Archive | August, 2024

Israel Exposes Its Political Agenda: ‘land’ not ‘security’; Gaza as Prelude, West Bank as Prize

31 Aug

[Prefatory Note: Modified responses to questions posed by Rodrigo Craveiro, a journalist with the Brazilian newspaper, CORREIO BRAZILIENSE, on 8/29/24, addressing the concerted Israeli military operation, extending the tactics and devastation of its attack on the Gaza Strip since last October, to the occupied West Bank. Again, Washington’s silence is almost as dismaying as Israel blatant disregard of law and standards of decency.] 

  1. I would like to quote you on this military operation in West Bank. How do you see that? What was the purpose?

From the outset of Israel’s response to the October 7 attack, I believed that it was being used as a pretext for ‘ethnic cleansing’ to induce massive departures of the resident Palestinian populations from the three Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), with a long undisclosed priority being systemic expulsion coupled with massive devastation of the West Bank. It should not be forgotten that when the Netanyahu coalition at the start of 2023, that is, months before the Hamas attack, took over occupation and administration of the OPT it was viewed even in Western circles as the ‘most extreme’ in Israel’s history. What made it extreme from Day One were two characteristics: the appointment of Itmar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, leaders of the far right religious Zionist parties in the Netanyahu coalition insistent on an ethnic cleansing agenda, as the chief administrators of Occupied Palestine, and the closely associated greenlighting of West Bank widespread settler violence in West Bank villages while the political leadership in Israel smiled obligingly.

What could be clearer than that the Zionist Religious Right was persuaded to join the Netanyahu coalition because it was given unconditional assurances that a Jewish supremist state would be pursued to complete the Zionist Project of establishing Greater Israel in all of the Promised Land. The prominence given Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the intensity of settler violence could not have been a clearer signal that two-staters were pursuing a Zombie solution, and yet the somewhat sullen silence of Diaspora liberal Zionism in the face of these developments exposed both liberal delusions and its self-righteous superficiality. The liberal approach was always more about us in the Diaspora than about ‘them’ (including even Israeli Jews but certainly the Palestinians long recruited against their will to make the major sacrifices to allay the guilt feelings of the Western democracies for hardly lifting a finger in opposition to the grotesque excesses of European antisemitism).

The Israeli response in Gaza over the last 11 months has horrified most peoples of the world, especially of the Global South, while enjoying the active complicity of the liberal democracies of most elites in the Global West. It has now reached a stage where it has undermined Israel’s reputation as a legitimate political actor, creating a vital decision point, signaled by these lethal attacks on the West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Juber. The IDF commander of this latest military operation, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, was quick to point out to the media that this was not an isolated incident to discourage Palestinian militancy but the beginning of a sustained military operation in the West Bank. This represents both a military and political escalation motivated by a commitment ‘to finish the job’ while regional and global anti-Israeli sentiments are already at fever pitch, but now ‘the job’ is revealed to the more attentive public to be what it has always secretly been, a campaign to achieve the coercive incorporation of the West Bank into Israel. This enlarged view of ‘the job’ that American pro-Israelis were earlier tricked into believing they were supporting, which was supposedly limited to the destruction of Hamas as a terrorist political actor and the elimination of its leaders, effectively propagandized as dehumanized  ‘terrorists.’

The Israeli leadership as ever master of shaping the public discourse, still seeks to pull wool over eyes by describing this escalation of the scope of their post-October 7 rampage, insist on justifying their West Bank behavior as directed at West Bank Palestinian militancy. Any fool knows that the most effective way to achieve such a result would be to rein West Bank settler violence, but that is not even part of the conversation. It should not be forgotten that from the perspective of international law the West Bank remains an Occupied Territory subject the 4th Geneva Convention that prohibits Jewish settlements, collective punishment, and imposes legal duties on the Occupier to uphold the safety, security, and material health and wellbeing of an Occupied People. This reading of international law as it pertains to the West Bank was given an authoritative confirmation in the July 19th Advisory Opinion of a nearly unanimous International Court of Justice, which was met in Tel Aviv with a show of condescending scorn and in Washington by looking away altogether.

Even the brave, knowledgeable, and perceptive current UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, who rarely takes a false step bought into the core of the Israeli public narrative when she described this surge of official Israeli violence as “a serious pattern parallel with what is happening in the Gaza Strip” in the course of an interview with Drop Site News. I believe it is not parallel but integral to the politics underlying Israel’s response to October 7, which from the outset set up its campaign to induce a new nakba in the West Bank, preceded by this genocidal sideshow in Gaza. In effect, Gaza was Act 1 in a political theater piece of at least two acts.

From this follows my judgment that virtually the entire Israeli response since October 7 has been about land and only incidentally, if at all, about security, except in the secondary sense of warning (or deterring) regional enemy attacks, which means mainly Iran . If security had been the primary concern there were much less bloody and more effective and legally acceptable ways to go about a response: tightening border security, using sophisticated intelligence/surveillance skills to control opposition and resistance in Gaza, and even seeking a normalization of relations based on mutual respect for international law. Relevant here is the near unanimous July 19 Advisory Opinion of the International Court that clearly set forth multiple reasons for regarding Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank as unlawful, calling on the UN and UN member states to implement its rulings, and on Israel to comply.

If my conjectures are even only partly a corrective of the official version of the Hamas attack, it makes essential an official, trustworthy international investigation of what  really happened on October 7 and how it was decontextualized to serve Israel’s need for a self-serving rationale of the violence that was unleashed for reasons other than the attack. In retrospect, it seems clears that the events themselves were hyped in ways that invalidated criticism of Israel’s behavior and did not contextualize the attack in relation to pre-October 7 recent and structural provocations, the validity of resistance against settler colonialism, and the prolonged nature and severity of Israeli collective punishment of Gazans, the denial not only of rights of self-determination but of rights of return. 

A final observation in the form of a conjecture. US diplomacy used its leverage to discourage further Israeli provocations of Iran to lessen risks of being drawn into a regional war. In exchange, Israel was quietly assured that if it extended the Gaza military operation to the West Bank it would not meet with significant governmental resistance from the US or Europe. In other words, it could get away with completing its master plan of extinguishing the territorial existence of Palestine as well burying the prospect of Palestinian statehood in any viable form once and for all.

  • Do you see the risk of a third intifada after what is happening in Gaza and West Bank?

I believe the greater threat as of now is of a second nakba (catastrophe) involving confronting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with a choice between enduring genocide or fleeing across borders to neighboring Arab countries; so far, Gazan have withstood the pressure to leave, and enduring the unspeakable alternatives of genocide or a permanent refugee status. Such an outcome would be a further stage in a process that goes back to pre-Israel Zionism, which is to make Palestinians so persecuted in their own country that many are compelled to flee for safety across international borders as happened in 1948, and under international law unlawfully denied any right of return.

Such an exclusionary second nakba is not necessarily inconsistent with a third intifada, which would be more like the second than the first, that is it would include armed resistance. What probably prevents a new intifada, which would undoubtedly enjoy more sympathy and gain greater support than the earlier two, is the absence of Palestinian political will to expose themselves to an even more extensive genocidal response.

Beyond this, the resolution of East Jerusalem still awaits further action. Almost off camera have been exhortations and symbolic encroachment on the Al Aqsa compound by settler extremists. Even a wider religious war cannot be ruled out if the Netanyahu coalition continues to call the shots when it comes to the Palestinian future.

  • The Israeli leader, Benny Gantz claimed it´s necessary to repeat in West Bank the military strategy for Gaza. How do you see that?

As with other Israeli leaders, Gantz is using a security rationale for what is better understood as a land-grabbing and people-emptying undertaking. As argued above the overriding purpose of Israel’s behavior since October 7 is to take advantage of the attack (as its propaganda specialists have portrayed it) to address the primary Zionist agenda item of establishing Greater Israel as a Jewish supremist state stretching from at least the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, a pre-Netanyahu image of Israeli sovereign territory explicitly embedded in a 2018 Basic Law adopted by the Knesset.

The difference between the Israeli mainstream and the Netanyahu-led extremists is best interpreted as one of style and patience, not substance. The dominant expectations of opposed Israeli establishment groupings raise questions of religion and Jewish tradition, but more fundamentally about power in controlling state/society and international relations of Israel’s government.

