Gaza: The Rhythm of Time

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Opening Theme

Michael Parenti – The Wagon Train vs The Swarthy Hordes

Hello brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, this is Back in the USSR, I am Siegfried and thanks for tuning in.  I want to begin by explaining why I did not do a new show last week.  You might have noticed that I played an older show from last month where I expressed my solidarity with the Palestinian people and in particular the people of the besieged Gaza strip, who at that time were facing lethal violence from the Israeli Army every Friday as they peacefully demonstrated for their rights as a people in the face of a brutal colonial regime.  Those protests began on March 30^th and continued until Nakba “Catastrophe” Day, last Tuesday May 15^th, when Palestinians mark the hostile takeover of their lands in 1948 by the new Israeli state.  Last Monday, May 14^th, the United States, acting in defiance of world opinion as well as international law, opened an embassy in Jerusalem and recognized that city as the undivided capital of Israel in an open assault on Palestinian aspirations for a viable independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital. 

On that same day, the people of Gaza protested once again, and once again, unarmed demonstrators were met by the sniper rifles of the Israeli Army.  62 Palestinians died that day, thus eclipsing the entire death toll since the protests began on March 30^th in less than 24 hours.  This was not indiscriminate shooting on the part of the Israeli military.  These are soldiers armed with precision weapons, aiming and deliberately shooting individual unarmed Palestinians through their sniper scopes.  This was cold blooded murder in the fullest sense.  As Michael Parenti said in that opening clip there, this was a clear case of “The Wagon Train vs The Swarthy Hordes”, with the so-called “civilized” Israeli soldiers mowing down the “savage” Palestinians whom they dehumanize, brutalize and murder. 

And of course the Western media also does this when it engages in false balancing and tries to pass of this one-sided colonial massacre in terms of “clashes” or some similar trite phrase that implies both sides are to blame or that the unarmed Palestinian demonstrators were somehow “asking for it” when they were shot.  So you have the New York Times saying on May 14 that “a mass attempt by Palestinians to cross the border fence separating Israel from Gaza turned violent, as Israeli soldiers responded with rifle fire”.  As my friend Greg Shupak has pointed out, this kind of reporting paints “Israel’s rampage as a reaction to a Palestinian provocation”.  That same day, the New York Times editorial board went even further:

Led too long by men who were corrupt or violent or both, the Palestinians have failed and failed again to make their own best efforts toward peace. Even now, Gazans are undermining their own cause by resorting to violence, rather than keeping their protests strictly peaceful.

The mainstream capitalist media blamed the Palestinians for the bloodshed.  With a Yahoo article from May 14^th reading “Violent Protests in Gaza Ahead of US Embassy Inauguration in Jerusalem”.  Bloomberg, also on May 14^th, “Hamas Targets Fence as Gaza Bloodshed Clouds Embassy Move”.  A BBC report from May 15^th that states “Gaza Braced for Further Violent Protests,” similarly blames the Palestinians for the lethal force used again them, effectively accusing them of violence and not their killers.  Business Insider on May 14^th: “Palestinian protesters who ramped up their activities along the Gaza strip and, as a result, were targeted by the Israeli army with increasing intensity.” Once again attacking the protestors for throwing rocks and burning tires while the IDF had sniper rifles and tanks that it certainly wasn’t afraid to use against unarmed people.  Unarmed people whom the Washington Post, on May 15^th, referred to as being only “nominal civilians”.  To once again quote Greg Shupak, the media portrays the Palestinians as “inherently threatening, intrinsically killable, always suspect, never innocent, permanently guilty of existing”.  It’s truly disgusting.

