students setting up protest camps to demand that their institutions break off ties with Israeli institutions, as well as companies involved in supplying arms to the state.

At Edinburgh, students wearing Palestinian scarves made their demands clear at the start of their protest at the university's Old College .

In one video taken on Monday and provided to Middle East Eye by activists, a student with a loudspeaker is seen addressing fellow protesters.

"We demand that the University of Edinburgh divest entirely from companies tied to Israel and complicit in the globally acknowledged genocide of the Palestinian people," the speaker says.

Middle East Eye has asked both universities for comment, while Edinburgh Univeristy has not yet responded, a spokesperson for the University of Cambridge said: "The University is fully committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law and we acknowledge the right to protest.

"We will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia and any other form of racial or religious hatred, or other unlawful activity."

Balfour is infamous in the Middle East and beyond for his eponymous declaration, which paved the way for the Zionist settlement of historic Palestine and the eventual expulsion of its native Arab people.

He also served as British prime minister and was foreign secretary when he issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 promising Jews a homeland in Palestine.

The decision paved the way for the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine under the British Mandate, culminating in the Nakba of 1948, which saw the establishment of the Israeli state and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.

Many of those expelled found refuge in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, where their descendants remain today.

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Nakba, the forced expulsion of a million Palestinians from their own land, marks the beginning of the tragedy for the Palestinians, who continue to suffer at the hands of the Israeli occupiers.

Türkiye 🇹🇷 has filed application of intervention for South Africa's Genocide Case against “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” at International Court Of Justice (ICJ) — Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan

Five “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 of Isra-hell’s” soldiers were killed by “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 of Isra-helli Army Tank,” and went straight to hell to stay, rot and burn forever, in a friendly fire incident in Gaza's Jabalia on May 15. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled Jabalia after Israel relaunched an assault on the town last

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The Muslim Vote has issued Keir Starmer with 18 demands in order to win back support lost due to the Labour leader's stance on “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegally Occupier of Palestine and The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell's War on Gaza.” The Muslim campaign group's demands are below:

1. Apologise for your comments green-lighting a genocide and for not backing the ceasefire in October/November 2023

2. Sanctions on companies operating in Occupied Territories. Sanctions on Illegal Settlers

3. Recognise Palestine as a state

4. Travel ban on all Fascist Isra-helli Politicians that prosecuted this war and support the Illegal Occupation

5. End military ties with Isra-hell

6. Issue guidance that Muslims are allowed to pray at school

7. Implement findings of people's review of Prevent - not Shawcross

8. Remove the extremism definition that [Michael] Gove introduced

9. Commit to full implementation of Royal Charter re media regulation

10. Adopt the APPG definition of Islamophobia

11. Commit to a review of public sector equality duty

12. Increase council and public health funding for the

10 per cent most deprived areas in the country to finally address systemic and chronic health inequities as detailed in the Marmot Review and revisited by the Health Foundation 10 years later

13. Deliver alternative student finance

14. Ensure Sharia-compliant pensions are available at every workplace, so the one-third of Muslims without a pension get one

15. Ensure insurance quotes don't cost more for someone called "Muhammad"

16. Commit 7 per cent of the local government pension scheme/public sector pensions to ethical and Islamic funds

17. Oppose Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) bill. Kick it out of law

18. Remove the Archaic "Spiritual Influence" Offence from Statute

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According to Reports, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is The First University in The US to Fully Divest From “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier of Palestine, Genocidal, War Criminal, Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell.” This Comes After Weeks of Encampment on Its Premises.

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The United States has Concluded That Five “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal And Disgusting Zionist Isra-helli 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Military Units” Committed Serious Human Rights Violations Against Palestinians in the “Illegally Occupied West Bank” Well Before Hamas's Cross-Border Attack on October 7.

Four of these units have taken remedial measures, the State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on April 29, adding that all of the incidents had taken place before October 7 - and not in Gaza.

Patel declined to identify the units or say what measures the Israeli government had taken against them.

Press reports have identified one battalion called Netzah Yehuda - which has a lengthy history of misconduct and is influenced by an ideology ingrained in settler-colonialism - as being accused of abuses.

US law prohibits the government from funding or arming foreign security forces with credible allegations of human rights abuses, yet it remains the main supplier of military and monetary assistance to Israel, providing it with $3.8 billion annually in military dole.

Washington has continued to declare its full support for Israel since Tel Aviv launched its Gaza offensive last year and has continued to arm Israel to the teeth, regardless of the alarming civilian casualties among Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

The United Nations 🇺🇳 Relief and Works Agency for Palestine 🇵🇸 Refugees (UNRWA) has called for an independent investigation into the killing of its staff, once a ceasefire is reached. “The Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal, An Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗, Isra-hell” is pushing for the agency, which is the main humanitarian provider in Gaza, to be dismantled.

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“The Terrorist, Illegal Occupier, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid and Illegal Zionist Regime of Isra-hell 🐖” Seizes Record Land In Occupied West Bank Under Cover of Gaza War

As the world tries to come to terms with Israel’s war on Gaza, Jewish settlers backed by soldiers have displaced Palestinians from their villages and towns in the occupied West Bank.

