The Gospel of Gaza
What we must learn from Netanyahu’s Bible lessons
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 6, 2023
In a speech in Hebrew on October 28, Netanyahu justified the Israeli slaughter of civilians in Gaza with a biblical reference to Amalek.
You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we fight. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining the chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun, until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the October 73 War, and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy, and to guarantee our existence in this country.
In Netanyahu’s Holy Bible, God gives his chosen people Palestine, and the same God commands them to exterminate the Amalekites, an Arab people that stands in their way. Yahweh asks Moses to not only exterminate the Amalekites, but to “blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
It was left to Saul to finish them up: “kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” Yahweh instructs him (1Samuel 15:8). Because Saul spared the Amalekite king Agag, Yahweh withdrew the kingship from him and drove him mad: “I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders” (15:11). The holy prophet Samuel, who had a direct line of communication with Yahweh, had to butcher Agag himself (“hewed Agag in pieces,” in the Revised Standard Version). Yahweh then gave the kingship to David, who proved a more obedient exterminator, for example when he put the people of Rabba “under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:31).
Despite their complete genocide in the Bible, the Amalekites remain the eternal nightmare of Israel. Amalek came to be associated, like his grandfather Esau, with Rome and Christianity, but also with Iran, because the villain of the Book of Esther, Haman, is referred to as an Agagite, that is, a descendant of the Amalekite king Agag. That is why the hanging of Haman with his ten sons and the massacre of 75,000 Persians are often conflated in Jewish tradition with the extermination of the Amalekites and the brutal execution of their king. The Torah reading on the morning of Purim is taken from the account of the battle against the Amalekites, which ends with the conclusion that “Yahweh will be at war with Amalek generation after generation” (Exodus 17:16).[1]
In a 2009 New York Times piece called “Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal,” Jeffrey Goldberg reports that, when he asked one of Netanyahu’s adviser’s “to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s anxiety about Iran,” the answer he received was: “Think Amalek.”[2] Now Netanyahu is calling on Israelis to remember Amalek while their army shells Gaza, men, women, children, infants and livestock included.
Netanyahu has not gone insane, as I explained earlier. He is simply possessed by the Bible, because Israel and the Bible are one. Netanyahu’s insanity is rooted in the Bible. His obsession with Amalek is a collective one, shared by Zionist religious Jews around the world. Let us, for example, listen to this lecture by Rabbi Eliyahu Kin, delivered in 2009, on the question: “Why must Jews destroy Amalek?” Let me summarize it for you. The Amalekites deserved their fate because they opposed the will of God. The will of God is good, and opposing the will of God is evil. So exterminating Amalek is good, while saving just one Amalekite, as Saul did, is evil. In fact, since God is good, exterminating Amalek is the expression of his goodness. And since “the best way to love what Hashem (God) loves is to hate what Hashem hates,” hating Amalek is loving God. The reason why the Amalekites hate the Jews is not because the Jews want to exterminate them. “What bothers Amalek is that the Jew believes in mussar, morality, ethics, being good, being nice.” The Amalekites are also evil because they oppose the Torah — in which God orders them to be exterminated. Ultimately, Rabbi Kin summarizes, “we are cruel to Amalek because we need to be. Because that is exactly what they would do to us if they had the chance.” Why? Because Amalek “is a concentration of hatred.” And Jews must hate hatred — except the hatred of God for Amalek, which they must love as an expression of God’s love. How do you deal with such collective madness?
More to the point: what’s wrong with Netanyahu quoting the Bible? It is the Holy Bible, isn’t it? The Word of God! We, Christianized peoples, have been taught too that in ancient times God chose the Jews, gave them Palestine, and commanded them to exterminate the Amalekites (and the Midianites, and many other peoples, seven nations in all). What can Christians possibly object to the rabbi? That God was hot-blooded in those days, but has now cooled down? That the Amalekites are no longer around, or now have the right to oppose the biblical project? (Because, you know, we are Israel now). Enough with all this hand-wringing! After all, God, the creator of the universe, does order, in our Christian Bible, to exterminate Amalek, men, women, children and babies (and cattle, for Yahweh makes no difference). It is undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable.
