White House brags that it has given Israel $6.5b in weapons since Oct 7
Andre Damon, WSWS, Jun 27 2024
The US has provided Israel with more than $6.5b in weapons since Oct 7, the White House said Wednesday, underscoring the scale of the Biden administration’s support for the continuing genocide in Gaza. Doled out over just nine months, this figure is nearly double the US’s typical annual Israel military aid budget of $3.4b and will be further supplemented by $14b in weapons funding allocated by Congress this year. The White House admitted the scale of its arms shipments to Israel in a closed briefing to reporters, with neither a video nor transcript made available to the public. WaPo reporter John Hudson described the content of the briefing on Twitter:
The US has flooded Israel with more than $6.5b in security assistance since Oct 7, said a senior administration official, a massive transfer of equipment and firepower despite recurring disagreements between the two nations over civilian casualties and aid access. The US official declared, “This is a massive, massive undertaking, and nothing is paused other than that one shipment (of 2k lb bombs).
Amid continuing mass protests against the Biden administration’s complicity in the Gaza bloodbath, the White House has sought to keep the scale of its arms transfers a secret. For this reason, it has broken up its arms shipments into more than 100 chunks in order to bypass congressional reporting requirements. The announcement came the same day that Gallant met with senior White House officials. Gallant was welcomed by senior White House officials Wednesday, after the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for charges against him last month, accusing the Israeli defense minister, alongside Netanyahu, of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” The visit follows last week’s assertion by a UN investigative committee that the Israeli government is responsible for the “extermination” of the Palestinian population, with commission member Chris Sidoti declaring:
The Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.
Gallant’s trip sets the stage for the visit by Netanyahu to Washington on Jul 24, when he is set to address both houses of Congress. In a readout of the meeting between Gallant and Sullivan, the White House wrote:
Mr Sullivan reaffirmed the US ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including in the face of threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah. The two also discussed President Biden’s unprecedented support for Israel since the Hamas attacks of Oct 7. Mr Sullivan reaffirmed President Biden’s commitment to ensure that Israel has all it needs to defend itself militarily and confront its Iranian-backed adversaries.
The White House praised the purported humanitarian efforts of Gallant, the man who has pushed the population of the narrow enclave to the brink of starvation by declaring a “complete blockade” of food into Gaza because the Palestinians are, in his words, “human animals.” The readout declared:
Mr Sullivan and Minister Gallant discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the need to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Mr Sullivan recognized Minister Gallant’s personal efforts and leadership to support these efforts.
In a separate meeting:
Sec Def Austin underscored the ironclad US commitment to Israel, as evidenced in part by the extraordinary defense of Israel against an unprecedented Iranian attack on April 13 and by the more than $14b in assistance in the Bipartisan National Security Supplemental that President Biden signed on Apr 24.
Gallant, for his part, responded to the meetings by threatening war against Lebanon, declaring that Israel is “preparing for every scenario” and threatening to send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.” Israeli massacres of civilians in Gaza continued Wednesday, with 15 Palestinian civilians killed in a strike on a home in northern Gaza. Israeli forces killed Fadi Al-Wadiya, a doctor and member of MSF, while he was on his way to work in Gaza City. MSF reported:
The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children, while he was cycling to work, near the MSF clinic where he was providing care. Fadi was a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three. He joined MSF in 2018. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones. Fadi’s loss marks the sixth killing of an MSF staff member in Gaza since Oct 7 2023.
Meanwhile, famine is worsening in Gaza. In a Twitter statement, UNICEF wrote:
Malnutrition in Gaza is wreaking havoc on children. Lack of food, water, and medical supplies is worsening the already desperate situation for Gaza’s children.
Mass starvation and hunger in Gaza have been massively intensified by the closure of the Rafah border crossing, as part of the US-backed Israeli attack on Rafah. In a statement Wednesday, the World Health Organization said that no medical evacuations had taken place from Gaza since May. World Health Organization representative Rik Peeperkorn said:
Before the closure of the border, “approximately 50 critical patients a day left Gaza. It means that since May 7 at least 2k people have been unable to leave Gaza to receive medical care.
Separately, UNRWA reported that at least 508 internally displaced people had been killed at its shelters in October.
