STOP!
June 17, 2024
- The problem with the US position on Gaza and it’s various peace proposal initiatives, is that the US position does not call for an unequivocal call to both Israel and Hamas to STOP the war in Gaza.
Peace proposals are made subject to certain unilateral and multilateral positions such as daytime ceasefire in return for allowing humanitarian aid to pass through border crossings.
This is an invitation to bring baggage to the negotiating table. It contextualises history, add in psychopathology of Netanyahu, it renders solution impossible.
For example, it’s announced today IDF have proposed daytime cessation of hostilities to allow humanitarian aid to get through to Gaza. There is some ambiguity about this announcement as it’s also been made known Netanyahu is opposed to this temporary ceasefire. Previously, Netanyahu has said the mission to occupy Gaza is expected to last at least 7 months.
The proposed humanitarian window will not apply to Rafah. 8 Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday in an alleged Hamas ambush of an Israeli armed vehicle. Following the attack and losses Netanyahu reaffirmed his intention to continue to prosecute his war in Gaza.
There are precedents for this madness in Gaza. One recalls the hollow victory of Bush’s war in Iraq when it’s capital Baghdad was taken. This was not the end of that war only the beginning.
Iraq was subsequently torn apart in civil war that took large casualties from all sides in the conflict.
Lessons also learned in Ireland until it’s Good Friday agreement brought an and to decades of urban warfare also leading to mass casualties on all sides.
Netanyahu is the embodiment of a destructive and malignant cancer that those Israeli casualties are merely the beginning of untold carnage in this region if this war cannot be stopped.
A long protracted drawn out war fought by urban guerrilla warfare is not in the interest of Israel or Palestine.
Netanyahu clearly wants to occupy and annex all of Gaza, driving out it’s native Palestinian population and enact settlers reoccupation of Gaza including it’s West Bank by Israeli occupiers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722r0p31x7o
Netanyahu clearly has demonstrated his lack of good faith in regard to any peace talks that might offer relief to Palestinians living in Gaza.
So where does this leave peace talks with proposals from any interested parties in the conflict? It leaves them nowhere.
We need to focus on where pressure can most be brought to bear to end the conflict.
This brings us to the role of the US in particular it’s role in proposing Peace Initiatives. It’s not good for US policy agenda to be clearly aligned with Israeli genocide in Gaza with upwards of 37000 dead, most of whom innocent men, women and children, untold number of casualties and the rest of the population of Gaza living under siege and famine.
The moral support of Israel under Netanyahu is unconscionable. Today Netanyahu dissolved his powerful war cabinet https://bit.ly/3xllhOj This is after key members have quit:
“…The Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the change with the media, said Netanyahu will now hold smaller forums with some government members for sensitive issues surrounding the war.
That includes his security Cabinet, where far-right governing partners who oppose cease-fire deals and have voiced support for reoccupying Gaza, are members….”
To what extent US lame duck proposals for Peace Initiatives that include ceasefire that will constantly be ignored and shot down by Netanyahu, are in fact empty window dressings on what the real US position on the war in Gaza is namely, nominal support for Netanyahu that is primary to any secondary doubts about his genocidal tactics and intentions! Hopefully, this is not true, but the longer time passes with Netanyahu allowed to prosecute his war in Gaza, the more this appears to be true.
Make your own mind up but bear in mind its common knowledge that Netanyahu’s tactics at home and abroad make it clear Netanyahu intends to occupy GAZA and prosecute his war with remorseless cruelty at least for the medium to long term.
Forget Peace Negotiations under Netanyahu. They’ve run their course and failed.
The US needs to say STOP! to Netanyahu.
If he fails to stop immediately, the US should introduce sanctions and join other countries blocking military and financial aid to him.
