28 January 2024

Hugely Successful Holocaust Memorial Day Meeting Last Night - Israel and Zionism Represents the Perpetrators not the Victims of the Holocaust

The Israeli State, instead of being Recompense for the Extermination of Europe’s Jews, is the Embodiment of the Nazi Policies of Lebensraum and Racial Resettlement 


Holocaust Memorial Day Meeting 27.1.24.

Above is the recording of our hugely successful Holocaust Memorial Day meeting last night. 333 people attended from 25 countries and every continent including 218 from the UK, 38 from South Africa, 27 from the United States and 12 from Germany.

Instead of this being a typical Zionist Holocaust Memorial Day meeting, using the memory of the Holocaust to reinforce the racist, genocidal Israeli state, there were a series of speakers who spoke of the liberation of humanity from the imperialist order which led to the Holocaust.

The meeting was chaired by Esther Giles from the Socialist Labour Network. Speakers included the foremost Israeli historian of the Nakba, Ilan Pappe; Ronnie Kasrils,  the former leader of the ANC’s military wing, Umkonte we Sizwe and former Police Minister under Mandela. 

Ghada Kharmi, a Palestinian doctor who was expelled with her family from Jerusalem in 1948 and a prolific author and academic, the latest book being One State, Suzanne Weiss, who as a child was hidden by the Jewish resistance from the Nazis in Auvergne, France; Stephen Kapos, who was hidden by the Holy Cross church group from the Nazis and the fascist Iron Cross in Budapest and Tony Greenstein from the SLN and Jewish Network for Palestine, the first Jewish member of the Labour Party to be expelled and author of Zionism During the Holocaust.

We intend to repeat this meeting next year. Never Again must the Zionists be allowed to lay claim to the memory of the Jewish dead of the Holocaust. They represent the perpetrators not the victims of the Holocaust.

When Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister, called Palestinians ‘Human Animals’ he was repeating word for word Himmler’s October 1943 Speeches in Poznan, Poland calling Jews ‘Human Animals’.

It is important that we do not allow the Zionists to colonise HMD and thus trash the memory of the Jews and others who died at the hands of the fascist barbarians. There is no one and nothing that is closer to these fascists than the regime in Tel Aviv whose closest friends today are those very same fascists – from our own Tommy Robinson to people like Geert Wilders, Germany’s Afd and Norway’s Anders Breivik, to say nothing of Trump and Bannon.

The United States and its British Poodle Cut Food Aid to those Already Starving

Channel 4 Interview with Chris Gunnis, former spokesperson for UNRWA

It was no surprise that the war criminals who govern us – Biden, Sunak, Scholtz and the rest immediately cut of all aid to UNWRA, the UN agency responsible for feeding the Palestinian refugees. Israel has long desired to eliminate UNWRA altogether. It is as Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNWRA said, collective punishment.

But even if the allegations are true, even if some UNWRA staff did participate in October 7, so what? Resistance against an occupier is allowed under international law and is the right of any occupied people.

Most people will understand what the real motive is behind this decision. The leaders of western imperialism don’t even bother to hide their anger at the decision of the International Court of Justice at the Hague, weak as it was, that the case that the United States said was ‘meritless’ was upheld by the ICJ who considered genocide ‘plausible’.

The decision to attack UNWRA is clearly in retaliation for against the decision to go to the ICJ. Such is the nature of the ‘rules based order’. See below two articles from Mondoweiss. Naturally Israel’s response was to accuse the ICJ of anti-Semitism!  The go to explanation for all criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Never before has it been so obvious that Western support has nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism and everything to do with Western interests.

However in their desire to support the West’s attack dog in the Middle East the west’s war mongers are risking setting the whole of the region on fire.

If the Arab regimes, the Houthis apart, weren’t so cowardly and subservient to the West, the genocide in Gaza could have been stopped in its tracks long ago. An oil embargo, as in 1973, would have forced the United States to reign in their racist Rottweiler.

Tony Greenstein

UNRWA once again in the crosshairs

On the very day that the ICJ ordered for Israel to ensure the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Washington saw fit to cut off all funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

The decision came after Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA workers had been involved in the October 7 attack. UNRWA has said that it has terminated the contracts of these workers as it commissions an independent investigation into the allegations — but the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and Canada have followed the U.S.’s lead and pulled their funding of the organization.

