Credit: UNOCHA A mosque in Gaza City lies in ruins.

By Mouin Rabbani
MONTREAL, Canada, Jul 18 2024 (IPS)

Usama bin Laden once claimed that the seeds of 9/11 were planted in 1982 as he watched the scenes of mass slaughter emerging out of Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, the bloody conclusion of that summer’s US-supported Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Either Bin Laden’s statement was accurate, or he recognized that appealing to the widespread outrage generated by Western support for Israel’s serial atrocities was the most effective way to generate popular and organizational support for his extremist project.

Bin Laden’s successors are no doubt doing everything they can to capture similar outrage throughout the region about Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. But they will encounter significantly greater challenges deploying it for their own purposes.

The difference between 2024 and 1982 is the overwhelming evidence of popular Western rejection of the policies of their governments. In public opinion polls, in mass demonstrations easily rivalling those organised against the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, in the numerous campus encampments, and, as the recent Letter of Dissent shows, extending even to government bureaucracies and political appointees.

The distinction between ruler and ruled, government and governed, has rarely been more clearly exposed.

The Letter of Dissent makes indisputably clear that US policy towards the present crisis has been an absolute failure at virtually every level. Not only has it failed to achieve any of its objectives and further consolidate Western hegemony in the Middle East, but it has made the US government directly and actively complicit in the genocide currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

https://jointstatement.tiiny.site/

As the signatories note, the US is “wilfully” violating not only international laws that are binding upon Washington, but is similarly and knowingly violating US domestic law in its fanatic determination to see Israel’s mass atrocities through to the bitter end.

Tellingly, and quite accurately, they also point out that the Biden administration’s determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist, annexationist government has led to the suppression of basic constitutional freedoms within the United States.

That campaign, which has involved Ivy League presidents being forced to resign, students and faculty punished for condemning a foreign state, journalists losing their jobs, and much else, has far exceeded anything observed during the US wars against Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

Calling for the destruction of the United States is, it seems, constitutionally protected speech, but this right that does not extend to calling for the dismantling of a genocidal, supremacist regime located thousands of miles away.

Civil servants, even senior ones, generally have at best marginal influence on policy, particularly in a plutocracy like the United States. In the current context, where US Middle East policy is the personal preserve of Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk, and very few others, their influence is non-existent.

This explains why the signatories felt they were left with no option other than to resign. To have done otherwise would have made them complicit in their government’s policies, including its participation in Israeli crimes and ceaseless efforts to ensure Israeli impunity for atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The moral and political choice they have made, which must have been agonizingly difficult and exceptionally simple in equal proportion, is one to be admired.

Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), and Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

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Air strikes continue in Gaza. Credit: WHO

By Mouin Rabbani
AMMAN, Jordan, May 22 2024 (IPS)

The ICC Prosecutor’s applications for arrest warrants regarding the Situation in Palestine represent a milestone. But they are of little credit to Prosecutor Karim Khan.

It is abundantly clear that Khan has been sitting on this file for years, hoping it would simply disappear. Two matters forced his hand.

First, his 2023 indictments of senior Russian officials despite a previous pledge that he would only pursue cases referred to his office by the United Nations Security Council and ignore the rest – particularly the investigations concerning Afghanistan and Palestine that were opposed by the US and UK.

Having gone back on his commitment, the hypocrisy associated with continuing to ignore the Palestine investigation initiated in 2021 became simply too overwhelming, particular as Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip intensified in 2024.

Second, the global outcry against his inertia became too loud to ignore. Much as Khan would have preferred to pursue the policy preferences of the US, UK, and Israel, the main sponsors of his campaign for ICC prosecutor, his inaction became untenable.

According to Khan. his office been investigating the Situation in Palestine since early 2021, and is examining all violations of the Rome Statute as since 2014. Yet in his case too, history appears to have commenced on 7 October 2023.

His applications wholly ignore, any and all, issues unconnected with the current situation in the Gaza Strip. Nothing about the crime against humanity that is apartheid, nothing about the war crime of illegal settlement, nothing about Israel’s previous onslaughts against the Gaza Strip, or its systematic sniper attacks against demonstrators during the 2018 Great March of Return.

Ever the careful politician attentive to those who got him elected, he pointedly indicted three Hamas leaders but only two Israeli officials. This raises numerous questions: why did he seek an arrest warrant for the head of Hamas, who according to available reports was not involved in the planning or execution of the 7 October 2023 attacks, but not Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has explicitly identified Palestinian civilians as legitimate military targets?