If that fails to STOP the genocide, then the UN should intervene to force the opening of humanitarian aid corridors into GAZA. If that should fail, serious thought and action should be put into the military defense of the people of GAZA to protect them against ongoing genocidal operations mounted against them by Israel.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/11/politics/antony-blinken-gaza-aid-humanitarian/index.html
Its time for Antony Blinken to seriously give up his nonsense that it is only Hamas that opposes ceasefire in Gaza. Netanyahu ignores Blinken’s calls for ceasefire they go on deaf ears.
” There was an “ecosystem” for humanitarian aid work in Rafah – some non-governmental organizations and UN agencies provide logistical facilities, others provide transportation, “everybody works together to make that possible,” he described to CNN. But with the Israeli military operation happening since the beginning of May, “it could not function anymore, it just ground to a halt.”
International officials and humanitarian workers have described the situation in Gaza as unprecedented in its complexity and scope. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the conference Tuesday that “the speed and scale of the carnage and killing in Gaza is beyond anything in my years as Secretary-General.”
If a parent finds 2 siblings fighting, the parent cries STOP! and stops the fighting by whatever means is required. Its time to forget about historical contextualising consent predicated on futile analysis of cause and effect with blame and accountability ceaselessly allowed to sabotage action that will save children, mothers, parents and families from genocide.
Antony, Netanyahu is a psychopath and psycho, no amount of appeal to a rational voice exists for this sociopath.
Its time to wake up and grow up. Do what needs to be done. Have your negotiations after the fighting and genocide stops.
STOP! the genocidal war in GAZA, or be seen as a willing accomplice to genocide!
till again,
Colm
Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza
June 7, 2024
Spokespersons from Israel IDF or current Israeli government I’ve listened to follow the following rules of engagement with reporters attempting to engage with them.
Initially they draw upon a relentless denunciation and recall of the Hamas attack on Oct 7th. Their interviewer is invited to support Israel in it’s response to this attack. If not forthcoming, the interviewer will be cast as a supporter of Hamas and enemy of Israel. Spokespersons on behalf of the Israeli government are hellishly obsessed with Oct 7th to the point that Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of 2.2 million Palestinians most of whom innocent men, women and children and their families, is justified!
Israeli spokespersons claim hospitals have been used as cover by Hamas and that this justifies the targeting of hospitals by IDF. There is yet to be found one instance IDF have targeted a hospital and removed Hamas from their target area, that Israel has rebuilt one hospital supplying the hospital with medical personnel and medicine.
- Ethnic Cleansing for Israel while it includes destruction of infrastructure, the dreadful killing of men,women and children, starvation of the population, forced removal of the target population to unsafe areas, it does not provide for the rebuilding of hospitals.
Typical of western efforts to broker peace in Israel is the response above by David Cameron in which he upholds the view a permanent ceasefire is not supportable by Israel on the basis that this would render Israel defenceless against further attacks by Hamas.
Firstly, lets drill down into this notion of Israel being rendered defenceless. Let’s assume that Israel assumes it has a right to self defence against attack. The Right to Self Defence is not an absolute right, its a conditional right that must satisfy in law the following constraints that are legally binding by an independent body such as the International Court of Justice https://icj-cij.org/home
The use of force must end when the threat is over
The use of force must not be excessive or disproportionate to the threat
The use of force must not intentionally harm a third person who is not involved in the threat.
The use of force must be effective and necessary to stop the threat.
The Hamas attack on October 7th has precipitated a war on the Palestinian people of Gaza pop circa 2.2 million people. Majority of whom innocent men, women and children. Over 60% of their homes destroyed in a relentless bombing campaign killing over 35000 of their number majority being women and children.
“…After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution.[d] Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help.[ To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant.[20][21] In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.”
