On Gaza, Most Congress Members Have Been Moral Failures. Don’t
Grade Them on a Curve.
January
9, 2024
The
vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza
during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military. Capitol Hill remains a
friendly place for the Israeli government as it keeps receiving massive arms
shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
“Israel
would not be able to conduct this war without the U.S., which over time has
provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports,” Vox
reports. The distance between the Capitol and Gaza can be measured by the vast
disconnect between the standard discourse of U.S. politics and the terroristic
carnage destroying Palestinian people.
The
human toll includes upward of 22,000 dead, more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.2
million population displaced, and the emerging lethal combination of hunger and
disease that could kill several hundred thousand more.
The
impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly
does not want a ceasefire. The same can be said of the vast majority of
Congress, with silences and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support
for the wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend
itself.”
Members
of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify
huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they
had to dig their own dead children out of rubble.
Seventeen
members of the House stepped forward in mid-October to sign on as cosponsors of
the ceasefire resolution introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush, “calling for an
immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” The
number of those forthright representatives has not risen during the 11 weeks
since then.
What
we’ve gotten instead has been the molasses-pace drip of some other members of
Congress calling for — or kind of calling for — a ceasefire.
Now
in circulation from some antiwar organizations is what’s described as “a
growing list of members of Congress who have publicly called for a ceasefire in
the Gaza Strip.” But the basis for listing those names — 56 House members and
four senators — ranges from solid to flimsy.
A
case in point is my congressperson, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, whose
name is on the list but doesn’t belong there. As ostensible documentation, the
list provides a link to a Nov. 19 social-media post by Huffman stating that a
ceasefire would require “Hamas releases all hostages, disarms &
relinquishes control of Gaza” — in other words, full surrender by Hamas as a
prerequisite for an end to Israel’s mass killing of civilians there.
Several
other listed House members, such as Judy Chu (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.),
Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.), have “publicly called for
a ceasefire” only with caveats and preconditions — without calling for the
U.S.-backed Israeli government to immediately stop killing Palestinian
civilians no matter what.
A
lot of members of Congress have taken far worse positions. But we should not be
grading on a curve. Constituents need accurate information — so they won’t be
under the false impression that they’re being represented by an actual firm
supporter of a ceasefire.
Even
including the most dubious names that have been put in the category of
ceasefire supporters, the current list comprises just 13 percent of the House
and 4 percent of the Senate. That’s a measure of just how far we have to go in
order to end what amounts to congressional support for Israel’s genocidal war
on Palestinians in Gaza.
Outpourings
of protests against U.S. support for that war have included large nonviolent
actions at bridges, highways, train stations, airports, college campuses,
legislatures and more. Some activists have also confronted members of Congress.
But
mostly, congressional supporters of Israeli impunity have been spared the
nonviolent confrontations that they deserve. Such confrontations can occur at
their office on Capitol Hill, but traveling to Washington is not necessary.
Senators
and House members have numerous offices back home that are conveniently located
for most of their constituents to visit, picket and nonviolently disrupt —
insisting that support for the mass murder in Gaza is morally unacceptable.
South Africa's Genocide Case Against Israel Should Be a Rallying
Cry to the World
Phyllis
Bennis
1948
was a year of tragic irony.
That
year saw the adoption of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
together promising a world in which human rights would be protected by the rule
of law. That same year, South Africa adopted apartheid and Israeli forces
carried out the Nakba, the violent mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians. Both systems relied on western colonial support.
In
short, the modern international human rights movement was born into a world of
racialized colonial contradictions. Seventy-five years later, the world is
watching in horror as Israel has continued the Nakba through its months-long,
systematic ethnic purge of Gaza — again with the complicity of powerful western
governments led by the United States.
The
horrors of the original Nakba were met with decades of absolute impunity for
Israel, feeding further violence. But this time, three decades since the
overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, the post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” is
taking the lead in challenging Israel’s genocidal assault.
On
December 29, South Africa became the first country to file an application to
the UN’s high judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, instituting
genocide proceedings against Israel for “acts threatened, adopted, condoned,
taken, and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel
against the Palestinian people.”
In
wrenching and horrifying detail, South Africa’s 84-page document describes a
litany of Israeli actions as “genocidal in character, as they are committed
with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part
of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”
A
Horrifying Civilian Toll in Gaza and the West Bank
2023
was the bloodiest year in the Palestinian territories since the destruction of
historic Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel.
