Nuclear War or Invasion: The False Dichotomy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Brett Wilkins Posted on August 06, 2020

https://original.antiwar.com/Brett_Wilkins/2020/08/05/nuclear-war-or-invasion-the-false-dichotomy-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

Seventy-five years ago, the United States waged the only nuclear war in history. Among the truths held self-evident by millions of Americans is the notion that the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, both American and Japanese. The choice, Americans are told starting as school children and throughout their lives by largely uncritical media, was between nuclear war and an even bloodier protracted invasion of Japan, whose fanatical people would have fought to the death defending their homeland and their divine emperor.

As with so many other dark chapters in US history, the official narrative of the decision to unleash the most destructive weapon humanity has ever known upon an utterly defeated people is deeply flawed.

‘Anxious to Terminate’

The Japanese had in fact been trying to find a way to surrender with honor for months before the atomic bombs were dropped, and US leaders knew it. Japan could no longer defend itself from the ruthless, relentless US onslaught; years of ferocious firebombing had reduced most Japanese cities, including the capital Tokyo, to ruins. General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay, commander of strategic bombing, even complained that there was nothing left to bomb there but "garbage can targets."

After years of war and privation, Japan’s people had had enough, and so had many of its leaders. The Allies, through a secret cryptanalysis project codenamed Magic, had intercepted and decoded secret transmissions from Shigenori Togo, the Japanese foreign minister, to Naotaki Sato, the ambassador in Moscow, stating a desire to end the war.

"His Majesty is extremely anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible," Sato cabled on July 12. However, saving face was imperative to the Japanese, which meant retaining their sacred emperor. Unconditional surrender was, for the time being, out of the question.

In a secret memo dated June 28, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard wrote that "the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender." In a 1960 interview, Bard reiterated that "the Japanese were ready for peace and had already approached the Russians" about capitulating.

On July 26, the leaders of the US, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding unconditional Japanese surrender and vowing "prompt and utter destruction" – the US had successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico 10 days earlier – if Japan refused. The declaration was originally written so that Emperor Hirohito would not be removed from the Chrysanthemum Throne, with Japan to be ruled as a constitutional monarchy after the war.

However, Secretary of State James Byrnes removed that language from the final declaration. It would be unconditional surrender or total annihilation.

President Harry S. Truman, who only learned about the Manhattan Project after being sworn in following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death on April 12, approved a plan to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Planners sought undamaged cities where military facilities were located near civilians, and the decision was made to detonate the bombs hundreds of meters in the air for maximum destructive effect.

Tokyo, which in early March suffered firebombing that killed more people than either of the atomic bombs, was off the table as a target. Kyoto was spared due to its cultural significance. Kyoto’s good fortune would mean the Nagasaki’s destruction. Hiroshima, Japan’s largest untouched target, would die first.

Widespread Opposition

Seven of the eight five-star US generals and admirals in 1945 opposed using the atomic bomb against Japan. One of them, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

“Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary," President Eisenhower wrote in 1954. "I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face."

Despite so much high-level misgiving, the US did "hit them with that awful thing." The idea of giving Japanese officials a live demonstration of an atomic bomb on a remote island, proposed by Strategic Bombing Survey Vice Chairman Paul Nitze and supported by Navy Secretary James Forrestal, was rejected. The US was already destroying multiple Japanese cities every week; it was believed that such a demonstration would likely not have moved the Japanese any more than the ongoing destruction of their actual cities.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1945, Japanese officials increasingly sought an honorable end to the war. Although they had no way of knowing that the US was planning to wage nuclear war against them, they knew that the defeat of Nazi Germany meant that a Soviet invasion, first of Manchuria and Korea and then of Japan itself, was now imminent.

"The Japanese could not fight a two-front war, and were more anti-communist than the Americans were," Martin Sherwin, an historian awarded the Pulitzer Prize for co-authoring a biography of Manhattan Project leader Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, said a recent webinar sponsored by over two dozen international peace organizations. "The idea of a Soviet occupation of Japan was their worst nightmare."

Historian and professor Peter Kuznick, who with Oliver Stone co-authored the bestselling The Untold History of the United States, also spoke at the webinar, adding that "the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeatedly reported that if the USSR should enter the war then Japan would realize that defeat is inevitable." Kuznick also noted that General George Marshall, the only five-star US officer to approve of using the atomic bomb, said that a Soviet invasion would likely lead to Japan’s swift surrender.

Truman knew this too. On the opening day of the Potsdam Conference, he had lunch with Joseph Stalin. Afterwards he wrote in his diary that the USSR "will be in the Jap war by August 15. Fini Japs when that occurs."

Regardless, Truman pressed ahead with the plan to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki while attempting to convince himself that there was some humanity in the act. "I have told Secretary of War Stimson to use [the A-bomb] so that military objectives… are the target, not women and children," the president wrote in his diary on July 25.

"Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]," he added. "The target will be a purely military one."