Rodrigo Craveiro

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Introducing Ismaels’/MacDonald’s Pax America: America’s Unending War on Iraq

29 Aug

[Prefatory Note: In the face of the failure of the US Government to use its diplomatic

leverage to end the war in Ukraine, and renounce the project to score a geopolitical victory over Russia at the expense of the people of Ukraine (and Russia) and persisting with its active complicity with Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people residing in Gaza, and so far to a lesser extent to those residing in the West Bank, this book could not be timelier. It is a grim reminder of the Iraq War precedent in which the United States openly embraced a criminal path in both its attack and long occupation of Iraq beginning with  “shock and awe’ unprovoked aggression and culminating in a state-building venture that brought the Islamic State to the region. Memories of geopolitical failures of the magnitude of what took place over the course of more than a decade of occupation and supposed state-building is brilliantly depicted in this authoritative book dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Ismael, the long devoted partner of Tareq Ismael. It was my privilege to have been invited to write the foreword to this fine book, just published, which I strongly recommend both to remind us of the Iraq War and its dismal aftermath, and to cast light on the present negation of the most minimal standards of decency in the course of human interaction. I find myself haunted by a simple epistemological question: WHY DO WE AS A NATION, PEOPLE, AND SPECIES REFUSE TO LEARN FROM PAST TRAGIC FAILURES?]   

Intrioducing Pax Americana: Ae

Foreword to  Pax Americana: America’s Unending War on Iraq by

                  Jacqueline S. Ismael, Tareq Y. Ismael, & Leslie T. MacDonald

                  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Narrating the Logic of Pax Americana

Recent references to the Iraq War of 2003 in the West tend mostly to

come from the political or anti-war left sources seemingly intent on issuing

stern reminders that Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine was foreshadowed in

its most objectionable features by the US/UK attack followed by a long

controversial occupation of Iraq, while the mainstream tries to erase

America’s experience from collective memory.

Those invoking Iraq as a precedent relevant to Ukraine offer a justifi-

able critique of the imperial aspects of American foreign policy that make

a mockery of self-righteous appeals to international law and the UN

Charter to mobilize international opposition to Russia while building

global support for sanctions, arms shipments, and huge donations of eco-

nomic assistance. Adopting such an ahistorical, abstract, and Eurocentric

optic, however useful, comes at a price. Iraq loses its core reality as a coun-

try inhabited by people who have endured the trials and tribulations of

tyranny, war, foreign intervention, and prolonged occupation. The US

refusal to practice what it preaches when dealing with the Global South,

especially in the countries of the Middle East, vividly confirmed by its

complicity in Israel’s genocidal onslaught upon Gaza, remains a significant

precedent in relation to the policy debate about Ukraine, but it is far from

telling the whole story of the Iraqi ordeal of the past 80 years.

This remarkable book is written by Jacqueline and Tareq Ismael, both

highly respected Iraqi specialists who are longtime scholarly commenta-

tors on the sorrowful recent history of the country. They present us with

Forewordviii FOREWORD

a devastating critique of the American role in Iraq during the 20 years

since the ill-conceived aggression of 2003, but they do much more. Above

all, they convincingly explicate the comprehensive anatomy of victimiza-

tion that became the fatal destiny of Iraq and its people, climaxing with

the aggressive regime-changing war of 2003. The historical contextualiza-

tion of the war and the refusal to erase from political consciousness its

terrible impact on the Iraqi civilian population is what makes this book

such a powerful indictment of American foreign policy. The understand-

ing imparted by their analysis goes far deeper than typically superficial

assessments based on a simple model of ‘attack and occupation.’

Jacqueline Ismael, who sadly died earlier this year, and Tareq, her Iraqi-born

writing partner and husband, have long devoted their scholarly lives

to narrating the American desecration of Iraq. Additionally, they have

together built an ambitious academic infrastructure that has made major

contributions to Iraqi studies. These have included the founding of a jour-

nal, organizing international conferences, and publishing books. And per-

haps most of all, by developing an international community of scholars

committed to probing various less-known, yet integral, aspects of the

complex Iraqi experience of the last century. This high-quality scholarship

should not be confused with the one-dimensional output of Beltway think

tanks that offer the US government menus of policy options that are gen-

erally pleasing to the Pentagon and mainstream foreign policy venues. In

contrast, the Ismael orientation is objective, exhibiting and encouraging

others to undertake interdisciplinary styles of inquiry and assessment. This

work also valuably merges standard political and economic concerns with

serious attention to the social, ethical, religious, and even artistic and phil-

osophical dimensions of Iraq’s extraordinary cultural heritage. It is this

heritage that has been shattered by Iraq’s encounters with America in the

course of fragmenting the political and cultural unity of the Iraqi people.

In this necessarily last collaborative book, the Ismaels draw on their

superb qualifications to share with us their cumulative knowledge and wis-

dom about Iraq. This short but profound book manages to consider both

the disasters that have befallen Iraq but also the confused and sinister

behavior embedded in this pattern of dysfunctional US deployments of

hard and soft power over a period of six decades. What results is a highly

instructive book that contextualizes US geopolitical tactics and strategies

in a manner that sheds light on a host of other contemporary concerning

issues around the world. In essence, the Ismaels have managed to interpret

the interplay of America’s global and regional hegemonic ambitions inix FOREWORD

ways that yield a deeply informed narrative of the tragic events that have

ravaged Iraq and spilled over its borders to cause comparable forms of

distress elsewhere in the region. The book brilliantly depicts the intercon-

nections between the fate of Iraq and that of the Middle East as a whole,

presenting an illuminating account of why the impacts of the American

imperial agenda should not be conceptualized as mere aggression followed

by an occupation devoted to benign ‘state-building’ undertakings suppos-

edly aimed at constitutional governance and developmental dynamism.

With electrifying clarity, the Ismaels show that contemporary tragedy of

Iraq should not begin, as in most assessments with a focus on the two wars

in 1991 and 2003, their interim of harsh sanctions, and their chaotic after-

maths, but look at the downward spiral of events starting in 1963. The

book’s illuminating, mostly ignored or suppressed starting point is the

1963 CIA-facilitated coup that replaced the nationalist Qasim govern-

ment with the dictatorial repressive Ba’athist Party leadership, eventually

headed by Saddam Hussein. Tareq Ismael’s personal history of living in

exile ever since this coup and forever scarred by these events of 60 years

that culminated in the roundup and massacre of at least 5000 Iraqi intel-

lectuals and progressive. political activists, lends an aura of authenticity

and significance to these barely recollected events.

In a manner the 1963 coup in Iraq recalls the 1953 coup in Iran that

overthrew the Mossadegh government with the covert help and encour-

agement of the CIA, anticipating in several of its particulars the Iraqi

undertaking ten years later. In Iran, the Shah was restored to the Peacock

Throne, and more importantly, foreign ownership of the Iranian oil indus-

try was restored, with leading American energy corporations the greatly

enriched beneficiaries.

The true character of these events in both major oil producing coun-

tries was thinly disguised by then fashionable Cold War rationalizations of

saving these countries from a Communist takeover by marginalizing and

discrediting Soviet/Marxist/socialist influences that purportedly under-

mined Western strategic interests in the Middle East, as well as threatening

these countries with Stalinist futures. Such state propaganda, spread by an

ideologically subservient Western media, downplayed the true strategic

motivation for these disruptive political events, which was to keep the

energy reserves of the region under secure Western control while entrust-

ing their custodianship to the American oil industry. In this process, the

disregard for the sovereign self-determination rights of the state and suf-

fering of the peoples that followed was ignored as were the allegations thatx FOREWORD

the outcomes reflected the maneuvers of the CIA rather than the revolt of

nationalist forces. Only years later was the instrumental role of the CIA

widely confirmed. The original public rationale portrayed the events as

internally driven anti-Communist rejections of hysterical or tyrannical

leaders.

