Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.
Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.
In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibit a “willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,” have “excessive fears of specific stimuli,” or refuse “voluntary treatment recommendations.”
While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, they could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”
As the AP reports, federal officials are already looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.
Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.
Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.
Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others), are a perfect example of this mindset at work and the ramifications of where this could lead.
As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority in order to preemptively neutralize a potential threat, and you’ll understand why some might view these mental health round-ups with trepidation.
No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands. For instance, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.
Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has raised questions regarding the veracity of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony on the bureau’s role in curbing social media “misinformation.”
Jordan, along with Rep. Mike Johnson, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, have sent a letter to Wray offering him a chance to clarify his statements which appeared to be contradicted by information possessed by the committee and federal court findings.
Wray had previously stated that the FBI’s emphasis was on thwarting harmful disinformation stemming from foreign adversaries. He had stressed that the bureau doesn’t influence or control social media content, but instead may alert media companies about particular content. The decision of further action, according to Wray, remained within the purview of the respective social media companies.
However, Jordan and Johnson drew attention to Wray’s testimony conflicting with a federal court ruling in Missouri v. Biden. The ruling stated that the FBI had flagged domestic speech as potential misinformation and had significantly urged social media platforms to take specific content-related actions. The court had recently impeded key agencies of the Biden administration from liaising with social media companies, citing potential First Amendment breaches.
Jordan and Johnson also highlighted the court’s finding that the FBI did not attempt to distinguish the origin of misinformation reports related to the 2020 election. The court criticized the FBI for misleading social media platforms about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The congressional duo also underscored their findings that the FBI had followed up with social media companies and asked for updates regarding flagged accounts. They also suggested that the FBI provided unsolicited advice on whether content would infringe the companies’ terms of service.
“Today’s threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone. We know of new methods of attack. The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.”
Such were the remarks from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chat on May 26, 1940. Roosevelt’s sentiments captured and propagated a growing sense of fear and paranoia that the United States was entering a covert war with a hostile foreign power. These sentiments, coupled with the steps taken by the United States government to fight them, are strikingly similar to those of today. With Vladimir Putin as a stand-in for Hitler and MAGA for the alleged rising presence of domestic fascism, supporters of the foreign policy status quo are mobilizing a version of history to frame current dissent as beyond the pale and to justify their extraordinary steps to curtail it.
As they had during the Great War, the United States government and American interventionists preceded official entry into World War II with a concerted effort to convince Americans of the need to aid the Allies. This push to move foreign policy opinion accompanied a growing panic concerning domestic extremism, particularly on the Right, in what historian Leo Ribuffo called “the Brown Scare.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was among the institutions that perpetuated the scare and constricted American foreign policy opinion. During the height of the “Great Debate” concerning American entry into the Second World War, the White House used the FBI as a means to surveil and gather political intelligence. The FBI’s authority to conduct these operations stemmed from a 1936 directive in which FDR formally granted the bureau the power to monitor “subversive activities,” primarily the presence of explicitly illiberal organizations like the German American Bund. The fear of domestic extremism, coupled with the domestic security demands of the Second World War, proved a boon to the FBI and the career of its director, J. Edgar Hoover. From 1933 through the end of World War II, the FBI’s budget grew 16-fold and its number of agents rose from 266 to around 5,000. With the outbreak of war in Europe, and the ensuing foreign policy debate in the United States, the FBI’s writ to monitor “subversive” organizations was extended to noninterventionist groups, chiefly, the America First Committee (AFC).
To achieve its mission to monitor the AFC and its leadership, principally Charles Lindbergh, the FBI employed its usual litany of odious and often extralegal collection techniques, including wiretaps, break-ins, and bugging. The entirety of the FBI’s surveillance campaign against the AFC was done without a criminal predicate, and was, therefore, illegal. In addition to the FBI’s assortment of black-bag techniques, the bureau also attended AFC meetings, gathered their materials, and collected public and often derogatory information on members and leadership. Among the information collected during the FBI’s campaign was some of the non-interventionist Senator Gerald Nye’s correspondence, collected incidentally during an illegal wiretap in the execution of another and eventually unfounded investigation. Knowledge gathered by the FBI, either fair or foul, revealed nothing legally actionable but did provide the Roosevelt administration and its allies in Congress with information it would not have otherwise obtained.