In an election year during which he is trying to convince the American public that he is the only alternative to the return of Donald Trump to the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden is following his predecessor’s lead, as Trump had partially suspended funding to UNRWA in 2018.

“We call on the countries that announced the cessation of their support for UNRWA to immediately reverse their decision, which entails great political and humanitarian relief risks, as at this particular time and in light of the continuing aggression against the Palestinian people, we need the maximum support for this international organization and not stopping support and assistance to it,”

Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh wrote on X.

Hamas, meanwhile, called on the United Nations “not to yield to the threats and blackmails.”

“We stress the importance of the role of these agencies in providing relief to our people and documenting the crimes of the occupation, which exceed the most horrific crimes known to humanity in our modern era,”

the movement said in a statement.

Even as the U.S. appears steadfast in siding with Israel, Biden is facing legal trouble at home over his administration’s failure to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Palestinians testified on Friday in front of a federal court, in a case brought forth by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, arguing that the three high-ranking officials are liable under U.S. law for complicity in Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. 

Biden cuts off life-saving aid to Palestinians based on Israeli allegations against UNRWA

The State Department has paused funding for UNRWA after the Israeli government accused 12 employees of being involved in the October 7 attack.

The State Department paused additional funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after the Israeli government accused 12 UNRWA workers of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack.

A press statement from State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the Biden administration was “extremely troubled by the allegations.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “to emphasize the necessity of a thorough and swift investigation of this matter.”

UNRWA has already terminated the staffers and opened an investigation into the allegations. “The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7,” said UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini.

“To protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay.”


Many have noted that UNRWA provides life-saving aid to more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

“Based on unproven allegations alone, the U.S. has cut off funding to UNRWA, one of few groups which provides crucial on the ground aid to Palestinians,” said the antiwar group CODEPINK. “Yet, as Israel commits war crime after war crime, the U.S. continues sending weapons.”

“The US is collectively punishing Palestinians, who rely on UNRWA to survive, based on Israeli allegations against 0.0004% of UNRWA’s staff. Outrageous,” said the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).

The Biden administration’s announcement comes on the same day that the UN’s top court ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts Gaza and a U.S. court began hearing a lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide.


Commentators questioned the State Department’s timing across social media.

“So, the US State Dept drops a rather significant statement on (unsubstantiated) allegations against UNRWA workers and pulling funding on the day of the ICJ ruling which finds sufficient evidence for plausible genocidal acts—- and decides there’s no need for a press briefing,”

wrote AJ+’s Sana Saeed. “Honestly, this would be masterful manufacturing of the news if it wasn’t so transparent.”

“The US chose to stop funds to UNRWA only an hour after the ICJ decision,” tweeted USCPR Organizing & Advocacy Director Iman Abid. “Israel kills over 33,000 Palestinians and the US still continues to negotiate an increase in funding to Israel. I don’t know what more you need to know about this administration.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the move on Twitter. “Major changes need to take place so that international efforts, funds and humanitarian initiatives don’t fuel Hamas terrorism and the murder of Israelis,” he wrote. “Terrorism under the guise of humanitarian work is a disgrace to the UN and the principles it claims to represent.”

In December, UNRWA announced that Israel’s onslaught against Gaza had killed 142 employees of the organization.

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27 January 2024

Israel’s Shame is Germany’s and the West’s Shame

 On the Eve of Holocaust Memorial Day Israel has been Found by the International Court of Justice To Have Been Perpetrating a Genocide

Register in advance for this webinar here

http://tinyurl.com/mr49ufvh

ICJ interim ruling on genocide case against Israel - Live

It is a comforting myth, not least to the German State, the heir to the Nazi murderers, to believe that the State of Israel was gifted to the Jews in compensation for the Holocaust.

Like all such myths it carries within it the danger that it will imbue those who claim to inherit the memory of those who died, with the power to repeat what happened before. And thus it has come to pass that Israel has been found to have perpetrated genocide in Gaza in the  name of the Jewish Holocaust.

It is a myth that Israel was created because of the Holocaust. If that were true why is there no Roma or Gypsy state? Why have the Gypsies and Roma not been offered compensation equivalent to Germany’s reparations to Israel? The Gypsies continue to be hounded and persecuted in Europe.