The First Nuclear War

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress dropped "Little Boy," the first nuclear weapon ever used in war. It exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT, destroying everything and everyone within about a 1-mile (1.62 km) radius. The heat, blast wave and ensuing inferno killed as many as 90,000 people. Tens of thousands more were injured, many of them mortally. Tens of thousands more people perished from radiation over the following weeks, months and years.

Three days later, Nagasaki suffered a similar fate as "Fat Man," the second and so far the last nuclear weapon used in war, obliterated Nagasaki in a 20-kiloton air burst. As many as 75,000 people died that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.

Despite Truman’s attempt at self-delusion, most of the people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were women, children and old people, as most of the men were away fighting the war, or dead from it.

The same morning that Nagasaki was destroyed, Prime Minister Kintaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese cabinet, declaring that "under the present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war."

Why Japan Really Surrendered

Suzuki did not learn about Nagasaki until the afternoon of August 9. But he did know that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan the previous day. This, Japanese officials and historians on both sides of the Pacific agree, precipitated Japan’s surrender more than the A-bombs, although it also slammed the door shut on attempts to negotiate a surrender via Moscow.

"The destruction of another city was just the destruction of another city," said Sherwin. "It was the entry of the Soviets into the war that really threw the Japanese into a complete panic." They knew that if they didn’t surrender soon to the US, they would lose not only their overseas empire, but also Hokkaido.

An exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy in Washington, DC states that "the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds."

"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all," General LeMay stated flatly in September 1945.

“The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan," agreed Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff. "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."

It is probably too much to say the atomic bombings had nothing to do with ending the war. Hirohito, after all, spoke of "a new and most cruel bomb" that could "lead to the total extinction of human civilization," in his surrender broadcast. It is also important to note that the decision to capitulate was not unanimous; in fact, a cabal of hard-line military officers attempted to stage a coup the day before the emperor’s announcement.

Target: Moscow

Not only were Hiroshima and Nagasaki the last battles of World War II, they were also the first battles of the Cold War. American leaders knew very well that the Soviet Union would feature prominently in the postwar world order. The US wanted to maximize its own position as the dominant world power, and what better way to do this than to show the Russians that the United States had the cold resolve necessary to unilaterally wage nuclear war, even when it enjoyed an atomic monopoly and dropping the bomb wasn’t even necessary?

Stimson acknowledged that some US officials saw nuclear weapons as "a diplomatic weapon," and that "some of the men in charge of foreign policy were eager to carry the bomb as their ace-in-the-hole" and wanted "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip."

"I’ll certainly have a hammer on those boys," Truman reportedly said, referring to the A-bomb and Soviet leaders.

According to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, Secretary Byrnes believed that "Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia."

But instead of "managing" Russia, some US officials admitted that waging nuclear war actually empowered it, encouraging Moscow to rush to develop its own nuclear arsenal, which it did in 1949.

‘A Nice, Round Figure’

As for the common claim that a US invasion of Japan would have cost a million lives, Kai Bird, who shared the Pulitzer Prize with Sherwin for their Oppenheimer biography, said it is simply not true.

"This figure was never given to Truman or bandied about by Stimson," Bird told the webinar audience. "I asked [Stimson protégé] McGeorge Bundy about it, and he sheepishly admitted that he chose 1 million because it was a nice, round figure. He pulled it out of thin air."

There is no doubt that an invasion of Japan would have been horrific for all involved, as demonstrated by the bloody battle for Okinawa, in which over 12,000 US invaders and six times that number of Japanese defenders died, along with as many as half of the island’s 300,000 civilians, many of whom committed mass suicide rather than fall under enemy occupation. However, the probability of Japan remaining in the war by the time the US was ready to invade was extremely low, especially given the Soviet Union’s declaration of war.

Plus, the claim that the United States cared anything about the lives of Japanese people, who were portrayed in wartime propaganda as sub-human barbarians, beggars belief. US bombs and bullets had killed over a million Japanese people by 1945, and back in the United States, Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals – who had been banned from even immigrating to the US since the 1920s – were still languishing in a network of concentration camps.

Being mere "dirty Japs" made it easier for the Americans to try out their ultimate weapon, in which so much time and treasure had been invested. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would make perfect laboratories in which to test the atomic bomb, as some US officials later acknowledged.

“When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we didn’t need to do it, we used [the Japanese] as an experiment for two atomic bombs," said General Carter Clarke, the intelligence officer in charge of intercepted Japanese cables.

Tough Luck

Many of the very men who invented the A-bomb also had grave misgivings, even before it was used. These Manhattan Project scientists wrote what came to be known as the Franck Report in May 1945. It recommended a demonstration of the bomb to the Japanese and questioned whether using it would really bring Japan to its knees when massive conventional bombing had failed to do so.

“If no international agreement is concluded immediately after the first detonation, this will mean a flying start of an unlimited armaments race," the report prophetically stated.

One notable participant in the events of August 6, 1945 had no regrets. Paul Tibbets flew the B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay after his mother, that let loose "Little Boy" over Hiroshima on that fateful morning. Asked at age 87 about doing it again, Tibbets, who died in 2007, said he "wouldn’t hesitate if I had the choice."

