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Sunday, March 17, 2024

Schumer vs. Netanyahu | Potomac Watch Podcast: WSJ Opinion





MY COMMENT: 

There are times in history when the moral fiber and integrity of one man determines the history of humankind. The best example is May 28, 1940 when Churchill won over the extended cabinet of 25 MPs in his decision not to negotiate a separate peace with Hitler. 


Three days ago we had the example of a similar moment,  except this time the lack of Chuck Schumer’s integrity  may end up having far reaching negative consequences for the democracies of the West.  Why? Because Israel is fighting Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran alone and throwing Israel under the bus at this crucial moment may push Iran towards nuclear breakout.



I'm Kate Bachelder Odell. I'm hosting today and I'm about to talk to my colleague, Elliot Kaufman, who is fresh off a trip to Israel about the developments there in Israel's war and Israel's relationship with the United States. So, Elliot, thank you so much for joining us. I believe you're relatively fresh off a plane, so hopefully you've had a moment to figure out what time and day it is and where you are, but we're glad to have you. In the past 24 hours, the biggest news item in the US-Israel relationship has obviously been the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer who went to the US Senate floor and basically called for Netanyahu's ouster from Prime Minister of Israel. So, let's listen to a quick clip of what Chuck Schumer had to say.

Chuck Schumer: There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel after October 7th. In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election. Now, if Prime Minister Netanyahu's current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Well, Schumer really waded right in there to Democratic allies electoral process. So, Elliot, I've got a small idea of how this perhaps went over in Israel, but why don't you give us some more detail on how Mr. Schumer's remarks are being received so far?

Elliot Kaufman: Sure. Thanks for having me on Kate. There are plenty of Israelis who would agree with Senator Schumer. There are plenty who would disagree, but I think what they would all say is that it's not his place, it's not his country. He doesn't get to say when Israel has an election, when a government has to fall, when the country's policy has to change. So, you've seen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leading opponents, people who would usually be more than happy to say bad things about him have to come and rally to his side here, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's chief opponent coming out and saying that, this is a decision for Israelis to make, not an American Senator, no matter how powerful. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, another Netanyahu opponent coming out and saying, Israel is not a banana republic. America doesn't get to dictate what happens in this way. So, if the intent was to undermine the Prime Minister, I don't think it has succeeded in Israel. Israelis don't like to hear their country given orders about basic democratic processes.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Right. One of the things I find fascinating about this speech from Schumer is that if you read the full text of it, the first half of it is actually a remarkably cogent defense of Israel's existence, that it's not a 20th century invention and a very clear-eyed description of Israel's enemies and what they face against Hamas and Schumer recalls things like when he was younger listening over the radio about whether Israel was going to win the Six-Day War. So, what boggles my mind is that he kept going, and obviously the speech is not remembered for any of those features that I'm describing now. So, this is I guess, more of a question about the American left, but there's clearly some sort of change going on among Democrats, among the Biden administration and their posture toward Israel. Can you give us any more understanding of how maybe America's bent toward Israel has changed over the past couple of weeks?

Elliot Kaufman: You're absolutely right about there being two sides to Senator Schumer's speech, and I think you have to read it in the context of a campaign by President Biden over the past several weeks, months, maybe a month and a half, to really up the rhetorical ante against Israel, except he would put it differently. He would say it's against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The truth is, that plays well with American liberals, not only the anti-Israel left, but American liberals in general who have come to a situation where you can really say anything about Prime Minister Netanyahu and it's okay. The problem is what Netanyahu is being attacked for aren't things where he is on one side and the Israeli people are on another. That's what President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have tried to argue, but on every issue they pick, those are the issues where Netanyahu is actually aligned with Israelis on issues like what to do about Rafah, Hamas' final stronghold in Gaza. On issues like a Palestinian state now. Israelis find that idea absolutely crazy. They can't believe an American would think that's a good idea right now, even on things like humanitarian aid, where I would argue the Prime Minister is actually out in front of where Israelis are. Most Israelis don't like the idea of sending in humanitarian aid while their hostages are still suffering there 150 days in. Netanyahu is sending aid, and so by attacking the Prime Minister on these issues, they're really undermining their argument that the US problem is just with Netanyahu and not with Israel.

Kate Bachelder Odell: I thought your point in your piece for us Elliot was brilliant that, folks assume that if Netanyahu were gone, that they'd get somebody who were closer in agreement with the Biden administration, but in turn the reality might be quite the opposite. You mentioned Rafah and President Biden declared it would be a red line, which is an odd thing to say to an ally of any variety as opposed to an adversary, but maybe you could give us a little bit more insight into what Israel is planning in Rafah, what the potential for Israel to go into Rafah is, and how that pressure not to go into Rafah is actually playing there, whether it's having any effect or maybe the opposite effect in giving more Israel resolve, that it really does need to finish the job of eliminating the threat of Hamas.

Elliot Kaufman: Yes, so the Israeli war effort has two goals. One of them is to destroy Hamas. The other is to free the hostages that Hamas has been holding. These two objectives sometimes go hand in hand and sometimes not. So Rafah, the argument is, you can't destroy Hamas if you're going to leave it, an entire city as a stronghold where it has an estimated 40% of its military forces sitting where its senior leadership is believed to be hiding and where the hostages are believed to be held, most of them. So, the argument from an Israeli perspective is very clear for why there has to be some sort of military operation against Rafah. However, there are all kinds of other strategies being pursued at the same time, the Biden administration, President Biden really doesn't talk about destroying Hamas anymore. He did at the start of the war, and it really gave Israelis a boost of morale. President Biden went there to Israel, gave some very powerful speeches, but these days he just never mentions it, victory defeating Hamas, that's simply fallen off of his list of priorities, instead, he talks about humanitarian aid and he talks about bringing the war to a close. Now, the way to do that for him is with some kind of hostage deal and talks have been going on and there's some progress lately, but one can never know. The way that these two issues intersect is that President Biden would like a hostage deal that comes with a six-week pause in the fighting and then use that to get a larger ceasefire. He's been fairly open about this. Now his way to get there has been to pressure Israel, new policy measures, threats about suspending weapon shipments, escalating anti-Israel rhetoric. It's been pressure on Israel, Israel, Israel to try to get this hostage deal. The problem is Hamas has seen that too, and so in the last several weeks, we've seen Hamas harden its negotiating stances and move further away from a deal. Why after all should Hamas go to a deal if Israel's threat of an invasion of its final stronghold Rafah, is no longer credible? So, the Biden administration's actions are in some ways working at cross purposes with its goals.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Your point about victory just completely being absent from the discussion is a great larger point about the Biden administration's foreign policy in general, and reminds me of Ukraine where victory has also dropped off as any sort of objective the US should have. But we'll take a quick break and we'll be back talking more with Elliot about the war in Israel.

