Countercurrent – February 14, 2024

US gives Israel blank check to massacre civilians in Rafah

By Andre Damon

In multiple statements over the past 24 hours, US officials have made clear that they will take no action against Israel no matter how many civilians it massacres in its planned assault on Rafah, where one million displaced people are sheltering. These statements effectively give Israel a blank check to commit unrestrained war crimes in its assault on the city.

On Monday, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked whether the United States will reduce its military aid to Israel if it assaults Rafah without taking into consideration “what happens to civilians.”

To this, Kirby replied, “We will continue to support Israel. They have a right to defend themselves against Hamas, and we will continue to make sure they have the tools and capabilities to do that.”

To drive this point home, Politico reported on Tuesday, based on statements by three US officials, that “The Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety.”

Politico continued, “No reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.”

Over one million Palestinians have been forced into Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, as a result of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign throughout the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear on Sunday that Israel intends to proceed with a full-scale military assault on Rafah, pledging “final victory.”

On Sunday, Biden declared, “The major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than 1 million people sheltering there.”

The statements by Kirby and the officials who spoke on background to Politico made it clear that this declaration is meaningless, and that the United States will endorse Israeli actions no matter how many people it massacres.

In a testament to how brazenly American imperialism is endorsing the genocide, Kirby was asked again on Tuesday, “What happens if Israel does not provide this plan and moves into Rafah?”

Kirby dismissed the question as a “game,” declaring, “I’m not going to get into a hypothetical game.”

The question is, however, neither a game nor hypothetical. Israel is killing between 100 and 200 people every single day in Gaza, and the death toll stands above 35,000. These victims were killed by US bombs, launched with US logistical support, and given political cover by the Biden administration.

The open support for Israel’s genocidal actions is all the more striking given statements by figures within the US political establishment that Israel is committing war crimes.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen accused Israel of committing a war crime by withholding food from the population of Gaza. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. … That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.” This did not stop Van Hollen from voting for a bill that includes billions in additional funding for Israel.

If these words apply to the Netanyahu government, they apply with even greater force to the Biden administration.

Israel continued to pound Rafah with airstrikes on Tuesday, killing dozens of people in the city even before the planned full-scale invasion. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 133 people were killed between Monday and Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that a “potential full-fledged military incursion into Rafah—where some 1.5 million Palestinians are crammed into a tiny area—is terrifying, given the prospect that an extremely high number of civilians, again mostly children and women, will likely be killed and injured.”

On Tuesday, the World Food Program said in a statement that its efforts to feed starving people in Gaza were “constantly hampered” by the Israeli government. “WFP is deeply concerned about an expanded military offensive in Rafah, where over a million people are crammed into a tiny area. WFP has expanded our distribution points, but efforts to reach people in need throughout Gaza are constantly hampered,” it added. “There is nowhere safe.”

United Nations humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths warned that the looming offensive against Rafah would be a “slaughter,” declaring, “Today, I am sounding the alarm once again: Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza. They could also leave an already fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), meanwhile, confirmed that it received a request by South Africa to intervene to stop the assault on Rafah. In its filing, South Africa “calls upon the Court to consider as a matter of the greatest urgency whether the developing circumstances in Rafah require that it exercise its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Last month, the ICJ ruled that Israel could “plausibly” be committing genocide in Gaza. But in the wake of the ruling, Israel, with the support of the US, has only intensified its bombing of civilians, summary mass executions and deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces targeted Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar, seriously injuring him and photojournalist Ahmed Matar. In a statement, Al Jazeera wrote that the attack is “a full-fledged crime added to Israel’s crimes against journalists, and a new part in the series of the deliberate targeting of Al Jazeera’sjournalists and correspondents in Palestine.”

Israeli officials, meanwhile, have threatened to expand the geographic scope of the war. On Tuesday, the Israeli military carried out strikes in southern Lebanon. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that there is “a realistic possibility” that the Israeli army will have “to return the northern residents to their homes forcefully,” implying a broader military offensive against Lebanon.

He added, “This means creating a different security situation by force, and that could lead to anything … we can reach anywhere we decide to go in Lebanon and beyond that.”

https://countercurrents.org/2024/02/us-gives-israel-blank-check-to-massacre-civilians-in-rafah/

World Socialist Web Site – February 14, 2024

In bipartisan vote, US Senate backs $95 billion for war in Ukraine

Jacob Crosse, Joseph Kishore

In a bipartisan 70-29 vote Tuesday morning, the US Senate advanced a $95.3 billion military funding package centered on expanding the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, continuing the genocide in Gaza and preparing for war with China. Working through the night, the vast majority of Democrats voted to approve the bill, with only two voting against, while a near-majority of Republicans, 22 out of the 48 voting, gave their support.

