Radio: I Discuss Israel’s Horrendous Prisons for Palestinians and the ICC Noose Tightening Around Netanyahu’s Neck on Gorilla Radio
31.5.24
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My thanks to the indefatigable Chris Cook, based in western Canada, for having me on his Gorilla Radio show to discuss Ending Israel’s Impunity for Genocide in Gaza, and the Threat to Those, Like Joe Biden, Who Are Most Complicit, my latest article on the defining horror of our times. Our discussion takes place in the second half of the one-hour show, available on Substack here, after an illuminating first half with Yves Engler, the Montreal-based political activist, whose latest book, co-authored with Owen Schalk, is ‘Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy.’ I’m also pleased to note that Chris played my song ‘Forever Prisoner’, about Guantánamo prisoner Khaled Qassim, recorded with my band The Four Fathers.
Chris and I began by discussing Jonathan Cook’s latest article for Middle East Eye, The message of Israel’s torture chambers is directed at all of us, not just Palestinians, which drew on a detailed CNN investigation published on May 11, Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center, about Sde Teiman, a secret Israeli prison on a military base in the Negev Desert, where Palestinians seized in the Gaza Strip since October 7 are kept naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, and, permanently, “forced to remain motionless and silent”, as Cook describes it, adding, “At night, dogs are set on them. Anyone who speaks or moves risks being savagely beaten till bones are broken.”
The whistleblowers who spoke to CNN also explained that “doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.”
I haven’t yet written about the horrors of Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, although I hope to do so soon, as they have been preoccupying me for many months, because the entire system of prisons fundamentally outside the law, where men and boys — and, to a lesser extent, women and girls — are treated brutally while being held for indeterminate amounts of time, where many are subjected to “administrative detention” (arbitrary six-month periods of imprisonment that can be indefinitely renewed), and released (or not released) completely arbitrarily was a direct inspiration for the US’s treatment of men and boys seized in the “war on terror” and imprisoned in Afghanistan, in CIA “black sites”, at Guantánamo and in Iraq.
Chris was particularly appalled by the suggestions of Mengele-like “experimentation” on prisoners, although it seems to me that the reports more generally show a pattern of trainee or untrained doctors being given licence to operate on prisoners (without anaesthetics), which doesn’t plumb the depths of Mengele’s Nazi depravity, but is, of course, horrendously barbaric and lawless, and reminiscent of the medical conditions in the early years of Guantánamo, where prisoners have spoken of a prevailing fear of doctors, because of visits that resulted in them having limbs amputated and teeth removed, even though none of these procedures were necessary.
Just as Guantánamo involved “suspects” being rounded up in a largely indiscriminate manner, despite which they were all regarded as “terrorists”, so Israel’s prisons for Palestinians have always also involved an erasure of the presumption of innocence, and a determination to regard everyone imprisoned as a terrorist, with the only “proof” required, as in the “war on terror”, being confessions extracted through the use of torture and other forms of abuse.
However, Israel’s prison are, in many respects, far worse. In Afghanistan and at Guantánamo, the prisoners rose up against efforts to keep them permanently immobile and silent, and to prevent them from praying, whereas, in Israel’s prisons, the horrendous oppression of enforced silence, immobility and the deprivation of religious expression seems to be much more brutally maintained, and is, as a result, a crime against humanity on a deeply shocking scale.
In addition, of course, the numbers of men detained at Guantánamo is dwarfed by those held by Israel, with the numbers having doubled, at least, from before October 7, when around 5,000 prisoners were held, to at least 10,000 now — and probably many more.
Moreover, although the US was notoriously inept at rounding up anyone connected in any meaningful sense to Al-Qaeda, treated soldiers as terrorists, and also rounded up hundreds of civilians who were neither involved in terrorism nor in any kind of militancy, Israel has been going out of its way to fill its vile prisons almost exclusively with civilians who are, nevertheless, treated as terrorists, with journalists detained, for example, and with doctors and medical personnel being the most noticeable group whose imprisonment — and torture to get them to confess to non-existent connections with Hamas — to my mind plumbs new depths in Israeli depravity, with one particular case — that of the renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, chilling me to the core of my being.
