Yes, you peace-loving liberals, we told you but you wouldn’t listen. Told you that Zionism means racism, colonial settler expansion and, ultimately, genocide. But you wouldn’t listen. And you’re not listening now.
There just had to be a way of resolving things so everyone got something and then there would be peace, you all said.
People like you think all that has to happen for peace is that both sides sit down and talk. But what if what one wants is irreconcilable with what the other wants? Well, then you say, they both have to give up something.
The problem with that is that it’s always the oppressed who have to give up the most – or even everything. However, that’s necessary, because that’s how we get peace, you say. But would you apply it to yourselves as easily?
If a thief got your wallets, would you suggest sitting down and talking it over with him or her? Maybe suggesting s/he only stole half the contents? Well, you might, I suppose. But what if they got your cars, your houses and emptied your bank accounts?
You’d very quickly resort to violence! Oh, not you personally, of course not! You’d get the police to use force for you and a judge to use force to put them in jail and prison officers to use force to keep them in jail for an allotted time, to try and ensure they didn’t steal from you again.
We told you that the only peace the Zionists could achieve would be the peace of the Palestinian cemetery; but as many graves as the Zionists dug for the Palestinians, more would rise up fighting and they would never give up their land or agree to be kept down.
Every time the Zionists carried out a massacre or another atrocity, we told you: the only solution to this conflict is a unitary democratic state of Palestine, “from the River to the Sea”. But you wouldn’t listen.
And even now, as you begin to talk about “peace again” “after Gaza”, it’s clear you haven’t learned. The massacre of 22,600, including over 9,000 children, the ruins of Gaza, refugee camps, hospitals, mosques, water and sewage treatment plants have taught you nothing.
Because here you are again, proposing something other than the rational solution, in this case re-marketing the two-state plan. All the imperialists agree and you’ll get Abbas and the corrupt Al Fatah to go along as before of course but the Palestinian people as a whole will never do so.
The irony is that by pushing your kind of ‘peace’ measure and avoiding real peace, you are effectively advocating the conditions for war without end – or wiping out/ expulsion of the Palestinians. Really, it would be better if you just shut up and stop trying to ‘help’.
Because the only ones you’re helping are the genocidal Zionists and their imperialist backers.
British TV personality Rachel Riley shared with the media that she is feeling sombre on New Year’s eve with reference to the conflict in Gaza. We could all empathise with that were it not for her further elucidation.
So, what makes you “somber” Rachel, is the number of Israeli settlers killed on October 7th– not the genocidal slaughter of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women and children?
From some points of view, it is entirely understandable that should be making you somber three months later. But what is not understandable in any sense of humanity, Rachel, is that you are not in the least somber about the genocide being carried out every day.
A genocide that in just three months has taken the lives of tipping at 23,000, destroyed refugee camps, clinics, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, schools, bakeries, water treatment plants, whole neighbourhoods, fishing boats, and left a dislocated 1.9 million to starve and die from disease.
It is recorded that you give talks on a genocide committed nearly a century ago – for which you have been awarded an imperialist honour — but apparently the one occurring now does not move you.
Even for someone with Zionist credentials1 that seems shocking — but perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked, for genocide is both the excuse, the aim and the practice of Zionism.
In an Instagram post on Sunday, you wrote that “Holocaust education feels present and urgent” since the attack by Hamas on October 7th. We agree — but not in the way you meant it, which was as a justification for the holocaust being visited upon the Palestinians.
Which would be bad enough if they had been the ones who carried out the other genocide, the one (the only one, apparently) which concerns you, but they aren’t. No, in fact, many of those states that carried out the genocide against the Jews are the very ones endorsing and supplying this slaughter.
Yes, the Palestinian offensive on 7th October last year was brutal – it was a military operation. But how does it compare in scale and number of occasions to the brutal massacres carried out by the ‘Israeli’ state in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their very land and ever since?
You claimed that “As a result (of the Palestinian attack), incidents of anti-Jewish hate are surging around the world”. Of course, we know that Zionists constantly try to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, even accusing anti-Zionist Jews of being “self-hating.”
But if anti-semitic incidents are indeed on the rise, do you not think that the bestial genocidal acts of the Zionist state might be a more likely source for such incidents? Along with the feeling of powerlessness engendered by the complicity of the major powers in the genocide?
You expressed a wish “for an end to the violence in Gaza and the region as soon as possible that allows for stable and safe home for everyone there to be able to live in peace.” We might be able to join you in that wish, “as every decent person” might, if we didn’t know what you really mean.
What homes remain to the people in Gaza, Rachel? What you mean is the ‘peace’ in ‘Israel’ before 7th October last year.
What you want is the ‘peace’ of the end of Palestinian resistance to the wholesale robbery of their land, to the expulsion of refugees, to the thousands of indignities heaped upon a people made second-class denizens in their own land, where they cannot even be citizens.
Expelled from houses in Jerusalem, houses elsewhere demolished, water and sewage treatment plants ruined, fishermen forbidden beyond their polluted shores and harassed even there. Prisons full of Palestinians, even children, sentenced by military courts and many not even convicted.
Constantly under pressure from the encroachment of armed zealot European settlers even into the ‘reservations’ the State allows the Palestinians with the Gaza open prison deliberately kept at subsistence level, with no legal way in or out except by Zionist permission under Zionist guns.
We note that you were a forefront campaigner against the left-social-democrat Jeremy Corbyn. As a revolutionary I have more than one bone to pick with him but your campaign and that of the others with you was a complete fraud: there was no more anti-semitism there than anywhere else.
In fact, once again, it was the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism which was the real issue and shamelessly used by Corbyn’s enemies and competition within the imperialist British Labour Party to overthrow his leadership.
MATHEMATICS
It is recorded that you are a qualified mathematician so I have some questions for you around numbers and statistics: how many Palestinians is it justified to kill to avenge the “around 1,200” claimed killed by the Palestinian incursion operation?