In fact the colonisation of Palestine by Zionist settlers began in 1882 not 1945. The Holocaust was, as far as the Zionist leaders were concerned fortuitous in that it enormously strengthened their project. As Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian wrote in The Modern History of Israel:

‘As the European holocaust erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism... In conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. ... By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the movement.’  

Even now Germany refuses to compensate Namibia for the massacre of more than 70,000 Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908, which was the 20th Century's first genocide.

Namibia: The Price of Genocide | People and Power

It is no surprise that Namibia’s anger boiled over when Germany offered to join Israel’s case at the ICJ. It was in Namibia, then a German colony, that Germany’s extermination program for the Herero and Nama people became the template for the Holocaust.

Eugen Fischer was the Nazi doctor who helped pioneer eugenics in the Third Reich. As director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology (1927-42) Fischer provided the ‘scientific’ rationale for the Nazi’s war of extermination.

On Shark Island in SW Africa Fischer ran medical breeding experiments on the camp’s inmates. Racist ideas developed in the colony were brought back to German institutions along with the Africans’ skulls. In 1939, Fischer declared

When a people wants … to preserve its own nature, it must reject alien racial elements,… The Jew is such an alien and, therefore, when he wants to insinuate himself, he must be warded off.

Fischer conducted medical experiments on children born from the rape of African women. His research inspired Adolf Hitler and in the 1930s, Fischer taught his racist theories to Nazi doctors. One of his students, Joseph Mengele, was responsible for the medical experiments in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

It is therefore appropriate that the German state, which never de-Nazified, has offered its support to Israel at the ICJ.

In March 1988 Professor Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz, wrote an article in Ha’aretz, The Need to Forget. Elkana, who later became Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, before Netanyahu’s friend, Viktor Orban, the anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, closed it down wrote of:

a profound existential "Angst" fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust and the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us, and that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient belief, shared by so many today, I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who assert, "this must never happen again," and a frightened and haunted majority who assert, "this must never happen to us again."

Elkana described how Israel sent children on repeated visits to Israel’s holocaust propaganda centre, Yad Vashem asking:

What did we want those tender youths to do with the experience? We declaimed, insensitively and harshly, and without explanation: "Remember!" "Zechor!" To what purpose? What is the child supposed to do with these memories? Many of the pictures of those horrors are apt to be interpreted as a call to hate.

Israel also sends thousands of schoolchildren to Poland every year to visit Auschwitz. As Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy observed,

Remembering the Holocaust is now for nationalists only. There’s no universal conclusion or moral lesson.

Levy remarked, prophetically:

I have yet to hear a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border, saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.

Elkana told how Thomas Jefferson wrote that democracy and worship of the past are incompatible.

Democracy fosters the present and the future. Too much of "Zechor!" (Remember) and an addiction. to the past undermine the foundations of democracy.

Elkana’s conclusion caused uproar in Israel:

we must learn to forget! Today I see no more important political and educational task for the leaders of this nation than to take their stand on the side of life, to dedicate themselves to creating our future, and not to be preoccupied from morning to night, with symbols, ceremonies, and lessons of the Holocaust. They must uproot the domination of that historical "remember!" over our lives.

If we are going to commemorate the Holocaust every Holocaust Memorial Day then we have to ask ‘to what purpose?’ If the Holocaust is going to be used, as Israel uses it, to justify its genocide in Gaza and maybe the West Bank too, then Elkana is right. It is best forgotten.

We have seen Israeli politicians proclaim that the breakout from Gaza on October 7 was the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Not only is this factually wrong but it is morally and politically wrong too.

Israel sees October 7 through the prism of the Holocaust because it wants to avoid discussing the real reasons of what happened that day. I leave to one side the question of what actually happened, as opposed to the myth of organized rapes, beheaded babies and all the rest.

It is no wonder that when Antonio Gutterez, the UN General Secretary, said that October 7 did not happen in a vacuum Israel’s leaders went berserk, calling for his resignation. Israeli leaders want people to believe that the events of October 7 happened, not because of Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip for 57 years and its siege of 17 years but because Palestinians are consumed by hatred of Jews. In other words our old friend, ‘eternal anti-Semitism.’