"I’d wipe ’em out," he said. "You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: ‘You’ve killed so many civilians.’ That’s their tough luck for being there."

A False Choice

Seventy-five years later, a slim majority of Americans still believe the nuclear war against Japan was justified. Millions of Americans believe the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of "necessary evil," while ignoring alternatives to the standard narrative that the only choice was between nuclear war and invading Japan.

What if the United States had clarified its unconditional surrender stance to assure that Hirohito would not be hanged? Or announced that he would be allowed to remain in a position of ceremonial leadership? After all, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander, would ultimately allow Hirohito to remain emperor, even if only as a figurehead.

"It is possible," wrote Stimson in his memoir, "that an earlier exposition of American willingness to retain the emperor could have produced an earlier ending to the war."

It is also possible, adds Sherwin, "that unconditional surrender would have been qualified earlier" if the atomic bomb wasn’t being developed and tested for use.

"Most historians know this, but most Americans regurgitate the official narrative," Bird told the webinar audience.

The official US narrative blames the Soviet Union for starting the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, which on numerous occasions over the following decades brought the world within reach, and once to the brink, of thermonuclear annihilation. But it was the United States that fired the first fiery salvo, forcing the Soviets to scramble to develop their own deterrent and launching an arms race in which there are now thousands of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of a record number of countries, with the risk of nuclear armageddon as real as it has ever been.

Americans must admit that the nuclear war against Japan was one of the greatest atrocities in human history. For the first time ever, we humans now have the power to bring about our own extinction. There is absolutely nothing "necessary" about this evil.

"If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been tried as war criminals," General LeMay remarked, according to Robert McNamara, who brought maximum efficiency to B-29 bombing during the war and maximum death and destruction to Vietnam as secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

He added: "What makes it immoral if you lose but not immoral if you win?"

Brett Wilkins is editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace.

‘Normalization’ With Israel Is Losing Popularity in Arab States, As Netanyahu Kills More Palestinians

by Connor Freeman | Aug 3, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/normalization-with-israel-is-losing-popularity-in-arab-states-as-netanyahu-kills-more-palestinians/?feed_id=6859&_unique_id=64cc5f637d6ec

Tensions between the Gulf States and Israel are growing as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu oversees illegal settlement expansion and mass killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. This comes as the White House is attempting to forge a “normalization” deal between Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

According to Bloomberg, Abu Dhabi and Manama are becoming frustrated with the outcome of the 2020 Abraham Accords. People familiar with the matter said the leadership in both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as Bahrain are particularly concerned over a massacre Israel’s apartheid army carried out last month in the northern West Bank.

With the support of the Joe Biden administration, Israeli forces invaded and bombed the Jenin refugee camp, killing a dozen people including five children. Israeli bulldozers tore up the camp’s roads, electricity, and water networks. 1,000 troops participated in the raid, along with Apache helicopters, drones, and 150 armored vehicles.

Moreover, since Netanyahu returned to power last December, Israel has been destabilizing the region, carrying out drone strikes in Iran, myriad airstrikes in Syria, and bombing Lebanon. Already, 2023 has been one of the deadliest years in Palestine. As Middle East Eye reported “At least 204 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire this year, including 36 children – a rate of nearly one fatality per day. A total of 167 people have died in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, making 2023 one of the bloodiest years in the occupied Palestinian territories. Another 36 people were killed in the Gaza Strip.” In May, Israel launched a bombing campaign against Gaza – the blockaded, open-air concentration camp – killing 33 people.

Another point of contention is Netanyahu’s coalition which is full of extremist settlers, Jewish supremacists, and ultra-nationalists determined to annex the West Bank by force. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said earlier this year that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people.” The UAE condemned the mass murder in Jenin as well as Smotrich’s comments.

On the domestic front, Abu Dhabi and Manama received public backlash after these incidents because of their relationship with Tel Aviv. Opinion polls conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an Israel lobby think tank, show significant drops in support for the Abraham Accords. Respectively, in the UAE and Bahrain, only 27% and 20% of respondents saw normalization with Israel – absent an end to the occupation in Palestine – as positive. These numbers represent a 20% and 25% decrease in support over the last three years. In Saudi Arabia, when asked if normalization with Tel Aviv would be good for the region, just 20% of respondents said yes, a 50% drop since 2020.

The Abraham Accords are a thinly veiled, American-led coalition against Iran. It is doubtful the Saudis will want to join, given that Riyadh recently restored full diplomatic relations with Tehran in an unprecedented, diplomatic feat brokered by Beijing.The long-time arch rivals resumed full diplomatic relations and plan to expand cooperation – particularly with respect to trade and investment – while both sides have expressed interest in creating a naval alliance. In another move that “blindsided” the US, Saudi Arabia has also restored relations with Iran’s key ally Damascus.

As Aziz Alghashian, a Riyadh-based analyst who studies the Saudi Kingdom’s policies toward Israel, explains “This is not part of the vision some in the Abraham Accords had — Israel wanted it as an anti-Iranian axis.” He continues, “The region is moving in a different direction now.”