50 years old, Dr. Al-Bursh was the head of orthopedics at Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital (now destroyed twice by the Israelis in the last eight months), but was seized in December 2023 while temporarily working at another hospital, Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. Taken to the notorious Ofer Prison in the West Bank, he died after four months of imprisonment without charge, with UN Special Rapporteur Tlaleng Mofokeng issuing a statement on May 16, in which he cited a witness in the prison describing how Dr. Al-Bursh “had reportedly been beaten in prison, with his body showing signs of torture.”
As I explained in incredulity to Chris, how is it that our countries continue to support a regime that, not content with the war crime of bombing, invading and destroying hospitals, seizes doctors and medical staff, and tortures and kills them with impunity while trying to extract false confessions about non-existent connections with Hamas militants?
Not for the first time, when it comes to the genocide in Gaza, I sometimes struggle, when trying to cope with the myriad ways in which Israel has, for the last eight months, been engaged in the most monstrous war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and yet is still backed almost entirely uncritically by the west, to find words that are adequate to express the particular horrors taking place, as though our own languages have been found wanting, and words have not yet been invented to describe such unparalleled depravity.
In the hope that, one day, Israel will be brought to justice, I have, like countless other people, been trying to cling to the straws of accountability created in the wake of the Second World War, primarily via the UN, and, more recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC), as I explained in detail in my most recent article, and as I also discussed with Chris.
I do believe that, one day (although not soon enough to stop the bombs from falling right now), Israel will be found guilty of genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and I also take heart that the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan last week announced his intention to seek arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. This is the first time that rules created by the west to apply to others have been used on them (Israel being a fully accepted member of the colonial club created by the countries of the west to punish others), and it is, therefore, quite genuinely significant.
I hope the ripples from the above eventually engulf not just Israel, but also all its supporters and facilitators in the west, but I can’t say with any certainty that a more horrific future doesn’t await us, in which the post-WWII vehicles for human rights and accountability collapse completely. Have we really sunk so low, in defence of another country’s genocide, that we will allow this to happen? I don’t know, but sadly, at present, it’s still not possible to see how, for the surviving Palestinians, and for humanity itself, Israel can be imminently compelled to bring a halt to its genocide.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
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27 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, linking to my latest appearance on Gorilla Radio, the weekly radio show from western Canada run by Chris Cook, who has been interviewing me on a regular basis for many years, in which, for 30 minutes, we discussed various aspects of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, following up on my recent article, ‘Ending Israel’s Impunity for Genocide in Gaza, and the Threat to Those, Like Joe Biden, Who Are Most Complicit’, and also following up on recent reports about conditions in Israel’s brutal and fundamentally lawless prisons for Palestinians.
In relation to my recent article, we discussed the efforts by international bodies — the UN, the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and the ICC (International Criminal Court) — to hold Israel accountable for its actions, which, although stymied by a deliberately built-in lack of enforcement mechanisms, remain noteworthy because, I am sure, the ICJ will eventually find Israel guilty of genocide, and the ICC’s eventual intervention — the announcement of the intention to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant — marks the first time that any of the post-WWII mechanisms to hold nations and individuals accountable for the gravest of crimes has turned its attention to one of their own (Israel having, until now, been protected as, essentially, part of the cosy colonial club of western countries that never intended the rules to apply to them).
Regarding Israel’s prisons, I was pleased to be able to discuss the comparisons between Israel’s prisons for Palestinians and the US’s “war on terror” prisons — including those in Afghanistan, the CIA “black sites” and Guantanamo — but to stress that, in numerous significant ways, Israel’s prisons are even more shocking, disturbing and lawless than the manifestation of the US’s vengeful depravity after 9/11.
I haven’t yet written a full-length article about Israel’s prisons, although I hope to do so soon, but in the meantime I hope that, as well as listening to the show, you also have time to read my accompanying text, in which, for the first time, I provide an introduction to this horrific, and mostly under-reported story.
...on May 31st, 2024 at 6:02 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Judith Lienhard wrote:
Thanks for tackling this deeply disturbing issue.
...on May 31st, 2024 at 7:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
You’re welcome, Judith. I was glad that Chris gave me the opportunity to talk about Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, because, as I say, I’ve been meaning to write about them for some time, particularly since I saw Israeli TV footage, a few months ago, of facilities where those allegedly captured on October 7 are held, where, relentlessly, prisoners are forced to kneel while bound and blindfolded, with their heads touching the floor, an unending punishment like some circle of hell.
