Israel, Gaza, and the ‘Merchants of Death’ / Israeli Film Festival Cancelled in Mumbai After Citizen Campaign

Ramin Mirfakhraie

On July 24, 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to a joint session of the United States Congress, where nearly half of the House and Senate Democrats were not present. In his address, which was presented in terms of a binary opposition between barbarism (“Iran’s axis of terror”) and civilization (“America, Israel, and our Arab friends”), and riddled with false and unsubstantiated claims, he tried to defend his government’s horrific war on Gaza, as a result of which tens of thousands of Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured, nearly 2 million have been displaced, and the entire civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. His address to Congress was later followed by separate meetings with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, who did not preside over Netanyahu’s address to Congress, and former President Donald Trump.

Shortly after returning to Israel, fired up by all the private meetings, warm handshakes, and standing ovations in Congress, Netanyahu managed to wreak even more havoc in the region by ordering the killing of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Shukr’s assassination was soon followed by the killing of Hamas’s political bureau chairman Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, an act that has been widely blamed on Israel, which had pledged to kill him for his alleged role in Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. Haniyeh was also the target of an Israeli assassination attempt in 2003.

Holding Israel responsible for the July 31 operation that killed Haniyeh, Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, albeit at a proportional level, in the days or weeks to come. Consequently, the United States and some other countries in and outside the Middle East have urged Iran to forego such retaliation for fear of a broader conflict engulfing the region. Whether or not Iran heeds their call for restraint remains to be seen.

For now, Israeli officials continue to count on what seems to be the unconditional backing of the United States, no matter what crimes they commit. And this, without a doubt, is the main source of not just the protracted nature of the current conflict, but also much of the instability that exists in the Middle East. Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, establishment of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, extrajudicial assassinations in the region, and lack of regard for international law are good cases in point here, none of which would be possible without the full support of the United States.

US support for Israel has also allowed it to ignore the rulings of the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice, whose nonbinding July 19 Advisory Opinion ordered Israel to end its “unlawful” presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible and pay reparations to “all the natural and legal persons concerned” in the Territory for damages caused by the decades-long occupation. The Court’s advisory opinion further concluded: “all States are under an obligation . . . not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

And yet the United States continues to provide Israel with all kinds of assistance, prompting the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch to state: “The [July 19 ICJ] ruling should be yet another wake up call for the United States to end its egregious policy of defending Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and prompt a thorough reassessment in other countries as well.”

But by supporting Israel’s war on Gaza militarily, financially, and diplomatically, despite the ICJ’s January 2024 ruling that it is “plausible” that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention, the United States, under the Biden administration, has already shown that it is not going to stop backing Israel anytime soon, which raises the question: why is the United States so willing to be a party to Israel’s daily massacres of Gazans and other war crimes in the Palestinian territories?….

https://countercurrents.org/2024/08/israel-gaza-and-the-merchants-of-death/

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Israeli Film Festival Cancelled in Mumbai After Concerted Citizen Campaign

After a concerted national campaign – The NFDC / NMIC, Mumbai HQ, called off the Israel Film Festival slated to be held in Mumbai on the 21st-22nd of August. India Palestine Solidarity Forum had organised a signature campaign, which went viral and got endorsements from over thousands of people, with more than 200 from the artist fraternity itself. People from all walks of life in India and abroad signed the petition. Feroze Mithiborwala National General Secretary of India Palestine Solidarity Forum said they will be taking up this issue with the NFDC-NMIC management, and a delegation will soon meet them.

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