In
the first half of the year, Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank
had already reached a fever pitch, with successive waves of mass arrests,
settler pogroms, and military attacks against Palestinian towns and refugee
camps, including the ethnic cleansing of entire villages. At the same time,
millions of civilians in Gaza were suffering unbearable hardship under a
17-year-long Israel-imposed siege.
On
October 7, Gaza-based militants launched a devastating attack on Israeli
military and civilian targets and seized more than 200 military personnel and
civilian hostages. In an appalling act of mass collective punishment, Israel
immediately cut off all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.3
million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. Then it began a relentless
campaign of annihilation through massive bombing and missile strikes followed
by a ground-level invasion that brought shocking reports of massacres,
extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and mass civilian detentions.
More
than 22,000 civilians and counting have since been killed in Gaza, the
overwhelming majority children and women — along with record numbers of
journalists and more UN aid workers than in any other conflict situation.
Thousands more are still trapped under the rubble, dead or dying from untreated
injuries, and now more are dying from rampant diseases caused by Israel’s
denial of clean water and medical care, even as the Israeli military assault
continues. Eighty-five percent of all Gazans have been forced from their homes.
And now Israeli-imposed starvation is taking hold.
The
Legal Standard for Genocide
Genocide
analysts and human rights lawyers, activists, specialists around the globe—no
strangers to human cruelty—have been shocked by both the savagery of Israel’s
acts and by the brazen public declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli
leaders. Hundreds of these experts have sounded the genocide alarm in Gaza,
noting the point-by-point alignment between Israel’s actions and its officials’
stated intent on the one hand, and the prohibitions enumerated in UN Genocide
Convention on the other.
The
South African application “unequivocally condemns all violations of
international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli
civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian
armed groups.” But it reminds the Court: “No armed attack on a State’s
territory, no matter how serious—even an attack involving atrocity crimes—can,
however, provide any possible justification for, or defense to, breaches of the
[Genocide Convention] whether as a matter of law or morality.”
Unlike
many aspects of international law, the definition of genocide is quite
straightforward. To qualify as genocide or attempted genocide, two things are
required. First, the specific intent of the perpetrator to destroy all or part
of an identified national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Second,
commission of at least one of five specified acts designed to make that happen.
South
Africa’s petition to the ICJ is filled with clear and horrifically compelling
examples, identifying Israeli actions that match at least three of the five
acts that constitute genocide when linked to specific intent. Those include
killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to
members of the group, and, perhaps most indicative of genocidal purpose,
creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical
destruction.” As South Africa documents, Israel has shown the world, at levels
unprecedented in the 21st century, what those conditions look like.
For
specific intent, South Africa points to dozens of statements made by Israeli
leaders, including the President, Prime Minister, and other cabinet officials,
and as well as Knesset members, military commanders, and more.
Accustomed
to decades of U.S.-backed impunity, Israeli officials have been emboldened,
describing openly their intent to carry out “another Nakba,” to wipe out all of
Gaza, to deny any distinction between civilians and combatants, to raze Gaza to
the ground, to reduce it to rubble, and to bury Palestinians alive, among many
other similar statements.
Their
deliberately dehumanizing language includes descriptions of Palestinians as
animals, sub-human, Nazis, a cancer, insects, vermin—all language designed to
justify wiping out all or part of the group. Prime Minister Netanyahu went so
far as to invoke a Biblical verse on the Amalek, commanding that the “entire
population be wiped out, that none be spared, men, women, children, suckling
babies, and livestock.”
The
U.S. May Also Be Complicit in Israel’s Genocide
The
petition to the ICJ is sharply focused on Israel’s violations of the Genocide
Convention. It does not deal with the complicity of other governments, most
significantly of course the role of the United States in funding, arming, and
shielding Israel as it carries out its genocidal acts.
But
the active role of the United States in the Israeli onslaught, while hardly
surprising, has been especially shocking. As a State Party to the Genocide
Convention, the U.S. is obliged to act to prevent or stop genocide. Instead, we
have seen the United States not only failing in its obligations of prevention,
but instead actively providing economic, military, intelligence, and diplomatic
support to Israel while it is engaged in its mass atrocities in Gaza.
As
such, this is not merely a case of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide
(itself a breach of its legal obligations) but also a case of direct
complicity—which is a distinct crime under the Genocide Convention. The Center
for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations
and individual Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, has filed a suit in U.S.
federal court in California focused on U.S. complicity in Israel’s acts of
genocide.