Let us face it: the God of the Old Testament is a bloodthirsty devil. Some people have known that for a long time, and tried to warn us. Bakunin, for example, who saw the Jewishness in Marxism, stated in God and the State that of all the gods adored by men, Yahweh “was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.” To quote from John Kaminski, “Yahweh gave the Jews the right to steal the lands of others (Deuteronomy 6:10-13, 6:18-19, 7:1-2). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to commit genocide, to totally annihilate the peoples whose lands they had the God-given right to take as their own (Deuteronomy 7:16). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to ‘destroy them (other peoples) with a mighty destruction until they be destroyed’ (Deuteronomy 7:23). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to murder and plunder other races of their property (Exodus 3:20-22). Yahweh has made the Israelites a ‘holy’ people, a master race among other races (Deuteronomy 7:6).”
Bakunin was among those insightful intellectuals who, in the nineteenth century, woke up to the realization that Israel had been the creation of the most evil deity from the beginning. But most people didn’t hear them, because Israel was, for Christians, an abstraction, a story, a holy legend from mythological times. But today, Israel is real, and its hellish character is plainly manifested for everyone to see. Never before has the realization of Israel’s evil soul been so accessible. We are living in a time of revelation, and we’d better not miss it.
“The Palestinians have unwittingly sacrificed themselves for the purposes of enlightening the entire planetary civilization to the profound evil and satanic nature of the Zionist State of Israel,” wrote the Armchair Prophet.[3] A profound statement. Gaza is Christ, and Israel is Israel.[4] But Gaza is also Amalek. Amalek was Christ from the beginning, but we didn’t see it, because we were told that Christ was Yahweh’s son, and one with him. Now we can begin to see our tragic mistake. This is our wake up call. Let us face the truth about Yahweh and the chosen people he created in his image (or the other way around).
Why have Christians never noticed that, when he promised Israel domination over the nations on the condition of exclusive worship, Yahweh was the very same devil that later appeared to Jesus and “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor [and] said to him, ‘I will give you all these, if you fall at my feet and do me homage’” (Matthew 4:8-10). After all, Satan is just an “angel of Yahweh” in the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 22 and 32), indistinguishable from Yahweh himself in 1Chronicles 21.
Netanyahu is opening our eyes, and I am eagerly awaiting his next Bible lesson. After mentioning Amalek, he referred to the biblical Joshua as a “Jewish hero”. Please read the Book of Joshua to understand what he means, and what all Israelis who applaud him mean. Joshua committed genocide after genocide on the order of Yahweh, killing “men and women, young and old” (6:21) In the whole land, he “left not one survivor and put every living thing under the curse of destruction, as Yahweh, god of Israel, had commanded” (10:40).
Three days before that speech, Netanyahu declared to his people: “We shall realize the prophecy of Isaiah.” You may recall from your Sunday school that Isaiah prophesied a time when all nations “will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into sickles” (Isaiah 2:4). But go back to your Bible, and read the full prophecy to understand what Netanyahu means. Isaiah is about a time when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples” (2:3-4). Here is more from Isaiah: “the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly destroyed” (60:12); “You will suck the milk of nations, you will suck the wealth of kings” (60:16); “You will feed on the wealth of nations, you will supplant them in their glory” (61:5-6). “Yahweh’s sword is gorged with blood, it is greasy with fat,” says Isaiah on the occasion of “a great slaughter in the land of Edom [Amalek’s grandfather]” (34:6).
One man, in the second century AD, saw clearly that Jesus could not possibly be the son of Yahweh, that he was instead his archenemy. His name was Marcion. Scholars call him a Gnostic, because he taught that Yahweh was an evil demiurge, and Christ the good god coming down from Heaven to save us from Yahweh. Most texts we call Gnostics promoted this view, in one form or another. In the Apocryphon of John, also from the second century, Yahweh (or Yaltabaoth) is the first of a series of demonic entities called archons, who usurps the position of God by proclaiming: “I am a jealous god, there is none other than me.” Yaltabaoth and the other archons attempt to imprison Adam in the Garden of Eden, a false paradise. But Christ, who is the first aeon, sends Eve to Adam to release the light trapped in him, and lead him to eat the liberating fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Modern scholarship has established that Gnosticism arose within Judaism, probably in Samaria. In the highly regarded opinion of Gilles Quispel, Gnosticism was a Jewish heresy before it was a Christian heresy. During the first three centuries there were Christian Gnostics and anti-Christian Gnostics, but all are Jews.[5] As a Jewish heresy, Gnosticism can be seen as a rejection by spiritual Jews of the materialistic and sadistic nature of Yahweh. Gnostics, however, still took their Torah too seriously and accepted the premise that, before becoming the god of Israel, Yahweh had been “God”, the creator of the world. In that sense, they were still under a biblical delusion.
