The G7 war summit and the US abortion ban
WSWS, Jun 27 2022
The escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia and the massive attack on democratic rights, epitomized in the US Supreme Court decision abolishing the right to an abortion, are two sides of the same process. In his seminal 1916 work Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Vladimir Lenin defined imperialism as “reaction all down the line.” In both war and domestic policy, “finance capital strives for domination, not freedom.” Lenin wrote:
The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.
Lenin’s words aptly characterize the present crisis of the world capitalist system. At this weekend’s G7 summit, the leaders of the major imperialist powers met in the Bavarian Alps to plan the next stage of the war. Behind the backs of the population, with no public discussion and no formal declaration, the conflict has developed into a de facto war against Russia in Ukraine. The extent of NATO involvement was revealed in a NYT article published Saturday titled “Commando network coordinates flow of weapons in Ukraine, officials say.” The article explains that the US and NATO have organized “a stealthy network of commandos and spies” who are “rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training.” The article cites US and European officials who confirmed that the NATO powers have deployed advisers within Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers, while the US military directly trains soldiers at bases in Germany. This is the product of a years-long plan, dating back to the 2014 Ukrainian elections and the Maidan putsch, to transform Ukraine into a staging ground for a war against Russia. The NYT article states:
From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27k Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.
In both their choice of planning location as well as in their war aims, the leaders of the world’s self-proclaimed “democracies” emulated Hitler, the last capitalist politician who attempted the colonization of Russia through military means. The very castle where the G7 leaders met in the Bavarian town of Schloss Elmau had been a Nazi military vacation camp during WW2. A communiqué issued by the G7 group after the meeting in Schloss Elmau states that it is prepared to carry on the war “as long as it takes.” This means there is no limit to the number of lives the governments are willing to sacrifice to accomplish their geostrategic goals. The first point on the agenda at the G7 summit, on the cost-of-living and food crisis, makes clear that the ruling class is aware the war is paving the way for a colossal confrontation with the working class. Under these conditions, the ruling class of each imperialist power views the most basic democratic rights as obstacles in the pursuit of its war aims. Even as the war propagandists in the corporate media justify war on the grounds that Putin is a “fascist,” the logic of the development of the war in the imperialist countries necessitates “reaction all down the line.”
The decision by five unelected judges on the Supreme Court to strip hundreds of millions of Americans of the right to abortion must be seen in this context. In issuing its decision, the court announced that it was launching an assault on all basic democratic rights. While Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly referenced contraceptives and same-sex marriage as its next targets, he made clear that all cases involving substantive due process must now be revisited. This includes fundamental rights related to searches and seizures, free speech and assembly, labor regulations and other civil rights. The Democratic Party and Biden administration have facilitated the Supreme Court’s attack on democratic rights with constant efforts to appeal to and appease the far right. When Biden speaks of his “Republican friends,” he is appealing to bipartisan unity in the pursuit of imperialist war aims against Russia. This bipartisanship only legitimizes the extreme right and strengthens the increasingly fascist Republican Party, which attempted to prevent Biden from taking office less than two years ago.
The intensification of the war and the abortion ban are inextricably related and underscore the basic truth that democracy is incompatible with imperialism. In his 1948 book The American Political Tradition, the historian Richard Hofstadter references publisher Frank Cobb’s recollection of a discussion with then-President Woodrow Wilson on the eve of Wilson’s 1917 decision to enter WW1. Cobb writes of Wilson:
He said when a war got going it was just war and there weren’t two things about it. It required illiberalism at home to reinforce the men at the front. We couldn’t fight Germany and maintain the ideals of Government that all thinking men shared. He said: “To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat…”
This is the case in every imperialist center, where three decades of nonstop imperialist war have asphyxiated democracy and nourished the forces of extreme political reaction. In Britain, Boris Johnson is perhaps the most hated prime minister in history for his naked corruption and slovenly subservience to the London banks. The Johnson government is attempting to deport asylum seekers from countries devastated by imperialist war to Rwanda in a move that even the European Court of Human Rights ruled is blatantly illegal. In France, where Emmanuel Macron is reviled as the “president of the rich,” the fascist far right won more votes than in any previous presidential election. An unelected administrative court just banned Muslim women from wearing bathing suits that comport with their religious beliefs in a blatant act of cruel discrimination against the country’s large immigrant population.
