US troops conduct area reconnaissance in Syria (Photo: Spc. Jensen Guillory)
The country approved plans to widen the scope of the regional war originating in Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Following an attack by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq against US foreign outpost “Tower 22”, which killed three US soldiers stationed near the Syria-Jordan border, the United States has approved plans for a multi-day strike against Iraq and Syria.
The death of three US troops, the first casualties among US forces in a widening conflict in West Asia, drew attention to the hundreds of US military bases and outposts spread throughout the world.
In confirming responsibility for the attack, an Islamic Resistance official declared, “If the United States continues to support ‘israel,’ there will be an escalation.” and that “All American interests in the region are legitimate targets.”
The United States is using the strikes as a way to continue to blame Iran for the wider resistance in West Asia. The strikes will purportedly be against “Iranian targets.” Resistance organizations such as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq are frequently accused of being Iranian “proxies” by US officials and in the mainstream press.
Contrary to seeking peace for the hundreds of thousands being slaughtered in Gaza, the United States and the Western world have continually chased escalation. Earlier in January, the US and the UK began an airstrike campaign against Yemen, in retaliation against the nation’s casualty-free blockade of the Red Sea, which Yemeni forces claim to be carrying out in solidarity in Gaza. The only deaths surrounding the blockade have been suffered by Yemenis, and have been as a result of the US and UK’s bombing campaign.
The United States and several Western nations have also directly worsened the plight of Gazans by cutting all their funding to the UNRWA, due to dubious accusations made by Israel that some UNRWA were involved in the October 7 operation.
A young boy watches as people pray during a funeral service for 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoumi at the Mosque Foundation on October 16, 2023 in Bridgeview, Illinois. (Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“The way to stop the hate is to end the apartheid, occupation, and genocide occurring in Palestine,” said one CAIR leader.
Nearly four months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States on Monday highlighted that the U.S. saw a dramatic rise in Islamophobic hate during the final three months of 2023.
In line with data released last month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealed that it received 3,578 complaints from October through December—a 178% jump from a similar three-month period the previous year.
The highest reported categories last quarter were employment discrimination (19%), hate crimes and incidents (13%), and education discrimination (13%), according to CAIR, which plans to release a full analysis and dataset in the months ahead.
Victims of high-profile incidents have included six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was stabbed to death in Illinois; three university students shot and wounded in Vermont; and a New York City food cart vendor harassed by a former U.S. State Department official.
“Despite this disturbing wave of bias targeting the Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian communities, we are witnessing an impressive resilience in the face of bigotry.”
“Despite this disturbing wave of bias targeting the Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian communities, we are witnessing an impressive resilience in the face of bigotry,” said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad in a statement.
CAIR’s Monday release comes as the death toll in Gaza has topped 26,600 people—including at least 11,500 children—with over 65,300 others injured and thousands more missing. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are displaced and hungry.
Despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday ordering Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocide in Gaza, the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the besieged enclave continues, and fears of a wider regional war keep mounting.
The ICJ’s initial ruling last week also emboldened supporters of a cease-fire, who have repeatedly taken to the streets around the world since Israel launched its current military campaign against Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7.
“In the face of relentless hate and bogus smears, American Muslims, Arabs, and a broad coalition of Jewish, Christian, African American, Asian Americans, and others continue calling for justice for Palestine,” CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said Monday. “This coalition knows the way to stop the hate is to end the apartheid, occupation, and genocide occurring in Palestine.”
In the last 3 months of 2023, we received 3,578 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias. That's a 178% increase over previous year. Today at 1 p.m. ET, we plant to host a livestream to discuss and explain this data and its significance.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, since Israel declared war, there has also been a significant rise in antisemitism in the United States and worldwide—though reliable figures have been hard to come by, as some individuals and groups conflate protests against the war or criticism of the right-wing Israeli government with hostility toward Jews.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the early weeks of the war that the Department of Justice was monitoring the increase in threats against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities nationwide and the Department of Homeland Security last month released resources to help houses of worship and faith-based groups enhance their security.
However, the United States also gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and since October 7, U.S. President Joe Biden has sought a new $14.3 billion package while also bypassing Congress to arm Israeli forces—degrading many Arab and Muslim Americans’ trust in the Democrat, who is seeking reelection in November.
As a federal court on Friday held a hearing for a case accusing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of complicity in genocide, some local leaders in Michigan—a key swing state with the nation’s biggest Arab American population—refused to meet with a delegation from the president’s campaign.
Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, told CNN on Saturday: “There is no possibility of repair while he is supporting an act of genocide. So, there is no reason to have communication.”
dizzy: I’ve been considering Islamaphobia recently. The term doesn’t do it justice – it’s more of a relentless hatred as the title of this article suggests than a fear or similar. It appears to be a form of Neo-Fascism with Muslims as the scapegoat with the classic German Fascist concept of untermensch applied to them.
Opposition to or criticism of Zionism is not anti-semitism of course, they are obviously and clearly distinct. The Zionist UK Labour Party claims that they are equal.
President Joe Biden speaks at South Carolina’s First in the Nation dinner at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., January 27, 2024
THE killing of three US soldiers along the Jordan-Syria border is inseparable from the war in Gaza.
It risks a spiralling Middle East war, a risk heightened by the reflex blaming of Iran and the clamour for revenge driven by hawkish US politicians in an election year.
Attacks on US forces will always be presented in mass media as unprovoked. British politicians too will depict them as acts of illegal terrorism which need to be punished to shore up the “international rules-based order.”
We should therefore be clear: US troops would not be under attack in the Middle East if they were not stationed in the Middle East, often against the wishes of the host countries.
…
Stationing your troops in a country against its wishes is not upholding an “international rules-based order” — it is an act of contempt for international law.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) walks through the Senate subway after a vote in the U.S. Capitol on January 9, 2024. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
“After years of working to block and undermine diplomatic alternatives, these people may be closer than ever to realizing their dream of war with Iran.”
Warhawks in the United States wasted no time agitating for direct military conflict with Iran after a drone attack on a military base just inside Jordan’s border with Syria on Sunday killed three American troops and injured dozens more.
Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress called on U.S. President Joe Biden to quickly respond with strikes inside Iran, which denied any connection to Sunday’s attack.
“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a longtime supporter of war with Iran. “Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) called Iran “an existential threat to the U.S. and our allies in the region” and said Tehran “must be held accountable for the murder of three U.S. soldiers.”
United Against Nuclear Iran, a group chaired by former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also demanded “a decisive U.S. military response against targets inside Iran.”
“The U.S. should attack and destroy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military and intelligence targets in Iran, as well as missile and drone bases where the Iranian regime’s proxies are trained,” the group said.
“Those who have consistently counseled only violence to address the crisis unleashed on October 7 should be ashamed of the disastrous outcomes they have so far reaped.”
Biden claimed in a statement Sunday that “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” were responsible for Sunday’s drone attack, but acknowledged that the U.S. is “still gathering the facts.”
“Have no doubt—we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing,” the president said.
U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East have faced increasingly frequent attacks since Israel launched its large-scale war on the Gaza Strip following the deadly Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7. Sunday marked the first time since October that American troops have been killed in a Middle East attack.
The Biden administration has blamed the attacks on Iran-aligned militias and responded with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, intensifying concerns that the U.S. is fueling a regionwide conflict. The administration has also launched a series of unauthorized strikes in Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Despite the above, the Pentagon continues to insist that the U.S. is “not at war in the Middle East.”
Contrary to the growing calls for a military response to attacks on U.S. troops, analysts and progressive lawmakers have argued that the only way to halt the escalating violence in the region is to secure a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces armed by the U.S. have killed more than 26,000 people in less than four months. The Biden administration has repeatedly stonewalled international efforts to secure a cease-fire.
“I am heartbroken by the loss of the servicemembers killed in Jordan,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a U.S. Senate candidate, wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “Like I feared, the violence is spiraling out of control. President Biden must demand a cease-fire in Gaza now.”
“This is what the U.S. has been doing for literally decades in this region, responding to violence with more violence…and it has not worked,” @mattduss responds to growing calls from the GOP to attack Iran after militia groups linked to the country killed U.S. troops in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/HT3djtxDmq
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, warned in a statement Sunday that “the U.S. and Iran are now closer to the brink of being pulled into a full-blown regional war by the vortex of violence that was unleashed by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th and Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
“Those who have consistently counseled only violence to address the crisis unleashed on October 7 should be ashamed of the disastrous outcomes they have so far reaped,” said Abdi. “We are disgusted by calls for more escalation from opportunists like Senators Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, and John Cornyn who are urging yet again for the U.S. to directly attack Iran. After years of working to block and undermine diplomatic alternatives, these people may be closer than ever to realizing their dream of war with Iran.”
