that the US and Israel have stopped bombing Iran, Israel can
re-focus on its core business of starving children in Gaza,
and killing their parents, medical staff, journalists and
anyone else who strays across their line of
Since Israel shut the UN out of aid delivery, it
has given the job of handing out a trickle of food to a
private US entity called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,
or GHF. The GHF aid sites have functioned as effective
killing grounds. Reportedly, top UNRWA officials have
described the GHF aid centres as a “death
Parents desperate for food to feed their
starving children have been drawn to these GHF sites, where
they continue to be killed in large numbers by the IDF.
Since the GHF set up shop on May 27th, over 400 Palestinians
have reportedly been killed at these aid sites. Here’s Tuesday’s
death toll:
Israeli forces and drones have
killed at least 86 Palestinians since dawn, including 56
near aid distribution centres, in the latest attacks on
desperate people seeking aid in the besieged Gaza Strip,
according to medical sources in hospitals. In Rafah alone,
in the south of the enclave, 27 aid seekers were gunned down
by the Israeli military on Tuesday.
This use of
food to lure desperately hungry people into locations where
they can be killed in large numbers is functioning as a
cost effective feature of Israel’s machinery of
At least 92 people have been killed
in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip as desperate
Palestinians continue to seek food amid an ongoing hunger
crisis…Starving Palestinians have gathered in the area
daily to receive packages from the United States- and
Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which the
United Nations has condemned for its “weaponisation” of
At least 82 Palestinians were killed across
Gaza by the Israeli army on Friday, sources said, including
several in an attack where jets bombed a house west of Deir
At least 37 people were killed in
central Gaza, including 23 who were seeking aid, according
to hospital sources. In Gaza City, another 23 people lost
their lives, while 22 were killed in southern Gaza – 11 of
whom were also aid seekers.
Not only food
distribution points are being used to target groups of
Palestinians. Reportedly, so are the electricity charging
points, essential if the poor quality food being distributed
is to be cooked. None of this butchery got much media
coverage last week beyond Al Jazeera, because world
attention was so distracted by the Israel/Iran
Gangster politics
We’ve seen this
movie before. The boss sends his chief goon in to take down
some sap who’s been getting too big for his britches. The
goon, gets so into it that the boss has to swear at him to
stop. Do they finish the sap off, or do they leave him to
linger on, as a stark warning about the real power players
are in the Middle East?
That last bit seems to be the
reasoning behind the current “ceasefire.” To be clear:
this conflict was never really about a a supposed threat
posed by Iran’s nuclear programme. No more than the 2003
invasion of Iraq was ever about finding those non-existent
weapons of mass destruction. In both cases, the war was
waged to remove rivals, and to establish just which
neo-colonial power rules the roost in the region.
sorting out truth from fiction in what is largely an
exercise of naked power, the tut-tutting by the US and
Israel about the need to keep the region safe from nuclear
weapons is pretty shameless. Both countries have long
opposed UN moves to turn the Middle East into a nuclear
weapons free zone.
The US and Israel are both nuclear
armed to the teeth. Israel is estimated to possess some 90
nuclear warheads, and the US is the only military power ever
to use its nuclear weapons on other human beings. It did so
twice. So…when it comes to issuing warnings about nuclear
weapons, neither Israel nor the US are reliable
However, they have been extremely
successful at setting the boundaries of this debate
Myth One: Iran was building nuclear weapons
and had to be stopped. Not true. Instead, it
is entirely legal for member states of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) to pursue
the peaceful enrichment of uranium. (Iran is a signatory of
the NPT, Israel is not.)
In their latest report, IAEA
inspectors found that Iran had not enriched its U-235 above
60 %. and there had been no indication of nuclear
weaponisation, for which enrichment to 90% would be
required. In March, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard
testified to Congress that US intelligence sources had
indicated Iran was not engaged in building a nuclear
In other words, Iran’s non-existent nuclear
weapons capability posed no ‘imminent threat” to anyone
– which is the necessary pre-condition needed under
international law in order to justify the attacks made on
its territory by Israel and the US.
New Zealand for
all of its loud claims to be an honest broker that supports
the norms of international law has chosen not to defend
international law in this instance. Russia’s actions in
Ukraine? Terrible, we said, right from the outset. But Team
Israel’s actions in Iran? Different story. According to
acting PM David Seymour in his best impersonation of a moral
vacuum, we don’t have enough information ( about what?)
and besides, no one cares what we think anyway. Truly, a
leader for our time.
