An election for the billionaires
Patrick Martin, WSWS, Apr 9 2024
There are two presidential elections taking place in the US in 2024. The voting by the American population, which culminates on Election Day on Nov 5, will receive the bulk of the media attention. Far more decisive, however, is the second election, which is going on right now, in which a relative handful of billionaires and corporate oligarchs decide which of the candidates of the two established capitalist parties, Biden or Trump, will better serve their class interests. As of Mar 31, the Biden campaign had more than double the cash on hand of Trump and the Republicans, $192b compared to $93.1b. The Biden campaign is touting the fact that its war chest is the highest total amount amassed by a Democratic candidate in US history. It includes $26m raked in two weeks ago in Manhattan, where three Democratic presidents (Biden, Obama and Clinton) and an array of Hollywood and Broadway performers appeared before an audience with ticket prices that topped out at $500k. Trump’s efforts were given a boost at a record fundraiser Saturday night, held at the estate of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson in Palm Beach, a short distance from Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago compound. The price of admission ranged up to $800k, and the 117 guests ponied up a total of $50.3m in campaign pledges, nearly double the Biden total at Radio City Music Hall. Paulson wrote in a statement to the media Saturday evening:
Tonight, we raised an historic $50.5m for the re-election of President Trump. This sold-out event has raised the most in a single political fundraiser in history. This overwhelming support demonstrates the enthusiasm for President Trump and his policies.
The enthusiasm of the assembled billionaires was no doubt fueled by Trump’s 2017 tax cut for the wealthy and by the fact that the exemption for “pass-through” corporations, worth $700b to private equity firms and other speculative ventures, will expire in 2025, the first year of the new presidency. Trump’s open embrace of fascist violence is seen by an increasing section of the ruling elite as necessary to crush social opposition to its policies of austerity and war. If money is any indication, however, there is even more “enthusiasm” among the billionaires for Biden, whose war against Russia is seen as critical to the global interests of the American ruling elite. Dominant sections of the capitalist class see Trump as too erratic on foreign policy and recognize that Biden’s occasional anti-corporate demagogy is purely for show, a means of deluding the population and defusing popular resistance to the war policies of American imperialism. Unfortunately for his electoral prospects, however, Biden’s attempts to present himself as a “man of the people” have become increasingly strained. “Middle-class Joe” has been displaced by “Genocide Joe” in public consciousness, as he has become indelibly associated with the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, armed and financed by the Biden administration.
Biden continues to collect multimillion-dollar amounts at closed-door meetings with wealthy supporters on virtually every campaign swing. On Monday, for example, he traveled to Wisconsin to unveil his latest political swindle, a proposed reduction in college student loan repayment, which will provide little actual benefit. Air Force One then touched down at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, so Biden could attend a fundraiser that collected $2.5m from about two dozen individuals (roughly $100k apiece). The co-hosts of this affair were Michael Pratt, who runs GCM Grosvenor, a $77b hedge fund specializing in “alternative,” socially “progressive” investments, and Laura Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and daughter of the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade. Over the weekend, Politico published a revealing account of the 2024 campaign headlined, “Big-dollar fundraisers are back,” which noted that both parties are relying on small affairs where Trump and Biden schmooze with the super-rich to raise the bulk of their campaign funds. This is particularly important for the Democrats, the website reported, citing the comments of former Obama fundraiser Ami Copeland. Copeland said:
For Biden, burying Trump in cash is central to his general election strategy. He’s started with a sizable financial advantage over the former president, and hosting splashy, high-dollar fundraisers helps to further pad that edge. His cash advantage is existential, it’s the thing working the best on the campaign right now.
The fundraising for both campaigns seems inversely related to their actual support, given that polls and media accounts generally concede that Biden and Trump are the two most unpopular political figures in America. Small-donor fundraising, which was up substantially in 2016 and 2020, driven initially by support for the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and later by opposition to (or support for) Trump’s fascist demagogy, has slowed significantly this year. The massive domination of money is only one aspect of an electoral process that is completely undemocratic and aimed at excluding any opposition to the capitalist two-party system. The Democratic Party in particular has taken the lead in waging an “all-out war” on third party and independent candidates, which will be focused on challenging their efforts to meet massive signature requirements. This is the state of American democracy in 2024: One of the two major parties is controlled by the perpetrator of an attempted fascist coup to overturn the 2020 election, while the other party will renominate the president responsible for an ongoing war against nuclear-armed Russia and the first genocide of the 21st century.