Speaker 7: Don't forget. You can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

Audio: From the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. This is Potomac watch.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Welcome back to Potomac Watch. I'm Kate Bachelder Odell chatting here with my colleague Elliot Kaufman about war in Israel. Elliot, one thing you mentioned in your last remarks was about these potential threats to cut off US weapon support for Israel. Now, the Biden administration has been saying all of these bromides about we will never abandon Israel, but then leaving it open to the possibility that they would cut off some weapon support or put restrictions on weapons or maybe supply things like Israel's Iron Dome interceptors to help it protect its cities, but lay off some more active support. My understanding of my own reporting is that Israel really could benefit and needs US support on items like precision-guided munitions, whether that's artillery or guided bombs. I guess my question for you, having spent the week there is, how seriously are the Israelis taking those threats that maybe US support won't be there, and what are Israel's options if that were to happen? How are they thinking about the potential unreliability of the Biden administration?

Elliot Kaufman: It's a good question. Lack of ammunition is one of the most serious threats to the Israeli war effort, and it has been almost right from the start. Now, this is talked about all the time in Israel, but not so much in America. When you talk to senior Israeli officials about this, political officials, military officials, ammunition is the one thing where they will signal to you how serious it is, so much so that they really can't say much. Now, what I've been able to hear is that in the first two weeks of the war effort, Israel was running dangerously low. I've spoken to reserve soldiers who were told their unit could only fire 10 rounds of artillery that day. They had a set quota they simply could not exceed. The question is how did they get into a situation like this? There are a few reasons. One of them is completely inadequate Israeli planning. They weren't ready for a real war, especially not on two fronts, because Israel has to hold so much ammunition in reserve for Hezbollah in the north. They can't simply use all of it on Hamas in the South. The second point though is that many of these US ammunition stocks that were held in Israel were sent to Ukraine during that war. Now, that was a perfectly legitimate choice, but Israel found itself scrambling for these weapons that would've otherwise been on its own territory, US weapons. The third thing I would point to is Israeli officials will say that US ammunition transfers, well, there were many more of them at the start. They've been slower. There's been some stalling by the US and now there are leaks every day in the US press about weapons being cut off, conditioned, there was a US policy change adding all sorts of strings to how the weapons can be used and so forth, not in a way that would take them away from Israel, but in a way that was aimed at Israel seemingly to make it nervous. So, when you talk to Israelis, this is one of the number one issues that they say is holding up an operation on Rafah, holding up the war in general, they say that the war in Gaza would've been over months ago if the ammunition had arrived on the pace that they would've liked, and so it's in America anyway, one of the untold stories of the war and definitely one to watch going forward.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Fascinating stuff Elliot, but slightly alarming. We've talked a lot on this podcast about the US' ammunition shortages and struggle to provide enough for Ukraine in artillery, so there's a global run on artillery, it seems like. One quick thing I want to ask you about here towards the end, we have this week the Biden administration renewed that $10 billion sanctions waiver on Iran. A great theme of this podcast in our pages has been discussing the ways in which the Biden administration doesn't quite appreciate how Iran is driving events in the region and how Hamas is a subsidiary of Iran. How has that news, has that had any effect in Israel, and is there any sense in Israel that the Biden administration is doing this two-step sanctions relief for Iran while supporting Israel? What is your view of that decision and how is it being received in Israel?

Elliot Kaufman: Well, the first thing that came to mind is something that an Israeli minister told me, and that is that, strategically, the US Is still in October 6th. Israelis talk this way. They speak about the October 6th army, or if they're talking about the future, the October 8th army, what is it going to look like? The US, I'm afraid he's right. Strategically, the Biden administration is still in October 6th. It hasn't changed its perception of Iran. It hasn't fundamentally changed its policy toward Iran. It still thinks that concessions can be made to sort of buy quiet, or if not quiet totally, then quieter than it might otherwise be. So a $10 billion sanctions waiver when Iran is financing a war against Israel on so many fronts, when its proxies are shooting on US troops and have been shooting on US troops. It's hard to understand how the US could think it's a good idea to allow more funds to go to Iran because we know what it's going to do with it. One other point is that just lately, there have been these reports that the US is threatening sanctions on Iran if it signs a ballistic missile deal with Russia to send ballistic missiles for Russia's use in Ukraine. Now, what Israelis have been saying is that these two policies in combination don't make any sense. Why is the US with one hand giving a $10 billion sanctions waiver and with the other hand threatening ballistic missile sanctions? The policy just seems incoherent, and I think until the US, really the Biden administration changes the way it conceives of this war. Not of Hamas starting a war, Hezbollah joining in, but of the Iranian axis going to war with Israel and the US in the region, we're going to continue to see this policy incoherence.

Kate Bachelder Odell: Well Elliot, it sounds like a fascinating and productive trip. Thanks so much for coming to fill us in. That's all for this week on Potomac watch. We'll be back on Monday.


Friday, March 8, 2024

Yuri Fedorov: The Ukrainian Front of the Third World War

The following is the google translate of a chapter published in Russian in ВАЖНЫЕ ИСТОРИИ  from  Yuri Fedorov’s new book The Ukrainian Front of the Third World War


Hopefully, the book will be translated into English ASAP. 


The Russian threat is usually associated with the personality of Putin, which was discussed in the first part of this book. Putin and a number of people around him are indeed the most important driving force behind Russian aggression. But the secret of his long stay in power and the absence of significant opposition movements and sentiments is that Putin’s strategic ambitions and phobias coincide with the instincts of the Russian ruling class and mass consciousness, and his policies realize the claims of the Russian ruling elite and society: historical revenge and the restoration of a powerful Eurasian empire.


From Primakov to Crimea 


In the first two or three years after the collapse of the USSR, it was assumed that Russia should become an ally of the West, weaken the role of the military command in the life of the country, form a “belt of stability and good neighborliness” along the borders, that is, respect the independence and territorial integrity of the independent states that emerged from the ruins of the USSR.


This line, which was named after its author, the first Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, faced resistance from the army generals and the directorate of the military-industrial complex, the state security leadership, most of the regional elites and academic circles. It was finally buried in 1996, when Academician Yevgeny Primakov, director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, became head of the Foreign Ministry. “All of us in the leadership of the SVR,” he wrote, “were well aware that with the end of the Cold War the concept of “enemy” will not disappear <...> The leaders of a number of Western countries are acting to prevent Russia from playing a special role in stabilizing the situation in the former republics of the USSR, disrupt the development of trends toward their rapprochement with the Russian Federation.”


Primakov declared Russia’s most important foreign policy objectives to be opposition to NATO expansion, preservation of the Slobodan Milosevic regime in the former Yugoslavia, and the transformation of the CIS states into a strategic forefield where Russian troops would be stationed for operations “on distant frontiers.” None of these goals were achieved. But Primakov was able to transform the phobias, ambitions and expectations of the Russian elite into strategic concepts. The current Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is right: Primakov is indeed “the author of the key provisions of the foreign policy doctrine of modern Russia.”


The outside world was declared a center of danger, and the main threat to Russia's security was the establishment of a “unipolar world.” Washington was accused of undermining Russia's international influence and pushing it out of its traditional zones of influence and spheres of interest. This is a typical explanation for Russian political thinking of its own expansion by concern for countering an external threat. “Constantly at war and expanding in all directions, she [Russia] nevertheless believed that she was constantly under threat,” wrote Henry Kissinger.


In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, the emphasis was on manipulating contradictions between stronger actors in world politics. Actually, this was the meaning of the concept of “multipolarity” invented by Primakov. Western unity during the Cold War, he argued, was the result of confrontation with the USSR. But as soon as the Soviet threat disappeared, contradictions between the United States, Europe and Japan undermine their former military-political and economic unity, and China turns into a superpower competing with Japan and the United States. Moscow must stimulate contradictions between these centers of power and, by playing on them, achieve its goals. However, this concept turned out to be stillborn. The Japanese-American military alliance remained in force. In the 1990s, NATO survived and expanded, and after 2014 and especially 2022, the North Atlantic Alliance became the focus of the military-political power of the West, opposing Russian expansion.


In Russia it is often discussed that, having come to power, Putin sincerely wanted to be friends with the West, join NATO, and supported the deployment of American bases in Central Asia, necessary for the operation in Afghanistan. But contrary to Moscow’s demands, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty, and the states of Central and Eastern Europe were accepted into NATO, including, which especially irritates the Kremlin, the Baltic states. And, accordingly, Putin could not help but react to the hostile behavior of the West. This version is sometimes repeated in the West: if the Baltic states had not been accepted into NATO, then today Russia would be an ally of the North Atlantic Alliance and world politics would develop along a completely different trajectory.


The reality, however, is different. Indeed, once in the Kremlin, Putin tried to reduce tensions with the West - at that time Russia did not have the resources for a new confrontation with it. The war in Chechnya consumed almost all combat-ready units of the army. World oil and gas prices in 2000–2002 were only slightly higher than in the 1990s. In Moscow they spoke with alarm about a default in 2003, when the peak of payments on external loans would occur. Thus, without the weakening of the confrontation with the West, Putin’s presidency would have gone down in history as a “presidency of disaster.”


But in 2003, oil prices went up. A harsh anti-American campaign has unfolded in Russia in connection with the US operation in Iraq. Shortly before this, the State Duma postponed the ratification of the agreement signed with the United States on the reduction of strategic offensive capabilities. In early 2007, in Munich, Putin gave a keynote speech, saying that the economic and military power of the United States did not correspond to its claims to “global leadership,” and that Russia had always “enjoyed the privilege of pursuing an independent foreign policy” and was not going to “change this tradition.”  It quickly became clear that “independent policy” means a policy independent of the rule of law and the need to comply with agreements signed by Russia.


The Munich speech reflected the ideas that had become entrenched in the Russian establishment about the strengthening of Russia and the deepening crisis of the West. The Russian foreign policy concept approved by Putin in December 2016 stated, for example, that “the ability of the historical West to dominate the world economy and politics is being reduced.”

As a result, as Moscow believed, the possibility of taking “historical revenge” opens up: establishing military-political control over the territory of the former USSR and East-Central Europe, as well as the destruction of NATO, which should have been presented with a dilemma - surrender or nuclear war. According to the Kremlin’s logic, Euro-Atlantic civilization has entered a period of decline, unable to cope with the growing crisis, and unable to resist by force the growing influence of Russia. And even if Western elites are able to stabilize the situation in the future, the Kremlin believes, it is necessary to take advantage of their current weakness and ensure the most favorable positions for future confrontation.


The response to the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 reinforced Moscow's confidence in the weakening of the West. In both cases, the United States and Europe were faced with a choice: either a new Cold War or non-resistance to the aggressive actions of the Kremlin. The West's reaction was ambivalent. In August 2008, warships of NATO member states, including American destroyers with cruise missiles, entered the Black Sea. This stopped the Russian troops rushing towards Tbilisi. However, by the end of the year they tried to forget about the invasion of Georgia. From the report of the European Union commission, known as the Tagliavini report, it is impossible to understand who is to blame for the outbreak of the war. Events developed in a similar way after the annexation of Crimea. On the one hand, Western states introduced economic sanctions against Russia, on the other, they set as their goal the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation on the basis of the Minsk agreements. This effectively legitimized the Russian occupation of Crimea and turned the so-called people's republics of Donbass into a powerful instrument of Russian influence in Ukraine.


The people are ready for aggression


The revanchist and militaristic nature of the strategic thinking of the Russian establishment and the aggressiveness of Russian foreign policy are due to the peculiarities of the Russian mentality. According to the Levada Center, which publishes fairly reliable (at least the most reliable of all known) data on the attitude of the Russian population to the war in Ukraine, about 70% of respondents consistently approve of it, approximately 20% disapprove of it, the rest cannot formulate their  attitude towards it  These data, naturally, were questioned by many: in a strictly authoritarian regime that is turning into a totalitarian regime, people are afraid to express their real attitude to current political problems for fear of reprisals.


Sociologists can be trusted or not. But you can't help but believe the facts. Anti-war protests at the beginning of the war were weak and today have been reduced to a minimum. Last fall, several hundred thousand people fled the country from mobilization. This is a small—maximum 10%—proportion of those who can be drafted into the army. The majority of those remaining, having received the summons, obediently go to the recruiting stations. The discontent of those mobilized is not caused by a protest against an aggressive war, but by the bungling of the authorities, poor provision, late payment of money, and the like.


It is also striking that the results of the Levada Center surveys correlate with the conclusions of numerous studies conducted before the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Thus, analyzing the reaction of Russians to the Kremlin’s aggression against Georgia, sociologists recorded a strange situation: on the one hand, in the summer of 2008, about two-thirds of respondents did not fully or partially trust the Russian media, on the other hand, almost immediately after the start of the invasion of Russian troops in Georgia, the official the picture of what was happening, broadcast on television channels, was accepted by 70 to 80% of adult residents of Russia. Putin's personal rating jumped in the fall of 2008 to a record 88%.


Events developed in the same way immediately after the annexation of Crimea. Putin's ratings rose quickly, rising by about twenty percentage points. The highest figure—88%—was in October 2014, after Russian troops attacked the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Ilovaisk. The mass consciousness entered a hysterically excited state, giving rise to the odious slogan “Crimea is ours!”, which, like a drop of water, reflected deeply rooted public sentiments   As the famous Russian psychologist and psychotherapist Andrei Gronsky wrote: “Since the spring - summer of 2014, on the public stage we have been seeing a different person - a person obsessed with ridiculous, overvalued ideas, emotionally excitable and aggressive. <...> I would call a person of the 90s antisocial, a person of the 00s hedonistic, and a person of 14–15 years old psychotic (of course, not in the strict clinical meaning of the word). The question arises as to how a generally reasonable and peace-loving person could suddenly turn into an angry paranoid.”


Sociologists and psychologists have yet to explain this feature of Russian society. Moscow's aggressive policy, experts say, fully corresponds not only to the conscious, but also to the unconscious attitudes and expectations of at least three-quarters of the population. Leading analyst of the Levada Center Boris Dubin wrote: “I want to emphasize: this is not at all about “imposing” on the masses or the notorious “manipulation” of mass consciousness, its “zombification” by the media and political experts, but about semantic permission, if anything - a blessing, and additional symbolic reinforcement of those moods and stereotypes that already exist among the masses, but in an uncondensed, vague, unarticulated form.”  In other words, propaganda liberated, legitimized, gave a more or less complete stable verbal form to the aggressive, militaristic and revanchist mentality and emotional state of mass consciousness and consolidated the political stereotypes that originally existed in it. This calls into question the idea that a change in propaganda strategy, say, in the case of replacing Putin and his clique at the top of Russian power, will lead to a change in the basic imperial and revanchist attitudes deeply rooted in the consciousness of the average Russian. At least for part of the Russian population, a change in propaganda theses may cause rejection. And finally, one of the factors of Putin’s overwhelming popularity becomes clear: the content and style of his thinking, declared values, geopolitical views, even humor, which is not without reason considered an example of bad taste, coincide with the way of thinking of 80–85% of Russians, who consistently approve and support his activities.


The fact that militaristic propaganda is readily accepted by Russian society, with the exception of a relatively small part of it, means that this society consciously or subconsciously shares the very assessments, views and stereotypes that the pro-Kremlin media instill in it. Facts that contradict the formed vision of what is happening are either simply ignored or interpreted in the desired direction. This well-known phenomenon, called the “paralogical type of thinking,” is characteristic of Russian mass consciousness. The latter has been formed over centuries. But the Soviet years were especially important, when total indoctrination was supported by equally total terror. The idea that one can avoid the Gulag and even save one’s life is firmly established in the minds of homo soveticus, not only by declaring one’s loyalty to the leaders, but also by accepting the way of thinking they impose, by believing what the authorities instill in their subjects. Psychologists can explain this not only by elementary fear, but also by the desire to avoid cognitive dissonance, a feeling of deep emotional discomfort caused by a clash in the mind of conflicting ideas, ideas, beliefs, values ​​or emotional reactions, on the one hand, imposed by the authorities, and on the other, reflecting personal , an alternative to the official picture of the world. 


Numerous researchers have tried to understand the causes and origins of the militarization of mass consciousness, the widespread prevalence of xenophobia and ethnic hatred, mythologized concepts that justify and glorify war, and the search for an external enemy. Many works noted a deficit of critical-analytical thinking and, accordingly, adherence to an indoctrinated point of view, infantile dependence on the authorities and pro-government media, rejection of logical arguments and facts. There are many theories that describe and explain these phenomena. They do not contradict each other and together form a complete picture.  


Russian philosopher Igor Klyamkin is looking for the origins of the militarized culture of Russian society in the type of statehood that emerged as a result of the long stay of the Moscow Principality as part of the Golden Horde. The Moscow state was built on the model of a “big army.” “The statehood and, accordingly, the culture of post-Mongol Muscovy initially developed as a statehood and culture of a militaristic type,” writes Klyamkin. - <...>  We are talking about militarization not only in the sense of spending most of the resources for military purposes, but also about the way the state is organized, as well as its relationship with the population.” Militarization, which also extended to peacetime, blurred “in people’s minds the boundaries between war and peace. And, accordingly, it could not but affect the type of culture that was establishing itself in Muscovy.  


Not everyone in the Russian scientific community agrees with this. But in itself, the initial thesis about Russia as a militaristic type of state does not raise doubts. The entire system of power relations was built not on the basis of legal norms, to which both rulers and their subjects had to obey, but according to the army type, which presupposed the unquestioning subordination of the lower levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy to the higher ones. This organization of social relations best met the tasks of permanent territorial expansion, first of the Muscovite kingdom, and then of the Russian Empire, which was carried out primarily by military force. At the same time, the mentality of an “obedient subject” was formed, accustomed to submission, unquestioningly carrying out not only the orders and instructions of his superiors, but also easily assimilating the ideological and political doctrines and views imposed from above.  


According to another concept, the militarization of Russian mass consciousness was a consequence of “negative selection”, which contributed to the accumulation of militaristic views, attitudes and sentiments in the Russian public consciousness, which has reached a dangerous level in our days. The changes experienced by the population of Russia, wrote the outstanding Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, “are typical of all major wars and revolutions. The latter have always been a tool of negative selection.” In particular, “the more strong-willed, gifted, morally and mentally developed” died in large numbers. Persons who are morally defective suffered less. During the revolution, conditions were just favorable to their survival. In conditions of brutal struggle, lies, deception, unprincipledness and moral cynicism, they felt great; they occupied profitable positions, committed atrocities, cheated, changed their positions as needed, and lived a satisfying and cheerful life.”  


The Great Terror and World War II dealt a terrible blow to public morality in the former USSR. In order to survive, many people did not simply remain silent, without risking giving away a critical attitude towards Soviet reality with a careless word, but consciously or subconsciously forced themselves to believe in Bolshevik propaganda in order to avoid split thinking. As a result, a huge number of people became accustomed to communist dogmas, some deeply believed in them. And these dogmas, as one of the deepest experts on Soviet Bolshevism, Alexander Yakovlev, wrote, “harshly and strictly dictate the policy of violence as the “midwife of history.” Communism in Russia died before the collapse of the USSR, but its inherent logic of thinking, ideas about violence as the main or even the only political instrument remained and, largely thanks to Kremlin propaganda, were transferred to the foreign policy sphere.


The rootedness of militaristic attitudes in Russian society is also associated with the spread of the sadomasochistic personality type in it. “For the authoritarian character there are, so to speak, two sexes: the powerful and the powerless,” wrote Erich Fromm. “Strength automatically evokes his love and willingness to obey, regardless of who showed it. Strength attracts him not for the sake of the values ​​that stand behind it, but in itself, because it is strength. And just as power automatically earns his “love,” powerless people or organizations automatically earn his contempt. At the mere sight of a weak person, he feels the desire to attack, suppress, humiliate. <…> An authoritarian personality feels the more rage, the more helpless its victim is.” In other words, a person best suited to existence in an authoritarian or totalitarian society finds a kind of pleasure in subordination to his superiors and at the same time overcomes the feeling of his own inferiority caused by this subordination, subordinating and humiliating people who are weaker or standing on the lower steps of the social ladder.  This mechanism largely explains the origin of the aggressiveness of modern Russian society towards, for example, Ukraine and Ukrainians. Open hostility towards the former “brotherly people”, the desire to humiliate them by taking away Crimea or Donbass, may well be the product of a deeply hidden but powerful feeling of one’s own humiliation and discrimination in one’s own country.   


Another mechanism, closely related to the authoritarian, sadomasochistic nature of mass consciousness, is based on the desire to compensate for one’s own weakness and humiliation by associating with a powerful state pursuing a tough aggressive policy towards its neighbors. Alexander Asmolov, one of the leading Russian psychologists, writes: “This is not masochism or even sadism, this is a different mechanism.  As soon as a particular culture chooses a mobilization scenario rather than an innovative development scenario as a development strategy, it actualizes patriotism as a love not for society, but for the state. And it completely mobilizes all aggressive-patriotic xenophobic mechanisms. As soon as the country chose crisis as the path of development, as soon as we became a great country of permanent crisis, the main thing we do is to protect our security. <…> Thus, aggression exists at the political level as a tool for maintaining the crisis and justifying rigid vertical forms of power.” 


The main conclusion seems far from optimistic. The aggressive foreign policy of Putin’s Russia, which took its final form in 2014, was generated not only by the views and geopolitical ideas of Putin himself, part of the highest circles of the bureaucracy, the interests of the military command, the owners of the military-industrial complex and the heads of the security services. Russia's aggressiveness on the world stage has deep roots in Russian society and reflects expectations, phobias and other mental and emotional characteristics of the Russian mass consciousness.  


“The annexation of Crimea gave such a powerful effect of triumph and self-satisfaction, a sense of demonstration of strength, that it eliminated or pushed aside all claims to power,” wrote Levada Center director Lev Gudkov. — The annexation of Crimea and policy towards Ukraine, the war in Donbass, confrontation and demonstration of force towards the West have sharply increased Russians’ self-respect. I would say they doubled it. And claims to power and ideas about power as corrupt and selfish have not so much changed as they have been put into brackets.” This circumstance makes Russia and its foreign policy truly dangerous


Sunday, February 18, 2024

Comment on Russia has died with Navalny


The world is going through a dark period. I posted the following comment two days ago on Sergey Radchenko’s article in The Spectator  Hope for Russia has died with Navalny


This is a black day for Russia and the West. Dictatorships sense when leaders of democracies are weak and take advantage of it. People living in democracies take their freedoms for granted and do not understand how totalitarian regimes function, and often underestimate the threat emanating from them. Nemtsov, Navalny and Kara-Murza had been warning for years about Putin but nobody listened. Of the three, only Kara-Murza is still alive, in prison.

Not since the 1930s do we have such a confluence of weak leaders in the West. It boggles the mind how Biden is still trying to appease Iran and just came up with a delusional plan of recognizing a Palestinian state in the near future just 4 1⁄3 months after Oct 7. Macron and Cameron are lecturing Israel how to protect Palestinian civilians whereas the IDF already has the best noncombatant to combatant death ratio (1.5: 1 in Gaza) of any army in history, whereas for US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the ratio was 4 civilians killed for every combatant. Only Ukraine and Israel are seriously fighting totalitarian regimes.

How did it come about that Russia is back where it was 80 years ago during Stalin? Perhaps the best is to read Alexei Navalny’s own explanation:

My fear and loathing









Tuesday, January 16, 2024

I accuse, by Manuel Valls

 

Manuel Valls

Google translate from French  https://www.tribunejuive.info/2024/01/15/jaccuse-par-manuel-valls/ 

Source: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/guerre-israel-hamas-jaccuse-par-manuel-valls-ZMJHJJJRABE7BG2RZC54UDKMTI/

January 11, 2024, in The Hague.

The crowd is going wild. Palestinian keffiyeh hanging around the necks of the men present in the vast majority, the songs and the jumps make the flags dance above the heads galvanized by the idea of ​​a curious victory. A few meters away, the atmosphere is one of mourning. Israeli flags slowly come to life from the tired steps of their carrier. The faces are sad, many came accompanied by a photo of a hostage. It's been a time of pain since October 7.

The day before, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was delighted on X to be invited to this event. In what capacity, one wonders, but he will be “present for peace”, in the camp of the celebration of what for some is the trial of the century. It is a “choice” according to him “which challenges the law of the strongest, the most armed or the injunctions of murderous theories such as that of the “clash of civilizations” or “the war of good against evil”. » A political choice, in short.

Between the walls facing the demonstrators stands the International Court of Justice where South Africa has indicted Israel for genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, part of a “Continuous Nakba for 75 years”. Grotesque initiative of this government of the African National Congress, eaten away by corruption, which seeks to divert attention while the country experiences 30% unemployment and faces, each year, 30,000 assassinations and 40,000 rapes...

If political indecency has raged in all countries of the world in recent months, it finally finds its peak in the main judicial organ of the United Nations. The trial of the century, they said, or the Dreyfus affair of our time. “Since they dared, I will dare too. " 126 years later, it's my turn to tell the whole truth.

The truth first about the trial and the false accusations made against Israel.

Because the South African pleading is distressing. Edited around videos found on social networks and shocking sentences published in the press and on the web, the lawyers follow one another to assert a single message: in the bombings of the Gaza Strip, Israel's sole objective is to to destroy the “subgroup” of Palestinians in Gaza.

A particularly attractive idea for anti-Zionists who dream of Israel as the great tyrant of the Middle East, but what about the 1,200 people murdered in the wildest hatred, dismembered, raped, decapitated, burned? What about the more than 7,500 injured and the 139 hostages including 19 bodies removed during the massacre of October 7, 2023, not counting the 110 released and traumatized for the rest of their lives? What about the 500,000 displaced within Israeli borders? What also about the incessant salvos of rockets unleashed by Hamas? What about common sense and self-defense?

The myth of a country thirsty for Palestinian blood fueled by South African accusations is a brazen lie. The accusations of genocide also seem very weak in the face of the only democratic state in the Middle East. It would be a disgrace to recall the considerable efforts made by Israel to protect civilians from this war, despite the trouble Hamas goes to to shield them. It would be disgraceful to recall that for a State which wishes the disappearance of Palestinians from Gaza, treating Gazan children and terrorists in Israeli hospitals would be counterproductive. It would be disgraceful to point out that a genocidal state would probably not welcome tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to work with the end goal of creating the conditions that could lead to their demise. And in the face of this, it would be disgraceful for a third country to persist in condemning Israel of genocidal acts.

Then the truth about a political class steeped in anti-Jewish hatred guided by an insatiable electoral thirst.

For part of the European and international political class, none of all the abominations committed by Hamas on the Gazan population and the Israelis in particular on October 7, 2023 was enough. With Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn at the head, and also major guests of the Hague trial at the ICJ, without us understanding in what capacity, neither the hijackings, nor the hostage-taking, nor the murders, nor beheadings, nor dismemberments, nor rapes, are sufficient to qualify Hamas as a terrorist movement. One more indignity which adds to the long respective lists of the two former elected officials of defamatory, anti-Semitic and hateful remarks. A real disaster for the French and British leftists who no longer retain any credit for the defense of humanist and universal values. Their Manichean vision of power and minorities deprives them of all lucidity, finding legitimacy in barbarism, and making them complicit in acts and crimes which should shake their most deeply held convictions, if any remain. This nauseating left has agreed to sell its weak convictions for the benefit of the supposed new proletariat that they set out to conquer: the great mass of immigration and Muslims and to hell with the defense of the popular classes and workers who no longer make enough victims to still be attractive.