Following the bill’s passage in the Senate, President Biden delivered an afternoon address demanding that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson “bring it to the floor immediately.” Johnson had said that he would not allow a vote unless it was paired with the anti-immigrant “Secure Our Border Act,” which was passed by Republicans in the House last summer.

Biden’s speech was a full-throated call for global military escalation to defend the geopolitical imperatives of American imperialism.

It focused first of all on the situation in Ukraine, for which the bill provides more than $60 billion in funding. The US-backed Zelensky government is mired in crisis following the failure of the “spring offensive” last year, combined with the disastrous consequences of the two-year-long war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

Describing the situation, Biden declared, “Ukrainian soldiers out of artillery shells, Ukrainian units rationing rounds of ammunition to defend themselves, Ukrainian families worried that the next Russian strike will permanently plunge them into darkness or worse.”

Biden’s professed concern for “Ukrainian families” and soldiers is the height of imperialist hypocrisy. After it instigated the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration has repeatedly rejected any negotiated settlement to the conflict, which continues to this day. Yesterday, Reuters reported, citing Russian sources, “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion of a ceasefire in Ukraine to freeze the war was rejected by the United States after contacts between intermediaries.”

The US and NATO imperialist powers have bled the country white in their determination to impose a military defeat on Russia. The death toll is so great that the Zelensky government is attempting to lower the draft age to dragoon more youth into the battle, under conditions of growing opposition within Ukraine itself.

An article in the New York Times published earlier this week declared that lowering the draft age “would bring more lithe, healthy soldiers to the fight but would pose long-term risks for sustaining Ukraine’s population, given the country’s demographics.” In language that reeks of the romanticization of slaughter, the Times acknowledged that “sustaining Ukraine’s population” is an open question. In other words, imperialism is fighting to the last Ukrainian—literally.

Biden then turned to the Middle East, where he focused on the military buildup in the Red Sea, targeting Iran. He only briefly referred to the second largest component of the bill—another $14 billion for Israel and the continuation of the genocide against the Palestinian people.

With consummate cynicism and imperialist hypocrisy, Biden claimed that the bill included measures to “provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, who desperately need food, water and shelter.” Millions of Palestinians are in desperate need, and more than 35,000 are dead, because of a slaughter and bombardment carried out with the full financial and military resources of the United States.

In fact, unlike initial iterations of the bill, this war package strictly prohibits any funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is the main humanitarian aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon, upon which millions rely.

The pittance of “aid” provided to suffering Palestinians in the bill through the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development contains several onerous oversight and reporting requirements. These include a requirement that procedures for delivering aid be developed “in coordination with other bilateral and multilateral donors and the Government of Israel, as appropriate.”

It is as if an arsonist set fire to a neighborhood, murdered many of its residents, and then provided a broom to assist in the clean-up, so long as this was done under the watchful eye of the arsonist himself—and as he goes on to destroy the rest of the city.

Finally, Biden said that the bill “includes critical funding for our national security priorities in Asia, because even as we focus on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, we must not take our eye off our national security challenges in the Pacific.” That is, the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza and the military buildup in the Middle East are seen as preparatory and part of the developing conflict with China.

The bill provides another $5 billion to this end, including nearly $2 billion for the procurement of Columbia class ballistic missile submarines as part of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) military arrangement. The Columbia class is capable of carrying up to 16 Trident D5 ballistic missiles, each of which can be equipped with a W88 thermonuclear warhead. The estimated yield of a W88 is 475 kilotons, which is more than 23 times as powerful as the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.

What happens with the bill now remains uncertain. While Trump and his most fervent supporters in the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives are opposing it, sections of the Republican Party are calling for it to be brought to a vote and passed.

The Republican Party-aligned Wall Street Journal editorialized after the Senate vote, calling it “a victory for American security that would buttress US defenses and hold the line against compounding dangers abroad.” Rejection of the bill, it wrote, “heralds weakness against China and Iran as much as it does Russia. Anyone who thinks a fight over Taiwan is coming should be rushing to pass $2 billion in weapons sales and training for [our] Pacific partners.”