I also found the murder of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, which I wrote about in the article, and discussed with Chris, hugely significant, because, as I state, “how is it that our countries continue to support a regime that, not content with the war crime of bombing, invading and destroying hospitals, seizes doctors and medical staff, and tortures and kills them with impunity while trying to extract false confessions about non-existent connections with Hamas militants?”
...on May 31st, 2024 at 7:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Judith Lienhard wrote:
Andy, I have read articles by physicians talking about working with healthcare workers released from detention and the nightmares/PTSD they suffer.
They have come back to work just to stay busy and try not to think. I’ll see if I can find the article and will send it to you.
...on May 31st, 2024 at 9:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Judith. I found an article from The New Arab in February, which may be the one you were thinking of. Dr. Said Abdulrahman Maarouf, a paediatrician abducted from Al-Ahli Hospital in December (perhaps at the same time as Adnan al-Bursh) was held for 45 days and subjected to torture. He said he was forced “to sleep on gravel, without a pillow or a blanket, with loud music blasting ‘as if it was a party'”, adding, “My weight was 87 kg, but in 45 days I lost more than 25 kg. I lost my balance, focus, all my senses. We were shackled for 45 days.” He also added that he was “blindfolded the entire time.”
After his release, he immediately went back to work, at the Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, explaining that it was his “humanitarian duty” to help children in need, even though he must have been traumatized, and had no idea whether his family members were still alive.
https://www.newarab.com/news/gaza-doctor-returns-work-right-after-israel-torture
...on May 31st, 2024 at 9:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Thank you, Andy! I posted shortly after Oct. 7th a Report on Israeli Prisons I found on Middle East Monitor. I posted it on FB, my post disappeared, then I tried to find it on the journal site, but it had disappeared. I believe it was from 2013? It was devastating horror. It included the practice of organ harvesting and a Swedish newspaper account of an Israeli official saying, “we have harvested organs but stopped harvesting organs.” They still do. I hope you have found all the buried proof of the horror the Palestinian People have endured. Thank you for writing and posting. #PermanentCeaseFireNOW!
...on May 31st, 2024 at 9:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Kären. Yes, I recall that an organ harvesting story apeared in Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper in 2009, which caused some controversy (to put it mildly). Horribly, just recently, “Paramedics and rescue teams involved in retrieving civilian bodies from the mass graves discovered at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis … reported organ theft by Israeli military and claimed some Gaza victims were buried alive in the recently discovered graves”, as an article in TRTWorld explained. https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/organs-stolen-victims-buried-alive-gaza-mass-graves-expose-israeli-crimes-17924041
...on May 31st, 2024 at 9:35 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I obviously have no intention of unduly getting my hopes up, or anyone else’s, for that matter, but it’s noticeable that, this evening, out of the blue, President Biden, announcing a ceasefire proposal that he said Israel had agreed to, and which he urged Hamas to accept, spoke about Israel’s “war” on Gaza in language that we haven’t heard him use before.
As he said, “Indefinite war in pursuit of an unidentified notion of ‘total victory’ will only bog down Israel in Gaza, draining [its] economic, military and human resources, and furthering Israel’s isolation in the world. That will not bring hostages home. That will not bring an enduring defeat of Hamas. That will not bring Israel lasting security.”
Evidently, Biden is playing some sort of a game here, because the ceasefire proposal, involving three six-week phases, an end to all military activity, the provision of aid, exchange of hostages for prisoners and eventual reconstruction is almost identical to the recent ceasefire deal agreed by Hamas, but which Israel turned down.
I can’t help but wonder if Biden is perhaps finally trying to exert some sort of political pressure on Israel, hence his framing of the deal. I don’t think he will have suddenly discovered a concern for Palestinian lives, but I do think that his statement may well reflect serious concerns within his administration that they’re running out of time to find a resolution so that they don’t lose the election, and that they’re genuinely concerned about Israel’s increasing isolation.
