Mondoweiss – January 13, 2024
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 99:
Yet another Gaza hospital runs out of power, as demonstrators across the globe call for ceasefire
New U.S. strikes on Yemen spark fears of regional escalation as Ansar Allah vows to continue fighting for Palestine. Meanwhile, Germany asks to join Israel’s side in the ICJ case.
BY MONDOWEISS PALESTINE BUREAU
Casualties
- 23,843 killed* and at least 60,317 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 385+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
- 520 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 2,193 injured.**
- *This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 12. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 30,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.
**This figure is according to a release by the Israeli military.
Key Developments
- Israel continues to pummel Gaza, killing at least 135 Palestinians in span of 24 hours, Ministry of Health warns that 1.3 million people taking refuge in Rafah.
- Telecommunications cut in Gaza for at least seventh time, impeding ability of emergency services to reach people injured in airstrikes on time, and limiting information coming out of Gaza.
- Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah officially out of electricity, putting lives of many patients, including newborn babies, at risk.
- Israel responds to accusations of genocide levied by South Africa, Germany requests that International Court of Justice allow it to stand as third party testifying in favor of Israel.
- South Africa states it is unconvinced by Israel’s claims of “self-defense”: “There is nothing justifying the way Israel wages war on Gaza. Self-defense does not justify genocide.”
- U.S. military bombards Yemen for second day, Ansar Allah rebels vow to continue to apply pressure on Israel via Red Sea. International community split amid fears of regional conflagration.
- Israeli forces kill at least three Palestinians in occupied West Bank, including three teenagers who allegedly carried out attack on illegal Israeli settlement near Hebron.
- U.N. Security Council rejects Israeli calls for forced displacement of Gaza civilians, humanitarian officials beg for a ceasefire.
- Israel continues to shell southern Lebanon, Hezbollah retaliates.
- Thousands take to the streets around world on Saturday with one message: Ceasefire now.
- No respite from death and devastation in Gaza
On the eve of 100 days of unfettered violence, and one day after Israel argued in front of the world’s highest court that it was doing all it could to spare civilians in Gaza, the tiny blockaded Palestinian territory continued to face indiscriminate bombardment, injury, death, starvation, cold, and thirst.
According to the official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA, deadly Israeli strikes hit Gaza City, Khan Younis, Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Juhor al-Dik, Zuwaida, and the refugee camps of al-Bureij, al-Maghazi, and Nuseirat since Friday.
Meanwhile, Palestinian factions reported that ground fighting with Israeli forces was ongoing in the areas of Khan Younis and Beit Lahia.
The Gaza Ministry of Health reported that Israeli attacks had killed at least 135 Palestinians and injured 312 more in the span of 24 hours. The ministry toll — which currently stands at 23,843 killed and 60,317 wounded — does not include the thousands of people reported missing and those who have succumbed to hunger, thirst, illness, or cold related to the stringent Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza since October 7.
“Children in the Gaza Strip face a deadly triple threat to their lives, as cases of diseases rise, their nutrition status plummets, and the escalation of hostilities approaches its fourteenth week,” UNICEF warned on Friday.
Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said on Saturday that more than half of Gaza’s population was now crammed into the southernmost Rafah governorate, where they continue to be bombed.
“The infrastructure, services and health infrastructure in Rafah is fragile and cannot bear the needs of 1.3 million citizens and displaced people,” he wrote in a statement.
Meanwhile, Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital in Deir al-Balah reported that it had run out of fuel on Friday night, leaving its patients, including babies in incubators, in the dark.
“There are children and patients who are at risk of death because the electrical generators have completely stopped,” the hospital’s director warned on Friday. “We hold all competent authorities fully responsible for this disaster if it occurs. We call on the countries of the world to intervene immediately to supply hospitals, especially Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, with fuel before we announce the death of dozens of sick, wounded, and children in intensive care and nursery departments.”
AnﾠAl Jazeera correspondent said people who had taken shelter at the hospital now faced the difficult decision of whether to stay put or risk leaving: “It’s very risky for patients who are trying to leave… The hospital is located in an area that is considered to be a battle zone.”