Officially, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has taken any normalization deal with Israel off the table unless there is a two-state solution and the millions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians, suffering under a brutal military occupation for nearly sixty years, are given their own state. Netanyahu’s policies of setting records for settlement expansion and construction in illegal Jewish-only colonies serve solely to eviscerate even the pretense of a future Palestinian state.

Riyadh has reportedly issued demands to the White House including increased access to advanced US weapons systems, NATO-style security guarantees, and assistance building its own civilian nuclear energy program.

Although, MbS has reasons to be skeptical of any assurances Washington may peddle to secure the agreement. As the Bloomberg article notes, “In a continuing sore point, the UAE suspended talks on the purchase of advanced F-35 warplanes from the US in late 2021 after Washington insisted it cancel a contract with China’s Huawei for 5G mobile technology. It was promised the weapons when it agreed to establish ties with Israel. The UAE experience over the Abraham Accords has been watched closely by Saudi Arabia.”

A major aspect of the White House’s push for a normalization deal between Riyadh and Tel Aviv is to curtail China’s influence in the Middle East, according to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Washington is pressuring Tel Aviv to decrease their economic ties with Beijing as well.

How media makes impact of US forever wars invisible

A new book by Norman Solomon breaks down the ways the devastation suffered by civilians rarely comes into public view.

JULY 20, 2023

Written by
Robert Crawford

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/07/20/how-media-makes-impact-of-us-forever-wars-invisible/

Norman Solomon’s new book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine,” discusses components of what the public is allowed to know and what is carefully excluded from view about the perpetual wars of the post-9/11 period.

Beyond this principal topic, the book also touches on a range of subjects related to American militarism. Solomon is a journalist who has written previously about U.S. wars, most notably “War Made Easy,” a book that focused on deceitful justifications for war.

Solomon’s undertaking provides a necessary perspective for comprehending post-9/11 wars. Sustaining public support is a requirement for a global power that regularly employs its coercive instruments and is occasionally subject to democratic checks. The work of legitimation is ongoing, demanding not only a high level of concealment but also efforts to shape that which is accepted without question and considered unworthy of attention and concern.

Dissenting views challenging dominant narratives are ignored or ridiculed. Information that counters official accounts is denied, minimized, and neutralized. Leakers and even news organizations that report “top secrets” are vilified as threatening national security and face potential prosecution. The recent death of Daniel Ellsberg reminds us of the occasional courageous insider who risks everything to tell the truth about war.

Solomon demonstrates how in recent U.S. wars the violent consequences for civilians are hidden from public view. The toll — counted in deaths, injuries, destroyed infrastructure and related malnutrition and disease — is far more extensive than Americans are led to believe. Harms inflicted on civilians and their immediate environment can last for generations. Solomon is at his best in discussing how the media ignores or is complicitous in defusing these consequences. I will briefly summarize four of his most significant topics.

First, unless large numbers of U.S. troops are deployed, killed, and injured, the media pays minimal attention to the ongoing violence of America’s military operations. This includes secretive actions undertaken by Special Operations Command or the intelligence agencies, the increasing reliance on drone warfare and other kinds of airstrikes, and the expanding utilization of contractors. America’s wars without end are waged largely out of sight and out of mind.   

Second, even in wars extensively covered by the media, journalists rarely report the consequences for civilians living in target nations. Solomon reviews several reasons for media complicity, including editorial control, the perceived duty among journalists to support the war effort and support the troops, journalists’ dependence on information provided by the military, and the risk of alienating their sources.    

Third, and more extensively, Solomon provides documentation for media participation in promulgating a Manichean view of America’s wars. The language of good and evil, humane and inhumane, is pervasive, applied to both the necessity for war and how the enemy uses barbaric tactics in contrast to America’s civilized conduct of war. The enemy kills civilians purposely and commits other war crimes; the U.S. kills civilians only by accident, a matter of “collateral damage” — the claimed unintended, accidental, and regrettable byproduct of defeating the enemy.

Solomon counters that in fact, military strategists expect large numbers of civilian deaths as the inevitable result of war tactics and the lethality of the weapons employed in war.   

In a chapter entitled “‘Humane’ Wars,” Solomon demolishes the assumption that the U.S. occupies the moral high ground. He illustrates his argument by examining the tragedy of lost lives and forced displacement resulting from two decades of war in Afghanistan and how the continuing sanctions, including freezing Afghan government accounts, are responsible for the many millions of Afghans who face life-threatening malnutrition and starvation. Solomon argues that the near total silence among the political and media establishment about these direct consequences of war by other means should undermine any claim about how the U.S. intervention was about protecting Afghan human rights.

Fourth, media personalities, coerced by editors or acting on their own, become cheerleaders for war. Celebrating war and the soldiers who “sacrifice” with life and limb often follows from journalists’ own nationalistic impulses and their infatuation with the “shock and awe” of American military power or from what they expect that their viewers or readers want to hear.

Beyond his important discussion of media-political-military collusion in sanitizing America’s wars, Solomon also touches on some other ways that America’s seemingly endless wars are legitimized and their harmful consequences ignored.  

