by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
Arab, Russian, and international media are reporting the Israeli government has issued an ultimatum that if Hezbollah does not withdraw its army and arms from their positions in southern Lebanon, between the Litani River and the Blue Line (lead image), and redeploy north of the Litani, Israel will launch an air and ground attack on the region of southern Lebanon, and also on Beirut. The Israeli ultimatum reportedly sets a 48-hour time limit.
There is no official Israeli record of this ultimatum. In the non-Israeli press, it is attributed to remarks on local television made on Saturday night, December 9, by Israel’s National Security Advisor, Tzachi Hanegbi. However, in the version reported by Times of Israel, Hanegbi did not set any time limit.
Instead, Hanegbi claimed that “Hezbollah’s Radwan force could attempt a similar murderous invasion from the north, targeting civilians in communities near the border. Israel, he acknowledged, was tackling Hamas ‘17 years too late,’ and it could no longer dare to tolerate the danger of the prevailing situation in the north, with Hezbollah’s forces at the border. Some 60,000 residents of border communities have been evacuated from the north since October 7, amid relentless and sometimes deadly clashes across the border between Hezbollah and Israel. ‘Residents will not return if we don’t do the same thing’ in the north against Hezbollah as is being done in the south against Hamas…”
“‘We can no longer accept [Hezbollah’s] Radwan force sitting on the border. We can no longer accept Resolution 1701 not being implemented,’ he added, referring to a UN Security Council resolution from 2006, at the end of the Second Lebanon War, that barred any Hezbollah presence within almost 30 kilometres of the border with Israel. Asked directly if there would be a war in the north, Hanegbi said: ‘The situation in the north must be changed. And it will change. If Hezbollah agrees to change things via diplomacy, very good. But I don’t believe it will.’ Therefore, he said, ‘when the day comes,’ Israel will have to act to ensure that residents of the north are no longer ‘displaced in their land, and to guarantee for them that the situation in the north has changed.’
“Hanegbi noted that while many countries have missiles pointed at Israel, including Iran, Syria and Iraq, ‘Israel doesn’t invade them’. The fear regarding Hezbollah’s Radwan force is that ‘within minutes’, it could cross the border and begin a murderous rampage in northern communities as Hamas did in the south on October 7. Israel cannot tolerate this threat any longer, he said. Hanegbi said Israel does not want to fight simultaneously on two fronts, and indicated it would therefore tackle Hezbollah after Hamas is defeated. He said Israel has been ‘making clear to the Americans that we are not interested in war [in the north], but that we will have no alternative but to impose a new reality’ if Hezbollah remains a threat.’”
The Russian Foreign Ministry is reporting no reaction to these claims, nor any ministry contact in Moscow with a Lebanese government official. None of the mainstream Russian newspapers nor the media specializing on military and security affairs are reporting the remarks of Hanegbi as a signal of imminent Israeli air and ground attack against Hezbollah.
The Russian reaction is that the Israelis are bluffing.
Over the past twenty years, the Russian government policy has been to condemn Hezbollah operations against Israel as “terrorist”, and Israeli attacks on Lebanon as “disproportionate”.
In the last official communication at the foreign minister level with Lebanon in November 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov didn’t mention Hezbollah.
Lavrov did mention Russian interest in investing in offshore oil exploration of the Mediterranean seabed claimed by Lebanon. “We discussed our cooperative efforts, including our companies’ [Novatek and Rosneft] activities, to develop Lebanon’s energy sector. Among other things, we focused on drilling in Lebanon’s continental shelf, which Novatek engages in, and expanding a petroleum product storage terminal at a Rosneft-owned port in Lebanon…As for oil and gas production, I have already mentioned that Russian hydrocarbon exploration and production companies, in particular, Novatek, are planning to sink another offshore well in early 2022. Rosneft, which is implementing a major project, has a contract on the operational management of [an oil products terminal] in the port of Tripoli.”
RUSSIA SUPPORTS LEBANON IN EXPLORATION OF DISPUTED OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS
For a detailed analysis of the legal and diplomatic issues, read this. For the potential targeting by Hezbollah of the Israeli gas fields identified in the map, if fighting on the northern front escalates, read this.
Since the Gaza war began on October 7, Israeli threats to cross the Blue Line and attack southern Lebanon and Beirut are not new.
On November 11, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister, said: “‘What we can do in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut…Our pilots are sitting in their cockpits, their aircraft facing north,’ Gallant said, stressing that the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] already has mobilized enough forces for its goals in the South against Hamas, and the Israel Air Force has plenty of power to spare. ‘We haven’t even used 10% of the IAF’s power in Gaza.’”
