A former Arabic language spokeswoman for the State Department, who resigned over US support for the genocidal slaughter in Gaza, said in an interview that aired Wednesday that the Biden administration’s warning to Israel to allow more aid into Gaza within 30 days was nothing more than a pre-election public relations stunt.
“I can tell you, as someone that worked within the State Department PR machine, that this, unfortunately, is a public relations ploy. I am sad to say it, but it’s the truth. It is conveniently 30 days, marking the time after the election,” Hala Rharrit told Democracy Now. “Also, it was conveniently leaked. It’s not typical for a statement like this to be leaked to the press, but it was.”
The Biden administration sent the letter to Israeli officials on October 14 and suggested that if the demands aren’t met, US military aid could be affected. However, the letter didn’t explicitly threaten to cut off weapons shipments, and the State Department also declined to say if there would be any consequences for Israel.
“The reality is that the State Department and the administration at this point is trying to give voters, especially those that are so concerned about the conflict in Gaza, some level of hope: ‘As long as you vote for us, after this 30 days, we’ll enforce the law, and we will make a change.’ This is absolutely a deception for the voters and for the American people,” Rharrit said.
Rharrit said the US was violating multiple foreign assistance laws by providing military aid to Israel. “The reality is that we, as the United States government, are in violation of US law, of multiple of laws that your viewers can Google for themselves: the Leahy Law, the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act. We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge US military assistance to Israel,” she said.
Discussing State Department spokesman Matt Miller, Rharrit called him a liar. “As to Matthew Miller, I’m going to be unequivocal: He’s lying. And I know, I realize it’s quite a forceful thing for me to say, but as a former diplomat, I can assure that,” she said.
Rharrit pointed to the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the obstacle to a ceasefire deal, while the State Department has always blamed Hamas. “There have been ceasefire deals that Hamas has agreed to. I am not one to advocate for the terrorist organization whatsoever, and I want to be clear about that. But facts are facts. Hamas has repeatedly agreed to ceasefire deals. It is Benjamin Netanyahu who has reneged on those deals,” she said.
Rharrit resigned from her post in the State Department back in April. She was a career diplomat, first entering the foreign service in 2006. She is one of 13 officials from US government agencies who have publicly resigned over President Biden’s full-throated support for the slaughter in Gaza.
It is, nobody that matters in the US political class has absolutely any intention of ending the very Palestinian Genocide they themselves engineered and actively entice and guard.
If they want the Palestinians out, they should bring them out. Offer food, water, aid, everything. Pay them some huge amount to get started elsewhere.
Too much stick, not enough carrot.
Palestinians don’t want out of their ancestral homeland, why would they? Anyway that was the original Trump-Netanyahu-Saud plan as denounced in 2017 by exiled prince Mohamed bin Farhan ibn Saud: to force Gazans (who are 70% from “Israel” and not from Gaza) into Sinai, Bin Salman would pay for the refugee camps.
Maybe it is still the plan and the so-called “General’s Plan” is only phase 1, then they will do the same with South Gaza or maybe just give it in full to Egypt with all the displaced persons inside. All Israel/USA wants after all is Gaza City and building the Ben Gurion Canal. That’s probably why treacherous Al Sissi has built a concentration camp just south of Rafah.
It is likely still the plan. I hope it happens quickly. I hate it.
How can you hope that GENOCIDE is accomplished? It’s like hoping that the Holocaust “happens quickly”, that’s a no-no. We must stop it no matter what, what else can we do with our lives but to fight for JUSTICE?
If they’re kicked out, it’s ethnic cleansing not genocide. I don’t want them to lose their lands. But if they’re going to lose them anyway, then I hope it happens quickly.
The children are the nation. The children are being ruined.
You can always regain lost lands, but you can never repair many of those children.
You’re defending the indefensible, you are defending Holocaust 2.0 in fact.
Firstly, the terrorist criminal is Israel (USA) and not the ones defending Gaza and in general Palestine from GENOCIDE, a genocide that has been going on for many decades and that was announced years ago to enter this “final solution” stage.