Japan to join AUKUS military pact against China
Peter Symonds, WSWS, Apr 9 2024
The stage has been set for Japan to become involved in the AUKUS military pact between the US, Britain and Australia when Japanese PM Kishida meets with Biden in Washington on Wednesday. The integration of a key US ally into AUKUS is part and parcel of the Biden administration’s accelerating preparations throughout the Asia Pacific for war with China. US ambassador to Tokyo Rahm Emanuel suggested last week that Japan was “about to become the first additional Pillar II partner” of AUKUS. He hailed the Japanese government’s decision to ease restrictions on military exports, saying:
This opens up an industrial capacity in Japan to be part of the solution to the global challenge.
In a statement issued yesterday, the British, Australian and US defence ministers together announced that they would consider bringing Japan into Pillar II of AUKUS. That involves joint research and development of hi-tech military systems, ranging from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to undersea capabilities and hypersonic weapons. the ministers said:
Recognising Japan’s strengths and its close bilateral defence partnerships with all three countries, we are considering co-operation with Japan on AUKUS Pillar II advanced capability projects.
While the statement gave no indication of when and how Japan would become involved, it provides the framework for Kishida and Biden to formally set the process in motion. The AUKUS pact, first announced in 2021, resurrects the WW2 alliance between the US, Britain and Australia that fought Japan, but now in preparation for conflict with China. The provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia at the estimated cost of A$368b, as well as hypersonic missiles and hi-tech research and development, are key aspects of AUKUS. The formalisation of AUKUS has more the character of integrating Australia and the UK into a central command for war with China. Britain and Australia are already US allies and members of the top-level “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing network with the US, along with Canada and New Zealand. The incorporation of Japan into AUKUS Tier II projects paves the way for its full integration as an AUKUS partner. That has been ruled out in the short term. Nevertheless, the involvement of Japan, the world’s fourth largest economy, with a substantial and rapidly expanding military, is clearly aimed at strengthening the anti-China pact. Japan is already part of the Quad, a quasi-alliance with the US, Australia and India.
The Financial Times reported yesterday that Australia, Britain and sections of the US political and military establishment had misgivings about incorporating Japan into AUKUS, citing concerns in particular about sharing highly sensitive intelligence with Tokyo. The Biden administration, however, pressed for Japan’s inclusion. Speaking at the CNAS think tank in Washington last week, US Deputy Sec State Kurt Campbell aggressively promoted the extension of AUKUS to Japan. Campbell also made it absolutely clear that AUKUS is aimed at war with China. While the Australian Labor government insists that Canberra will determine the use of its nuclear submarines, Campbell added an obvious reference to war with China across the Taiwan Strait. The Biden administration has been deliberately goading Beijing into a conflict over Taiwan, by boosting arms sales to Taipei and all but tearing up the One China policy that recognises the island as part of China. Campbell said:
We’re practicing Australian, British and US submarines operating in close co-ordination that could deliver conventional ordnance from long distances. Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances.
The accelerating war drive against China is part of a wider conflict evolving globally. Britain and Australia are already involved in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and, along with the US, fully back Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. US imperialism, which has been building up military forces and alliances in the Indo-Pacific over the past decade, is determined to maintain its global hegemony at all costs and regards China as the chief obstacle to that objective. Stoltenberg’s comments at last week’s NATO summit to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary show that NATO is preparing for worldwide conflict. He said:
We know that our security is not regional, it is global. The war in Ukraine illustrates this clearly. Russia’s friends in Asia are vital for continuing its war of aggression. China is propping up Russia’s war economy. North Korea and Iran are delivering substantial supplies of weapons and ammunition.
Beijing, which has objected to AUKUS since its formation, reacted to the latest, unmistakable threat in measured language. Beijing foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China was “gravely concerned” about Japan joining AUKUS. She said:
We oppose relevant countries cobbling together exclusive groupings and stoking bloc confrontation.