Throughout 1941, FBI headquarters and field offices received reports from private citizens in which they offered up gossip, commentary, and concerns about the America First Committee, its members, and its activities. Letters to J. Edgar Hoover and other government officials, located within the FBI files on the AFC, revealed that numerous Americans voluntarily participated in the FBI’s domestic surveillance and legitimately believed that non-interventionism presented an existential threat to the nation and advocated for authoritarian measures to address the presence of the alleged internal threat.
In a letter addressed to President Roosevelt, one such correspondent from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania wrote, “I therefore implore you, or have someone In Washington, try to break this rotten [America First Committee]” and added that “a Democracy should not permit traitors to go on and on and on causing more disunion.” Similarly-minded individuals who wrote to the FBI saw the AFC as an enemy within and opined on possible solutions to this “fifth column.” One concerned citizen floated the idea of sending AFC’s leadership “to concentration camps, or some place [sic] where they could do no more harm.” In a letter dated from June 10, 1941, a full seven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, another correspondent agreed with such sentiment. Its author complained that the FBI was unwilling to find all the “subversive individuals,” i.e., antiwar activists, and “round them all up.” Not content with mere extrajudicial imprisonment, still, another writer to the FBI lamented that America was too lenient with the America Firsters to do what other countries, “big or small,” do with their “traitors,” and put them “against the wall.”
While other correspondents with the FBI were considerably less authoritarian in their desires, they willfully offered up information to the bureau. These voluntary assets delivered the names and addresses of AFC members, forwarded AFC materials, circulated anti-AFC propaganda, and provided their assessments of individuals’ motivations and assumed links to Nazi Germany. These citizen spies made note of America Firsters’ views on FDR, his foreign policy, the location of new chapters, speculated on the presence of draft-dodgers within these chapters, and the ethnic makeup and presence of foreign accents at AFC events.
Correspondents also ratted out their neighbors and coworkers to the FBI, treating membership in the AFC akin to membership in a spy ring. One correspondent from Staten Island was appalled that AFC members showed disdain for FDR and his foreign policy. They noted that “a woman with a decided [sic] German accent” made the galling suggestion that FDR “should be impeached [underlined in original].” They went on to note that they were stunned into silence and dared not defend the honor of the president as they were “spotted” by “3 tough men.” Implicit within this correspondent’s letter, as with others, was the view that merely disagreeing with the president was worthy of suspicion.
The information citizens gave amounted to little more than gossip, generating more paperwork than leads. Despite the FBI’s failure, these acts of surveillance, including writing the FBI, matched with the official writ of the bureau and the often-glowing responses from government officials helped to sustain fear among the American populace. Correspondents, be they regular people or members of Congress, sought and received validation for their paranoia and thereby sustained a domestic panic that curtailed legitimate foreign policy debate; as historians Douglas M. Charles and John P. Rossi wrote, the FBI’s efforts, even if indirectly, “successfully defined the parameter of what was permissible in public debate and cautioned those who would oppose government policy.” Combined with those of the British government and (nominally) private actors, the FBI’s energies successfully collapsed the Overton Window. They created a useable (and mythic) history that has served the foreign policy consensus for decades.
Despite the FBI’s best efforts, their agents found no evidence of illegal activity or overseas connections, or unlawful funding activity within the America First Committee. From the perspective of the White House, the FBI’s efforts, at best, provided them with political information that gave it an edge in public debate. The FBI’s collection also served as a means of distributing information on AFC and other non-interventionists to friendly members of Congress. Despite failing to create a legal mechanism to silence the America Firsters, the FBI’s surveillance campaign succeeded in one area; it helped to sustain an environment of fear that successfully branded non-interventionism as a subversive activity worthy of opprobrium and suspicion.
The United States did not look over the brink into the chasm of domestic fascism in the waning days of American neutrality, and moral considerations of entering the war aside, the United States was never under military or covert threat from the Nazi regime. Nor did their avatars within the German American Bund, or its fellow travelers like the Silver Shirts—however odious their presence—constitute a threat to the American republic. However, the United States took its first giant steps into imperium overseas, and it implemented a form of soft authoritarianism within its borders that lasted long after the end of the Second World War.
The federal government repurposed the powers, personnel, and legal techniques granted to the FBI during World War II against left-wing targets. The postwar growth of the security state, coupled with the normalization of corporatism (banally referred to as “private-public partnerships”) and an aggressive overseas foreign policy, bear many of the characteristics of the dreaded F word. Yet an AFC member with controversial views of FDR did not implement these transformations to American society. These changes were wrought by the federal government, bolstered by the opinions of the redacted correspondents who longed to imprison or execute their political opponents, all in the name of fighting fascism.