Biden’s full speech is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-middle-east-2/
...on May 31st, 2024 at 9:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Judith Lienhard wrote, in response to 5, above:
Andy, I found what I was looking for – ‘What It’s Like on the Front Lines of Gaza’s Hospital Hell’: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/tanya-haj-hassan-interview-gaza-healthcare/
...on June 1st, 2024 at 11:42 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Judith. I had missed that article in The Nation, just two weeks ago, with Mary Turfah interviewing Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan of Médecins Sans Frontières, who I remember hearing from back in November, when she broke down reading out a message from doctors in Gaza outside 10 Downing Street.
I’m posting below a significant portion of that interview, because it captures so well the absolute horror of what Israel is doing, and has been doing to doctors and medical staff in Gaza:
Mary Turfah: Yesterday, I came across a report of a third mass grave unearthed at Al-Shifa Hospital. One month ago, as the first mass graves there were being uncovered, you were interviewed by Sky News. The anchor cited Israeli military sources saying that they had detained “hundreds of Hamas militants” within the complex, then asked you what you thought of that. Could you speak to your response to him, and to this persistent obsession with “militants at Al-Shifa,” when not a single hospital in Gaza has been spared, and when there have been mass graves [seven in total to date] uncovered at multiple hospitals in Gaza?
Tanya Haj-Hassan: Yeah. I think my response was something to the effect of, I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. Everybody from a medical or humanitarian background is so sick of having to respond to these atrocious, preposterous justifications that are being provided for things that are never justifiable. I thought the Hamas and Al-Shifa question was buried a long time ago. There were several weeks where that’s all we were asked about in interviews. There were multiple investigations done that concluded no credible evidence existed to justify the attacks on Al-Shifa. And then, Al-Shifa was targeted again, besieged again.
I think I had come back from Gaza shortly before that Sky News interview. When I was at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah, I spoke with several healthcare providers who were at Al-Shifa until the last minute during that first round of attacks, when the hospital was besieged and forcibly evacuated of all patients and staff. You probably remember that first round, the Israeli targeting of the hospital solar panels and the oxygen supply, how the hospitals ran out of fuel, the various units in the hospital that were damaged.
Then, eventually, Al-Shifa started functioning again. The staff were so proud of the fact that they got it functioning again.
That second time, the hospital was again besieged and targeted. A lot of the staff were taken out into the courtyard of the hospital, where the male staff were stripped. Israeli soldiers beat several of the healthcare providers. A very, very senior person at Al Shifa, an older doctor, was eventually released and came on foot to Al-Aqsa Hospital. And immediately, he went back to work. I was at Al-Aqsa Hospital when he turned up disheveled, beard down to here, exhausted, having lost I don’t know how many kilos, hadn’t seen his family for five months, didn’t have a phone, didn’t have proper shoes, didn’t have proper clothes.
They fled with basically nothing. And many of the other healthcare providers who were taken outside with him were abducted. I think his testimonies of what happened and the amount of work they had put into getting Al-Shifa functioning again made the question of the Sky News anchor even more infuriating. Because that’s the reality I had just come out of, and to hear him then ask a health professional who had spent the last few weeks resuscitating dead and dying children that have been maimed to an extent that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget—even though I think for my own well-being, it would probably be good if I would forget some of those images—I found it so insulting. Insulting to me, to the healthcare providers who had risked their lives to stay at Al-Shifa, who had lost 25 percent of their body weight, who were exhausted. Insulting to the health care providers who had been killed at Al-Shifa, fleeing from Al-Shifa, to the civilians who were executed there. It’s insulting to our intellect. It’s insulting to humanity.
MT: Last week, it was revealed that Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, a renowned orthopedic surgeon in Gaza, was tortured to death inside of Israeli prisons, according to eyewitness testimony, after he had been abducted from the hospital where he was providing life-saving care, back in December. Hundreds of medical workers have been killed to date, and many more injured. You said in one interview that doctors and healthcare workers are changing out of their scrubs before leaving the hospital so that they’re not targeted. On top of this, the doctors in Gaza have been working basically nonstop for 215 days. As someone who has worked in Gaza, I was wondering if you could say a bit about what your colleagues are facing day-to-day.