Channelling
There’s more. Through diplomatic
channels, Iran had repeatedly signalled its willingness to
forego nuclear weaponry in return for trade sanctions being
lifted, and for gaining access to Western markets. A deal to
that end was signed between the Obama administration and
Iran in 2015.
In that deal, Iran agreed not to
commission its Arak nuclear reactor, significantly reduced
its enrichment programme and submitted to regular IAEA
inspections to ensure its compliance. Even though the US
never followed through on its side of the bargain, Iran also
suspended its enrichment programme for two more years in the
hope that the Biden administration might honour the US
commitments. Biden didn’t.
Even after this track
record of treachery by the US, Iran was still willing this
year to negotiate an acceptable level of nuclear enrichment
with the West. It was still in the middle of those talks –
with more talks scheduled in Oman on June 22nd – when
Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran. Here’s how the
former head of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei, has summed up the
situation :
“For Israel to attack #Iran
including its nuclear facilities (prohibited by
international law) and for #Trump
to ask Iran for “total surrender” and forego a treaty
right (uranium enrichment) in a clear act of national
humiliation, on suspicion that it is developing nuclear
weapons (possessed by both #Israel
suspicion that does not constitute an “imminent threat”
as confirmed by all western intelligence agencies and was
dealt with through negotiations in #JCPOA
agreement of 2015 which the US withdrew from in 2018. To
rely on force and not negotiations is a sure way to destroy
and the nuclear non-proliferation regime (imperfect as it
is) and sends a clear message to many countries that their
“ultimate security” is to develop nuclear weapons
Footnote: If Iran has shifted enrichment
tools out of its official sites, it may soon (or already)
have enough material to construct a “dirty
Myth Two: Iran funds terrorism
throughout the Middle East. To be sure, Iran has
lent support in recent years to both Hamas in Gaza, and to
Hezbollah n Lebanon. In response to the active Saudi/UAE
involvement in the civil war in Yemen – which included
Saudi blockades of food and essential medical supplies
during an epidemic – Iran has also lent a limited amount of
support to the Houthis.
Commonly, the Houthis get
described by Western media as “rebels” and Iranian
”proxies” – even though they control some 70-% of
Yemen, provide the nearest thing to an effective central
government, and make their own foreign policy decisions
(notably in support of the people of Gaza) regardless of
what Tehran advises them to do. Evidently, only the bad guys
have proxies. We have alliances.
Look at the map of
the Middle East. Iran has few friends (Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon
at best) and many, many far more powerful enemies –
Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and all
of North Africa. When it comes to funding ”terrorism”
abroad, Iran’s exported terrorism is largely limited to
its murderous attacks upon its own Iranian
dissidents.
To everyone else, Iran is not the main
terrorist problem. Over the past decade or more, the
terrorism threat in cities across Europe has come from
either right wing hate groups, or from Islamic State and
other Sunni extremist groups. It has not come from the Shia
clerics in Iran.
No doubt, Iran is ruled by a stupidly
brutal, religiously bigoted regime that executes its
dissidents. But then, that description also fits Saudi
Arabia just as neatly. Yet no-one is bombing Riyadh in order
to weaken or eliminate the House of Saud.
Which country repeatedly carries most of the acts of
terrorism committed across the Middle East? That would be
Israel, by a long shot. Israel has not only invaded and
continues to illegally occupy territory that belongs to its
neighbours. According to this Washington Post count
in February, over 23,000 US citizens currently
serve in the IDF, in aid of Israel’s military
expansionism.
On a regular basis across the Middle
East, Israel kills foreign political and religious leaders,
journalists, aid workers, medical staff, and scientists.
Assassination has become a common tool of Israeli foreign
policy. There is no equivalent elsewhere in the Middle East
to Israel’s scale of state-sponsored terrorism.
moral decline involved has been tragic to witness, given the
WWII circumstances that gave birth to the state of Israel.
Yet by choosing to fixate solely on their own needs and
interests – the hostages! – the citizens of Israel seem to
be wilfully blind to the daily round of crimes against
humanity that are being committed in their name, by the
Netanyahu government.
Once seen as a victim, the state
of Israel now acts more like a psychotic, impervious to the
suffering it is causing to others. Apart from a few notable
exceptions like Ireland, Spain and South Africa, the West
prefers to look the other way. For its part, New Zealand
pretends not to see what is happening in
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