Or how many Palestinian civilians is it justifiable to kill for those Israelis killed? The Zionist state improbably claims it has killed 8,500 Palestinian fighters and if we deduct that figure from the overall number of those killed, 23,000, it still means the killing of 14,500 civilians since October.
On the other hand, from an analyst’s estimated death toll of 3,500 Palestinian fighters,2 that means that the Zionist death toll of Palestinian civilians is 19,500. How do you justify that as payback for the revised figure of 1,200 Israeli civilians killed in the Palestinian operation of 7th October?
But even that figure is false, isn’t it? Because many of those killed were Israeli soldiers, right? And most military age Israelis are either serving soldiers or reservists, like the ones called up to take part in the current genocide.
And now Bituah Leumi, Israel’s social security agency on its website lists 695 people killed during the attack, over half of which were Israeli security personnel, with names and the alleged circumstances of their deaths (but of course the media will keep repeating the old numbers).
And then even those can’t all be added to the total Israelis killed by Palestinian fighters on that day, since we know from Israeli civilian and army testimonies that many of the Israelis were killed by the IOF in panic, in crossfire or in deliberate shelling according to the “Hannibal” doctrine.3
So, after a quick “countdown” of which you are surely capable, Riley, how many indigenous Palestinian lives may justifiably be taken for each Israel settler in the Zionist colony? And what would happen, though I do not encourage it, if the Palestinians were to reverse the ratios?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1In case of confusion let me state clearly that has everything to do with your political outlook and next to nothing to do with your ethnic group or your mother’s.
It has been said that with one phone call from Joe Biden to Netanyahu the genocide in Gaza could be halted.
Comparisons have been made to Reagan doing just that with the Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, who was the Israeli Prime Minister during the siege of Beirut in 1982 or Obama in later years.
Little has been said of the European Union’s equal capacity to make a similar call and bring an end to the slaughter. The EU is not a minor player in the region, and Israel is as much dependent on the EU as it is on the USA, though in a slightly different manner.
From the start the EU decided to support Israel, come hell or high water, and hell it was to be, for the Palestinians. Ursula von der Leyen stated that Israel had the right to defend itself against what she termed terrorism and that “Europe stands with Israel”.1
Ursula von der Leyen, taken at a time when EU staffers complained about her bias in favour of Israel (Photo credit: EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND)
A month later, as the gravity of Israeli plans were clear for all to see, she continued to talk about the Hamas attack on October 7th, much of which has now been proven to be false (there were no decapitated babies, many of the dead were Israeli military not civilians and furthermore Israel itself killed many of the civilians).
She made no condemnation of Israeli bombings of civilians. She and the EU still stood by Israel.2
But on October 20th 842 staffers at the EU signed a letter condemning her position and pointing out she was legitimising a war crime in Gaza, and pointed to her support for the blockade of food and water in Gaza.3
But Von der Leyen continued as before and still stands by Israel and its “right to self-defence”, despite the evidence that what Israel is engaged in, is genocide and multiple war crimes.
Some have made reference to the Nazi past of her family, and though interesting, it is not the reason for her support nor that of the EU, though it may affect the tone of her statements.
In evaluating her behaviour we should, of course, bear in mind her aristocratic and Nazi past, of which she is apparently very proud of and has made reference to.
But they are just anecdotes, others with a clean family tree have also supported Israel.
The reason why the EU supports Israel is one of naked self-interest. Like the USA, the EU has decided that Israel is also its very own Forward Operating Base to keep in check the Arab masses and ensure the flow of oil.
The EU was in a position to halt the genocide from the word go. Von der Leyen could have told Israel to back off and it would have. Without the EU, the Israeli economy collapses.
A ban on exporting to or importing from Israel would see the modern-day Babylon collapse overnight with little effect on Europe itself. Israel is the EU’s 25th largest trading partner, way behind Turkiye which is the EU’s sixth largest trading partner.
However, the reverse does not hold. The EU is a significant trading partner for Israel.
According to the European Commission’s Office in Israel (Von der Leyen & Co.) 31.9% of Israeli imports come from the EU and 25.6% of Israel’s exports go to the EU with total trade amounting to €46.8 billion in 2022.
Israeli imports of services amounted to €16.7 billion in 2021 with exports representing €9.8 billion. Further the EU invested €60.5 billion in 2021. Israel depends on the EU.4 One phone call is all it would have taken to put Netanyahu in his place and stop the genocide.
European complicity in the genocide is not limited to its economic role. Between 2012 and 2022, Israel received just over 5.4 billion US dollars in arms transfers, from three sources. Unsurprisingly, the USA was the primary supplier.
But Germany supplied Israel with $1.475 billion and Italy supplied a further $261 million. In the same period, Israel exported $7.458 billion to a range of countries, including the UK, bastions of democracy such as Azerbaijan ($854 million), Turkiye ($60 million).
But by far the biggest recipient was India which received $2.879 billion.5
The type of weaponry received is important. Israel received $2.734 billion in aircraft, $609 million in armoured vehicles, $752 million in missiles, just the type of weaponry it has used to reduce Gaza to rubble and carry out its genocide.
Israeli Merkava 4 tank in exercise on occupied ground in the Golan Heights 2016; it and other armoured vehicles carry German engines, according to arms watch organisation SIPRI which believes them to be in operation in Gaza now. (Photo: Ariel Schalit/AP)
All of those regimes who supplied Israel with weaponry are as guilty as the Israelis. After Operation Cast Lead (December 2008 – January 2009) it was obvious what type of regime held sway in Tel Aviv.
They have repeated this type of operation on many occasions since then, with major interventions and also a number of smaller, though still deadly attacks.
The nature of the Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, and yet the EU continued to export the type of weapons needed to carry out a genocide.
The nature of the Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, and yet the EU continued to export the type of weapons needed to carry out a genocide.