The book draws appropriate attention to the critical differences between

regime-changing interventions in the period between 1950 and 1990, and

those taking place after the Soviet implosion in 1991. Earlier efforts to

disrupt the politics of self-determination were hidden and covertly carried

out, and hence entrusted to the CIA and collaborating national elites in

countries targeted for regime change. The only overt exceptions of any

consequence during the Cold War occurred in the two wars taking place

in the divided countries of Korea and Vietnam where international fault

lines were breached by the revisionist behavior of rival nationalist forces

seeking restored unification of the states as single nations. Elsewhere, the

United States tried to disrupt what it opposed by acting off-stage and rely-

ing on compliant national elements to construct the successor states.

After the Cold War the dynamic of intervention in the Middle East

became overtly militarist, tied to arms sales and predatory globalization.

The US sought to legitimize these overt interventions at the UN by claim-

ing humanitarian and international law justification or counterinsurgency

imperatives in the face of alleged terrorist threats. Among the rationaliza-

tions put forward in 2003 for violating Iraq’s state boundaries were its

possession of non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction and a secret pro-

gram to develop nuclear weapons; Afghanistan after 9/11 as safe haven for

international terrorism; humanitarian urgency in Libya concerning the

beleaguered population of Benghazi. If UN legitimation was not granted,

as was the case with Iraq (and earlier Kosovo, 1999), then the US together

with allies proceeded to intervene openly, feeling no need for the secrecy

it relied upon during the Cold War. When the UN Security Council

refused the American request for authorization to use force in Iraq, George

W. Bush angrily suggesting that if the UN decided to withhold approval

of US war plans, it would find itself irrelevant. And regrettably, Bush was

to some extent right.

This overtness, also enabled prolonged foreign occupations, and in Iraq

was an alleged necessity to complete the challenge of liberating the coun-

try from its dictatorial past, which required ensuring that the successor

state was a stable and secure exemplar of constitutional democracy. The

only thing hidden from view in carrying out such state-building plans arexi FOREWORD

the various aspects of economic exploitation, including a forced entry into

neoliberal world economy.

This form of state-building by an occupying foreign power is half of the

abusive story exposed by this book. The other half has not been previously

explicated. What the Ismaels have managed to demonstrate through their

focus on the specifics of the American occupation is a set of policies that

had the intended effects of doing the opposite of what was claimed for

state-building. In actuality, the American occupation destroyed prospects

of a stable, competent, and prosperous Iraq, let alone a state protective of

human security and public order. The policies and practices systematically

pursued destroyed sturdy pillars of governmental stability that existed in

Iraq prior to 2003. The occupation purged the armed forces and bureau-

cracy of its Sunni highly professional staffing during the Ba’athist period,

turned a blind eye to the looting of museums and archeological artifacts

undermining cultural identity and national consciousness. Such an

approach gave ample political space to the assertion of a variety of sub-national

grievances and embittered rivalries among religious factions and

ethnic minorities. As the Ismaels explain state-building turned out in Iraq

to be state-ending, such a dismal assessment of the occupation manifested

itself through greatly increased ethnic strife, radical micro-politics, rising

criminality, gross corruption, persisting chaos, and increasing poverty.

It is for these reasons that ‘state-building,’ as argued by the authors, is

better conceptualized as a process of ‘state-ending’ or ‘state deconstruc-

tion.’ This is a radical claim that goes far beyond critiques of the conven-

tional understanding state-building as benevolence gone wrong with

Afghanistan and Iraq especially in mind. The shocking argument that the

Ismaels advance for our consideration is that this outcome was not a fail-

ure of occupation policy but a deliberately orchestrated success. The goal

of such an approach may seem perverse, but reflects American deep state

thinking on the Middle East, as strongly paralleled by Israeli beliefs and

practice, that the cornerstone of regional security is not so much a matter

of weaponry as it is in the existence of weak, internally divided and preoc-

cupied states.

In an informative chapter on the aspirations of the Kurdish minority

further concreteness is added to the exposition of how occupation mis-

shaped Iraq by showing that the US and Israel both promoted Kurdish

aspirations in ways that weakened Iraqi sense of national identity, so vital

for successful state formation projects.xii FOREWORD

The geopolitical hypocrisy of the American role in Iraq is given a bipar-

tisan slant that goes back to the Kennedy role in promoting the 1963 coup

against Qasim and forward to the efforts of both Bush’s to wage war

against their former client state, Iraq. We need to remember that in 1980

Saddam’s Iraq had been persuaded to attack Iran in what turned out to be

a grueling eight-year war, partly extended by US arms sales to both sides.

In addition, Saddam was given ambiguous signals a decade later by the US

ambassador in Baghdad about launching an attack on subsequent annexa-

tion of Kuwait, only to find Iraq subject to international denunciations by

the US President, Arab neighbors, and the UN as a legitimizing prelude

to a ‘shock and awe’ attack, and after another twelve years of punitive

sanctions that ravaged the civilian population of Iraq, yet another American

aggression launched against its former notorious ally who ended up pay-

ing with his life.

This mastery of the Iraq narrative by the Ismaels does what most Iraqi

commentators do not do. That is, they present dismaying evidence that

the wellbeing of the people of Iraq was consistently sacrificed as a sup-

pressed side-effect of this American quest for political and economic dom-

inance in the post-colonial Middle East. The story of Iraq serves as a

metaphor for the twenty-first-century US imperial (mis)adventures

throughout the entire world. To be sure, the region was especially vulner-

able to imperial design, and a result, has vividly exhibited this state-destroying

and people-victimizing behavior by the United States. This

reflects several factors: oil geopolitics as its supreme strategic priority,

Israel’s junior hegemonic status as its unconditional domestic priority, and

the blowback threats of Islamic radicalism and expansion of Islamic influ-

ence in the region after the 9/11 attacks have shaped its security dialogue

at least until the Ukraine War. We can be most thankful to have such a

book for its insight, knowledge, wisdom, and empathy, and for getting

right the complex story of America’s role in Iraq.

University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

_ Richard Falk

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The Responsibility of Western ‘Liberal Democracies’ for Gaza Catastrophe

13 Aug

\

[Prefatory Note : This is the text of an interview with Mike Billington of the Schiller Institute modified for clarity and style, with no changes in substance.]

 Richard Falk: Western “Liberal Democracies” Responsible for Genocide in Palestine

Mike Billington : This is Mike Billington with the Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute. I have the pleasure of having an interview today with Professor Richard Falk, who has done another interview with us earlier. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton, among other positions he holds in institutions around the world, mostly peace related. Between 2008 and 2014, he was the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine. So, given the circumstances that we have today in the Middle East, it’s a very timely moment to have a discussion with Professor Falk. So let me begin with that. Professor, the assassination of Haniyeh today in Tehran is clearly a sign that Israel is trying its best to get an all-out war with Iran started, but also, it’s the fact they just killed the person who was leading negotiator with Israel for peace in Palestine. So what are your comments on that?

Prof. Falk: I agree with your final sentences that this is certainly either gross incompetence on Israel’s part or a deliberate effort to provoke a wider war. And a shady effort by Israel to compel the engagement of the United States in Israel’s multiple struggles in the region. One should also refer here to the double assassination. Not only Haniyeh, but Nasrallah’s right-hand assistant and prominent military commander, Fouad Shukra, who was killed 2 or 3 days ago, in Beirut. And so now Israel in successive inflammatory assassinations attacking the capitals of Lebanon and Iran, certainly signaling an almost intentional search for some kind of escalatory response. The Supreme Leader of Iran has already declared that that Iran will arrange — he didn’t go into detail — arrange an appropriately harsh response, in retaliation for Israel’s criminal act. In the Lebanese context, Nasrallah and Hezbollah deny the Israeli justification for the attack, which was the missile that landed in the Golan Heights a few days earlier, killing several Syrian children playing on a soccer field. It almost certainly was not intended as the target by whoever fired the missile, which is still being denied by Hezbollah. The very explosive situation in the Middle East — perhaps the assassinations were motivated by the wish to distract attention from Israel’s failure to destroy Hamas and Netanyahu’s unpopularity in Israel. At best, this is a very dangerous way of proceeding because a multi-state war in the Middle East will bring widespread destruction , including likely attacks on Israeli cities, something Israel has avoided over the course of its existence. This may yet be a dramatic turning point for the worse in the whole experience of Israel’s defiance of international law, international morality and just plain geopolitical prudence.