For their part, several Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have raised the possibility of a “discharge petition.” This parliamentary maneuver would allow Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, with the support of even a handful of Republicans, to bring the bill to the floor without Johnson’s approval.

Whatever the immediate outcome, the process has starkly revealed the political dynamic in the United States.

The Democratic Party is a party of war and genocide. Its differences with the Trump faction of the Republican Party center primarily on issues of foreign policy, particularly in relation to Russia. Toward the end of his speech, Biden denounced Trump for accommodating to Putin, declaring, in reference to earlier remarks by Trump, “As long as I’m president, if Putin attacks a NATO ally, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

As for Trump and the other fascists in the Republican Party, they are no less ardent supporters of American imperialism than the Democrats. If Trump were to return to office, he would proceed with absolute viciousness to advance US imperialist interests abroad. The conflict over the bill reflects certain divisions within the ruling class over the orientation of war policy, and Trump also sees it as an opportunity to escalate his fascistic campaign against immigrants.

Biden declared in his remarks that “an inflection point in history” has been reached. This is indeed true, though in two very different senses. For Biden, it means that the American ruling elite, confronting a desperate crisis, must use military violence on an unprecedented scale to defeat its rivals, suppress popular opposition, maintain its global hegemony and thereby defend its profits and wealth.

For the working class of the United States and the entire world, however, the matter is posed differently. For the working class, it is a question of opposing the relentless escalation of imperialist brutality, including the normalization of genocide and nuclear war, which threatens all of humanity, through the development of a working class movement against the capitalist system and for socialism.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/14/kbsu-f14.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws 

World Socialist Web Site – February 14, 2024

Modi government unleashes massive police-military
crackdown against farmers’ protest

Our Reporter

India’s Narendra Modi-led, far-right BJP government has launched a massive state security operation to crush a farmers’ protest already joined by over 100,000 farmers and farm laborers. The crackdown has involved tens of thousands of police and para-militaries, the erection of huge multi-layered blockades at state borders, and drone-delivered tear-gas strikes.

The farmers are demanding the Modi government fulfill a promise to establish a minimum support price (MSP) for basic crops.

That promise was extracted from the government at the conclusion of a year-long farmer’s protest, the 2020-21 “Let’s go to Delhi” (Dilli Chalo) movement. For thirteen months, tens of thousands of farmers campedﾠon the outskirts of India’s National Capital Territory to demand the repeal of three recently adopted pro-agri business laws. Ultimately, the government was forced to beat a retreat and pledged to repeal some of the offending legislation, but it has since reneged on key promises.

Working in tandem with BJP state governments, Modi is determined to prevent a reprise of the 2020-21 mobilization, lest it derail his bid for a third term in office in India’s general elections which are to be held this spring .

On Monday, the day before the protest was to begin, the BJP state government in Haryana, which lies between Delhi and Punjab, the northwest Indian state where the farmers’ agitation is centered, implemented a raft of repressive measures. These included deploying 114 companies of paramilitaries and state police to districts adjacent to Punjab, blockading key roads and placing much of the state under Section 144 of the Criminal Code, which outlaws all public gatherings of four or more people. The government has also suspended mobile and internet services across much of the state through Feb. 15.

When farmers from Punjab reached the border with Haryana yesterday, they were confronted by barricades comprised of large concrete slabs and containers and barbed wire spread across the roads to prevent them from proceeding. Nails were also laid to puncture the tires of tractors and other vehicles as protesters passed. Like measures were taken at the border between Haryana and Delhi, with some 50,000 police deployed to prevent protesting farmers from entering the capital territory. The Delhi police are under the control of the BJP central government even though the territory is governed by the opposition AAP.  

Violent clashes soon erupted between the security forces and farmers. Haryana state police fired tear gas shells at farmers as they reached the Shambhu border crossing between Punjab and Haryana. At a crossing from Haryana into Delhi, media reported Special Commissioner of Police Ravindra Yadav inciting police via a bullhorn, “We have to fire tear gas shells, use lathis (batons) and save ourselves.”

At the end of the day, peasant/farmer representatives told a press conference, “Around 60 of our men have sustained injuries. The government is provoking us by attacking us with tear gas shells and rubber bullets.” Farmers’ leader Sarwan Singh Pandher called Tuesday, “a black day” in the “history of India. It is shameful the way the Modi government attacked farmers and farm leaders.”