Zionist provocation at Los Angeles synagogue used by Democrats to escalate the assault on democratic rights
Alan Gilman, WSWS, Jun 27 2024
Last Sunday the Israeli-based real estate agency, My Home, held a real estate event in Los Angeles at the Adas Torah Synagogue to promote the sale of homes in Israel and the occupied territories. The event was produced by Gidon Katz, a self-styled “expert in marketing Israeli real estate to the global Jewish community.” Katz earlier this year held similar events in synagogues in Montreal, Toronto, New Jersey and New York. Initially, Katz considered canceling this year’s Israeli real estate events because of the ongoing war in Gaza. Ultimately, however, he decided it really provided a great opportunity. “This was actually an ideal time for Americans to invest in Israeli properties,” Katz said on local Israeli news channels, citing rising fears of antisemitism, along with the fact that real-estate experts predict that land value in Israel will increase once the war is over. In early March, Katz held this year’s first Israel Real Estate Expo at a Montreal synagogue. It was met by hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who showed up to condemn the sale of houses built on settlements illegally expropriated from Palestinians in the West Bank. At his next Expo in Toronto, a man attacked pro-Palestinian protesters with a nail gun.
Opposition to these events was further escalated before a scheduled Teaneck, New Jersey event when a video of a Jewish resident named Rich Siegel denouncing the event went viral. He said in the video:
There’s a genocide going on,”. “What this real-estate event is going to do is fan the flames.
The Teaneck protests were especially large, drawing both locals and out-of-towners. Though the Teaneck event took place, mounting opposition caused Katz to cancel his remaining East Coast tour, only to revive it again this week in Los Angeles. The main Los Angeles sales event was staged at the Adas Torah synagogue located in the predominately Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood that is just south of Beverly Hills. In response to the advertisements promoting this real estate event, protest fliers shared on social media by the Southern California chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement said, “Our Land Is Not For Sale,” condemned “land theft,” and called for people to rally on Sunday.
On Sunday, about 200 pro-Palestinian protesters had assembled in front of the synagogue, when 30 minutes later an equal number of counter-demonstrators arrived and began assaulting the anti-genocide demonstrators. Despite the presence of local law enforcement at the scene, they initially did little to intervene and stop the violence. This police inaction was similar to their hours-long stand-down as a violent Zionist mob attacked an anti-genocide encampment at UCLA earlier this year. Abner Hauge, a writer for the web site Left Coast Right Watch, described how the site’s reporter, Katre Burns, had called him while still in shock after she and other reporters had been attacked by the Zionist mob.
She recounted the mob attacking her and eight other reporters in front of the Adas Torah synagogue. Someone assaulted Burns in front of the police and stole her phone while it was still recording. They threatened to come to her home, to rape and behead her, called her a whore, called other reporters faggots, and beat them. Our long-time reporter Sean Beckner-Carmitchel was punched in the head during a gang assault. As she recounted all this, Burns told me over and over that while all of the violence went on, the police watched and did nothing.
Although assaults continued around the synagogue and the nearby neighborhood for several hours, the only arrest reported was a pro-Israeli counter-demonstrator for carrying a sharp pole. According to CNN, that individual was issued a citation for possessing a prohibited item during a protest and released from custody. By the next day, the leadership of the Democratic Party led by President “Genocide Joe” Biden had transformed a police-supported Zionist attack on peaceful demonstrators into an antisemitic attack by pro-Palestinian protesters on a Jewish synagogue. Biden tweeted:
I’m appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American. Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship and engaging in violence is never acceptable.
Perhaps Biden, who is Catholic and used to going to church on Sunday, is either ignorant or has simply forgotten that the Jewish Sabbath is on Saturday. The “service” that was being conducted at the Adas Torah synagogue on Sunday involved a conspiracy to violate international law by unlawfully offering to sell land in the occupied territories. Moreover, neither Biden, other political leaders, nor the corporate media have questioned how synagogues, that have tax-exempt status because they are to be used exclusively for religious purposes, are also now allowed to be used as fronts to sell stolen real estate. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom followed Biden’s lead, tweeting:
The violent clashes outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles are appalling. There is no excuse for targeting a house of worship. Such antisemitic hatred has no place in California.
California’s senior US Senator Alex Padilla, another Democrat, tweeted:
I strongly condemn the protestors for targeting the Adas Torah temple and its members this weekend. There is no justification for targeting a house of worship or its community.