Hopefully, some day in the future we can hold a Nuremberg-style tribunal to judge those responsible. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, places obligations on states and gives them the authority to try people for the crime of Genocide.6
To be clear about what genocide is, the convention to which most states are signatories defines it in Article II as:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.7
Israel was one of the first signatories to it and has made no reservations on any aspect of it, unlike the USA which has placed some caveats on its jurisdiction in relation to the USA.8
Photo of Nuremberg defendants during the Nuremberg Trials. Will there one day be such a tribunal sitting on the Israeli war criminals and their international accomplices? (Photo sourced: Internet)
Following WWII not only were the Nazis tried at Nuremberg, other Nazis were tried by individual states in the subsequent years. Countries such as France, Germany, Israel, Norway and others brought Nazis to trial after the Nuremberg Trials.
In Hungary alone, around 26,000 people were tried for treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Czechoslovakia around 32,000 people met a similar fate. Some 100,000 Germans and Austrians were tried in Western Europe and in the Soviet Union another 26,000 were also tried.9
Any nation can place those accused of genocide on trial. To date it has been a question of power. The US won the war in the East and so were not charged for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nearly all those tried for crimes against humanity have been on the losing side of a conflict in which the US and Europe wished to punish one side.
It is entirely conceivable that the powers that make up the BRICS10 could detain war criminals and place them on trial in a national or supranational court convened by them. It is possible though unlikely.
It is however necessary. International law is dead, buried under the rubble of churches, mosques and hospitals in Gaza.
Netanyahu and the entire High Command of the IDF should stand trial like Göring and others did and should face the same consequences as Eichmann who the Israelis tried and executed by hanging.
Ten top ranking Nazis were executed, with Göring committing suicide the night before his scheduled execution. Others should meet another fate as did those lower ranking Nazis in subsequent trials. Various EU leaders should also be tried.
Von der Leyen is a key case and should meet the fate her Nazis family escaped from. Keir Starmer, Macron, Merkel, Rushi Sunak and others should all be put on trial and at the very least imprisoned. Europe is as much to blame for the current genocide as the USA and Israel itself.
6 See Article IV Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals. Article V The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III. Article VIII Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
As the death toll of Israeli bombing in Gaza long passes the capacity of imagination and as even the means of counting the dead can no longer be accurate, marchers took to Dublin streets in another Palestine solidarity march.
About 18,000 Palestinians have been killed and 49,500 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7, including 300 in one 24-hour period.
View of section of the rally shortly after arrival at Molesworth Street. Leinster House, home of the parliament of the Irish State can be seen in the distant background but there were Garda barriers between it and the Palestinian supporters (in addition to the normal high railings). (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Despite the debunking of Biden’s claim of “unreliability” of the Gaza mortality statistics, which have been verified as of a high standard, Israeli bombing has now made his words come true. The ability to collect the numbers and names of the dead no longer exists in Gaza.
Not much left of where to treat the wounded or otherwise sick either with all major hospitals in the area gone and less than half remaining in semi-operation. The hospitals were the place of treatment and of data collection for statistics compilation.1 The Zionist armed forces have bombed them too.2
Another section of rally crowd taken facing away from direction of previous photo, i.e towards the rear. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
First the Israelis bombed people to death and now they have also bombed the mechanisms of collecting and checking the data on how many victims. And they have also not only buried thousands under rubble but also bombed the machinery and equipment for digging them out.3
DUBLIN MARCH
The Dublin march organised by the IPSC rallied outside the north city centre’s Garden of Remembrance and then marched down the city’s main street to cross over via O’Connell Bridge to the south side, then describing a half-circle around Trinity College and up Dawson Street.
Ending in Molesworth Street, the marchers found themselves facing Leinster House, the seat of the parliament of the Irish State but kept well back from it by the special Garda barricades near where the IPSC had their speakers’ platform.
Marchers started to drift off a while after arriving and many missed a performance with two kneeling males blindfolded and stripped to their underpants, with hands seemingly tied behind their backs while a young woman led chants in solidarity with Palestine.
Men in Dublin’s Molesworth Street simulate treatment of Palestinian detainees in Gaza by Israeli Army while women lead solidarity chants. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The blindfolded nearly naked men was clearly a reference to the Israeli army having been photographed recently doing the same to a line of their Palestinian prisoners, on the excuse that they were being interrogated regarding possible Hamas membership.4
Another such video purported to be a mass surrender by Palestinians fighters but was debunked as a number were recognised by others, including relatives: a shopkeeper, a journalist and a UN aid worker, while the few hard sources available indicate the IOF5 is far from gaining surrenders. 6
The very existence of such propaganda testifies to the lack of Israeli military success against fighters, as distinct from ‘success’ against civilians, including women and children, hospitals, public sanitation/ water treatment/ health infrastructure, housing, fishing boats …
A notable feature of the Palestinian solidarity marches in Dublin since October 7th has been the appearance of the Irish language in the written and spoken (or shouted) word. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Many bystanders along the Dublin march route applauded the marchers and took photos of them. Some joined in the slogans: From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free! There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! In our thousands, in our millions – we are ALL Palestinians!
Other slogans included: Free, free – Palestine! Saoirse – don Phailistín! Zionist Ambassador – Out, out, out! 1, 2, 3, 4 – Occupation no more! 5, 6, 7, 8 – Israel is a terrorist state! (I personally answer “Israel is a fascist state” which has long been an appropriate description).
IRISH PEOPLE MOSTLY IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE
Many other towns and cities in Ireland had marches, rallies or pickets on Saturday also. The Palestinian flag flies over Dublin City Hall for a week by vote of elected councillors and at least three city halls elsewhere have been lit up at night with Palestinian colours in solidarity.
With the exception of Loyalist areas in the Six Counties awash with Israeli state flags, the Irish overwhelmingly support the Palestinians.
Section of the crowd at the commencement rally outside the Garden of Remembrance, before the march. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Irish population overall is clearly pro-Palestinian which, in the current context, is clearly to be pro-humanity. But although the public position of the Irish Government is among the most supportive in the EU of the Palestinians it is not applying hard pressure against the Israeli state.