Mike Billington : You have been a very outspoken supporter of the role of the International Court of Justice, ICJ, and their rulings, including the decision on the South African petition that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza; the issuing of arrest warrants on both Israeli and Palestinian leaders; and more recently, the verdict that the entire occupation of the Palestinian territories has been illegal from the beginning, ordering it to end the occupation and withdraw the settlements. But of course, Israel has ignored them totally, while the US and the EU have equally ignored them. As you pointed out in one of your articles, Bibi Netanyahu even said “No one will stop us,” from driving all the Palestinians out or killing them. What can be done overall to deal with the Gaza genocide?

Richard Falk: Well, it is, of course, a terribly tragic moment for the Palestinian people who are faced with this grotesquely sustained and executed genocide, that has now gone on for more than nine months on a daily basis. As your question suggests, Israel has been crucially backed up throughout this process by the complicity of the liberal democracies, above all the US. And so long as that power relationship persists, it’s very unlikely that an effective intervention on behalf of Palestine, or to stop the genocide, can be organized and implemented. From that point of view, these judicial rulings, although they give aid and some comfort to supporters of Palestine are not able to influence the situation on the ground, which continues to be horrifying. At the same time, the rulings are important in depriving Israel and the West of complaining about Palestine and Hamas as violators of international law, including ‘terrorist’ accusations. In other words, by reliably finding that Israel is in gross violation of international law and by issuing arrest warrants, global judicial procedures deprive these aggressive countries from opportunistically using international law as a policy instrument the way they have against Russia in the Ukrainian context. It also influences media discourse and civil society behavior, particularly activists throughout the world, who feel vindicated and challenged to do more by way of pro-Palestinian solidarity initiatives.

There exist a variety of initiatives underway in civil society that not only brand Israel as a rogue state, but also propose nonviolent acts of boycotting, divesting, and shows of opposition, highlighted by the activism of students in university campuses around the world giving rise to repressive responses by pro-Israeli elites in and out of government. This has become quite a distinctive phenomenon — even during earlier student activist periods involving South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, there wasn’t nearly as much passion or such animated expressions of civil society activism. This is now a near universal reaction, including a growing portion of citizens in the country whose governments are complicit in supporting Israel’s commission of genocide.

Also prresent is a contested and growing gap between what the citizenry wants and the government is doing. This gap was highlighted and dramatized by the scandalous, honorific speech that Netanyahu gave last week to a joint session of Congress, where he received a hero’s welcome, frequent standing ovations, thunderous applause and cordial meetings in the White House with Biden and Kamala Harris. It was widely observed that Harris abandoned protocol by not attending the joint session of Congress over which the vice president ordinarily presides whenever a foreign leader is making such an address, and the Netanyahu visit was met be large protests in the streets of Washington.

Mike Billington : Your friend, and mine, Chandra Muzaffar, who is the founder and the head of the International Movement for a Just World based in Malaysia, has written a letter to all member nations of the UN noting, as you have also, that the West is ignoring the evil in Gaza, and called on the UN General Assembly to act upon Resolution 377, which, as I understand it, allows the General Assembly, when the Security Council fails to take action to stop a disaster against peace, to act in its own name, to deploy forces, I think unarmed forces, to intervene. You are, among other things, a professor of international law. What is your view of this option?

Prof. Falk: There is that option, that was adopted in the Cold War context of the Korean War, with the objective of circumventing future Soviet vetoes. GA Res. 377 was thought initially to give the West a possibility of nullifying the Soviet veto and mobilizing the General Assembly to back Western positions. As the anti-colonial movement proceeded, the US in particular became more and more nervous about having an anti-capitalist General Assembly empowered to act when the Security Council was paralyzed. To my knowledge that Resolution 377 has never been actually invoked in a peace – war situation. I think there is a reluctance to press the West on this kind of issue, because it would require, to have any significance, a large political, military, and financial commitment, as well as a difficult undertaking to make effective. So I’m not optimistic about such a move to empower the General Assembly . I think the law can be interpreted in somewhat contradictory ways, as is often the case, particularly where there’s not much experience. But I don’t think the political will exists on the part of a sufficient number of governments to make the General Assembly act on behalf of Palestine. I think in general making the UN more effective and legitimate, empowerment of the General Assembly would be desirable and should be supported by people that want to have a more law governed international society, but preferably without relying on this Cold War precedent

.

Mike Billington : On that broader issue, do you have any hope or any expectation that the UN in general will be reformed in the current crisis situation internationally?

Prof. Falk: I’m skeptical about that possibility. The forthcoming UN Summit of the Future on September 22-23 is dedicated to strengthening the UN. This is an initiative of Secretary-General Guterres that seeks to discuss some ambitious ideas about UN reform, enlarged participation by civil society and more democratic, transparent procedures for UN operations. But my guess is that the Permanent Members, and probably including China and Russia, will not push hard for such major development. Each of the P5 states seems to believe that their interests are better protected in a state-centric world, even if geopolitical managed, than they would be in a more structured world system operating according to a  more centralized authority structure. It might  become even more susceptible to Western domination and manipulation than is the case with present arrangements.

Mike Billington: On the US situation, you issued a public letter to Kamala Harris soon after Biden dropped out of the race. There and elsewhere, you have denounced what you called the “diluted optimism” of President Biden, who talks about American greatness and the great future America is looking forward to, and so forth. You called it: “a dangerous form of escapism from the uncomfortable realities of national circumstances and a stubborn show of a failing leader’s vanity.” you express some hope that Kamala Harris will dump the Biden team of Blinken and Sullivan. Who do you think could possibly come to be her advisors? Who could, in fact, change the failed direction of the Biden-Harris administration?

Prof. Falk: You raise a difficult issue, because effective governance involves balancing various pressures from without and within the apparatus of the state. I think Harris knows and respects these constraints, aware that even an elected leader is restricted, encountering resistance if public policy dissents from the main tenets of the Washington Consensus. Harris’s policy choices are restricted because those that are prominent enough to be eligible for confirmation in the top jobs are either conforming to this geopolitical realism, or they’re regarded as too controversial to get by the congressional gatekeepers and survive media objections. In fairness to Harris, or any leader for that matter, it’s a difficult undertaking to make American foreign policy particularly more congruent with the well-being of people and more oriented toward sustaining peace in a set of dangerous circumstances that exist in different parts of the world. And, of course, the Israeli domestic factor is probably also at least a background constraint. In light of this, the best that I could hope for, realistically, is some critical realist personalities like John Mearsheimer or Anne-Marie Slaughter, or possibly Stephen Walt. These are people that have been more enlightened in their definition of national interest and more critical of the Jewish lobby and of other manipulative private sector forces. But they’re strictly, and properly, categorized as realists, A more progressive possibility, but probably still too controversial for serious consideration, would be Chas Freeman despite his distinguished diplomatic background. Obama wanted to give him an important position in the State Department. But he was perceived even in 2009 at that time as sufficiently controversial as to be blocked, and Freeman’s proposed appointment was withdrawn. Obama himself is an outside possibility. He’s privately let it be known that he’s quite critical of the way in which Israel has behaved in this period. He is oriented toward domestic policy yet would like to promote a more peaceful, less war oriented world. But whether he would be willing to play that kind of role, having been previously President is uncertain, and whether Harris would want such a strong political personality within her inner circle remains uncertain. Possibly, if he was willing, he could be the US Ambassador at the UN or some kind of other position. But it’s strange that in a country of 330 million people, there are so few individuals can both back a progressive foreign policy agenda and get by the gatekeepers, a part of whose job is to make sure that more progressive voices are not appointed to top foreign policy positions. So, for instance, someone like Chomsky or Ellsberg, if heallthy, would be perhaps amenable to serving in a Harris government. And she might be eager to chart a somewhat independent path and give more sensitive attention to foreign policy and more support to the people that have been suffering from inflation and other forms of deprivation resulting from a cutback in social protection that has occurred in the last decade or so.