On December 6 Gallant added: “We’ll push Hezbollah beyond Litani River before residents of northern Israel return home”.
Last Friday, the day before he took a telephone call from President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced: “ ‘If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Younis,’ Netanyahu said while visiting troops near the border.”
In the Kremlin report of Netanyahu’s telephone conversation with Putin on Saturday, December 9, the communiqué omits to reveal what Netanyahu said. Instead, it is reported “the discussion focused on the critical situation in the Palestine-Israel conflict zone, in particular, the disastrous humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his principled position of rejecting and condemning terrorism in all its manifestations. At the same time, it is of the essence to avoid such grave consequences for the civilian population while countering terrorist threats. Russia is ready to provide all possible assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilians and de-escalate the conflict. In addition, the parties expressed mutual interest in further cooperation on the evacuation of Russian citizens and their families, as well as the release of Israelis held in Gaza.”
Source: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1701
Hezbollah accuses Israel of repeatedly violating Point 1, as Israel makes the same allegation against Hezbollah. They invalidate the two sides’ undertaking in Point 8(2) to implement “security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11, deployed in this area.”
International lawyers dispute Hanegbi’s claim that the disputed terms of Resolution 1701 would make legal the threatened IDF air and ground attack on Lebanon.
https://johnhelmer.net/israels-litani-u ... more-89011
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The U.S. Is Complicit With Israel in the Genocide in Gaza
Steven Sahiounie
December 12, 2023
America is the chief supporter of Israel, and holds immense leverage over Israel, but refuses to demand that they stop the genocide and bring home the hostages.
A UN Security Council vote on December 8, demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war, failed because the U.S. used their veto power in the sole dissenting vote. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, did not cast the damning vote, she sent her assistant instead, shielding herself from the disgust of the international community. Thomas-Greenfield is the direct descendant of African slaves held in America without citizenship or human rights, similar to the Palestinian people today.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani ahead of the December 8 meeting with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, including Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Al-Safadi, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki, and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan.
Some had envisioned the meeting between Blinken and the Arab ministers would take place prior to the UN vote, and the ministers could present their case as to why a ceasefire to save children’s lives should be supported by the U.S., as initiated by Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres.
But, instead Blinken waited until after the U.S. voted no, and the ceasefire was an impossibility, to sit around the table with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, who all looked dejected, and hopeless. They all told Blinken they reject the U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called on the U.S. to assume its responsibilities and take the necessary measures to push Israel towards an immediate ceasefire. They also called for a lifting of the siege which prevents adequate amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
They voiced their rejection against attempts to displace Palestinians from Gaza, emphasizing on “creating a real political climate that leads to a two-state solution,” after over 75 years of brutal occupation of the Palestinian people.
However, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The Biden administration is stuck in the past, thinking itself immune to criticism from the international community, and the Middle Eastern countries which are key allies of the U.S., energy providers, and housing some of the largest American military bases in the world.
“Our message is consistent and clear that we believe that it is absolutely necessary to end the fighting immediately,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said.
“I certainly would hope that our partners in the U.S. will do more… we certainly believe they can do more,” the Saudi minister added.
Before the vote
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said prior to the UN vote that if the resolution fails, it would be giving a license to Israel “to continue with its massacre.”
“Our priority for now is to stop the war, stop the killing, stop the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure,” Safadi said adding, “The message that’s being sent is that Israel is acting above international law… and the world is simply not doing much. We disagree with the United States on its position vis-a-vis on the cease-fire.”
“The solution is a cease-fire,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry,
What can the Arab world do?
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt are all stanch American allies. They host some of the largest U.S. military bases on earth. Most of them buy their weapons from the U.S., and all of them are consumers of very large amounts of products made in the USA. Saudi King Faisal shut-off the oil in support of the Palestinians in the past, but they would never do that now as they are locked into OPEC pumping schedules. But, the Arabs have other leverage they could use to move the U.S. position from blind acquiescence to Israeli orders.
Israeli plan to wipe-out Gaza
Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician, activist, and politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
“I am 100% sure that their main goal right from the beginning was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, trying to push people to Egypt, a terrible war crime. And if they managed to do so, I think their next goal will be to try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and force people to join them,” said Barghouti.
Barghouti added, “If they fail to ethnically cleanse all Gazans, I am sure that Netanyahu’s plan B is to annex Gaza City and the north of Gaza completely to Israel and claim it as a security area.”