The war will be conducted on the basis of a massive assault on the economic and social rights of the working class in every country. Government after government is pouring billions of dollars into arming Ukraine without ever asking the public. Calls are growing for balancing budgets to pave the way for further military spending. To pay for war, health and welfare programs will be gutted, even as the pandemic spreads and as governments enact fiscal policies aimed at increasing unemployment and lowering wages. The war has exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis that is forcing billions of workers to confront unprecedented levels of economic hardship. The imperialist governments are sacrificing the lives of millions in Asia and Africa who face varying degrees of starvation in an attempt to weaken the Russian government’s ties to the global economy. In Europe and North America, the cost of food, gas, energy, rent and basic services is skyrocketing because of the war, while the corporatist trade union bureaucracies suppress wages.
Conditions are emerging for a revolutionary explosion throughout the world. Protests against the rising cost of living are suppressed with deadly brutality in countries like Peru, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and elsewhere. In Europe, strikes are growing across the transport industries, including among British rail workers, dockworkers in Germany and Greece, airport workers in France, Denmark and the Netherlands, and pilots and flight attendants across the continent at Easy Jet, Ryan Air, British Airways and SAS. A series of powerful strikes have taken place in heavy industry in the US, where strikes are threatened by tens of thousands of dock and rail workers. The ruling class has responded by banning strikes and blaming workers for undermining the war effort. In Britain, the Tories are denouncing striking rail workers as “Putin’s agents,” while the courts in the US have barred rail workers from striking on national security grounds. This is the modern version of Hitler’s “stab-in-the-back” narrative, which blamed German workers and the revolution of 1918 for German imperialism’s defeat in WW1. In Spain, the “democratic” government of the PSOE and Podemos banned airport workers from joining a European-wide strike for similar reasons.
The International Committee of the Fourth International and its national sections, the Socialist Equality Parties, call for the development of a powerful movement of the international working class against imperialist war. The fight against war must be connected to the defense of democratic rights, rooted in the growing struggles of workers throughout the world, and based on a socialist program in opposition to the capitalist profit system.
Bank for International Settlements calls for accelerated interest rate hikes
Nick Beams, WSWS, Jun 27 2022
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the umbrella organisation for the world’s central banks, has called for an escalation of interest rate rises to stop inflation becoming “entrenched,” that is, to hit harder against wage demands by slowing down economic growth, even to the point of inducing a recession. The call was made in the BIS annual economic report issued over the weekend as leaders of the G7 were meeting in Germany to determine future action against Russia, and to discuss policies in response to the deepening crisis in the global economy. the report said:
Gradually raising policy rates at a pace that falls short of inflation increases means falling real interest rates. This is hard to reconcile with the need to keep inflation risks in check. Given the extent of the inflationary pressure unleashed over the past year, real policy rates will need to increase significantly in order to moderate demand.
The BIS pointed to the effects of the previous monetary policies of the world’s central banks in pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system after the global financial crisis of 2008 and the market meltdown of Mar 2020. These measures had boosted stock markets and lifted asset prices to record highs, especially property. It said:
The coexistence of elevated financial vulnerabilities and high inflation globally makes the current conjuncture unique for the post-WW2 era. Tighter monetary conditions needed to bring down inflation could cast doubt on asset valuations including housing, priced on the basis of persistently low interest rates. The provision of central bank liquidity and even traditionally more secure assets could be exposed. Bonds, for example, have provided a safe haven for investors in the low-inflation environment of recent decades. During this phase, bad economic times when the prices of riskier assets like equities typically fall were generally met with monetary easing which boosted bond prices. But when inflation is high, economic downturns are more likely to be triggered by tighter monetary conditions, causing both bond and stock prices to fall. A modest slowdown may not be enough. Lowering inflation could involve significant output costs, as after the ‘Great Inflation’ of the 1970s. Some pain will be inevitable, but the overriding priority is to avoid falling behind the curve.
The economic response to the 1970s inflation was the “Volcker shock” of the early 1980s, which resulted in an upsurge of struggles by the working class around the world. Under the chairmanship of Paul Volcker, the Fed lifted lifted interest rates to record highs, 20% at one point, resulting in the deepest recession to that point since the Great Depression to crush wage demands. But as the WSJ noted, the risks to the global economy are much greater today because “overvalued assets and high debt were much less of a concern” at that time. As with central banks around the world, the BIS insisted that the key issue is wages, writing:
Whether inflation becomes entrenched or not ultimately depends on whether wage-price spirals will develop. The risk should not be underestimated, owing to the inherent dynamics of transitions from low- to high-inflation regimes. Price-induced cuts in real wages are likely to prompt workers to seek to recoup the lost of purchasing power. In many countries, a substantial part if not the bulk of wage negotiations are still to come.