I couldn’t do my show last week.  In the aftermath of such an atrocity, it was too much for me to handle.  You might have noticed that every week since the Great March of Return began at the end of March, I’ve been naming the dead, naming the individuals shot down in cold blood by the Israeli state.  If I did the show last week, I would have had to name 62 people, 62 individuals with faces, names, lives and stories to tell, and I just couldn’t do it.  Instead, I went to the Guelph Poetry Slam at the E-Bar in downtown Guelph, I used to be a regular there, but it had been at least two years since I last attended an event like that.  I got up in front of everyone and performed the following poem by an Irish Republican hunger-striker who gave his life for his people in a British jail in 1981, and I did it for Palestine just as Bobby Sands himself would have wanted me to if he was still with us now.  It’s called “The Rhythm of Time”:

(Read “The Rhythm of Time” by Bobby Sands)

(Eire Og – “Sunday Bloody Sunday”)

You’re listening to Back in the USSR.  Now there have been some interesting developments that have emerged in the wake of this latest atrocity against the people of Gaza.  Notably the UN has launched an extremely belated investigation into Israeli war crimes.  In many ways they had no choice.  Even with the atrocious quality of Western media coverage, the whole world was outraged by what the Israeli Army did and is continuing to do, because the protests have continued.  On Friday May 25^th, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported 109 people injured by Israeli sniper fire while another man, 24 year old Yasser Sami Habib, died of the wounds he sustained in last week’s protests.  Thus he became the 67^th victim of the May 14^th massacre, the 5^th person out of the more than 2,000 injured that day to succumb to their injuries.  Now, as commentators have pointed out with regard to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the Israeli arms industry is one of the largest in the world and it continues to literally make a killing off of the Israeli Apartheid state’s repression of Palestinians – testing out new weapon systems and then marketing them as “battle-tested” to other countries.  I’m going to play a recent report from the Real News that gets into that.  But first, I want to emphasize the growing level of international solidarity for the Palestinian cause.  Protests in support of Gaza have occurred around the world, we had some significant ones happening around here in Toronto and Waterloo.  And, very notably, a new Gaza Freedom Flotilla of activists has just set sail and will be attempting to run the Israeli sea blockade on Gaza in the near future.  I want to play a report on that first:

TRNN – Freedom Flotilla Sets Sail for Gaza After the Great March of Return

TRNN – Arms Manufacturers Use Israel’s Massacres in Gaza to Test New Weapons

You’re listening to Back in the USSR.  I’ve talked a lot about atrocities on this show, but the growing solidarity with Palestine, with the BDS movement in particular, is cause for hope.  In addition to that we’ve just seen some real democratic victories for the people, happening in several countries.  In Ireland, the Irish people just voted overwhelmingly to overturn the constitutional ban on abortion, a massive victory for women’s rights, and when I say overwhelming I really mean it: urban, rural, young, middle-aged, even relatively old people, major majorities across virtually every demographic according to exit polls in what amounts to a cultural revolution in a historically Catholic and socially conservative country.  Just amazing. 

I also want to talk very briefly about the recent decision by Donald Trump to walk away from upcoming negotiations with North Korea.  Now that, needless to say, is not a democratic victory for the people: the DPRK has ended missile tests, demolished its one and only nuclear test site, and engaged in meaningful dialogue with South Korea.  The U.S. response has been to continue with ongoing wargames simulating an invasion of North Korea, deploy nuclear capable B-52 bombers to the region, and say they want to impose a “Libya Model” on the DPRK – ie. Invade the country and kill its leader, like what was done with the NATO assault on Libya in 2011, a country that had voluntarily disarmed, given up its nuclear program and made a deal with the West.  It didn’t save it in the end.  But the real democratic victory here, against all the threats and imperialist sabre-rattling, is the solidarity of the Korean people.  The Korean people want peace.  Overwhelmingly.  They want peace, a peace treaty, a conclusive end to the Korean War, over 85% of South Korean support the process, and they are not going to permit Donald Trump or anyone to ruin it for them.  This is their land, and they are determined to exercise their self-determination as a people – both north and south.  So the Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-In met again today in defiance of the U.S. and once again pledged their commitment to a made-in-Korea peace process.  I have every confidence they will succeed.  As Thomas Sankara used to say, "When the people stand up, imperialism trembles".  This is what journalist Tim Shorrock had to say about this on the Real News:

TRNN – After Trump Cancels Summit, Koreas Try to Save It

Michael Parenti – Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes

Imperialism and Resistance in Syria and Palestine

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Opening Theme

John Stockwell - "Crimes of the CIA"

Friends and comrades, imperialism is the fundamental fact of our age.  It characterizes the world in which we live.  It dominates the way nations and economies interact.  It is the elephant in the room at international summits and United Nations Security Council meetings.  As Lenin correctly pointed out more than a century ago, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and it is not a policy but a system.  Imperialism is the structure of the modern world.Global capitalism requires constant expansion, it requires new markets and new resources.  As Michael Parenti says, a no growth capitalism is a contradiction in terms.  Capitalism must grow and that growth must be secured by any means necessary, even if that includes the use of things like deadly airstrikes on sovereign independent states, military invasions and the destruction of whole countries, crippling economic sanctions against whole nations and peoples, death squad terrorism and mass repression of entire populations and the list goes on.   