We are supposed, according to the Zionists, to ignore the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the murder of 30,000+ people including 15,000 children, the murder of 120 journalists, hundreds of doctors and health workers, the destruction of hospitals and homes and instead focus solely on the 700 Israeli civilians, the majority of whom appear to have been murdered by Israel as a result of its Hannibal Doctrine.

The decision of the ICJ, despite the fact that it didn’t order a ceasefire, is welcome. Those who, even now, ignore the death of  Palestinians and instead can only remember October 7 should be treated as the racists and genociders that they are.

On a personal note, I have myself put an end to a 40 year friendship with someone who wrote in a local right-wing rag that ‘nothing the Israeli state has done provides justification for the atrocities of that day.’ The whole article concentrated on attacking Hamas comparing it to ISIS as Netanyahu did.

As the video below from two Israeli hostages show, Hamas’s treatment of its captives is incomparably better than Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, especially given Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza.

Hin & Ajam Were 2 Prisoners of Hamas

The article railed against an anti-Semitic doctor in Durban without mentioning that the South Africa Jewish community wholeheartedly supported Apartheid. South Africa and Israel became close military partners. Those Jews, like Ronnie Kasrils and Joe Slovo, who joined the ANC and opposed Apartheid were ostracized by this right-wing Zionist Jewish community.

Tonight the Socialist Labour Network and Jewish Network for Palestine are holding a meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day. Our message is that Never Again applies to everyone, including the Palestinians currently fighting to live in Gaza.

We should also remember the record of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust when they not merely prioritized the building of a ‘Jewish’ State over the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust but they actively opposed all rescue attempts where the destination wasn’t Palestine.

Historian Christopher Sykes wrote of the 1938 Evian Conference that Roosevelt called to find a solution to the Jewish refugee problem and the Zionist attitude to it, that:

From the start they regarded the whole enterprise with hostile indifference... If the 31 nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need then the pressure on the National Home and the heightened enthusiasm of Jews with Palestine would both have been relaxed. This was the last thing that the Zionist leaders wished for…. Even in the more terrible days ahead they made no secret of the fact, even when talking to Gentiles, that they did not want Jewish settlements outside Palestine to be successful... The Zionists wanted to do something more for Jews than merely help them to escape danger…. that such was the basic Zionist idea is not a matter of opinion but a fact abundantly provable by evidence... [my emphasis - Crossroads to Israel]

Nor should we forget the response of David Ben-Gurion to the Kindertransport, a scheme whereby the British agreed, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, to admit 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children to England. He was furious that they weren’t going to Palestine and in a speech to the Israeli Labor Party’s [Mapai] Central Committee on 9 December 1938, he explained his reasoning:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

Likewise Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel and then President of the Zionist Organisation told Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary that ‘‘We shall fight you - and when I say fight I mean fight.’

We have to reclaim the Nazi Holocaust for everyone, not just for Jews people or the Israeli state.

Tony Greenstein

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26 January 2024

Day of Judgement for the International Court of Justice

October 7 Seen in Context 

UPDATE

Well the decision of the ICJ is now out. It is better than I had hoped for but my prediction that the Court would balk at taking the decisive step of ordering Israel to desist by issuing an injunction has proven correct.

The decisiveness of the 15-2 majorities surprised me. On one vote even Israel’s Aharon Barak voted with the majority yet Uganda’s vile Christian Judge Julia Sebutinde voted against anything that might relieve the present catastrophic situation.

But at the end of the day Israel has said it doesn’t accept the vote and the United States, its main backer has said nothing. Western talk of human rights is now shown to be a sham.

In accepting that there is a ‘plausible’case for genocide this is clearly a victory for South Africa and the Palestinians. It is just a pity that they judges of the ICJ didn’t have the courage of their convictions.

Tony Greenstein 

ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel


Today is the day that the International Court of Justice makes its decision. I hesitate to speculate as to what the decision might be. Will they issue an interim injunction to Israel to desist from its genocidal activities or will it end up with a fudge or compromise instructing Israel to protect the civilian population and take more care. In which case Israel will proclaim that they are already doing that. 