In the Jewish infancy of Christianity, there was a struggle between Gnostic Christians and anti-Gnostics Christians. Marcion wrote the first evangelium and established the first organized ekklesia. It was still very strong in the early third century, according to Tertullian, who also tells us that the Gnostic teacher Valentinus almost became bishop of Rome (Against Marcion). Gnostics, relying on Paul’s teaching, believed that Jesus’s new covenant freed them from Moses’s covenant, but their enemies insisted on continuity, and claimed that the New Covenant (or Testament) fulfilled rather than contradicted the Old one. The anti-Gnostics ultimately prevailed, and the Jewish Tanakh became part of the Christian canon. That might have been a wise political move as long as the purpose was to convert Jews. But as Christianity became a Gentile religion, it resulted in Gentiles worshipping Yahweh along with Christ.
Christianity has given us the powerful story of Christ, the man who wanted to free Jews from their evil, ethnocentric god, and was martyred for it. But Christianity also became Yahweh’s Trojan Horse into Gentile civilization. The spirit and the teaching of Christ came to us mixed with the spirit and the teaching of Yahweh. The spirit of Yahweh is the spirit of mass murder: “The spirit of Yahweh came upon him (Samson), and he went down to Ashkelon, where he killed thirty of their men and despoiled them” (Judges 14:19). The spirit of Yahweh is in all Israel, now, stronger than ever before, fed by a century of bloodbaths orchestrated by Zionists.
In a book written under the pen-name Seymour Light, The Marcion Thesis, Revisited, which I recommend, Nick Kollerstrom (also author of the memorable Terror on the Tube) points out that, if we had to draw Yahweh’s portrait, he would have to be a dragon: he “rides through the heavens” (Deuteronomy 33:22) with his wings (Psalm 17:8, 36:8, 91:4), while “smoke rises from his nostrils, and from his mouth devouring fire” (Psalms 18:8 and Samuel 22:9). Yahweh also shares with the evil dragons of lore his lust for gold which he hoards in his dwelling place: “Mine is the silver, mine the gold!” (Haggai 2:8). (According to 1Kings 10:14, the amount of gold hoarded each year into Salomon’s temple was “666 talents of gold”). Like dragons, Yahweh is also a consumer of young virgins: thirty-two of them were offered to him after the slaughter of the Midianites, presumably burnt as holocausts together with the oxen, donkeys and sheep that were also part of Yahweh’s share (Numbers 31).
In the episode of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal, Yahweh’s devouring fire is given as the definite proof that he is God: “You must call on the name of your god, and I shall call on the name of Yahweh; the god who answers with fire, is God indeed” (1Kings 18:24). How spiritual! It is Yahweh’s devouring fire that is now unleashed on Gaza.
You better realize it now: Yahweh, the god of Israel, is Satan.
For more evidence, read my other Unz Review articles:
- Zionism, Crypto-Judaism, and the Biblical Hoax
- The Holy Hook
- The Devil’s Trick: Unmasking the God of Israel
Notes
[1] Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 122-125, 4.
[2] Jeffrey Goldberg, “Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal,” New York Times, May 16, 2009, on www.nytimes.com
[3] The Armchair Prophet, “What’s happening in Gaza right now is beyond biblical…beyond apocalyptic,” State of the Nation, November 2, 2023, on https://stateofthenation.co/?p=193985
[4] Watch Abby Martin’s 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom.
[5] Gilles Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, edited by Johannes Van Oort, Brill, 2008. Also Attilio Mastrocinque, From Jewish Magic to Gnosticism, Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
Iran FM says Tehran received new message from Washington on Gaza
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
Press TV – November 6, 2023
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.
The minister, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Monday meeting between Iranian and Iraqi heads of governments in Tehran, said, however, that the message did not correspond to what the US has done in practice in Gaza where it has supported the Israeli crimes against the civilians.
“The Americans … delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard,” said Amir-Abdollahian, but “they, however, back mass killing and genocide” of people in Gaza.
“We hope that the US will soon change its policy and stop supporting the occupying party,” he said.
The US had sent similar messages to Iran, a country with influence over resistance groups in Palestine, since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7, according to statements by Amir-Abdollahian and other authorities.