The truth finally about this “war of good against evil”

“Martyrdom is undoubtedly the greatest secret of our success. Your adversary [always] seeks to kill you, except if it is not serious for you to lose your life, [if] what matters is to achieve your goal, he loses all control over you.” It is on these words of Naïm Qassem, number 2 of Hezbollah revealed in a documentary series on France 2, that this war crystallizes, not of good against evil, but this war of value. From Hamas to Hezbollah, from Daesh to all contemporary Islamist terrorist groups, the objective is the same: to destroy the West and wage a global jihad. The urgency, for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and behind them Iran, is to put an end to the "Zionist entity" which they also call the "little Satan", and above all to overcome the American threat (“the great Satan”).

Understanding what is happening today in the Middle East means understanding the challenges we will have to overcome tomorrow. The barbarity that was expressed and the inhumanity of the actions of October 7 gave us all a lesson about the enemies, the Islamists, terrorism, which Israelis have to fight. Ours in France and in Europe have not been and are not very different.

In this war of life against death, it is neither the Israeli bombings nor the words of the leaders that are genocidal, but rather the very existence of the State of Israel as a genocide in itself. For too long, the Palestinian flag has not been raised in pain to mourn the loss of civilians. No, for too long the Palestinian flag has been brandished with fierce rage as the political symbol of a war waged today against Jews and Israel, and tomorrow against democracies and the West. It is this visceral hatred of the values ​​that Jews and Israel embody that unites terrorists, sovereign states and political leaders without any other apparent coherence. This “war of good against evil” that Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls is none other than a war of values ​​between two worlds, a tireless repetition of history, and the precipitous fall into an era that we would have liked to forget.

For the reasons given, I accuse Hamas terrorists of genocidal acts against the Palestinian population in Gaza and specifically of murder and torture of homosexuals and political opponents; serious attacks on the physical and mental integrity of Gazans by using the population, women and children, as human shields as well as schools, universities, hospitals and ambulances for terrorist purposes; intentional submission of Gazans to conditions of existence leading to its partial destruction by diverting international aid for the benefit of the development of weapons and the financing of terrorism, by confiscating humanitarian aid from civilians and holding the population hostage despite the Israeli bombing announcements; measures aimed at hindering births by depriving Palestinian women in Gaza of quality care in hospitals widely used as weapons warehouses.

I accuse Hamas of incessant attacks aimed at threatening Israeli territorial security and of war crimes and hostage-taking that led the State of Israel to initiate a military response in self-defense. I accuse Hamas of being solely responsible for the dramatic situation in Gaza for the Palestinians since its takeover in the strip, and for the war waged there by Israel.

I accuse Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran of making genocidal remarks against the Jewish community, Israel, the United States and Western nations.

I accuse South Africa and their supporters of bringing the voice of Hamas and their propaganda to the highest authorities in the world. I accuse them of guilty silence when it was necessary to condemn Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq and Iran for genocide against their populations and war crimes. I accuse South Africa and their supporters of failing in their duty to prevent and punish genocidal remarks made directly and publicly against Israel. I accuse South Africa and their supporters of ignoring the massacres of October 7, which they do not consider as part of the Israeli response. I accuse South Africa and its supporters, for the reasons set out above, of bringing to the International Court of Justice an unfounded and politically motivated complaint by a rejection of the right of the State of Israel to exist and to enjoy assertive territorial security.

I accuse Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn of acting as political relays for the anti-Zionism carried by Hamas by refusing to recognize the organization as terrorist and by attributing resistance activities to it.

I accuse the UN of lacking impartiality towards Israel, targeted by 17 resolutions in 2020 compared to 7 for the rest of the world (including one against Iran and one against Syria). I accuse the UN of incomprehensible blindness until January 8, 2024 on the rapes and sexual mutilation carried out on October 7, 2023 in Israel. I accuse the UN of a lack of distance from the information provided by Hamas concerning the deaths and attacks attributed to Israelis. The pitiful response given by the UN to Hamas's misleading information on Al-Shifa Hospital should have alerted us. I accuse UNRWA of complicity with Hamas terrorists to the detriment of the civilian population. I condemn in the strongest terms the misappropriation of European and international funds by Hamas to finance anti-Semitic school books, weapons and war infrastructure, and the terrorist group's food rationing.

More than 100 days after the greatest pogrom that Israel has known and the attempted genocide that it had to combat, I condemn the unworthy summons of Israel to answer to accusations of genocidal acts and provide my support for democracy Israeli in this unbearable political war of which it is the target. I join the Israelis who mourn their dead and share their terror of knowing that at a time when Israel is being tried for genocide, 120 Israelis are still hostages of terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, and victims of the abuses of which we know they are capable.

I expect from France the same commitment as Germany alongside the Israelis, a total and clear commitment, and an unequivocal condemnation of South Africa's initiative.

Manuel Valls served as Prime Minister of France (2014–2016)


Sunday, January 14, 2024

South Africa-Israel ICJ case | Israeli ministry of justice: Dr. Galit Raguan

 

ICJ transcript 


Ms RAGUAN: FACTS ON THE GROUND


Madam President, Members of the Court, it is an honour to appear before you on behalf of the State of Israel. As Professor Shaw noted, at this stage, South Africa does not need to prove that genocidal acts have been or are being committed. But it does have to show that the Genocide Convention is actually relevant.It has to show some level of acts and some level of intent. Professor Shaw has spoken to the issue of express intent. It is my task to speak to the circumstances of Israel’s actions. 


Israel cannot possibly comprehensively address today all of the allegations made in South Africa’s Application in this regard. The Applicant paints a dire picture. But it is a partial and deeply flawed picture. The Application is so distorted in its descriptions that it prevents the Court from properly assessing the plausibility of the rights asserted by South Africa. Plausibility cannot be determined based on the unsubstantiated allegations of one party to the proceedings alone, if Article 41 of the Court’s Statute is to have any meaning. In the time available, I will address three aspects of reality on the ground that the Applicant has either ignored or misrepresented.


First, Hamas’ military tactics and strategy. Second, Israel’s efforts to mitigate civilian harm during operational activity. And third, Israel’s efforts to address humanitarian hardship in Gaza, despite Hamas’ attempts at obstruction. 


With respect to Hamas’ military tactics and strategy, it is astounding that in yesterday’s hearing, Hamas was mentioned only in passing, and only in reference to the 7 October massacre in Israel. Listening to the presentation by the Applicant, it was as if Israel is operating in Gaza against no armed adversary. But the same Hamas that carried out the 7 October attacks in Israel is the governing authority in Gaza. And the same Hamas has built a military strategy founded on embedding its assets and operatives in and amongst the civilian population. 


