Craig Murray:

Israel does have the right of self-defence, but only in precisely the same way other countries do. In fact, the only unique factor about Israel here is that it is the only country to have been found by the International Court of Justice specifically to have abused and exceeded the concept of right of self-defence, in its treatment of the Palestinians.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice, in an advisory Opinion to the UN General Assembly, ruled illegal Israel’s construction of its great Wall, which is a fundamental part of the Israeli Apartheid system. The court considered Israel’s argument of self-defence and ruled that this did not justify the numerous breaches of international law represented by the Wall:

While Israel has the right, and indeed the duty to respond to the numerous and deadly acts of violence directed against its civilian population, in order to protect the life of its citizens, the measures taken are bound to remain in conformity with applicable international law. Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall. The Court accordingly finds that the construction of the wall, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law.

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Israel has not undertaken any of the actions specified by the ICJ and has indeed built more settlements and imposed more restrictions. It is absolutely plain that the UK, US and European Union are not only not fulfilling their duty in international law as set out by the International Court of Justice;

The US, UK and EU are acting directly opposite to their obligation in international law under the ICJ ruling.

The BDS movement is acting precisely in line with the obligations set out by the International Court of Justice, while the states attempting to ban the BDS movement are acting precisely against the obligations imposed on them by the International Court of Justice.

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I am indebted to a number of staff and national delegates at the United Nations in Geneva for pointing out to me the importance of the 2004 ICJ ruling in the current context. I hope it helps you understand why the lies of Biden, von der Leyen, Sunak, Starmer, Macron etc. are indeed lies.

Haaretz:

Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu. Credit: Yonatan Zindel/Flash90

Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Sunday that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip is „an option.“

Speaking in a radio interview, the far-right minister maintained that „there are no non-combatants in Gaza,“ adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute „a failure.“

Juan Cole, ScheerPost:

Netanyahu thought that although this was a horrible situation, that the Gaza problem and the Hamas problem were were contained and that Hamas would be happy running its little fiefdom in Gaza and Netanyahu could concentrate on stealing the rest of the Palestinian West Bank. And he brought into his government when he came back to power late last year, the most extreme. I mean, this is beyond fascism, the most extreme parties in Israel, the religious Zionists and the Jewish power. I mean, these people are terrorists and they some of them actually have been on the State Department terrorism watch list, not allowed in the United States in the past. And he brought them into the cabinet. He made one of these guys, the minister of national security. It put the other in the finance ministry and then gave him responsibilities as a civilian for overseeing the Palestinian West Bank. And both of these ministers who are extremists were also squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank and wanted to steal the rest of it to bring in more settlers.

„beyond fascism“. In 2015-2016 I became quite aware that while I was reading people like Sheldon Wolin, Chalmers Johnson, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and nodding my head in agreement I didn’t have as much theoretical knowledge as I’d like of some of the concepts I was reading about. When Wolin writes of „inverted totalitarianism“ what, really, do we mean by „totalitarianism“? What does Robert Paxton mean by „fascism“? Happily there is no shortage of material to read on this.

Less happily I found it difficult – no here really „impossible“ is much more fitting – to even begin to discuss anything like this with coworkers, family, acquaintances. Even to attempt discussion on „fascism“, like „capitalism“ immediately makes it clear that one is to be avoided. Also clear was that the part of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here which was obviously fantasy was the idea of any significant resistance posed to American political movements which cheerfully wrap themselves in a US flag while stamping the bloodied corpse of democracy into the mud. A vapid obese American public is alternately captivated/bored. Thank God Trump is not in the White House! What else is on Netflix?

Now Americans watch „beyond fascism“ commit genocide day after day in Gaza. At a Palestine demonstration yesterday I asked two young Italian women what properly to call Meloni. They were surprised at the question: she’s a fascist, of course. They quickly proceeded to explain the background for this, how appropriate the term is given her associations, backers, platform, actions.