Mike Billington : In a more general sense, you’ve been critical of what you call the “incredible stance of Democratic Party nominees to be silent this year about the world out there, beyond American borders, at a time when the US role has never been more controversially intrusive.” As you know, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the head of the Schiller Institute, has initiated an International Peace Coalition (IPC) which is aimed at addressing that problem, bringing together pro-peace individuals and organizations from around the world, many of whom have different political views, but to put aside those differences in order to stop the extreme danger of an onrushing nuclear conflict with Russia, and also possibly with China, and to restore diplomacy in a West which has fully adopted the imperial outlook of the British Empire, which they now call the “unipolar world.” How can this movement be made strong enough to make those kinds of changes in the paradigm?

Prof. Falk: That’s an important challenge. There are other groups that are trying to do roughly parallel things. I’ve been involved with SHAPE [Save Humanity And Planet Earth], the group that Chandra Muzaffar is one of the three co-conveners along with Joe Camilleri [and myself]. But it’s extremely difficult to penetrate the mainstream media, and it’s very difficult to arrange funding for undertakings like your own, that challenge the fundamental ways that the world is organized. The whole point, I think, of these initiatives is to create alternatives to this kind of aggressively impacted world of conflict, and to seek common efforts, common security, human security, that humanistically meets the challenges of climate change and a variety of other issues that are currently not being addressed adequately. But this kind of development depends, I think ultimately, on the mobilization of people. Governments are not likely to encourage these kinds of initiatives. The question needs to be rephrased: how does one mobilize sufficient people with sufficient resources to pose a credible challenge to the political status quo in the world?

Mike Billington : In that light, Helga Zepp-LaRouche has also called for the founding of what she called a Council of Reason, reflecting back on the Council of Westphalia, which led to the Peace of Westphalia, where people of stature, as you indicated, are brought to step forward and speak out at a time when that kind of truthful, outspoken approach is sorely lacking and very, very much needed. What’s your thought on that?

Prof. Falk : I think all such initiatives help to build this new consciousness that is more sensitive to the realities of the world we live in. There has been, as you undoubtedly know, a similar Council of Elders composed of former winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and a few selected other individuals, but it hasn’t had much resonance either with the media or with government. It’s very difficult to gain political space and non-mainstream credibility the way the world is now structured, as empowered by a coalition of corporate capitalism and militarized states. It’s hard not to be pessimistic about what can be achieved. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t struggle to do what at least has the promise and the aspiration to do what’s necessary and desirable. And the Counsel of Reason, presumably well selected and adequately funded, and maybe with an active publication platform, could make contributions to the quality of international public discourse. It’s worth a try, and I would certainly support it.

Mike Billington: I appreciate that. What are your thoughts on the peace mission undertaken by Viktor Orban?

Prof. Falk: Well, I don’t have too many thoughts about that. It seemed to coincide what many independent, progressive voices were saying. In any event. The interesting thing about Orban’s advocacy is that he’s the leader of a European. state, and therefore his willingness to embark on such a journey and to seek ways of ending the Ukraine conflict is certainly welcome. He, of course, has a kind of shadowy reputation as a result of widespread allegations of autocratic rule within Hungary. I don’t know how to evaluate such criticisms I haven’t been following the events in Hungary, but he’s portrayed in the West as an opponent of liberal democracy. And for that reason, he doesn’t receive much attention from the media or from Western governments overall. Orban’s message seems too deserve wider currency, but whether he can deliver that message effectively seems to me to be in fairly significant doubt. I think the Chinese are in a better position to make helpful points of view toward ending the Ukraine War.

Mike Billington : You’re saying that he is accused of being against “liberal democracy.” Do you think criticism of liberal democracy is wrong?

Prof. Falk: No, no. I consider myself a critic of liberal democracy. But I think liberal democracy remains  powerful in the West because it’s linked to corporate capitalism on the one side, and the most militarized states on the other side. The liberal façade of these Western states purports to be guided by the rule of law and human rights, presenting an attractive image to many people who close their eyes to the contradiction in the behavior of these states, especially in foreign policy.

Mike Billington : You’re generally very pessimistic about the US election, saying that you saw the choice — this was before Biden dropped out — but you saw it as “a warmonger and a mentally unstable, incipient fascist.” That’s pretty strong. You welcomed Biden dropping out, but do you see any improvement in the choices today?

Prof. Falk: Yes, I see at least the possibility of an improvement, because we don’t know enough about how Kamala Harris will try to package her own ideas in a form that presents an independent position. It’s conceivable it would even be to the right of Biden, but I don’t think so. Her own background on domestic issues is quite progressive and at the same time pragmatic. As a younger person, she has a mixed record, to say the least while serving as prosecuting attorney and attorney general in California. But I think there is a fairly good prospect that she will be more critical of Israel during the last several years as Biden’s vice president. She has already indicated a determination to not support Israel, at least openly, if they engage in a massive killing of Palestinian civilians. She probably feels she is walking a tight rope to avoid alienating Zionist funders and others who would be hostile should she show a shift to a more balanced pro-Palestinian position.

Mike Billington : you referred to Trump in that passage as a warmonger. But on the other hand…

Prof. Falk: No, you misunderstood me. Biden is the warmonger.

Mike Billington : Oh, a “warmonger and a mentally unstable, incipient fascist.” I got it. So those terms were both as a description of Biden.

Prof. Falk: I would never call Trump “peace minded,” but he has at various points suggested an opposition to what he and others have called “forever wars,” these US engagements in long term interventions that always seemed to have ended up badly, even from a strategic point of view, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But Trump is so unpredictable and unstable that I wouldn’t place any confidence in his words or declared interntions. He does seem determined to move the country in a fascist direction if he’s successful in the election. And if he isn’t successful, he seems to want to agitate the country sufficiently so that it experiences some level of civil strife, or at least unrest.

 Mike Billington: Well, he clearly is insisting that there must be peace and negotiation with Russia on the Ukraine issue. Do you see any hope that he would also negotiate with China in terms of the growing crisis there?

Prof. Falk: I doubt it because of his seeming perception of China as an economic competitor of the US, and as one that, in his perceptions has taken advantage of the international economic openness to gain various kinds of unfair economic advantages. I think he is, if anything, more likely to escalate the confrontation with China and at best to put relations on a very transactional basis, which suggests that only when it was to the material benefit of the US would the US Government in any way cooperate with China even for the benefit of the public good. 

Mike Billington: Of course, we saw just recently in China that the Xi Jinping government brought many diverse Palestinian factions together in Beijing, and that they did come to an agreement. What are your thoughts on the agreement that they came to and what effect will that have?

Prof. Falk: It seems helpful.  I hope it lasts. There have been prior attempts, mostly in the Middle East, mostly with Egypt playing an intermediary role, especially before the present Sisi government. And none of these earlier unity arrangements have lasted. There is a lot of hostility rivalry among the PLO, Fatah Hamas, and several other Palestinian factions. It relates to the religious – secular divide, differences of personality, patterns of corruption, and opposed adjustments to Israeli criminality. It was encouraging to me that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the assassination of Haniyeh. That, I think, was an early confirmation of the potential importance of this Beijing Declaration and the successful, at least temporarily successful, effort at bringing these Palestinian factions together in common struggle. And from the Palestinian point of view, unity has never been more important as a practical matter to achieve and sustain any hope of statehood or realization of their right of self-determination. The entire future of Palestinian resistance probably depends on being able to have a more or less united front to sustain hopes that a post-Gaza arrangement will be beneficial for Palestine.

Mike Billington : You recently signed an appeal which was issued by the Geneva International Peace Research Institute, which has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for alleged complicity in war crimes and genocide committed by Israel. What are your expectations for that effort?