Secondly, in order to achieve their “ethnic cleansing” euphemistic goals, the Zionist Evil needs to totally terrorize the population by mass murder, unspeakable torture and brutal mutilation, of adults and children alike, of civilians and combatants. And that’s what they have been doing for more than a year now, turning the largest concentration camp on Earth into the largest death camp ever.
Thirdly, in the current phase of the GENOCIDE, they are just murdering absolutely everybody north of an arbitrary line. Much like when Auschwitz happened, we don’t get much info because they dropped the iron curtain over Gaza, but we still do (we’re not in the days of mass media anymore, info flows no matter what). When they try to find refuge, they’re murdered anyhow.
Fourthly, Palestinians have all the numbers: they are almost 15 million vs a very theoretical 7 million settlers (“Israeli Jews”), many of which do not even live in Palestine even (the real figure is probably around 5 million in fact, maybe even less with the recent mass exodus of colonials, fleeing the loss of privileged affluence bc of the genocidal war).
Zionistan has already murdered maybe 10% of Gazans (the official figures are smaller but they only account for reported victims of direct warfare, not those killed by famine and disease nor those buried under the rubble and never found). They’re determined to murder maybe 50% of the population, maybe 100%, we just don’t know. What we know is that, if they succeed, per their own openly discussed plans, they won’t stop at that but will follow up in West Bank (already suffering many massacres and unarmed, almost unable to resist), Lebanon (also suffering genocidal war crimes impunely), Syria, Jordan, etc.
This is the final war and it’s a war that Israel will lose, that is already losing. Everybody knows that except maybe in the West, where delusions of invulnerability and long past imperial grandeur still linger. Israel is toast and is also a class A war criminal, along with their accomplices, especially in the USA, Britain and Germany. They may end up avoiding Nüremberg 2.0 but that will only be because the run like the proverbial rats abandoning a sinking ship and became protected from persecution in Brooklyn.
I’m not defending it… If they’re going to be expelled anyway, then those children should be protected from further harm.
Children are the nation.
They are not going to be expelled, as there is a full fledged war by several actors to impede this GENOCIDE from being accomplished and there’s also a lot of worldwide nonviolent resistance.
The nation is the land. A people without land is not a nation.
There’s a Dougie MacLean song you might like: https://dougiemaclean.com/index.php/s/83-solid-ground
Regardless, a nation is people.
I don’t “support” expelling them. I see it as better than ruining all those children.
I’m of British descent. We spread across the world during colonialism, but now we’re losing our lands everywhere. The people are the nation.
Anyway, it’s impressive to meet Arabs who flee the area. They’re not inferior as Israelis believe. Persians probably look down on Arabs just due to herding providing better nutrition than grain farming. But they’re very capable.
A people without land is not a nation: Basques who migrated to Argentina or Nevada don’t speak Basque anymore and only keep at best a faint memory of their ancestry, we Basques in our own homeland have difficulty surviving as nation because our country has been in foreign hands for too long. The same happens to Armenians and many other oppressed or displaced nations.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Some things die. New things arise. Life changes.
Many have few children. If Palestinians form a group and have children, they will endure.
Many groups are declining and dying out. Many traditions are lost and forgotten. But some survive.
The Rig Veda was nearly lost, as I understand. Some versions were fully lost, but we have a version recorded now. Other minor religions in India have been largely forgotten.
The only utility in keeping Palestinians there currently seems to be to entice Israel into greater sin. That price is too high.
I’d rather see Palestinians empowered to become future leaders. The great hero of El Salvador is Palestinian. The ruined children of Gaza will never accomplish anything this generation. They are broken.
It’s not about you or me “keeping” anything anywhere: it’s about them not wanting to move an inch further being as they are the ones expelled from Jaffa and Ascalon in 1948. Do you think that anyone who didn’t want to leave did not leave already? Do you think they have anywhere to go to? You’re being ridiculous, you’re clinging to burning nails in order to support the worst crimes against Humanity.
You shoud stop asking Palestinians this or that, demand the USA to stop Zionism, to stop the very essence of GENOCIDE and RACIST EVIL itself.