Concerning the prospect of Israeli troops remaining in Gaza, he said “Israel did that before and it didn’t work. And there will be resistance to their occupation, which they cannot tolerate. And that’s why Netanyahu’s goal really is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people. He knows very well that Gaza with people is something that is unmanageable.”
Boycott Israel and the U.S.
The Arab world comprises about 300 million people. The populations are consumers of American products in huge amounts.
During World War II, a movement by American Jews called for a boycott of Nazi Germany. That was followed by a boycott of the Apartheid regime in South Africa that began in the late 1950s and is largely credited for raising awareness of the injustice in the following decades.
Purchasing Nazi products in Germany, or the Apartheid regime in South Africa, supported their crimes and gave their existence and activities a legitimacy that enabled them to continue.
In the past two months, ever since Starbucks’ corporate office announced it would sue its union for posting a pro-Palestine statement, a strong boycott has left the company with a loss of nearly $12 billion.
The company’s support for Israel has caused a drop in sales while the company was hosting its Red Cup Day, an annual event where baristias hand out reusable holiday themed cups. Over 5,000 workers at 200 stores went on strike in solidarity with Palestine and worker rights.
Coffee drinkers are looking to switch to a local café which does not support the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Across the Arab world, and around the globe, consumers are finding their power to confront the Israeli war which is supported by the U.S. Posters with the slogans of various products with drops of blood from victims of war and aggression, compared the act of drinking “Coca-Cola” or “Pepsi” to drinking the blood of dead children.
American public is isolated, insulated, and far-removed from the war in Gaza, and often they have no idea what Europeans, South Americans, Canadians, Africans and Asians are thinking about the U.S. policy to support the genocide in Gaza and prevent a cease-fire.
Since 2005, the official BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) Movement has run a coordinated boycott effort to help Palestine, which called for “a broad boycott of Israel and the implementation of divestment from it, in steps similar to those applied against South Africa during the apartheid era.”
In the U.S., many college campuses have passed resolutions to divest from these companies, bringing boycotts to a new, younger, more energetic generation. President Joe Biden is far out-of-step with these younger people, who in a recent poll showed 70% disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
Recent campaigns urging people to boycott companies such as McDonald’s, Disney, Starbucks, Coca Cola and others have gone viral around the world. In some countries, restaurants have removed Coca Cola and Pepsi products.
Many people globally have cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions, and young children have been heard saying they won’t eat McDonald’s because it kills children in Gaza.
There are lists of large companies around the world, owning hundreds of famous brands, that operate in Israel or support them in one way or another, such as L’Oréal, Nescafe coffee or Heinz products.
The boycott results in dwindling sales and revenues of American and Israeli products. With the academic and cultural boycott, the American Anthropological Association decided to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
Social media
Information, videos, photos and comments are being delivered to our phones and laptops constantly. The global audience can’t turn away from the genocide in Gaza. In the 2014 war on Gaza, which lasted six weeks, Israel killed about 2,300 Palestinians. But now, the Palestinian death toll exceeded 12,000 during the first six weeks, and is edging upward of 17,000.
The Biden administration has supported the genocide in Gaza, and has done nothing to stop the Israeli war machine. State Department employees and White House staffers have also voiced condemnation of the un-checked and un-restrained Israeli war machine marching through Gaza, which has left no place safe, and has caused the survivors to face actual starvation according to the UN. America is the chief supporter of Israel, and holds immense leverage over Israel, but refuses to demand that they stop the genocide and bring home the hostages. Biden and Blinken are oblivious to American public opinion, and the international community.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/ ... cide-gaza/
Two Court Cases Might Be the Final Nail in the Coffin of Bibi
Martin Jay
December 11, 2023
Getting rid of Netanyahu and toppling his increasingly fragile coalition is an attractive strategy for Biden, Martin Jay writes.
Recent gestures by the international criminal court in the Hague, often called simply the ICC, are that it might begin war crime proceedings against Israel for the genocide it carries out each day, with the blessing of the West. So far, they are just statements but it is interesting that global public opinion, not from elites but from the masses right around the world, is putting pressure on the international court to step up to the mark. It’s interesting on a number of levels. Chiefly though, given that the court is a creation of America and a very effective tool to use against regimes in the Global South which it doesn’t like, sceptics can only speculate as to the rationale behind the move. A fair bet might be that a number of EU member states have leant on the Hague court to at least become vocal; another possibility is that Palestine itself has urged the court to uphold international law; and a third option is that Biden himself is using the court as a tool to impale Netanyahu. Getting rid of Netanyahu and toppling his increasingly fragile coalition, forcing new elections in a country that no one calls “the only democracy in the middle east” anymore is an attractive strategy for Biden who doesn’t want to go to the polls next year with no support whatsoever from American Jews who don’t support Netanyahu and, for that matter, losing the American Muslim vote.