I hesitate to make a prediction but nonetheless I will. The Court has come under an immense amount of political pressure.  The United States has already said that the case that South Africa has brought to be ‘“meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”. The UK under Sunak has played its traditional role, which is one of being America’s faithful lapdog and Keir Starmer has played his normal role of follow my leader.

https://twitter.com/SaraYafi/status/1750506900163363049?s=20

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Happy to report that this video garnered more than 100,000 views within the first couple of hours on IG. <br><br>Over the last 111 days, since October 7, Isræl has consistently denied targeting civilians. Well, in this video, I am going to show you that in the history of its… <a href="https://t.co/076QZ2QcYp">pic.twitter.com/076QZ2QcYp</a></p>&mdash; Sara El-Yafi (@SaraYafi) <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraYafi/status/1750506900163363049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 25, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Well the decision of the ICJ is now out. It is better than I had hoped for but my prediction that the Court would balk at taking the decisive step of ordering Israel to desist by issuing an injunction has proven correct.

The decisiveness of the 15-2 majorities surprised me. On one vote even Israel’s Aharon Barak voted with the majority yet Uganda’s vile Christian Judge Julia Sebutinde voted against anything that might relieve the present catastrophic situation.

But at the end of the day Israel has  said it doesn’t accept the vote and the United States, its main backer has said nothing. Western talk of human rights is now shown to be a sham.

In accepting that there is a ‘plausible’case for genocide this is clearly a victory for South Africa and the Palestinians. It is just a pity that they judges of the ICJ didn’t have the courage of their convictions.

Tony Greenstein

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttrJd2aWF-Y

ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel

https://twitter.com/adoniaayebare/status/1750895305753850001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1750895305753850001%7Ctwgr%5Eb03652460355af52cf44a34a04c7002c8502e227%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2024%2F1%2F26%2Fwho-is-julia-sebutinde-the-judge-against-all-icj-rulings-in-israels-case

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Justice Sebutinde ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine. She has previously voted against Uganda’s case on DRC. Uganda’s support for the plight of the Palestinian people has been expressed…</p>&mdash; Adonia Ayebare (@adoniaayebare) <a href="https://twitter.com/adoniaayebare/status/1750895305753850001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Today is the day that the International Court of Justice makes its decision. I hesitate to speculate as to what the decision might be. Will they issue an interim injunction to Israel to desist from its genocidal activities or will it end up with a fudge or compromise instructing Israel to protect the civilian population and take more care. In which case Israel will proclaim that they are already doing that.

I hesitate to make a prediction but nonetheless I will. The Court has come under an immense amount of political pressure.  The United States has already said that the case that South Africa has brought to be ‘“meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”. The UK under Sunak has played its traditional role, which is one of being America’s faithful lapdog and Keir Starmer has played his normal role of follow my leader.

https://twitter.com/SaraYafi/status/1750506900163363049?s=20

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Happy to report that this video garnered more than 100,000 views within the first couple of hours on IG. <br><br>Over the last 111 days, since October 7, Isræl has consistently denied targeting civilians. Well, in this video, I am going to show you that in the history of its… <a href="https://t.co/076QZ2QcYp">pic.twitter.com/076QZ2QcYp</a></p>&mdash; Sara El-Yafi (@SaraYafi) <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraYafi/status/1750506900163363049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 25, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel 

Today is the day that the International Court of Justice makes its decision. I hesitate to speculate as to what the decision might be. Will they issue an interim injunction to Israel to desist from its genocidal activities or will it end up with a fudge or compromise instructing Israel to protect the civilian population and take more care. In which case Israel will proclaim that they are already doing that.

I hesitate to make a prediction but nonetheless I will. The Court has come under an immense amount of political pressure.  The United States has already said that the case that South Africa has brought to be ‘“meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”. The UK under Sunak has played its traditional role, which is one of being America’s faithful lapdog and Keir Starmer has played his normal role of follow my leader.

There is no doubt that if the decision were made on purely legal grounds then South Africa would win hands down. That is the opinion of international law experts. However this is not a court that bases its decisions on legality. It is a political court and its judges are political appointees.

Therefore, although I would love the court to come to a clear-cut decision instructing Israel to stop its genocidal attacks my fear is that the court will fudge the decision and engage in meaningless soundbites. It will criticize Israel without having the courage to issue an injunction instructing it to stop the genocide that is taking place.