Why did Khan decline to apply for arrest warrants for the Israeli military’s chief of the general staff, or any of the senior Israeli military commanders directly responsible for perpetrating the crimes he has enumerated, or other members of Israel’s war cabinet who share full responsibility for its decisions?

Why did he pointedly ignore the crime of genocide, which is explicitly identified in the Rome Statute? It may well be the case that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is also considering Israel’s responsibility for genocide, but unlike the ICJ the ICC does not deal with individual criminal responsibility.

It seems indisputable that Khan is once again playing politics. His problem is that his efforts to curry favour in Washington will gain him nothing, and he is already being attacked from across the US political spectrum for violating the sacrosanct principle Israeli impunity. Washington will now stop at nothing to ensure that only Khan and Hamas are held to account.

US attempts to interfere with ICC procedures themselves constitute crimes under the Rome Statute. Will Khan seek to hold the raving lunatics who have taken over the Washington asylum to account, or look the other way in the hope of achieving absolution?

The flaws of Khan’s conduct notwithstanding this remains an enormously significant development. Together with the ICJ genocide case, it has now become impossible for Israel to maintain its state of exceptionalism.

It is increasingly being judged both legally and politically on the basis of its actual conduct rather than through the sordid prism of twentieth-century European history. For Israel this represents a defeat of strategic proportions.

Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), and Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

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Azzawieh Market in Gaza City lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Omar Al-Qattaa

By Mouin Rabbani
MONTREAL, Canada, Dec 18 2023 (IPS)

The political significance of US-Israeli differences is easily exaggerated.

It is certainly true that tensions in the relationship exist. Israel is currently committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The US would like Israel to reduce – not cease, but reduce – its slaughter Palestinian civilians,

Israel has stated its intention to indefinitely maintain a military presence within at least parts of the Gaza Strip, and rejects any role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the governance of the Gaza Strip. The US has indicated it would like to see Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundary and supports replacing Hamas rule with that of the PA, which it believes to be in Israel’s best interest.

Washington would like to resume bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under US supervision, and has paid lip service to a two-state settlement. Israel has repeatedly and emphatically rejected both proposals.

Neither these nor other disagreements resulting from the current crisis have resulted in any reduction of US military, political, or diplomatic support for Israel, which remains total and unconditional. In other words, US-Israeli tensions have the political significance of a loving couple deciding whether to dine on steak or sushi for their next date.

It has been widely reported, for years, that Biden and his key lieutenants detest Netanyahu, and intensely so. If so, the Israeli prime minister must be thinking: “With enemies like these, who needs friends?”.

On December 12, the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on “Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” during the 45th plenary meeting of the resumed 10th Emergency Special Session. Member States adopted a resolution, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, the unconditional release of all hostages as well as a call for “ensuring humanitarian access”. It was passed with a majority of 153 in favour and 10 against, with 23 abstentions. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

The US is not only complicit in Israel’s genocide, it is a full and active partner. For it to propose a “humanitarian pause” under present conditions, which in addition to the continuous, relentless bombing include measures intended to produce starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease is tantamount to advocating for a Khmer Rouge coffee break.

A meaningless and diversionary charade if ever there was one.

If the Biden administration does take action to enforce international law during the current crisis it won’t be against Israel, but rather against Yemen for interfering with global shipping. Israeli impunity might as well be incorporated into the US constitution.

The performance of the UN Secretariat also leaves much to be desired. It has been extremely slow off the mark, hesitant to a fault, and excessively deferential to the US and Israel. It’s head of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, has been enveloped in an impenetrable invisibility cloak.

For his part Secretary-General Guterres has been condemning Hamas in the strongest possible terms on an almost daily basis since 7 October but has yet to explicitly condemn Israel for anything.

Candidates for Guterres’s censure would include the mass killings of thousands of children; a medieval siege designed to produce widespread starvation, dehydration, and epidemic disease; an unprecedented campaign to destroy an entire territory’s health sector; the bombing of UN facilities sheltering civilians fleeing hostilities, and a record number of UN staff killed in a conflict, often together with their families.

Among senior officials only Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, and to a lesser extent Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, have defied the echo chamber and been more explicit in framing the atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

To his credit, Guterres on 6 December invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, thereby identifying the crisis as not only a humanitarian emergency but also a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security.

Its significance notwithstanding, history will question why Guterres dithered for two months when it came to calling out Israel for its ferocious onslaught on Gaza before suddenly reaching for his heaviest weapon.

Rather than using the stature and authority of his office during the crucial months of October and November to call for an immediate and comprehensive cessation of hostilities and accountability for all who have violated the laws of war or international humanitarian law, he instead chose to advocate for a vaguely-defined “humanitarian ceasefire”.