Obliquely referring to Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and the death and destruction caused by WW2 throughout the Pacific, Mao declared:
Japan needs to earnestly draw lessons from history and stay prudent on military and security issues.
In China, the Japanese military was responsible for millions of civilian deaths and terrible atrocities such as the Nanking massacre. Kishida’s trip to Washington will mark a significant step down the road to a US-led war with China. Not only is his meeting with Biden set to announce Japan’s integration into AUKUS but also the biggest upgrade of the US-Japan Security Treaty since its inception in 1960. According to an article last week in the Financial Times:
The idea is to restructure the US military command in Japan to strengthen operational planning and exercises between the nations.
Closer joint operational planning and exercises are essential preparations for a modern, hi-tech war. The US maintains permanent military bases throughout Japan manned by some 55k personnel and encompassing all arms of the military: Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. The greatest concentration is in Okinawa, the southernmost part of Japan’s island chain, directly adjacent both to Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. The NYT reported that Biden and Kishida are expected to discuss the formation of a joint defence council to examine further Japanese military exports to the US, including additional Patriot missile systems, cruise missiles and jets used to train fighter pilots. Washington is also seeking assistance in repairing and maintaining US Navy warships so they do not have to leave the region. After meeting on Wednesday, Biden and Kishida will hold a summit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the first such trilateral meeting. Billed as boosting maritime cooperation in the South China Sea, the summit is also directed against China amid mounting tensions between Manila and Beijing over territorial conflicts, particularly control of the Second Thomas Shoal. According to the Financial Times, Biden intends to greatly magnify tensions by warning China that the US-Philippines Mutual Defence Treaty applies to any conflict over the tiny reef. Increasingly, the meetings convened by the US with its military allies in Asia assume the character of war summits as the Biden administration exacerbates tensions with China, tightens its military encirclement and nakedly prepares for war.
Israel withdraws soldiers from Khan Younis to regroup ahead of assault on Rafah
Jordan Shilton, WSWS, Apr 9 2024
Netanyahu insisted Monday that “there is a date” for an onslaught on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, one day after the IOF withdrew troops from Khan Younis. After a brutal four-month campaign of death and destruction in what was once the largest city in southern Gaza, IDF soldiers left Khan Younis in ruins. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant commented Sunday that the military would “regroup” and prepare for “follow-up missions.” Israel’s Channel 13 reported Monday that the evacuation of the more than 1.5 million people currently crammed into Rafah could begin as early as this week, with the process taking “several months.” Referring to the Rafah operation, Netanyahu stated, “It will happen. There is a date.” Even as it withdrew the 98th Division from Khan Younis, the IOF made clear it was retaining two brigades in the enclave to “preserve the IDF’s freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence-based operations.” White House and State Dept spokesmen sought to portray the move as a step towards a ceasefire. Both NSC spox Adm (Retd) John Kirby and State Dept spox Matthew Miller claimed that the US has not been briefed on a start date for a Rafah offensive. They placed considerable emphasis on a new round of ceasefire talks that opened Sunday in Cairo, where a proposal to implement a ceasefire during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday was reportedly discussed. Washington and its pliant tools in the corporate media apparently want to create the impression of a genuine effort on the part of Israel and the US to reach a ceasefire, when the fact of the matter is that what was presented to Hamas was more akin to an ultimatum. Kirby bluntly declared:
At the end of the weekend, a proposal was submitted to Hamas, and now it’s going to be up to Hamas to come through.
In other words, if Hamas fails to “come through” by accepting total surrender to the IDF and releasing all hostages with no guarantees of a permanent ceasefire, they will be to blame for the bloody onslaught on Rafah. The Biden administration will say it did all it could to prevent the assault, while hoping that nobody remembers the 1.8k 2k-lb bombs delivered by the US recently to Israel just in time to be dropped on Rafah. Late Monday, a senior Hamas official announced the rejection of the terms, insisting on its Mar 14 proposal that included a permanent ceasefire, the return of all displaced Palestinians to their homes, and the withdrawal of all IDF troops from Gaza. However, another source said that the proposal is still being studied.