South
Africa’s Genocide Complaint is a Rallying Cry for Civil Society
In
a situation such as this, framed by shocking western complicity on one side and
a massive failure of international institutions fed by U.S. pressure on the
other, South Africa’s initiative at the ICJ may hold significance beyond the
Court’s ultimate decision.
This
case comes in the context of the extraordinary mobilization of protests,
petitions, sit-ins, occupations, civil disobedience, boycotts, and so much more
by human rights defenders, Jewish activists, faith-based organizations, labor
unions, and broad-based movements across the United States and around the
world.
As
such, this move puts South Africa, and potentially the ICJ itself, on the side
of the global mobilization for a ceasefire, for human rights, and for
accountability. One of the most important values of this ICJ petition may
therefore be in its use as an instrument for escalating global civil society
mobilizations demanding their governments abide by the obligations imposed on
all parties to the Genocide Convention.
Predictably,
Israel has already rejected the legitimacy of the case before the Court.
Confident that the U.S. and its allies will not allow Israel to be held
accountable, the Israeli government is defiantly continuing its bloody assault
on Gaza (as well as the West Bank). If Israel and its western collaborators are
once again successful in blocking justice, the first victims will be the
Palestinian people. Then the credibility of international law itself may be
lost as collateral damage.
But
South Africa’s ICJ action has opened a crack in a 75-year-old wall of impunity
through which a light of hope has begun to shine. If global protests can seize
the moment to turn that crack into a wider portal towards justice, we may just
see the beginnings of real accountability for perpetrators, redress for
victims, and attention to the long-neglected root causes of violence:
settler-colonialism, occupation, inequality, and apartheid.
Pressing the Triggers That Could Lead to Two Wider Wars
In
both Gaza and Ukraine, the United States has followed a policy of allowing a
war to continue – in the former case through its Security Council veto and in
the latter by blocking negotiations – while attempting to limit a widening war.
In Gaza, attempts to prevent a wider war have focused first on Lebanon and the
potential to spread still wider from there; in Ukraine attempts to prevent a
wider war have focused on calibrating Ukraine’s ability to strike deeper into
Russian territory and preventing a Russian response that would draw the United
States and NATO into a wider world war.
That
balancing strategy of allowing war while preventing widening war is now at risk
in both theaters.
In
the Middle East, while the focus was on Lebanon, a perhaps surprising threat
came from Yemen as Houthi fighters attacked and boarded commercial naval
vessels bound to or from Israeli ports with cargo. The U.S. opted for a
military solution, forming a naval coalition with a small number of countries
to protect Red Sea traffic from Houthi attacks. As the attacks continued, and
even escalated, the U.S. and thirteen likeminded countries issued a joint
statement warning the Houthi against further attacks.
The
joint statement asserted that there is no justification for targeting and
killing civilians nor for blocking the flow of goods. It called for an
immediate end of the illegal attacks and warned the Houthi that they “will bear
the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives,
the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical
waterways.” The joint statement anchored its legitimacy in a commitment “to the
international rules-based order.”
Unlike
international law that is based on known sources and established laws and has
its foundation in the United Nations, the rules-based order has no known or
agreed upon source and the laws are insisted upon by the United States when
they work for them and set aside when they do not. The U.S. is surely right
that attacking civilian vessels at sea and blocking the flow of goods into or
out of a country is illegal under international law. But threatening the Houthi
on those grounds with a selective use of the rules-based order is likely to
provoke and anger them, given the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths they
suffered under a blockade and a U.S. supported war and the civilian deaths and
blockade they are responding to in Gaza.
That
provocation led to further escalation and risk of a widening war when Mohammed
Ali al-Houthi, the head of Yemen’s Houthi supreme revolutionary committee,
responded two days later that any country that is a member of the U.S. naval
coalition will lose its security in the Red Sea. The American strategy for
preventing the spread of the war is pushing on trigger points and risking a
widening war.
And
that threat is coming on land as well as sea. Israel’s northern border with
Lebanon has been the scene of a carefully measured confrontation in which
Israel and Hezbollah have calibrated their strikes below the threshold for war.
