Getting away with murder, part 2
The MIlitarised Industrial Complex and its crimes against humanity.
Apartheid and the role of the US and Israeli governments.
Lets recap on something I pointed out in Part One;
The Camdridge Dictionary defines genocide as;
the crime of intentionally destroying part or all of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, by killing people or by other methods:
The UN definition is more specific and considerably broader, article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
It is a common misconception that genocide involves the destruction on a specific people in their entirety.
It is also not true that the legal threshold for genocide is difficult to prove. The UN charter states only that there needs to be proven intent to target people based on their ethnic, religious, national or racial identity.
There can be no doubt that the residents of Gaza are being targeted based on their national identity. Remember, at no point does the legal definition accept the argument of self defence or revenge as mitigation.
What about intent?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to oppose the existence of a Palestinian state in any future scenario, in favor of Israeli control anywhere west of the Jordan river — an area encompassing all of what remains of Palestine.
“In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said in a news conference on July the 5th 2023 according to a translation published by the Associated Press. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty [for Palestinians]. What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.”
On the 2nd of November he went even further stating in a press conference;
You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”
There are more than 23,000 verses in the Old Testament. The ones Netanyahu turned to, as Israeli forces launched their ground invasion in Gaza, are among its most violent—and have a long history of being used by Jews on the far right to justify killing Palestinians.
As others quickly pointed out, God commands King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. “This is what the Lord Almighty says,” the prophet Samuel tells Saul. “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Gaza is not the only place where the conditions for genocide occuring have been met, and ignored, there has been plenty of evidence of genocide in Sudan over the last twenty years. But the U.S., Britain, China, France, and Russia did not see it in their national interest to intervene militarily to stop it.
Reread the last sentence, it tells you that this is not an attack on America or any other country. As I stated in Part One, it is ludicrous to claim that successive US Presidents have simply been cruel, evil or racist in their application of international law. Too many have gone on to play important roles in various peace-keeping missions to make that claim.
In the same way, the idea that this article is anti-semetic is patent nonsense. I gratefully acknowledge the role played by numerous Israeli academics, journalists, politicians and religious leaders in vehemently opposing the action taken by the IDF against the residents of Gaza. The vast majority of whom are themselves, semitic people.
To infer that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government and IDF constitutes antisemitism is as ridiculous as saying that by criticising the action of the UK government makes a person anti British!
Indeed, doing so undermines the case of, and the ability to protest about, any group of people subjected to discrimination based on them belonging to or identifying with any group within the protected characteristics. Be it race, religion, gender or sexual orientation etc.
So who then do I hold responsible for the failure of nation states to act when crimes against humanity are committed so openly, if not reported on so diligently in the world's media?
Quite simply, the global elite, the corporate multi billionaires, the 1% and the shadowy behind the scenes, secretive groups’ that make up the Militarised Industrial Complex. (MIC)
As the only real global superpower, with the possible exception of China, the US will naturally be the focus of any article focussing on the MIC and as the situation in Gaza is the biggest global newsworthy event, highlighting the actions of the Israeli government is inevitable and also relevant.
Interestingly both governments were heavily criticised by the Special Committee on Apartheid for the role they played in assisting the South African government in its efforts to maintain a system considered by most of the world to be abhorrent.
For decades the special committee criticised the US for its response to apartheid including the blocking of UN resolutions. In the early 1980s, President Reagan’s government adopted a policy of constructive engagement which paved the way for many exports to SA that were previously blocked, including nuclear related materials and equipment used by the South African Police.
This approach led to the easing of the arms embargo, strengthening and protecting the apartheid regime.
In 1986, around 100 major US corporations had South African Subsidiaries or affiliates and around 6000 US companies had business connections with the SA.
In 2016 The Sunday Times newspaper, published a report based on an interview with ex-CIA agent Donald Rickard shortly before he died who finally admitted his and the CIAs role in the 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela in Durban.
During my time as a National Serviceman in the South African Defence Force (SADF) I met with members of The Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) who often carried the Israeli made Uzi sub-machine gun and spoke openly how they were working alongside their Israeli counterparts both on arms development and at the South African nuclear power plant at Pelindaba, South Africa's main nuclear research centre and home to the country's nuclear technology program.
They claimed that both countries were actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. On March 24, 1993, in a speech to the South African parliament, President F. W. de Klerk announced publicly that his country had secretly built and dismantled six nuclear weapons at its secret research facility, Kentron Circle situated close to Johannesburg.
Again, it is important to highlight that the criticisms are directed against the actions of governments, not the citizens of the countries they control. Many members of the SOuth African Jewish community played active and heroic roles in the struggle against apartheid.
Arthur Goldreich was the owner of Liliesleaf farm and provided refuge there for Nelson Mandela and other senior members of the then banned African National Congress. Harold Wolpe, a South African of Jewish-Lithuanian descent assisted him in providing the funds to purchase the farm.
Another South African of Jewish - Lithuanian descent, Helen Suzman, played a critical role in the struggle for equality in South Africa as a Member of Parliament for the United Party she was re-elected as a member of the fiercely anti apartheid Progressive Party which later became part of the muli racial South Africa Democratic party. While canvassing for the DP prior to the 1989 elections I had the privilege of hearing her speak at a meeting in Pretoria.
It can justifiably be claimed that the willingness of the Israeli government to work closely with the apartheid regime is highly counter-intuitive. What would convince the leaders of a nation born in the aftermath of The Holocaust, the actions of the most brutal fascist government, to cooperate with another right wing government in which the idea of racial supremacy was similarly enshrined ?
The same question can be asked of the US government. What would convince a nation whose founding values include freedom, equality, liberty, and respect for individual rights to actively support a government whose own values so contradicted their own.
In 1961 the U.S. government, through the military and the CIA, engaged in a far more extensive campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against civilian and military targets in Cuba. The terrorist attacks killed significant numbers of civilians. The U.S. armed, trained, funded and directed the perpetrators, most of whom were Cuban expatriates.
The same can be asked of US funded attacks against civilians in Columbia and Italy.
Critics of my work often say things like,’ oh they were different times’, ‘you can't compare the way the world was then to the way it is now’.
What of the Iran - Contra affair then? A political scandal in the United States that centered around arms trafficking facilitated by senior officials of the Ronald Reagan administration.
The answer lies in the objectives of the previously mentioned global elite and their quest, via the MIC, to achieve global dominance. Profit over people, money over morals.
In Part 3 of this series I will examine the emergence of the MIC in the late aftermath of WW2, its links to the formation of the State of Israel and how it currently, regardless of morality and often contrary to the official stance of western governments,
facilitates and crucially profits from conflicts all over the planet.