In other words, the present upsurge in the struggles of workers seeking higher wages is only the beginning of a much bigger movement building up. The BIS left no doubt about what the response had to be. It drew attention to the fact that existence of private debt at “historical peaks” and “elevated valuations” could make financial markets overreact. This raised a “policy dilemma” because financial market reactions “may counsel caution.” But, it insisted that notwithstanding this “dilemma” central banks had to press ahead, because “the risk of inflation becoming entrenched calls for a more preemptive and vigorous response.” Underscoring this prescription, BIS general manager Agustín Carstens said:
The key for central banks is to act quickly and decisively before inflation becomes entrenched.
On top of a preemptive strike against wages, the BIS called for cuts in vital government spending, in other words an austerity drive. Their report stated:
For far too long, there has been a temptation to turn to fiscal and monetary policy to boost growth, regardless of the underlying causes of weakness. Loosening during contractions has not been followed by consolidation during expansions. The temptation to postpone adjustments has been too strong. Such a strategy has arguably generated unrealistic expectations and demands for further support.
The rapidly worsening economic outlook hangs over the G7 leaders meeting now underway in Germany. While the first day of discussions were dominated by moves to increase measures against Russia with regard to oil exports, the economic crisis is a key issue. A survey of economists conducted by the Financial Times on the eve of the meeting concluded that the risk of recession in Europe and the US had increased markedly following the decision by the US Federal Reserve to “go big” on rate increases with its decision to lift its base rate by 0.75% earlier this month. The mood was summed up by Berenberg chief economist Holger Schmieding, who told the FT the balance had “tipped” in favour of an economic contraction. He said:
What used to be a rising risk has now turned into a base case. It would have been impossible to imagine at the last G7 summit that we’d be facing a situation like this. Things are pretty bad and could get even worse.
An unnamed “senior German official” cited by the newspaper said:
At the start of the pandemic, there was a simple consensus on how to respond through expansive monetary and fiscal policy. The situation we’re now in is a lot more complex, a lot more difficult. This completely clear, almost instinctive idea that you just pursue expansionary polices is no longer so obvious.
The way in which the leaders of the major powers will seek to use the economic crisis that their own policies have created in order to intensify the war against Russia and draw China into the line of fire was revealed in Schmieding’s comments. He said:
It’s not the G7 leaders who have caused these problems, it’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
That is, the inflation crisis is not the result of the inflationary monetary policies pursued over the last two decades, and the refusal of capitalist governments to eliminate the pandemic, but the product of Putin’s Ukraine war, while the Chinese government is responsible for the supply chain crisis because of its zero COVID policies based on necessary and effective public health safety measures.
Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government denounces migrants as “hybrid threat”
Alice Summers, WSWS, Jun 27 2022
Spain’s PSOE (Socialist Party) – Podemos government has demanded that NATO consider migration, food insecurity and terrorism to be “hybrid threats.” This reference to NATO denunciations of Russian “hybrid warfare” before the war in Ukraine comes as Madrid prepares to host the 2022 NATO summit from Jun 28–30. PSOE Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Reuters the Spanish government intends to push for the inclusion of these “non-military” threats into NATO’s “Strategic Concept” document, the alliance’s new policy roadmap for the next decade. The document, to be drafted at the conference, will lay out NATO’s “mission” amid the war in Ukraine and the admission of new members such as Sweden and Finland. Albares told Reuters that NATO must also strengthen its “southern flank,” meaning the Sahel and Maghreb, even as the military alliance funnels billions of dollars worth of weapons and military vehicles to Ukraine to wage NATO’s proxy war against Russia. Albares stated:
We want it to be recognised that there are also serious threats coming from the southern flank. Terrorism, cyber-security, the political use of energy resources and irregular migration affect our sovereignty.
Albares claimed that the inclusion in the NATO strategic document of these “hybrid threats” with explicit reference to the “southern flank” would have a “deterrent” effect. The PSOE-Podemos government’s characterisation of migration as a “hybrid threat” is not only a declaration of its intent to launch a brutal crackdown on refugees and asylum-seekers. Madrid means to instrumentalise the arrival of a few thousand refugees a year at its borders to push for neocolonial wars and interventions in the resource-rich regions of North and sub-Saharan Africa. Albares continued:
Nobody should doubt that these hybrid threats could be used to challenge our territorial integrity and our sovereignty. We don’t have to do anything new. We just have to take into account that a series of threats can come from the southern flank, that at any moment could require a defensive reaction from NATO exactly like what we’re seeing on the eastern flank.
This is nothing less than a call for NATO to turn the Maghreb and Sahel into a new Ukraine, asserting its interests in this region via proxy wars or even direct military intervention. If migration is to be acknowledged as a strategic “hybrid” threat, several questions are raised. Would the arrival of refugees on the southern borders of the NATO bloc constitute an “attack” on the alliance? Would this trigger Article 5 of NATO’s treaty, obliging all 30 member states to come to Spain’s “defence” by waging war on impoverished African or Middle Eastern states? Which country would be considered the aggressor? The one from which the majority of migrants are coming? Or any country that refugees pass through on their way to Europe, and which fails to apprehend them? Each of these scenarios risks the outbreak of large-scale war. In this regard, it is significant that Albares framed his reactionary demands as being a part of NATO’s ongoing conflict with Russia, explaining that interventions in the Sahel and Maghreb would be necessary to combat the “growing Russian influence” in the region. Referring to the deployment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group in Mali, he stated:
The presence of Russia doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help to advance democracy or to stabilise the situation at all.
The statements made by Albares recall events last autumn. In October and November, as a few thousand refugees from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other war zones tried to enter the EU from Belarus, European politicians and media denounced Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko for supposedly using refugees and migrants as a weapon in a “hybrid war.” Their aim was to ramp up tensions with Belarus, a Russian ally, as part of their campaign to militarily encircle and ultimately wage war on Russia.
Spain’s calls for a strategic focus on the “southern flank” come amid growing Spanish-Algerian tensions triggered by the Algerian-Moroccan conflict over the Western Sahara. Algerian–Spanish relations have been strained since PSOE PM Pedro Sánchez recognised Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara in mid-March. The Western Sahara is a sparsely inhabited former Spanish colonial possession on Morocco’s south-western border, with considerable mineral and phosphate reserves. Rabat has long sought to bring it under Moroccan administration as an “autonomous region.” After Spain ended its long-standing neutrality in this dispute, Algeria, which has backed the pro–Sahrawi independence Polisario Front, withdrew its ambassador from Madrid. On Jun 8, reports then emerged that Algiers had officially ended its 20-year treaty of friendship with Spain, although the Algerian government later denied this.
The Spanish government fears that Algeria, which provided 40% of Spain’s natural gas imports in 2021, may now cut energy supplies to the country. This comes as the EU and NATO campaign for an energy embargo against Russia, the EU’s major oil and gas supplier, amid the war in Ukraine. Spain’s economy minister and first deputy prime minister, Nadia Calviño, tried to blame Madrid’s deteriorating relations with Algeria on Russia, telling Catalunya Radio:
These reports did not surprise me that much. I had already seen that Algeria was more and more aligned with Russia. The important thing is for the EU to respond with unity and determination.
The call for refugees to be considered a type of “hybrid warfare” is a significant escalation of Madrid’s vicious anti-migrant campaign, which it has adopted directly from the programme of the far-right Vox party. In a statement on May 18 referring to migrants on the Spanish–Moroccan borders as “hybrid warfare,” Vox declared:
The Moroccan government continues to attack Spain through its hostile actions against the autonomous cities (Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla). The aggression suffered by Spain is not finding any response in the face of the hostilities of Morocco.
Vox’s comments themselves echo those made by PM Sánchez last May. As several thousand Moroccan migrants tried to cross over into Ceuta, Sánchez had all but accused the Moroccan government of waging war on Spain. Rabat, which had reportedly opened its side of the border in retaliation for Spain’s earlier position on the Western Sahara, had “used immigration,” Sánchez stated, “due to disagreements in foreign policy.” Sánchez declared that this was “inadmissible” and akin to “attacking borders.”
