Law Professor Richard Falk on Gaza

January 17, 2024
(Please go to the end for “Ray Comment”)

In Gaza, the West Is Enabling the Most Transparent Genocide in Human History

Hamas and a Second Nakba

While I [Richard Falk] was special rapporteur for the U.N. on Israeli violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, I had the opportunity to meet and talk in detail with several of the Hamas leaders who are living either in Doha or Cairo and also in Gaza. In the period between 2010 and 2014, Hamas was publicly and by back channels pushing for a 50-year cease-fire with Israel. It was conditioned on Israel carrying out the unanimous 1967 Security Council mandate in SC Res 242 to withdraw its forces to the pre-war boundaries of “the green line.” Hamas had also sought a long-range cease-fire with Israel after its 2006 electoral victory for up to 50 years.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. would respond to those diplomatic initiatives. Hamas, Machel particularly who was perhaps the most intellectual of the Hamas leaders, told me that he warned Washington of the tragic consequences for both peoples if the conflict was allowed to go on without a cease-fire, which was confirmed by independent sources.

Where can Palestinians go as the population suffers from famine and continued bombing? What is Israel’s goal? 

All indications are that Israel used the October 7 attack as a pretext for the preexisting master plan to get rid of the Palestinians whose presence blocks the establishment of Greater Israel with sovereign control over the West Bank and at least portions of Gaza.

I see the so-called commitment to thinning the Palestinian presence in Gaza and to a functional second Nakba. This is a criminal policy. I don’t know that it has to have a formal name. It is not a policy designed to achieve anything but the decapitation of the Palestinian population. Israel seeks to move Gazans to the Egyptian Sinai, and the Egyptians have already indicated that they don’t welcome this. 

This is not a policy. This is some kind of a threat of elimination. The Israeli campaign after October 7 was not directed toward Hamas’ terrorism nearly as much as it was directed toward the forced evacuation of the Palestinians from Gaza and for the related dispossession of Palestine in the West Bank.

If Israel really wanted to deal with its security in an effective way, much more efficient and effective methods would have been relied upon. There was no reason to treat the entire civilian population of Gaza as if it were implicated in the Hamas attack, and there was certainly no justification for the genocidal response. The Israeli motivations seem more related to completing the Zionist Project than to restoring territorial security.

For a proper perspective we should remember that before October 7, the Netanyahu coalition government that took power at the start of 2023 was known as the most extreme government ever to govern the country since its establishment in 1948. The new Netanyahu government in Israel immediately gave a green light to settler violence in the Occupied West Bank and appointed overtly racist religious leaders to administer the parts of Palestine still occupied.

This was part of the end game of the whole Zionist project of claiming territorial sovereignty over the whole of the so-called promised land, enabling Greater Israel to come into existence.

The Need for a Different Context

We need to establish a different context than the one that exists now. That means a different outlook on the part of the Western supporters of Israel. And a different internal Israeli sense of their own interests, their own future. And it’s only when substantive pressure is brought to bear on an elite that has gone to these lengths that it can shake commitments to this orientation.

The lengths that the Israeli government has gone to are characteristic of settler colonial states. All of them, including the U.S. and Canada, have acted violently to neutralize or exterminate the resident Indigenous people. That is what this genocidal interlude is all about. It is an effort to realize the goals of maximal versions of Zionism, which can only succeed by eliminating the Palestinians as rightful claimants. It should not be forgotten that in the weeks before the Hamas attack, including at the U.N., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was waving a map of “the new Middle East” that had erased the existence of Palestine.

Undoubtedly, one of Hamas’ motivations was to negate the view that Palestine had given up its right to self-determination, and that Palestine could be erased. Recall the old delusional pre-Balfour Zionist slogan: “A people without land for a land without people.” Such utterances of this early Zionist utopian phase literally erased the Palestinians who for generations lived in Palestine as an entitled Indigenous population. With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, this settler colonial vision became a political project with the blessings of the leading European colonial power. …

This may turn out to be a moment of clarity with respect not only to Gaza, but to the overall prospects for sustainable peace and justice between these two embattled peoples.

(The above are excerpts from: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/west-enabling-genocide-gaza January 17, 2024 [Emphasis added])

Ray Comment: In my view, the war in Gaza is going so badly for Israel that its Great White Hope is to get the US directly involved militarily. The best way to do that is to involve Iran. So far, the Iranians have been clever not to rise to the bait. So … watch for an Israeli FALSE FLAG attack on US troops or simply on US “interests” blamed on Iran. Brace yourself. Remember: Iran is still the main Israeli-cum-neocon target.

See also: https://twitter.com/raymcgovern/status/1748000865221218348

Ukraine-US-Russia, China-Russia, and Taiwan

Ukraine: “One of the most insightful, concise, coherent and exposing summaries of the Ukraine-US-Russia situation I ever heard and that’s probably ever been put out there” (Thanks, commenter @pschroeterps.) Nima and I also discuss China-Russia and Taiwan.