Public political discourse in Germany, as in the US, is extremely narrow, and shows no signs of broadening. The question of whether dystopia will manifest as more 1984 or more Brave New World has become moot. We are the beneficiaries of a world where we can have both. „Can have“? We wouldn’t have it any other way, this seems daily apparent.

Berliner Zeitung:

Als Nächstes spricht auf der Demonstration Udi Raz, eine Vertreterin des Vereins „Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost“. Der Verein hatte für sein Engagement 2019 den Göttinger Friedenspreis erhalten, wird vom Zentralrat der Juden aber für seine Nähe zur Boykottbewegung BDS kritisiert. Udi Raz, selbst in der Hafenstadt Haifa im Norden Israels geboren und aufgewachsen, trägt ebenfalls eine Kufiya um den Hals und spricht in ihrer Rede von Israel als einem „rassistischen System“, in dem Muslime nicht die gleichen Rechte hätten wie Juden. „Unsere Vorfahren, die den Holocaust in Deutschland überlebt haben, haben uns sehr klar gemacht, was es bedeutet, wenn eine Bevölkerungsgruppe sich als die herrschende Klasse geriert.“

Raz wurde vor ein paar Tagen vom Jüdischen Museum entlassen, wo sie Führungen für Touristen anbot, weil sie von Israel als einem „Apartheidstaat“ sprach. Der Vorwurf wird seit einigen Jahren von Organisationen wie Amnesty International gegen Israel erhoben, von der amtierenden israelischen Netanjahu-Regierung aber als „falsch, einseitig und antisemitisch“ zurückgewiesen.

Franco “Bifo” Berardi, delivering lecture „How Will We Live?„, September 2023.

This is where I was last night. When you hear the police announce „The cries of ’stop the murder! stop the war!‘ are not allowed“ this is not a joke. This is the police force in a liberal democracy telling demonstrators they may not shout „Stop the murder! Stop the war!“

What’s even more striking is the replies to this tweet. There are dozens of people saying in more or less coarse reflexive Gleichschaltung that the police are correct, that „Stop the war!“ is anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas. Here is the stereotype of Germans being unquestioning rule-following robots come to life.

ACLU-Open-Letter-to-U.S.-College-and-University-Presidents-Embargoed-PDF

The Islamophobia today reminds me of post-9/11, but the fear in the US today is not from Iraqi Anthrax, Iraqi nuclear weapons, „the terrrorists“, but fear of other Americans, from those others, from the political and intellectual polarization which shows no sign of abating. In 2001-2003 when the US National Guard was stationed on the Golden Gate Bridge there was open discussion of people afraid to cross bridges, afraid to travel near national landmarks, for fear of The Terrorists™. I remember family members afraid to travel to central Philadelphia for fear of the Anthrax that might be sprayed by Iraqi drones launched by the Iraqi Atlantic fishing fleet prowling just off the coast. The potential threats as explained to me were absolutely laughable, however the fear was very real: a mushroom cloud might only be minutes away for many. Americans angrily and fearfully called for revenge on the Iraqis who, while perhaps not having anything to do with 9/11, seemed to hate us for our freedoms.

Today I don’t feel a German fear of Palestinians when Berlin police rip down posters, just as last night when the Kurfürstendamm was lined with police — I thought for a bit that there were more police vans than there were demonstrators until I saw the mass of largely women and younger people — the sense I get is that Germans aren’t afraid of demonstrators with Palestinian flags any more than they are afraid of college-age kids with buckets of orange paint. The flags and the paint are not approved, however, thus making their carriers other, and so fair game for attack and abuse, like the Letzte Generation young woman thrown by a policeman to the pavement on Monday.

Lashing out in fear, having a helpless population to visit rejection on, seems a way to take some sort of action as well, both in Germany and the US. Universal fears, about the destruction of the planet’s ability to sustain human civilization, fear of the out of control concentration of wealth, fear of escalating numbers of immigrants, have some outlet.