Urban warfare will always result in tragic deaths, harm and damage. But in Gaza, these undesired outcomes are exacerbated because they are the desired outcomes of Hamas. In urban warfare, civilian casualties may be the unintended, but lawful, result of attacks on lawful military objectives. International humanitarian law recognizes this reality and provides a framework for balancing military necessity with humanitarian considerations. These do not constitute genocidal acts. 


 In the current conflict, many civilian deaths are directly caused by Hamas. Booby-trapped homes detonate and kill indiscriminately. Mines in alleyways collapse structures around them. And over 2,000 rockets misfired by Hamas have landed inside Gaza, causing untold levels of harm. One telling example is a blast at the Al Ahli Hospital on 17 October. Hamas claimed that the IDF attacked the hospital; headlines around the world rushed to repeat this claim. The IDF later proved, and United States intelligence and other national security intelligence agencies independently confirmed, that the blast was the result of a failed rocket launch from within Gaza. It was not, as Hamas claimed, the fault of the IDF.


Damage to civilian structures is another fact claimed by South Africa as evidence of genocide. But South Africa does not consider the sheer extent to which Hamas uses ostensibly civilian structures for military purposes. Houses, schools, mosques, United Nations facilities and shelters are all abused for military purposes by Hamas, including as rocket launching sites. Hundreds of kilometres of tunnels dug by Hamas under populated areas in Gaza often cause structures above to collapse. 


In the slides before you, you can see a militant priming projectiles for launch on IDF forces in Gaza. You can see the holes in the residential house to hide and launch them. Here you can see projectiles discovered underneath a bed in a child’s bedroom. Here, a rocket being fired from a school. The launch site is circled in red.. Here you can see militants firing from a United Nations school. You can see letters “UN” on the roof and the fire is circled in red. Here, long-range rocket launchers hidden inside a Scouts club building. Finally you can see part of a tunnel that runs for four kilometres, including nearby the Erez Crossing, which is adjacent to Israel. 


Gaza’s infrastructure has certainly been harmed during the conflict. However, South Africa would have the Court believe that Israel is deliberately and unlawfully destroying homes without cause. But harm caused to lawful military objectives, and harm caused as a result of Hamas’ actions, is not evidence of genocide. 


South Africa also alleges that Israel has waged an assault on Gaza’s health system. What South Africa has neglected to bring before the Court, however, is the overwhelming evidence of Hamas’ military use of such hospitals.


Hamas militants retreated to Rantissi Hospital in Gaza on 7 October with hostages from Israel, whom they then held in the basement. 21. In the slide before you, you will see a militant going into Quds Hospital with an RPG. Hamas fired at IDF forces from near, and from within, Quds Hospital. At Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, Hamas managed operations from a closed-off area. Here you can see an opening to the tunnel that ran for hundreds of metres directly under the hospital. Here, you can see the weapons found in different wings of the hospital. Here, CCTV footage showing armed militants bringing hostages into the hospital’s lobby.. More than 80 militants hiding inside another hospital, the Adwan Hospital, surrendered themselves to the IDF. Here you can see a weapon that IDF forces discovered hidden inside incubators at the hospital. The director of the hospital has admitted that numerous members of hospital staff belong to Hamas’ military wing. In the Indonesian hospital in the neighbourhood of Jabalya, Hamas forces managed their operations from that hospital until the IDF reached it. IDF forces recovered the bodies of five murdered hostages from a tunnel dug underneath the hospital. 



The list goes on. In every single hospital that the IDF has searched in Gaza, it has found evidence of Hamas military use. Israel is acutely aware that because of Hamas’ use of hospitals as shields for its military operations, in grave violations of international humanitarian law, patients and staff are at risk. This is why the IDF has reached out to every hospital and offered assistance in relocating patients and staff to safer areas. Hospitals have not been bombed; rather, the IDF sends soldiers to search and dismantle military infrastructure, reducing damage and disruption. Indeed, the tunnel that sat directly under the main building in Shifa Hospital was exploded without damaging the building above. The IDF then withdrew from the hospital. Yes  damage and harm have occurred, as a result of hostilities in hospitals’ vicinity; sometimes by IDF fire, sometimes by Hamas. But always as a direct result of Hamas’ abhorrent method of warfare.


Israel has published plenty of evidence of the extensive misuse by Hamas of medical facilities in direct violations of international humanitarian law. It has brought journalists to see first-hand. It has recorded calls with hospital staff to co-ordinate assistance. None of that is mentioned in the Application. In fact, the Applicant describes the result and asks the Court to attribute malicious intent to Israel. But that is only a possible conclusion if one obscures, as the Applicant has, Hamas’ strategy of turning hospitals into terrorist compounds. The Applicant also made much of the fact that force has been even used in humanitarian zones. What the Applicant neglected to inform the Court, however, was that Hamas has  in its contempt for Palestinian civil life  regularly and deliberately fired from such zones, turning areas of relief into zones of conflict.


Here, before you, you can see one example of a launch site adjacent to the humanitarian zone, both amplified in larger pictures. 36. And in the next slide you can see evidence of a rocket launched from next to Gaza’s water desalination facility. 


I now would like to address briefly the second issue: Israel’s efforts at mitigation of civilian harm. 


Here, too, the Applicant tells not just a partial story, but a false one. For example, the Application presents Israel’s call to civilians to evacuate areas of intensive hostilities “as an act calculated to bring about its physical destruction”. This is a particularly egregious allegation that is completely disconnected from the governing legal framework of international humanitarian law. Evacuation of civilians is recognized under international humanitarian law as one of the measures that may be implemented to protect civilians from the effects of ongoing hostilities. Indeed, such evacuation may even amount to a duty that the party to the conflict has toward civilians.While temporary evacuation undoubtedly involves hardship and suffering, it is preferable to remaining in areas of intensive hostilities, all the more so when one party makes a concerted effort to use those civilians as shields. 


The IDF maintains a Civilian Harm Mitigation Unit to undertake this task. It works full-time to provide advance notice of areas in which the IDF intends to intensify its activities, co-ordinate travel routes for civilians and secure these routes. This unit has developed a detailed map so that specific areas can be temporarily evacuated, instead of evacuating entire areas. On the slide before you, you can see that map, divided into areas, as well as a screenshot of a video explaining the system in Arabic so civilians may understand it. The IDF also enacts localized pauses in its operations to allow civilians to move. It does this even though Hamas does not agree to do the same and has even attacked IDF forces securing humanitarian corridors. 


The PRESIDENT: Excuse me. I have a request from the interpreters that you slow down the pace of your speaking. Could you please do that? Thank you.