THH: I want to start with the abduction of healthcare workers, because it’s so underreported, to the point where myself and my colleagues, medical providers working our own jobs, are doing the investigative work. They’re systematic. There have been at least 240 abductions documented by our group—
MT: 240?!
THH: At least 240, and I’m not talking about what’s reported by the Ministry of Health, which I believe is an even higher number. We documented that at least 240 healthcare workers have been abducted and detained by Israeli forces, the majority of whom have not been released. And the ones who have been released are providing testimonies of torture, of themselves but also the torture that they’ve witnessed.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 11:44 am
Andy Worthington says...
More here:
Tanya Haj-Hassan: I’ve taken testimonies. One, a three-hour-long testimony about the torture inflicted on [my friend,] a nurse, for 53 days in custody, accusing him of being part of Hamas, of his family being part of Hamas, even though the fact that he was released tells you he wasn’t part of Hamas. Given the extent to which he was tortured, I’m surprised that he survived. And he has not survived with his physical and mental health intact. He has scars, he has nightmares. He had hematuria, so bleeding when he urinated, for weeks after he was released.
Mary Turfah: Hematuria? What did they do to him?
THH: Let me just say it was physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. And he gave me detailed descriptions of what each of those entailed. And it is the worst thing I’ve heard in my life, honestly. I have a friend who worked on the Abu Ghraib investigations, a human rights lawyer. And I’m telling you this is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
They treated him like an animal. They threatened to rape his mother and his sisters if he didn’t confess, and they threatened to kill his family who were still in Gaza if he didn’t confess. They stated that they knew where his family was sheltering, where they were, and they kept telling him to confess. And he kept refusing to provide a false confession, insisting he was a nurse and had nothing to do with any military group.
Let me tell you something about this nurse, because I think it’s important just to paint the picture. This nurse, excuse my language, works his ass off. He’s one of the most dedicated nurses I’ve ever met. Now that he’s been released, guess what he’s doing? He’s working for free, as a volunteer.
Say it’s two, three in the morning. We’ve received mass casualty after mass casualty. We’re exhausted. We’ve just finished resuscitating all the patients, everybody’s relatively stable. And while the rest of us are getting a cup of tea, he’s in the resuscitation area, wiping the sand out of a patient’s eyes, removing their wet clothing, talking to them. That is the type of human he is.
I just want to paint that picture, with dark circles under his eyes because he has insomnia, because he wakes up every night, after 30 minutes of sleeping, screaming “Stop hitting me! Stop beating me!” He cannot sleep. So he works. He’s supposed to be 24 hours on, 48 hours off, right? But after he’s done with his 24 hours, he’s back three hours later because he can’t sleep.
Once, I told him to go home because he’d been working for way too long. So he leaves. Two to three hours later, I’m in the ER, and I see a man lying on the ground with a tourniquet with both legs traumatically amputated and one arm traumatically amputated. He has one arm left and he’s hemorrhaging onto the ground. They’re resuscitating him and he’s just arrived at the hospital. He has a Foley catheter used as a tourniquet around one stump. And on the other leg, he has a military-grade tourniquet. I hadn’t seen any military-grade tourniquets in the ER before, but I had brought a whole bunch into Gaza with me, and I had gifted one to this nurse two days before.
This patient has a military-grade tourniquet on one leg. I quickly pull out another one from my bag, and I put it on his other leg, and I’m thinking, where the heck did they find that other tourniquet?
And then I turn around and I see that nurse. So now I know where the tourniquet came from. I’m like, what are you doing here, man? I told you to go home and rest. He goes, “I did go home and rest. This is my sister’s husband on the ground with triple amputations.”
He explains that his sister’s husband went to an aid distribution. The Israeli forces bombed the aid distribution site. So his family woke him up and asked him to please go check on his brother-in-law, whom they knew was at the aid distribution site.
He arrives. He sees his sister’s husband, who’s also his very good friend, hemorrhaging on the ground, with triple traumatic amputations. And now his sister’s husband is in an overcrowded hospital requiring multiple surgeries and unable to get them. He is caring for him, and he’s the same person who’s been through everything I just told you about.
This is also the same nurse who, a few nights later, was resuscitating a child at three in the morning. The child dies, and the nurse passes out, head on the cot in front of him.