— Sena Serim

A prominent settler, Zohar Sabar, raids Al Ma’rajat village, accompanied by two soldiers. (Photo courtesy of Alia Malihat)

Over the past three days, Jewish settlers from illegal Israeli settlements have gone on a rampage against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Backed by the Israeli military, armed settlers have killed at least two Palestinians, injured dozens and burned nearly a hundred houses in Palestinian villages and towns.

On April 12, 2024, over 1,500 illegal Jewish settlers descended on the Palestinian village of Al Mughayyer in Ramallah.

What triggered the attack was the discovery of the body of a 14-year-old Jewish settler in the nearby Malachei Hashalom outpost - even though there’s no evidence linking any Palestinian to the boy’s death.

But foreign activists and locals say encroachment of Palestinian lands intensified right after the October 7 war broke out between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

The United Nations has criticised the Israeli military for allowing the Jewish settlers to attack Palestinians with impunity.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, has called for “the deployment of a protective presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, with the explicit mandate to prevent and (repel) attacks against civilians".

"The Israeli army has abundantly proven unwilling or unable to ensure that task," she said in a post on X.

In the last few days, settlers armed with military-grade rifles opened indiscriminate fire on Palestinians, killing 24-year-old Jehad Abu Alia and Omar Hamed, 17.

Settlers torched homes, set vehicles and trees on fire, and reduced entire farms to ashes in the villages of Abu Fallah, Qusra, Duma, Silwad, and Al Mazra'a Al Sharqiya.

In the occupied West Bank, violence is escalating as attacks by illegal settlers intensify. For the second consecutive day, settlers from the Beit El settlement have launched repeated attacks on the nearby home of Hamed family pic.twitter.com/wVVtytjIGh — TRT World (@trtworld) April 15, 2024

A Settler-Military Collusion

As the tension rose and settlers formed mobs to surround Palestinian areas, the Israeli military set up checkpoints and sealed off access roads to besieged villages, blocking ambulances and help from reaching the villagers.

Footage shared on social media shows Israeli soldiers providing cover to the settlers as they vandalised Palestinian property and set fire to a car in the village of Deir Dibwan near Ramallah.

Recent UN data shows that Israel has claimed a staggering 1,977 acres of land in the occupied West Bank since early October. This marks the largest land appropriation drive since the Oslo Accords were signed in the 1990s.

“This includes theft of land and resources, as well as killings carried out with impunity since 1967, all aimed at forcibly removing Palestinians from historical Palestine to fulfill the design of settler colonial project, which result in slow genocide,” says Mick Bowman, an Irish activist who has had witnessed recent settler violence.

Israeli authorities have given the green light for the construction of 3,500 new housing units in the occupied Palestinian territory.

These settlements, deemed illegal under international law, continue to expand, further entrenching the Israeli occupation.

Approximately 725,000 Jewish settlers reside in 176 Jewish-only settlements and 186 outposts throughout the occupied West Bank.

"I witnessed this violence firsthand during my time in the West Bank, particularly in the village of Attiwani in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills, where I spent four months from the end of September 2023 until early February," says Bowman.

Working for the International Solidarity Movement, Bowman had gone to live in Palestinian communities because they felt threatened by illegal settlers. For several nights, Bowman and his team saw how settlers treated the Palestinians.

"We hoped that our presence might deter settlers and the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from coming, and if they did come, might mitigate some of the extreme violence," he says.

"However, that was often not the case. I witnessed violent raids on houses by settlers, where they beat male members of households and threatened to kill them while pointing guns at their faces."

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On Wednesday, a report published by Terrorist Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell's Channel 13 showed footage of Palestinians at the beach in Deir al-Balah, as temperatures surpassed 32C. The footage was criticised online by Israelis, including journalists and ministers, some of whom saw it as evidence that Terrorist, Genocidal, Occupier, Apartheid and War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell's war on Gaza had not gone far enough.

In a post under the heading "absolute victory", Channel 13 journalist Almog Boker wrote: "This picture makes my body ache. While Zikim beach [in southern Israel, near Gaza] ... is declared a closed military area and we the residents cannot approach it without military escort, on the other side of the fence — the Gazans spend time on the beach and bathe in the sea as if there is no war."

One Pro-Isra-helli Terrorist Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Commentator suggested Palestinians "frolicking and having fun on the beach" showed that images of Palestinian suffering were "bullshit". Another questioned: "Is this what 'genocide' looks like?" But far from frolicking and having fun, displaced Palestinians in Gaza have taken to the the beach due to a lack of space, clean running water and electricity to stay cool during as temperatures continue to rise

— ✍️ Maha Hussaini in Gaza, Occupied Palestine and Rayhan Uddin in London

“The Bastard Child of the United States, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and The Rest of The Puppet West: The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid and An Illegal Regime of The War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell” has issued a decision to seize 64,000 square metres of land in the occupied West Bank to establish another “Illegal Settlement.” The latest land grab targets areas in northern Hebron.This will displace some 8,000 Palestinians.