You Are No JFK

RFK Jr telling fish stories (literally) in Raleigh: at min 15:55 I ask re 10,000 Palestinian children already killed in genocide. “Q&A later.” I add “I worked for your uncle; you are no JFK”. His reaction suggests we need to keep speaking for the children.

My unanswered email to Amaryllis Kennedy after she became RFK Jr’s campaign manager

Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images

Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 9:08 PM

Dear Amaryllis:

I’ll cut to the chase. Bobby knows of my strong disagreement with him on Palestine. He also knows I can be very helpful to him — before I forget all the things I wrote and speeched about these past 20-plus years :)) . He may also know that, finally, I have acquired a substantial following on TW, FB, other platforms, and, more important, on “Judging Freedom” with Judge Napolitano. I’m on with the Judge for a half-hour twice a week

Amaryllis, I hope this will not strike you as odd, but I know Palestine — been there, done that. It is a matter of conscience. I had the imprint of a tear gas canister on my left breast for a while last time I was in Hebron.

So, please know that however much I want to support him — and to do what I can to help him win — I will not do so unless he denounces the coming genocide by Israel, before it happens.

Again, it is a matter of conscience — a Justice issue. We are called to act with Justice.

You cannot be selective in picking Rabbis. Mine — tried and true — is Abraham Heschel:
“When injustice takes place, few are guilty, but all are responsible. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.”

Entre nous, and as you no doubt perceive, I am torn. But one must follow one’s conscience.

Could not support Obama either …

That’s what I did (followed my conscience), despite my initial enthusiasm for Obama, after John Brennan joined him and, first thing you know, Obama bows to the deep state. That was 15 years ago, but I could read the tea leaves. It was Obama’s capitulation to NSA and the giant telecoms that should have raised all our antennae higher.

As soon as Obama-the-candidate went back on his earlier promise, and said he had decided to vote, after all, FOR the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation holding the telecoms and NSA harmless for having trashed the Bill of Rights, I wrote him the following. See text below; it was originally posted on afterdowningstreet.org and warisacrome.org

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Ray McGovern’s Response to Obama’s FISA Explanation
It’s a Deal Breaker for This Intelligence Officer

July 3, 2008

Dear Senator Obama,

I speak from 30 years of experience in intelligence work. I don’t know who actually briefed you on the eavesdropping legislation, but the bill is unnecessary for intelligence collection and POISON for our civil liberties—not even to mention the unconscionable retroactive immunity provision.

You have made a big mistake, Senator, in indicating you intend to vote for it. There is still time to change your mind. That’s what big people do.

Your penultimate paragraph seals it for me. What you are saying relies not on principle—and still less on respect for the law, or respect for our Constitutional rights.

What I hear you saying is an all too familiar refrain: “Tough s___, progressive voter. You know you’ve got nowhere else to go. You want McCain in there?”

A painful reminder that the Republicans have no corner on arrogance. You think you have us over a barrel. Well let me tell you something that those suits from K Street haven’t told you; you need our active support, and you are about to blow it.

Your “explanation” was unworthy of one who has sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States (including the Fourth Amendment).

And your attitude is not that of a person I THOUGHT was different—and would be genuinely for change I could believe in.

We live just a couple of miles from where George Mason is buried. (As you may remember, professor of the Constitution that you have been, Mason actually refused to approve the Constitution—although he and fellow Virginian James Madison had pretty much drafted it—BECAUSE IT LACKED THE BILL OF RIGHTS).

Well, the air is still this evening. Our windows are open and George Mason can be heard tossing and turning in his grave, loudly moaning. Yes, moaning.

I went over to his grave; between the moans he explained that he had just heard of your plan to play fast and loose with his beloved Bill of Rights. “Hard to enjoy the Fourth tomorrow with the Constitution being shredded Right and Left,” he whispered.

Remember, Senator, what Emerson said about those unable to change their “little” minds. Beware the K Street hobgoblins!

Again: Dissing us by the “So-you-want-McCain?” riposte is unworthy. Not only is it clear that you are “mis-underestimating” us but, frankly, I find it insulting.

Please get back on track.

Respectfully,

Ray McGovern
US Army Infantry/Intelligence Officer: 1962-64
CIA Analyst, 1963-1990
CIA Presidential Briefer, 1981-85
Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), Jan. 2003

END of letter to Obama

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In sum: Amaryllis, I am willing — eager even — to make what I think might be a unique substantive contribution, but I need to, well, ‘seek first justice’.

An IMMEDIATE tactical suggestion: As Biden is now flying toward Israel, it might be a good idea if RFK Jr could issue a statement with some balance; could he not come out against genocide?

Screw the Audacity of Hope; I’ll go for a Profile in Courage.

END of my email to Amaryllis