“President Biden must show leadership and recognize that there is no military solution to this crisis that has only been expanded and prolonged by military escalation and a dearth of diplomacy,” he continued. “The president must calibrate his response so as not to condemn the U.S. and region to an intractable war and instead work to end this conflict. The most impactful thing Biden can do to prevent further deaths across the region and prevent a full-blown war is to secure an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Palestine.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, similarly argued that “to truly protect our troops and avoid both war and more needless American deaths, Biden should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and Syria and press Israel for a cease-fire, since its slaughter in Gaza is fueling four fronts that put the U.S. at risk.”
“There will be understandable calls for revenge and counterstrikes,” Parsi said. “Biden will almost certainly go down that path. Know that this is how America gets dragged into endless war. Retaliations, which in the moment may feel justified by the unacceptable attacks of these militias, put us on a path toward a war that doesn’t serve our interests and that we cannot afford—one whose victory we cannot define and whose exit we cannot envision.”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. on January 18, 2024. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
If President Biden demanded an end to the bombardment of Gaza, it would stop. But he’s hasn’t demanded and the bombing and death and destruction continues.
In 1948, the newly-formed United Nations marked the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Genocide Convention was a response to WWII’s Holocaust, when six million European Jews where murdered by Nazi Germany. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, coined the term “genocide” during the war, as he developed legal arguments for prosecuting war criminals, leading to the Nuremberg Trials.
1948 was also the year Israel was founded. While many celebrated Israel as a safe refuge for the world’s Jews after the Holocaust, Palestinians call that period the ‘Nakba,’ Arabic for ‘catastrophe.’ Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages, their property confiscated, and 15,000 were killed.
1948 was also when the white minority in South Africa imposed apartheid on the Black majority, creating an oppressive system of segregation that lasted close to half a century.
In the intervening 75 years, despite the Genocide Convention, genocides have still occurred – and too few perpetrators of genocide have faced prosecution. Last week, the eyes of the world were on the Hague, as South Africa brought a case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The ICJ, also referred to as the “World Court,” convened on January 11th, first hearing South Africa’s case, followed the next day by Israel’s defense. South African lawyer Adila Hassim opened, saying,
“For the past 96 days, Israel has subjected Gaza to what has been described as one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare. Palestinians in Gaza are being killed by Israeli weaponry and bombs from air, land and sea. They are also at immediate risk of death by starvation, dehydration and disease as a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the destruction of Palestinian towns, the insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the impossibility of distributing this limited aid while bombs fall. This conduct renders essentials to life unobtainable.”
Another of South Africa’s legal team, Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, said,
“On average, 247 Palestinians are being killed and are at risk of being killed each day, many of them literally blown to pieces. They include 48 mothers each day. Two every hour. And over 117 children each day, leading Unicef to call Israel’s actions a war on children. Entire multigenerational families would be obliterated. And yet, more Palestinian children would become WCNSF. Wounded Child, No Surviving Family, the terrible new acronym born out of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian population in Gaza.”
Israel said its attack on Gaza was in self-defense, directed at Hamas’ military infrastructure, following its October 7th attack on Israel, in which over 1,000 people were killed and over 200 taken hostage.
Renowned Jewish Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said on the Democracy Now! news hour, “Does this give us Israelis the right to do anything we want after the 7th forever, without any limits, no legal limits, no moral limits? We can just go and kill and destroy as much as we wish? That’s the main question right now.”
Levy serves on the editorial board of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He recently wrote a column headlined, “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza, Then What Is It?” In it, he writes, “Let us assume that Israel’s position at The Hague is right and just and Israel committed no genocide or anything close to it. So what is this? What do you call the mass killing, which continues even as these lines are being written, without discrimination, without restraint, on a scale that is difficult to imagine?”
Any measures ordered by the ICJ would have to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council, where the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally and weapons provider, regularly wields its veto to protect Israel.
The United States is quick to accuse others of genocide, from Serbia in the 1990s, to Burma in the last decade for its atrocities against its Rohingya minority, to the mass imprisonment of Uyghurs in China, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The United States even acknowledged Turkey’s 1915 genocide against Armenians, albeit in 2021, more than 100 years late.
Yet, President Biden, in a statement marking the 100th day anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, failed to even mention the more than 24,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, 70% of whom were women and children. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Davos, Switzerland said the situation is “gutwrenching” and asked “but what can be done?”
If President Biden demanded an end to the bombardment of Gaza, it would stop. Now is the time to heed the global calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
