Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Germany has become the latest country to resume its funding to Unrwa, the United Nations agency that provides essential relief services to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees. The decision came after an independent review found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas.
All eyes are now on the US, the agency’s largest supporter, to see if it will reinstate the US$350 million (£280 million) it typically provides each year. Meanwhile in the UK, MPs have written to foreign minister David Cameron, demanding that funding is restored “without delay”.
Reaction from the Israeli government has been hostile. In a statement, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman said that “this is not what a true and comprehensive investigation looks like”, adding “it is impossible to say where Unrwa ends and Hamas begins”. The Israeli government did not provide any further detail or evidence for this claim.
Israel alleged in January that 12 of Unrwa’s 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks. Shortly afterwards, the government went on to claim that hundreds of Unrwa employees are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, in breach of the UN’s neutrality principles.
In response, Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini immediately fired nine of the accused 12 (of the other three, two are dead and one is missing). Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, ordered an independent review into Unrwa’s neutrality practices.
That review was chaired by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna and carried out by staff of Nordic research bodies – the Swedish-based Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the Norwegian Chr. Michelsen Institute and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
The report makes good reading for Unrwa. Colonna and her team described its work as an “indispensable lifeline” for Palestinians and noted the agency’s robust neutrality framework.
Crucially, they also found that Israel has provided no evidence for its allegations that a significant number of Unrwa employees belong to militant groups.
Donor response
In response to the original Israeli allegations, 16 governments paused or suspended funding to the agency. This threw Unrwa’s work into an escalating crisis. With the agency having already suffered from a serious financial deficit for many years, management warned that it could run out of money entirely in a matter of weeks.
The withdrawal of core funds heightened the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where Unrwa provides essential services to 87% of the population, including food assistance to 1 million Palestinians. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food advised that the defunding made famine in Gaza inevitable.
With the Colonna report finding no evidence to support the allegations, serious questions are now raised about the speed with which so many states withdrew their funding. Many governments had already reinstated funding for Unrwa after Colonna’s interim report was released last month. These included Australia, Japan, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Canada.
Since the final report’s publication, EU humanitarian chief Janez Lenarcic has called on others to follow suit. But there are so far no signs that the US – Unrwa’s biggest donor for decades – will.
Congress recently passed a budget banning any financing of Unrwa for the next 12 months. This means there is little possibility of a policy reversal, even if the Biden administration was amenable to it. By the time that budget expires in March 2025, the next US presidential election may have returned the White House to Trump – who completely defunded the agency during his previous presidency.
The UK government has also so far resisted calls to reinstate funding to Unrwa, meaning there may be a limit to the Colonna report’s impact on this front.
Israel’s stance
The accusations levelled against Unrwa in January follow years of Israeli attacks on the agency. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, first called for Unrwa to be disbanded back in 2017 and has repeated his demand regularly since then.
Observing this, several observers, including Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, have concluded that the Israeli discourse on Unrwa is really driven by the political objective of undermining Palestinian refugee rights.
They may now point to further evidence of this in the Colonna report, which notes that although Unrwa has provided Israel with its staff lists annually since 2011, the government had never previously raised any concerns.
The report also throws further doubt on Netanyahu’s post-war plan for Gaza, which proposes that Unrwa be shut down and replaced by other international aid groups. It is unclear how this would work in practice, as Israel has provided no specifics.
What’s more, Colonna and her team found that Unrwa actually has “a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities” – raising questions about whether neutrality is really the issue here.
Amid the political discussions, it is crucial not to lose sight of what is at stake. A man-made famine is threatening lives across the Gaza Strip. More than 2 million Palestinians are struggling to survive after Israeli attacks have killed more than 34,000 people over the past six months.
With Unrwa providing a critical lifeline, any decision about its funding has serious repercussions – with the most vulnerable people in Gaza paying the ultimate price.
Anne Irfan, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies, UCL
Climate strikers march in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 19, 2024. (Photo: Albin Haglund via Greta Thunberg/X)
“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” one young activist said.
Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand “climate justice now.”
In Sweden, Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other demonstrators for a march in Stockholm; in Kenya, participants demanded that their government join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in the U.S., youth activists are kicking off more than 200 Earth Day protests directed at pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
“We’re gathered here to fight, once again, for climate justice,” Thunberg told Agence France-Presse at the Stockholm protest, which drew around 500 people. “It’s now been more than five and a half years that we’ve been doing the same thing, organizing big global strikes for the climate and gathering people, youths from the entire world.”