Hezbollah
has been trying to balance their support for Hamas and their role in the region
with the self-interest of an economically collapsed Lebanon that cannot afford
a full out war. But the recent Israeli strike deep into Lebanese territory that
killed Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chief of Hamas’ political wing and a founder
of its military wing, on January 2 pushed hard at those balancing calculations
and risks crossing the line at which Hezbollah sees itself as having to act on
Lebanese interests.
Following
the killing, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that Hezbollah “cannot be
silent about a violation of this level” because the strike on a Hezbollah
stronghold much deeper inside Lebanon “means that all of Lebanon will become
exposed, all cities, villages, and figures will become exposed.” This time,
Nasrallah promised that “the murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go
without reaction and punishment.”
Nasrallah
stressed that Hezbollah makes its decisions independently and in its own
interest and does not blindly follow the orders of any other and promised that
the response to the killing of al-Arouri would come on the battlefield.
That
preliminary response came just a few days later on January 6 when Hezbollah
fired 62 rockets at a key Israeli observation post used for aerial observation
and air control.
As
in the Red Sea, the pressure on trigger points, in this case an assassination
of a senior Hamas official on Lebanese territory, threatens the American policy
of attempting to manage the conflict and risks a widening of the war.
The
same risk is being faced in Ukraine. On December 30, 2023, Ukraine launched
long range missile attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod. None of the targets
seem to have been military targets. 21 civilians were killed and 111 were
wounded. No military personnel were killed.
The
attack led to an escalated Russian response. Waves of Russian drones and
missiles struck Ukraine over the next three days.
Such
spectacular Ukrainian strikes will not change the course of the war. They are
meant to refocus the media spotlight from Ukraine’s serious loss of land,
lives, and weapons on the battlefield and to show the West something that may
persuade it to keep sending aid.
But
there may be a more sinister intent too. The use of Western long-range missiles
will not weaken Russia, but it may anger them. It may trigger Russia to reverse
its policy of restraint in not striking Western-supplied weapons as they
transit through NATO countries like Poland or Romania. Russia made a point of
blaming the Czechs for supplying RM-70 Vampire multiple rocket launchers that
they say were used in the attack. Were Russia to reverse its policy and launch
retaliatory strikes on Westen targets, the American policy of containing the
war could break and introduce a risk of wider war.
Ukraine
is losing the war on the battlefield, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky has previously acted in ways that seriously restrict his ability of
initiating a negotiated settlement. With no chance for victory on the
battlefield nor at the negotiating table, widening the war and pulling in the
United States may be Ukraine’s only hope for victory. Strikes by
Western-supplied long range missiles inside Russian territory that lead to high
civilian deaths or the destruction of a symbolic target could trigger a Russian
retaliation that could risk widening the war. And that may be Ukraine’s intent.
In
the Red Sea, along the Lebanese border, and in Ukraine, the danger of
Washington’s policy of pursuing a balancing act that allows wars while also
trying to manage their spread is being exposed, and the United States and its
allies are risking a widening war in two very flammable conflicts.
How Israel’s “Send Palestinians to Congo” plan Evokes British
Colonial Plans to send Jews to Uganda
Oakland,
Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – Nothing illuminates the mutant
perversion of Zionism under Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) more clearly
than this: He proposes to forcibly evict all Palestinians from Gaza
(Palestine), and move them to Congo. This is what Great Britain proposed in
1903, as a solution to the “Jewish problem.” Rather than allow Jews to
immigrate to Palestine and create a new Jewish homeland, they proposed to move
them to Uganda, where the British Crown had plenty of room.
Bibi’s
empowerment of “Israeli Proud Boys” such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belezel
Smotrich, gives him the chutzpah and hubris to openly discuss a “forced”
migration, couched in Orwellian doublespeak to call it a “voluntary” migration.
The
notion to resettle Gazan war refugees in the Congo came from Israeli Minister
of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich,
though some Israeli officials deny it is being seriously considered. This very
proposal illustrates the deeply corrupt ideology that Zionism has become under
Bibi: A movement that began to save Jews from the Holocaust has mutated into a
murderous government, devoted to war crimes against other people, and to expel
them from their own historical homeland.
Under
Bibi’s leadership, Zionism has become a driving force in global anti-Semitism.