Yet, the image of the AFC as an inherently subversive organization has resurfaced in recent years. Despite the dispositive findings of the FBI and decades of scholarship from credentialed academics, the Brown Scare has returned to (liberal) American consciousness. Recent academic work like Susan Dunn’s 1940, Bradley W. Hart’s Hitler’s American Friends, Sarah Churchwell’s Behold America as well as Rachel Maddow’s pop history podcast Ultra, and the novel and HBO miniseries The Plot Against America have all resurrected the Brown Scare and view American non-interventionism as a subversive activity, one either essentially embedded within, or suspiciously adjacent to American fascism.
With the postwar American order under strain overseas and losing legitimacy within the minds of a growing number of Americans, consensus tastemakers have remobilized the image of America, teetering on the edge of fascist tyranny in the late 1930s to buttress policy objectives in a post-2016 world. In doing so, they not only repackage a long-debunked version of the past, but they obscure the civil rights abuses of yesteryear to legitimatize government efforts to censor speech or undermine associations deemed threatening to the regime in the present. As in the past, supporters of current American foreign policy, either earnestly or cynically, compare their domestic opponents to agents of outside hostile actors. Meanwhile, the federal government, yet again, has inserted itself into the domestic foreign policy debate, monitored antiwar activists, and allegedly suppressed online speech on behalf of a foreign power.
History is repeating, just not in the manner portrayed in the pages of TheNew York Times or on the programming of MSNBC.
UK bank Coutts dropped British politician Nigel Farage as a customer not because his accounts contained insufficient funds but because his social and political views were incompatible with its “values,” according to a 40-page dossier compiled by the bank and seen by the UK Telegraph on Tuesday.
While admitting “there is no evidence of regulator or legal censure of [Farage],” the document concluded Farage was no longer “compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organization.”
“This was not a political decision, but one centered around inclusivity and purpose,” the file stated, recommending the UKIP founder be put on a “glide path” to debanking as soon as his mortgage deal concluded – even though he was described as “professional, polite and respectful” in his dealings with Coutts.
While searching for a legitimate reason to drop him, Coutts apparently tried to leverage Farage’s “Russian connections,” only to find he did not have any. The file discussed his appearances on RT, where he was last a guest in 2017, alongside a claim about receiving payment from the Russian network that the bank admitted was bogus, and lamented that his comments about the conflict in Ukraine “fall short of endorsement” of the Russian position.
The bank ultimately settled on reputational risk. Farage “presents a material and ongoing reputational risk to the bank” as he is “regularly (almost constantly) the subject of adverse media,” the document explained, citing dozens of unfavorable news articles, including many from partisan sources like Hope Not Hate and Labour Movement for Europe.
The populist “is seen as xenophobic and racist” and a “disingenuous grifter” who promotes values that “do not align with the bank’s,” the dossier stated, referring to comments that were “distasteful and appear increasingly out of touch with wider society,” reportedly including tweets expressing his belief that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights. His friendships with former US president Donald Trump and Serbian tennis champion Novak Djokovic were also brought up as liabilities.
When Farage revealed last month that Coutts had closed his account without giving a reason, the bank claimed his balance had fallen below the minimum amount required to maintain an account. The dossier, which he obtained through a subject access request, thoroughly contradicts the bank’s statement, explaining that his “economic contribution is now sufficient to retain on a commercial basis.”
Farage described the file to the Telegraph as a “Stasi-style surveillance report” that “reads rather like a pre-trial brief drawn up by the prosecution in a case against a career criminal,” noting the word “Brexit” appears 86 times and that Coutts found no fault with him before Brexit became an issue in 2016.
Israel’s water company Mekorot has this month reduced the water supply to the occupied West Bank cities of Hebron and Bethlehem, causing severe shortages for Palestinians, Quds Press reported yesterday.
Mohammad Al-Jaabari, a Palestinian from Hebron, said he has to wait for days in queues until he gets his turn to get a tank load of water for his house.
“However,” he told Quds Press while looking at the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, “we see the settlers play with water, irrigate their trees and home gardens.”
Al-Jaabari said: “This is unfair, but who can deter the Israeli occupation in order to stop its unfair distribution of water?”
Hebron’s Deputy Mayor, Asmaa Al-Sharabati, said: “The Israeli occupation continues practicing its control of natural resources. This complicates the water problem.”
She said that the amount of water being provided to Hebron each day is “far less than the needs of residents,” adding that some areas that used to receive water once every 18 days are not sent supplies every 28 days. This too during the summer heat.