This dire warning came as Palestinian telecommunication companies Paltel and Ooredo announced that all internet and communication services were out of service in Gaza as of Friday night – making it at least the seventh blackout in Gaza since October 7. As a result, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said it had lost all contact with its medic crews, making it nearly impossible to dispatch rescue teams effectively to the scenes of bombings.
While mobile clinics have tried to palliate some of the gaps in Gaza’s devastated health care system, international aid deliveries, especially to northern Gaza, have been extremely limited due to Israeli restrictions.
“In particular, [Israeli officials] have been very systematic in not allowing us to support hospitals, which is something that is reaching a level of inhumanity that, for me, is beyond comprehension,” U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Andrea De Domenicom said in a press conference.
Meanwhile, CARE International sounded the alarm regarding the devastating toll of the war on pregnant women.
“From what we hear from our staff and partners, there are women who do not survive childbirth. Premature babies die or will have to live with lifelong disabilities, as they do not receive the necessary medical support. One hundred days of war have brought darkness and destruction, and the suffering, especially of mothers and children, is simply unimaginable,” CARE acting deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Hiba Tibi said. “The joyous time of having a baby is now overshadowed by dread and desperation given the many dangers mothers and their babies are facing.”
While Israel seems little concerned with the deliberate devastation of Gaza’s health care and its effects on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that it had reached an agreement to have vital medication transferred to the estimated 132 hostages held by Palestinian groups in Gaza since October 7.
U.S. continues to bomb Yemen as Ansar Allah vows to continue fighting for Palestine
Yemen has risen to the top of news coverage since Thursday, when the U.S. and the U.K. struck dozens of areas in the impoverished country, in retaliation for the attacks waged by Ansar Allah (commonly known as “the Houthis”) on maritime trade in the Red Sea. U.S. forces carried out more strikes on Sanaa on Friday night.
The Ansar Allah movement has repeatedly said it is deliberately applying pressure on this important trade route in order to inflict economic losses on Israel and support the Palestinian people as they face unbridled Israeli violence. Their attacks on ships passing in the area have so far not caused any casualties.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Ansar Allah a “terrorist” group on Friday, condemning its “outrageous” actions in the Red Sea. U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps meanwhile warned that the world was “running out of patience” with Iran, which he held responsible for instigating the actions of its allies in Yemen.
The British and American incursion has not been universally embraced, however, as European countries and regional powers like Saudi Arabia have been reportedly split over this move, which some experts have called a ﾓdangerousﾔ escalation of violence in the region.
The military leader of Ansar Allah, Mahdi al-Mashat, vowed that his movement would not be deterred.
“We will continue to prevent Israeli ships or those headed to occupied Palestine, regardless of the cost, and we hold the Americans and the British responsible for militarizing international navigation,” he said in a statement. “The solution lies in stopping the American-supported Israeli aggression against our brothers in Gaza, not in aggression against Yemen.”
“We say to our brothers in Palestine and our people in Gaza that our blood is not more precious than yours, and we are at peace with our conscience knowing that we are actively participating with you,” he added.
Israeli forces kill at least four Palestinians in the West Bank
Back in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces continued to wage deadly raids in a number of Palestinian refugee camps and towns, as Palestinian factions claimed responsibility for several attacks on Israeli targets.
Israeli forces killed three Palestinian teenagers — identified as cousins Ismail Ahmad Abu Jahisha, 19, Mahmoud Arafat Abu Jahisha, 16, and Uday Ismail Abu Jahisha,16 — after they reportedly infiltrated the illegal Israeli settlement of Adora west of Hebron overnight, injuring one soldier.
Israeli forces then raided the Abu Jahishasﾒ hometown of Idhna, detaining and beating relatives, and confiscating at least 30 vehicles.