The American Empire, as the standard bearer and enforcer of the global capitalist system, will effectively do anything to preserve and expand the profits of the Fortune 500.  Independent states, such as Syria, that try to maintain sovereign control over their economies for the benefit of their people, are obstacles to the expansion of multi-national capitalist profits and are therefore targeted for destruction.  Indigenous peoples, such as the nations struggling to block the expansion of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline in BC, are obstacles to the expansion of multi-national capitalist profits and are therefore targeted for repression by the state.From the murder of indigenous land defenders blocking the expansion of Canadian mining interests in Honduras and Indonesia to the invasion and devastation of the sovereign states of Libya and Iraq by “coalition” forces, capitalism and imperialist violence are inseparable today.  They go hand in glove all around the world.

The imperialist efforts to keep the Middle East safe for the Fortune 500 have been particularly bloody in recent decades and I want to stress that the Apartheid state of Israel plays a major role in this bloody process that includes the settler-colonial occupation of Palestinian land as much as it involves the murderous efforts to topple sovereign states like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran and Yemen.  The fact that the United States and its allies are occupying almost one third of Syria’s land area, including its main oil fields, is no accident.  It’s also no accident that when Israel launches more than 70 missiles against targets in Syria on a single night on May 9th, and strikes Syria repeatedly over the past several years under the ludicrous claim of “self-defense” against Iranian forces present in that country, it does so not as a rogue regime but as a vital lynchpin of an American Empire that remains hellbent on regime change both in Damascus and Tehran.  Just as in Iraq in 2003, the U.S. wants a Syrian government that makes the country safe for Western investment and the same goes for Iran. 

So it’s no surprise that the Western media, the same media that cheerleaded for the massive U.S.-led assault on Syria last month on the spurious basis of responding to a chemical attack that almost certainly never even took place, has swallowed Israel’s claims of responding to Iranian “aggression” in Syria hook line and sinker, defending Israel’s “right to self-defense” when the Syrian army retaliated with missile strikes on Israeli military positions in the occupied Golan Heights – evening claiming, without evidence, that the retaliatory strike came from Iranian forces rather than the Syrian military.  Indeed, Western countries, particularly France, have blamed Syria and Iran for the incident and for “escalating” the situation,while failing to utter a single word in condemnation of Israel’s repeated acts of aggression against its neighbor…or its continued and illegal occupation of Syrian land in the Golan since 1967. Once again this comes as no surprise, as France, the former colonial power in Syria before it was driven out in 1946, would love to have a slice of the pie in the aftermath of any kind of regime change operation.

Unsubstantiated claims that Israel killed a dozen or more Iranians in the strikes conceal the truth that the strikes on May 9th hit Syrian targets and killed Syrian people, who were very rightfully defending their country.  According to the Russian Defense Ministry, just as in the case of the American-led missile strikes on Syria one month ago, which France and Britain also participated in, more than half of the incoming Israeli missiles were downed by Syrian air defense forces, with at least 4 soldiers of the air defense forces giving their lives in the process.  Lt. Colonel Ayham Hashem Habib, commanding a Pantsir S-1 air defense system outside Damascus, was killed when an Israeli missile struck his unit.  In the video of the missile strike, released by the Israeli military and shot from the point of view of the incoming missile itself, you can actually see Habib running toward the point of impact and deliberately taking the full blast of the exploding missile to protect his men, none of whom died as a result of his heroic efforts.

The following is a blow by blow report of the Syrian army’s defense against the Israeli assault on the night of May 9^th and the early morning of May 10^th, which stands as the biggest Israeli attack on Syria since the Lebanon War in 1983. It comes from the Syrian Arab Army’s Facebook page.