For Guterres, the Gaza Crisis constitutes a low point in an already unremarkable and frankly mediocre tenure. There’s a reason morale at the UN is disintegrating.

One does not require the benefit of hindsight to conclude that Guterres would have done better to align himself with the overwhelming majority of UN member states, who on 12 December, in numerous speeches from the floor, once again spoke out against the horrors of this war and called for it to end forthwith.

Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor, Jadaliyya www.jadaliyya.com

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Israeli authorities are committing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released April 27. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem. Credit: Human Rights Watch (HRW)

By Mouin Rabbani
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Apr 30 2021 (IPS)

Human Rights Watch’s 27 April report, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, could also have been entitled Better Late Than Never.

The evidence and analysis deployed in this 217-page report and its 867 footnotes, voluminous and sound as it is, has been at HRW’s disposal for years. Similarly, its conclusions have been common currency in the region, and often beyond, since before HRW was founded. It is thus not Israel, but rather HRW that has crossed a threshold.

The more pertinent question is why HRW chose this moment to formally recognize reality. HRW is the industry leader in its field. As an establishment institution that places a premium on access to the corridors of power, it generally avoids open conflict with US foreign policy.

And compared to its reporting on other states in the MENA region, it has until recently been extremely reticent about explicitly condemning Israeli conduct or unambiguously charging it with criminal conduct – unequivocal HRW denunciations have in fact traditionally been directed at the Palestinians and other Arabs rather than Israel.

Additionally, key HRW leaders such as founding Chairman Robert Bernstein and President-for-Life Ken Roth are known for their pro-Israel sympathies. Bernstein for example was a shameless apologist for Israel who never encountered an Israeli violation he wouldn’t justify.

It is common knowledge within the human rights community that HRW staff hold a rather different view of Israel and its conduct, and have been agitating for many years for their organization to hold Israel to the same standards it applies to others in the region.

When, particularly during the past year, Israeli human rights organizations, most notably B’Tselem, published major reports characterizing Israel as an apartheid regime, HRW’s continued silence on the matter became politically untenable and somewhat of an embarrassment.

As in other aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, the Americans follow the lead of their Israeli counterparts and almost never get ahead of them.

Similarly, HRW management has always been adept at divining the political winds, and it may be the case that it assessed the direction of the ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) deliberations on Palestine, and saw benefit in getting on the right side of history and positioning itself to claim some of the credit.

A report by the world’s most prominent human rights organization accusing Israel of apartheid and calling for it to face real consequences for its policies is by definition a significant development. And precisely because of HRW’s history, and because it is a renowned US organization, this report acquires added importance.

For example, the campaign by Israel and its apologists to proscribe advocacy for Palestinian rights and delegitimize findings that Israel is an institutionally racist state has I suspect suffered a significant blow.

Whenever Israel is exposed as a racist state or compulsive violator of Palestinian rights it seeks to render such judgements irrelevant and delegitimize its critics – including, it should be noted, Jewish ones – with specious charges of anti-Semitism. It’s a well-worn playbook often augmented with other dirty tricks and propaganda such as denouncing critics as terrorists and fellow travellers. But the anti-Semitism canard remains the core of its response.

Similarly, authoritative reports by prominent Israeli and US organizations make it more difficult for Western media and officialdom to continue avoiding serious discussion of Palestinian rights and Israeli practices, and may empower those within such institutions seeking to promote greater debate about Israeli-Palestinian issues. Such reports can also serve as a valuable educational resource and assist in advocacy efforts.

The more interesting question is what if any consequences A Threshold Crossed and similar publications may have for Israel’s continued impunity in its dealings with the Palestinian people.

Apartheid is not a murder committed by a soldier who can theoretically be placed on trial, or a war crime commissioned by a commanding officer or government minister who can theoretically be held to account.

It is, rather, the intentional, consciously designed character of a state, and as such implicates not only the state itself but every participating leader, official, and bureaucrat. It will be interesting to see, for example, if such reports have an impact on the current deliberations within the ICC prosecutor’s office about the situation in Palestine.

It will be similarly interesting to see if such reports register within the United Nations system. In 2017, Secretary General Antonio Gutteres scandalously buckled to US and Israeli pressure, and disassociated the UN from, and tried to suppress, a report commissioned by UN ESCWA on this very subject.

This led to the resignation of ESCWA’s highly respected Executive Secretary, Rima Khalaf. Given that his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric recently refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide on the spurious grounds that it transpired prior to the UN’s establishment (perhaps it is his view that the Nazi Holocaust commemorated by the UN this January was perpetrated during the 1970s), I am not particularly optimistic.

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