The PSOE-Podemos government already has the blood of thousands of refugees on its hands. Blocking off “legal” routes to enter Spain, it has forced desperate migrants to make perilous sea journeys in unsafe or makeshift vessels, in which thousands have drowned. On Friday, dozens of African migrants were killed and hundreds injured as they tried to climb the border fence between Morocco and Melilla. The PSOE-Podemos government of warmongers has fully signed itself up to NATO’s war against Russia and is campaigning for the escalation of imperialist conflict abroad, all while it cracks down on refugees at its borders and workers’ opposition at home. The decisive issue is to build an anti-war movement in the working class, in irreconcilable opposition to pseudo-left parties like Podemos, defending refugees and migrants as part of a struggle for socialism in Spain and internationally.
37 refugees dead, hundreds injured in Spanish-Moroccan police massacre at Melilla border
Alejandro López, WSWS, Jun 27 2022
Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, working with Moroccan police acting as EU border guards, have carried out a barbaric massacre at the borders of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Africa. At least 37 migrants were killed and 150 more were injured when thousands tried to cross the Moroccan border into Melilla on Friday. According to the UNHCR, many came from Chad, Niger, Sudan and South Sudan, and would be considered potential asylum seekers according to international law. The precise cause of the deaths remains unclear. Some migrants may have died from suffocation or crushing because of a stampede provoked by Moroccan police charges. Other deaths may have occurred when some fell from the top of the fence: at the place on the border where the massacre took place, the border fence rises to between 6m and 10m in height. Others may have been directly killed by police who hit them with stones and batons. Footage released by Al Jazeera showed dozens of people lying by the border fence, some bleeding and many apparently lifeless as Moroccan security forces stood over them. In one clip, a Moroccan security officer appeared to strike a person lying on the ground with a baton. Significant police repression by Spain’s Civil Guard and National Police left at least 60 migrants injured, two of them in hospital. According to Spanish govt spox in Melilla, police forces from the two sides of the border worked collaboratively, in “a joint operation,” with tear gas and baton charges from both sides against the crowd. The Moroccan Association for Human Rights said:
Many of those wounded were left there without help for hours, which increased the number of deaths.
Helena Maleno, founder of the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, declared:
The victims of the Melilla tragedy agonized for hours under the cruel gaze of those who were supposed to help them and did not.
According to videos posted by elDiario.es and Público, Moroccan security forces pursued some 500 migrants into Spanish territory, where they attacked, arrested and forcibly returned them to Morocco. Only 133 refugees now remain in Melilla, with the rest forcibly expelled. Certain images, recorded by elDiario.es between 11 and 12 in the morning, show two Moroccan gendarmes at the border, on the roof of a Spanish checkpoint, taking turns trying to stone a migrant who was at the top of the fence. The ability of Moroccan police to cross into Spain depended on the collusion of the members of the Civil Guard and the National Police. Photojournalist Javier Bernardo told Público:
The Spanish agents were in trouble. There were many people in a very narrow place. Migrants who managed to cross were surrounded by the Police and the Civil Guard, who pushed them towards the Moroccan side. Some managed to break free and run further into Melilla. I was surprised to see the green helmets of Moroccan police on the Spanish side of the fence, detaining, assaulting and returning migrants. It’s the first time I’ve seen this in four years working in Melilla.
On Sunday evening, protests against the massacre erupted across Spain, in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Badajoz, Cáceres, Seville, Granada, Cádiz, Mataró and Zaragoza. These horrific scenes testify to the barbaric character of the EU. To the east, NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has led to tens of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. To its south, the EU is arraying the full force of its police-military machine against migrants, thousands of whom are left to drown in the Mediterranean each year. PM Pedro Sánchez hailed the massacre. Promoted in the media as having a more “humane” policy towards migrants when he came to power in mid-2018, Sánchez hailed the police and denounced the victims in words that could have been said by any far-right leader from Donald Trump to Santiago Abascal of Spain’s fascistic Vox party. Sánchez condemned the migrants’ attempted mass crossing as a “violent assault” and an “attack on the territorial integrity” of Spain. He cynically blamed it on human trafficking, saying:
If there is anyone responsible for everything that appears to have taken place at that border, it is the mafias that traffic in human beings.