The Irish state supports the imperialist/ colonialist two-state ‘solution’ (sic) for Zionists and Palestinians, declines to expel the Israeli Ambassador, to apply sanctions, to progress the Occupied Territories Bill or even to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court.
A number of commentators (including two published on Rebel Breeze) have commented how useless such a referral to the ICC would be, except for its propaganda value perhaps. But the bias demonstrated by an ICC Prosecutor shows the situation to be even worse than was thought.
Palestinians complained that the Prosecutor accepted Israeli refusal to allow visiting Gaza but yet spent days visiting Israeli areas attacked by Hamas and declined a Palestinian offer to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
When Prosecutor Kharim Khan finally held a meeting with Palestinians, he spoke at length, leaving them only ten minutes for their own contributions, to their outrage. Although he later gave them an hour, they fear that he has revealed his deep bias against them.7
A new banner seen on this march in Dublin, it bears the logo of the PFLP, words in Arabic and also calls for freedom for Palestine in Irish. (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
A future government including Sinn Féin may not act very differently; the party supports the 2-State ‘solution’ and was pushing the Government to refer Israel to the ICC. More crucially perhaps will be its close relationship with the USA and its need to work with its future political partners.
The Irish mass media, in line with that of the West, continues to exhibit a deep level of partiality towards Israel, along with hostility towards the Palestinians. The genocidal bombing by Israel is never called that while the short Hamas offensive is called “a rampage”.
The bombing is always presented as a response to the Hamas attack while that attack itself is never portrayed as a response to the many, many Israeli bombings and murders going right back to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in the Nakba coinciding with the 1948 foundation of the state.
The most effective and realistic lever for Palestinian-supportive action remains the ordinary mass of Irish people and it is upon their support that we must rely, along with actions making zionist support as difficult and uncomfortable as possible at all levels in Ireland, especially at the higher ones.
End.
Closeup of section of crowd at rallying point, at commencement of march. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
4And the relevance of that to stripping and blindfolding? What else but intimidation and humiliation? An eyewitness also reported having seen a number of Palestinian detainees shot for non-compliance.
Recently then-Minister for Home Affairs of the UK Suella Braverman claimed the common Palestinian solidarity slogan, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! to be antisemitic, genocidal in effect and looked set to try to have it banned.
In some other western institutions, for example Columbia University USA, it HAS been banned and a Palestine solidarity student group has had its rights within the University revoked despite, reportedly, the opposition of the majority of students to that sanction.
Suella Braverman, MP, former UK Minister for Home Affairs. (Photo sourced: Internet)
How can a basic solidarity slogan be claimed to be genocidal?
Definition of a genocidal act: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group …1
Obviously there can be such a thing as a genocidal slogan and, in fact, there are many examples in history: “The only good Indian (sic) is a dead Indian”2; “Juden raus”3; “To Hell or to Connaught”4; “Nits make lice”5; “Kill the cockroaches”6; “There are no Kurds, only mountain Turks”.7
Anti-Jewish racist and genocidal slogan in German with the Nazi Swastika symbol on wall in Florence, Italy.
But really, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”? Genocidal? For the Palestinian people to be free and in control of their own land, there has to be genocide?
Would “Scotland Free from Dunnet Head to Tweed” be considered a genocidal slogan? Or for example slogans such as “Ireland free from Donegal to Cork” or “A 32-County socialist Republic” be thought genocidal?
“Oh, but the Palestinian one means Palestine for the Arabs only, no Jews!” Really? And you know this how? Before the British started driving Jews into Palestine the maximum size of the Jewish population there was 6% but there was no attempt by the mostly Arab people to drive them out.
Could the slogan not equally or even more likely be a call for a free, equal, democratic state across the whole of the original Palestine? Such as the stated objective of a number of Palestinian resistance organisations, the PFLP for example?
The nationalist slogans for Ireland and Scotland could be interpreted to mean clearing out all non-Scottish and non-Irish respectively but for the vast majority they not mean that nor are they generally thought to do so. So why suspect genocidal intention of the Palestinians?
The opposition to the slogan is not at all based on fear of genocide but in fact on support for it: the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians! It is based on denying the right to self-determination of the indigenous Palestinian people, of which a huge majority are Arab.
To deny the right of the Palestinians to self-determination is to support the right of the Zionists to colonise, a project entailing expulsion or massacre of the ethnically Arab Palestinian majority that existed in Palestine even up until 1948.
That Zionist project has continued with a constant ethnic cleansing pressure and genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people.
And the same people who oppose the slogan “From the River to the sea” etc support such slogans as “Israel has a right to self-defence” and “The Jewish people have a right to their own state”, which ARE racist and genocidal statements based on Zionist and European colonial ideology.
If Israel has a right to self-defence, what that means is that those who occupy a territory, steal the land and resources, colonise it and attack the indigenous people … have the right to defend themselves against the legitimate resistance of the people.
It gives the settlers the right to defend their occupation and repress the resistance, which naturally is given no rights at all. The robber has the right to the loot.
If the Jewish people have a right to their own state, where is that to be? Where will a land be found without people in it for them to take as their own?
And if such an empty land does not exist – which it does not – then what gives Jews or anyone else the right to occupy and settle a land, removing the rights of the indigenous people? An alleged promise by a being of religious belief? Or the backing of imperialist colonial powers?
The defence of the solidarity slogan’s content and the right to use it across the world are important democratic standards in the peoples’ struggles for justice and to express and build internationalist solidarity across the world.
The realisation of the slogan will be an important contribution to peace and justice in the world.
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Article II, UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
2Whether correctly attributed to General Phillip Sheridan of the US Army or not it was certainly a popular saying in the white US colonial wars against the Indigenous native people.
4Attributed to Oliver Cromwell in his mid-17th Century genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Irish Catholics.
5Horrific slogan justifying the killing of children because they will grow up to be the hated/ feared people. This slogan or saying has probably been heard at one time or another in most parts of the world but certainly against Native Americans in the USA; among Nazis against Jews, Slavs and Gypsies; in Israel against Palestinians.