“Late on the evening of May 9th the Zionist military conducted number of artillery strikes against a Syrian Army post in Khan Arnabea which led to SAA returning fire by firing number of mortars against the source of Zionist fire.

- The enemy did not stop its attack and launched number of recon drones to sweep the borders over the airspace of the occupied-Golan Heights without entering Syrian Airspace.

- Enemy brought a Merkava Tank which fired 6 random shots into al-Baa`th city in al-Quneitra which led to SAA's Tank Hunters dealing with the situation according to the rules of engagement.

- Enemy fired a long-range Stand-Off missile into Damascus International Airport which was intercepted and destroyed by SyAAD ~30km Southeastern Damascus.

- The Syrian 7th Division was given an order to strike 4 Zionist military establishments inside the occupied-Golan Heights; at 00:00 a barrage of 40 rockets were fired at the Zionist military establishments.

- Zionist airforce quickly escalated the situation by launching several long-range Stand-Off missiles at number of Syrian Targets in and around Damascus, and three targets in Homs.

- SyAAD foiled the first three waves of attacks by the Zionists which forced the Zionists to resort to surface-to-surface missiles.

- After the Zionist's 3rd wave of missiles, the Syrian 7th Division was given another order to launch a barrage of 20 missiles at Zionist Military establishments in the occupied-Golan Heights.

- The number of Zionist war jets participated in the attack was ~30 jets, all of which fired their missiles from outside the Syrian and even Lebanese airspace and did not dare to enter either.

- Zionist launched a 4th wave of missiles combined with decoy, surface to surface and air launched long-range missiles; and this was the wave that 4 of its missiles reached their targets and hit an SyAAD detection radar, an SyAAD short-range defense battery (seen in enemy footage) and two ammunition depots.

- No Long-Range SAM were fired at the Zionist jets although they were in range multiple times, and that is up to the Syrian Command's rules of engagement to determine (Despite one's feelings this is not a game, this is real war)

- To our knowledge, the majority of the Syrian missiles fired at the Zionist's locations reached their targets.

- Syrian casualties were three martyrs.

With all do respect to all Syrian allies, the entire situation was dealt with by the Syrian Arab Army and under Syrian command's orders.”

Hussein Al-Deek - "Ana Souri, Ana Arabi"

Imperialism is also evident when the United States blocks a UN investigation into the deaths of unarmed protestors in Gaza at the hands of Israeli military snipers, it does so to protect this vital lynchpin in its imperial arsenal…not because Israel somehow controls the U.S. government.  52 unarmed demonstrators have now been killed in Gaza since March 30^th.  18 year old Hisham Abu-Oakal was shot and killed on Friday by Israeli snipers and on the same day 40 year old Gabr Abu-Mustapha died after being shot in the head.  Upwards of 500 people were injured on the same day according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with more than 6000 being injured since the start of the Great March of Return on March 30^th.  These demonstrations will continue until next Tuesday, when, on May 15^th, Palestinians will mark Nakba Day or the day of catastrophe, when the state of Israel first colonized their lands in 1948.  On Saturday Israeli warplanes struck Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza with 21 missiles, targeting Palestinian power generators in the same way they have targeted water-treatment facilities and hospitals in the past – tightening the siege on Gaza in a further cruel effort to make the world’s “largest open air prison” more unlivable.

Norman Finkelstein - "Israel's violence on Gazans' non-violence"

Damien Dempsey - "Colony"

And finally we have Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran.  I’m not going to say much about this, but direct you to an excellent article by my friend Greg Shupak on FAIR, entitled “Media Debate Best Way to Dominate Iran.” To this day, America would love Iran to return to the days of the Shah, before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when Iran was the Empire’s biggest client in the whole region, eclipsing Saudi Arabia and even Israel.  Once again, it’s all about making the world safe for the Fortune 500.  Imperialism in action on a global scale.  But through it all it equally remains the case that, as Thomas Sankara once said, “When the people stand up, imperialism trembles!”

Stephen Gowans - "Washington's Long War on Syria"

Eva Bartlett - "Canadian Journalist on Lies About Syria December 9th 2016"