geneva conventions

Israel’s Pager Bombs Have No Place in a Just War

The exploding pagers and walkie-talkies targeting members of Hezbollah in Lebanon were certainly an espionage and technological coup.

Few people on the spot or reading about them from far away could fail to be amazed.

But the explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday were also very likely war crimes — terrorist attacks by a state that has consistently condemned terrorist attacks on its own citizens.

At what point are we permitted to…?

Five questions, and a sixth

JONATHAN COOK – SEP 9

  1. At what point does it become irresponsible not to compare Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people with the genocide westerners know best: the Nazi Holocaust?
  2. At what point does shielding Israel from the revulsion its actions naturally inspire not turn into complicity?
  3. At what point should western publics be offered proper historical context to make sense of Israel’s genocide: one that lets them understand how the Zionist movement was [ideologically shaped] by its exposure to ugly, century-old European ethnic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism, and how the Zionists chose to those supremacist ideologies rather than reject them?

https://bit.ly/3TKm7MP

David Cameron sat on advice that there was breach of law in Gaza, officials say

David Cameron, the former foreign secretary, sat on advice from Foreign Office officials in Israel and London that there was clear evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza for which the UK risked being complicit, a former Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) adviser said.

The source, who contributed to the drafting of the advice, was speaking after the Labour government banned 30 of about 350 arms export licences due to a clear risk cited in a government memorandum published on Monday that they might be used in serious breaches of international humanitarian law.

(https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/03/david-cameron-breaches-international-humanitarian-law-gaza)

You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?

Profits from slaughter

It isn’t just arms manufacturers and the hi-tech industries, with their booming surveillance businesses, whose shares are soaring on the back of the slaughter in Gaza and Ukraine. 
Bloomberg reported last month that Israeli air strikes on Gaza had turned the homes of 2.3 million Palestinians into 42m tonnes of rubble. That’s enough to fill a line of dump trucks from New York to Singapore. 


It won’t be Gaza companies raking in the profits from the mammoth clean-up operation. After a 17-year blockade of the enclave by Israel, Gaza’s industrial and commercial sector barely existed even before Israel’s current wrecking spree. The beneficiaries, once again, will be western corporations.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathancook/p/you-cant-arm-a-genocidal-state-into?r=7w1yj&utm_medium=ios

U.S. Pier for Gaza Aid Is Failing, and Could Be Dismantled Early

The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected.

In the month since it was attached to the shoreline, the pier has been in service only about 10 days. The rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns.

(https://nyti.ms/4c497Zu)