Even more disgusting were the feigned calls for an investigation from Podemos, which demanded an “immediate and independent” EU investigation of its own government to clarify the “harsh images of violence and serious human rights violations by border authorities.” Deputy PM and de facto Podemos leader Yolanda Díaz sent her “condolences to the loved ones” of the victims. Podemos parliamentary spox Pablo Echenique tried to deflect attention by racializing the massacre and blaming Morocco. He tweeted:
If they were blond and European, there would be emergency meetings at the highest level, television specials about their life stories and their families and a total break in relations with the country whose police action has caused this tragedy.
In fact, as Echenique knows full well, the imperialist media’s propaganda feigned sympathy towards Ukrainian refugees only seeks to promote war against Russia, which Podemos fully backs. In reality, official treatment of Ukrainian refugees has been very different, with one EU country after another cutting their social benefits. One of the worst was Spain, where authorities have been receiving large numbers of complaints from Ukrainians of abuse and poor treatment. Just 6.5% of the 47k Ukrainian refugees in Spain have found work, mainly seasonal jobs tied to the orange harvest. The Podemos International Area stated that the timing of the massacre “is not by chance,” as it occurs days before the NATO Summit in Madrid, where the southern border and increasing military spending will be discussed. This statement directly raises the issue of the complicity of Podemos in the massacre.
At the NATO summit, the PSOE-Podemos government is demanding that NATO consider migration as a “hybrid threat,” justifying stepped-up repression of refugees and imperialist interventions in Africa. If this massacre was “not by chance,” the question is whether the PSOE and Podemos encouraged this to take place to justify their plans they will announce for the NATO summit. The brutality of the EU, the PSOE-Podemos government and their Moroccan police allies against refugees must be taken as a warning to the working class. Amid spiraling inflation, millions of preventable deaths due to capitalist mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic and NATO’s war with Russia, the ruling class is rapidly turning to dictatorship. The Melilla massacre is just the latest outrage that the PSOE-Podemos government has perpetrated against refugees. Tens of thousands have died making this risky journey. Last year, over 1.1k migrants died trying to reach the Canary Islands. Those who reach the islands are interned in concentration camps built by the PSOE-Podemos government.
Last year, the government, backed by the EU, reacted to desperate migrants crossing from Morocco into Spain by deploying the army, special forces and riot police to round up and expel thousands of desperate men, women and children after denying them food and medical care. WSWS warned that violence against migrants would soon be turned against the workers. Months later, the PSOE-Podemos government deployed armored vehicles and riot police against striking metalworkers in Cadiz. This April, it mobilized 23k police to crush a truckers strike against rising fuel prices amid NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Now, Spain is mobilizing 20k police and military officers to police the streets during the NATO summit in Madrid. The sympathy for migrants felt by millions of workers across Europe exposes the utterly anti-democratic character of the anti-refugee policy of the PSOE-Podemos government and the EU.
UN investigation finds IOF killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with “seemingly well-aimed bullets”
Jean Shaoul, WSWS, Jun 26 2022
A UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) investigation has shown that the bullets that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi, were fired by IOF. It is a damning refutation of Israel’s preposterous lie about her murder, including that she was shot by Palestinians firing indiscriminately at its troops. Spox Ravina Shamdasani told reporters Friday:
All the information we have gathered is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from IOF, and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians. There was no evidence of activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists.
The IOF killing on May 11 of Al-Jazeera Arabic’s widely respected veteran journalist, a US-Palestinian citizen, while she was covering an army raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank, caused mass outrage. Clad in a press vest and helmet and standing in open view near a roundabout, she was targeted and shot by Israeli snipers along with her co-producer Ali Sammoudi who was hospitalised. It was a brazen attempt to intimidate and prevent journalists reporting on Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinians. According to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, Israeli troops have killed 30 journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2000. In each case, there have been no indictments against the soldiers responsible, testifying to the degree to which US backing guarantees impunity.
Israeli police later stormed her family’s home demanding the mourners take down the Palestinian flags and end the gathering and singing. On the day of the funeral, the police gave the pallbearers such a beating that they nearly dropped the coffin. Soldiers fired sponge-tipped bullets and threw stun grenades at the crowds gathered at the hospital morgue until Abu Akleh’s family were forced to whisk her coffin away in a car as a police officer removed the Palestinian flags covering it. Shamdasani said the UN Human Rights Office had gone through photo, video and audio material, visited the scene, consulted experts, reviewed official communications and interviewed witnesses. She confirmed that the Al Jazeera reporter along with her fellow journalists had made a real effort to be clearly visible as members of the press to Israeli soldiers. Shamdasani said:
The journalists said they chose a side street for their approach to avoid the location of armed Palestinians inside the camp and that they proceeded slowly in order to make their presence visible to the Israeli forces deployed down the street. Our findings indicate that no warnings were issued and no shooting was taking place at that time and at that location. Several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired towards them from the direction of the Israeli security forces. Furthermore, bullets continued to be fired at an unarmed man who tried to help Abu Akleh, as well as a journalist who was sheltering behind a tree. At least 16 shots were fired in total. It is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation.