For example, he links the pervasive discounting of harms to civilians with the enduring effects of racism applied on a global scale. He comments on the contradiction between the outsized media attention given to the suffering of Ukrainian victims of Russia’s aggression in contrast to how wars and their tragic consequences outside of Europe are thought to be normal and expected. He mentions other double standards in a world of friends and enemies, such as claims about defending a “rules-based international order,” “territorial integrity” and sovereignty, citing the example of billions of dollars of military aid going to Israel despite its “systematically inhuman treatment of Palestinian people.”

Solomon also argues that the “costs of war” on American society are marginalized by the media. He includes the extent of traumatic brain injury among U.S. soldiers, domestic violence in families of post-9/11 veterans, the increase in violence more broadly, right-wing political violence, the rise of MAGA populism, the militarization of the police, and the detrimental effects of outsized military budgets on needed social spending.

American militarism depends on a culture of compliance with war. Solomon provides a valuable account through the lens of what is made invisible. His account helps readers grasp the mechanisms of invisibility and the moral consequences of refusing to grapple with the harms inflicted. Yet explaining the war culture is no easy task and requires more sustained attention than offered in this book.

If we can ever hope to dismantle this nation’s attachment to militarism, the larger challenge remains — illuminating the deep cultural and historical roots of Americans’ disposition toward war. We need to better comprehend how, despite all their horrific consequences, wars come to be seen as necessary and good, and commemorated and remembered. From myth creation (such as idolizing the warrior and the nation at war or the “indispensable” or “exceptional” qualities attributed to this nation’s global role) to the violence that has coursed through American culture from the beginning, war-making, both visible and invisible, requires and is made possible by a culture invested in war.

Israeli sex crime law condemned for giving Jews lesser punishment for rape

Bipartisan bill doubles penalties for Palestinians convicted of sexual assault or harassment if authorities deem there was a 'nationalistic' motive

By Lubna Masarwa in Jerusalem and Katherine Hearst in London

Published date: 31 July 2023 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-sex-crime-law-jews-lesser-punishment-condemned?sourceid=1001761&emci=e61af5bf-3a31-ee11-b8f0-00224832eb73&emdi=2d5ca1a4-4d31-ee11-b8f0-00224832eb73&ceid=365485

Israel's parliament on Sunday passed a law that has been condemned for allowing Jewish Israelis to have a lesser punishment for rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment than Palestinian citizens.

The "sexual terrorism" law, which was passed by 39 MPs to seven, directly targets Palestinian citizens of Israel who have sexually assaulted or harassed Jewish women if authorities deem the motive as "nationalistic".

Penalties can now be doubled for convicted Palestinians, with the previous maximum penalty standing at 16 years.

Unusually, the bill was co-sponsored by a key part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, the far-right Jewish Power party, and a faction from the opposition, Yisrael Beiteinu.

At a time when Israeli politics is in crisis over highly controversial judicial reforms, the bill is a rare example of bipartisan support in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, but the latest in a string of legislation that has been accused of being discriminatory against Palestinians.

Six of the MPs that voted against were Palestinian citizens of Israel, alongside just one Jewish lawmaker.

"This is not what an opposition looks like, this is not what a struggle for democracy looks like. Be ashamed," Israeli journalist Yisrael Frey tweeted in response.

The new legislation has drawn fierce criticism from commentators, politicians and women's rights activists, who say that it is tantamount to a race law that exploits victims of sexual violence and disproportionately impacts Palestinian citizens.

MP Aida Touma-Suleiman of the left-wing Hadash party poured scorn over the prospect of judging an assailant on their identity, asking if it was reasonable for someone to prefer the suffering of a woman over another because of the identity of her rapist.

"This law will not prosecute Israeli officials harassing Palestinian women at checkpoints, nor Shin Bet interrogators who harass them during interrogations. It's custom-made only to be used against Arabs," Touma-Suleiman told Middle East Eye.

"Every sexual offender is despicable, filthy and should rot behind bars, regardless of the identity of their victim - whether she is Arab, Jew, of the left or right," she added.

"Shame on this government for exploiting the pain and suffering of sexual assaults victims to incite against Arabs."

Denial there is a 'growing phenomenon'

The bill's sponsors, Jewish Power's Limor Son Har-Melech and Yisrael Beiteinu's Yulia Malinovsky, said that the law was intended to combat what they described as a "growing phenomenon of nationalist terrorism" in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

During a debate on the law two weeks ago, Son Har-Melech said the bill provides "proper and correct treatment to female Jewish victims".

"It can't be the case that the honour of Jewish women is violated by miscreants who get away with no or ridiculous punishments," she said.

Son Har-Melech claimed to have heard "dozens" of testimonies from women travelling on buses in the occupied West Bank who faced sexual harassment "due to nationalistic context".

However, Palestinian and Israeli women's rights defenders have denied that sexual assault with so-called "nationalistic" motives is an issue.

Laila Jaroshy, an activist in the Assiwar -Arab feminist movement, said her group has never come across any case of "rape with nationalist motivation".