Following Biden’s statement on Monday, the protest group CodePink blasted Biden’s characterization as “lies.” Making clear that the protest was against the real estate sale and not related to the synagogue itself, the group said in a statement
It is outrageous that President Biden and certain media outlets have misrepresented this protest as an anti-Semitic attack on worshippers. This rhetoric is reminiscent of the McCarthy-era smears used to discredit and, at times, deport activists for peace & civil rights. Not only is his narrative false but also dangerous. The protest aimed to address the unethical sale of Palestinian land, not to target any religious group.
Hussam Ayloush, the Los Angeles Executive Director of the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), issued the following reply to the grossly false depiction that was being used to characterize what has occurred on Sunday:
The demonstration in front of the Adas Torah synagogue over the weekend was in response to the blatant violations of both international law and human rights from agencies that seek to make a profit selling brutally stolen Palestinian land as the Israeli government continues its eight-month-long genocidal campaign and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Elected officials and the mainstream media have politicized this incident as religious discrimination as opposed to a human rights issue. We call on political leaders to condemn the organizations involved in the potentially illegal sale of Palestinian land and the counter-protesters who commit violence against anti-genocide protesters with the same fervor used for rightfully condemning antisemitism.
During a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday, members of several organizations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement and Southern California Students for Justice in Palestine, said unarmed individuals were “brutalized” by police officers and pro-Israel demonstrators during Sunday’s protest. A member of the SJP, who declined to provide her name to the LA Times, said:
The Zionist attackers followed us and doxxed us with the intent to cause physical harm, targeting those wearing hijabs, pulling them off and throwing eggs at our heads. They threatened to use law enforcement connections to find out our identities and our addresses.
On Tuesday, to better enable law enforcement to identify such demonstrators, the mayor of Los Angeles, Democrat Karen Bass, urged the City Council to consider new rules requiring permits for demonstrations and restricting the wearing of masks during such demonstrations.
German Foreign Minister Baerbock supports Israel’s genocide and war offensive in the Middle East
Johannes Stern, WSWS, Jun 27 2024
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s trip to the Middle East highlighted once again the devastating role played by German imperialism in the genocide in Gaza and the escalation of war throughout the region. Baerbock’s shedding of a few crocodile tears over the humanitarian disaster in Gaza cannot hide the fact that the German government fully supports the genocidal actions of the Israeli army. During her appearances in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the Greens politician repeatedly expressed her solidarity with Israel and the far-right Netanyahu regime. In her speech at the Herzliya conference in Tel Aviv, she explained:
The security of the State of Israel is paramount for my country. It is part of our raison d’état. This means standing up for the security of Israel when it is under attack. It means saying very clearly that Israel has the right to defend itself, like any other country in the world. The images of 7 October have stayed with me since, as a human and also as the foreign minister of a country that was responsible for the worst crime in history: the Shoah, the state-planned murder of six million Jews with the aim of extinguishing Judaism in Europe. These images from Gaza are travelling the globe, sparking strong emotions in the Arab world, but also in the US, in Europe, in my country, everywhere. Disbelief. Sadness. But also anger. This anger is not helping Israel to meet its security needs. To the contrary. It only serves Hamas’ cynical drive to provoke further escalation. Hamas wants to destroy Israel’s security, but also Israel’s legitimacy.
Cynically, she equated the armed breakout of Hamas and other Palestinian groups from the “open-air prison” of Gaza with the crimes of the Nazis. In fact, the genocide in Gaza underscores that the ruling class in Germany, eight decades after the Holocaust and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, is once again drawing on its genocidal traditions. Since the beginning of the war, it has not only unconditionally supported the Israeli onslaught and criminalised the enormous resistance to it, but has also increased German arms deliveries to Israel more than 10-fold. Baerbock can repeat the government propaganda as often as she wants, but after more than 40k dead, mostly women and children, and the almost complete destruction of the Gaza Strip over the past nine months, there is no doubt that the Israeli army, with the full support of Berlin, is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians.
Leading Israeli politicians and military figures made no secret of this right from the start. On Oct 9 2023, Gallant announced that Israel was placing Gaza under “complete siege.” There would be “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” He added, “We are fighting human animals,” and would act accordingly. Netanyahu himself declared on Oct 28 2023: “You must remember what Amalek did to you,” referring to a Bible passage in the Old Testament that says, “Now go and strike Amalek. Spare them not, but slay man and woman, children and infants.” If Baerbock now criticizes some excesses of the Israeli army and warns of a conflagration in the region, this is mainly for one reason: She fears the growing opposition among workers and young people in the region and worldwide against the genocidal Israeli regime and against the even more expansive war plans of the imperialist powers in the region.
In reality, it is Israel and the imperialist powers that “provoke further escalation.” Their war aims go far beyond the expulsion and extermination of the Palestinians. For Washington, Berlin and Brussels, Israel serves as a bridgehead to militarily enforce their economic and geostrategic interests in the Middle East and worldwide. The mobilization of the Israeli war machine is part of the broader agenda to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon and defeat Iran, thereby advancing the war offensive against Russia and China. Gallant visited the US this week to hold talks about the supply of further US weapons to Israel and the expansion of the war. US imperialism is pushing towards a region-wide war against Iran on the Middle East front of a rapidly developing third world war. The major powers are locked in a ruthless redivision of the world aimed at securing access to raw materials, markets and geostrategic influence, and outdoing and ultimately subjugating their competitors. German imperialism does not intend to stand aside in this imperialist redivision of the world, but wants to secure as much of the spoils as possible. This is the significance of Baerbock’s trip. In her speech in Tel Aviv, she made it unequivocally clear that she supports the military action against Hezbollah and Iran. She stressed:
Israel has the right to defend itself against the relentless attacks of Hezbollah in the north. I want a future in which the ruthless threat that Iran poses to Israel’s legitimacy is deterred, with the help of Israel’s international partners. We saw how Israel’s regional neighbours helped to avert Iran’s aggressive drone and missile attack on Apr 13. This was a glimpse at what might be possible in the region in security cooperation one day.
This is another warning. In recent months Baerbock has also travelled to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. Baerbock’s intense diplomacy in the region is primarily aimed at stabilizing the hated Arab regimes and strengthening the war front against Hezbollah and Iran, as well as facilitating the deployment of more troops to the region. After a conversation with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut on Tuesday, she complained on Deutschlandfunk that he had “no real access to Hezbollah.” That is why “the Lebanese army is also being strengthened with UNIFIL, the UN mission on the ground.” At a party congress of the Greens restricted to delegates at the beginning of June, Baerbock even called for an “international protection force” for the Gaza Strip and the Middle East, among other things.
At least 21 dead in terrorist attacks in Makhachkala and Derbent, Russia
Lev Novitsky, WSWS, Jun 27 2024
On the evening of Jun 23, terrorist attacks were carried out in the Russian cities of Makhachkala and Derbent, located in the impoverished North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The population of Dagestan is ethnically diverse but predominantly Muslim. The attackers targeted two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, one of which was set on fire, and a traffic patrol post (one of the units of the traffic police). The attack took place on Orthodox Holy Trinity Day, one of the main holidays of Orthodox Christians. According to the latest figures, at least 21 people were killed and 26 others injured. Among those killed were 16 policemen and five civilians, including one Orthodox priest. Five suspected terrorists were killed on the spot. All media reports indicated that the attacks were well-organized and the attackers themselves used foreign-made weapons in the attack, including at least one assault rifle. Notably, among the attackers were the sons and two nephews of Magomed Omarov, a local official from the ruling United Russia party in Dagestan. Before the terrorist attack, Omarov was the head of one of the districts of the Republic of Dagestan and the secretary of the local branch of United Russia. He has now been arrested. He has already been prosecuted for hooliganism, but it is likely that he will also face a case under the article on aiding and abetting terrorism. One of the nephews of Omarov who perpetrated the attack was, until 2021, the head of the district branch of the parliamentary party “Just Russia.”
As of this writing, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Kremlin has only just begun investigating the attack, and has not yet formally charged any state intelligence service or terrorist organization. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Jun 25 that the missile attack on the beach in Sevastopol, which killed four people, and the terrorist attacks in Dagestan were likely synchronized. Everything indicates that the imperialist powers were involved in the attack which serves their war aims and strategy in several respects. It comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Washington on Jul 9-11, and as NATO is preparing a direct entry into the war against Russia in Ukraine. At the end of May, the NATO countries approved strikes with weapons supplied by them far into Russian territory. This directly jeopardizes the civilian population in Russia, especially of the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions. The US and other NATO members have repeatedly claimed that they will not cross certain ”red lines” in order not to turn the conflict in Ukraine into a full-fledged world war, but then each time NATO member states have crossed these very “red lines” that they had drawn themselves. Even in an article before Biden’s decision to authorize US weapons strikes on Russian territory, the NYT claimed that Biden was unlikely to take such a step, but Biden did just that.