It was already at an all-time high since WWII because of Donald Trump’s
enabling and promotion of American and European Nazi movements. Anti-Semitism
has been a scourge of so-called Western civilization for centuries. In the 21st
Century it has been escalated by ignorance on both ends of the political
spectrum for different reasons. Right-wingers have always hated Jews, and
Evangelicals want to round us all up and send all the Jews to Israel so they
can solve the “Jewish problem,” with their own forced migration. It’s the
pre-requisite for their long-awaited Apocalypse. Anti-Semitism has escalated on
the left in recent years out of the willful failure to distinguish Zionism as a
political movement, from Judaism the religion. Republican Jews in the US are
also fueling anti-Semitism, AND our own demise at the same time, with their
“self-hating” loyalty to Trump.
Zionism
began as a movement for survival, in reaction to centuries of brutal pogroms in
Europe, culminating with the Holocaust, when six million Jews were brutally
murdered en masse, along with gays, gypsies (Roma), dark-skinned people, and
the mentally and physically disabled. Zionism began as a secular agrarian
movement in the latter third of the 19th Century. The Jewish presence in
Palestine began to slowly increase as Jews left Europe and slowly migrated to
Palestine, where they lived harmoniously through the early 20th Century, with
organic migration among the native Palestinians, Arabs and Druze populations
who never left. As political Zionism gained momentum and the pace of
immigration increased beyond absorption capacity, that’s when conflicts began.
When
the 1st Zionist Congress was led by Theodore Herzl in 1897 in Basle,
Switzerland, the goals were simple:
1.
The promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists,
artisans, tradesmen and manufacturers in Palestine.
2.
The organization and uniting of all Jews by means of appropriate
local and international institutions, in accordance with the laws of the
various countries.
3.
The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and
national consciousness.
4.
Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments,
where necessary, to achieve the Zionist purpose
It
contained no expression of Jewish nationalism, per se; nor a religious
obligation to fulfill a Biblical prophecy. Zionism began as a secular, agrarian
movement. At the 1905 7th Zionist Congress, they rejected the “Uganda project”
proposed two years earlier, and agreed to focus on creating agricultural and
industrial settlements in Palestine. However, numerous Jewish leaders opposed
any formation of a Jewish State in Palestine, as an impediment to the arrival
of the Messiah. They felt the creation of an artificial political state would
disrupt the spiritual return.
Bibi’s
goal of wiping out Hamas is only a cover for his real agenda of ethnic
cleansing in Gaza, according to Prof. Juan Cole. Bibi’s notion of “voluntary
immigration,” is a fiction intended to euphemize his own war crimes, as he
prosecutes a gratuitous war to avoid the consequences of his crimes against
Israel.
Now
Israel has bombed the last hospital in central Gaza, forcing Doctors Without
Border and relief agencies to abandon their patients for their own lives. They
have bombed people out of their homes, destroyed all infrastructure, killed
22,500 people and injured 57,000. They even killed three Israeli hostages who
survived 49 days in captivity, escaped and were trying to surrender. Bibi
doesn’t care if his campaign of Palestinian genocide kills a few Israelis in
the process. This is not an act of Judaism, but gross political murder.
Clearly,
forced immigration of Palestinians is Israeli policy now. Of the proposal to
deport 1.1 million destitute war refugees, Ben-Gvir said, “On the subject of
voluntary emigration… I think it’s the right solution.” But he also conflated
American political rivals as being in a fictional alliance. When asked about
possible objections from the Biden administration, Ben-Gvir said, “Nikki Haley
supports it, it is voluntary.” Haley hopes to run against Biden and can’t speak
for his agenda. Ben-Gvir revealed that strategy all along has been to inflict
so much misery on Gaza’s Palestinians, that they will want to go anywhere but
their bombed out homes as he said, “hundreds of thousands will leave now” if
given the option.
Haley
has already become invested in the mass deportation of Palestinians. The Times
of Israel reports she said, “They should go to pro-Hamas countries — Qatar,
Iran, Turkey… send them there… Those are pro-Hamas countries. Haley told ABC
News, “They should be going to the Rafah gate and [have] Egypt take them.”
That’s a non-starter as Egypt can’t absorb them, and it gives Israel cover for
war crimes from an American politician. But Haley lacks the standing tell any
country to accept immigrants, given her position on US immigration. She also
lacks any understanding of historical and political realities, namely that
Turkey is part of NATO.