Amir-Abdollahian also commented about reports suggesting that his US counterpart Antony Blinken had arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier on Monday while wearing a bullet-proof vest out of fears that he could be targeted because of his support for the Israeli carnage in Gaza.
“This is the reality about the US role in the region,” said the diplomat.
Resistance groups in Iraq have launched attacks on US military bases in the Arab country in response to Washington’s offering of direct and open support for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Those groups and peers in other countries of the region have warned that such attacks on US interests could expand if Israel does not stop its brutal aggression against Gaza.
Gaza health authorities said on Monday that the number of people killed in 31 days of Israel attacks had exceeded 10,000 with children accounting for nearly half of the death toll.
Hamas calls for an international committee to inspect Gaza hospitals
Palestine Information Center – November 5, 2023
GAZA – The Hamas Movement called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to form an international committee to visit Gaza hospitals and verify the Israeli false narrative about being used for resistance activities.
The Movement strongly condemned the Israeli army spokesman’s claims regarding Indonesian and Hamad hospitals in Gaza as media fabrications.
According to the Movement, the occupation is attempting to use the claim that Hamas constructed tunnels beneath the buildings as justification for its attacks on the Qatari and Indonesian hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.
“This is just a lie to cover up the Israeli crimes committed against injured people and civilians.”
The Movement also confirmed that the Israeli allegation about a tunnel entrance under the Indonesian hospital is, in fact, a fuel store for the facility, while the alleged tunnel beneath Hamad Hospital is just a room for pumps and electricity generators.
Targeting more than 100 hospitals and medical centers and putting about 16 hospitals out of service refutes the Israeli army spokesman’s allegations.
Additionally, Hamas refuted Israeli claims that it is stealing fuel, an accusation that UNRWA has categorically refuted.
Spain ‘neo Nazi’ mercenary among others helping Israel in Gaza
MEMO | November 5, 2023
The Israeli occupation army has resorted to using foreign mercenaries as part of its genocidal campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, according to a report on Friday by major Spanish outlet El Mundo.
Among the foreign fighters is a notorious Spanish mercenary who previously fought alongside Ukrainian neo Nazis following Russia’s invasion last year. Pedro Diaz Flores was previously presumed dead by the Russians, but he is alive and well, according to the newspaper who interviewed him.
“So I came for economy, for money. They pay very well, they offer good equipment and the work is calm. It is 3,900 euros [$4,187] per week, complementary missions aside,” he said of his motives for joining the occupation forces.
However, he insists that he fights in occupied Golan Heights, “we only provide security support to arms convoys or the troops of the Israeli armed forces that are in the Gaza Strip, we do not fight Hamas directly, nor are we involved in assault operations.”
“We are in charge of the security of the checkpoints and access control on the borders of Gaza and Jordan. There are many PMCs [private military companies] here and they share the work. Traditionally they have guarded border terminals between Eliat and Aqaba,” he added.
The article features an image of Flores, 27, alongside colleagues at a border checkpoint with the Gaza Strip.
Last month, speculation arose that mercenaries stationed in Ukraine have started to divert their attention to aiding and joining the Israeli military, while the focus of the West has also shifted in standing with Israel while it commits war crimes and massacres against Palestinian civilians.
Speaking yesterday during a briefing in Kyiv with visiting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “It’s clear that the war in the Middle East is taking away the focus” from Ukraine.
Fuel crisis forces complete shutdown of Gaza hospital generators
Palestine Information Center – November 5, 2023
GAZA – Power generators at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza have stopped working due to a lack of fuel, officials at the hospital said.
“Generators in Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza have completely stopped operating due to the severe fuel shortage,” director of the hospital Ahmed Kahlut said in a statement on Saturday.
During the past few days, the health ministry in Gaza appealed for fuel supply for hospitals’ generators in the war-torn coastal enclave.
It announced last Thursday that the main power generators at the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza had shut down.
Such a serious fuel crisis threatens the lives of hundreds of patients, including premature babies, at Gaza’s hospitals.
Israeli warplanes also bombed the power generator and solar energy panels at Al-Wafa Hospital in central Gaza City on Saturday.
Protesters block US military supply ship’s departure for ‘occupied territories’
Press TV – November 4, 2023
Protesters opposing the US’s military aid for Israel, which is waging a hugely deadly war against the Gaza Strip, have blocked the departure of a military supply ship reportedly earmarked for delivering weapons to the occupied territories.
