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!
* * *
The total absence of any due process in this case is not an isolated example; an outlier; a bug. It is a feature of a post-modernist ideology which to quote
“[the] emphasis on ‘narrative’; and rejection as old fashioned, quaint and uncool all talk of an external reality — independent of our thought processes but in principle accessible by empirical methods — has served, as some prescient souls warned decades ago that it would, thoroughly reactionary ends. If there’s no knowable reality, then all manner of key principles are eroded — such as the distinction between being accused of something, and being found guilty of it!”
Whilst the emphasis here is at the level of the so called ‘Rules Based Order” in terms of Geo-politics the same process can be seen operating at every level within the “Garden”.
People are summarily dismissed from their employment and smeared on the basis of allegations which are never tested through any proper rules or law based due process. Similarly, members of political parties – including the Greens, Lib-Dems, SNP as well as Labour – are subject to the same reversal of process in which, to avoid being disciplined through internal procedures which automatically treat people as guilty, they have to prove their innocence rather than their accusers prove them guilty.
And the key problem here is the consistency of application of this conveniently applied misuse of power at every level across the Collective West. It is not unreasonable to anticipate, even expect, that those who have no qualms about making decisions which support and engender the Genocide and starvation of populations abroad and the indiscriminate bombing, murder and torture of those they consider ‘lesser peoples’ will have no qualms, should they deem it necessary and convenient, to treat their own domestic populations, or sections of those populations, in the same manner.
Particularly those they consider ‘deplorables’ – which seems to be the majority.
As one below the line commentator on MoA has noted…..:
“Finally the pretence has been stripped away…….The line between the Empire and the unconquered drawn clear and bright”
……as nine Countries openly declare in favour of genocide in defiance of International Law and in favour of their own rules made up to suit their own convenience.
Removing a total of just over half a billion dollars in aid to the UNWRA whilst remaining silent about the number of UNWRA staff already murdered by the Genocidal regime they are arming and supporting:
BREAKING: LIST OF COUNTRIES SUSPENDED FUNDS TO UNRWA
United States: $223 million
Germany: $127.3 million
Canada: $76.8 million
Australia: $20 million
Netherlands: $19 million
. United Kingdom: $12.2 million
Italy: $3.27 million
Finland: $5.45 million
Switzerland: $3.3 million
Attention will certainly turn to how this challenge to the UN and the ruling of the ICJ will develop and play out at various levels. Including not only the charges of complicity in the Genocide being prepared against any of the current Gang of Nine but also how that Gang deal with any internal challenges from within its own populace on these matters and the principles involved?*
*Will, to take one example, anyone publicly collecting money for the UNWRA and/or Palestinian Relief Agencies in any of these Rogue States face any kind of sanction?
Or, how will the internal legal process within these Rogue States deal with boycotts against Israeli goods or attempts to take legal action against anyone supporting, aiding and abetting the Genocide under Article 25 of the ICC Rome Statute now that an International ruling has been made against the Zionist Israeli Regime?
Questions like your last two point us to the reality that for all it lacks teeth, the ICJ ruling is a big deal.
Iif the western Mafia are pronounced to be complicit in Genocide that will be another embarrassment. Hopefully there will then be a call for sanctions against both perpetrator and accomplices, to the oil producing countries and China and everywhere else outside the charmed circle who provide them with essential raw materials, products and energy. This if put into effect would be more effective than embarrassment, but I’m not holding my breath.
The purpose of sanctions seems to be to deprive the entity being sanctioned of necessities their economy needs.
As matters stand this is already happening to a degree. The Red Sea is effectively a closed route to at least some of the main backers of the Israeli regime and its actions.
– Insurance and carry rates are going up at a phenomenal rate;
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/red-sea-crisis-latest-data-from-xeneta-forecasts-ocean-freight-shipping-rates-are-set-to-rise-further-in-february/
At best increasing prices to the consumer markets of the rogue states involved and at worst discouraging shipping from even bothering supplying those states.
This will only be exacerbated should similar solidarity action to that of Yemen be instigated in North Africa to similarly close shipping into the Mediterranean.
– The privateer navies and air forces of the US and UK are failing to prevent attacks on Western shipping in the Red Sea from Yemen. In the past few days alone we have seen ships escorted by the US/UK military turn back because their safety cannot be guaranteed and a UK ship sunk. Fortunately, according to reports, the crew successfully abandoned the vessel.
– Meanwhile, Qatar stopped the export of LNG energy into Europe this last week or so – hitting Italy quite badly according to reports. Whether this is temporary or permanent remains to be seen.
However, this is exacerbated by the type of sanction blowback we have witnessed in regards Western sanctions on Russia. Apparently, (again, according to reports) one of the results of the recent (ongoing?) row between the US Federal Government and the State of Texas was that the Federal Government used its powers to stop Texas from exporting LNG energy from its ports.
Hitting its economy.
Whether this continues or has been discontinued as a result of some deal (?) this will have impacted on geographical Europe (UK as well as the EU) which, by choice of its elites, no longer has access to cheap energy from Russia and is dependent upon LNG imports from places like the USA, Qatar and North Africa.
Maybe this is one way of sanctions being applied by sections of the Global South, maybe it isn’t. Either way it is having a negative impact not a million miles away from the kind of impact for which sanctions are applied.
Moreover, sanctions are not the only means by which pressure can be applied. There have been arguments put forward over the past few days that the ICJ ruling on Friday last could put Israel’s UN membership at risk. Should this be the case it makes no logical sense not to include those states providing the support to Israel’s actions from such an exclusion.
It may well be that present events have served to speed the process towards a multipolar world at every level. Not only with differing trade and economic blocs but also with different International organisations along the lines of a rump minority of the world following the chaos based US ‘Rules based International Order’* and a far larger section of the world preferring the a more coherent and sensible route.
*Alexander Mercouris at The Duran provided a succinct** description of this the other week:
“”Well. of course, it [the USA] doesn’t want to acknowledge there are any restraints on its behaviour at all. And, if you want to understand the difference between International Law and ‘The Rules based International Order’ there you have it. ‘The Rules Based International Order’ is what the United States decides what it wants to do from one day to another. If the United States does it, its legal. That’s basically the conception behind ‘The ‘Rules Based International Order’ – International Law is this old fashioned idea that there are rules binding on everybody, including the United States.”
**Well, succinct compared to Alexander’s normal verbosity.
Great post Dave. Thanks.
“the Federal Government used its powers to stop Texas from exporting LNG energy from its ports.” – that’ll make the satraps in Europe sit up sharply, I hope.
“the ICJ ruling on Friday last could put Israel’s UN membership at risk.” – and that would be great news too, especially if it dragged the rest of the west into the same tumbril.
Addendum/Update
“Will, to take one example, anyone publicly collecting money for the UNWRA and/or Palestinian Relief Agencies in any of these Rogue States face any kind of sanction?”
Well, the answer to that question did not take long to arrive:
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/01/28/exclusive-bank-locks-customers-account-after-donation-to-unrwa/
“A UK bank locked its customer’s account – and subjected her to a security grilling – minutes after she made a donation to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides a lifeline to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.,,,,,,
……..Update – this appears not to be an isolated incident:
I’m receiving multiple reports that British banks are blocking querying and otherwise disrupting their customers legitimate personal donations to @UNRWA A United Nations Agency! What a country we are rapidly becoming… #Gaza
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) January 29, 2024”