Though there are distinct parallels between the actions of the Khmer Rouge in Saigon in 1975 driving out the population of Saigon to live in camps ruled by violence and the enforcement of a distorted agrarian ideology, there are differences. While ” It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).[3][4][5][6][7]”
Israel so far has managed to kill, maim or injure up to 6% of the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Clearly Israel has gone far beyond the rules of self defence described above. Attacking schools, universities, humanitarian storage supply facilities, infrastructure supporting water/electricity to the civilian population, hospitals; depriving the population of humanitarian relief and aid, medicine, water; herding of the population from one alleged safe area to another. Whole areas of Gaza rendered uninhabitable turned to rubble. Fleeing from one unsafe refuge to another.
This is not Israel on a mission of self defence. It is Israel embarked on a mission of Ethnic Cleansing whose target is not simply the annihilation of Hamas, but rather the annihilation of the Palestinian people of Gaza as a perceived threat to the Israeli people..
The evidence for this is not only contained in the above paragraphs its also contained in the refusal of Israel to seek a solution to the conflict that is not based on its present and future occupation of Gaza.
While supplying arms and ammunition to Israel the US under Joe Biden has sought to put itself forward as a Peace Broker in this conflict. While its proposals for peace are ignored and scorned by Israel, there is no Red Line beyond which Biden will refuse to support Israel with financial and military aid.
This exposes the US to the charge of hypocrisy in its alliance with Israel.
How can the US take the moral high ground with Putin over the Ukraine while losing the moral high ground to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and destruction brought upon the people of Gaza through the blocking of humanitarian aid including the imposition of starvation hunger on the population, bombing of its hospitals. aerial bombardment igniting fires in tent city refugee camps civilians flee to.
Such a policy rather than annihilate Hamas short/medium/long term, will serve as a magnet for Hamas recruits.
Click to access 192-20240603-int-01-00-en.pdf
“As the Court is aware, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is “disastrous” and
continues to deteriorate as the Court itself noted in paragraph 28 of its Order of 24 May
2024. It is estimated that Israel has killed over 36,000 Palestinians, at least 15,000 of
them children, in addition to wounding approximately 81,000 since its onslaught
against Gaza began in October 2023.6 These are conservative estimates. The numbers
continue to increase not only because Israel’s genocidal acts, including starvation, are
ongoing and escalating but also because of the discovery of mass graves. 7 Volker Turk,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he was “horrified” by
reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies, including women and children,
at the Al Nasser Medical Complex and Al Shifa Medical Complex, two of Gaza’s
largest hospitals. 8 Since then, as the Court also noted, “[t]he military ground offensive
in Rafah, which Israel started on 7 May 2024 is still ongoing and has led to new
evacuation orders . As a result, according to United Nations reports, nearly 800,000
people have been displaced from Rafah as of 18 May 2024.9 At the time when the
present Request for intervention is drafted the Court’s decision which it indicated in its
Order of 24 May 2024 is that, “[t]he State of Israel shall [ … ] Immediately halt its
military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Govemorate, which may inflict
on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part” 10 remains a dead letter.”
Ethnic Cleansing is a war crime, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240603-int-01-00-en.pdf
It’s a tragedy https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm5512l7yero
US politicians have voted to sanction members of ICC
“The US House of Representatives has voted to pass legislation that would sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) after its prosecutor applied for arrest warrants against Israeli officials.
The move comes after The Hague-based court’s prosecutor said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant should be arrested on charges relating to the war in Gaza.
The prosecutor is also seeking warrants for three leaders of Hamas. “
Meanwhile incongruously the American Congress is debating whether to invite leaders of the Israeli government guilty of war crimes to address congress.
Best take on the above is that too many Americans are ignorant of what is going on, Ethnic Cleansing on a daily basis, including starvation and malnutrition. Worst take on this is that there are pro Israeli extremists in the US willing and able to support the ongoing policy of Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian population being carried out by war criminals who need to be held to account.
There is no 2 state solution acceptable to Netanyahu who wishes to address the population numbers 2.2 million Palestinians, 2.2 million Israelis, by driving out Palestinians and occupying by force their land with a majority of Israelis able to do so…..
till again
Colmbrazel's Blog 