Ms RAGUAN: Of course. Yesterday, South Africa stated that the IDF gave 24 hours’ notice to civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate. In fact, the IDF urged civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza for over three weeks before it started its ground operation. Three weeks that provided Hamas with advance knowledge of where and when the IDF would be operating. This three-week period for temporary evacuation is a matter of common knowledge. And the Applicant’s misrepresentation of this fact is, at best, an unfamiliarity with the events and, at worst, a desire to tailor its story to a pre-existing narrative. 


The IDF employs a range of additional measures in accordance with the obligation to take precautionary measures under international humanitarian law. For example, it provides effective advance warnings of attacks where circumstances permit. To date, the IDF has dropped millions of leaflets over areas of expected attacks with instructions to evacuate and how to do so, broadcast countless messages over radio and through social media warning civilians to distance themselves from Hamas operations, and made over 70,000 individual phone calls, including to occupants of the targets, warning them of impending attacks. This requires time. It requires resources and intelligence — and the IDF invests all of these to save civilian lives. 


Here you can see the IDF’s Arabic Twitter account, providing information for civilians to evacuate specific areas, including the location of shelters nearby. Yet the Applicant astonishingly claims that these efforts are in themselves genocidal. In other words, a measure intended to mitigate harm to the civilian population, sometimes exceeding the requirements of international humanitarian law, is proof — according to the Applicant —of Israel’s intent to commit genocide, when in fact, it proves the exact opposite. 


My third topic, with respect to the humanitarian situation. Much attention was given by South Africa to this situation. Despite Israel’s efforts to mitigate harm, there is no question that many civilians in Gaza are suffering as a result of the war that Hamas began.While Israel is seeking to minimize civilian harm, Hamas is doing everything in its power to use the civilian population and civilian infrastructure for its own protection, thwarting humanitarian efforts aimed at alleviating the distress of the civilian population. Further illustration on Hamas’ tactics and Israel’s efforts can be found in tabs 4 and 9 of the volume provided to the Court.


I now turn to describe just some of the humanitarian co-ordination efforts that Israel has been engaged in and Mr Sender will further expand on this. Israel maintains a dedicated military unit, called COGAT, responsible for routine co-ordination with international organizations in Gaza with respect to various humanitarian aspects. It is COGAT that mans and operates the crossings between Israel and Gaza. This includes the Erez Crossing, through which prior to 7 October, almost 20,000 Gazans passed through into Israel daily for work. 


South Africa showed a map yesterday, with the Erez Crossing marked “closed”. What it failed to note is that the crossing was attacked on 7 October by Hamas, which murdered and kidnapped COGAT staff and caused significant damage. Here you can see some of that damage. Nevertheless, COGAT works around the clock to fulfil its role. Its large professional staff run numerous initiatives, of which I will only mention a few.


 First, COGAT manages a mechanism by which it maintains an up-to-date picture of the needs in Gaza. It does this with the United Nations, other international organizations and States, whose representatives sit in COGAT’s offices. COGAT uses this monitoring to help donor States and organizations prioritize their aid efforts to fit the evolving situation on the ground. 56. 


Second, COGAT facilitates the entry of aid into Gaza. Israel has publicly stated repeatedly that there is no limit on the amount of food, water, shelter or medical supplies that can be brought into Gaza. To increase capacity, COGAT has re-opened the Kerem Shalom crossing, as acknowledged by the Security Council in resolution 2720, despite Hamas putting it under fire. Israel has offered to extend operating hours at the crossing if there is a capacity to receive the goods by international organizations on the Gazan side. 


Third, COGAT works to reinforce and strengthen medical services. COGAT has facilitated the huge logistical challenge of establishing four field hospitals in Gaza, and more are being set up, and two floating hospitals. It has facilitated the entry of new ambulances into Gaza. And Israel has even co-ordinated airdrops of aid over Gaza by Jordan, co-ordinating these flights with the Israel Air Force operating in Gaza. 


This, of course, is not to say that nothing more can be done, or that there are no challenges to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Such challenges exist and change according to the evolving circumstances of the conflict. But it is to say that the charge of genocide, in the face of these extensive efforts, is frankly untenable.


It is an inconvenient truth for the Applicant’s case, but one of the most significant challenges is the fact that Hamas commandeers consignments into Gaza and controls their distribution. Gazan residents have reported that Hamas is regularly stealing aid, at the expense of its own population, for the benefit of its fighters. This is a tweet stating that fuel and medical equipment was stolen by purported Hamas members from an UNRWA warehouse. UNRWA later deleted the tweet, perhaps under pressure from the authorities.Here you can see Hamas commandeering an aid truck. And here is another example. Because Hamas for years has used aid consignments to smuggle weapons, security checks of all goods going into Gaza are required, as acknowledged by international humanitarian law. Hamas has time and again hoarded fuel, including during the current conflict, which it uses for military purposes, to sustain ventilation in its expansive underground tunnel network, and for its continued attacks against Israel. 


Nevertheless, in co-ordination with the United Nations, Israel enables fuel to enter Gaza to service essential infrastructure, such as sewage treatment, desalination plants, water pumps and hospitals, and cellular infrastructure for maintaining communication. Israel remains committed to helping international organizations and States involved in the aid effort to overcome these hurdles, and consistently increase the amount of aid and services available to the population in Gaza, as will be further described by Mr Sender.


Here, a picture of incubators the IDF provided to Shifa hospital. Here, a picture of an ambulance convoy co-ordinated by COGAT. A picture of consignments.  A picture of ambulances, the entry of which was co-ordinated by COGAT. And finally, more consignments waiting to enter Gaza. 


 Madam President, Members of the Court, in the time allotted I have been able to describe only some of Israel’s efforts to mitigate civilian harm and to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza. But even this mere fraction is enough to demonstrate how tendentious and partial the Applicant’s presentations of these facts are, and certainly enough to conclude that the allegation of intent to commit genocide is baseless. 


If Israel had such intent, would it delay a ground manoeuvre for weeks, urging civilians to seek safer space and, in doing so, sacrificing operational advantage? Would it invest massive resources to provide civilians with details about where to go, when to go, how to go, to leave areas of fighting? Would it maintain a dedicated unit, staffed with experts, whose sole role is to facilitate aid? And who continued to do so, despite having their staff killed and kidnapped? 


When a population is ruled by a terrorist organization that cares more about wiping out its neighbour than about protecting its own civilians, there are acute challenges in protecting the civilian population. Those challenges are exacerbated by the dynamic and evolving nature of intense  hostilities in an urban area, where the enemy exploits hospitals, shelters and critical infrastructure. Would Israel work continuously with international organizations and States, even reaching out to them on its own initiative, to find solutions to these challenges if it were seeking to destroy the population? Israel’s efforts to mitigate the ravages of this war on civilians are the very opposite of intent to destroy them. Under these circumstances, far from being the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from Israel’s pattern of conduct, intent to commit genocide is not even a plausible inference. 


Madam President, Members of the Court, that concludes my statement. I thank you for your kind attention and I ask that you now invite Mr Sender to the podium.