Putting aside the comical if not predictable response from Netanyahu who hit back with accusations of “antisemitism”, many might argue the move by the ICC is a combination of all three scenarios. But it is hard to imagine the court doing anything without the blessing of the Biden administration and Netanyahu must be feeling increasingly isolated — almost entirely at home where polls show he has no support at all from his base — and more and more from the rest of the world. What we have seen in recent days is the limitation of the “Israel has the right to defend itself” mantra from Western countries’ elites who are growing increasingly uncomfortable with huge demonstrations in support of Palestine, with an increase in genuine antisemitism noticeable but not in such great numbers as US media is spinning.
Nothing is quite what is seems and dark forces are at work when we talk about Netanyahu’s future. He was never a friend of Biden, although he was the first world leader to welcome the US president to office, which shocked many Trump supporters, who, after all gave him and Israel so much during his one tumultuous term.
Were these same dark forces in play when it emerged that corruption charges against Netanyahu — thought to be put on hold during the war in Gaza — are, in fact, to proceed. Those charges in themselves might be the straw which broke the camel’s back and lead to the downfall of both him as PM and also his coalition. Did Biden have a hand in this move also?
Conspiracy theories, perhaps. But the odds are stacking up against Bibi and for him to play the antisemitism card against the ICC would appear to show a new level of desperation in reaching out to international Jews (as Zionists wouldn’t buy into this BS anyway). Is the world going to stand by and watch the numbers of civilian deaths in Gaza reach 30 or even 40,000 and do nothing? It was initially believed that Arab leaders wouldn’t stand by and let this happen but the initial chest beating didn’t amount to much. Leading commentators are pointing out that that all Saudi Arabia’s mercurial leader MbS has to offer his young supporters who decry the fate of Palestinians in Gaza is international pop stars jetting in to the capital to take their minds off the slaughter. Sami Hamdi’s tweet is both hilarious and tragic.
Ordinary Saudi: Your highness. I am distraught over #Gaza. Please do something! Bin Salman: I am arranging for the Only Fans model Iggy Azalea to come to Riyadh soon and take your mind off it. We also have an offer at McDonald’s, buy one and get one free on us. Go. Have fun.
Next door in the UAE it’s a different story as, like Morocco, these two countries have invested too much in Israel for them to back out. For the Abu Dhabi royals, they’re with Israel no matter what and were the first Arab country to send military hardware to the IDF in preference to aid. For the UAE, simply, the points they score with Washington and the whitewashing of human rights abuses is worth the Palestinian lives. For Morocco it’s more complicated. The King has invested too much money in the relationship — even developing a satellite with Israel — for him to call off all deals. There’s literally too much money in it although a new Arab Spring in the kingdom might be the price he pays as the number of Moroccans boiling with anger over Israel’s daily slaughter has reached fever pitch in a country which most GCC elites don’t even consider part of the Arab world given its modernity and proximity to Europe. Bibi may well end up living in exile in one of these two countries when the brown stuff really hits the fan and the West says enough is enough. His only hope to cling on is a bigger and longer war which disables the judiciary system and mobilizes the IDF against Iran and Hezbollah. It certainly won’t be the first time an Israeli leader has used Hezbollah as a way of buying time to stay in power.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/ ... n-of-bibi/
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BRICS and the Resistance Axis: a convergence of goals
The Gaza war has accelerated cooperation between Global South behemoths resisting western-backed conflict. Together, the Russian-led BRICS and Iran-led Axis of Resistance can shape a US-free West Asia.
Pepe Escobar
DEC 11, 2023
Photo Credit: The Cradle
MOSCOW - Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a notable pit stop in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to meet, respectively, Emirati President Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) before flying back to Moscow to meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The three key issues in all three meetings, confirmed by diplomatic sources, were Gaza, OPEC+, and BRICS expansion. They are, of course, interlinked.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership is developing at breakneck speed, alongside Russia-Saudi Arabia (especially on OPEC+) and Russia-UAE (investments). This is already leading to stark shifts in defense interconnection across West Asia. The long-term implications for Israel, way beyond the Gaza tragedy, are stark.