“We do not have any roles in the water supplies,” she told Quds Press. “All we have is to receive water from the Israeli company and ensure fair distribution among the Palestinian residents of the city.”
Al-Sharabati said everyone needs 100 litres of water a day, and 30 litres during emergencies. “A Palestinian in Hebron receives far less than 30 litres a day,” she said.
A senior figure in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was placed in pretrial detention. Cleric Metropolitan Pavlo is facing charges for voicing opinions deemed too pro-Russian.
A Kiev court ordered Pavlo to jail on Saturday. The cleric’s bail was nearly $900,000, and he could remain in pretrial detention for a month. The judge claimed Pavlo violated a court order by contacting a witness in his trial. Pavlo, who is also known as Petro Lebid, says he did not know that the person was a witness.
On April 1, Pavlo was placed under house arrest. Though initially only scheduled for a month, his house arrest has been extended several times. The charges against Pavlo include inciting hatred and justifying the Russian war in Ukraine.
On Saturday, Moscow demanded Kiev release Pavlo. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria said, “We demand strict compliance by the Kiev regime with its international legal obligations, the immediate release of Metropolitan Pavlo, who is suffering from a serious illness, and the provision of proper medical care for him.” She added that the arrest was “yet another manifestation of political arbitrariness and lawlessness [by Kiev.]”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has waged a culture war. The UOC has been a primary target of the “derussification” campaign. On December 1, Zelensky announced that Kiev would attempt to expel all religious institutions with ties to Russia, arguing the move would make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.”
Kiev further ratcheted up the campaign to erase the UOC by seizing the assets and placing travel bans on several of the church’s top officials. Additionally, a series of raids by Ukrainian police targeted the UOC.
Zelensky’s derussification campaign has extended far beyond the UOC. Kiev has nationalized the media, renamed public places named for Russian historical figures, banned books printed in Russian and outlawed political parties representing Ukraine’s ethnic Russians.
Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is trying to push back against claims by Coalition MPs that the proposed upcoming legislation would lead to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”
The newly proposed legislation aims to strengthen the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) abilities to manage digital platforms that are seen to propagate “misinformation and disinformation.” However, critics rightly know that the move will threaten the very essence of free speech.
Despite these assurances, skeptics like Coalition communication spokesman David Coleman argue that the regulator will inevitably need to form an opinion on what constitutes misinformation to ensure platforms comply with the new legislation.
“For government to start defining what can and cannot be said in a democracy is hugely concerning. This bill would allow that to happen,” Coleman said, to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The proposed bill gives ACMA the authority to collect information from digital platforms about how they adhere to existing codes.
Moreover, ACMA will have the power to introduce a new “code” for companies that repeatedly fail to address so-called misinformation and disinformation or establish an industry-wide “standard” requiring the removal of harmful content.
Failing to adhere to these standards will carry significant penalties. These include substantial fines, either $6.88 million or 5% of a company’s global turnover, whichever amount is higher.
This policy approach is not without its opponents. Critics argue the broad definitions of misinformation and disinformation as material that is “false, misleading or deceptive” and “reasonably likely to cause serious harm” could be abused by political subjectivity, potentially stifling legitimate views.
Coleman expresses concern over potential self-censorship by digital platforms due to fear of incurring hefty fines. The proposed legislation, in his view, could lead to the suppression of Australians’ authentic opinions. The exemptions within the bill for professional news content, authorized electoral content, and satirical material do little to assuage such fears.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also expressed apprehensions about the bill’s potential to chill legitimate political expression online, due to the potential for imposing “binding standards” with severe penalties.
Despite previous attempts to increase ACMA powers by the former Morrison government in March 2022, draft legislation was never released. Rowland asserts the Albanese government’s openness to “constructive suggestions” to enhance the bill and is holding public consultations for feedback. However, the opposition has yet to take a formal stance on the legislation.
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Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, in a conversation with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, vehemently argued against the possible introduction of a digital dollar by the Federal Reserve. The discourse took place at an event spearheaded by the right-leaning Family Policy Alliance lobby group.
DeSantis, who has a long-standing aversion to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) emphasized that any move towards the creation of a digital dollar would necessitate congressional authorization.
Despite this, he warned that the Fed might endeavor to push this financial innovation unilaterally – an act he contends is at odds with constitutional principles.
“If I’m the President, on day one, we will nix central bank digital currency,” DeSantis affirmed, expressing his hostility towards CBDCs.