The mighty USA would just laugh at my demands.
Regardless, it’s terrible to know that those very capable children are being ruined.
The not-so-mighty USA also bleeds, just like you and me. All is about people doing or not doing things, although better in organized manner.
I used to be somewhat active in the US far right. I probably pushed them to oppose war. We used to be this reliable war supporting group. I comment, in person, on foreign policy at least once a day, to random people. I mention things like El Salvador’s hero president is Palestinian. I admittedly don’t set myself on fire, but I do talk.
Yes, you sound a bit like a right winger. Learn this from veteran antimilitarist leftist: THERE IS NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE.
You’re a leftist who argues for blood and soil for Palestinians, which is a very right wing position. You just call it left wing.
Justice is for the strong who do what they will to the rest of us, often while using leftists as enforcers.
I argue for soil, not blood, things would be much easier if native peoples and democratic principles would be respected. These are quite progressive ideas defended by people like Lenin (or also Marx and Engels once they realized that class war in Ireland was also national liberation war) or more recently Abdullah Öcalan, for example, in different versions. Here in Europe national liberation was always championed by the radical left, sometimes in nonviolent, other times in violent ways (guevarismo). On the other hand, reactionaries from Stalin to nearly everybody in the right, always defended real power (oppression, exploitation) and thus the so-called “nation-state” and its imperialism agains all kinds of weaker peoples.
I don’t know how you understand Justice but it’s not about tribunals what I’m talking about nor what most people understand as Justice, it is about nobody being oppressed or exploited by those very “strong” (petty bullies, often cowardly and weak behind the mask) you mention. Call it “fairness” if you wish.
Often leftist attempts at reducing exploitation lead to greater exploitation. However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes they do good.
I guess people like to feel like they’re serving some greater cause.
Anyway, I hope the children aren’t ruined for life.
I’m pretty sure that exploitation decreased by a lot after the Mexican and Russian revolutions, which implemented, for example the 8 hr work journey first on Earth, quickly spreading to most of Europe (but not to Britain which was only forced to accept that in the 90s by reason of their being EU members in those days). That was not the only progress achieved: free healthcare, nearly free housing, free kindergartens, full employment, etc. was also achieved by the USSR and many of its imitators. Polls in Vietnam show that people, while being in general now more affluent, feel that they were better off overall when they were socialist, statistics show that countries like Cuba score very high in satisfaction because greater wealth does barely or not at all add to human happiness, what matters the most is eradication of poverty. Socialism is a very good theory and a very good praxis.
Another thing is if we’d be discussing authoritarianism, which is not on itself exploitation but is oppression, and it was a major handicap in “real socialism” because people also want freedom and it is an explicit goal of communism to achieve people’s power, not party power.
Well, there are plenty of horror stories to go with that.
I like the ideal of distributism, which empowers small businesses and seeks to keep them small. Communists saw small businesses as a threat, and the royals in Russia saw them as supporters.
It doesn’t make sense to me just how people are to be empowered with communism. It can work or work for a time, but it was mostly popular just as a symbol of resisting US and colonial exploitation.
Nationalism can motivate workers and elites to care for a group, but socialism and communism seek to do away with that, because nationalism causes conflict with other groups. Similarly, religion can motivate empathy and group oriented behaviour, but socialism and communism seek to do away with religion.
Anyway, it’s positive to have a diverse set of political traditions.
As I see it, you have very different groups labeled under each category. So, it’s almost like the labels create more confusion than would otherwise exist.
There are plenty of horror stories in any system, have you heard of the Irish or the Bengal famines?, how Britain and the USA promoted fascism?, have you heard of the Holocaust and the Porajmos?, of the Finnish or Spanish massacres of communists?, have you heard of the crimes that the USA, France, Britain and Portugal committed in the colonies and neo-colonies?, have you heard of how much people is poor and often homeless in the wealthiest country on Earth? Please don’t be selective about some cherry-picked, exaggerated and distorted horror stories promoted by the oligarchs that arbitrarily own our economies and thus our miserable lives.