“I lost my home to climate change. Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”
The first global youth climate strike, which grew out of Thunberg’s Fridays for Future school strikes, took place on March 15, 2019. Since then, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, with 2023 blowing past the record for hottest year. Yet, according to Climate Action Tracker, no country has policies in place that are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” Karla Alfaro Gripe, an 18-year-old participant at the Stockholm march, told AFP.
The global strikes are taking place under the umbrella of Friday’s for Future, which has three main demands: 1. limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, 2. ensure climate justice and equity, and 3. listen to the most accurate, up-to-date science.
“Fight with us for a world worth living in,” the group wrote on their website, next to a link inviting visitors to find actions in their countries.
Participants shared videos and images of their actions on social media.
In Asia, Save Future Bangladesh founder Nayon Sorkar posted a video from the Meghna River on Bangladesh’s Bola Island, where erosion destroyed his family’s home when he was three years old.
“I lost my home to climate change,” Sorkar wrote. “Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”
“Young climate activists in Bandarban demand a shift to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels,” said Sajjad Hossain, the divisional coordinator for Youthnet for Climate Justice Bangladesh. “We voiced urgency for sustainable energy strategies and climate justice. Let’s hold governments accountable for a just transition!”
In Kenya, young people struck specifically to demand that the government sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“As a member of the Lake Victoria community, the importance of the treaty in our climate strikes cannot be overstated,” Rahmina Paullette, founder of Kisumu Environmental Champions and a coordinator for Fridays for Future Africa, said in a statement. “By advocating for its implementation, we address the triple threat of climate change, plastic pollution, and environmental injustice facing our nation.”
“Halting fossil fuel expansion not only safeguards crucial ecosystems but also combats the unjust impacts of environmental degradation, ensuring a more equitable and sustainable future for our community and the wider Kenyan society,” Paullette said.
— Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (@fossiltreaty) April 19, 2024
In the U.S., Fridays for Future NYC planned for what they expected to be the largest New York City climate protest since September 2023’s March to End Fossil Fuels. The action will begin at Foley Square at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, at which point more than 1,000 students and organizers are expected to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to rally in front of Borough Hall.
The strike “is part of a national escalation of youth-led actions in more than 200 cities and college campuses around the country, all calling on President Biden to listen to our generation and young voters, stop expanding fossil fuels, and declare a climate emergency that meaningfully addresses fossil fuels, creating millions of good paying union jobs, and preparing us for climate disasters in the process,” Fridays for Future NYC said in a statement.
The coalition behind the climate emergency drive, which also includes the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future USA, and Campus Climate Network, got encouraging news on Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that the White House had reopened internal discussions into potentially declaring a climate emergency.
“We’re staring down another summer of floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat,” Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement. “Biden must do what right Republicans in Congress are unwilling to do: Stand up to oil and gas CEOs, create green union jobs, and prepare us for climate disasters. Biden must declare a climate emergency and use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and prepare our communities to weather the storm. If Biden wants to be taken seriously by young people, he needs to deliver on climate change.”
The coalition is planning events leading up to Monday including dozens of Earth Day teach-ins beginning Friday to encourage members of Congress to pressure Biden on a climate emergency and Reclaim Earth Day mobilizations on more than 100 college and university campuses to demand that schools divest from and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.
Emboldened by the overturning of Roe vs Wade, US anti-abortion groups have the UK in their sights | Future Publishing/GettyImages / Pexels / Composition by James Battershill
A right-wing political and media ecosystem pushing a US-style anti-abortion agenda is gaining traction in the UK
Conservative MPs, hard-right media personalities, and US-backed Christian anti-abortion charities are working to spread their anti-abortion agenda ahead of a parliamentary debate on legislation that would stop women being imprisoned for terminating a pregnancy after 24 weeks.
Emboldened by their success in the United States with the Dobbs decision – the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to safe and legal abortion in the US – groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Edmund Burke Foundation are now seeking to rollback progress on reproductive rights around the world.
Their campaigns in the UK are based on strategies honed and perfected in the US. They use language shaped over decades to seed anti-abortion falsehoods that begin on social media before becoming talking points on conservative-friendly TV stations modelled on right-wing US news channels and far-right podcasts. Crucially, those behind the campaigns also invest millions of dollars to push their agenda in the UK.