The
Hamas massacres put a quick freeze on the regular, massive demonstrations in
Israeli cities challenging Bibi’s legitimacy. It was an Israeli point of pride
that 1000’s of protesters and military objectors suddenly closed ranks to
defend the nation. But now that the patriotic responses have led to more
Israeli deaths, including hostages killed by “friendly fire,” the movement to
oust Bibi has quickly escalated. As with Trump, Bibi is now running on
belligerence and fear alone. A chat page on Ha’aretz illustrates the growing
opposition to Bibi’s efforts to remain in power, with Israeli commenters
saying:
“Get
Netanyahu out now. Urgently. He is a destroyer of the dreams of Israel’s
founders, and a clear and present danger.”
“An
IDF/Shin Bet coup supported by the public.is the only way. ASAP.”
“If
Bibi goes, so goes the war. So goes the premiership. So goes the coalition. So
goes the war on democracy.”
Some
Israeli leaders deny that the Congo proposal is the agenda, and others object;
this proposal will hopefully go nowhere, especially with US State Department’s
expressed disapproval, calling it “inflammatory and irresponsible.” The global
focus now is to strengthen efforts by the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to heal, nurture and
heal as many refugees as possible, and whatever can be done to mitigate
Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Hidden Health Risks Loom in War-Ravaged Gaza
A
toxic mix of dust, ash, and other material from 15 million tons of rubble now
blankets the territory and all who live there.
In
the months since Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking
hundreds more hostage, Israeli forces have pummeled Gaza in a campaign to
dismantle the terrorist organization. The offensive has killed 22,000
Palestinians and dealt a grievous blow to the territory’s fragile air, water,
and land — and risks the long-term health of its residents.
The
ruin dwarfs anything Gazans have ever experienced. The ongoing aerial, naval,
and ground assault has by one United Nations estimate damaged or destroyed
about one-fifth of the structures in Gaza. According to Thorsten Kallnischkies,
a former disaster waste manager who has advised cleanups in 20 countries, 15
million tons of debris now litter the Gaza Strip.
The
last major hostilities between Israel and Gaza, in 2021, left 1 million tons.
When
these buildings, some 40,000 in all, were blown up, concrete, insulation, and
other materials — not to mention residents’ possessions — were pulverized into
toxic dust. The Jabalia refugee camp, for example, a sprawling neighborhood of
apartment towers known to contain asbestos, has seen repeated battering.
Systematic
research after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States was among
the first to link exposure to such a mix of detritus to pulmonary and
respiratory disease and cancer. Public health experts say the death count from
debris-related diseases stemming from the destruction in New York will soon
exceed that of the day’s attacks, if it hasn’t already.
Yet
such studies have not been replicated in places like Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq,
where the vast leveling of urban and industrial infrastructure left legacies of
pollution in addition to their costs in blood. Some environmental health
advocates argue it is time to devote the same attention to Gaza and other war
zones that was given to Ground Zero.
“You
can make a very solid case that civilians in these settings with a lot of dust,
debris and rubble are inhaling it on a frequent basis,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a
researcher with the Dutch peace organization PAX. “At the moment, nobody is
looking at those kinds of risks. But it does have real-life effects.”
Gaza
is among the most urbanized places in the world, with a population density
comparable to London’s. That makes the often toxic pollution associated with
decades of conflict one of the “serious long-term public health and
environmental problems” Gazans face, according to a report PAX released on
December 18. “It’s a known unknown,” Zwijnenburg said. “We know it’s a risk, we
just don’t know how much it is in Gaza right now.”
Research
after 9/11 established links between razing buildings and a panoply of short-
and long-term ailments. The attacks on the World Trade Center produced a toxic
cloud of dust, smoke, and fumes whose exact composition remains unknown even
now. It’s thought that most of the particulates consisted of pulverized
concrete, giving the plume the alkalinity of lye, a common ingredient in
household drain cleaner. The rest contained some 150 substances, from glass,
wood, lead and asbestos to heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs,
carcinogens produced by incinerated wiring and electronics.
Most
building materials are harmless in their everyday state. Blowing them up gives
them entree to the body. “Just like tobacco smoke, it’s a toxic mixture,” said
Ana Rule, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health. The nose and throat may catch larger particles, but the tiniest
of them move within the body “a little like a gas,” she said, transiting the
lungs into the bloodstream and on to other critical systems.