This is the experience of one healthcare provider who’s been abducted. He’s exhausted. His home has been destroyed. He’s working an insane number of hours without pay. And he’s one of the hundreds who have been abducted.
And all the other healthcare workers who haven’t been abducted know healthcare workers who were killed or abducted. They’re working without pay, or with minimal pay, if they have a contract. Most of the healthcare workers that I spoke to at Al-Aqsa Hospital are living in tents at this point. They’re coming to work every day, trying to provide for their family members because they’re often the only person, if they are getting paid, who has an income.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 11:46 am
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Judith, that article is incredibly important with the eyewitness account. “THH: I want to start with the abduction of healthcare workers, because it’s so underreported, to the point where myself and my colleagues, medical providers working our own jobs, are doing the investigative work. They’re systematic. There have been at least 240 abductions documented by our group—”
Imagine this, Judith, with the fact Netanyahu is being allowed to speak to our Congress. He needs to be arrested.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 11:47 am
Andy Worthington says...
I agree, Kären. It is unthinkable that Netanyahu will be welcomed in Congress and feted as some sort of hero by so many elected representatives, both Democrats and Republicans. Any politician with any sense – even if they don’t have a heart – should stay away, if only to avoid being held complicit one day in having welcomed someone under investigation by the ICJ for initiating a “plausible genocide”, and facing an arrest warrant from the ICC for four war crimes — “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” “wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health, or cruel treatment,” “wilful killing or murder” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population” — and three crimes against humanity — “extermination and/or murder, including in the context of deaths caused by starvation,” “persecution” and “other inhumane acts.”
Members of Congress may like to pretend that these charges are groundless, as they try to discredit and threaten the ICC, but unless the entire edifice of international’s law collapses, they’re eventually going to be proven wrong.
I can only hope that, if this deranged idea goes ahead, there will be protests of such size and intensity that the very foundations of Congress shake.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 11:48 am
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote, in response to 8, above:
It is to stop losing votes. Biden, a self proclaimed Zionist, is doing too little, too late for the dead, orphaned, maimed, trauma victims and destroyed infrastructure. I am glad if a permanent ceasefire can happen and desperately needed aid that they have been withholding gets in immediately. We should never trust Biden and he must be replaced as a candidate.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said, Kären, and I don’t trust him at all, and think the Democrats really should replace him, but I’m curious about why this is happening now.
Politicians are all so deeply, deeply untrustworthy and cynical that it may be that his fine words are meant to be nothing more than the right noises, with no intention of there actually being any change, but at the same time he must have some advisers who recognize that words alone aren’t going to stop the haemmoraging of votes.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Agree and does Biden really have any control over the Sociopath / psychopath / Narcissist Netanyahu and his band of Reptilian Monsters?
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Biden has immense power, in that he could stop sending the bombs, Kären, and I truly believe that his own obsession has, at least to date, been overriding the advice of senior officials who must know that this is unconscionable. Remember, over and over again he has talked about seeing photos of atrocities committed by Hamas that don’t exist. Frequently, White House staff have had to add that crucial fact in comments to the press. Doddering at the end of his life, his mind collapsing, he is fixated by horrors that didn’t happen, to justify what for him is evidently the bloodthirsty joy of wiping out an entire people (who, of course, are a brown-skinned Muslim “other”, and, for the colonialists, like Biden, an irritating thorn in the side of Israel’s self-declared right to colonize the whole of historic Palestine).
It’s important to remember that AIPAC and other Israeli lobbying groups have been keeping a tight rein on all their servants for decades, but it goes beyond that – and not just in Biden’s case. All the politicians we hear revelling in genocide – and there are, shamefully, so many of them on both sides of the aisle – have given in to the darkest impulses humanity possesses: a hunger to eliminate an entire population.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
I understand but Hamas has already offered cooperation before and Israel said no. Biden is beyond crazy. “Time for this war to end” and he keeps arming Israel!!! Then he defends every single attack, condemns the ICJ, the international community, the officials and politicians defending Palestine … honestly, if he’s going to keep being a part of this genocide, he may as well just shut up and stop pretending he wants this war over.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, it’s all so horrible, isn’t it, Natalia? I really do despise the overwhelming majority of politicians, who seem to have reached the nadir of untrustworthiness in the 21st century, endlessly lying and spinning, and persistently saying and promising things they don’t mean.