Communism should empower because it makes everyone equal (or nearly so) in terms economic. If nobody owns the means of production and the media, then everybody has, at least in principle, exactly the same material and communicational power, which is necessary (but not sufficient) condition to build a real democracy.
Please search for Öcalan’s work on Democratic Confederalism, which is the latest major development in terms of Marxism and Anarchism (it blends both, largely follow Murray Bookchin, who was also both before becoming his own thing). Ironically the Apoists (Öcalan is nicknamed Apo = Uncle) are today allied with the USA since the 2016 geopolitical shift of Obama, after the suppossed Turkish coup, leading to the “anti-ISIS coalition”, which saw the North Syrian Federation primarily defeat those fascist terrorists backed by Turkey and originally also by the USA. It’s not a great alliance but the nationalist (state imperialist) forces of Russia, Iran or China are not interested on overcoming the “nation-state”, which Öcalan rightly claims is a bourgeois imperialist design, even if of course people-nations have the full right to self-rule (but this is best accomplished via Democratic Confederalism).
If no one owns anything, the result isn’t necessarily better. It’s better to have decentralised wealth and power.
Fascists aren’t always bad either. They usually seem to arise as resistance to communism.
Anyway, I’ll look up what you mention, ty.
Fascists are always bad, I can tell you even coming from a partly fascist family: their whole goal in life is to destroy the communists, and that means myself.
Eh, the “always” is usually bad in anything.
Franco was better than his opponents as I understand the history. I expect the Latin left is usually better than the “fascist” right though.
If Pu Yi could be recycled into a useful gardener there is hope for nearly everyone, provided good enough reeducation and some remain of humanity down their callous hearts, I guess. But I remain skeptic: fascists are anti-social, anti-humanist and thus anti-human.
Franco was a puppet of Britain and Italy, and later of the USA. He was the most cruel tyrant and he could not achieve peace even in his best decade (the 60s). He died in bed, sadly enough, but his right hand was killed by my neighbor, a man I admire and respect: Argala. Everyone I respect fought against Franco or his successors.
Defending Franco is unacceptable to me, his accidental product but also his victim. I demand an apology.
Fascists are the epitome of social. They serve an abstract group, though likely desiring a smaller group they could connect with.
The problem with Franco is he wanted a centralised state, at the expense of the parts, especially parts that desired independence.
But Communists and anarchists usually are worse in that regard, at least in their goals.
The problem with Franco was not just that, that’s a general problem of all bourgeois states, fascist or “democratic”, Spain or France or Britain: they all exert imperialism against their minority nations in favor of the core imperialist nation (Castilians, French and English respectively), and, when they can, they also exert imperialism overseas of course. The problem with Franco was that he did not even represent the Castilians themselves but only a bellicose minority backed by foreign powers (Italy sent 70,000 troops, including my grandpa, Portugal sent 10,000, Germany the infamous Condor Legion that destroyed Gernika, Britain imposed a blockade to “both sides”, which only hurt the Republic, etc.) Do you know how many MPs had the fascists before the war: exactly zero!, just the same MPs that Mussolini had when he was crowned Duce. Zero legitimacy, all founded on terrorism against the peoples, all the peoples, with hundreds of thousands murdered just because of being red or not even that, because of being critical of fascism as was the case of Unamuno.
Of course some of the most oppressed nations like mine (Basques) or the Sahrawis (who are still fighting against another imperialist tyrant, the petty king of Morocco, which Trump supports at his own peril) were more dynamic in the antifascist struggle but it was something that pretty much everyone embraced one way or another.
I’m still awaiting for that apology. My policy is zero tolerance to fascism, I still don’t speak to my mum for that very reason.
Demand all you like. No one owes you an apology for having an opinion you disagree with.
At one time it was feared that communism was inevitable. Fascism is a sort of reactionary attempt at uniting groups to resist that inevitability, to unite to act in the group’s interests, to preserve that group.
However, what I’m trying to argue is a person can do wrong under any flag. Franco and Hitler both tried to centralise their societies into a machine that could fight. War is the purpose of a state, and they were united to fight.