Israeli officials have made clear that the war will continue even if all hostages are returned home. Netanyahu has repeatedly referred to three goals of the onslaught: releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas, and establishing security control over all of Gaza. The devastation that awaits Rafah, which has already repeatedly been targeted with air strikes, was graphically underscored by reports from residents who returned to Khan Younis Monday to a city in ruins. Numerous high-rise blocks have been reduced to rubble, while the Nasser hospital, formerly the largest in the city, was devastated by sustained bombing. At least 84 bodies were discovered in the rubble on the first day alone. Ahmad Abu al-Rish told Al Jazeera:
It’s all just rubble. “Animals can’t live here, so how is a human supposed to?
Yet that is precisely what Israel’s government is proposing. The withdrawal from Khan Younis would allow civilians to return to their homes from Rafah, a military official told Haaretz. They stated:
There’s no need for us to remain in Khan Younis. The 98th Division dismantled Hamas’s Khan Younis brigades and killed thousands of its members. We did everything we could there.
The troop withdrawal will bring no letup in the desperate humanitarian situation confronting Gaza’s population, which is dealing with developing famine conditions due to the deliberate blocking of aid by Israel. Israeli authorities announced Monday that 322 trucks were approved to enter Gaza, the highest number for a single day since the genocidal onslaught began. Even this number falls well short of the estimates by the UN and other aid agencies for the amount of aid needed to supply the population. An Al Jazeera correspondent based in Rafah reported that none of the trucks were allowed to travel to the north of Gaza, further compounding the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Last week, Oxfam reported that residents of the north are living on just 245 calories a day, a mere 12% of the recommended food intake for an adult. Sean Carroll, head of the American Near East Relief Agency (ANERA), one of the organisations that suspended operations following the murder of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers by Israel last week, commented:
To make up ground to meet the extreme gaps in food and other essentials for living, we need to see more than 500 trucks a day. The real issue is, who is going to deliver all this aid.
A no less horrific expression of Israel’s brutality toward the Palestinians is the cruelty being meted out to detainees. According to a Haaretz report, a doctor at the Sde Teiman medical centre addressed a letter to lawmakers last week describing how detainees brought in from Gaza routinely have their limbs amputated due to complications arising from being tightly handcuffed and shackled. The doctor wrote:
Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.
Other sources said the center typically restrains and blindfolds prisoners for 24 hours a day, feeding them through straws. Over six months after the beginning of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, the Zionist regime is blatantly displaying its barbarism for all to see. The indiscriminate bombing of Gaza has pushed the official death toll to over 33k men, women and children, with well over 40k dead if the missing are included. Israel’s “final solution” to the Palestinian question has been made possible due to the unstinting support extended by the imperialist powers. The Biden administration has repeatedly refused to impose any “red lines” on Israel’s savagery, while supplying over 100 shipments of armaments and other military equipment to ensure the machinery of genocide can operate.
Another key imperialist backer of the Gaza genocide is Germany, which is supplying Israel with approximately half a billion dollars of weaponry each year. At an International Court of Justice hearing in The Hague Monday, Nicaragua accused the German government of “facilitating the commission of genocide” due to Berlin’s weapons supplies to Israel and unconditional declarations of support for its war in Gaza. Germany had failed to “differentiate between self-defence and genocide,” according to Nicaragua’s delegation head, Carlos Jose Francisco Arguello Gomez. Daniel Mueller, another lawyer representing Nicaragua, told the court:
It’s a pathetic excuse to the Palestinian children, women and men to provide humanitarian aid, including through airdrops, on the one hand and to furnish the military equipment that is used to kill and annihilate them.
The reason for the imperialist powers’ embrace of Israel’s barbaric treatment of the Palestinians is the deepening crisis of world capitalism. The horrendous crimes being carried out against the Palestinians by Israel will be replicated on a much broader scale if the imperialists get their way. With their simultaneous backing for the Gaza genocide, reckless escalation of the US-NATO war on Russia, and preparations for war with China, American and European imperialism is demonstrating to the world that it will stop at nothing to achieve its interests, including a global conflagration with nuclear weapons. The task facing the working class is to put an end to capitalist barbarism by taking up the struggle for a socialist and internationalist programme. The mass protests that have swept the world against the Gaza genocide must be unified with the eruption of workers’ struggles against attacks on their jobs and living standards to fund militarism and war in all of the major imperialist centres. An international anti-war movement led by the working class must be built to stop Israel’s onslaught and the rapidly emerging third world war.
