Juan Cole
Ann Arbor
(Informed Comment) – A Special Committee of the United Nations Office of the
High Commission on Human Rights has issued a new report on Israeli actions in
Gaza concluding that they fit the profile of genocide.
The report says,
“The developments in this report lead the Special Committee to conclude that
the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent
with the characteristics of genocide.”
It goes on to
specify: “The targeting of Palestinians as a group; the life – threatening
conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on
humanitarian aid – resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages
and stillbirths – and the killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused
to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
are violations under international law. Civilians have been indiscriminately
and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza . . . ”
Genocide as the
term is used in contemporary International Humanitarian Law does not have the
connotation of killing millions of people. It has become a technical term for
trying to wipe out even a portion of a people simply because they belong to
that people. Trying to prevent them from having children is one of the actions
listed as indicating genocidal intent in the Rome Statute and the Genocide
Convention. That is why the Special Committee mentions “increased miscarriages
and stillbirths” happening as a result of Israeli actions in Gaza. It also
talks about the “unchilding” of the 800,000 Palestinian minors in Gaza, who
have been deprived of their childhoods and subjected to physical and emotional
traumas that will scar them for the rest of their lives, making them prone to
depression and other debilitating mental conditions.
One of the
things that most alarmed the committee is the Israeli use of artificial
intelligence for targeting, in ways that certainly increased the civilian death
toll and showed a reckless disregard for civilian lives in direct contradiction
of International Humanitarian Law.
It expressed
grave concern over the unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure and
the exceptionally high civilian death toll in Gaza. They said that this way of
proceeding raised significant questions about Israel’s use of artificial
intelligence to guide its military operations.
The Special
Committee cited Israel’s +972 Magazine and The Guardian among other sources
suggesting that the Israeli military lowered the thresholds for target
selection and simultaneously increased the previously accepted ratio of
civilian to combatant casualties. Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine reported that
the Israeli Rules of Engagement permitted the killing of 15 to 20 civilians for
every militant killed. Those aren’t military Rules of Engagement, they are
instructions for shooting fish in a barrel (my comment, not the UN’s).
The Special
Committee observed, “These directives reportedly enabled the military to use
artificial intelligence systems (which rely on mass surveillance to process
large volumes of data), to rapidly generate tens of thousands of targets, as
well as to track targets to their homes, particularly at night when families
shelter together.”
And by the way,
there was very little human supervision of these targeting decisions made by
AI, which is known to have a 10% error rate. At 43,000 dead from drones and air
strikes, 70% of them women and children, that could be 4,300 that were straight
up errors having nothing to do with Hamas. Not that the children of Hamas
members deserved to die when their father returned home in the evening. They
were children.
They continued,
“Reliance on the artificial intelligence-assisted targeting purportedly
accelerated decision-making to the point of soldiers reportedly authorizing
strikes in a matter of seconds, while the home-tracking of targets and night
strikes would have disproportionately increased civilian casualties.”
They said that
they were profoundly troubled by the indiscriminate loss of life reportedly
caused by these AI-enhanced targeting mechanisms, noting that fatalities were
multiplied because AI targeting was combined with explosive weaponry with
wide-area effects.
The report
concludes that Israel’s approach ignores Israel’s legal obligations
under international humanitarian law to make a distinction between civilians
and combatants and to implement sufficient safeguards to minimize harm to
non-combatants.
The report
concludes in this regard, “As stated by the High Commissioner for Human Rights,
the requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the
very least minimize to every extent civilian harm appears to have been
consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.”
The Special
Committee asserts that Gaza has become “unlivable” for Palestinians. It points
to statements of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres where he underlines that
no justification exists for the collective punishment of the Palestinian
population.
The report notes
that Israel has not yet complied with Guterres’ call for a cease-fire, a call
that has been reiterated in Security Council resolution 2735 (2024), and that
the Israeli government has similarly ignored no less than three binding orders
issued by the International Court of Justice.
