clear winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election is undeniably Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is now freer than ever to pursue his genocidal campaign against Palestinians; demolish Lebanon; create more illegal settlements on the West Bank; and even annex the West Bank itself if he chooses to do so.
MoreThe Winner of the US Presidential Elections? Prime Minister Netanyahu
While there was some audience applause from the sparsely populated room on Friday, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Rami Ayari explained that “the people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose.”
In response to diplomats’ Friday walkout, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that “the impunity Biden has offered Israel has been used by Netanyahu to make Israel an international pariah. Neither good for the U.S. nor for Israel.”
Mass Walkout as ‘Global Pariah’ Netanyahu Addresses UN General Assembly
The only way to stop a bloody and electorally disastrous regional war in the Middle East is for President Joe Biden to do the one thing he wants to avoid: cut off military aid to Israel.
09.26
Who’s to blame for the failure to bring Israeli hostages home safe? Israeli officials have been telling us for months it’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel is arguably at its most precarious moment in national security since its founding, with the public’s confidence in both political and military leaders at an all-time low. The question is whether Israelis will start to openly challenge the working assumptions on which their security has been based for decades. If they fail, or are unable, to do so, they can only pray that the other key actors — the U.S. and Iran — find it sufficiently in their interests to pull us all back from the abyss.
This brings us to the question Netanyahu’s speech forces upon us. Does the U.S. control Israel or does Israel control the U.S.? Is the apartheid state another of Washington’s client regimes, albeit — let’s borrow a little from the Chinese — a client with Zionist characteristics? Or is Israel a case — rare, if not unique — of a distant outpost that dictates to the imperial center? The periphery exercises power over the metropole, this to say: This would have to be something new under the sun, surely.
The immediate answer, perhaps obvious, is the terrorist at the podium. It cannot be lost on anyone paying attention that more or less every member of Congress in attendance — and good on the 100 or so members who boycotted — has in the past taken and continues to take money from the Israel lobby, notably but not only the profoundly antidemocratic American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the infamous AIPAC.
Netanyahu knew this. He spoke to some people who genuinely believe in the Zionist cause and some people concerned with the imperium’s geopolitical position in the Middle East. Some and some, O.K. But everybody he addressed, allowing for exceptions, was on the take from AIPAC. Thomas Massie, the libertarian Republican from Kentucky and one of the exceptions, told us just how AIPAC works — a combination of bribes, threats, and coercion — in quite unbelievable detail when Tucker Carlson interviewed him on these subjects a couple of months ago.
Patrick Lawrence: Israel Runs the U.S. No, the U.S. Runs Israel. No, Wait
The Israeli leader had hoped to press the reset button and return to his silly theories about the irrelevance of Palestine to the Middle East, and the world. He was proven wrong, again, making him a false prophet or, at best, a failed leader.
Meanwhile, both Israel and the U.S. have not only condemned the ICJ’s landmark ruling; they are actively violating it. Israel specifically rejected the court’s finding that it is occupying Palestinian territory. The Biden administration has shown no sign that it intends to follow the ICJ’s command to stop supporting Israel’s illegal occupation.
Netanyahu’s Visit to Congress Underscores US Contempt for International Law
Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress — and spent a significant portion of his hourlong speech attacking the U.S. pro-Palestinian protest movement with insults and misinformation.
Netanyahu Insulted and Smeared the Pro-Palestine Protest Movement. Congress Clapped.
We seem to live in a strange age where politics relies more than ever on the big lie technique, even as social media makes the exposure of such lies inevitable.
July 24, 2024
The appearance again in Congress of the Israeli prime minister makes it seem as if he is the American president and Israel and the U.S. are one country, writes Corinna Barnard.
July 22, 2024
Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459—according to Gaza officials—while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.
For 15 years, the Israeli prime minister has proven his ability to scuttle political agreements — while never losing the United States’ backing.
StoryJul 11, 2024
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy discusses ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued hostility to compromise and the Biden administration’s ineffectual mediation. Contrary to its claims of brokering peace, the U.S. “will continue to send the weapons” Israel uses to devastate Gaza, unremittingly fueling an increasingly unpopular war, says Levy, who is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project.
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/11/daniel_levy_on_ceasefire_negotiations?jwsource=cl
The Israeli prime minister has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-and-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region.
It is a matter of record that the Zionist project has had extensive territorial designs on the lands known as Palestine since at least the early 20th century.
As others have argued, the Israelis’ openly racist assault on the Palestinians of Gaza is to be understood not as a sudden eruption of violence, a departure, but as an especially savage continuation of Zionist conduct for more than a century.
