President-Elect Trump’s press conference yesterday was an excursion into the mind of a seriously deranged individual. National Public Radio reports in an interview with Laura Barron-Lopez of NPR:
“And in it, the president-elect talked about using force to gain control over countries and territories. He raised the possibility of using military force to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal. He also talked about using economic control to pressure Canada to acquire it.
“And he said that — as you played there, Geoff, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And he also said that — quote — “all hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t release hostages by the time he takes office.
“In addition to that, he said that he wants to use tariffs at a high level against Denmark to try to pressure it to cede control of Greenland to the United States. And on that idea of the annexation of Canada, Geoff, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that — just outright rejected it on X, saying that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would happen.”
One never knows whether Trump is actually serious–he has a long history of making outrageous statements and never following through on them. But the mind-set revealed in the press conference is straight out of Nineteenth Century Europe when the balance of power was the operating system of global politics and manifested most dramatically in the carving up of Africa by the colonial powers. The period from 1870 to 1914 is commonly known as “The Scramble for Africa“.
After World War II, the US tried to create a different system, based upon multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO, and various other organizations. The aspirations for this system were quite simple. Instead of the system of power politics characterized by Thucydides as one in which “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must“, the hope was that international politics could be governed by rules and norms agreed upon by the major powers. That aspiration was never realized, and it seems clear that Trump intends to govern US foreign policy by the maxims of power politics and to return the world to the 1800s.
Trump should read some history. He would find that the US did in fact invade Canada in 1812 and gained nothing from that war (forget the Battle of New Orleans and focus instead on the British burning down the White House). He should also learn that the Gulf of Mexico was named the Gulf of Mexico long before the US was even a state. He also needs a refresher course on what it means to be an ally–if Russia or China would dare to invade Greenland, the NATO treaty would obliged the US to defend the island because Denmark is a member of NATO. THe US does not need to “own” Greenland in order to defend it.
What is deeply troubling is that Trump uses the phrase “national security” to justify his fantasies in such a sloppy manner. He seems to be worried that Chinese companies on each end of the Panama Canal gives China a strategic advantage (conveniently ignoring that China is 6000 miles away from the Panama Canal while the US has easy access to the canal). China would have the same problems defending its troops that Russia had when it tried to place nuclear missiles on Cuba in 1962. When confronted with American military power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians had no choice but to capitulate.
Unfortunately, Trump seems to be following the policies of Putin and Netanyahu: grabbing land when it appears to be a task with few immediate downsides. Both Putin and Netanyahu seem oblivious to the long-term costs of being an imperial power: the immense cost and the serious damage to the reputation of their states. Randy Newman wrote a song about the phenomenon which is macabrely funny:
And while we are at changing names, Trump should now start thinking about purging foreign names from American geography. We should call Los Angeles the City of the Angels, Baton Rouge should be called Red Stick, and by all means we should get rid of Native American names like Massachusetts (“Large Hill Place”) and Connecticut (“Long Tidal River”). I am not sure I can survive this stupidity for four years.
President-Elect Trump has nominated a distinctive group of individuals to serve in his Cabinet: With some exceptions, they are all wealthy individuals with little or no government experience but a lot of experience as hedge fund managers. We will have to wait to see how these individuals fare in the confirmation process, but their nominations suggest that Trump believes that such people will manage the economy well. That assumption will likely prove to be very wrong.
We have historical examples of similar decisions. For example, Venice was once a powerful city-state and a dominant force in the global economy in the 13th-15th Centuries. That wealth was based upon international trade and Venice’s ability to link Europe to Asia through the Silk Trade routes.
“This brings us to the great puzzle of Venetian history. During the period 1297–1323, a defining epoch in Venetian history known as the Serrata or “closure,” Venetian politics came under the control of a tightly knit cabal of the richest families. It was, in Norwich’s (1977, p. 181) words, the triumph of the oligarchs. Furthermore, by the early 1330s this political closure had spilled over into an economic closure that excluded poorer families from participation in the most lucrative aspects of international trade. Finally, by 1400 the political and economic closure had created a society characterized by a new emphasis on rank and hierarchy. In short, after 1323 there was a fundamental societal shift away from political openness, economic competition, and social mobility and toward political closure, extreme inequality, and social stratification.”
Ultimately, more dynamic economic centers emerged, such as Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, and Great Britain, finding a way to bypass the Venetian chokehold on the Silk Trade by finding alternative routes to Asia. Venice lost its economic vitality and declined into nothing more than a footnote in the history of the global economy.
The argument is straightforward: rather than continuing to innnovate under the pressures of competition (such as the need to find a sea route to Asia), wealthy individuals tend to use political power to protect their interests through laws. That political power is then used to insulate existing techniques and technologies from externally induced change. Those industries become less efficient over time and economic growth slows as a result.
That same process seems to be in play in the US today. Robert Reich outlines the process in the YouTube video, “Wealth Inequality Explained”:
The composition of Trump’s Cabinet fits into this mold perfectly. In a broader cocntext, the process seems to be affecting many different countries in the world, as globalization produces distorted economic outcomes. Trevor Jackson describes the dynamic in his recent essay on theNew York Review of Books:
“For decades now, the ideology of free-market liberalism has obfuscated the ongoing distributive conflicts of the world, but it has not blunted the material suffering of the people on the losing end. Since the 2008 crisis, the reality of ruthless distributive conflict has become impossible to ignore, but the failure of market liberalism to reconcile political equality and economic inequality has produced a global crisis of legitimacy and a growing constituency amenable to antiliberal figures like Trump, Orbán, Modi, and Bolsonaro.”
The anger against the prevailing patterns of wealth distribution is not only found in political outcomes. The astonishing amount of support for the alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione, reflects the degree of animosity toward the “undeserving” rich. If the Democratic Party needs to make a decision about how to orient its platform for the future, it would be well-advised to concentrate exclusively on the process of redistributing wealth and breaking up the political power of economic interests.
The last post held that much of modern life occurs at an arms-length for most US citizens. We have so distanced ourselves from the actual processes that govern our lives, that we must rely upon experts to fix problems. That procedure allows for greater expertise, but it also means that most people now must rely upon someone or some institutions with authority to make sure that everything moves seamlessly. I think that it is fair to say that one hundred years ago, most Americans were familiar with most sources of relevant authority: the local grocer, the local doctor, the mayor, the school committee, and most of their neighbors. Today, all these people and institutions are less connected to their localities, and most of our interactions are with anonymous people on the telephone or the internet.
Attenuated authority is difficult to assess, and becomes even more so if there are competing authorities. And most people lack the ability to make rigorous assessments. Just think about how people assess the veracity of their news sources. Is CNN reliable? Fox News? MSNBC? And over the last 8 years, Americans have been subjected to a withering barrage of criticisms about eacsh source. How does one go about finding a Medicare Supplement Plan? There are numerous insurance companies which want your business, but the plans are complicated, opaque, and, in many cases, misleading. Under such circumstances, many people will defer to someone they think is trustworthy to make the decisions for them.
We actually know a great deal about why people defer to authority. The Milgram experiment suggested that a commanding percentage of people would engage in activities that their senses and experience clearly indicate a high degree of harm to others. The Zimbardo prison experiment indicated that many people behave quite differently than expected when cast into roles that demanded harsh treatment of others. Erich Fromm’s desire to understand how the Holocaust could occur led to his superb work, Escape from Freedom. But the most compelling analysis of deference to authority is Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov. In one part of the book, Dostoyevsky imagines that Jesus returns to earth during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The religious authority in Seville (The Grand Inquisitor) has Jesus arrested in order to prevent Jesus from undermining the authority of the Catholic Church. What follows is a monologue by the Inquisitor (Jesus says not a word in the excerpt) outlining a criticism of Jesus by giving people the freedom to choose between good and evil. The Inquisitor argues that the Church has corrected that error by taking away that freedom:
“No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us.’ They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves. They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. You promised them heavenly bread, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble human race? And if in the name of heavenly bread thousands and tens of thousands will follow you, what will become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Is it that only the tens of thousands of the great and strong are dear to you, and the remaining millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, weak but loving you, should serve only as material for the great and the strong?”
The argument is straightforward: people will defer to authority when they feel vulnerable. This statement is similar to the Hobbesian state of nature: if you want power over a people, make them know fear. Our feelings of vulnerability are not unique, but they can be amplified, manipulated, and directed. The fears of the French after the Revolution led them to embrace Napoleon. The fears of the German people after World War I and the punitive terms of the Peace Treaty, made them embrace Hitler. The American people have not suffered similar calamities, but their sense of vulnerability is heightened by their inability to live out the American dream of the rugged individual. We are acutely aware of the fact that we have little direct control over some of the things that are necessary to survive in such a complicated, overly technological environment. The American people have become alienated because of the growing discrepancy between what they can and cannot explain and that uncertainty has made them susceptible to easy and direct answers.
Unfortunately, those easy and direct answers do not really address the real issues. It is undeniable that the American working class suffered a great deal due to globalization which sent many jobs to low-wage areas such as China. But the decisions that led to those job losses were not made by the government; they were made by private corporations whose job is to create profit for their shareholders. Attacking the government is purposely misleading. But the distraction does not end with attacking the government. Somehow, many people in America believe that their economic misfortunes are due to undocumented immigrants, or gay or transexual individuals, or diversity initiatives. The tactic is familiar to those who study historical and contemporary despots, and should be threadbare by now. But it seems as if it is still resonating all over the world as evidence by recent events in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The proper political response is to highlight the systems that lead to economic decisions that harm people. One should focus on the processes that allow the accumulation of wealth, such as the taxation rules, the disregard for markets overwhelmingly dictated by oligoplies, such a petroleum and agriculture, the willingness to tolerate the hiding of wealth in offshore banks, and the insane neglect of the global environment. Unfortunately, political decisions in the US now seem to be determined by unregulated campaign contributions. Elon Musk invested $280 million in the re-election of Mr. Trump; his wealth since 6 November has increased by about $200 billion–an obscene commentary on the state of democracy in the US.
The last post outlined a clear pattern in the presidential election of 2024: people who lived in areas that received large transfers of money from the Federal government preferred Mr. Trump, while those who lived in areas that received less from the Federal government preferred Vice-President Harris. Given that Mr. Trump favored policies that would reduce employment (deportation), increase inflation (tariffs), and reduce revenues for the Federal government (tax cuts), that pattern seems inconsistent with the interests of those who rely on transfer incomes.
While curious, this pattern is not unique. For example, some Marxists use the concept of “false consciousness” to explain this self-defeating behavior. Britannica defines that concept this way:
“…false consciousness, in philosophy, particularly within critical theory and other Marxist schools and movements, the notion that members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes.”
The concept does not seem relevant to the election of 2024. My own view was that there was a great deal of resentment against “elites” in campaign rhetoric, although support for a person who regularly bragged about how rich he was is inconsistent with that assessment. Moreover, false consciousness begs the question: it does not explain why people fail or refuse to act on evidence and logic to protect their interests.
I also have not fully answered that question, and the purpose of this post is to afford me an opportunity to clarify my thinking as well as to elicit other ideas from the readers of this post. What now follows is a wild tangent that I hope is ultimately relevant to an explanation.
My suspicion is that the failure to protect one’s own interests stems from the growing inexplicability of the world to most people. There is a growing discrepancy between what we can and cannot readily explain, and when the number of inexplicable events or processes occur, humans will often resort to myth or magic to explain what they cannot account for. It really did not matter whether one believed that the Norse god Thor was responsible for thunder and lightning or whether one believed that thunder and lightning was caused by friction of particles which create an electrostatic charge–thunder and lightning were going to occur no matter which explanation was proffered. But the question of why we believed what we believed is crucially important.
The mythological explanation for thunder and lightning required someone or some institution to legitimize the myth of the god, Thor; the scientific explanation required a process (something we call the scientific method) that neccessitated a broad agreement among those who come to conclusions based upon evidence and reasoning. Both the shaman and the scientist are authorities, but the shaman relies upon faith and the scientist relies on evidence. There is a profound difference in determining what constitutes a true statement between the two approaches.
Over time, the scientific method gained greater legitimacy as scientists such as Galileo and Newton carefully explicated the observations and subjected those observations and conclusions to review by those who accepted the method. Indeed, the increased rigor of the scientific method utlimately led to the pivotal role of “right reason”, or rationality, in the movement that we call the Enlightenment. Science emerged as the most effective way to resolve such problems as transportation and health, and I have no hesitation whatsoever in asserting that the scientific method became the most readily accepted basis for resolving questions about the efficacy of competing approaches to public policy. More importantly, the scientific method is responsible for the dramastic increase in public welfare thast has occurred since the early 19th century.
The price for this progress, however, was to deepen the ignorance of private citizens about how the increase in welfare actually occurred. It was fairly easy to correlate a horse with better transportation than walking–one fed and cared for the horse so that it could perform that essential role; it was less easy to make that same correlation to the automobile–what is a carburetor? How does one refine petroleum into gasoline? Do I really have to answer those quesitons to use a car? The same is true of virtually every aspect of modern life: every day we use things, like a computer, that we really do not fully understand, take medicines to which we have no personal connection such as the bark from a witch hazel tree, eat food that we could not produce for ourselves, wear clothes that we could not make for ourselves, and receive bills with charges that make no sense, only to find ourselves in a phone tree that is impossible to navigate, talking to a person (perhaps) who really does not care if our problem is resolved. Paradoxically, science has produced an environment whose existence might as well been created through sorcery.
Many generations have faced this conundrum, and usually there is a difficult period of transition between our understanding of the universe and our means of assessing that understanding of the universe–think of the Luddites. During this transitional period, shamans will exploit the gap between knowing and believing. In the present, that gap is huge. And since no one really knows how the whole system works, any explanation for its working becomes plausible. And it appears as if even preposterous explanations (“we will build a wall to prevent illegal immigration, and Mexico will pay for it”) can be readily accepted.
The next step in this process is to create a mythological reality which diverts attention from scientific reality. Since the 1980s, the mythological reality of the movement that ultimately led to the election of Mr. Trump in 2024 has been clear and best articulated by one of the gods of that movement, Ronald Reagan: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” How this myth distracted us from the fact that the real source of the economic dislocations of the globalization at the turn of this century was private corporate behavior will be the topic of the next post. End of tangent.
The Economic Innovation Group has published a new study entitled “The Great Transfer-mation” which is a report decrying the dependence of US citizens on income transfers from the government. There are many points in the report with which I strongly disagree and I found it personally useful to go through the mental exercise of critiquing flawed arguments and evidence. But the report does provide some information which I found quite interesting, the most important of which was the correlation between getting transfers from the Federal Government and votes in the recent presidential election in the US.
According to the report, in 2000 about 10% of counties in the US received significant income from the government; by 2022, that percentage increased to 53%. Those counties tended to be rural with a significant population of elderly people and considerably poorer than many other counties in the US. The transfer programs idenitified in the study include:
● Old age supports such as Social Security and Medicare
● Medical supports to low-income households such as Medicaid
● Veterans benefits
● Poverty alleviation and income maintenance supports such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
● Unemployment insurance (UI) compensation
● Education and training supports, such as Pell grants
The report is trying to make the case that the only way to address the growing dependence of Americans on income transfers is to stimulate economic growth through lower taxes and reduced regulation–in other words, a stronger commitment to the “trickle-down” myth of modern capitalism (despite all the evidence suggesting that that ideology is fundamentally flawed). But I found the link between income transfers and voting to be highly intriguing as reflected in the following graph:
The graph shows that those most dependent on income transfers were more likely to vote for Mr. Trump and that those who are less dependent on income transfers were more likely to vote for Vice-President Harris. That conclusion is not surprising and comports to my own understanding of why Trump was able to secure a popular majority.
The question is why were people who relied so heavily on aid from the Federal Government were so willing to back a candidate who made such an issue of government deficits and the need to control the Federal budget. The answer is that Mr. Trump was able to make the case that Federal aid was going to the “undeserving” poor (“illegal” immigrants and people who benefit from discriminatory DEI programs) and that he would protect the income transfers to those that truly “deserved” the support. Presumably, those Americans who voted for Trump obviously believed that they deserved those transfers.
The Harris campaign tried to refute those assertions, but many people were not persuaded even though the idea that undocumented individuals without social security numbers could ever receive aid from the Federal Government was clearly ludicrous. The question that nettles me is why it was so difficult for so many Americans to clearly assess their own self-interest.
The question is important to me because I dedicated much of my life to a process that demanded close attention to evidence and logic and I am now confronted with the possibility that many people no longer believe those standards are valid. Give me a few more days to think this over, and I will post those thoughts in a few days.
The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria is rapidly changing the geopolitics of the Middle East. The Assad family had ruled in Syria for 50 years, but its collapse only took a few weeks. At this time, I would not hazard a guess about who will rule Syria in the future, or even whether Syria will remain a nation-state or devolve into mini-states ruled by different factions.
In reality, Syria fell apart 13 years ago as a popular movement known as the “Arab Spring” swept through many states in the Middle East in 2011. The Assad regime barely survived that movement and has been propped up by both Russia and Iran since that time. Russia, weakened by its war against Ukraine, and Iran, weakened by the Israeli attacks against its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, were unable to maintain that support as a rebel group in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, seized control of Damascus. But there are many groups within Syria, as described by the BBC:
“Among these groups – some now in Damascus – are rebel factions that once operated under the banner of the Free Syrian Army from southern towns and cities that had been dormant for years, but where the spark of rebellion had never entirely been sniffed out.
“Over to the east, Kurdish-led forces have benefited from the collapse of the Syrian army to take full control of the main city, Deir El-Zour. In the vast Syrian desert, remnants of the so-called Islamic State could also look to take advantage of the situation. And in the far north along the Turkish border, the Syrian National Army – backed by Ankara – could also prove to be a significant player in what happens next.”
In terms of the geopolitics of the region, the big losers are Russia and Iran. The big winners are Turkey and Israel. Turkish ambitions might be stymied by the strong Kurdish community in Syria. But the Israelis have taken advantage of the power vacuum in Syria by launching military assaults against virtually every Syrian military installation. Mondoweiss reports:
“Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it.
“As of Wednesday, Israel had struck Syria nearly 500 times. Their goal with these attacks has been to essentially destroy Syria’s military capability, and they have already succeeded. Reports by Israeli media claim that well over 80% of Syria’s weaponry, ships, missiles, aircraft, and other military supplies have been damaged or destroyed.
“In essence, Israel has rendered Syria completely defenseless. “
Moreover, Israeli Defense Forces have seized territory in Syria which includes Mount Hermon, which offers Israel a critically important strategic location giving it the ability to monitor activities in Lebanon and Syria with great accuracy. The map of Israeli occupation is striking.
Israel has ordered the IDF to maintain its control of Mount Hermon throughout the winter and has suggested that its occupation is temporary. But, given its strategic significance, it is unlikely that Israel will return control of the mountain to Syria. Indeed, some in Israel have proposed that Israel should annex the terriroty, as reported by the Middle East Monitor:
“Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli yesterday called for Israel to occupy the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria.
“Chikli said: ‘The events in Syria are far from a cause for celebration. Although Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and its leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, portray themselves as a new product, ultimately most of Syria is now under the control of affiliate organisations of Al-Qaeda.’
“’The good news is the growing strength of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the northeast of the country,’ the Likud Party member said, noting that ‘Israel must operationally renew its control at Mount Hermon [in the occupied Golan Heights] and establish a new line of defence based on the ceasefire line of 1974 [with Syria].’
“Chikli’s statements come despite a call by the office Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to make statements about developments in Syria, while the Likud Party asked its members in the Knesset not to conduct interviews about Syria without the approval of Netanyahu’s office, according to reports by the Israeli public radio yesterday.”
Israel has now seized territory in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria. This is unquestionably a war of conquest.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the Amnesty International report on genocide in the Gaza Strip, I call to your attention a website created by Israeli historian, Lee Mordechai, an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is entitled “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War.”
In his preface to the report, Mordechai says:
“The enormous amount of evidence I have seen, much of it referenced later in this document, has been enough for me to believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. I explain why I chose to use the term below. Israel’s campaign is ostensibly its reaction to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, in which war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed within the context of the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that can be dated back to 1917 or 1948 (or other dates). In all cases, historical grievances and atrocities do not justify additional atrocities in the present. Therefore, I consider Israel’s response to Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7 utterly disproportionate and criminal.”
Further in the Preface, Mordechai directly addresses the critical questions of intent:
“The evidence I have seen and discuss indicates that one of Israel’s very likely objectives is to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, whether in part or in total, by removing as many Palestinians as feasibly possible. Key members in Israel’s government have made statements confirming this intent, and several of Israel’s government ministries have planned or worked to facilitate such an end, sometimes by persuading or pressuring other states. Israel has already cleared significant parts of the Gaza strip by demolition and bulldozing, also attempting to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society by deliberately targeting civilian institutions such as universities, libraries, archives, religious buildings, historical sites, farms, schools, cemeteries, museums and markets. So far more than 60% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged.”
He goes on:
“All the evidence I have seen indicates that Israel is systematically destroying Gaza to make it unlivable in the future. In the first week of fighting, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza – over the annual total used by the US in Afghanistan.48 In the first three months of fighting Israel had destroyed over 10,000 buildings in the Strip – compared to some 4,700 buildings in Aleppo after three years of fighting. A coalition of aid groups stated in December that rebuilding the housing destroyed to that point will take 7 to 10 years if financing is available and will cost some $3.5 billion.49 According to a joint report by the World Bank and the UN, the cost of damage to physical structures alone was around $18.5 billion at the end of January (the cost during the 2014 Protective Edge was $1.4 billion).50 In mid May a UN official stated that rebuilding could cost around $50 billion over two decades.51 The amount of debris created by the destruction of residential areas (estimates ranged between 26 and 37 million tons in April) will take many years to remove.52 A top UN demining official claimed that simply clearing the debris could take as much as 14 years.53 An expert on the warfare-related destruction pointed out that the case of Gaza fits the term ‘domicide’, a massive violation of the right to housing and basic infrastructure in residential areas by making them inhabitable, which is itself a crime against humanity.48
“Israel is said to have dropped over 500 2,000-pound bombs within the densely populated urban area, despite the massive collateral damage these bombs cause (causing death or injury in a radius of up to 365 meters around the target). These bombs are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States used when fighting ISIS in Mosul; the US dropped a single such 2,000-pound bomb throughout its fight with ISIS.54 After two months of fighting, Israel had already caused more destruction in Gaza than Syria in Aleppo (2012-2016), Russia in Mariupol in 2022, or (proportionally) the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II,55 as well as the fights against ISIS in Mosul (2016-7) and Raqqa (2017).56“
The report is meticulously documented and judicious in its language. It is definitely worth a careful read.
Amnesty International has issued a new report accusing the state of Israel with the crime of genocide in its actions against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The crime of genocide is the most serious crime in international law and an accusation of genocide needs to meet extremely specific and demanding criteria of both actions and intent. Amnesty International is a well-respected human rights organization with a record of accomplishment that deserves respect.
It is a long, incredibly detailed report with evidence from a variety of credible sources. The report begins with an acknowledgement of what needs to be proven in order to support an accusation of genocide:
“To make a determination on genocide, Amnesty International first examined whether Palestinians in Gaza constitute part of a protected group under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), that is a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. It then focused on three out of the five prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention: ‘killing members of the group’; ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group’; and ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’. It finally examined whether Israel committed these acts with the specific ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, [the] group, as such’.”
The report then goes through each of these criteria and documents specific cases through eyewitness testimonies. I was unaware of several of these cases, even though I have tried to be as well-informed as I can on this conflict. Much of the evidence, largely from satellite imagery, suggests destruction in Gaza which can hardly be described as precision accuracy. And the degree of forced displacement is staggering. Given the scale of destruction in such a small area, it would be difficult to deny that the degree of “harm” inflicted on the population in the Gaza satisfies the first two criteria of the Convention.
The significantly more difficult question to answer is whether Israel intends to “destroy, in while or in part, [the] group, as such”. People have intentions; governments have intention; it is questionable whether “states” have intentions. In today’s US Department of State Press Briefing, members of the press questioned the matter of intent:
“QUESTION: Because now we have Amnesty International. Before that, we had Human Rights Watch. We have all the UN organizations, all the human rights organizations probably throughout the world, B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, every other organization saying that Israel is committing genocide. And depends – I mean it says – I know that genocide depends a great deal on intent, and it says – it bases its conclusion on statement time and time and time again by Israeli commanders, by Israeli officials, by certainly the president of Israel, by many, many other people that said they are committing genocide. I mean, we see that they have killed 44, 45 thousand people, 17,000 children. It deprives it food from going in, it deprives anesthesia from going on. CNN reported yesterday that Israel disallowed anesthesia from going into Gaza.
What is it going to take for you – for the United States of America that really holds the moral high ground on these issues, on human rights issues – to say what is happening is genocide? Because you are – what we see today, what we witness in northern Gaza is basically starvation by intent.
MR PATEL: Said, that’s an opinion. And you’re certainly welcome and you are entitled to it, as are all the organizations that you listed. They are entitled to make their own analysis of the situation and come to their own conclusions. What I can say as a spokesperson of the U.S. Government and as a spokesperson of this administration is that the findings of – the accusations of genocide, we continue to believe those to be unfounded. That does not change and that does not change the prioritization and the stress and the emphasis that we are placing on ensuring that there is appropriate access to humanitarian assistance, ensuring that every possible measure is taken to protect civilians, ensuring that we’re doing everything possible to bring this war to an end.
QUESTION: So —
MR PATEL: People, organizations, groups are entitled to draw their own conclusions. The U.S. conclusion is that these allegations of genocide are unfounded. There are and there continue to exist a number of avenues within the U.S. Government in which we are looking at what’s happening on the ground, where those assessments continue to be ongoing. But I don’t have any update to provide as it relates to that.
I sincerely doubt that there are many Israelis who wish to see the Palestinian people exterminated, even after the atrocities of 7 October. But does the government of Israel wish to see the Palestinian people exterminated? According to Amnesty:
“The offensive on Rafah was launched a week after Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, a member of Israel’s security cabinet, explicitly called for the city’s destruction by referring to a well-known Biblical story of absolute vengeance in which an entire nation – the people of Amalek – is ordered to be destroyed: “There are no jobs half done. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, destruction! Blot out the memory of [the people of] Amalek from under heaven,” he said at a public event on 29 April 2024. In fact, Minister of Finance Smotrich and Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir, who also made some of the most explicit calls for the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, threatened to quit the government coalition if Prime Minister Netanyahu abandoned plans to attack Rafah. Minister of Finance Smotrich’s statement came months after Prime Minister Netanyahu first referred to the story of the total destruction of the people of Amalek in the first week of Israel’s ground offensive in late October and early November 2023. He used it to garner support for what was, at the time, a new and highly destructive phase of the conflict. As Israel’s highest office-holder, who oversaw the offensive on Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu would have most certainly known that his words would be understood by soldiers, particularly those affiliated with the settler movement and religious nationalist parties led by the two ministers, as calls for the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”
The Israeli Government has explicitly rejected the report. The US has not rejected the report, but has rather found it to be “unfounded”. There really is no way to determine what the intent of the destruction on the people and land of Gaza was or is. But the future will give us an answer. If the Palestinian people cannot repopulate the land because of Israeli occupation or sovereignty, then the intent to remove the Palestinian people will become clear. If the world wants to know what Israel’s intentions truly are, then the world should demand that Israel clearly state that the Palestinian people will be able to return and to live in the Gaza Strip as part of their own homeland, Palestine.
Last Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Force announced that its current plan is for the complete evacuation of Palestinians from north Gaza. The Guardian summarized the announcement:
“Israeli ground forces are getting closer to ‘the complete evacuation’ of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.
“In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, ‘there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes’.
“He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to ‘regularly’ enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are ‘no more civilians left’.”
With that announcement, it is clear that Israeli military actions against the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran no longer qualify as “self-defense” unless we decide to include ethnic cleansing as an act of self-defense. Indeed, the IDF tactic is similar to the horrific acts committed by the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia in the early 1990s. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum characterized these acts as war crimes:
“On April 5, 1992, the government of Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. The creation of an independent Bosnian nation that would have a Bosniak majority was opposed by Bosnian Serbs, who launched a military campaign to secure coveted territory and “cleanse” Bosnia of its Muslim civilian population. The Serbs targeted Bosniak and Croatian civilians in areas under their control, in what has become known as “ethnic cleansing.”
“During the subsequent civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1995, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80 percent of whom were Bosniaks. In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.”
There is little question that the act clearly qualifies as a war crime. The Fourth Convention of the Geneva Accords is explicit on the movement of civilian populations in an occupied territory:
ART. 49. — Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
There is little chance that there is any amount of pressure that will change Israel’s behavior, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has openly refused to accept most guidance from its allies. And now that former President Trump has been elected, it appears that US policy will be guided by the blank check suggested by Trump: “do what you have to do”. Netanyahu also seems to be preparing the US government for expanded actions against Palestinians in the West Bank by appointing Yechiel Leiter as the next Israeli Ambassador to the US. Leiter has been an advocate for annexing the West Bank. According to Middle East Eye:
“Leiter was a member of the Jewish Defence League, which was founded in the US by the far-right rabbi Meir Kahane. The group was later designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, although the designation was lifted in 2022 due to inactivity.
“Leiter’s son was killed last year in Gaza while serving with the Israeli military.
“Leiter’s appointment came just three days after Donald Trump’s election as US president. During his first term, Trump reversed decades of US policy that considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law.
“Under Trump, Israel aggressively expanded its settlement building, pushing deeper into the West Bank and constructing thousands of settler homes on Palestinian land.
“Trump also recognised Israel’s control over the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory that Israel annexed in 1981 in a move the international community has never recognised.
“Israel’s settler leaders and far-right figures welcomed Trump’s victory, particularly after the Biden administration imposed sanctions and asset freezes on settler groups and individuals involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“Leiter’s appointment suggests that Netanyahu plans to advance policies in line with the settler movement’s agenda, which includes the annexation of the West Bank.”