Jordan clamps down on protests against Israel’s Gaza genocide
Jean Shaoul, WSWS, Apr 8 2024
King Abdullah’s regime in Jordan has played a crucial role in supporting Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians in Gaza. His regime has not lifted a finger to support the Palestinians, but instead clamped down on daily protests in Amman calling for an end to the war and the severing of the kingdom’s links with Israel. Riot police have used batons and tear gas and made dozens of arrests in a bid to disperse thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets around the Israeli embassy since Mar 24, demanding its closure and an end to all political and economic relations with Israel. Israel’s ambassador was expelled in October and Jordan withdrew its ambassador in Tel Aviv in November. Organised by the National Forum for Supporting the Resistance, demonstrators carried banners saying, “No to a Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory.” They shouted, “Open the borders,” a reference to Jordan’s border with the occupied West Bank where Israeli settlers and the IOF have gone on the rampage to drive the Palestinians into Jordan. Last November, the Jordanian authorities banned protests close to the border with the West Bank for posing a threat to national security. The army has deployed extra forces on the border, while the security forces have arrested Jordanians trying to smuggle weapons into the West Bank.
The protests have crossed the divide that separates Jordan’s traditional “Eastbanker” population (residing on the River Jordan’s east bank) from the Palestinians both within Jordan and the West Bank. Around half of Jordan’s 11m population are of Palestinian descent, including more than 2.2m registered Palestinian refugees, those driven there by wars between 1947 and 1967 and their descendants, of whom nearly 400k still live in 10 refugee camps. Jordan was carved out of Greater Syria and Palestinian land east of the Jordan river by Britain after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WW1. It operated as a client state to promote UK interests in the oil-rich region. Largely desert, it was dependent from the beginning on external aid, first from Britain and more recently from the US, which currently provides $1.45b/yr in military and economic aid as well as security guarantees. Abdullah, a descendant of a sheikh from the Arabian Peninsula assigned by British imperialism to rule Transjordan, depends on censorship, surveillance, and a system of military patronage. He appoints and dismisses prime ministers at will to deflect criticism away from his corrupt rule. Unemployment is officially around 25%, and even higher among women and young people, while poverty has risen sharply since the pandemic, forcing many educated young people to seek work in the Gulf. As fears about Jordan’s instability have grown, the European Union and the Gulf states have provided aid as well as funding to support 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in the country.
Jordan has maintained a “cold peace” with Israel following a US Clinton administration-brokered normalization treaty in 1994, signing around 15 trade and tourism agreements since then, most prominently the $10b 2016 gas import agreement under which Israel would supply Jordan with 45 bcm of gas over 15 years. However, amid widespread opposition to the Gaza war, Jordan was forced to recall its ambassador to Israel and to abandon the proposed water-for-energy deal with the country brokered by the United Arab Emirates in November, despite being one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. Abdullah has thus far managed to contain the widespread opposition to Israel by publicly criticizing its conduct of the war and calling for a ceasefire, while playing the most open role in the Middle East in repressing popular opposition. Between October and November, security forces arrested at least 1,500 people, protesters and bystanders, during rallies in support of the Palestinians in Gaza for offences such as “committing acts of violence,” “inciting discord” and “damaging public property.” Some were only released on bail after pledging to stop participating in protests.