Mr Netanyahu’s departure would not be a magic solution: another prime minister’s policies on Hezbollah and Gaza’s future would probably not look so different. The Biden administration remains reluctant to use its potential leverage – arms supplies, diplomatic positioning and sanctions even against Mr Smotrich – as it should to stop the war in Gaza and the tightening hold on the West Bank. But an administration governed by a sober consideration of Israel’s needs and priorities, rather than driven by personal political survival, might at least find its way to a hostage-and-ceasefire deal and free itself from the dangerous grip of the far right.
Blaming Netanyahu for failing to produce a “next day” vision for Gaza, however, is also wishful thinking as it assumes that Israel has all the cards. It has none.
Of course, there is an alternative to the neverending war scenario, namely permanently lifting the siege on Gaza, ending the military occupation, and dismantling the apartheid regime. This would grant Palestinians their freedom and rights as enshrined, in fact, guaranteed in international and humanitarian laws.
If the international community mustered the courage to force such a “next day” reality on Tel Aviv, there would be no need for war, or resistance, in the first place.
Both men, who have urged on even greater slaughter in Gazaand the eviction of Palestinians living there, remain members of the broader security cabinet. And they have made no secret about their mixture of delight and loathing at Gantz’s departure. “There is no less stately act than resigning from a government in time of war,” Smotrich haughtily declared.
Source: Fractious Arenas: Netanyahu Dissolves the War Cabinet – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Top Israeli officials on Sunday discussed plans to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank as an act of retaliation against countries that recently joined the majority of the international community in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu doesn’t believe in the rule of law. After all, he isn’t trying to arrest the leaders of Hamas, he is trying to kill them. Bringing Netanyahu to justice would be a repudiation of his “rule of the jungle” ethos. It would also signal to the sovereignistas that borders are no protection against prosecution for war crimes. His whole life, Netanyahu has fought the law. Let’s hope that, in the end, the law will win.
Source: He Fought the Law: Will the Law Win? | The Smirking Chimp
How much longer Bibi Netanyahu will you try to fool the world with your crimes? For how much longer Bibi Netanyahu will you call the actions of your armed forces technical mishaps, mistakes, blunders, unintended side effects, miscalculations?
Source: Netanyahu Under Fire After Calling Rafah Massacre a ‘Tragic Mistake’ | Common Dreams
Human rights barrister
As everyone who uses the word should know, antisemitism means hatred of Jewish people in general, and it is the vilest and most destructive form of race hatred. It is not constituted by condemning the policy or the war tactics of the Israeli government. Dutton’s attempt to conflate the two, and his call on the Australian government to withhold support from an independent international justice process, is shameful.
And history would note the irony that a law forged at Nuremberg to prevent repetition of the sufferings of millions of Jewish people was, 77 years later, dodged and despised by none other than the leader of Israel.
Has the No Vote in Australia Boomeranged?
poll shows that the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas has grown even more unpopular since the start of the Gaza war. The poll results were published by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
he is a patriot who, through his misguided actions, has done irreparable damage to his country and to the prospects for peace in the world.
Washington: The message was not getting through. Not through the phone calls or the emissaries or the public statements or the joint committee meetings. And so, frustrated that he was being ignored, US President Joe Biden chose a more dramatic way of making himself clear to Israeli leaders. He stopped sending the bombs.
Source: Biden had hoped to send a quiet message, then Israel leaked it
Israeli officials just rejected a cease-fire deal that could have brought hostages back because Israel wants to continue waging war. This should be a scandal — but American mainstream media isn’t reporting on it.
Source: Israel Rejected a Cease-Fire. The Media Isn’t Telling Us.
On the other hand, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has thumbed his nose at the court since it indicted him last year. His movements, however, have been affected, since when he travels abroad he risks arrest. He had to cancel a trip to South Africa last summer because Pretoria is an ICC signatory and may have been constrained to arrest him.
Source: Are Netanyahu & Co. about to face Arrest Warrants from the Int’l Criminal Court for Gaza War Crimes?
Ultimately Netanyahu is likely to be stymied by one factor which operates in both countries but which he is unable to control: domestic public opinion. In the West, including the United States, it has turned decisively against Israel, even if the spat with Iran becomes a temporary distraction.
He may have forgotten Gabriel Kolko’s golden rule that domestic politics ultimately trumps foreign policy.
Source: Biden, Netanyahu and the golden rule – Pearls and Irritations
It doesn’t escape anybody that, to a large extent, this has to do with Netanyahu’s desire to escape accountability for his actions. What is becoming increasingly evident is that absolute power has transformed him, making him even more ruthless and more impervious to criticism or to the calls for human kindness.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy –to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank,” he declared years later. Consequent with this strategy, between 2012 and 2018 Netanyahu gave approval to Qatar to transfer a total of approximately a billion dollars to Gaza, half of which went to Hamas, including its military wing.