Putin told Raisi something that was extraordinary on so many levels:
“When I was flying over Iran, I wanted to land in Tehran and to meet you. But I was informed that you wanted to visit Moscow. Relations between our countries are growing rapidly. Please convey my best wishes to the Supreme Leader, who supports our relations.”
Putin’s reference to “flying over Iran” directly connects with four armed Sukhoi Su-35s flying in formation, escorting the presidential plane over 4,000 km (if measured as a straight line) from Moscow to Abu Dhabi, without any landing or refueling.
As every stunned military analyst remarked, an American F-35 is capable of flying at best 2,500 km without refueling. Yet the most important element is that both MbZ and MbS authorized the Russian Su-35s escorts over their territory – which is something extremely unusual in diplomatic circles.
And that leads us to the key takeaway. With a single move on the aerial chessboard, compounded with the subsequent clincher with Raisi, Moscow accomplished four tasks:
Putin proved - graphically speaking - that this is a new West Asia where the US hegemon is a secondary actor; destroyed the neocon political myth of Russian “isolation;” demonstrated ample military supremacy; and lastly, as the start of Russia’s BRICS presidency approaches, showed that it retains all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic cards.
Kill them, but softly
The original five BRICS – led by the Russia-China strategic partnership - will open their doors to three major West Asian powers Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE on 1, January, 2024. Their accession to the multipolar powerhouse offers these countries an exceptional platform for broader markets, and is likely to accompany a flurry of investments and tech exchanges.
The long-term, sophisticated game played by Russia-China is leading to a complete, tectonic change in the geoeconomics and geopolitics of West Asia.
BRICS 10 leadership – considering that the 11th member, Argentina, for the moment, is a wild card at best – even has the potential, under a Russian presidency, to become an effective counterpart to the toothless UN.
And that leads us to the complex interaction between BRICS and the Axis of Resistance.
At first, there were reasons to suspect that the bland condemnation of the genocide in Gaza by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was a sign of cowardice.
Yet a renewed appraisal may reveal everything is evolving organically when it comes to the intersection of the Big Picture designed by the late Iranian Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani with the meticulous micro-planning by Gaza's Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who knows the Israeli mentality inside out and considered in detail its devastating military response.
Arguably, the most incandescent focus of detailed discussions in Moscow these past few days is that we may be approaching the point where “a signal” will unleash a concerted Axis of Resistance response.
For the moment, what we have are sporadic attacks: Hezbollah destroying Israel’s communication towers facing the southern Lebanon border, Iraq's resistance forces attacking US bases in Iraq and Syria, and Yemen's Ansarallah concretely blocking the Red Sea for Israeli ships. All that does not form a concerted, coordinated offensive - yet.
And that would explain the desperation within the Biden administration in Washington, complete with rumors that it needs Israel to finish Plan Gaza between Christmas and the start of January. Not only have the global optics of the Gaza assault become horrifyingly unsustainable, but most of all, a lengthier military campaign dramatically raises the likelihood of a “signal” to the Axis of Resistance.
And that will result in the end of all the Hegemon’s elaborate plans for West Asia.
The geopolitical goals of Zionism are quite clear: re-establish its self-constructed aura of dominance in West Asia and maintain steady control over US foreign policy and the military alliance.
Depravity is a key component for accomplishing these goals. It’s so easy to bomb, shell, and burn ultra-soft civilian targets, including thousands of women and children, turning Gaza into a vast cemetery, while the White Man’s Burden Club urges Israeli occupation forces to kill them, of course, but more silently.
Cue to toxic Atlanticist and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offering bribes, in person, to Egypt's and Jordan's leaders - $10 billion to Cairo and $5 billion to Amman - as confirmed with Brussels diplomats. That’s the mind-numbing EU solution to stopping the Gaza genocide.
All Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah bin al-Hussein would need to do is to “facilitate” the forced exodus and Final Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza to their respective territories.
Because the eschatological goal of Zionism remains an undiluted Final Solution, whatever happens in the battleground. And, of course, as the 7 October Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood operation suggests, to destroy Jerusalem's Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish Third Temple on top of its ashes.
What happens when “the signal” comes
So what we have is essentially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Emigration-or-Annihilation plan - versus what veteran West Asia expert Alastair Crooke has memorably coined as “Sykes-Picot is dead.” That phrase means that Arab and Iranian inclusion in BRICS will eventually rewrite the rules in West Asia, to the detriment of the Zionist project.
There’s even a strong possibility this time around that Israel's certified war crimes in Gaza will be prosecuted, as Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslim-majority nations, with full BRICS support, form a Global South-recognized commission to take Tel Aviv and its armed forces to court.