The crowd of roughly 200 protesters turned up at the Port of Oakland on Saturday, blocking the vessel’s departure for Washington, where they said it was to be loaded with weapons destined for the occupied territories.
Several protesters climbed a ladder on the side of the vessel attached to a cargo hatch.
The protest was organized by the San Francisco-based Arab Resource Organizing Center.
“The community became aware that the ship was headed to Israel to carry military cargo to the apartheid state of Israel because of the courage of crewmembers who decided not to take this job,” said Lara Kiswani, the group’s executive director.
“I’m here at the Port of Oakland with a group that’s protesting the departure of this ship that is planning to deliver weapons to Israel in support of the genocide of innocent people in Gaza,” said protesters Becca Lewis.
“The goal is to get the ship workers to stand in solidarity with the movement of people who are concerned about the shipment of weapons,” she said.
The United States, Israel’s biggest and oldest ally, has provided the regime with thousands of arms consignments since October 7, when Tel Aviv started the yet-ongoing war against Gaza.
On Friday, the 28th day of Israel’s genocidal attacks on the coastal territory, the death toll reached at least 9,227 people, including 3,826 children and more than 2,405 women. At least 23,516 people have been wounded.
The regime launched the war after Gaza’s resistance groups conducted Operation al-Aqsa Storm, their biggest operation against the occupying entity in years.
Since the onset of the war, the US has backed Tel Aviv’s ferocious attacks on the Palestinian territory as a means of “self-defense.”
Washington has also been casting its veto against the United Nations Security Council resolution that calls on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.
Amnesty International: A Template for Futility
Even in the worst period of the repression during the apartheid era in South Africa, the armed forces never bombed the townships
— Ronnie Kasrils, March 2009BY PAUL DE ROOIJ • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 3, 2023
One would hope that human rights NGOs would be influential, be tools to mobilise the public against oppression and barbarity, and maybe be of use in making the perpetrators of crimes accountable… Or is it the case that human rights NGOs are instruments of propaganda, means to deflect action against state power, and even instrumental in justifying state violence and war? Maybe Amnesty International’s latest press releases and the inevitable “reports” will enable one to determine on which side of the ledger its actions fall.
Yet again the Palestinians face massive Israeli attacks against Gaza, and the retail bombing of the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and even Egypt. Israelis engage in these attacks every four or five years; they call them “mowing the lawn operations”. Inevitably, the human rights NGOs utter clucking sounds, and issue press releases and reports; some of their insufferable researchers will appear on TV mouthing predictable trite statements. And if past experience is any guide, all that effort will be an exercise in futility. Who reads these materials, have they ever led to any action or change of state policy, or have they galvanised a public into action? The answer is self-evident.
Amnesty’s output also suggests that they are a lazy bunch incapable of improving their “product” to make it more effective. Invariably they utilise the same template; they just fill in the blanks whenever the level of violence has propelled a “conflict” onto the front pages or to the top of the hour news reporting. The template requires distressing clucking sounds about the violence, and a tally of those killed; it provides a few individual examples of violations. It then blames “both sides,” and asserts that the Palestinian violence was “horrific” and “indiscriminate”; both sides have perpetrated war crimes. It then urges both sides to cease and desist; return to the status quo ante. And finally, it calls on the “international community” to impose an arms embargo on “both sides”. And “independent” investigators should be allowed in to compile evidence of war crimes. That is it.
Basic Background
Gaza has been under military occupation and control for decades, and extreme Israeli violence has punctuated its history. Massacres, bombings, assassinations have been regular features; each military attack is increasingly more destructive and violent than the preceding ones. Furthermore, since 2006 Gaza was transformed into the largest open air prison with Israeli forces controlling who enters/exits the exclave; walls, razor wire fences, and watch towers armed with robotic machine guns surround the area; drones buzz overhead every day, especially at night. Dov Weissglas, a close confidant of Ariel Sharon, quipped that they’d put Gaza “on a diet”. Israelis calculated the basic caloric intake required to maintain the population just above starvation, and proceeded to limit food imports to that level; airplanes sprayed herbicides on crops, and even small allotments. The water supplied into Gaza was polluted with high levels of salt and over-fluoridation. Unemployment rate in Gaza has been staggeringly high. Gazans have lived in a terrible situation for many years. Non-violent resistance was brutally crushed. With no prospects political or negotiated solution what were Palestinians supposed to do?
It is this history that must serve as the foundation to guide solidarity with the Palestinians, and for any organisation to channel efforts to ameliorate the situation. It behooves us to understand why human rights NGOs are a failure by design; to understand why the human rights babble is equally a cruel fraud. Here is an explanation of this failure in Eight Acts:
They are so ahistorical…
Given the above snapshot history, the nature of the crimes requires recognising them as crimes against humanity, arguably one of the most serious crimes under international law. Second, Israeli crimes put the violence of the Palestinian resistance into perspective. Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. Third, the long history of violence perpetrated against the Palestinians, and the resulting power imbalance, suggest that one should be in solidarity with the victim.
Amnesty however refuses to acknowledge the serious nature of Israeli crimes, by using an intellectually bankrupt subterfuge; it insists that as a rights-based organisation it cannot refer to historical context; doing so would be considered “political” in its warped jargon. An examination of what AI considers “background” in its press releases/reports confirms that there is virtually no reference to relevant history, e.g., the prior attacks on Gaza, who initiated those attacks, the Goldstone report, etc. Presto! Now there is no need to mention serious crimes. Every time AI issues the same statements and even some reports; they are written from the same template. They may change a few details, but each of their statements and reports studiously ignores the previous attacks as if history didn’t matter. It also doesn’t recognise the nature of the Palestinian resistance, and their right to self-defence. Nowhere does AI acknowledge that Palestinians are entitled to defend themselves. And finally, AI cannot express solidarity with the victim; hey, “both sides” are victims!
Criminalising Palestinian Resistance
When Palestinians were engaged in non-violent demonstrations in front of the walls / fences surrounding Gaza, AI didn’t have much to say about the demonstrators who were shot by snipers. A demonstrator in a wheelchair shot and killed; dozens of demonstrators shot in the knee, kids flying kites shot, a journalist operating a drone killed… There are many Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily imprisoned, and when some of them engage in months-long hunger strikes, even resulting in death, AI barely utters a peep. So, non-violent resistance didn’t deliver much, and thus armed resistance seemed to be the only option.
When the Palestinians launch crude inaccurate missiles this is deemed “indiscriminate” in nature and ipso facto a war crime. AI also deems the taking of hostages to exchange for Palestinian prisoners to be a war crime. Attacking Israel and in the process killing civilians is also deemed beyond the pale. So Amnesty’s gang is not willing to state anything constructive about the Palestinian resistance other than to chastise them with accusations of serious crimes.
A blatant double standard is at play. Palestinian weapons are rudimentary and are not precise, and AI labels these as “indiscriminate” thus unlawful. On the other hand, Israeli weapons that are very accurate used to deliberately target civilians, hospitals, mosques, bakeries, ambulances, etc. These weapons are fine and dandy; AI will merely state that an independent body might have to “investigate war crimes” — knowing full well the fraudulent nature of these so-called independent investigations. What is worse: using inaccurate weapons that may result in civilian deaths, or use very accurate weapons to intentionally kill civilians? And what about the scale and proportionality of the weapons? Most Palestinian weapons are small, and not very lethal. Israelis use huge bombs to flatten buildings, hospitals, … with inevitable civilian deaths. For every Palestinian rocket, how many Israeli bombs have dropped? Amnesty usually reports the former, but not the latter.
When resistance fighters take hostages (both civilian and military) AI deems this to be a war crime. On the other hand, when Israeli forces routinely round up Palestinian civilians and arbitrarily imprisons them, this merits no comment. The use of an Israeli military kangaroo court to rubber stamp the imprisonment order is enough to keep Amnesty at bay. Recent video footage shows that Palestinian resistance fighters were captured alive, but a few minutes later they were executed. Does this merit any AI reproach? AI has a pompous sounding “Evidence Investigation Unit” — they may be taking a little nap now.
Addressing Apartheid
In its 26 October 2023 press release AI states: “The root causes of the conflict to be addressed, including through dismantling Israel’s system of apartheid against all Palestinians.” Maybe uttering this statement about 40 or 50 years ago would have been a bold statement. But as Ronnie Kasrils, the great anti-apartheid fighter, stressed: the Palestinians face a system of oppression far more serious, pernicious and violent than what was experienced in South Africa during the 1960-70s. The current Israeli policy is meant to drive the Palestinians off their land (ethnic cleansing) and it doesn’t shy away from implementing a genocidal plan. Amnesty lags behind these developments.