Instead, Biden and his allies declined to condemn Netanyahu’s action, continuing the North Atlantic insouciance toward Israeli war crimes and continuing the implementation of their double standard whereby International Humanitarian Law applies only to white people. That is, there is not as much difference between Trumpian white nationalism and Biden’s foreign policy as it might seem on the surface, though Trump is of course far worse.*
Source: Netanyahu, Empowered by Biden’s Grant of Impunity, baits Iran into his genocidal Gaza War
Source: Iran Launches Drone Attack Against Israel Over Consulate Bombing | Common Dreams
Pampered hernia patient Netanyahu is ultimately responsible for the destruction of more of the planet’s hospitals than anyone since the bombing of Hamburg during the Second World War.
Source: Shattered wards, ill-timed hernias, and the moral bankruptcy of a nation – Pearls and Irritations
The fact is Netanyahu was warned and had 18 months to develop a plan for what his government intended to do post 7/10.
The Hamas attack gave Netanyahu an opportunity to reassert Israel’s – and Jabotinsky’s – Iron Wall.
The massive and wantonly destructive war that Netanyahu has led against Hamas and Gaza since that date is the Iron Wall in its most elemental manifestation: unleashing overwhelming force as a signal that no territorial compromise with the Arabs over historical Palestine is possible. Or, as Netanyahu has repeatedly said in recent weeks, there will be no ceasefire until there’s a complete Israeli victory.
Source: Israel’s ‘Iron Wall:’ A Brief History of the Ideology Guiding Benjamin Netanyahu
Undaunted, Netanyahu mocks international criticism for his actions. “Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumin, Efrat, and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” said in a statement Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights responding to the Israeli government latest settlement expansion plans.
Türk also said that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention by “effectively transferring civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land. Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual responsibility of those involved.”
Source: Netanyahu’s Law of Unintended Consequences – CounterPunch.org
AIPAC attendees applauded his pursuit of genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, neighborhoods wiped out, and the Israeli military has overseen starvation policies now taking the lives of Palestinian children.
Source: AIPAC applauds Netanyahu genocide | The Electronic Intifada
There will be no election in Israel only a forever war
When governments clearly fail to uphold international law, and instead selectively invoke it when it suits their interests, how should concerned citizens respond? We should not despair. Instead, these governments should be publicly exposed, vociferously challenged and voted out, for the sake of a better world, including a “rules-based international order,” where the rules apply to all.
Source: Lessons on genocide from Xinjiang and Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
The Israeli Mafia Don Netanyahu’s position is becoming tenuous. Who is there to replace him surely not either of the two leaders of the minority parties? Ben Gvir a once-declared terrorist or Smotrich the leader of the colonizing invaders?
By Anne Irfan, UCL | – (The Conversation) – The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a ceasefire plan put forward by Hamas, calling the terms “delusional”. Claiming that an Israeli victory in Gaza is “within reach”, Netanyahu has vowed to fight on until Hamas is completely destroyed. But the US, which is involved in negotiation efforts along with Qatar and Egypt, has said that there could still be a path to a deal. Hamas’s plan came as a counter offer to a proposal put forward a week ago by Israel, the US, Qatar and Egypt.
All the while, the war in Gaza continues. With United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reporting a toll of more than 26,000 Palestinians killed, more than 65,000 injured, and 1.7 million displaced, the UN is now warning that famine is inevitable in the Strip.
As negotiations continue to go back and forth, time is running out for the most vulnerable.
Source: Netanyahu’s Position becoming more Uncertain as he rejects Hamas Deal to end War
Netanyahu dismissed the pleas of the hostage relatives begging him to let the hostages he hasn’t killed so far to come home
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed Hamas’s demand for a ceasefire and ordered troops to prepare to move on the city of Rafah in Gaza’s far south, where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge.
Source: Israel rejects truce, Hamas says Netanyahu set on genocide
For decades, administrations in Washington have fantasised about castles in the skies, the outlandish notion that Palestinians and Israelis might exist in cosy accord upon lands stolen and manured by brutal death. Washington, playing the Hegemonic Father, could then perch above the fray, gaze paternally upon the scrapping disputants, and suggest what was best for both. But the two-state solution was always encumbered and heavily conditioned to take place on Israeli terms, leaving all mediation and interventions by outsiders flitting gestures lacking substance.
Now, no one can claim otherwise that Palestinian statehood is anything other than spectral, fantastic, and doomed – at least under the current warring regime. Netanyahu’s own political survival, profanely linked to Israel’s own existence, depends on not just stifling pregnancies in Gaza but preventing the birth of a nationally recognised Palestinian state.
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