6One of the slogans of the Hutu against the Tutsi in the 1994 ethnic cleansing and massacres in Rwanda.
7Remark attributed to the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk with regard to the very large ethnically distinct Kurdish people in Turkey.
Israel uses white phosphorus munitions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
Norman Finkelstein published a book a number of years ago entitled Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom.
In it he looked at various major episodes in the long bloody onslaught on the people of Gaza, amongst them Operation Cast Lead and also the attack on the boat Mavi Marmara and the Goldstone Report, amongst other issues.
He could have written it yesterday about the current genocidal plans of the Israeli state.
The current Israeli offensive is just one more in a long line of massacres. This is not a review of Finkelstein’s book, though any book by him is worth reading and should be read. Rather I just want to use the book to show that what is happening now is not new, it is just more intense.
Israel has murdered before, it has lied, it has committed war crimes and it has always received the support of western states.
Above all we should be clear that we are where we are partly due to the Oslo Accord and also the role played by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. They cannot wash their hands of the affair.
“One of the meanings of Oslo,” former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami observed, “was that the PLO was . . . Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the intifada and cutting short . . . an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence.”
Rabin (left) and Arafat shake hands on the Oslo Accords under the management of then US President Clinton. (Photo sourced: Internet)
In particular, Israel contrived to reassign to Palestinian surrogates the sordid tasks of occupation. “The idea of Oslo,” former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky acknowledged, “was to find a strong dictator to . . . keep the Palestinians under control.”
“The Palestinians will be better at establishing internal security than we were,” Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin told skeptics in his ranks, “because they will not allow appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent the Association for Civil Rights in Israel from criticizing the conditions there. . .
They will rule by their own methods, freeing, and this is most important, the Israeli soldiers from having to do what they will do.”(1)
In other words, Gaza has bled under the passive gaze of the bureaucrats of the Palestinian authorities and of course of the reactionary Arab regimes that have never lifted a finger to help their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
They have not even threatened to cut off the supply of oil to the West, something they could do right now, but won’t. It has also happened under the gaze of those on the Left who run around shouting Implement Oslo! Two State Solution!
They ignore the fact that Oslo represented an ideological, political and military defeat for the Palestinians. The PLO accepted its role as puppet, administrator of a small urban city-like council and as chief repressor of those who continued to fight for Palestinian freedom.
A look at the Oslo II Accord, signed in September 1995 and spelling out in detail the mutual rights and duties of the contracting parties to the 1993 agreement, suggests what loomed largest in the minds of Palestinian negotiators.
Whereas four full pages are devoted to “Passage of [Palestinian] VIPs” (the section is subdivided into “Category 1 VIPs,” “Category 2 VIPs,” “Category 3 VIPs,” and “Secondary VIPs”), less than one page—the very last—is devoted to “Release of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees,” who numbered in the many thousands…
The barely disguised purpose of Oslo’s protracted interim period was not confidence building to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace but collaboration building to facilitate a burden-free Israeli occupation.(2)
However, Israel is now militarily weak. Finkelstein points to a number of attacks where it has shown its weakness. Its predilection is for attacks on the civilian population that can’t fight back.
In 2006, it opted to bomb civilians in Lebanon rather than engage in a proper fight with Hezbollah “terrorizing Lebanese civilians appeared to be a low-cost method of “education.”(3)
In Gaza in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9, it followed a similar path of aerial bombardments of civilians rather than land invasions, that would see its troops face the wrath of Hamas and other armed organisations. So first they relentlessly bombed Gaza before any troops went in.
When the troops went in, the civilian population was their preferred target then as it is now. The murder of civilians is not new. It is part of an Israeli strategy of claiming easy victories.
An Israelicombatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the “rules of engagement” were “essentially” conveyed as, “if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.”
Other soldiers recalled, “If the deputyBattalionCommander thought a house looked suspect, we’d blow it away. If the infantrymen didn’t like the looks of that house—we’d shoot” (unidentified soldier); “If you face an area that is hidden by a building—you take down the building.”
Questions such as ‘who lives in that building[?]’ are not asked” (soldier recalling hisBrigadeCommander’s order);
“As for rules of engagement, the army’s working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians … Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed” (unidentified soldier);
“We were told: ‘any sign of danger, open up with massive fire” (member of a reconnaissance company); “We shot at anything that moved” (Golani Brigade fighter); “Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly” (gunner in a tank crew).
“Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a ‘problematic’ location,” a Haaretz reporter found, “in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be ‘incriminated’ and in effect sentenced to death.”(4)
In all around 1,400 Palestinians were murdered in Operation Cast Lead, with 80% of them being civilians including 350 children. Israeli casualties were risible in comparison, just 10 combatants were killed, four of whom were killed by friendly fire.(5)
Then as now, Israel wheeled out the old trope of “human shields”. Amnesty International found no evidence of that,(6) in fact, it found evidence of Israel using children as human shields.(7)
It also found that Israel used then, as it does now, white phosphorous against schools, hospitals and even the UNRWA.(8) Furthermore, 99% of the air attacks were accurate.(9) If they murdered civilians, it is because the civilians were the target.
Following the operation, the Goldstone Report was published. It surprised no-one when it found evidence of Israeli war crimes and to a lesser extent of Hamas. It is a salutary lesson for those who now place their confidence in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Goldstone made various recommendations.
Individual states in the international community were exhorted to “start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
“Where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice.”(10)
We know that nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the western governments paid little heed to the report. Goldstone was forced to recant on the conclusions to his report.
Netanyahu for his part announced that he wanted to amend the rules of war leading to Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell asking “What is it that Israel wants … Permission to fearlessly attack defenseless population centers with planes, tanks and artillery?”(11)
Exactly.
And here we are today, with Israel unilaterally amending the rules of war, with the green light from the EU and the USA, amongst others. They murder civilians and no one proposes doing anything.