"Will they determine from a legal point of view what the motives for sexual assault are?" she asked.

Jaroshy told MEE that Israeli women should "take to the streets" as the law represented their "ultimate objectification".

"They are essentially telling women that rape is allowed but not by a Palestinian, and that the problem is not the crime itself but the identity of the perpetrator," she added.

"[This law] embodies the symbiosis between chauvinism and racism - two sides of the same coin… this is a blatant exploitation of women's bodies."

Orly Noy, writer and chair of B'Tselem, Israel's largest human rights group, said that the law's racial profiling has troubling connotations that even resemble the Nuremberg Laws of Germany in the 1930s, a comparison that is a highly charged accusation in Israel.

"This is another expression of the ideology of Jewish supremacy that dictates all of this dangerous government policy," Noy told MEE.

"Instead of seriously fighting gender crime, they exploit the woman's body in favour of a nationalist and racist agenda, and turn it into another tool in the establishment of Jewish supremacy."

In May this year, Israel ranked last out of 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in its gender equality index.

The rise of extremist discourse and growing influence of the far right in Israeli politics has been connected to heightened discrimination against women in politics, the workforce and military.

In November 2022, a report by the Association of Rape Crisis Centres revealed a surge in sexual violence across the Israeli military, prisons service and police, concluding that the uptick was driven by the normalisation of "masculine" and "militaristic" hierarchies in these institutions.

In 2012, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank was convicted of rape in a Tel Aviv assault that Israeli authorities said had political motivations.

The new bill stipulates that the justice and national security ministers must report the number of  "nationalistically motivated" sexual assault investigations and cases filed annually to the National Security Committee.

Kremlin Says BRICS Is Growing in Stature, Hints at Disagreements Over Expansion Plans

By Reuters

Aug. 1, 2023

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-08-01/russia-says-brics-summit-to-discuss-expanding-group

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Tuesday that other countries' interest in joining the BRICS group of nations was proof of the bloc's growing authority on the world stage, but hinted at disagreements over its possible expansion ahead of a summit.

BRICS' current five members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - are due to convene in Johannesburg on Aug. 22-24 and a potential expansion will be high on the agenda, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"This is a very important topic because we see that more and more countries are making statements about their intention of joining BRICS," Peskov told reporters.

"In general, such interest in the BRICS group shows the great potential of the association, its growing authority and, most importantly, the practical importance of this association."

South Africa said last month that more than 40 other nations had expressed interest in joining the organisation, which aims to offset the perceived hegemony of the U.S.-led West in global affairs. Of those, 22 had formally asked to join, it said.

While not publicly revealing its stance on expansion, Russia has not opposed the idea publicly. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers in June that the group's growing attractiveness to other countries was testimony to the fact that it symbolised what he called "the evolution of the multipolar world".

Pavel Knyazev, a Russian diplomat who represents Moscow's interests in BRICS, has said the criteria and methodology for admitting new members is still being discussed and consensus around the issue is needed.

'NUANCES'

Under Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine, which Moscow calls a special military operation, Russia has boosted economic, military and other ties with China, India and various African and Latin American states to try to stave off what it calls Western attempts to isolate it.

Peskov said there what he called "nuances" within the current five-nation group about expanding its membership.

"All these nuances will of course be discussed during the upcoming summit...and the heads of state will speak about their position," he said.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira struck the most cautious note on the idea of admitting new members during a news conference in June after the minister's meeting.

He spoke of the need to "take care of" what he called "a brand and an asset" which he said was responsible for 31.5% of the world's gross domestic product and 40% of its population and said discussions about its expansion were "a work in progress".

Lavrov will represent Russia at the Johannesburg summit, President Vladimir Putin will dial in by video call.

Putin decided not to attend in person due to a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes by Russia in Ukraine, something Moscow rejects and denies. South Africa is an ICC member.

(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Andrew Osborn/Gareth Jones; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Alex Richardson and Angus MacSwan)

The Real History of the War in Ukraine

A Chronology of Events and Case for Diplomacy

JEFFREY D. SACHS

17 JUL 2023

https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/the-real-history-of-the-war-in-ukraine

By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media ––The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN –– have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public. 

Biden is again denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time accusing Putin of a “craven lust for land and power,” after declaring last year that “For God’s sake, that man [Putin] cannot stay in power.”  Yet Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine.  He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war.

Expanding NATO to Ukraine, which Biden has long promoted, is a U.S. gambit that has failed.  The neocons, including Biden, thought from the late 1990s onward that the US could expand NATO to Ukraine (and Georgia) despite Russia’s vociferous and long-standing opposition.  They didn’t believe that Putin would actually go to war over NATO expansion.

Yet for Russia, NATO enlargement to Ukraine (and Georgia) is viewed as an existential threat to Russia’s national security, notably given Russia’s 2,000-km border with Ukraine, and Georgia’s strategic position on the eastern edge of the Black Sea.  U.S. diplomats have explained this basic reality to U.S. politicians and generals for decades, but the politicians and generals have arrogantly and crudely persisted in pushing NATO enlargement nonetheless.  