I expect that Netanyahu will take advantage of President Biden’s lame-duck status and move forward aggressively to resettle the Gaza and the West Bank. Israel’s behavvior is comparable to the atrocities in Bosnia, in Rwanda in 1994, and the ongoing war against the Royingha in Myanmar. The critical difference is that Israel would not be able to accomplish any of its goals without the support of the US, and the American complicity in the atrocity breaks my heart. But we can dispense with the idea that Israel is conducting a war of self-defense. It is quite clearly a war of conquest.
“Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric” — Umberto Eco, 1955
Today has been very difficult for many. This post was written in a state of confusion, fear, and rage. So you should tread carefully here, because there are dragons.
We had hoped that Mr. Trump had effectively diminished his allure to voters, but that was not the case. Instead, we now face the prospect of a mob boss political system, bent on enriching only those who submit and disenfranchising those who do not submit.
This terrain will be difficult to navigate, and it creates a problem for those of us who opposed Mr. Trump. Knowing that he will punish anyone who disagrees with him and knowing that the Congress and the Supreme Court will not restrain his basest instincts leaves us in uncharted territory. The Supreme Court has completely abdicated its responsibility to maintain checks and balances in Trump v. The United States and has decided that it does not have the power to check executive power as long as there is some mention in the Constitution of the powers of the President, no matter how indirect or peripheral the reference. With the Republicans in control of the Senate and possibly of the House as well, there is no posssibility that that party will restrain Mr. Trump given his ruthless purge of malcontents in the party.
We should place the blame for this situation squarely on the Republican Party which has completely abandoned its responsibility to defend the Constitution. The Democrats ran a very effective campaign which was not sufficient. What does the failure of opposition to Mr. Trump mean?
The election of 2024 was essentially a rerun of the early 20th Century. The end of the 19th Century brought about a wave of globalization powered by advances in refrigeration, telecommunications, shipping, and transportation. The result was a phenomenal explosion of wealth at the expense of those with limited access to capital and whose only link to the global economy was the sale of their labor. The growing inequality between rich and poor ultimately led to widespread dissatisfaction which resulted in the abandonment of traditional political norms and the adoption of new ideologies, fascism and communism, which channeled that dissatisfaction into acceptance of authoritarian rule. That inequality also led to the Great Depression.
Similarly, the technological revolutions of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of fabulous wealth–think Gates, Musk, Jobs, and Zuckerberg. But that wealth was accumulated by tapping into the labor markets of poor states such as China and Vietnam, leading to a massive loss of manufacturing jobs in the developed world. Those unemployed by the 2nd wave of globalization are the ones who abandoned traditional political norms, not only in the US, but in India, Hungary, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Cech Republic. They have reasons to be angry.
The pattern of the early 20th century is repeating because the conditions are roughly similar. And, I suspect, the outcome will be the same: economic collapse and war.
The question for me is how do I respond to this situation? My gut instinct is to resist as Trump attempts to create a White, Male, and Christian Republic. I should resist any attempts to cut Obamacare, Social Security, health and safety regulations, and the proposed deportations. These are the issues that Trump used to secure the support to win the election. My suspicion is that those who supported Mr. Trump did not believe that he would truly implement those policies. But they knew exactly who Mr. Trump was: a person who cheated on his taxes, who assaulted women and bragged about his conquests, who punished anyone who did not support him, and who showed little regard for the rule of law. He will, I am certain, insure that everyone appointed to his government will share the same contempt for integrity and lawfulness. Those who voted for Mr. Trump cannot plead ignorance of who he was and how he defined his interests as the single guide for public policy. They knew what they were buying when they voted.
I fear, however, that, for the next two years, resistance will be futile. So I think there should be a second course of action, a course of action which deeply offends my sensibilities as a civic person. The Democrats should simply withdraw from the process of governing. It will be a huge waste of time and, ultimately, counterproductive. The Democrats should simply sit in Congress and refuse to vote or participate in any hearings. Those who supported Mr. Trump should live in the world they voted for. And with tariffs, deportations, and the lack of income security and health insurance, they can figure out how to survive. That economic collapse is inevitable given the obscene inequalities of power and wealth that Trump’s Administration will foster.
Then the Republican Party will have to decide whether it cares more about the Constitution than raw power. And the American people might learn to appreciate the idea of Justice and Equality and to temper their infatuation with unaccountable freedom.
World Politics News 