Quite an eventful weekend this is turning out to be, no?
Friday, January 26
- The ICJ delivers its ruling. Israel must take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza.
- Some pro-Palestinian voices are disappointed that it does not formally call for a ceasefire (actually beyond ICJ jurisdiction since only one party is a state actor) but compliance is a de facto impossibility without a ceasefire.
- Not that compliance was ever on the cards. “Hague Schmague” is the sage response of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. (Quite the character is our Itamar. On his living room wall hung a portrait of US-Israeli murderer Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded 125 more in 1994. Itamar took it down for the 2020 election, hoping to run on a unified right ticket under Naftali Bennett.)
- Nevertheless the ruling does two things. It further embarrasses a US-led West still, I kid you not, capable of being embarrassed. And it boosts the moral legitimacy of Yemen’s principled stand.
Saturday, January 27
- The weekly pro-Palestinian protests once again take place in cities across the globe.
- With immaculate timing Israel announces intel, from the
tortureinterrogation of Hamas captives, that agents of UNRWA, main provider of aid to Gaza, were party to the October 7 attack. - The UN sacks those named. This despite an internal inquiry barely begun. And despite, as Caitlin Johnstone argued in December on the basis of its known mendacities, the need to assume everything Israel says is a lie until proven otherwise.
- Most of the US-led West halts funding of the UNRWA. (I literally mean the US-led West since Washington, probably pre-briefed by Tel Aviv, had announced this late on Friday.)
- Regardless of the truth or otherwise of Israel’s claim, pulling UNRWA funding is in breach of international law. By adding to the suffering of the Gazan people it commits the war crime of collective punishment.
- The
US marionettesgovernment of my country asserts its ‘right to respond’ after oil tanker set alight off Yemen … Let’s not labour the points of (a) the Alice-in morality at play here, and (b) the puffed up absurdity of supposing Royal Navy and Royal Air Force can do what ten years of Saudi bombing could not. I’ve covered both elsewhere.
All this, and the weekend not yet over!
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