Communists similarly have tried to unite to resist, to resist the US for example. The two can be almost indistinguishable sometimes.
No, fascism is imperialism, not defense of any honest group interests. When peoples have to fight for their group interests, they do it from leftist positions: IRA, ETA, PKK, Vietcong, etc. Even Lenin, who briefly ruled Russia a century ago, was so much in favor of self-determination that refused to intervene in Finland in favor of the reds and when he finally intervened in Ukraine, he was very generous in the asignment of the border, so much that modern wars derive partly from that, because way too many Russian-majority regions were given to Ukraine in order to over-respect their self-determination.
War is not the purpose of the state: social justice and reasonable prosperity is. A warring state is an imperialist state that wastes national resources for the interests of a few oligarchs (unless it’s legitimate self-defense). That’s a major ideological error of fascism and the very reason why Mussolini was expelled from the Socialist Party.
Franco anyhow was not interested in foreign wars and that’s because he owed too much to Britain (and also because Spain was objectively weak and in lower intensity civil war). That’s why Spain remained neutral in WW2 (except for a token volunteer unit sent to fight against the USSR).
Marx wanted a breakdown of barriers. This is part of the problem: Fascism becomes many things. Communism becomes many things. The names lose their significance.
I’m explaining things from the other perspective. I do not at all pretend to know more than you, but I probably know differently from you. Some right wing types are aggressive, imperialist. Some are defensive. You’re too rigid.
Barriers? Do you mean borders? They were broken 500+ years ago by another compatriot of mine, someone called Elcano (and definitely not called Magellan): the Earth is round and one and all has been globalized (very unfairly in general) by Capitalism since then.
More broadly it is Capitalism and not Marx which destroys all moral codes, it does so by means of mercantilist corruption. If you read “Capital”, you’ll notice how good old Karl laments that degeneracy and is, not explicitly but implicitly, longing for better structured families for example, which cannot exist under capitalist exploitation.
Plato argued that war is the purpose of the state, and I tend to agree with him. However, to explain, Switzerland is designed to fight, and that is largely why it was able to remain neutral. Syria is designed in a different way to fight, and that is why Assad endures.
Switzerland is defensive, and Assad wanted greater freedom, but that opened the door to external influence.
Anyway, I’ll think on what you’ve written. This sort of conversation tends to create misunderstanding. You know things I don’t; so, I have to consider your comments to better understand you.
Plato was wrong, he and all his (Socrates’) school were only a bunch of reactionaries. It would take centuries and definitely a lot of free thinking for Kepler to first break his spell but even today science is prisoner of Platonist ideas like “beautiful mathematics is the way to go”, instead of accepting the facts that we have to operate with “difficult” tensors and spinnors and that there’s nothing “beautiful” anyhow in Heinserberg’s “uncertainty principle”.
Switzerland is defensive and that’s fine, especially if your neighbors don’t bother you. They were once offensive and defeated mighty states but, after losing to Milan, they decided enough is enough. In fact I often call for “Cuba-Switzerland” as desirable communist polity… but anyhow even the USSR was very defensive. All the stories about the USSR invading Europe were US propaganda and nothing else, in fact, it’s unfortunate that the USSR, especially under “nationalist” (and thus not internationalist) Stalin did not support more those fighting for socialism like the Greek guerrillas or even the Chinese ones, which had to do their own thing at risk of being defeated and killed like in Finland.
The nation state isn’t entirely bourgeois. The bourgeois desires the breakdown of barriers. It desires workers as interchangeable cogs.
Under your system, managers of “the people” often act as slave lords over the rest. Applied Communism is known to be a class system with an oligarchy of top families at the top.
The dishonesty of Marxism/anarchism is what I dislike most. It is usually not what it claims to be.
Just to clarify: oligarchy is rule by the few. Every system tends to be an oligarchy.
Aristocracy is rule by the best.
Plutocracy is rule by the rich.
That’s very abstract. I’d say that the bourgeois wants profit first and foremost, what often means protectionist measures. According to my old HS history teacher (who was a Marxist, major influence of Marxism has been in History, all the rest is biopics) only Britain and the USA could thrive in early Capitalism without (much) protectionism and other state intervention. That’s why the French bourgeoisie reinvented France with their revolution and the German bourgeoisie unified Germany with a strong capitalist planned economy, later imitated by the likes of Japan and more modernly China and Russia, among others.
There are two types of bourgeoisie: national bourgeoisies (which have their own interests on top) and comprador bourgeoisies (which are subordinated to foreign bourgeoisies and are useless to their nations, parasitic instead). The latter is why, in the 20th century, many revolutions sought to either fully replaced them by a radical-socialist intelligentsia (Russia first of all) or at least to subordinate them to a reform-socialist direction (Mexico but also many other systems across the developing world, some more successful than others).
Not all Capitalism is as in the USA, in fact it’s not even an Anglo concept to begin with (the word “capitalist” is Dutch as was the first corporation, the VoC, to which it largely referred, the word “Capitalism” is French and socialist). The USA is just an extreme example… which does however heavily subsidize certain business such as agriculture, TBTF banks or the MIC, and is now going into protectionist rampage at Empire level.
Oligarchy is the “rule of few” taken literally and shallowly only, however if you bother reading Plato or Aristotle, you’d know that it means “rule of the rich” and is indistinct from Plutocracy, however they oppossed it as alleged “lesser evil” to Democracy, which they hated. Democracy is “rule by the people” and was successfully applied in those days in many city states, most famously Athens. It did have some contradictions such as sexism and some slavery but it worked well enough, it was however far from democratic socialism, it was rather “capitalist”.
Aristocracy again is “rule of the best” only in a shallow and literal take, in Plato it is rule of the philosophers, which would be only implemented more than 2000 years later by the bolsheviks in Russia/USSR. That’s why I dislike Lenin: too aristocratic.
Anarchism is an opposite to the fraternal twins communism and fascism. And to their retarded sibling, nationalism.
You’re not a fan of nationalism after watching Ukraine and Gaza?
Ukraine and Gaza made me even less a fan of nationalism than I already was.
"CNN says an IDF soldier has suffered trauma
because he had to run over too many Palestinians
with his D9 armored bulldozer.
Says he can’t eat meat anymore
because he had to drive over so much human meat
(he actually called it “meat”)
and it reminds him of all the blood and guts
and bones and tissue that would come squirting out
when he ran over them.
Poor IDF soldier,
can’t even enjoy a Big Mac anymore,
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/10/23/mcgenocide/
There is a conversation to be had about how genocidal acts will crush a person involved who has bits of humanity left.
But not without first and fully recognizing and condemning genocidal acts which CNN intentionally avoids.
A really extraordinary moment occurred on the CNN “town hall” with Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday.
Asked by an audience member what she would do to end the slaughter of Palestinians by US-sponsored bombs, Harris delivered her usual canned answer about how “far too many” Palestinians have died and the need for a two-state solution, after which host Anderson Cooper asked a follow-up question.
“What do you say to voters who are thinking about supporting a third-party candidate, or staying on the couch, not voting at all because of this issue?” Cooper asked.
What followed was an absolutely jaw-dropping answer from the vice president. In essence she says that people who have strong feelings about the genocide in Gaza need to get over it and vote for her anyway if they want abortions and affordable groceries, because she supports the genocide and that’s not going to change.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/10/25/the-only-good-thing-about-this-nightmare-is-that-its-exposing-the-monsters-for-who-they-are/
Indeed this election is to decide if our militarism and genocide will be calm and competently led. Shrug.
By that logic A.H. was ok because he enabled the average German to purchase affordable motor vehicles.
“Don’t send in the clowns…Don’t bother they’re here.”
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/india-iran-ties-multidimensional-significance-of-modi-pezeshkian-meeting-3244586
MK Bhadrakumar
Everything from Washington is a PR ploy.
The Biden-Harris administration is giving cover to the Israeli Netanyahu government for its genocide in Gaza. And Netanyahu is taking full advantage of the last few weeks that Joe Biden is in the White House to violate as many international laws as he can.