Armed clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents were meanwhile reported in Azzun, al-Faraﾒa, and Nour Shams refugee camps, injuring several, while Palestinian factions claimed a number of small-scale attacks in the areas of the Zawata, Shaked, and Kfar Etzion settlements, as well as the Jalameh checkpoint.
Israeli forces meanwhile shot, beat, and killed 19-year-old Khalid Ahmad Zubeid in the small town of Zita in the Tulkarem governorate.
More overnight raids were reported in the Jenin and Bethlehem governorates.
Germany sides with Israel, protesters the world over call for ceasefire
In the rest of the world, the International Court of Justice hearings continue to reverberate. After Israel rejected any accusations of genocide and insisted it was conducting a war of “self-defense,” Germany requested to join the case to intervene as a third party on Israel’s case — a reportedly unusual step that would need to be approved by the court.
The Palestinian Authority expressed its “dismay” at Berlin’s decision, which it said “revealed an unyielding German readiness to shield Israel from any form of international accountability, irrespective of the court, the substance of the case, or the scope of the misery it inflicts. It is deeply regrettable. We urge the German government to reconsider.”
Meanwhile, South Africa, which presented the case to the ICJ, said it stood firm in its assertions and was not convinced by Israel’s claims of innocence.
“There is nothing justifying the way Israel wages war on Gaza. Self-defense does not justify genocide,” South African Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola said on Friday. “The State of Israel today has failed to disprove South Africa’s compelling case that was presented before the ICJ yesterday. We stand by the facts, the law, and all the evidence we have submitted.”
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council held another meeting on Friday regarding the situation in Gaza, during which humanitarian officials reiterated what, at this point, is a well-known warning: nowhere in Gaza is safe.
“The unacceptably high civilian casualty rate, the nearly complete destruction of essential civilian infrastructure, the displacement of an overwhelming percentage of the population and the abominable humanitarian conditions in which 2.2 million people are being forced to endure raise very serious concerns about the potential commission of war crimes, while the risk of further grave violations, even atrocity crimes, is real,” OHCHR Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris told the council.
Far from the halls of power, supporters of Palestine around the world were taking to the streets this weekend, calling for an immediate ceasefire.
While protesters gathered on Friday in Jordan and Yemen, at the time of writing, thousands of people were marching on Saturday in New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Hungary, Pakistan, the U.K., and other locations. These widespread global protests continue to take place despite the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s report to the UN on Friday detailing the “alarming level of repression” of pro-Palestine activists in the U.K., France, and Germany.
Countercurrent – January 13, 2024
Israel’s War on Palestine and the Global Upsurge Against It
By Vijay Prashad
Hundreds of millions of people across the world have been deeply moved by the atrocity of the Israeli war on Palestine. Millions have attended marches and protests, many of them participating in such demonstrations for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with memes and posts about this or that terrible action. Some people focus on the Israeli attack on Palestinian children, others on the illegal targeting of Gaza’s health infrastructure, and yet others point to the annihilation of at least four hundred families (more than ten people in each family killed). The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing. Holidays in December went by, but the intensity of the protests and the posts remained steady. No attempt by social media companies to turn the algorithm against the Palestinians succeeded, no attempt to ban the protests—even the display of the Palestinian flag—worked. Accusations of antisemitism fell flat and demands for the condemnation of Hamas were dismissed. This is a new mood, a new kind of attitude toward the Palestinian struggle.
Never before in the 75 previous years has there been such sustained attention to the cause of the Palestinians and of Israeli brutality. Israel has launched eight bombing campaigns on Gaza since 2006. . And Israel has built up an entire illegal structure against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (an apartheid wall, settlements, checkpoints). When Palestinians have tried to resist—whether through civic action or armed struggle—they have faced immense violence from the Israeli military. Ever since social media has been available, images from Palestine have circulated, including of the use of white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza, and including the arrest and murder of Palestinian children across the Occupied Palestine Territory. But none of the previous acts of violence evoked the kind of response from around the world as this violence that began in October 2023.