The UN Human Rights Office report follows an investigation by the Palestinian Authority published May 26 that arrived at the same conclusion from the autopsy and an examination of the armour-piercing bullets that hit Abu Akleh and Sammoudi. Palestinian officials accused Israel of killing her deliberately, citing the fact that she had been shot in the head even though she was wearing a vest clearly identifying her as a journalist. Palestinian officials have refused to cooperate with any Israeli investigation or hand over the bullets, knowing full well that any such inquiry will allow the soldiers responsible to get off scot-free.
There have been at least five other investigations into Abu Akleh’s death published in international media outlets including the NYT, the WaPo, CNN and the AP, all of which have subjected witnesses’ statements and the video clips to extensive forensic examination by experts and confirmed Israel’s responsibility for her killing. Israeli officials variously charged the Palestinians with both direct and indirect responsibility for Abu Akleh’s death and denied any possibility that Israeli troops had killed her, since “the army opens fire only in an orderly, controlled manner,” while others even blamed the journalist for her own death, claiming she was just a paid agent of terrorists.
Later as Israel’s PM Naftali Bennett realized that Abu Akleh’s murder was turning into a public relations disaster, officials went into damage control mode, proposing a joint Israeli-Palestinian investigation. There would be a police investigation into the attack on the pallbearers carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin out of the hospital morgue. But its outcome was determined in advance. While it found that the handling of the event amounted to police misconduct, none of the commanders in charge of the incident would be disciplined in line with a decision made prior to the investigation. Israel’s Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai told a lawyers’ conference in Tel Aviv:
The bottom line is that the conduct of police officers there was wrong, but not every investigation has to end with heads rolling.
Eventually, the army accepted the “possibility” that Israeli gunfire had “inadvertently” killed the veteran journalist. However, the military’s advocate general ruled against a criminal investigation by the military police since the incident was a “combat event” with no suspicion of a criminal offense, even though she was a journalist killed in the line of duty. This is a clear breach of the order put in place in 2011 that requires an investigation into every case of a death in the West Bank, except in a clear case of thwarting of a terror attack or the death of an armed individual during an exchange of fire. Israel has always used this order as the basis for its claim that it is capable of investigating itself, despite few indictments ever following. Instead, as a sop to international public opinion, an army spokesperson promised a “thorough examination” of the events, with the proviso that without the PA handing over the bullet removed from Abu Akleh’s body it would be impossible to establish the truth.
Israel’s paymaster in Washington rushed to support its regional policeman, rejecting any responsibility to investigate the death of a US citizen, only belatedly echoing Israel’s call for a joint Israeli-Palestinian inquiry, since changed to “an independent, credible investigation.” According to the army’s own data released in response to a freedom of information request and analysed by Yesh Din, only five (7.2%) of all internal military investigations opened in 2019-20 resulted in criminal indictments, and only 2% of the complaints received led to the prosecution of a suspect, up from 0.7% in 2017-18. The punishment, usually for low level offences rather than manslaughter or murder, typically result in a trivial punishment. The total number of investigations by the army is declining each year.
Abu Akleh’s death is to be added to a legal complaint by the International Federation of Journalists, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians to the ICC. It relates to four Palestinian journalists wearing press helmets and vests, two killed and the other two maimed, and the attacks on international media buildings in Gaza in May 2021. The case argues that IOF have systematically targeted Palestinian journalists in violation of international humanitarian law and failed to investigate such incidents. Al Jazeera has referred the case to the ICC, vowing to bring the killers to justice using all available legal means. Israel has dismissed this, saying that as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute it is not subject to the court’s mandate and outside the court’s jurisdiction as Palestine is not a state. In Feb 2021, the ICC said its jurisdiction did extend to Gaza and West Bank, making it more likely the ICC can take up the issue.
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