The BJP government intended to commandeer a stadium in Delhi to detention protesting farmers en masse if they had succeed in entering the capital. However, the local AAP government refused to make it available, declaring that the issues over which the farmers were protesting were legitimate.

Ahead of Tuesday’s protest, police had already arrested hundreds of farmers at various places. For example, Madhya Pradesh police detained farmers who were heading to Delhi at the Bhopal railway station and in several other places on Sunday night. Madhya Pradesh farmer leader Anil Yadav and another leader were thrown in jail. A few days earlier, police brutally attacked a protest march on parliament by hundreds of farmers from Noida and Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

The Delhi police, for their part, have imposed prohibitory orders banning the entry for a month of any procession of tractors, trucks or other vehicles. The Hindu reported an order issued by Police Commissioner Sanjay Arore as proclaiming, “There will be a complete restriction on assembly of people, rallies and entry of tractor trolleys carrying people.”

The Modi government is determined to quash the farmer protest movement at the outset for fear that it will become a rallying point for mass opposition just as it is about to formally launch its campaign for re-election.

Backed by the most powerful sections of the Indian bourgeoisie and the corporate media and exploiting the spineless and right-wing character of its opponents within the political establishment, the Modi government has sought to project an image of political invincibility based on its supposed mass support.

An ongoing mass protest of farmers in India’s capital would put the lie to this false narrative, as well as to the associated fiction that under Modi India is experiencing rapid economic development and quickly becoming a “middle-income” country. In reality, the fruits of India’s capitalist growth have been monopolized by a thin crust of the most privileged layers of Indian society. Today the richest 1 percent of Indians own more than 40 percent of all the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent, more than 700 million people, own just 3 percent.

The Modi government resorted to brutal repression throughout the 2020-21 farmer protests, although ultimately it determined that an all-out clash with the farmers was too political risky under conditions where they enjoyed huge support within the working class and among rural toilers across India.   

The BJP government filed multiple legal cases against farmers and farm union leaders, while harassing and arresting activists who extended support to the farmers protests. Over 200 farmers died at the protest site from heart attacks, cold, COVID-19 and other illnesses. Among the farmers killed during the protest were four who died after being run over by a vehicle driven by the son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra.

In 2024, the Modi and BJP state governments are determined to crush the farmers’ agitation before it even begins. At the same time, as it did in 2021, it is trying to divide the various farmer organizations—most of which have ties to the opposition parties and are generally led by better-off farmers—with false promises.  

The Modi government confirmed late Tuesday it has agreed to a third round of talks with the farmer unions. This is expected to take place Wednesday. However, on the substance of the dispute, the government has made it clear that it intends to cede no ground, by repeatedly insisting on the “difficulties” in instituting MSP.  

“We are not averse to discussions,” said K.V. Biju, a senior leader of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (United Farmers’ Front)-Non Political or SKM-NP. “We will wait for the outcome of (the talks) and if they fail, farmers will breach the blockades and will start marching to Delhi.”  A split-off from the  Samyukt Kisan Morcha (United Farmers’ Front), which came into being during the 2020-21 farmers’ movement agitation, the SKM-NP is one of the two main organizations leading the current agitation. The other is the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha or KMM. 

In a joint action with some central trade union federations, the protesting farmer groups have called for a Grameen Bharat Bandh on February 16, during which they will suspend supply and purchase of vegetables and other crops and close government officers, and state-owned and private industry.

As would be expected, the opposition parties are trying to capitalise on the farmers’ protest to salvage their flagging electoral hopes. On Tuesday Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi claimed, “If INDIA alliance forms the government, we will give MSPs legal guarantee.”

Led by the Congress Party, till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of national government, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance is a right-wing electoral comprised of some two dozen parties, including the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI). While it denounces the Hindu supremacist BJP for betraying “secularism,” INDIA itself connives with the Hindu right and like the BJP supports further “pro-investor reform” and the anti-China Indo-US military-strategic alliance.

Significantly, farmer spokesmen Sarwan Singh Pandher, has dismissed the Congress’ claims to support the agitation for the MSP. “Congress Party,” he declared Tuesday, “does not support us.” No doubt expressing the sentiments of many farmers, he noted that the Congress Party had never introduced MSP in all the years it led India’s government: “We consider Congress equally responsible as much as the BJP. These laws were brought by Congress itself. We are not in favour of anyone, we raise the voice of farmers.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/14/krve-f14.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
 

 

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HEADLINES

 The Journal of America Team:

 Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott

Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab