Mondoweiss: July 1, 2024
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 269
Israel has killed 159 Palestinians and wounded 592 across the Gaza Strip since Thursday, June 27. This raises the death toll since October 7 to 37,877 and the number of wounded to 86,969, according to the Gaza health ministry.
BY QASSAM MUADDI
Casualties
37,877 + killed* and at least 86,969 wounded in the Gaza Strip. Among the killed, 28,152 have been fully identified. These include, as of May 1st, fully identified 7,779 children, 5466 women, and 2418 elderly. In addition, around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
554+ Palestinians killed in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. These include 135 children.**
Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
670 Israeli soldiers have been admitted killed since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on July 1st, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health on June 30, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded, according to declarations by the head of the Israeli army’s wounded association to Israel’s Channel 12, exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7, as of June 18.
Key Developments
Israel has killed 159 Palestinians and wounded 592 across the Gaza Strip since Thursday, June 27. This raises the death toll since October 7 to 37,877 and the number of wounded to 86,969, according to the Gaza health ministry.
U.S. amends ceasefire deal proposal, Hamas says it is ready to negotiate any proposal that guarantees a permanent end to the war, while Netanyahu insists on continuing the war.
Gallant says the Israeli government will soon decide how to “change the security situation” on the Lebanese border.
Israeli opposition leader Lapid says that opposition is having talks with Likud members to bring down Netanyahu’s government “in order to save the state.”
Tens of thousands of Israelis protest in 80 locations to demand resignation of Netanyahu government and prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.
Some 60,000 Palestinians forced to flee their homes in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City under Israeli airstrikes as Israel continues its attack on the neighborhood for the fifth day in a row.
Israeli army admits 33 wounded soldiers over the weekend, including 22 in the Gaza Strip, as fighting with the Palestinian resistance continues.
Israel releases 50 Palestinians from Gaza, including the director of al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiyah, detained since last November.
Benny Gantz and Itamar Ben-Gvir separately criticize the Israeli prison services and the Israeli intelligence for releasing al-Shifa Hospital’s director.
Ben-Gvir responds to critics of reducing food for Palestinian detainees, saying Palestinian prisoners should be “shot in the head.”
Israeli forces kill three Palestinians in an airstrike on Tulkarem, including a woman and a teenager, during a raid late on Sunday, June 30.
Israeli forces raid Tulkarem again early on Monday, July 1, destroying the main water pipeline to Nur Shams refugee camp and several streets.
Netanyahu insists on continuing the war
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday during the weekly Israeli government meeting that Israel would continue “to fight until achieving our goals; destroying Hamas, returning our hostages, ensuring that Gaza will no longer be a danger, and returning the residents to the north.”
Netanyahu added that Israel hadn’t changed its position on the prisoners’ exchange proposal put forward by U.S. President Biden earlier in June, adding that it was Hamas who refused the deal.
Last week, Netanyahu said in a lengthy interview with Israel’s Channel 14 that he was “not ready to end the war,” and that he aimed at a partial deal that would release some of the Israeli captives, and then continue the war.
Meanwhile, the U.S. proposed an amendment to its own deal proposal. The amendment is to the proposal’s article eight, which stipulates the beginning of negotiations between Israel and Hamas during the second phase of the ceasefire over the specifics of the prisoners’ exchange and the ceasefire. Hamas has demanded an explicit mention of a permanent end to the war. According to official sources quoted by CNN, the amendment introduces “a new language to breach the gaps.”
Tens of thousands protested in 80 locations in Israel on Saturday and Sunday, demanding the resignation of Netanyahu’s government and a prisoners’ exchange deal. The protests’ organizers also announced their plans to mobilize 1 million Israelis and start a series of strikes in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, said that the opposition was holding talks with some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party to bring down the government.
In the meantime, Israeli forces continued their second invasion of the Shujaï¾’iyya neighborhood for the fifth day in a row, forcing some 60,000 Palestinians to flee their homes under Israeli artillery shells and airstrikes. Israeli forces also attacked the al-Mawasi coastal area between Rafah and Khan Younis, which the Israeli army had told Palestinians to flee to as “a safe zone” at the beginning of its assault on Rafah in early May. Local sources reported that Israeli strikes caused the tents of displaced families in al-Mawasi to catch fire.
The Israeli army has announced during the past week that it is close to concluding its operations in Rafah as it continues to close the city’s border crossings, preventing all aid from entering the strip, which has accentuated the spread of starvation, especially in the north of the strip, according to the WHO.
Israeli war minister seeks to ‘change security situation’ on Lebanese border
Israel’s war minister Yoav Gallant said that his government is “very close to making a decision on changing the security situation in the north by diplomatic or military means.”
Gallant’s statements came as the specter of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah continues to loom following an unprecedented escalation in threats in the past two weeks.
Several countries have called on their citizens to leave Lebanon and to avoid traveling to it while both sides continued to exchange cross-border attacks. On Saturday, Israel bombed several locations in the south Lebanese towns of Houla, Idaiseh, and Kufr Kila.
Hezbollah, for its part, attacked Israeli positions in the occupied Shebaa farms and near the Lebanese border with rockets. On Monday, the Israeli army admitted that 18 soldiers were wounded in a drone attack by Hezbollah on a military position in the occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli leaders slam release of al-Shifa director
On Monday, Israeli forces released 50 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who had been detained during the current war, including the director of the Israeli-destroyed al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiyah, who was detained by Israeli troops in November.
According to testimonies by survivors from al-Shifa and other released detainees, Dr. Abu Salmiyah was arrested after he refused to make public claims that Hamas fighters were using al-Shifa for military purposes. Testimonies of fellow detainees indicated that Dr. Abu Salmiyah was beaten and humiliated during his detention.
Upon his release, Abu Salmiyah said to Al Jazeera that Palestinian detainees were suffering very hard conditions due to the lack of food, humiliation, and mistreatment by Israeli forces.
In reaction, Israel’s security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Dr. Abu Salmiyah’s release was a “security neglect” by the Israeli intelligence and prison services. Benny Gantz, the opposition leader, also criticized the release of Dr. Abu Salmiyah and 50 other Palestinians, calling it “an operational and moral mistake.” In response, the Israeli public broadcasting service said that the release of the detainees on Monday was because Israeli jails were full.
The detention conditions of Palestinians, especially from Gaza, continue to be the subject of warnings by human rights groups. Earlier in June, Palestinian attorney Khaled Mahajneh managed to be the first Palestinian lawyer to enter the Sde Teiman detention center in the Naqab and spoke of how prisoners were subjected to brutal forms of torture and humiliation, including sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.
On Sunday, Al Jazeera broadcast footage it had obtained of Palestinian detainees in Gaza being used as human shields by Israeli soldiers. The footage showed Palestinian detainees forced by Israeli soldiers to enter buildings ahead of them, with their hands cuffed behind their backs, some semi-naked, with hanging cameras. One detainee is seen forced to enter a tunnel opening and walking deep into the tunnel while tied with a rope and holding a camera.
Last week, Israeli media reported a significant decrease in food quantity given to Palestinian prisoners. Israeli security minister Ben-Gvir commented that it was part of Israel’s “deterrence” strategy.
On Sunday, Ben-Gvir commented on the reports about the food decrease for Palestinian prisoners by saying that the prisoners “deserve to be shot in the head,” adding that Palestinian prisoners would continue to receive “the bare minimum” until the final passing of a bill presented by his party at the Knesset which would legalize the death penalty for Palestinian detainees.
Israel kills three Palestinians, destroys infrastructure in Tulkarem
Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in an attack on the refugee camp of Nur Shams in Tulkarem on Sunday. The victims were a 15-year-old teenager, a 46-year-old woman, and a 23-year-old man who was a leading member of the local resistance group.
Israeli forces began its raid on Nur Shams late on Sunday, during which they conducted an airstrike on a house in the crowded Manshiyyeh neighborhood, killing Said Jaber, 23, a leading member of the Tulkarem Brigade, a local resistance group. Jaber had previously survived an Israeli drone strike and was wanted by the Israeli army. The strike also wounded five civilians, two of them critically.
On Monday, Israeli forces raided Nur Shams again before dawn, placing snipers on high buildings and opening fire in the camp’s streets, killing a teenager, Ali Sarhan, 15, and a woman, Nisreen Dimeiri, 46.
Israeli forces “bulldozed the streets and destroyed the main water pipeline that brings water to the camp, which left all residents without water,” Hussein Sheikh Ali, a resident of Nur Shams, told Mondoweiss.
“Although the occupation forces withdrew from inside the camp around noon, their snipers still surround the camp from all sides, and residents are all indoors, fearing to go out and get shot,” he said. “Classes were suspended in all of Tulkarem, businesses were closed, and daily life was completely interrupted.”
With the killings in Tulkarem on Sunday and Monday, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank rose to 556 since October 7.
World Socialist Web Site – July 2, 2024
Supreme Court declares America a presidential dictatorship
Eric London, Tom Carter:
The US Supreme Court’s decision Monday in Trump v. United States fundamentally alters the character of the American government as it has existed since the American Revolution, placing the president above the law and effectively transforming the “Commander-in-Chief” into a dictator, who can commit crimes with impunity. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the far-right majority declared that a US president enjoys presumptive “immunity” for “official acts,” and that ex-President Donald Trump was therefore “immune” from prosecution for most of his acts in furtherance of his January 6, 2021 coup attempt. The court remanded the case to the lower court to consider whether other actions related to the coup—including Trump’s efforts to force Vice President Mike Pence to seat alternate slates of electors in states Trump lost—count as “official acts.” In practical terms this means that Trump cannot be convicted for the January 6 insurrection before the November 5 election.
In the words of dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the majority opinion “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
While the word “dictator” does not appear anywhere in the majority or dissenting opinions, a chief executive who is “above the law” is called a dictator. This is what it means to have a presidential dictatorship.
“The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding,” Sotomayor wrote. “When the president uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Sotomayor wrote. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the president is now free to murder other government officials with impunity. “While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example,” she wrote, “the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death.”
Monday’s decision is without precedent in American history. In 1977, three years after resigning from the White House in disgrace, former President Richard Nixon told journalist David Frost that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” For decades, this declaration was treated not as a statement of American constitutional jurisprudence but as an expression of Nixon’s criminal character.
To make an appropriate historical analogy, it is necessary to reference fascist jurisprudence. The 1933 Enabling Act, for example, gave Hitler the power to unilaterally violate the Weimar constitution, without any accountability to other branches of government. Similarly, the Supreme Court majority Monday declared that the US president needs to enjoy legal immunity in order to be free to engage in “bold and unhesitating action.”
Under the new legal framework of presidential dictatorship announced by the Supreme Court, Augusto Pinochet would have enjoyed complete immunity from prosecution for his crimes, so long as he declared that the mass murder of left-wing political opponents was an “official act” to “combat terrorism and subversion” and “save the country from communism.”
To use a more immediate example, a bill proposed in the US House of Representatives in May by Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles authorizes the deportation of anti-genocide student demonstrators to Gaza. Under the Supreme Court’s decision Monday, a president who carried out such a policy would be immune so long as it was an “official act.”
The decision effectively abolishes what was once called the “American theory of government,” according to which there is no “sovereign” such as a king or prince. Instead, in the words of dissenting Justice Jackson, “the People are the sovereign, and the Rule of Law is our first and final security.”
American revolutionaries called the idea that anyone could be above the law “tyranny” and “despotism.” In the words of the Declaration of Independence, when a population is subjected to such a regime, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Notwithstanding the opinions of the dissenting justices explaining the monumental historical significance of the decision, much of the establishment media in the US downplayed the decision Monday. The New York Times, a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party leadership, even suggested that the ruling had an upside because in lower court proceedings, prosecutors will be allowed “to detail much of their evidence against Donald Trump in front of a federal judge and the public.”
Biden made a brief media appearance Monday evening to denounce the ruling. “Any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,” Biden said, calling the ruling “a fundamentally new principle and a dangerous precedent” because any limits on the president’s powers will now be “self-imposed by the president alone.” But in response to the ruling, Biden merely called for “the American people to render a judgment on Donald Trump’s behavior” by electing Biden instead of Trump in the 2024 elections.
Presidential dictatorship is not only in danger of happening if Trump is elected. It is already the “supreme law of the land,” thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision Monday, from which there is no appeal.
Biden essentially argues that the population should prevent a malevolent dictator from coming to power by electing another dictator instead, one who would assume the same powers but would supposedly exercise them in a more “responsible” way.
Biden offered no proposals for preventing the institution of a presidential dictatorship. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt at least threatened to overpower the opposition of the Supreme Court to the New Deal by appointing more justices, a measure that Biden could easily have justified under conditions of a historic corruption scandal on the court.
Five of the six justices who imposed a dictatorship on the 340 million inhabitants of the United States were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, including three appointed by Trump himself (Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh). At least two other justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, are implicated in the coup themselves.
Biden and the Democrats share equal responsibility with the Republicans for the menace posed by Trump, having insisted on rehabilitating a “strong Republican Party” in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Since the coup attempt, they have governed in an effective coalition with the Republicans to wage war and genocide abroad while suppressing strikes and dissent at home.
However, the danger of dictatorship does not come from Trump as an individual or even from the fascistic Republican Party in general. Likewise, the January 6 coup attempt was not an isolated incident, but an episode in a protracted and ongoing process.
This process has continued through both Democratic and Republican administrations, including the Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2000 elections to steal the election for George W. Bush—its infamous decision in Bush v. Gore—as well as the assertion by the Obama administration of the power to order the killing of US citizens in the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki in 2011, which Barrett cites approvingly in her concurring opinion.
The tendency towards dictatorship is inherent in the capitalist system in the imperialist epoch, which is characterized by the dominance of finance capital in the economy and by imperialist wars for the redivision of access to labor, markets and raw materials. The drive towards dictatorship is motivated in particular by expanding social inequality, war and the necessity, from the standpoint of the ruling class, of imposing fundamentally unpopular policies.
“Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination,” wrote Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, in a passage quoted by Lenin in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Democracy is inconsistent with a society in which oligarchs like Elon Musk can receive a $45 billion pay package, while hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and hungry.
Democracy is also incompatible with imperialist war, which requires the conscription of masses of youth to serve as cannon fodder, the diversion of public funds from social needs and the crushing of all opposition. While the US-NATO alliance claims to be warring for “freedom and democracy” against the “authoritarianism” of Russia and China, it is the American political establishment that is imposing authoritarian forms of rule at home.
The struggle against the imposition of presidential dictatorship requires understanding its roots in capitalist relations of production and in the outmoded division of the world into rival nation-states. The social force that will oppose dictatorship, defend democratic rights and challenge the capitalist system is the international working class, organized as a class, independent of all capitalist parties and fighting for socialism.
India and Pakistan exchange prisoner list
Hundreds of civilians, mainly fishermen, have been arrested by New Delhi and Islamabad for crossing the maritime border
India and Pakistan on Monday exchanged lists of civilian prisoners and fishermen who are being held by the other country, the Foreign Ministry in New Delhi has said.
India shared the names of 366 civilian prisoners and 86 fishermen from Pakistan in its custody. Islamabad, in turn, named 43 civilian prisoners and 211 fishermen in its custody from India or “believed to be Indian.”
New Delhi also called for the early release and repatriation from Pakistan of civilian prisoners, fishermen with their boats, and missing Indian defense personnel. It also asked to expedite the release and repatriation of 185 Indian fishermen and civilian prisoners who have completed their sentences.
The two neighbors regularly arrest each other’s fishermen for operating illegally in each other’s territorial waters. Lists of prisoners are exchanged twice a year on January 1 and on July 1 as part of a bilateral agreement signed in 2008.
According to New Delhi, 2,639 Indian fishermen and 71 civilians have been repatriated from Pakistan since 2014 due to its “sustained efforts.” Last year, 478 Indian fishermen and 13 civilian prisoners were released by Pakistan.
In a statement, Islamabad emphasized that it will continue its efforts to ensure the early return of all Pakistani prisoners lodged in Indian jails. Sixty-two people were repatriated last year and four people earlier this year, the statement noted. Islamabad said it had also received from New Delhi a list of 38 missing Pakistani defense personnel, believed to be in Indian custody since the wars of 1965 and 1971.
The two nuclear-capable neighbors share a tense relationship and have fought four wars since their independence from the British Empire in 1947.
Ties further nosedived in 2019, when a terrorist attack in Pulwama, Kashmir killed 40 Indian officers, prompting a response from the Indian Air Force inside Pakistani territory. Later the same year, the Narendra Modi-led government revoked the special status of Kashmir, which is claimed by Pakistan, by abolishing Article 370 of the Indian constitution. Reacting to the move, Islamabad downgraded its diplomatic ties with New Delhi.
Earlier this year, the two sides traded barbs over Pakistan’s allegation that the Indian government has orchestrated extrajudicial killings on its soil, which New Delhi has denied.
Meanwhile, fishermen in southern India have faced similar troubles with Sri Lanka. Earlier this month, ten fishermen were arrested for alleged illegal fishing. They now face charges related to the death of a Sri Lankan Navy sailor, who was reportedly killed during an operation to apprehend them. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu state, MK Stalin, noted in a recent letter to Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar that in 2024 alone, 203 fishermen and 27 boats have been apprehended by the Sri Lankan Navy.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