Appeals to the international community
In the 26 October press release, AI also states: “The international community to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on all parties to the conflict given that serious violations amounting to crimes under international law are being committed.” The day after the 7 October attack, the US and UK started flying in military materiel — by now amounting to about 60 military cargo plane deliveries. The US is itself militarily involved having assembled an armada in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; it has sent senior military officers to advice on the attack on Gaza; and a US Seal team is on location. Thus AI’s statement is yet another example of its futility and impotence; maybe it was meant to add a bit of comic relief.
But this time it is different…
While in the past, Amnesty could engage in its ritual press releases and reports, and eventually revert to its regular routine, the current attack on Gaza may force Amnesty to adopt a different stance or risk exposure of its true spineless and duplicitous nature.
Top Israeli politicians and military officers have ordered cutting off Gaza’s access to food, water, and fuel; outright state that all inhabitants “are not innocent,” are “human animals,” that “there is no safe place in Gaza,” “There is no symmetry; the children in the Gaza Strip brought this on themselves,”or recite Deuteronomy 25:19 to smite the Amalek. Other religious figures have chimed in with other vengeful and chilling religious utterances. The same chapter in Deuteronomy urges Israelis to prise open the jaws of the Amalek and pour molten lead into their throats. (NB: this gave rise to the 2008 operation name “Cast Lead”.) Arnon Soffer, the infamous demographer, stated (2004): “we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.” And finally, a bevy of foreign prime minsters/presidents has flown in to repeat that: “Israel has a right to defend itself”. None of these dignitaries uttered a word urging restraint or a return to negotiations, let alone observance of international humanitarian law. Israel was given a green light to do whatever it wants with no impediments, and as a matter of fact, with the aid of recently flown-in military materiel. The UN will be rendered impotent given the US veto; and the lame ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel, thus any meaningful war crimes tribunal will never materialise.
So will Amnesty pursue its business as usual or opt for a stronger stance — preferably a pronouncement by a coalition of NGOs and solidarity activists. There will be an answer within a month.
The feces smellers
Agnes Callamard, AI’s Secretary General, is possibly one of the better and most outspoken general secretaries; there is no doubt that she is a well intentioned person. Many of her statements are clear and strong statements, but they are clearly limited by AI’s overall posture. But her stance is very much like that of a person who finds a fresh piece of feces in her path. After studying the sample, tasting it, and sniffing it, declares “that an independent investigation is necessary to determine if Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.” So why does AI hesitate to make a strong statement about Israel? It has to do with its funding; a strong stand would upset the main donors.
The nature of human rights organisations
Many little NGOs have popped up that are merely meant to assuage the liberal conscience. Thus one may be worried that bananas were produced under harmful and exploitative conditions, and thus a little sticker on the banana may warm the liberal soul. The sticker they offer is merely meant to reduce consumer hesitancy when buying a product. The human rights NGOs perform very much the same function. When sordid and violent acts occur somewhere in the world, well intentioned concerned individuals may want to do something about it. And what could be easier than sending a donation to a human rights NGO! You will even get an Amnesty sticker to paste on your forehead to boast your liberal righteousness. Furthermore, the NGO will enlist well intentioned people to perform next to useless tasks like writing overly polite letters to dubious politicians seeking to improve the prison conditions of their adopted “prisoner of conscience”. Resources and effort are deflected away from pressuring domestic politicians to stop aiding and abetting mass crimes. There seems to be no downside to the back slapping politicians visiting Netanyahu encouraging greater mass crimes. Where are the activists clamouring to stop weapons deliveries to Israel from the US, UK and Germany?
And of course, Israel views the human rights NGOs as a necessary nuisance — easily ignored. While volunteers write overly polite letters, the paper shredders in Israel are whirring away. There is no effective action sought by the human rights NGOs which would cause Israel to take notice. In the very least, the human rights NGOs could heed Palestinian civil society’s call to implement a boycott of Israel. The boycott campaign was effective against apartheid South Africa, and given that the Palestinians face conditions that are orders of magnitude worse than apartheid, it would suggest a boycott campaign would be in order. Amnesty claims to have seven million followers, thus a call to implement a boycott would have more effect than the empty exhortations to governments to do nothing.