Given all these facts, it is logical to assume that the attack of militants in Dagestan was in the interests of the United States to destabilize the situation in Russia and in particular in the republics of the North Caucasus in order to weaken the Putin regime’s position in the war with Ukraine and disperse its forces on the internal front. Already, the NATO powers have de facto opened up a second front in the war, within Russia itself. In March, a major terrorist at the popular Moscow City Crocus Concert hall took the lives of at least 145 people. As the WSWS and the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists have documented, the attack had the fingerprints of US imperialism and its proxy, the Ukrainian regime, all over it. The WSWS explained the goals pursued by US imperialism with such attacks as follows:
The aim is threefold: First, to embolden opposition to the Putin regime within the oligarchy and state apparatus; second, to provoke a military response by the Kremlin that can serve as the pretext for a further escalation of the war by NATO; and third, to foster ethnic and religious tensions within Russia that would destabilize the regime and facilitate the carve-up of the entire region by the imperialist powers.
All these three goals are also met by the terrorist attacks in Dagestan. In targeting Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, the attackers clearly sought to inflame religious and ethnic tensions. Nor is the location of the attacks a coincidence. Dagestan is one of the most diverse but also most impoverished regions in Russia and has been afflicted by the impact of the decades-long war waged by the Kremlin against separatists in neighboring Chechnya. In Oct 2023, Makhachkala airport was the site of anti-Semitic riots that broke out after the arrival of a flight from Tel Aviv. At the time, we noted:
Indeed, one cannot rule out that Western special services were involved in inciting the riots, seeking to undermine stability in Russia itself. The instigation of ethnic and nationalist conflicts and tensions, especially among the country’s large Muslim population, has long been part of the imperialist strategy to carve up Russia. The Financial Times reported that a channel previously associated with Ilya Ponomaryov, a leading figure in the pro-NATO opposition in the Russian oligarchy who has coordinated incursions of Russian territory by Ukrainian neo-fascist militias, had helped incite the riot.
Through such incitement and terrorist attacks, the imperialist powers and their proxies in the oligarchy are seeking to take advantage of and intensify the discord in the Russian elite. The ultimate aim is to weaken and eventually topple Putin’s regime, putting a puppet regime in its place. The fact that local officials with ties to the ruling United Russia party as well as one of the main “loyal” opposition parties, Just Russia, were directly and indirectly involved in the attack, testifes not only to the reactionary character of the ruling class. It also shows that there are violent conflicts within the ranks of the Russian oligarchy. If at the local level there are such extremists and conflicts among officials, what does the situation look like at the highest echelons of power?
The Putin regime has emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism as a Bonapartist regime. In order to protect the interests of the oligarchy, it is maneuvering between different factions within the ruling class, between the working class and the oligarchy, and between the national interests of the oligarchy and the interests of imperialism. But both the relentless escalation of the war by imperialism and the growing social tensions within Russia itself increasingly undermine the basis for such maneuvers. In recent weeks, Putin initiated a far-reaching purge of the army, putting much of its leadership under the control of economists loyal to him, as well as the secret FSB special service. The Putin regime, besieged from all sides, is sitting on a ticking time bomb. The strikes on Sevastopol beach and the terrorist attacks will further exacerbate contradictions among the various factions of the ruling class and among the elites of the national republics. The openly NATO-backed opposition is emboldened by the ever more direct intervention of NATO in the war, and its systematic efforts to destabilize the Putin regime and will, in its turn, intensify the longstanding preparations for a regime change. The ultra-nationalist faction, on the other hand, will become more insistent in demanding that Putin take decisive measures in the war in Ukraine, including and up to the deployment of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, separatist tendencies within republics such as Dagestan and Chechnya will intensify as well.
For the working class, the terrorist attacks in Dagestan and the strikes on Sevastopol beach are a serious warning. Without the independent intervention of the proletariat, Russia will either be dragged into a nuclear war or dismembered by the NATO imperialists into pliant puppet and dictatorial regimes. Workers in all countries must condemn the terrorist attacks and oppose the fomenting of nationalist and religious tensions, a central component of the development of a third world war that threatens humanity with extermination. What is urgently required is the building of a socialist anti-war movement that fights for the independent mobilization of the working class against imperialist war and capitalism.
Niqnaq 