In Operation Cast Lead, the harshest sentence emitted by an Israeli court was seven and a half months to a soldier who had stolen a credit card!(12) Minor financial crimes are of greater concern than war crimes or crimes against humanity.
After this genocide in Gaza, we can’t expect much from the ICC.
Throughout its history the ICC has opened just 31 cases, including one for genocide. All of them against African leaders. This does not mean that those leaders did not deserve to be judged for their crimes, but that the ICC is just the legal arm of imperialism.
It has never attempted to put on trial the powerful in the West and despite everything even less so Israel. This year it issued a communiqué announcing that it would issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes and did so on its own initiative.(13)
In the case of Gaza, it will do nothing of the sort. Those who place their trust in the ICC or in the Palestinian Authority are fooling themselves. This situation is the result of turning a blind eye to Israel for many years whilst it commits all sorts of crimes.
It didn’t act before and it won’t do so now. Neither will the Arab regimes do much, unless their own populations force them. They fear the Palestinians and their own people as they know that the struggle against Zionism is also a struggle against them.
The more revolutionary Palestinian groups used to say that the path to Jerusalem went through Amman and Damascus. They were right, it does pass through those capital cities and also Beirut, Riyadh, Cairo and all the others and not through the ICC.
In fact, one day the judges and prosecutors of that body should be put on trial for their complicity in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity through their inaction and omission.
It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the role of Amnesty International in its own reports on Palestine.
They are what Finkelstein refers “as far from being the exception that proved the rule, Amnesty actually constituted a variant of the rule: instead of falling silent on Israeli crimes during Protective Edge, Amnesty whitewashed them.”(14)
I will leave it to the reader to look at the book for more information on that particular betrayal. Suffice to say, we can expect little from such organisations. At best they gather data we can sometimes use.
Notes
(1) Finkelstein, N. G. (2018) Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom. California. California University Press. pp 6 & 7
As more information emerges — without any great help from the mass media or the political class – it completely undercuts the platform of lies constructed by the fascist manipulators of the recent rioting mob in Dublin.
The story in fact is replete with ironies – not unusual in the country called by some ‘Ironyland.’
As most people will know, the immediate story began with a stabbing attack on three children and a worker who intervened to save them outside a Gaelscoil1 creche in Dublin City centre. Riding the crest of the horror story ran a footnote alleging that the attacker was a migrant.
A recent view of the steps to Scoil Mhuire BÁC (Photo credit: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos)
The fascist manipulators and their far-Right followers quickly boosted the footnote into the main – almost ONLY — story and mobilised on social media for the next few hours. By that evening, they had gathered a few hundred in the city centre, burning police cars and public transport.
Well, the alleged target of the riots were migrants and that was certainly the message being put out by the fascist manipulators and high-profile racists. And precisely here is where we see the emerging ironies and undermining of the racist memes.
For it quickly emerged that of those who intervened against the attack on the three children and the creche worker, two — possibly three — were themselves of migrant background, with another an Irishman.
All the injured were taken for medical care to hospitals where, of course, many of the workers at all levels are also migrant workers. No doubt they too would have been targeted except that such is one step too far even for the racist foot soldiers. Up to now, anyway.
As usual, the fascists and other racists spread lies about the circumstances of the attack, alleging the perpetrator was an illegal immigrant and motivated by Muslim fundamentalism.2 For although of migrant background he had been legally 20 years in Ireland and had mental health issues.
Nothing particularly ironic about that since lying comes naturally to fascists.
But then, what is not surprising to any except racists perhaps is that one of the injured children is from two migrant parents, each from a different region. And they sent their child to an Irish-speaking creche, probably to prepare for Irish-language schooling anon.
So racists whip up anti-migrant hatred around an attack on children, one of whom is herself a child of parents of migrant background, in an incident in which two out of the three who come to the victim’s assistance are migrants and the children are treated in part by migrant health workers.
And then the racists were at it again on social media, trying to reduce the heroic roles of the people of migrant background, counterposing the heroic acts of the people of Irish background against the others, implying that promoting the role of migrants was some kind of ‘woke’ propaganda.
FASCIST USE OF “WOMEN AND CHILDREN“
The call to “protect our children, our women” is a common trick to whip up emotions without any moderating thought. It is in fact a call hearkening to the Neolithic, when such things were real needs and often enough, sadly, since then in many parts of the world.
States have used the trick to get people to join armies to kill one another on battlefields while the masters of those states are far from “where the fast bullets fly” and, when the war is won or lost, may well sit down together draw up deals, to chop up and trade lands and markets.
But the fascists use the slogans and the underclass of the city allow themselves to be used, mouthing the slogans and talking about “undocumented migrants” “of military age”, parroting their lines.
The irony here too is that fascists want to protect women only if they stay in the kitchen or at least ‘know their place’. And the children of course will be fodder for capitalist exploitation or for fighting in foreign wars, against others of their class.
And increasingly with every war, women and children form the larger part of the casualty lists, not to mention widows struggling to get by and care for their bereaved children.
When Naoinrí3 managers, workers and children’s parents were demonstrating outside Leinster House for help with a sector struggling so badly that some have closed and others are considering doing so, were these elements called there by their fascist manipulators to support the protests?
Of course not!
A protest on March 29th this year about the lack of Irish Government support for the Irish language in education, including in the Irish-language creche services. Of course no support from the fascists and far-Right for improvement in these services for “our children”, not to speak of our national language! (Photo sourced: RTÉ)
But we have not exhausted the ironies yet, there are some still to go. The Gardaí, who have drawn their batons and struck at Republicans, water protesters and anti-fascists often enough, were afraid to do so while their patrol cars burned as they awaited the arrival of the Public Order Unit.
Which has led to irrelevant calls from some quarters to reform GSOC investigations and more recruitment for the police.
Mary Lou McDonald is absolutely correct in saying that the rioting was easily foreseeable and that the fascists and their followers had been active in recent years threatening and harassing people and so they had: migrants, refugees, LGBT people and some politicians.