I posted this to try and assess whether there was any meaning behind it, and to find out what people thought. I’ve since heard the disturbing news that Netanyahu has just received a bipartisan invitation to address Congress, which is absolutely horrific, and now I’m wondering if Biden’s statement is simply meant to provide some kind of cover for that.
I’m so sick of it all, tbh.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
I am beyond appalled Netanyahu, the Murderer, will be allowed to speak to Congress. I hope there is a giant protest outside and inside.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It needs to be like nothing anyone has ever seen, Kären. What an absolute disgrace. Like inviting Hitler to address Congress sometime after 1941, when he was fully implementing the Final Solution.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
If this is serious, Biden must have heard Israel’s plan to continue the war until the end of the year as a real threat to his re-election. Israel can reject this. They might. But it buys more votes.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your thoughts, Deborah. I’ve been convinced for some time that some high-level Biden administration staff must be freaking out that they might lose to Trump in November because of support for Israel’s genocide, so maybe, as you suggest, that deranged Israeli announcement yesterday about the “war” going on for the rest of the year pushed them to pressurize Biden more vigorously than they’ve done so far.
I despise having to work out these people’s deviousness. As you say, it could be just an effort to get more votes, on the by now recognized basis that politicians can say things and then not do them and no one even notices (Obama closing Guantanamo being a relevant example).
A pox on them all. As someone who loves language, I also despise how they can get their scriptwriters to craft decent statements that ought to be meant – the key passages in Biden’s speech – but that they don’t necessarily mean anything. What a debasement of language and the possibilities of its integrity.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 12:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
Thank you, Andy. I have no faith in anything of real substance happening any time soon. The Israelis enjoy killing too much. It’s pretty frightening but true. Most Americans have little concern for these children. They live in cozy moral equivalences where none exist. Keeping an eye too on NATO because maybe Biden realizes he cannot fight both wars and Russia is a much bigger prize. I can’t help that he is that deluded.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I so hope you’re wrong, Deborah, but it’s shredding my mind daily seeing no mechanism whatsoever to bring it to an end. Yesterday I saw footage from Jabalia after the IDF withdrew – again – and it was almost as apocalyptic as Hiroshima.
I can’t see how they can continue for the rest of the year. There’s literally almost nothing of Gaza left as it is, and the human toll is going to become more and more devastating severe the longer it goes on because of the starvation and the spread of diseases.
Ironically, because war always dreadfully deranges the minds of those who engage in it, it may be the military cost that finally makes Netanyahu stop, as those with military knowledge increasingly decry the cost in soldiers’ lives – and, though they’re not talking about it openly, in cases of PTSD which will ravage Israel’s collective psyche for decades to come.
Yesterday, I found this quote from two weeks ago, from Ram Ben-Barak, a former Mossad deputy director turned opposition MP, described the campaign in Gaza, on Israeli radio, as what the Guardian called “a political, economic and military failure.”
“This is a war without aim and we are unequivocally losing it,” Ben-Barak said. “We are forced to go back and fight again in the same areas, losing soldiers, losing in the international arena, destroying relations with the US, the economy is collapsing. Show me one thing we are succeeding in.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/18/father-of-woman-killed-at-israeli-festival-tells-of-relief-after-recovery-of-her-body
...on June 1st, 2024 at 1:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Exactly how I feel, Andy. Psychological double speak! When he brought up the unsubstantiated by the U.N., debunked, “Sexual Assaults” used to brainwash idiots in Congress to give out billions and weapons to Israel … I screamed at him. On top of everything else, he is so feeble, he can barely read the cue cards.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 1:02 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Absolutely, Kären. I have every sympathy for older people facing the many forms of mental collapse that are so prevalent in the times we’re living in. I know all about dementia from the long experience of my mother, who first succumbed to dementia 13 years ago, and is somehow still alive, on a bed in a care home, unable to speak, unable to move, but still able to eat, and I constantly hear about similar scenarios from my friends, whose parents are in their 80s or even their early 90s. But it’s not harsh to say that a man in this condition really shouldn’t be allowed to be the President of the United States.
...on June 1st, 2024 at 1:02 pm