In view of these
persistent violations, the Special Committee aligns with the
Secretary-General’s assessment that the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza
represents a moral failure that reflects poorly on humanity as a whole. They
say, “In the light of those ongoing violations, the Special Committee shares
the view of the Secretary-General that the humanitarian crisis has become a
moral stain on us all.”
Yoav Litvin
( The New Arab ) – In what war
criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “history’s
greatest comeback,” sexual predator, game show host and former Wrestlemania
idol Donald Trump was re-elected as US President.
Netanyahu, ever quick to kiss
Trump’s ring, has been scheming toward this very moment since last October when
Hamas fighters embarrassed his government by breaking out of Gaza’s prison
walls and attacking Israeli military bases.
Indeed, Netanyahu’s investment paid
off. Trump’s re-election reshuffles the Middle East colonial deck in
Netanyahu’s favour, shifting US policy from the Democratic Party’s hypocritical
complicity with and denial of Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity to a shameless embrace and encouragement of these malevolent actions.
Though historically Trump has been
far from an ally to the Palestinian people, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem
and recently using “Palestinian” as a pejorative on the campaign trail, he sent
a message to Netanyahu to conclude the “Gaza war” by inauguration day.
Trump likely seeks to distance
himself from the growing discontent over the Biden administration’s perceived
weakness in failing to rein in its Israeli junior partner, allowing him to
focus on advancing a series of xenophobic, regressive domestic policies aimed
at “Making America Great Again.”
Emboldened by Trump’s green light
and timeline, Netanyahu may escalate his genocidal actions leading up to the
inauguration, while a lame-duck President and defeated Vice President lick
their wounds and walk off into the sunset, hopefully via The Hague.
That said, Trump is anything but
predictable and could very well shift course entirely due to Netanyahu’s
persistent grovelling, providing continued imperial backing for belligerent
Zionist expansionism.
In their demagoguery, corruption,
racism and lack of social conscience, Trump and Netanyahu are mirror fascist
images.
They deploy a right-wing,
ethnocentric populist appeal with dog whistles and fear-mongering to
consolidate their power. Operating above and outside the law, they are both
avoiding corruption trials, inhabiting the same unrestrained, tyrannical
Hobbesian world.
Essentially, Trump and Netanyahu aim
to promote private capital by fragmenting the working class, pushing relentless
privatisation of social resources and eroding workers’ rights and union
protections. They rely on a fabricated white, Western “nation” to advance their
nationalist agendas, claiming to protect the purity and security of their
in-groups and white, Western interests while promoting a racist capitalist
system of global apartheid.
Raised in the shadows of powerful
fathers, the two leaders developed a narcissistic need for power, fame and
wealth, indulging in corrupt extravagance and throwing spiteful tantrums when
challenged.
Their motivations centre on
domination, personal gain and the thrill of victory, driven by an insatiable
desire to inflate their own grandiose egos. With little regard for integrity or
the welfare of others, they routinely scapegoat society’s disadvantaged people
to deflect criticism and wield power, prioritising in-group social identity
over truth and morality.
Media manipulation is another shared
skill. Trump, the reality show star, mastered this during his campaigns, using
an array of far-right media networks to spread misinformation, xenophobia and
deflect criticism.
Similarly, drawing on skill first
honed as a furniture salesman, Netanyahu, the quintessential Teflon politician,
has polished the arts of spin, cajolery and propaganda, deftly seizing on the
October 7 events to push his agenda unchecked.
With atrocity propaganda eagerly
consumed by Israel’s compliant press and promoted by a liberal Zionist
“opposition,” he shepherds the Israeli flock to endless war, perpetually
delaying his pending corruption trial.
Trump and Netanyahu’s Ur-Fascism
Beyond similarities in their
backgrounds, personalities and motivations, Trump and Netanyahu exemplify
figureheads of what Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco described as
“Ur-fascism.’