But there is irony here too because McDonald’s party, once the largest revolutionary opposition to the State did not at all mobilise against those fascist and far-Right thugs, not even when one of their youth wing was knocked unconscious by National Party supporters on Custom House Quay.4
But wait, this piece of irony is a real beaut! The Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, is only three years out of his previous job as Assistant Commissioner of the sectarian colonial armed police force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary).
Why is that an irony, you ask? Well, in his previous job, Harris would have been fully au fait with the biggest collection of far-Right bigots, racists and drug-dealing violent fascists to be found in Ireland, i.e the ‘Ulster’ Loyalists, the enforcers of the Orange Order.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris being congratulated on his appointment by his former colleague in the PSNI, Asst. Commissioner Hamilton. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Did he think that the Dublin variety was as easy to control as those in the Six Counties, or that he had a similar “understanding” with them?
So what now? Well the final irony of all. The Gardaí are going to get better tooled up which of course, they will not be using primarily against the fascists and their far-Right followers at all but rather on the anti-fascists, anti-racists and Republican campaigners and protesters in general.
But they were incapable of having a Garda presence at the school a few days later when, according to reports, parents found a drunken man who had urinated himself on the steps of the school building. Prevented from attending by fear of GSOC reports??!!
End.
FOOTNOTES
1School teaching through the medium of Irish language, usually all subjects except other languages. The one in question was adjoined to the primary-level Scoil Mhuire which in turn is connected to the Secondary-level Coláiste Mhuire. There is as yet no totally-Irish-language university although there are streams and some university courses taught through Irish.
Ambassadors generally don’t represent people but rather states. They report to their home state on attitudes at different levels in the country where they are based and on friendly and not-so-friendly contacts also.
Two ambassadors have been in the news recently and they are both from the same part of the world – one is Israeli and the other is Palestinian.
Individually ambassadors may be nice and friendly or, like the Israeli one, arrogant and aggressive but all that is really not the main thing to remember about them, which is that they represent the state that sent them. What you do or say to them, you do or say to their state.
The Israeli Dana Erlich is in the news because a number of political parties have tabled motions in the Irish Parliament for her expulsion.1 She is representing the Israeli State, a racist, Zionist colonial state which is at present carrying out a genocidal bombardment on the Palestinian people.
Dana Erlich, Israeli Ambassador to the Irish state (Photo sourced: Internet)
Wahba Abdalmajid is the Palestinian Ambassador in Ireland and, in the news mostly because she was warmly received at the recent Ard-Fheis (annual congress) of the Sinn Féin political party. A look at her “Embassy’s” website gives little indication of a people struggling for freedom.2
WHOM DOES THE PALESTINIAN AMBASSADOR REPRESENT?
Despite there existing formally a Palestinian state, in reality its people have been actively prevented from creating one. Wahba Abdalmajid’s real employer may be said to be the Palestinian Authority which functions somewhat like a state – but under the control of the Israelis.
In a recent interview, Norman Finkelstein commented that Israel had a great many spies in Gaza, most of them former employees of the Palestine National Authority, i.e the administration of which Al Fatah lost control when beaten in the 2006 legislative elections by Hamas.3
In the wave of imperialist pacification processes (incorrectly called “peace processes”4) that swept through anti-imperialist conflicts around the world, the Palestinian variant in 1993 seems to have been the first, which then spread like a virus to South Africa, Ireland, the Basque Country5 …
In the Oslo Accords of 1983, the leadership of the PLO recognised the ‘legitimacy’ of the Zionist colonial state of Israel and agreed to the idea of a Palestinian state on a part of Palestine, with the worst land and least water, forever to be under the guns of Israel.
No arrangement was made for the descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians expelled by Israel when the Zionist State was created in 1948, forbidden by Israel to return.
The attraction for the PLO’s leadership was getting to run their own administration and with that went a spiraling of the already-existing corruption and nepotism. And accompanying that, repression of dissent through the use of their ‘security force’ where they were in control.
Financial aid comes from the European Union and USA to the PNA (to the total of US$1 billion in 2005) and, despite 2006 elections won by Hamas, the funds are paid to the West Bank HQ, i.e to Mahmoud Abbas’ offices.
Mahmoud Abbas, imperialist and zionist stooge, glued to the presidential seat of the Palestinian National Authority. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The dissatisfaction of Palestinian youth and of much of society with Al Fatah and their agreement to the Oslo Accords broke out into the Second Intifada 2000-2005 and since then Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has been led by other organisations.
At a Tokyo meeting of foreign affairs ministers,6 USA’s envoy Blinken indicated that after Israel’s hoped-for defeat of Hamas (and cowing of Palestinians) they would favour the Palestine Authority administering Gaza again, to which PNA President Mahmoud Abbas indicated agreement.
Meanwhile, elections have not been held for the PNA since 2008, despite promises a couple of years ago. The reason is obvious: Al Fatah would again lose. Nevertheless, the western imperialist bloc recognises the PA as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people!
The same bloc and the Irish State also supports the “2-state solution” which was no solution even when being mooted back in the 1970s and is visibly risible now7; furthermore surveys show that most Palestinians do not want that option.8
So who does represent the Palestinian people? Difficult to see how that question can be answered at the moment. There are a number of resistance organisations that can legitimately claim to represent sections of the Palestinian people while the PA can only represent collusion and repression.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Unsuccessfully, so far, with the Government and its allies in opposition.
2And the most recent entry in the Embassy’s news section is dated 14 August of this year!
3That was the last election held for the PA, which remains under the control of Al Fatah, which did not accept the election results. In Gaza in 2007, Hamas had a short fierce conflict with Al Fatah and took the administration to which they had been elected but refrained from doing so in the West Bank.
4Inaccurate because they do not address the central issues and therefore do not at all bring peace.
5Also Turkish Kurdistan, Colombia … The only one where the people gained anything was South Africa, which got universal suffrage but under a neo-colonial corrupt and repressive regime whose police in 2012 murdered two score striking miners.