Prof. Falk: The ICC, the International Criminal Court, is much more susceptible to political pressure than is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is part of the UN and came into existence when the UN was established back in 1945. The ICC was established recently, in 2002. It doesn’t have many of the most important countries among its members or signatories to its treaty, the so-called Rome Treaty. It would be a pleasant surprise if the Chamber of ICC judges follows the Prosecutor’s recommendation and issues these arrest warrants. Already, Netanyahu has given the recommendation of the prosecutor an international visibility by denouncing them and calling on the US and, and the liberal democracies to bring pressure on the ICC to avoid issuing the warrants. And that reflects the strong impression that even though Israel defies international law, its leaders are very sensitive about being alleged to be in violation, especially of international criminal law and particularly of the serious offences alleged to have taken place in Gaza. The basis for recommending arrest warrant for Israeli leaders doesn’t extend to cover the elephant in the room — genocide. It enumerates other crimes that Israel, that Netanyahu and Gallant, are said to be guilty of perpetrating, and does the same thing for Hamas, in trying to justify issuing arrest warrants for the three top Hamas leaders. Of course, they don’t have to worry about Haniyeh anymore, and I think, I’m pretty sure he was one of the three Palestinians who were recommended as sufficiently involved in the commission of international crimes on October 7 to justify the issuance of arrest warrants.

Mike Billington: As I mentioned, you were the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine from 2008 to 2014. During that period, you were regularly declared by Israel to be an anti Semite for things you said and did during that time. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that at this point. Also, the current person in that position, Francesca Albanese, is also under attack from Israel. What do you think about her role today?

Prof. Falk: Well, as far as my own role is concerned, the attacks came not directly from the government, but from Zionist oriented NGOs, particularly UN Watch in Geneva and some groups in the US and elsewhere, all in the white Western world. I mean, all the attacks on me. And of course, they were somewhat hurtful. But this kind of smear is characteristic of the way in which Israel and Zionism has dealt with critics for a long time. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader in the UK, has been a victim of such a smear and defamatory campaign. It’s unfortunately a tactic that has had a certain success in branding one as lacking in credibility, and thus not fit to be listened to by the mainstream. Israel and its Zionist network are not interested in whether the allegations are truthful or even grounded in factual reality. This effort has as its primary aim the deflecting the conversation away from the message to the messenger.

And they’ve done, shockingly and without shame, the same thing with Francesca Albanese, the current Special Rapporteur. Francesca is an energetic, dedicated, very humanistic person and gives no signs of anhy kind of ethnic prejudice, much less anti-Semitism. She’s written very good reports in the time she’s been the Special Rapporteur, and bravely and forthrightly confronted her attackers.

It’s a real disgrace that this unpaid position at the UN is dealt with in such an irresponsible and personally hurtful way. The special rapporteurs enjoy independence, which is important in such roles, but they’re essentially doing a voluntary job, that frees them from the discipline of the UN, but also makes them vulnerable to these personal attacks that are intended to be vicious. The UN does nothing very substantial to protect those of us that have been on the receiving end of this kind of ‘politics of deflection.’ UN passivity reflects a core anxiety within the UN bureaucracy centered on losing funding from the countries that support Israel.

After I finished being Special Rapporteur, I collaborated with Professor Virginia Tilley to produce one of the first detailed reports in 2017 examining contentions of Israeli apartheid. The report was denounced by Nikki Haley [US Ambassador to the UN] in the Security Council soon after its release. I was singled out by her as a disreputable person undeserving of serious consideration. The UN secretary General Guterres, newly appointed at that time, was publicly threatened by Haley with withholding US funds if he didn’t remove our report from the UN website, and to our regret he complied. He removed the report, though it was already the most widely read and frequently requested report in the history of the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, which is a regional commission of the UN.

Mike Billington: And who was it that ordered it removed?

Prof. Falk: Guterres. Yes. Removal caused a stir. The head of this UN agency, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), was a civil servant named Rima Khalaf who resigned her UN post as a consequence of what was done. Our report was commissioned as an independent academic study. We were treated as scholars and not as UN civil servants. But the report was sponsored and accepted by a UN agency, and thus could not entirely escape its association with our conclusions that were controversial at the time.

Mike Billington: Is there anything else you’d like to add before we close?

Prof. Falk: No, I think we’ve covered a lot. I would hope that things will look better in a few months, but I’m not at all confident that they will. They could look a lot worse if this wider war unfolds in the Middle East. And if they are new tensions that come to the surface in the Pacific area. I find myself clinging to this marginal hope that Kamala Harris will not only win the election but surprise us by being more forthcoming in promoting an enhanced image of what a liberal democracy means internationally.

Mike Billington: Let us hope. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your taking the time to do this at a critical moment, with your own personal role in the Middle East having been so important historically and still today. So we’ll get this circulated widely. And let’s hope that, in fact, we do see a big change at a moment where the crisis is such that you would think people would be stepping forward all over the world to stop the madness.

Prof. Falk: Yes but they need — I found that they need the entrepreneurial underpinning. They have to have the support, sufficient funding. Support so that their words will have weight. This unfortunate, but it’s one of the political dimensions of the imperative: ‘follow the money.’ 

Mike Billington: Something we’ve always had to deal with in the LaRouche movement. I invite you to join us on Friday, we will have the 61st weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition, at 11:00 East Coast time, on Friday. And it would be very useful if you could attend and perhaps say some of what you said today in this interview or if that’s not possible, perhaps we could read a section of what you said today, during that event. So I’ll correspond with you to see if you can attend on Friday.

Prof. Falk : I know that I can’t because I have to attend a conference in Istanbul. I’m living these days in southern Turkey, a plane ride away from Istanbul. And I’m taking part in a conference on international law after Gaza , a little bit optimistic in the title. I’m occupied all day either with this trip or with my role at the conference.

Mike Billington: All right. Well, I’ll correspond with you about whether we may be able to read a portion of what you had to say in the interview today for the for the attendance.

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The Criminal Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran

9 Aug

[Prefatory Note: This post originated in a series of responses to questions asked by a journalist writing a feature story for the Turkish publication, TRT World. My responses here are derived from that source but took on a different life of their own.]

[Prefatory Note: This post originated in a series of responses to questions asked by a journalist writing a feature story for the Turkish publication, TRT World. My responses here are derived from that source but took on a different life of their own.]

The Criminal Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran

What does Hamas chief Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran mean for the wider conflict?

It appears that none of the countries directly involved in the conflict with Israel–Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen–seek a wider war in the Middle East. Only Israel, and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu seem to approach such a prospect favorably. This cycle of provocative acts followed by retaliations almost all initiated by Israel have their own escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, might merges with a deadly commitment to securing a wider victorious outcome.

There is much speculation that Netanyahu has his private motivations centering on his personal survival and the related likelihood that his coalition government would soon collapse after the Gaza war recedes from view. He was also associated with obsessively pushing a vendetta against Iran, especially recently as a useful distraction from the Gaza campaign that failed to achieve its main explicit objective of destroying Hamas and promoting the Greater Israel Project of territorial expansion.

Additionally, the recent cycles of tit-for-tat provocative acts almost exclusively initiated by Israel have an escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, merges with a commitment to securing a victorious outcome through sustained warfare.

Ismail Haniyeh’s July 31 assassination while attending the inauguration of the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was a step in the direction of regional war. It was further aggravated because of the location, the occasion, Haniyeh’s reputation as a ‘moderate’ in the Hamas leadership circle. And even further by taking account of his current role as the chief negotiator in the search for a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei immediately threatened a response that will be perceived as a ‘harsh punishment’ by political actors. The religious leader added that Iran is ‘duty-bound’ to inflict a response that ‘avenges’ the assassination. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian offered his strong condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime [of Israel] regret its action.”

This assassination may also be seen as Israel’s reaction to Iran and Hamas in the aftermath of the Unity Deal between Hamas and Fatah facilitated by the mediation efforts of China. The agreement signed in Beijing on July 23 by 14 Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah agreed on the composition of an ‘interim national reconciliation government,’ and seems to be the most serious effort to achieve Palestinian unity since Hamas emerged after the 1967 War. Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), made a meaningful gesture of his own that is being interpreted as an affirmation of the newfound unity of Palestinian resistance by joining in the condemnation of Israel for carrying out the assassination of Haniyeh. This seems significant as the PA has long been the bitter adversary of Hamas.

The Biden presidency seems intent on managing these tensions in such a way that avoids a general war in the region while not alienating Israel and its supporters in the West. It also purports to play its customary intermediary role in relation to Israel/Palestine conflict by putting forth a three-stage ceasefire, hostage/prisoner exchange, and Israeli Gaza withdrawal. It is odd that the Palestinians would accept such a diplomatic process, given the depth of US complicity in lending crucial support to the genocidal assault during the last ten months directed at the entire population of Gaza.