Forget the tainted ICC, servile as it remains to the Hegemon's Rules-Based Order. The BRICS will help usher international law back to the forefront of the global scene, as intended when the UN was born in 1945 before it was castrated.
The Gaza genocide is also forcing all latitudes along the Global South to be more inclusive – as in delving into the wisdom of our common, intertwined pre-modern history. Everyone with a conscience has been forced to dig deeply into oneself to find explanations for the Inexcusable. In this sense, we are all Palestinians now.
As it stands, no power – the west because it refuses it; the BRICS and the Global South because they have not yet made their play – has been capable of stopping a Final Solution conducted by a racist, ethnocentrist ideology.
Yet that also opens the startling possibility that no power will be strong enough to stop the Axis of Resistance when the “signal” comes to pull the curtain down on the Zionist Project. By that time, the Axis will have a supreme moral imperative, recognized, even urged, by populations globally.
So that’s where we are now: evaluating the incandescent symmetry between impotence and imperative. The deadlock will be broken – perhaps sooner than we all expect.
That evokes a comparison with a previous deadlock. The current impasse between a perverse, trashy version of Hebraic “civilization” and emerging Islamic nationalism – let’s call it “civilizational Islam” – mirrors where we were in December 2021, when Russian-proposed treaties on the “indivisibility of security” were turned down by Washington. In hindsight, that was the last chance for a peaceful way out of the clash between the Heartland and the Rimland.
The Hegemon rejected it. Russia made its play – and accelerated exponentially the decline of the Hegemon.
The song remains the same, from the steppes of Donbas to the oil fields of West Asia. How can the multipolar Global South – increasingly represented by the expanded BRICS – manage a raging, fearful, out-of-control imperialist west staring into the abyss of moral, political, and financial collapse?
https://new.thecradle.co/articles/brics ... e-of-goals
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Israeli Forces Storm Kamal Adwan Hospital in Northern Gaza
An image of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, Dec. 2023. | Photo: X/ @Kahlissee
Published 12 December 2023 (3 hours 50 minutes ago)
Israeli snipers have been continuously shooting toward its courtyards and into patients' rooms.
On Tuesday, Gaza's Health Ministry denounced that Israeli occupation forces stormed the only operational Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday after besieging and bombarding it for several days.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said that Israeli soldiers had ordered all men, including medical personnel, to gather in the hospital courtyard. He expressed concern about the possibility of the medical staff being arrested.
Al-Qedra called on the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Committee of the Red Cross to act immediately to save and protect the lives of those people in the hospital.
"For a few days now, Israeli snipers have taken over the buildings surrounding Kamal Adwan Hospital and have been continuously shooting toward its courtyards and into patients' rooms," Al Mayadeen reported.
"Israeli snipers are shooting at anyone who moves within the hospital complex. The Israeli occupation forces are gathering men in the hospital amid fears of arresting them," it added.
On Tuesday, the WHO denounced that medical personnel who participated in a mission to evacuate patients in Gaza were detained and mistreated at Israeli military checkpoints.
Over the weekend, a WHO-led humanitarian mission managed to bring surgical supplies to treat 1,500 patients to Al Ahli Hospital. On their way back south, however, members of the Palestinian Red Crescent were threatened with weapons and separated from the group by Israeli soldiers.
One of them was released shortly after, but the other was not, forcing the mission to continue for the sake of the 19 seriously ill patients they were transferring to southern Gaza.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0001.html
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WATCH: Anti-Genocide Protestors Arrested at US Capitol
December 12, 2023
U.S. Capitol police arrested demonstrators calling for the end of U.S. support for Israel’s genocide on Monday.
The demonstrators, chanting “Free Palestine” and “Stop the Genocide” were standing in the courtyard of the Hart Senate Building on Capitol Hill on Monday when they were arrested by Capitol police.
Demonstrations have been ongoing throughout the United States to put pressure on Congress and the Biden administration to cease its complicity in genocide. Film by Ford Fischer of News2Share.
Capitol police arrest demonstrators calling for the end of U.S. support for Israel’s genocide on Monday. (Ford Fischer/News2Share screenshot)
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/12/w ... s-capitol/
Although we are using the word 'genocide' a lot I do not know how that would stand up in court as things currently stand. As things progress that could certainly change. Where do we draw the line between blatant ethnic cleansing accompanied by mass murder and genocide? It don't make much difference because intentions are one thing but it's actions which count.