At this point, Biden knows full well that NATO enlargement to Ukraine would trigger World War III.  That’s why behind the scenes Biden put NATO enlargement into low gear at the Vilnius NATO Summit.  Yet rather than admit the truth – that Ukraine will not be part of NATO – Biden prevaricates, promising Ukraine’s eventual membership.  In reality, he is committing Ukraine to ongoing bloodletting for no reason other than U.S. domestic politics, specifically Biden’s fear of looking weak to his political foes.  (A half-century ago, Presidents Johnson and Nixon sustained the Vietnam War for essentially the same pathetic reason, and with the same lying, as the late Daniel Ellsberg brilliantly explained.)  

Ukraine can’t win.  Russia is more likely than not to prevail on the battlefield, as it seems now to be doing. Yet even if Ukraine were to break through with conventional forces and NATO weaponry, Russia would escalate to nuclear war if necessary to prevent NATO in Ukraine.

Throughout his entire career, Biden has served the military-industrial complex. He has relentlessly promoted NATO enlargement and supported America’s deeply destabilizing wars of choice in Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. He defers to generals who want more war and more “surges,” and who predict imminent victory just ahead to keep the gullible public onside.   

Moreover, Biden and his team (Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland) seem to have believed their own propaganda that Western sanctions would strangle the Russian economy, while miracle weapons such as HIMARS would defeat Russia.  And all the while, they have been telling Americans to pay no attention to Russia’s 6,000 nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian leaders have gone along with the US deception for reasons that are hard to fathom. Perhaps they believe the US, or are afraid of the US, or fear their own extremists, or simply are extremists, ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to death and injury in the naïve belief that Ukraine can defeat a nuclear superpower that regards the war as existential. Or possibly some of the Ukrainian leaders are making fortunes by skimming from the tens of billions of dollars of Western aid and arms.

The only way to save Ukraine is a negotiated peace. In a negotiated settlement, the US would agree that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine while Russia would agree to withdraw its troops.  Remaining issues – Crimea, the Donbas, US and European sanctions, the future of European security arrangements – would be handled politically, not by endless war.

Russia has repeatedly tried negotiations: to try to forestall the eastward enlargement of NATO; to try to find suitable security arrangements with the US and Europe; to try to settle inter-ethnic issues in Ukraine after 2014 (the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements); to try to sustain limits on anti-ballistic missiles; and to try to end the Ukraine war in 2022 via direct negotiations with Ukraine. In all cases, the US government disdained, ignored, or blocked these attempts, often putting forward the big lie that Russia rather than the US rejects negotiations. JFK said it exactly right in 1961: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”  If only Biden would heed JFK’s enduring wisdom.

To help the public move beyond the simplistic narrative of Biden and the mainstream media, I offer a brief chronology of some key events leading to the ongoing war.

January 31, 1990.  German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich-Genscher pledges to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that in the context of German reunification and disbanding of the Soviet Warsaw Pact military alliance, NATO will rule out an “expansion of its territory to the East, i.e., moving it closer to the Soviet borders.”

February 9, 1990.  U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III agrees with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.”

June 29 – July 2, 1990.  NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner tells a high-level Russian delegation that “the NATO Council and he [Woerner] are against the expansion of NATO.”

July 1, 1990.  Ukrainian Rada (parliament) adopts the Declaration of State Sovereignty, in which “The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three nuclear free principles: to accept, to produce and to purchase no nuclear weapons.”

August 24, 1991.  Ukraine declares independence on the basis of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which includes the pledge of neutrality.  

Mid-1992.  Bush Administration policymakers reach a secret internal consensus to expand NATO, contrary to commitments recently made to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

July 8, 1997.  At the Madrid NATO Summit, Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic are invited to begin NATO accession talks.

September-October, 1997.  In Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct, 1997) former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski details the timeline for NATO enlargement, with Ukraine’s negotiations provisionally to begin during 2005-2010.

March 24 – June 10, 1999.  NATO bombs Serbia.  Russia terms the NATO bombing “a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter."

March 2000.  Ukrainian President Kuchma declares that "there is no question of Ukraine joining NATO today since this issue is extremely complex and has many angles to it.”

June 13, 2002.  The US unilaterally withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Weapons Treaty, an action which the Vice-Chair of the Russian Duma Defense Committee characterizes as an “extremely negative event of historical scale.”

November-December 2004.  The “Orange Revolution” occurs in Ukraine, events that the West characterizes as a democratic revolution and the Russian government characterizes as a Western-manufactured grab for power with overt and covert US support.   

February 10, 2007.  Putin strongly criticizes the U.S. attempt to create a unipolar world, backed by NATO enlargement, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, declaring: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion … represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

February 1, 2008.  US Ambassador to Russia William Burns sends a confidential cable to U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, entitled “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” emphasizing that “Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.”

February 18, 2008.  The US recognizes Kosovo independence over heated Russian objections.  The Russian Government declares that Kosovo independence violates “the sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia, the Charter of the United Nations, UNSCR 1244, the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, Kosovo’s Constitutional Framework and the high-level Contact Group accords."