“As if the US anti-abortion movement didn’t already have sufficient momentum, the Dobbs’ decision turbo-charged their motivation and reach,” Gillian Kane, the director of policy and advocacy research at pro-abortion non-governmental organisation Ipas, told openDemocracy.
“There are veteran organisations continuing their line of work, but also traditionally domestic-focused groups… see an opportunity to dip their toes in these crowded international waters.”
In the UK, Labour MP Stella Creasy being viciously attacked on social media for backing an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would end criminal sanctions for late-term abortions. These attacks were not started by a far-right activist or even an anti-abortion campaigner – but by her fellow MP Neil O’Brien, a former junior health minister in the Conservative Party-led government.
O’Brien claimed Creasy was “arguing for people to be able to kill a baby before the day it is due to be born”, branding the amendment “an incredibly extreme and bad proposal”. Contrary to his allegation, the legislation would not increase the 24-week limit in which abortions must be carried out. Rather, it would mean women who self-administer late-term abortions will not be imprisoned, after Carla Foster, a mother-of-three from Staffordshire, was jailed last year for illegally procuring her own abortion at around 33 weeks pregnant.
We shouldn’t send women to prison for decisions they make about their own bodiesLouise McCudden, MSI Reproductive Choices
“On principle, we shouldn’t send women to prison for decisions they make about their own bodies,” said Louise McCudden, the UK head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, an NGO providing contraception and safe abortion services. “However, the solution has to be about more than prison and sentencing. We need to remove women who end their own pregnancies from criminal law altogether. That can be done without making any changes to the way abortion care is regulated or provided.”
O’Brien’s message was provably wrong – but it was still shared by five of his Conservative colleagues. Soon, hard-right broadcasters began making similarly incendiary posts about the amendment, with GB News’ Darren Grimes and TalkTV’s Isabel Oakeshott branding Creasy’s proposal “infanticide” and “butchery” respectively.
On social media, posts targeting Creasy started to quote far-right conspiracy theories and descended into misogyny and transphobia. It is no coincidence that such rhetoric directly echoes the far-right propaganda that led the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade – openDemocracy has found that many of those making false claims about the amendment have links to the US anti-abortion movement, which sees an opportunity to make reproductive rights a new frontline of the UK’s culture wars.
“Abortion isn’t divisive in this country like it is in the US,” said McCudden “Ninety percent of people [in Britain] are pro-choice, and many people are frankly shocked to discover that abortion sits within criminal law at all. That said, there’s a small but very vocal minority which does seem to be getting more aggressive.
“There has been a worrying trend towards greater policing of women’s reproductive choices, with women’s bodies implicitly treated as national resource, especially in policy debates about the ageing population.”
Funded by US cash
The campaign against the UK amendment is reminiscent of the ‘partial-birth abortion’ propaganda successfully deployed by the US-anti-abortion movement since the mid-1990s.
The term, which refers to late-stage abortions, is designed to make people think not of a fetus but “of a young child”, as conservative Robert Arnakis explained in 2017 at an event hosted by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ think tank, Family Research Council.
Such is its effectiveness, according to the Family Research Council’s president, Tony Perkins, that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win can be traced back to the moment he referred to “partial birth abortions” during a candidate debate in Las Vegas.
So-called ‘partial birth abortions’ had been banned nationwide in the US by 2003. When that ban was challenged by Planned Parenthood in 2007, a Christian legal charity successfully argued it was constitutional all the way up to the Supreme Court. That charity was Alliance Defending Freedom, which would go on to fund the lawyer who won a fight to implement an abortion ban in Texas in 2021 and was influential in the Dobbs ruling that revoked Roe vs Wade.
But the ADF, which was founded in 1993, never intended to limit its influence over sexual and reproductive rights to the US. It has spent more than $31m on foreign activities since 2015, of which $27m has gone to Europe.
The charity is now splashing more cash in the region than ever before; in 2015, its European spend was $1.4m – by 2022 that had risen to $5.2m. While US organisations must declare who they fund at home, for foreign spending they only need to name the region their money is going to. This means it is impossible to parse the details of where exactly ADF’s dollars flow overseas – though tax returns reveal much of it goes to its own international branches.
The UK’s ADF branch, for example, has received more than £2m from its parent company since its first tax return in 2017. This has been spent on legal support for anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ protesters and societies, as well as on growing its political influence in the UK – more than doubling its expenditure from £370,000 in 2018 to £770,000 today.
ADF UK’s communications lead, Lois McLatchie-Miller, was among those amplifying opposition to Creasy’s amendment. The day after she tweeted Creasy’s plans were “barbaric”, she appeared on the far-right podcast Hearts of Oak, which claims to “bridge the transatlantic and cultural gap between the UK and the USA” and has platformed conspiracist voices.
British anti-abortion groups have also increased their spending and activity in recent years. Right to Life UK, an anti-abortion charity with close ties to numerous UK MPs, spent £705,000 last year, up from £200,000 five years earlier. And the extremist anti-abortion group Centre for Bio-Ethical Research UK – which in 2019 erected a billboard featuring graphic abortion imagery outside Creasy’s office – is now targeting her constituency with leaflets and “education displays”. Although the group’s small size means it does not have to report full accounts, its staff numbers have risen from four in 2017 to 12 today, suggesting an uptick in its spending.
US campaigns, UK MPs
Money alone won’t help global anti-abortion actors to push their agenda in the UK. As the posts on X reveal, they are being aided and legitimised by Conservative Party politicians, media channels such as GB News, and events such as the annual National Conservatism Conference.
In 2019, ADF International paid for flights and other travel expenses for anti-abortion MP Fiona Bruce to attend its youth conference – Areté Academy – in Vienna. The same year, she attempted to ban late-term abortions for specific fetal anomalies. Academy alumni have gone on to work at Bruce’s legal firm, and in September 2023, she took another donation to cover expenses from ADF International, this time worth £1,737.92.
In Westminster, ADF UK also “engages with the members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief”. It featured alongside a host of anti-abortion and pro-Brexit MPs – including then-home secretary Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates – on the line-up of last year’s National Conservatism Conference, which was held in London.
NatCon, as the conference is more commonly known, is run by the Washington DC-based Edmund Burke Foundation. The 2024 conference – which took place in Brussels this week – was marred by controversies after police shut down the event during a speech by British hard-right politician Nigel Farage, following an order from a local mayor who feared a threat to public order. A court later ruled the event could resume and the ADF – which was again present at the conference – is backing a legal challenge against the mayor’s order.
On the bill for this year’s event were Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and French presidential hopeful Eric Zemmour, as well as British politicians including Braverman and Cates. The latter made a name for herself at the 2023 event, when she echoed the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, saying: “There is one critical outcome that liberal individualism had failed to deliver and that is babies.” The white nationalist theory accuses Black and Brown migrants of ‘colonising’ white Europeans and blames white women’s “selfish individualism” for low birth rates.
Cates is now part of a number of MPs pushing anti-gender narratives, including attacks on trans rights, LGBTQ+ inclusive education, and abortion. Alongside Kruger, she is a co-chair of the New Conservatives, a group of Tory MPs that says it is fighting “a dangerous new culture that despises national sentiment…, welcomes mass migration, denigrates our nation’s history, and pursues a radical agenda on sex and gender which is directly harmful to children”.
The Legatum Institute – a British think tank that openDemocracy previously revealed receives funding from the foundation of US billionaire Charles Koch, who donates to an array of anti-abortion causes – gave £50,000 to the New Conservatives in December 2023.
Legatum is also behind the recently launched ARC Forum, where Cates and Kruger sit on the advisory board, and is a co-owner of GB News, a right-wing news channel that offers a platform to commentators promoting anti-gender disinformation and anti-trans and anti-drag conspiracies.
While GB News and its presenters and guests maintain a veneer of respectability, the anti-abortion disinformation they amplify is picked up by far-right social media accounts that espouse conspiracies such as the Great Replacement.
One such post attacked Creasy’s amendment and suggested that white women should be banned from having abortions, while black women should be encouraged to have them. Another, which came in reply to a post by Grimes warned the plan would mean “the native birth rate will further decline”.
Despite the growing volume of attacks, and the increased spending on attempts to reverse abortion rights, the UK has seen progress in liberalising reproductive healthcare in recent years. Parliament voted to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland in 2019, and women have been able to access telemedicine for abortion since the pandemic. MPs also voted to introduce buffer zones around clinics, although the law has yet to be implemented.
But such success is often met with increased backlash. While the attacks on Creasy’s amendments seem disparate, our analysis shows they are connected by a global anti-abortion movement funded by hard-right interests determined to shout louder and spend more to roll back women’s rights in the UK. Such forces have already succeeded in making trans rights part of their culture war. They want abortion to be next.
openDemocracy approached ADF UK, O’Brien, Cates, Bruce, Clarke-Smith, Grimes and the Legatum Institute for comment, including clarification on what they believe the sanction should be for women who terminate their pregnancy after 24 weeks. We received no reply.
The Biden administration’s declaration of ‘ironclad support’ for Israel threatens to drive a wedge between the president and progressive voters, a potential electoral gift for Trump. In this photo, a woman walks by an election campaign billboard in Tel Aviv for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party that shows the Israeli leader with Donald Trump, Sept 15, 2019. Hebrew on billboard reads: ‘Netanyahu, in another league.’ | Oded Balilty / AP
President Joe Biden declared Saturday that U.S. support for Israel is “ironclad” as more than 300 slow-moving Iranian drones and missiles meandered across the sky toward Israeli military installations. With assistance from the U.S., Britain, France, and Jordan, it’s estimated that 99% of the weapons were destroyed in the air before reaching their targets. There were zero people killed.
As Biden’s declaration was being reported, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken with his Israeli counterpart “and made clear that Israel could count on full U.S. support.”
On television, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu peddled the image of a besieged Israel fighting for its life. Wearing a stern face, he said, “We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination.”
Of course, once the cameras were off, the Israeli leader was no doubt smiling. That’s because the pledges from Biden and Austin guaranteed that U.S. weapons will keep flowing his way and that Western leaders’ criticism of his genocidal war in Gaza—which has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians—will be tamped down.
It wasn’t just Netanyahu celebrating this weekend, though. Here in the U.S., ex-President Donald Trump and his allies were also beaming. The militaristic neocons and religious extremists that make up different wings of the Republican coalition were united in cheering for a bigger war and blaming Biden for disaster.
They sense a moment of opportunity to divide anti-MAGA forces, and the policy being pursued by the White House is unfortunately aiding them in their effort. All these developments combine to make the demand for an immediate arms embargo on Israel all the more urgent.
Settler rampage: A Palestinian woman attacked by illegal Israeli settlers arrives at the Palestine Medical Complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, April 12, 2024. While the world was consumed with the Iranian attack on Israel, dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village, killing Palestinians and destroying property. In Gaza, meanwhile, the genocidal destruction also continued unabated. | Nasser Nasser / AP
Netanyahu’s partial victory
The U.S. response to the Iranian attack was a partial victory for Netanyahu.
The weekend assault by Tehran was the result of Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. That last part is worth stating again—the Iranian attack this weekend was not some unprovoked incident; it was retaliation for an Israeli action that killed 13 people at an Iranian diplomatic outpost two weeks ago.
If one were only getting their news from the mainstream corporate media in the U.S. or listening to the words of many political leaders in Washington, they would probably never know that it was Israel that had provoked Iran.
That doesn’t make the latter part of some anti-imperialist alliance nor necessarily a friend of the Palestinians, but it is a context that is inconvenient for the narrative of an innocent Israel alone against aggressive neighbors.
At any rate, Netanyahu managed to prompt Iran to elevate the war danger. That will get him his weapons and temporarily hush the increasingly critical voices of allies skeptical of his execution of the war in Gaza. But the Iran provocation was not quite the complete win he’d hoped for.
The bigger goal was to escalate the war against Gaza into a wider regional war that would include direct U.S. involvement in the fighting. He wants to make U.S. imperialism not just his accomplice but his direct partner in waging war in the Middle East.
Why? The reasons are many.
So far, the Gaza genocide is not achieving many of its declared aims. Hamas has not been smashed. The hostages have not been freed. Gaza has been destroyed and tens of thousands have been killed, but the plan to completely eradicate the Palestinian presence there hasn’t materialized. That’s the case thanks to both Palestinian resistance and the refusal of Israel’s neighboring states to transform themselves into permanent refugee camps.
Meanwhile, the war is increasingly unpopular at home, and hundreds of thousands are demanding elections in Israel—elections which would certainly result in Netanyahu’s removal from office and the resumption of a long-delayed corruption trial that could send him to prison.
Clearly, he needs and wants this war to drag on as long as possible and to become as big and involve as many countries as possible, particularly one country—the United States.
To Netanyahu’s disappointment, however, Biden told him to consider the shootdown of all the Iranian missiles “a win” and close the book for now: Don’t expect U.S. help in any follow-up attacks on Iran.
The coalition for war
But there are other forces coalescing to give Israel the bigger war it wants.
John Bolton—former Trump cabinet member and one of the architects of the U.S. war in Iraq—is rallying neocons in the U.S. to squeeze Biden. Ever since President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of the “Axis of Evil” over 20 years ago, Bolton and his allies have been angling for a fight with that country.
In January this year, he was already telegraphing the message that the U.S. has “no option but to attack Iran.” This weekend, he said “passivity…would be a big mistake” and said Biden was “an embarrassment” for urging Israel not to attack Iran (again).
The Evangelical Christian leaders who command major swathes of the Trump MAGA coalition, meanwhile, are revving up their followers for war, as well.
Televangelist Pastor John Hagee, founder of the lobbyist group Christians United for Israel, characterized the Iranian attack as the fulfillment of prophecy, the beginning of the “Gog and Magog war” predicted in the Bible. Demonizing those who advocate a ceasefire in Gaza, Hagee said on Sunday that “the word de-escalate is music to the ears of Hamas and Iran.”
He and other pro-war Christian leaders will be going to Congress “like a bulldozer” in the coming days, he said, ordering lawmakers to “bless Israel” with more U.S. taxpayer-funded weaponry. In the meantime, he urged the faithful to bless the ministry run by him and his son with their hard-earned money.
Then, turning to the 2024 U.S. elections, Hagee indirectly endorsed Donald Trump when he called the Iranian attack on Israel “a tribute to the weak and pathetic leadership of Joe Biden.”
Fascist threat, imperialist strategy
Although Hagee’s remarks are often dismissed as the ravings of a conman cult leader, he illuminates the class and democratic contradictions that define U.S. capitalism and an electoral contest that is forcing voters to choose between two varieties of imperialism.
The absurdity of the moment was perhaps best illustrated when the red-hatted legions at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday broke into chants of “Genocide Joe,” and their leader responded, “They’re not wrong!”
Trump paired his apparent acknowledgement that Israel was committing genocide with U.S. complicity with a “God bless Israel” platitude and an affirmation that the Iranian attack wouldn’t have happened if he was president.
Follow the logic (if there is such a thing with Trump), and you get a pledge that he will do an even better job at assisting in genocide and supporting the Israeli military if he is re-elected.
An open fascist who has already tried to overthrow the U.S. government before and is working tirelessly with Republican officials across the country to destroy democracy is openly and cynically attempting to drive a wedge between the Democratic nominee and anti-war voters with a pro-war message.
Does Trump actually expect to win the votes of many pro-Palestinian voters? No, most of them wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he knows it. The goal is to demobilize progressive voters and stoke discontent toward Biden. Trump’s team has done its calculations, and it knows that getting Democratic-leaning voters to stay home in a few key states could be enough for him to win. And the threat extends down-ballot, because it’s not just Biden who’d be in trouble but other progressive candidates running on the Democratic ticket at the state and local levels, as well.
Unfortunately, the imperialist strategy being pursued by the Biden administration is making Trump’s task easier. The unity that’s needed to block fascism at the polls in November is jeopardized every time the president approves another weapons shipment to Israel or reaffirms his “ironclad” support of the government in Tel Aviv.
Ceasefire alone cannot be the demand of the peace movement in our country. A total and complete arms embargo on Israel is an absolute necessity—not just for saving the lives of the Palestinian people and preventing a wider Middle East war, but for saving U.S. democracy from a fascist takeover.
Many organizations and leaders are already making that call, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which on Sunday issued yet another call for the U.S. to end all military funding and weapons sales.
Rep. Cori Bush again reiterated the demand she and other lawmakers have made for an end to the “shameful and unconditional” arming of the Israeli government as it commits war crimes. “The people of our country do not want war,” she said.
There are a million reasons to vote against Trump in November, and almost everyone who is a part of or connected to the mass labor, anti-war, African-American, Latino, immigrant rights, LGBTQ, and other democratic movements know them by heart. But the Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign cannot simply rely on the bogeyman of Trump to motivate voters. The administration’s Gaza policy must change.
Every dollar for Israel’s war is another crack in the anti-MAGA coalition that’s needed to stop fascism in November.
As with all news-analytical and op-ed articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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A crowd of starving Palestinians, including children, waits to receive food distributed by charity organizations amid Israel’s blockade at the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has proven deadly for children in Gaza.”
The Israeli government is starving children to death in the Gaza Strip with its deliberate and systematic obstruction of food aid, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday, citing firsthand accounts from doctors and families in the besieged enclave.
At least 32 people, including 28 children, have died of malnutrition and dehydration so far in northern Gaza, which is facing famine conditions due to Israel’s illegal blockade.
HRW’s new report builds on its December assessment that Israel was “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” in Gaza, with disastrous consequences for the territory’s civilian population.
“The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has proven deadly for children in Gaza,” said Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director. “Israel needs to end this war crime, stop this suffering, and allow humanitarian aid to reach all of Gaza unhindered.”
For its new report, HRW interviewed doctors who have treated malnourished patients and family members of children who have starved to death in recent weeks. The group also reviewed photographs and video footage showing emaciated children who have died of malnutrition.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of the pediatrics unit of a northern Gaza hospital targeted by Israeli forces, said that 26 children in his facility alone have died from starvation-related health complications. Safiya told HRW that at least 16 of the children were under five months old, and one of them was just two days old.
The mother, he said, “had no milk to give him.”
“Israel’s allies like the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany need to press for full-throttle aid delivery by immediately suspending their arms transfers.”
Already badly hindered by Israel’s siege, aid deliveries to Gaza have been further disrupted by Israeli attacks on humanitarian workers and convoys. Israeli forces’ killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers last week led several aid groups to suspend their operations in Gaza.
While Israel agreed in the wake of the deadly attack—and in the face of massive international pressure—to reopen a key border crossing in northern Gaza, aid groups say far more is needed to prevent mass starvation.
“Governments outraged by the Israeli government starving civilians in Gaza should not be looking for band-aid solutions to this humanitarian crisis,” Shakir said Tuesday. “Israel’s announcement that it will increase aid shows that outside pressure works. Israel’s allies like the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany need to press for full-throttle aid delivery by immediately suspending their arms transfers.”
Israel’s six-month war on Gaza has been catastrophic for the territory’s children. According to one recent analysis, over 2% of Gaza’s child population—nearly 26,000 kids—has been killed or wounded during the assault, with at least 1,000 children losing one or both of their legs.
The war has also taken a devastating psychological toll on Gaza’s kids, many of whom have been displaced repeatedly and seen family members maimed or killed by Israeli bombs.
“The emotional distress of dodging bombs and bullets, losing loved ones, being forced to flee through streets littered with debris and corpses, and waking up every morning not knowing if they will be able to eat has also left parents and caregivers increasingly unable to cope,” Save the Children said last month.
Speaking to HRW, the father of newborn twin girls said that one of his babies died of malnutrition at northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital eight days after she was born.
“He said that he struggled to feed his family prior to the girls’ birth, but that they only had bread to eat, without meat or protein,” the human rights organization noted in its new report. “He said that after the twins’ birth, his wife could not produce milk to breastfeed the girls and that store-bought milk was scarce.”
One mother of a 6-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis told HRW that “because of the Israeli blockade, she struggled to obtain the necessary medication and provide adequate nourishment.”
“By mid-January, Fadi’s health had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer walk, prompting his hospitalization,” HRW said. Late last month, the boy was evacuated from Kamal Adwan Hospital to receive treatment at a facility in Cairo.
Lama Fakih, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director, said Tuesday that Israeli officials upholding the blockade that is starving children in Gaza “are committing war crimes.”
“Governments should impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against responsible officials,” said Fakih.
But the U.S., Israel’s top ally and arms supplier, is refusing to take concrete action even as damning evidence of Israeli war crimes mounts.
Asked during a Monday press briefing “how many Palestinian citizens should be killed, whether by fire or starvation, so you can seriously intervene,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “we do not want to see a single Palestinian killed.”
“And that is why we have made clear that Israel needs to do more to improve its deconfliction and coordination measures,” Miller said, brushing off the idea of imposing strict conditions on U.S. military aid. The Biden administration is currently pressing Congress to sign off on an $18 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel.
Earlier in Monday’s briefing, Miller said the U.S. has “not yet at this time concluded that Israel has violated international humanitarian law.”