Genocide
The Israeli armed violence against Gaza since October has been in a qualitatively different form than any previous violence. The bombardment of Gaza was vicious, with Israeli aircraft hitting residential areas with no concern for civilian life. The number of dead increased day by day at a rate not seen before. Then, when Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, they effected an illegal mass eviction of the Palestinian civilians from their homes and pushed them further and further south toward the border with Egypt. The Israelis violated their own promises of “safe zones,” hitting areas more densely packed than before because of the internal displacement. It was this scale of violence that provoked an early use of the term “genocide” to describe what was happening in Gaza. By early January, more than 1 percent of the entire Palestinian population in Gaza had been killed, while over 95 percent had been displaced. The kind of violence used here was not seen in any contemporary war, neither in Iraq (where the U.S. disregarded most laws of war) nor in Ukraine (where the death toll of civilians is far smaller despite the war now lasting two years).
The momentum of mass protest pushed the government of South Africa to file a dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for the crime of genocide. Both countries are parties to the 1948 Convention Against Genocide, and the ICJ is the venue for dispute settlements. The 84-page filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel, and also, crucially, the words of Israeli high officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list the Israeli officials in their own words, many of them calling for a “Second Nakba” or a “Gaza Nakba,” a use of the term “Nakba” or Catastrophe that refers to the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the State of Israel. These words are chilling, and they have been widely circulated since October. Racist language about “monsters,” “animals,” and the “jungle” shape the speeches and statements by these Israeli government officials. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9, 2023, that his forces are “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” This, along with the character of the Israeli military strikes, is sufficient as a benchmark for the accusation of genocide. At the hearing at the ICJ, Israel was unable to respond credibly to the South African complaint.
It is a combination of the images from Gaza and the words of these Israeli high officials—backed fully by the United States government and many of the governments of European states—that provoked the sustained anger and desolation that has driven these mass protests.
Legitimacy
Over the course of the past two years—from the start of the war in Ukraine until now—there has been a rapid decline in the legitimacy of the West, notably the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States. These wars are not the cause of this drop in legitimacy, but they have accelerated the decline in the legitimacy of the NATO countries, particularly in the Global South.
Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, over technology and science, and over raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their “tax strike” and withdrew a large share of social wealth into tax havens and into unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including by making investments in the Global South. That role was slowly taken up by China, which has been recycling global profits into infrastructural projects across the world. Rather than contest China’s Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, through its own commercial and economic project, the Global North has sought to militarize its response with massive spending (three-quarters of global military spending is by the NATO states). The Global North has used Ukraine and Taiwan as levers to provoke Russia and China into military conflicts so as to ‘weaken’ them rather than contest growing Russian energy power and Chinese industrial and technological power through trade and development.
It is clear to the majority of people in the world that it is the Global North that has failed to address the crises in the world, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute a language of euphemism for reality, using terms such as “democracy promotion,” “sustainable development,” “humanitarian pause,” and—from UK Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock—the ridiculous formulation of a “sustainable ceasefire.” Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a “sustainable ceasefire” while arming Israel or to speak of “democracy promotion” while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.
The Israelis say that they will continue this genocidal war for as long as it takes. As each day goes by of this war, the legitimacy of Israel deteriorates. But behind that violence itself is the much deeper end of the legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/israels-war-on-palestine-and-the-global-upsurge-against-it/
World Socialist Web Site – January 13, 2024
The US/UK attack on Yemen and the global eruption of imperialist war
WSWS Editorial Board
The World Socialist Web Site unequivocally condemns Thursday’s attack by the United States and United Kingdom against Yemen. With no popular mandate, with no congressional or parliamentary authorization, without even an attempt at a serious explanation, the Biden administration in the US and the Sunak government in the UK have carried out an illegal act of war against an impoverished nation.
The attack on Yemen is a major escalation of the developing war in the Middle East. Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the US and its imperialist allies in NATO have overseen a massive militarization of the region, directly targeting Iran. This is itself part of an expanding global war, including the US-NATO war against Russia and the developing economic and military conflict against China.
US President Joe Biden did not even see fit to go on national television to explain the launching of a new war, under conditions in which there is overwhelming popular opposition to the expansion of war in the Middle East. As the Pentagon was planning to attack Yemen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was admitted to the intensive care unit of Walter Reed Hospital, with the knowledge of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but unbeknownst to the president. This bizarre episode underscored the reality that US war-making is operating on autopilot, increasingly outside the pretense of civilian oversight.
As always, the rationale provided to justify the war is a pack of lies. Biden declared that the missile strikes were “defensive” and “a direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks.” The American media, with the same breathless reporting that has accompanied every US military operation, proclaims that a country with a gross domestic product 700 times smaller than the United States is carrying out “intolerable” actions, against which the American military is “forced” to defend itself. Overnight, Yemen’s Houthis have been turned into a new bogeyman, requiring urgent military action without any discussion or explanation.
In coordination with the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the United States has dispatched to the Middle East a massive military armada, consisting of two aircraft carrier battle groups, multiple guided missile destroyers, an unknown number of submarines and dozens of warplanes. These forces have provided logistics, reconnaissance, and target selection to Israel, in a deliberate effort to provoke retaliation from Iran and its allied forces such as the Houthis.
Yet, supposedly it is Yemen that is the “aggressor,” carrying out “unprecedented attacks” on US military forces deployed in the Red Sea, thousands of miles from the US border. American imperialism, which has a military larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, claims to be waging a “defensive” war on the other side of the world against a small, oppressed and impoverished country.
“We’re not interested in a war with Yemen,” asserted the Pentagon on Friday, “We’re not interested in a conflict of any kind.”
In fact, the imperialist powers have been waging a war against the population of Yemen for nearly a decade. The Houthis in Yemen have been subject to ruthless slaughter, waged by Saudi Arabia but armed and financed by the United States. According to the United Nations, 377,000 people have been killed in a genocidal campaign that has involved blockades resulting in mass starvation and disease. First under Obama and then under Trump, the US financed this assault with more than $54 billion in military equipment, aided and abetted by its imperialist allies, including the UK.
The devastation of Yemen is part of more than 30 years of unending and expanding war, spearheaded and led by American imperialism, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-91. This included the first Gulf War in 1990; the dismantling of Yugoslavia, culminating in the war against Serbia in 1999; the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; the second war against Iraq in 2003; the war against Libya in 2011; and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria that began the same year.
Every single administration since that of Bill Clinton has authorized military operations, airstrikes, and destabilization operations in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aiden from Yemen, seeking to control the critical waterway leading to the Suez Canal.
The launching of military strikes against Yemen marks a new stage in the deepening imperialist military offensive throughout the Middle East and beyond. The US and its imperialist allies are waging a de facto war against Iran, working to eliminate Iran’s military allies throughout the Middle East. The strikes against Yemen are directed at encircling Iran and provoking it into retaliation against US forces, which could be used to justify a full-scale war against Tehran.
The immediate antecedent for the escalating war in the Middle East, of which the genocide in Gaza is a part, is the collapse of Ukraine’s “spring offensive.” But the imperialist powers are doubling down. “Backing Ukraine is key to the West’s security,” declares The Economist, while Foreign Affairs asserts that “Victory Is Ukraine’s Only True Path to Peace.”
Overriding all of this, the United States is involved in a struggle to fend off the challenge posed by China to its global hegemony, which threatens to trigger a shooting war in the Pacific. In the US media and political circles, there is growing talk of a new “axis of evil” involving Iran, China and Russia.
Each one of these conflicts cannot be understood in isolation. The bombing of Yemen is part of a global counter-revolution, in which the imperialist powers are seeking to reestablish direct control over their former colonies.
The countries carrying out this agenda are the old imperialist powers: the US, UK, France, and Germany. The British ruling class, unable to carry through its policies independently, seeks to exploit the so-called special relationship, that is, Britain’s role as the principal ally of American imperialism, to advance its own interests on a global stage.
Every war launched by the US and its imperialist allies has ended in one bloody debacle after the other, with millions of people killed. But each disaster only reinforces the determination of US imperialism to use war as a means to secure its global hegemony.
American Imperialism, to paraphrase the words of Leon Trotsky, is “tobogganing towards disaster with eyes closed.”
Over the past three months, millions of people all over the world have marched in protest of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. The US strikes on Yemen occurred on the same day as the International Court of Justice heard devastating evidence that Israel, and by extension the United States, were responsible for genocide in Gaza.
The response of US imperialism to these mass popular protests and exposures of its war crimes has been to accelerate its war plans. This is because the eruption of war, genocide and political repression is not an aberration. Imperialism, as Lenin explained, is not merely a policy but rather a specific historical stage of capitalist development. Opposition to imperialism is, therefore, a revolutionary question.
It is not a matter of appealing to the capitalist governments responsible for these crimes to alter course but rather mobilizing the working class, fusing the struggle against war with the developing struggles of workers all over the world against inequality and exploitation. The logic of these struggles requires the conquest of political power by workers all over the world, the expropriation of the capitalist oligarchs and war criminals, and the socialist reorganization of economic life on a world scale.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/13/dlzo-j13.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Countercurrent – January 13, 2024
Futile and Dangerous: Bombing Yemen in the Name of Shipping
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
What a show. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza, a decision was made by his government, the United Kingdom and a few other reticent collaborators to strike targets in Yemen, including the capital Sana’a. These were done, purportedly, as retribution for attacks on international commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants. “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.
US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”
The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza. As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact. Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”
But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all. Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests. No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter. A White House statement on January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003. (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.) On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.
On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast. Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.
In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.” He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.” No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.
In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress. Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted. “The American people are tired of endless war.” Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence. We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”
A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.” Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie. “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.
Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict. These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.
There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia. Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation. The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country. There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action. Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.
In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.” He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country. He had done so without consulting Parliament.
Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure. Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work. They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping. The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.” The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.” Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities. All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/futile-and-dangerous-bombing-yemen-in-the-name-of-shipping/
World Socialist Web Site – January 13, 2024
Davos report highlights deepening capitalist crisis
by Nick Beams
In its opening perspectives statement of the New Year, the WSWS editorial board began by drawing the sharp contrast between the rosy predictions of a new era of capitalist peace, prosperity and democracy following the liquidation of the Soviet Union with the ever-deepening barbarity of today.
The appropriateness of that approach has been underscored by another report, that of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in preparation for its annual meeting next week in Davos, Switzerland, where politicians, corporate chiefs, billionaires, and various luminaries will gather.
The WEF was one of the chief promoters of the virtues of the capitalist free market which would show its full potential freed from past constraints under the guidance of “Davos man.”
Its Global Risks Report for next week’s meeting, convened under the banner “Rebuilding Trust,” painted a picture of a series of unmitigated, interconnected disasters.
The tone of the report was set in the preface by WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi who wrote that the report was “set against the background of accelerating technological change and economic uncertainty, as the world is plagued by a duo of dangerous crises: climate and conflict.”
Significantly, while it never used the term, the report pointed to the rising tide of class struggle around the world on the very first page. It noted that in 2023: “Societal discontent was palpable in many countries, with news cycles dominated by polarization, violent protests and strikes.”
It pointed to growing environmental risks resulting from climate change, warning they could “hit the point of no return” and that two-thirds of the 1,500 experts it surveyed for its report cited “extreme weather as the top risk most likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2024.”
It warned of the consequences of passing at least one “climate tipping point” within the next decade—a rise in global temperatures by 1.5 degrees. Global warming threatens to impact climate vulnerable populations even before that threshold is reached. The report noted that the Northern Hemisphere had just experienced its hottest summer in recorded history.
“The collective ability of societies to adapt could be overwhelmed, considering the sheer scale of the potential impacts and infrastructure investment requirements, leaving some communities and countries unable to absorb both the acute and chronic effects of rapid climate change.”