Even Iran despite its seeming commitment to revenging Haniyeh’s death while on a state visit to a high profile public event in Iran seems searching for a response that is viewed as retaliatory but as signaling its intent to avoid a war with Israel.

There are many actors involved with a wide range of disclosed and disguised motivations, making predictions hazardous. If a wider war  does occur, it will almost certainly be undertaken at Israel’s initiative, quite possibly reflecting Netanyahu’s personal animus. If Iran succeeds in inflicting heavy symbolic or substantive damage in executing its retaliatory attack, Israel might treat magnify the event as a suitable pretext for launching a wider war that I believe it would come to regret. Among other consequences, it may induce Iran to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, assuming this has not happened already. Given the security prerogatives of sovereign states, it would not seem unreasonable for Iran to seek a nuclear deterrent, given the threats and provocations over the years. Such a move would deeply challenge Israel and US-led anti-proliferation geopolitics, being a blow struck against the imperfect regional nonproliferation regime in the Middle East. So long as an aggressive Israel possesses and develops its own nuclear weaponry, without any pretense of accountability, the security situation highlights the double standards embedded in the Biden/Blinken ‘rules governed world.’



2. How will Iran respond to this? 

My earlier answer tentatively predicts a proportionate retaliation that may be treated by Israel as sufficiently ‘disproportionate’ to induce a further escalatory cycle. Although Iran has shown that it does not seek a wider war, it also seems poised to take risks to avoid being seen as weak by both adversaries and allies—the latter being demeaned by being called ‘proxies’ in the Washington and European official statements and media.

Although the world and particularly Iran, assumed that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s assassination, Israel failed to claim responsibility for several days.  Before doing so, Israel had been widely accused by Iran, and assumed responsible for this sovereignty-violating assassination. Israel’s official silence rather than offering an evidence-based denial strengthened the dominant impression that Israel was the culprit.

Also passed almost without prominent noticed was the almost simultaneous assassination of  Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military commander and close associate of accused by Israel of planning a deadly attack on a Druze town of Majjid-Shams in the Israel occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children playing on a soccer field. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the attack, and it seems that whoever was responsible for the attack misfired as the missile hit a site unassociated with Israel.

3.   The Gaza/Hamas Angle

In a notable statement, the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, indirectly accused Israel of assassinating Haniyeh in a post published on social media. Al Thani observed, “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” referring to Haniyeh as one of the main mediators in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. And further, “Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.” Israel has failed to respond to such an allegation, although it seems to have backed a rumor that Iran might itself have carried out or at least facilitated this assassination.

The US has been the pioneer in relying on assassination as a major instrument of covert warfare during the Cold Year, generally under the auspices of the CIA. During the Carter presidency Senate hearings were held (‘Church Hearings’), leading to the issuance of Executive Order 11. 905 in 1977 prohibiting political assassinations. This Executive Order was later somewhat relaxed during the Reagan Presidency in the 1980s. There seems to be agreement that the ceasefire proposals that looked quite promising in the days before Haniyeh’s assassination now are indefinite hold given the

The Criminal Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran

What does Hamas chief Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran mean for the wider conflict?

It appears that none of the countries directly involved in the conflict with Israel–Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen–seek a wider war in the Middle East. Only Israel, and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu seem to approach such a prospect favorably. This cycle of provocative acts followed by retaliations almost all initiated by Israel have their own escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, might merges with a deadly commitment to securing a wider victorious outcome.

There is much speculation that Netanyahu has his private motivations centering on his personal survival and the related likelihood that his coalition government would soon collapse after the Gaza war recedes from view. He was also associated with obsessively pushing a vendetta against Iran, especially recently as a useful distraction from the Gaza campaign that failed to achieve its main explicit objective of destroying Hamas and promoting the Greater Israel Project of territorial expansion.

Additionally, the recent cycles of tit-for-tat provocative acts almost exclusively initiated by Israel have an escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, merges with a commitment to securing a victorious outcome through sustained warfare.

Ismail Haniyeh’s July 31 assassination while attending the inauguration of the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was a step in the direction of regional war. It was further aggravated because of the location, the occasion, Haniyeh’s reputation as a ‘moderate’ in the Hamas leadership circle. And even further by taking account of his current role as the chief negotiator in the search for a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei immediately threatened a response that will be perceived as a ‘harsh punishment’ by political actors. The religious leader added that Iran is ‘duty-bound’ to inflict a response that ‘avenges’ the assassination. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian offered his strong condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime [of Israel] regret its action.”

This assassination may also be seen as Israel’s reaction to Iran and Hamas in the aftermath of the Unity Deal between Hamas and Fatah facilitated by the mediation efforts of China. The agreement signed in Beijing on July 23 by 14 Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah agreed on the composition of an ‘interim national reconciliation government,’ and seems to be the most serious effort to achieve Palestinian unity since Hamas emerged after the 1967 War. Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), made a meaningful gesture of his own that is being interpreted as an affirmation of the newfound unity of Palestinian resistance by joining in the condemnation of Israel for carrying out the assassination of Haniyeh. This seems significant as the PA has long been the bitter adversary of Hamas.

The Biden presidency seems intent on managing these tensions in such a way that avoids a general war in the region while not alienating Israel and its supporters in the West. It also purports to play its customary intermediary role in relation to Israel/Palestine conflict by putting forth a three-stage ceasefire, hostage/prisoner exchange, and Israeli Gaza withdrawal. It is odd that the Palestinians would accept such a diplomatic process, given the depth of US complicity in lending crucial support to the genocidal assault during the last ten months directed at the entire population of Gaza.

Even Iran despite its seeming commitment to revenging Haniyeh’s death while on a state visit to a high profile public event in Iran seems searching for a response that is viewed as retaliatory but as signaling its intent to avoid a war with Israel.

There are many actors involved with a wide range of disclosed and disguised motivations, making predictions hazardous. If a wider war  does occur, it will almost certainly be undertaken at Israel’s initiative, quite possibly reflecting Netanyahu’s personal animus. If Iran succeeds in inflicting heavy symbolic or substantive damage in executing its retaliatory attack, Israel might treat magnify the event as a suitable pretext for launching a wider war that I believe it would come to regret. Among other consequences, it may induce Iran to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, assuming this has not happened already. Given the security prerogatives of sovereign states, it would not seem unreasonable for Iran to seek a nuclear deterrent, given the threats and provocations over the years. Such a move would deeply challenge Israel and US-led anti-proliferation geopolitics, being a blow struck against the imperfect regional nonproliferation regime in the Middle East. So long as an aggressive Israel possesses and develops its own nuclear weaponry, without any pretense of accountability, the security situation highlights the double standards embedded in the Biden/Blinken ‘rules governed world.’



2. How will Iran respond to this? 

My earlier answer tentatively predicts a proportionate retaliation that may be treated by Israel as sufficiently ‘disproportionate’ to induce a further escalatory cycle. Although Iran has shown that it does not seek a wider war, it also seems poised to take risks to avoid being seen as weak by both adversaries and allies—the latter being demeaned by being called ‘proxies’ in the Washington and European official statements and media.

Although the world and particularly Iran, assumed that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s assassination, Israel failed to claim responsibility for several days.  Before doing so, Israel had been widely accused by Iran, and assumed responsible for this sovereignty-violating assassination. Israel’s official silence rather than offering an evidence-based denial strengthened the dominant impression that Israel was the culprit.

Also passed almost without prominent noticed was the almost simultaneous assassination of  Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military commander and close associate of accused by Israel of planning a deadly attack on a Druze town of Majjid-Shams in the Israel occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children playing on a soccer field. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the attack, and it seems that whoever was responsible for the attack misfired as the missile hit a site unassociated with Israel.

3.   The Gaza/Hamas Angle

In a notable statement, the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, indirectly accused Israel of assassinating Haniyeh in a post published on social media. Al Thani observed, “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” referring to Haniyeh as one of the main mediators in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. And further, “Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.” Israel has failed to respond to such an allegation, although it seems to have backed a rumor that Iran might itself have carried out or at least facilitated this assassination.