The underlying cause of DeSantis’s staunch opposition is rooted in his belief that the Federal Reserve will exploit CBDCs to advocate an anti-cash, anti-crypto policy. The Florida Governor predicts a future where CBDCs usurp all other forms of legal tender, effectively granting the Fed the power to restrict purchases they deem unfavorable, such as fuel and ammunition.
The controversial issue of CBDCs has taken center stage as the 2024 electoral race intensifies. Many, especially within libertarian sections of the Republican Party, are apprehensive that such currencies might encroach upon the sacrosanct privacy rights of American citizens. There’s a growing chorus arguing that CBDCs could bestow governments with an unprecedented level of control over individual expenditure.
In his critique, DeSantis harnessed the emblematic values of America. He insinuated that proponents of CBDCs aim to establish a “social credit system” in the US, emphatically referring to CBDCs as a “threat to American liberty.”
DeSantis is not the lone voice in the wilderness expressing discontent with CBDCs. Republican contender Vivek Ramaswamy also shared similar sentiments. “Just like ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] came out of the 2008 financial crisis, central bank digital currencies are what is going to come out of this next one… This is likely where this is heading. It is a longer-term game to a disaster,” Ramaswamy said.
DeSantis’s skepticism towards CBDCs has been consistent. In his capacity as the Florida governor, he ratified a law in May barring CBDCs from achieving legal tender status. The aspiring president is pushing Republican-led states to adopt similar deterrents against CBDCs. As part of this mission, he has reached out to a coalition of 20 states to counteract federal endorsement of CBDCs.
Tucker: Are you concerned about Central Bank Digital Currencies?
DeSantis: "They want to get rid of cash. They want no cryptocurrency. They want this to be the sole form of legal tender. It will allow them to prohibit undesirable purchases like fuel and ammunition. So, the… pic.twitter.com/Lmv5OzerlF
The Israeli military’s deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank fits into the parameters of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, legal experts argue.
Susan Akram, a clinical professor at Boston University’s School of Law, said the raid, which killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded dozens more, clearly amounts to a war crime for a number of reasons, including intentionally attacking a civilian population and attacking medical units.
“The Geneva Conventions include as war crimes during occupation, willful killings, willfully causing great suffering to an occupied population and extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity,” Akram said during a webinar hosted earlier this week by the Arab Center Washington, DC.
There’s no doubt, she declared, that what Israel carried out in Jenin constitutes a war crime.
Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project and journalist Dalia Hatuqa, the other panelists on the webinar, also agreed that Israel’s actions in the West Bank amount to a war crime.
Akram said the narrative used by Israel that the raids on Jenin and other Palestinian cities like Nablus are an attempt to root out resistance groups does not stop its actions from being illegal under international law.
Pointing out that the West Bank is an occupied territory, she said, “Israel’s attacks on an occupied population are criminal in and of themselves because occupation law forbids the occupier to use military attacks against civilian targets in the territory it occupies.”
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), some 900 Palestinian houses were damaged and many of them became uninhabitable in the wake of the Israeli military’s raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Adnan Abu Hasna, the spokesman for the UN agency, said on Tuesday that his fellow colleagues are still documenting the damage caused inside the camp during the onslaught.
The UNRWA’s priority is to help restore some sense of normality by resuming its services like education, healthcare and sanitation, he added.
“The other urgent priority is to provide cash assistance to families who were displaced from their homes, and help them pay for rent and rehabilitate their residences,” Abu Hasna noted.
Last week, a group of UN experts said Israel’s military raids targeting the Jenin refugee camp “may prima facie constitute a war crime.”
“Israeli forces’ operations in the occupied West Bank, killing and seriously injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands, amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime,” the experts said in a statement.
Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.
By Jamal Kanj – Intifada-Palestine.com – January 14, 2011
Israel’s survival kit is: perpetuate conflict, insecurity to rationalize collective hate and finally playing victim.
Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism loses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist.
From its inception, the house of Zion has mastered exploiting adversarial powers to advance Israel’s cause. For instance, their influence over the Democratic Party in the US began with President Truman’s bid for 2nd term election in 1948.
Responding to strong opposition from Secretary of State General George Marshall and Department experts urging against recognition of Israel, President Truman replied: “I’m sorry gentlemen but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands [Jewish voters] who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of [voting] Arabs among my constituents”
Zionists influence over liberal American politics was matched with the doctrinal school of Conservative theoreticians aligning the Republican Party’s platform with Israel’s objectives. The Neoconservative Zionists, coined Zioncons, invented the “Clash of Civilization” concept to fight Israel’s wars. … continue
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