April 3, 2008.  NATO declares that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia declares that “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

August 20, 2008.  The US announces that it will deploy ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in Poland, to be followed later by Romania.  Russia expresses strenuous opposition to the BMD systems.

January 28, 2014.  Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt plot regime change in Ukraine in a call that is intercepted and posted on YouTube on February 7, in which Nuland notes that “[Vice President] Biden’s willing” to help close the deal.

February 21, 2014.  Governments of Ukraine, Poland, France, and Germany reach an Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine, calling for new elections later in the year.  The far-right Right Sector and other armed groups instead demand Yanukovych’s immediate resignation, and take over government buildings.  Yanukovych flees.  The Parliament immediately strips the President of his powers without an impeachment process.   

February 22, 2014.  The US immediately endorses the regime change.

March 16, 2014.  Russia holds a referendum in Crimea that according to the Russian Government results in a large majority vote for Russian rule.  On March 21, the Russian Duma votes to admit Crimea to the Russian Federation. The Russian Government draws the analogy to the Kosovo referendum.  The US rejects the Crimea referendum as illegitimate.

March 18, 2014.  President Putin characterizes the regime change as a coup, stating: “those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots.”

March 25, 2014.  President Barack Obama mocks Russia “as a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not out of strength but out of weakness,”

February 12, 2015.  Signing of Minsk II agreement.  The agreement is unanimously backed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015.  Former Chancellor Angela Merkel later acknowledges that the Minsk II agreement was designed to give time for Ukraine to strengthen its military.  It was not implemented by Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that he had no intention to implement the agreement.

February 1, 2019.  The U.S. unilaterally withdraws from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty.  Russia harshly criticizes the INF withdrawal as a “destructive” act that stoked security risks.

June 14, 2021.  At the 2021 NATO Summit in Brussels, NATO reconfirms NATO’s intention to enlarge and include Ukraine: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.”

September 1, 2021.  The US reiterates support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations in the “Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership.” 

December 17, 2021.  Putin puts forward a draft “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees,” based on non-enlargement of NATO and limitations on the deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

January 26, 2022.  The U.S. formally replies to Russia that the US and NATO will not negotiate with Russia over issues of NATO enlargement, slamming the door on a negotiated path to avoid an expansion of the war in Ukraine.  The U.S. invokes NATO policy that “Any decision to invite a country to join the Alliance is taken by the North Atlantic Council on the basis of consensus among all Allies. No third country has a say in such deliberations.”  In short, the US asserts that NATO enlargement to Ukraine is none of Russia’s business.

February 21, 2022.  At a meeting of the Russian Security Council, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov details the U.S. refusal to negotiate:

“We received their response in late January. The assessment of this response shows that our Western colleagues are not prepared to take up our major proposals, primarily those on NATO’s eastward non-expansion. This demand was rejected with reference to the bloc’s so-called open-door policy and the freedom of each state to choose its own way of ensuring security. Neither the United States, nor the North Atlantic Alliance proposed an alternative to this key provision.”

The United States is doing everything it can to avoid the principle of indivisibility of security that we consider of fundamental importance and to which we have made many references. Deriving from it the only element that suits them – the freedom to choose alliances – they completely ignore everything else, including the key condition that reads that nobody – either in choosing alliances or regardless of them – is allowed to enhance their security at the expense of the security of others.”

February 24, 2022.  In an address to the nation, President Putin declares: “It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”

March 16, 2022.  Russia and Ukraine announce significant progress towards a peace agreement mediated by Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.  As reported in the press, the basis of the agreement includes: “a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces.”

March 28, 2022.  President Zelensky publicly declares that Ukraine is ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia.  “Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point ... they started the war because of it.”

April 7, 2022.  Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accuses the West of trying to derail the peace talks, claiming that Ukraine had gone back on previously agreed proposals.  Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later states (on February 5, 2023) that the U.S. had blocked the pending Russia-Ukraine peace agreement.  When asked if the Western powers blocked the agreement, Bennett answered: “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.”  At some point, says Bennett, the West decided “to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.”

June 4, 2023.  Ukraine launches a major counter-offensive, without achieving any major success as of mid-July 2023.

July 7, 2023.  Biden acknowledges that Ukraine is “running out” of 155mm artillery shells, and that the US is “running low.”

July 11, 2023.  At the NATO Summit in Vilnius, the final communique reaffirms Ukraine’s future in NATO: “We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements.  Ukraine’s future is in NATO … Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance, and has made substantial progress on its reform path.”

July 13, 2023.  US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterates that Ukraine will “no doubt” join NATO when the war ends.

July 13, 2023.  Putin reiterates that “As for Ukraine’s NATO membership, as we have said many times, this obviously creates a threat to Russia’s security. In fact, the threat of Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the reason, or rather one of the reasons for the special military operation. I am certain that this would not enhance Ukraine’s security in any way either. In general, it will make the world much more vulnerable and lead to more tensions in the international arena.  So, I don’t see anything good in this. Our position is well known and has long been formulated.”