In the end, one cannot expect an organisation to change its spots after such a long and dubious history which includes trumpeting for war (AI was instrumental in pushing the throwing-babies-out-of-incubators hoax), pushing state propaganda (e.g., putting Croatian propagandists on tour in the US to push the “rape camp” slur), and many more. Amnesty International was created by a Zionist, it is difficult to countenance that a critique of Israel would be tolerated even today. Amnesty International Israel was run for many years by Israeli Foreign Ministry officers; this gang blocked critical reporting and played the gate keeper function. Amnesty never responded to the revelation of the penetration of its Israeli branch. Even today, as Amnesty’s website shows, the Israeli branch of the organisation is based in Tel Aviv. Maybe a clarification about its contribution and about its personnel may be in order. AI must be aware that several prominent Palestinians refuse to meet with them. And if the Israeli branch contributes to or edits its reportage, then AI must confront the ethics of producing Palestinian human rights coverage by Israeli personnel. During the war in Yugoslavia, Serbian researchers were not allowed to report on the condition of Croatians, Bosnians; the evident bias was not tolerated. But when it comes to Palestinian issues, a different standard applies.
During the 1970s Dr. Israel Shahak, the well known scientist and activist, headed a human rights organisation which translated Hebrew texts into English. He related how the state attempted to harass and interfere with his organisation. Break-ins, intimidation, destruction of archives, and planting their own operatives in the organisation leading to successful violent takeover of the organisation. So, does Amnesty-Israel have the same fraught relationship with the state? Or are they on chummy terms with Israeli officials? If the latter, there may be a reason for that.
And then there is snake oil
Pushing for the observance of human rights doesn’t necessarily imply that one will obtain justice. The human rights agenda merely softens the edges of the status quo. As Amnesty’s position on the Israeli attacks on Gaza illustrate, pushing human rights can actually be incompatible with obtaining justice. Human rights are a bastardised, neutered, and debased form of justice. The application and effectiveness of international law is bad enough, but a pick and choose legal framework with no enforcement is even worse. If one seeks justice, then it is best to avoid the human rights discourse; above all, it is best to avoid human rights organisations. If one wants justice it is best to avoid the discourse that only delivers bandages.
Palestinians should be wary of sanctimonious do-gooders peddling human rights snake oil. In exchange for giving up their resistance and complying with AI’s norms, it is not likely that Palestinians will obtain a pixel of justice. One should be wary of human rights groups that don’t push for justice, play the role of Israel’s lawyer, and are bereft of solidarity with the victims. During the Algerian war for independence, Frantz Fanon related that whenever a European would come to talk with him about “human rights,” his urge was to fetch a gun. Palestinians could learn something from this. When the likes of Amnesty come wagging their finger, it is best to keep the old blunderbuss near at hand.
Palestine TV correspondent killed in Israel’s strikes on Gaza
Palestinian correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab was killed in an Israeli strike on the besieged Gaza Strip on November 2, 2023
Press TV – November 3, 2023
A correspondent working for the Palestinian Authority’s television channel, Palestine TV, has been killed along with a number of his family members in an Israeli strike in the south of the Gaza Strip.
“Our colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab fell as a martyr along with members of his family in an Israeli bombardment against his home in Khan Yunis” on Thursday, broadcaster Palestine TV station said.
Palestinian media reports said the airstrike killed 11 of Abu Hatab’s family members, including his wife, son, and brother.
The Palestinian Official Media described the attack as “a deliberate assassination” of Abu Hatab, noting that his house was targeted shortly after he arrived home after covering Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
“It’s a message in blood to terrorize Palestinian journalists to prevent them from reporting on our people’s suffering and exposing Israel’s crimes.” the Palestinian Official Media said in a statement.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) States Broadcasting Union also mourned the death of Abu Hatab and his family members.
Amr Al-Laithi, the OSBU President, also denounced the “heinous crime” committed against Abu Hatab.
The union also urged civil society organizations and human rights groups to immediately intervene to stop Israel’s “barbaric, criminal and systematic attacks” against media workers.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
The regime has further ordered 1.1 million people in the north of Gaza to evacuate and move south of the coastal sliver. However, it has continued to rain down bombs on the south.
Israel’s aggression on Gaza has so far killed more than 9,061 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured about 32,000 others.
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From the Archives
The US: The Century of Lost Wars
By James Petras | Global Research | September 12, 2018
Introduction
Despite having the biggest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases – over 180 – in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21st century.
In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures. … continue
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