The US has been the pioneer in relying on assassination as a major instrument of covert warfare during the Cold Year, generally under the auspices of the CIA. During the Carter presidency Senate hearings were held (‘Church Hearings’), leading to the issuance of Executive Order 11. 905 in 1977 prohibiting political assassinations. This Executive Order was later somewhat relaxed during the Reagan Presidency in the 1980s. There seems to be agreement that the ceasefire proposals that looked quite promising in the days before Haniyeh’s assassination now are indefinite hold given the leadership to the supposedly hardline Yahya Sinwar.

Israel has a long record of assassinations in Iran, including of high profile nuclear scientists (e.g. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) and a much revered military commanded and diplomat. Qasem Solemani, in January 2020, the last days of the Trump presidency.

Political assassinations carried out on the territory of a foreign country in the form of an official undertaking of a government is a violation of international law, an act of aggression, and a violation of fundamental human rights standards.

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Interrogating the Venuzeulan Victory of Nicolas Madura

6 Aug

Murat Sofuoglu

Venezuela election sparks geopolitical feud between US, China and Russia

Whether incumbent President Nicolas Maduro holds on to power could very well depend on his allies, and the result could have global ramifications.

Murat Sofuoglu

MURAT SOFUOGLU

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, left, and opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez address supporters during a protest in Caracas, July 30, 2024. Photo/Cristian Hernandez
APOpposition leader Maria Corina Machado, left, and opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez address supporters during a protest in Caracas, July 30, 2024. Photo/Cristian Hernandez

One week after Venezuela held its presidential election on July 28, the United States and its rivals China and Russia are taking sides in the debate over who actually won power in the South American state, which has had an anti-Western socialist leadership under President Nicolas Maduro. 

The US contests the official results declared by the National Electoral Council (CNE), the country’s election oversight authority, which said that Maduro won 51 percent against opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s 44 percent. 

Meanwhile China and Russia are standing by the incumbent president.

According to the US-backed opposition, Gonzalez won the presidency with a large margin. He has called for protests against Maduro, and anti-government demonstrations have been raging across Venezuela since the CNE’s declaration of election results. Maduro described the unrest as a far-right conspiracy against his government. 

Venezuela’s election has also divided Latin America, where pro-Western governments from Argentina to Peru, Panama and several other states rejected the official result. Countries like Cuba, which have socialist leaderships, have backed Maduro’s reelection. 

“At present, Maduro’s victory has received congratulatory messages from left governments in the region including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia and critical reactions from the US and European countries,” said Richard Falk, a leading international relations expert. 

Meanwhile, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, the three critical Latin American countries with leftist or left-leaning governments, have distanced themselves from the US position. These nations have important interactions with both Russia and China, and oppose external interference to address the Venezuelan impasse. 

But the three states also called on Caracas to release details of election results, urging an internal “institutional solution”. Caracas says that a hacking attack prevents the electoral oversight body from releasing detailed outcomes as its website continues to be down. 

History of tensions

Venezuela has seen at least two failed coup attempts against anti-Western governments since the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999, which was launched by Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who passed away in 2013 which brought his protege Maduro to power.

APA mural of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with a message that reads in Spanish: “Chavez, the heart of our towns”, in Caracas, Venezuela, July 24, 2024. Photo/Fernando Vergara

The Bolivarian revolution refers to Simon Bolivar, a 19th-century Venezuelan leader who was instrumental in achieving the independence of some South American states from Spanish rule. Like Bolivar in the past, Chavez and later Maduro along with their allies have aimed to form an anti-Western socialist bloc across the region. 

“The natural stance of the opposition and of countries (Western powers) is to oppose Madurismo-Chavismo,” said Juan Martin Gonzalez Cabañas, a researcher at Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU) and a Eurasia specialist at the Argentine-based Center of Studies “Soberanía”. 

Madurismo-Chavismo refers to the ongoing leftist governance in Venezuela since the Bolivarian revolution. So far, at least two failed coup attempts were launched against the Venezuelan socialist leadership. 

In 2002, US-linked forces ousted Chavez for a brief time from power, but in a dramatic reversal, much of the military loyal to Chavez restored him to power after a tense 47 hours. In 2020, there was another failed coup attempt against Maduro’s government. This one was orchestrated by Jordan Goudreau, a US Green Beret, who was recently arrested by the US in New York for arms smuggling.

“More or less impartial commentators believe that the political outcome will depend on whether the Venezuelan armed forces continue to back Maduro and whether the opposition is militant and organised enough to threaten the survival of the Maduro government,” Falk told TRT World. 

Cabanas assesses that Western powers’ antagonist relationship with Maduro and their approach to his reelection bid are clearly related to their political interests. “A [Venezuelan] government opposed to Chavismo would be more functional to their objectives,” he told TRT World.

Russia and China weigh in

On the other hand, the Kremlin is on the side of Maduro, “firmly” backing him and the outcomes of elections that recognised him and his government as winner of elections, according to Cabanas. 

AP ARCHIVEVenezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, right, meets with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, April 18, 2023.

China, which has already congratulated Maduro on a third term following the release of election results, also reiterated its support for the socialist leader. 

“China will, as always, firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and firmly support Venezuela’s just cause of opposing external interference,” President Xi Jinping said last week.

Both Chavez and Maduro have been long aligned with the anti-Western camp, ranging from Russia to China and regional leftist states like Cuba to counter US influence in Venezuela. 

But Caracas faces a serious economic recession under US-led sanctions, which has led more than 7.7 million Venezuelans to migrate to other countries, particularly the US, since 2014.

It’s difficult to present a fair assessment of the elections because “they are being undertaken in a country that operates in a state of economic siege and hostile relations with the United States,” said Alexander Moldovan, a researcher on social movements and security in Latin America at York University.

“Democracy and national security are difficult to balance,” Moldovan told TRT World, referring to the Venezuelan political dilemma. He sees that the country’s post-election process will be difficult as both pro-government and opposition forces have been entrenched into their firm positions. 

Prior to the election, Maduro has shown his flexibility and held talks with Washington to address the two countries’ differences, aiming to reach an agreement to ease sanctions. 

“Although Maduro’s victory is a win for the counter-hegemonic powers that counterweights the West, this fact should be measured in its proper context: Venezuela is facing an economic recovery after very hard years, and Chavismo is no longer an ideological ‘export brand’ as it used to be, at least in its region (South America/Latin America),” Cabanas added. 

Madurism and regional socialist trends

Falk said he believes that Madurism’s future might depend on how “governments with progressive credentials, such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, will influence” its perceptions outside Venezuela if the socialist leader’s reelection is “sustained in a future period that is bound to be turbulent.” 

APBolivia’s President Luis Arce, from left, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva assemble for a group photo during the South American Summit at Itamaraty palace in Brasilia, Brazil, May 30, 2023. Photo/Andre Penner

The three countries are part of BRICS, a non-Western alliance, and have not sided with the Western stance, as Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva said he found “nothing abnormal” in the election process. 

“If Maduro manages to hold on, and especially if he gains support from Brazil and other moderate governments, it will be interpreted as a setback for ideologically motivated US coercive diplomacy, including an effort to exert political influence by imposing sanctions unilaterally,” Falk said. 

But if the opposite political scenario becomes a reality, then Maduro’s exit and opposition success could be perceived “as allied with the right and the beneficiary of US intervention,” according to Falk. This perception would essentially empower leftist tendencies in Latin America, “not so much for the sake of socialism or electoral integrity, but to assure sovereign rights and resistance to foreign intervention, especially on behalf of capitalist vested interests.” 

The professor also drew attention to the media’s use of political language when it comes to internal settings and processes of anti-Western states like Venezuela. 

While pro-Maduro forces describe María Corina Machado Parisca, a leading opposition leader, and Gonzales, as the leaders of “right-wing” or “far-right” groups, “the liberal media never uses this language, painting the struggle as between “autocratic” and “democratic” tendencies,” he said.

On the other hand, “Maduro describes his movement as one on behalf of the people, especially the poor and marginalised, rarely speaking of ‘socialism’ as the inspiration or goal,” he added.

SOURCE: TRT WORLD

Murat Sofuoglu

Murat Sofuoglu

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