At least five more were arrested between November and December and charged under the Cybercrimes Law, passed in August last year, for social media posts expressing pro-Palestinian sympathies, criticizing the authorities’ peace or economic deals with Israel, or calling for public strikes and protests. In January, Ayman Sanduka, political activist and mathematics professor, was sentenced to three months in jail for calling for a general strike and charged with “defaming an official body.” Permission was only then granted for weekly Friday protests. The regime has pressed ahead with its efforts to keep Israel’s economy functioning, providing a crucial “land bridge” for trucking vital goods overland from the Gulf to Israel as Yemen’s Houthis struck in the Red Sea against Israeli-linked shipping, in support of the Palestinians. In January, Israel’s Channel 13 revealed that Jordan was exporting fruit and vegetables to Israel. According to an investigation by Arabi Post, citing Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, Jordan and Turkey exported the most fruit and vegetables to Israel from Oct 7 2023, to Feb 11 2024, amounting to 55% of all such imports. These revelations led to a renewal of protests in February in Amman, Irbid, Aqaba, Karak and Zarqa. An online campaign was mounted for Jordan to send humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The latest protests that broke out at the end of March amid Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital and the pending invasion of Rafah have roiled Abdullah’s regime. Jordanian officials blamed Hamas leaders, especially former leader Khaled Meshaal, now resident in Doha, accusing the bourgeois clerical group, which was banished from Jordan in 1999, and the Muslim Brotherhood of seeking to destabilise the country. On Tuesday, Muhannad Moubaydeen, a government spokesperson, told a press conference that the government was supposedly not opposed to the demonstrations but to the chants, which it views as pro-Hamas and harmful to national security. Citing a Mar 26 speech in Amman by Meshaal calling on millions to take to the streets, former information minister Samih al-Maaytah said:
Hamas abroad is trying to pressure Jordan to restore relations with the movement.
Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has rejected these accusations, with Murad al-Adayleh, Secretary-General of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) which is affiliated to the Brotherhood, stating:
There are no special party interests in these protests, which represent all sectors of Jordanian society that support the Palestinian resistance.
The widespread support for the Palestinians is a significant turning point. In 1970, in what became known as “Black September,” Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, turned to Israel for undercover support when he faced calls from some Palestinian factions, backed by Syria, for his overthrow. He was able to defeat Yasser Arafat’s PLO and drive its leadership out of the country. Since then, with Israel’s 360-km border with Jordan, its longest—free from attacks by Palestinian militants, the Israeli military has been able to focus on securing its other borders. Jordan’s Palestinians have faced widespread discrimination, despite most being granted citizenship, with state employment and other policies favouring the Eastbankers. Washington’s full-throated support for Israel has also resulted in an upsurge in anti-American sentiment in Jordan and across the wider region.
The logic of Israel’s war on Gaza implies driving out not only the Palestinians in Gaza, but those in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. Israel’s mainstream politicians have for decades called for a population “transfer,” a euphemism for driving the Palestinians into Jordan, an event that would profoundly destabilise the monarchy. For years, far-right settlers under the protection of the army have carried out attacks on the Palestinians in the West Bank to force them off their land. Now they do this with the active encouragement of Israel’s far-right politicians who have provided them with additional firearms, arousing fears of another Nakba or mass displacement as happened in 1948 and 1967. The Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas, acting as Israel’s policeman, has done nothing to protect its citizens. This has forced the Jordanian parliament to unanimously endorse a motion to review its bilateral treaty with Israel that expressly forbids such an expulsion, stating:
Within their control, involuntary movements of persons in such a way as to adversely prejudice the security of either Party should not be permitted.
The messianic Religious Zionists now in government have long viewed Jordan as part of “Greater Israel.” They were one of the many Zionist strands that opposed Britain’s partition of Palestine and its exclusion of Transjordan from its promise to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a “serious whittling down of the Balfour Declaration,” as Chaim Weizmann, later Israel’s first president, noted in his memoir. In Mar 2023, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, took to the podium to display a map showing Jordan as part of “Greater Israel” while denying the existence of the Palestinian people. These far-right forces and Israel’s ultra-orthodox parties are also challenging Jordan’s custodial role over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third most holy Muslim site. Jewish extremists and government officials have frequently stormed and desecrated the compound in preparation for seizing full control and establishing a Jewish temple. Netanyahu’s goal of erasing Hamas, with the full backing of US imperialism and its European allies, while Hezbollah in Lebanon has declared its commitment to ensuring a “Hamas victory in Gaza,” is driving towards a regional war against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that would place Jordan firmly in the line of fire.
Niqnaq 