IT is a common misconception that genocide involves the destruction of a specific people in their entirety. It is also not true that the legal threshold for genocide is difficult to prove. The UN charter states only that there needs to be proven intent to target people based on their ethnic, religious, national or racial identity. There can be no doubt that the residents of Gaza are being targeted based on their national identity. Remember, at no point does the legal definition accept the argument of self-defence or revenge as mitigation. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to oppose the existence of a Palestinian state in any future scenario, in favour of Israeli control anywhere west of the Jordan river – an area encompassing all of what remains of Palestine. “In any future arrangement…Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said in a news conference on July 5, 2023, according to a translation published by the Associated Press. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty [for Palestinians].
What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.” Gaza is not the only place where the conditions for genocide occurring have been met, and ignored – there has been plenty of evidence of genocide in Sudan over the last twenty years. But the U.S., Britain, China, France, and Russia did not see it in their national interest to intervene militarily to stop it.
So who then do we hold responsible for the failure of nation-states to act when crimes against humanity are committed so openly? Quite simply, the banking elite, the corporate multi-billionaires, the secretive groups that make up the military-industrial complex (MIC). As the only real world superpower, with the possible exception of China, the U.S. will naturally be the focus of any article on the MIC, and as the situation in Gaza is the actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. On March 24, 1993, in a speech to the South African parliament, President F. W. de Klerk announced publicly that his country had secretly built and dismantled six nuclear weapons at its secret research facility, Kentron Circle, situated close to Johannesburg.
Again, it is important to highlight that the criticisms are directed against the actions of governments, not the citizens of the countries they control. Many members of the South African Jewish community played active and heroic roles in the struggle against apartheid. Arthur Goldreich was the owner of Liliesleaf Farm and provided refuge there for Nelson Mandela and other senior members of the then banned African National Congress. Harold Wolpe, a South African of JewishLithuanian descent assisted him in providing the funds to purchase the farm. Another South African of Jewish-Lithuanian descent, Helen Suzman, played a critical role in the struggle for equality in South Africa as a Member of Parliament for the United Party.
It can justifiably be claimed that the Artwork: Song Chen an unwillingness to co-operate in sanctions and other international efforts for the biggest newsworthy event, highlighting the actions of the Israeli government is inevitable and also relevant. Interestingly, both governments were heavily criticised by the special committee on Apartheid for the role they played in assisting the South African government in its efforts to maintain a system considered by most of the world to be abhorrent. For decades, the special committee criticised the U.S. for its response to apartheid including the blocking of UN resolutions. In the early 1980s, President Reagan’s government adopted a policy of constructive engagement which paved the way for many exports to South Africa that were previously blocked, including nuclearrelated materials and equipment used by the South African Police. This approach led to the easing of the arms embargo, as well as strengthening and protecting the apartheid regime.
In 1986, around 100 major U.S. corporations had South African subsidiaries or affiliates and around 6,000 U.S. companies had business connections with the SA. This statement from the special committee, on display at The Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg, further highlights theses concerns: ‘The recent actions of the United States not only reflect elimination of apartheid, but represent serious retrograde moves.’
In 2016, the Sunday Times newspaper published a report based on an interview with ex-CIA agent, Donald Rickard, shortly before he died, when he finally admitted his and the CIA’s role in the 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela in Durban. This display, also from the Nelson Mandela Foundation, describes the view of the UN’s International Conference on the relationship between South Africa and Israel – how it strengthened after the latter’s initial criticism of apartheid. There is also reference to co-operation with regards to nuclear proficiency. During my time as a national serviceman in the South African Defence Force (SADF), I met with members of the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) who often carried the Israeli-made Uzi submachine gun and spoke openly about how they were working alongside their Israeli counterparts both on arms development and at the South African nuclear power plant at Pelindaba, South Africa’s main nuclear research centre and home to the country’s nuclear technology program. They claimed that both countries were willingness of the Israeli government to work closely with the apartheid regime is highly counter-intuitive.
What would convince the leaders of a nation born in the aftermath of World War Two, the actions of a most brutal government, to cooperate with another right-wing government in which the idea of racial supremacy was similarly enshrined? The same question can be asked of the U.S. government. What would convince a nation whose founding values include freedom, equality, liberty, and respect for individual rights to actively support a government whose own values so contradicted their own? In 1961, the U.S. government, through the military and the CIA, engaged in a far more extensive campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against civilian and military targets in Cuba. The terrorist attacks killed significant numbers of civilians. The U.S. armed, trained, funded and directed the perpetrators, most of whom were Cuban expatriates. The same can be said of U.S. funded attacks against civilians in Columbia and Italy. In part three of this series next month, I will examine the emergence of the MIC in the aftermath of World War Two, its links to the formation of the State of Israel and how it, regardless of morality and often contrary to the official stance of western governments, facilitates and crucially profits from conflicts all over the Earth.
eturn to Bomb Alley 1982 – The Falklands Deception, by Paul Cardin
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