Ur-Fascism combines traditionalism,
irrationalism and authoritarianism to manipulate and control through several
defining traits.
It adopts a cult of tradition,
whether a delusion of a once “great” America, or a vast Judean Kingdom, fusing
diverse, often contradictory teachings into an unchangeable “truth,” rejecting
intellectual progress and embracing mysticism to legitimise its ideology. This
rejection of modernism ties into an anti-Enlightenment stance, superficially
accepting technology yet viewing reason, rationality and liberal values as
corrupt.
Irrationalism lies at Ur-Fascism’s
core, glorifying action over thought and condemning intellectual culture as
weak and untrustworthy.
In this environment, disagreement
equals betrayal, and questioning established norms is cast as subversive.
Thriving on a fear of difference, it fosters racism and xenophobia, uniting
followers against outsiders as a trick to divert attention from internal
corruption.
Ur-Fascism is nurtured by social
frustration, appealing to a disillusioned middle class and those lacking social
identity by promoting nationalism and a sense of unity through battles with
imagined enemies.
Whether through Trump’s
villainisation of immigrants or Netanyahu’s “Amalek,” followers are made to
feel both humiliated by and superior to their enemies, creating a contradiction
that leads to inevitable defeat.
This struggle manifests in a heroic
narrative where death and martyrdom are celebrated. Toxic masculinity further
defines Ur-Fascism, with disdain for women and nonstandard sexualities and a
fetishisation of violence and weapons.
Misogynoir, deeply embedded in
Zionist and American white supremacist ideology, fuses religious and fascistic
dogmas to cast non-whites, including immigrants and Palestinians as
“demographic threats” while erasing Indigenous female identities and lives.
In place of these identities, a
Western femininity is constructed, where women are integrated into
male-dominated, capitalist and militaristic structures “whether they like it or
not.” In fascistic, genocidal escapades, controlling women, who uphold cultural,
reproductive and territorial continuity, symbolises ultimate conquest.
Ur-Fascism’s qualitative populism
denies individual rights, presenting the people as a unified entity whose will
is interpreted by the leader, bypassing democracy through controlled media and
staged public support.
Language is deliberately simplified
to suppress critical thinking, reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak, often
disguised in seemingly innocuous forms like talk shows. Through this web of
manipulation, Ur-Fascism ultimately seeks to dismantle rational discourse,
undermine democracy and create a society ruled by fear, conformity and
unquestioning loyalty to a single leader.
Globalisation of white supremacy
The Trump-aligned Heritage
foundation has produced complementary documents which outline the globalisation
of American white supremacy and Zionism with “Project 2025” and “Project
Esther,” respectively.
The texts, which read like dystopian
fascist manifestos, detail plans which attempt to institutionalise apartheid
and genocide, with vigilante groups under the guise of ‘self defence’ as
enforcers.
Netanyahu’s appointment of Yechiel
Leiter — a prominent settler and former member of the Jewish Defense League
(JDL), an FBI designated terrorist organisation — as ambassador to the US
signals his intent to escalate his campaign in Gaza, push toward the annexation
of the West Bank and embolden already manifest fascist Zionist mob attacks with
the assistance of Mossad beyond Israel (e.g. Amsterdam, Toronto).
In a possible scenario, if Netanyahu
persists in his crusade, Trump could broker one of his signature “deals,”
offering to recognise annexation of the West Bank, a move articulated by
far-right Israeli Minister Smotrich, in exchange for a halt to Zionist
aggression against Lebanon and Iran. Trump could then posture as a
“peacemaker,” at the expense of the Palestinian and Lebanese people, of course.
That said, recent reports of an
Iranian plot to assassinate Trump may prompt the vindictive President-elect to
abandon any thoughts of diplomacy with Iran, aligning perfectly with
Netanyahu’s fervent ambitions to pull US forces into a war with Iran in a fascist
tag-team effort straight from hell.
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