Children About To Be Shot

I sincerely hope that I am wrong but I fear otherwise. Israel has already made it crystal clear that it will defy an injunction to stop committing genocide. That means a decision instructing it to desist from further military activities it will go to the Security Council for enforcement.

The United States will then veto the resolution and under the Uniting for Peace resolution 377 (V) it will then go to the General Assembly. It is anyone’s guess what could happen then but theoretically the General Assembly could suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations. If Israel was suspended it is likely that the United States would walk out and the British poodle could follow them.

This scenario must be playing on the minds of the ICJ which is why I don’t believe that they will deliver the verdict that most people want. No one doubts that legally South Africa has clearly met the test of showing intent on Israel’s part to commit genocide. Indeed it is already doing just that and its spokespersons, from the President and Prime Minister down have made their genocidal intentions clear to all.

No one doubts that Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh made a devastating closing speech. If it was simply about the case that South Africa made then it would win hands down but my fear is that this court will allow political considerations to intervene.

Murder of Man With White Flag

If however the ICJ does do as I predict then that will be seen as the death of international human rights law. If the highest court in the world cannot implement the law when there is such an egregious example of genocide taking place under its very eyes, then international law is meaningless.

The other question I have posed is how October 7th will come to be seen in years to come. Again I hesitate to make predictions but I am convinced that we are seeing the beginning of the end of Zionism.

Zionism was always an unnatural political creature and Israel even more so. Israel, even its Jewish part, has never been able to decide what its identity was. Was it Jewish first or Israeli first? This is a question on which Israeli Jews themselves are split.

International Court of Justice

October 7 has also made ‘normalisation’ between the treacherous and corrupt Arab regimes and Israel that much harder though one cannot put it past creatures such as Saudi Arabia’s MBS to plough on nonetheless.

However the rise of the Houthis and Hezbollah coupled with the fierce resistance of Hamas and the other militias in Gaza has destroyed the myth of invincibility that the Israeli state likes to cloak itself with. Israel may be a nuclear power but despite the wishes of certain far right Israeli ministers it is unlikely to want to create a radioactive desert in the Middle East.

It is just possible that Israel pre-1967 could have turned into a normal bourgeois state, albeit one with repressive and authoritarian tendencies. After 1967 and the conquering of the territories with the growth of what Yeshayahu Leibowitz called the Judeo-Nazis this became impossible.

Today we see the far right settler parties driving Israel’s political agenda and we saw, pre-October 7 the massive demonstrations in Israel over the judicial reforms. What October 7 postponed will not go away. We are seeing the symptoms of those divisions in the growing political crisis in Israel over the hostages as it becomes clear that Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir wish to pursue their war aims regardless of its effect on the hostages.

Given the choice between killing Palestinians and saving the hostages Netanyahu and co. unhesitatingly choose the former.

The relatives of the hostages though are becoming more and more desperate as they know that the longer the war goes on, the more of them will die. These divisions roughly correspond with the divisions over the judicial reforms.

The current government has effectively declared war on the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority is barely able to survive as the Israeli government ignores this Vichy style administration that the Oslo Accords gave birth to. It is doubtful that this bastard child of Oslo will long survive.

Ever since July the war on Jenin in particular, but also Nablus and Tulkarem has gone on. I am told that there hasn’t been one peaceful night in Jenin since July. I know because I fundraise for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre there.

There is now a war between the settlers, armed by Ben Gvir and the Palestinians. A war whose purpose is ethnic cleansing.

I once asked myself if there is anything that Israel could do which the United States would sanction it for. The answer that I have drawn is no. Whatever protestations made by Biden and Blinken they continue to arm Israel.

The key question that is posed today is how to get rid of the ‘Jewish’ settler-colonial state, a state of Jewish supremacy and Apartheid. War with Lebanon seems increasingly likely and if that happens the conflagration is likely to spread to Iraq and Iran. The whole region is slipping inexorably into war.

The Houthis have shown the way but others in the region are not far behind. The Abraham Accords have been show to be built on sand.

The reality is that if the repressive and rotten Arab regimes had taken a leaf out of the Houthis book and embargoed the oil, as they did in 1973, then the United States would have stopped the genocide in its tracks.

Above all the question of Zionism and its demise is integrally liked with the death of the Arab regimes, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Tony Greenstein  

See also What will the ICJ announce on Israel’s Gaza war? The possible scenarios

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