It noted that the elections over 2024, as close to three billion people go to the polls, in conditions of what it called the spread of misinformation and disinformation “may undermine the legitimacy of newly elected governments.” This could result in civil unrest ranging from “violent protests and hate crimes to civil confrontation and terrorism.”
In other words, there could be a complete breakdown of the democratic order, which previously the WEF claimed would flow from the operation of the free market economy.
The response of governments would be a further evisceration of democracy as they “could be increasingly empowered to control information based on what they determined to be ‘true.’ Freedoms relating to the internet, press and access to wider sources of information that are already in decline risk descending into broader repression of information flow across a wider set of countries.”
Amid the ongoing Ukraine war and the Israeli genocidal onslaught on Gaza, now threatening an escalation to the rest of the Middle East, together with the rising US-China tensions, the report said “interstate armed conflict” was a new entrant into the top risk rankings for the next two years.
It linked that danger to one of the most significant developments of 2023—the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). In a rationally organised society based on the collective development and use of the productive forces in accordance with democratic planning and organisation, AI would provide the basis for tremendous social advancement.
Under capitalism, where social relations are based on private property and profit and a system of rival and conflicting nation-states and great powers, it contributes to war as the WEF report laid out.
“The growing internationalization of conflicts by a whole set of powers [no one is named and specifically not the US] could lead to deadlier, prolonged warfare and overwhelming humanitarian crises. With multiple states engaged in proxy, and perhaps even direct warfare, the incentives to condense decision-making through the integration of AI will grow. The creep of machine intelligence into conflict decision-making—to autonomously select targets and determine objectives— would significantly raise the risk of accidental or intentional escalation over the next decade.”
On the economic front, the report said the cost-of-living crisis was of major concern for the outlook with the risks of inflation and an economic downturn “notable new entrants to the top 10 risk rankings” over the next two years.
“Although a ‘softer landing’ appears to be prevailing for now, the near-term outlook remains highly uncertain” with multiple pressures from the supply side looming.
“And if interest rates remain high for longer, small- and medium-sized enterprises and heavily indebted countries will be particularly exposed to debt distress.”
This is something of an understatement because the entire edifice of US finance capital has been based on an ultra-low interest rate regime. The continuation of the central bank’s interest rate of 5 percent, once considered well within the normal range, for any prolonged period could set off a crisis.
Last year, seemingly out of the blue, the rise in interest rates in the US led to three of the four largest bank failures in history.
The conditions which produced it have not gone away. As the report stated: “Weak systems only require the smallest shock to pass the tipping point of resilience.” It warned that “corrosive socioeconomic vulnerabilities will be amplified in the near term,” including looming concerns about an economic downturn and interstate conflict.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the WEF report was the concluding section in which it canvassed the prospects for a solution to the deepening and interconnected crises it had outlined.
In a document running to more than one hundred pages it comprised only eight, signifying that the global elites have no answer to the breakdown of the system over which they preside.
The report pointed out that “collaborative effort remains the cornerstone of addressing global risks.” But then, in obvious recognition of the deepening national and greater power conflicts which have rendered such cooperation null and void, it offered the prospect that not all global risks required “deep global cooperation as the only viable solution.”
But even if it was launched, this prospect foundered on the reactionary nation-state system, which stands as the chief obstacle to any rational solution to the deepening crises.
As the report put it: “As with public goods, the risk reduction efforts tend to suffer from the ‘free rider problem.’ In a world characterised by different and at times competing power centres pursuing their own interests, governments may be incentivised to transfer the burden of preparedness to others, while reaping the benefits of others’ investments without incurring the costs.”
In other words, in the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism, it is every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.
Global cooperation and collaboration, which is necessary to resolve the existential crisis into which capitalism has plunged civilisation, can only take place if based on a social force whose material interests are grounded on the abolition of the nation-state and profit system and reconstruction of society on socialist foundations, that is, the international working class.
The perspective and program for which it must actively fight was laid out in the New Year statement of the WSWS editorial board.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/13/ppmr-j13.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