According
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, this chemical miasma
affected some 400,000 people in metropolitan New York — first responders most
severely, but also many who lived and worked near Ground Zero. The health
consequences are still surfacing. In 2011, the CDC launched, at congressional
direction, the World Trade Center Health Program to identify, understand, and
treat diseases linked to 9/11. It has documented a long and growing list of
ailments traced to the attack and, as of September, estimates that more than
6,500 of the program’s enrolled members have died. (It cautions that not all
those deaths were necessarily due to the 9/11-related disease.) The most
frequently observed illnesses are aerodigestive diseases, mental health
conditions, and cancers. A network of clinics across the U.S. will treat them
at no charge. In a 2021 paper, program officials called their work “a model for
how to address the complex health issues that arise in the near and long term
from any large-scale environmental disaster.”
Catastrophic
wars in Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq would seem to qualify. The conflict in Syria
has destroyed one-third of the country’s housing stock and a quarter of its
forest cover, largely by bombing and arson. In heavily industrialized Ukraine,
Russian attacks on nuclear power plants, oil refineries, and mines are among
thousands of possible sources of dangerous pollution suspected by the U.N.
Environment Program. In Iraq, where retreating ISIS fighters often set oil
wells ablaze, Zwijnenburg saw crude flowing in open pools and sheep blackened
by soot.
In
principle, making post-conflict zones livable again requires rigorous field
sampling, remediation of pollution hotspots, and health surveillance to watch
for disease trends. In practice, these things usually get skipped in the
exhaustion that follows hostilities. Advocates for more health-minded cleanups
say they have a tough time persuading governments and funders such efforts are
more than a luxury. “When conflict finishes, this can be a long and lingering
issue. You need clean water, clean soil to be able to sustain livelihoods,”
said Linsey Cottrell, a career chemist and the environmental policy officer at
the Conflict & Environment Observatory, a UK charitable organization. “It’s
not that it’s not happening, it’s just not as visible or highlighted as a
priority concern as some of the other things.”
Without
ground access to Gaza, observers are relying on remote sensing and publicly
available information to measure environmental impacts to the Strip. Using
satellite analysis, He Yin, an assistant professor of geography at Kent State
University, reckons the fighting has damaged 15 to 29 percent of Gaza’s arable
land. The PAX report identifies a plume of black smoke from a soda factory,
suggesting burning plastics, and heavy damage at an industrial campus that
makes pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics and other chemical goods. In
November, the New York Times observed a huge fire at a water-treatment plant, a
frightening development in one of the most water-stressed places in the world.
Debris
will probably pose a risk too. The volume of rubble littering the Strip is
roughly four times that of the Great Pyramid of Giza, according to
Kallnischkies. Given Gaza’s ultra-dense building environment and Israel’s
extensive bombing in residential areas, experts told Grist, aerosolized
concrete and asbestos are two likely public-health threats. Most of the
territory’s 2.3 million people live in
apartment buildings. Many residents build informal add-ons to their homes using
inexpensive but durable materials like asbestos sheeting. Asbestos is safe in
its inert state, but when destroyed releases microscopic fibers that can enter
the body with ease.
Inhaling
silica, a key ingredient in cement and glass, also increases the risk of
cancer. And while the greatest exposure occurs when a building is destroyed,
even its wreckage poses a risk. “Based on the images I have seen, people may
also be sleeping and living within homes that are partially damaged and filled
with dust,” Rule said. These microparticles can be kicked up by footfalls or
vehicles or lofted to other places on the wind, she said.
People
also tend to overlook the risk posed by the stuff of daily life — bottles of
bleach and detergent, cans of paint and thinner, jugs of gas and oil.
Businesses like dry cleaners and printers and auto repair shops keep bulk
chemicals on hand; so do high school chemistry labs. With proper handling by
trained professionals, all can be safely disposed of. But too often in
post-disaster scenarios, cleanups occur in bootstrapped ways as people,
governments and even humanitarian organizations get on with reconstruction.
Kallnischkies is skeptical that Gazans will get all the protective gear and
equipment needed to do the job safely, and says
it’s very likely a lot of rubble will simply be dumped into the sea.
The
PAX report said the war in Gaza offers a chance to do better. It recommends
that when the shooting and bombing ends, U.N. authorities and the World Bank
should lead a comprehensive environmental assessment. By identifying any toxins
in the environment and who might have been exposed to them, such analysis could
alert public health officials to the diseases they need to watch for.
In
the longer view, some want to see greater reflection and consideration about
where and how wars are fought. “We need the military to understand the human
and environmental cost when they fight in urban areas,” Cottrell said. “We need
to see that wars aren’t conducted where people live.”
No comments:
Post a Comment