7Also supported by Sinn Féin in Ireland and by the Chinese Government.
8Gallup poll found “24% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, down from 59% in 2012.” Also, a Pew Research poll showed only 35% of Israelis think “a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.”
In the context of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, a number of personalities and Palestinian solidarity organisations have asked that Netanyahu and others be put on trial by the International Criminal Court.
This will not happen, that court has been described in vulgar but accurate terms as a stinker. It is true, its putrid stench is nauseating and the history of international tribunals is full of hypocrisy, even when they judge people who should be tried and punished.
We all know of the Nuremberg Tribunal where the Nazis were put on trial. A correct decision, but Harris the man responsible for the fire-bombing of Dresden that killed 30,000 civilians was not tried, nor were other Allied criminals.
In Tokyo, the Indian judge, Radha Binod Pal argued that the USA should be tried for the atomic bombs used against purely civilian targets. But they didn’t. In more recent times we have seen international tribunals try one group of people but not another.
Radha Binod Pal, dissenting jurist at the Tokyo War Crime trials (Image sourced: Internet)
One of the first tribunals in recent times was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. That tribunal tried a significant number of war criminals, amongst them people as vile as Ratko Mladić, the butcher of Srebrenica, where they murdered more than 8,000 men and boys.
In all, 111 people were tried, but there were those who they never ever considered putting on trial. Following the war, two high-ranking British officials took advantage of their contacts in the Serbian government and in the name of the British Natwest Bank facilitated the privatisation of Serbian Telecom.
It has been said that not only did that save Slobodan Milosevic but that he used those funds for his later war in Kosovo.
The British officials who collaborated with someone who was nothing more than a war criminal were none other than Pauline Neville-Jones, Britain’s key diplomat in the Yugoslav crisis, seen by many as appeasing Milosevic and her boss the Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.(1)
Of course, no one ever proposed trying them for facilitating the war in Kosovo.
Perhaps a clearer example of not trying Europeans is the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
That tribunal decided upon various despicable crimes such as murder, rape and sexual slavery. It also decided upon another issue, particularly in the case of Charles Taylor, that of what are termed Blood Diamonds. Though in reality it did no such thing.
The tribunal rightly tried Taylor, but never looked at the role of the Belgians or the South Africans in the trade of Blood Diamonds. Any black person would do, but no whites, no businesspeople from the sector.
The company De Beers is a key player in the market, not only as far as production is concerned, but also in the sale of diamonds from other companies, controlling 80% of the market. But in the Sierra Leone tribunal, they didn’t even think of looking at the role of companies such as those.
They also set up a tribunal for Iraq, though it was supposedly set up by the “new government”. They tried various high-ranking officials from the Saddam Hussein regime, amongst them his once upon a time minister of defence, due to his use of gas against the Kurdish people, known as Chemical Alí.
The regime massacred thousands of Kurds, wiped off the face of the earth whole towns, displaced the Kurds and tried to repopulate those areas with Iraqis. Something similar to what Israel does with the Palestinians.
There can be no doubt about the regime’s responsibility for war crimes and also for the crime of genocide. But who sold them the gas they used against the Kurds?
Up to 40 German and European companies were involved in supplying the raw materials and know how to Saddam.(2) Yet this was not an issue for the West.
A Dutch court eventually sentenced one person to 15 years in jail.(3) However, Frans van Anrat was arrested and tried after the Saddam regime had been destroyed, not before. No one sought to arrest him and imprison him when the regime was an ally of the West.
In 2023, another Dutch court ordered a Dutch company to compensate five Iranians injured in those chemical attacks.(4) But the use of chemical weapons is a war crime, so why were the directors of the company not charged?
Previously, in 2013, a group of Iraqi Kurds tried to sue a French company that had supplied chemicals to Saddam.(5) So far, they have made little progress on that matter.
However, recently the French courts saw no problem in issuing arrest warrants for the Syrian president, Assad over the use of chemical weapons.(6) US involvement in the supply of chemicals has not been subject to such judicial investigations, nor will it ever be.
The US, however, did not just supply chemicals, it actively participated in their use.
According to Foreign Policy, a magazine that could hardly be described as progressive or opposed to US foreign policy in general, in the war with Iran, Iraq repeatedly used chemical agents, with the US providing satellite imagery to help Iraq target Iranian forces more successfully.(7)
So, evidence is not a key factor in deciding who gets tried by international tribunals and who doesn’t. Political expediency is the key factor, trumping all others. Justice is not what is sought, though it may be an unintended consequence in some cases.
Justice would see all those involved being brought to trial. But many of them pay the wages of the prosecutors and the judges and even pay for the logistics of these tribunals.
The ICC is no different. Its wages are paid by the states who carry out the greatest human rights violations in the world. The refusal to arrest Tony Blair or Netanyahu is not an oversight. They will never bite their master’s hand.
To date the ICC has dealt with 31 cases, including one for genocide. All of these cases were against black African leaders, some of whom relied on western complicity in their crimes. Their western accomplices will never face charges.
Judges and staff International Criminal Court (Photo sourced: Internet)
If western generals, politicians and companies don’t face charges when they are directly involved in war crimes and genocide, they are not going to face charges when they are murky figures in the shadows.
It is highly unlikely that Israel will be brought before the ICC, though sacrificing some lower ranking officers is not beyond the realm of possibility, though it is also highly unlikely.
Placing our faith in an international court which has shown itself to be nothing more than the judicial branch of imperialism is a mistake. In principle there is nothing wrong in taking a case, but believing you will get justice at the court is a criminal level of naivety and gullibility.
It dismissed cases against US allies such as Colombia, but immediately opened a file on Venezuela after the deaths of some protestors. When the Colombian police murdered over 80 protestors in 2021, the ICC looked on passively, just as it does now in the face of a Zionist campaign of genocide in Gaza.
One day it is to be hoped that the prosecutors and judges of that court are put on trial for their own role in facilitating the repression and murder of people around the world. But it won’t be the current western regimes that do that.
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