Our Wednesday News Analysis | In Syria, the West’s humanitarian claims crumble to dust

A Syrian boy, who lost his entire family in the earthquake, walks amid the rubble of his family home in Jindayris, Syria's Aleppo province, 11 February 2023 (AFP)

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/turkey-syria-earthquake-west-humanitarian-claims-crumble-dust

By Jonathan Cook
Published February 13, 2023

The US said it wanted to free Syrians from a tyrant. Then it was willing to let them die of cold and hunger. The truth: for the West, Syria is only about power

"But no one should be fooled by this apparent change of heart."

US President Joe Biden's administration relented last Thursday and finally lifted sanctions on Syria. The change of policy came after four days of relentless and shocking footage from the disaster zone in southern Turkey and northern Syria caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

It seems as if Washington felt it could no longer sustain its embargo when tens of thousands of bodies were being exhumed from the rubble and millions more were struggling with cold, hunger and injuries.

The US could not afford to look like the odd man out faced with a global wave of concern for the devastated populations of Syria and Turkey.

Under the new exemption, the Syrian government will be able to receive earthquake relief for six months before the embargo locks back in.

But no one should be fooled by this apparent change of heart.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the State Department’s first reaction was to double down on its policy. Spokesman Ned Price dismissed the possibility of lifting sanctions, arguing it would be “counterproductive … to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now”.

The truth is that the sanctions regime imposed by the US and its allies in Europe, Canada and Australia was a criminal policy long before the earthquake struck. The brief and belated exemption - under international pressure - does not fundamentally alter that picture.

Western claims of humanitarian intervention in the oil-rich Middle East were always a lie. It just took an earthquake to make that crystal clear...

Read more: In Syria, the West’s humanitarian claims crumble to dust

‘NEW ISRAEL AND ZIONISM SOCIETY’ OF EXETER WAGES WAR ON COMMITTED SCHOLARSHIP

A workshop with Professor Ilan Pappé at the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. (Photo: via University of Exeter website)

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/new-israel-and-zionism-society-of-exeter-wages-war-on-committed-scholarship/

By Ilan Pappe
Published February 13, 2023

"The essence of the challenge is how to make committed scholarship more effective,
and make the pen mightier, at least at times, than the sword.
No person can figure out how best to do it; it requires a joint effort.”

Recently, I received a polite email from an Israeli student in my university inviting me to a talk by one Yoseph Haddad who, I was informed, will tell the campus about the wonderful life of a 48 Arab in Israel. This coincided with the establishment of a new student society at the University of Exeter, the “New Israel and Zionism Society”. The headline in the Jewish Chronicle hailed the fact that no student group on the campus objected to it.

The reason for the polite invitation was an attempt to represent Zionist propaganda as an organic part of healthy academic life and debates, whereas the absence of objection to the new society was because no one knew about its establishment or its registration. But this is hardly the point.

What matters is that quite astonishingly, the Anglo-Jewish community that supports Israel and Zionism genuinely believes, at this time and age, that either a Zionist Arab or a new Zionist outfit have a credible message to present to students and faculty alike in British universities.

The clueless student guild accepted the main argument for having such a society: “We believe there is a lack of representation of Zionist ideas and values which are often misconceptualized by students in general”.

The “misinformed students” are postgraduate students in Palestine and Middle East Studies, who know more about Israel and Palestine than probably the most senior journalists in The Jewish Chronicle. So, the aspiration of the new society that “our university now has a chance to provide a fair and robust platform for Israel”, is about forty years too late...

Read more: ‘New Israel and Zionism Society’ of Exeter Wages War on Committed Scholarship

THE US’S EMPTY COMMITMENT TO A TWO-STATE SOLUTION

A man walks along a road by Israel’s separation barrier between the occupied West Bank village of Nazlat Issa and the Arab-Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiya in northern Israel on February 1, 2020. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/the-uss-empty-commitment-to-a-two-state-solution/

Jonathan Guyer writes in Vox on February 6, 2023

An outdated policy stands in the way of efforts to defuse violence in Israel and Palestine.

"Young American Jews are less likely to unconditionally support Israel than previous generations.

Black Lives Matter activists link the struggle for rights in Palestine with those disenfranchised in the United States.

A movement pushing to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel shows what the next phase of peaceful protest against Israeli policies might look like —

and the result has been laws in 34 states that seek to ban the right to boycott when it comes to Israel."

It’s a particularly dangerous moment for Israel and Palestine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East last week on a previously scheduled trip after 48 hours of violence: a terrorist attack in East Jerusalem killed seven Israelis and an Israeli raid on the refugee camp of Jenin killed nine Palestinians, culminating a month in which Palestinians experienced the highest level of killings at the hands of Israeli forces and Israeli settlers in more than a decade. The situation called for US leadership.

Blinken was there to “urge de-escalation,” as the Biden administration described it, at a time when an extreme far-right Israeli government pushes for incendiary changes to the judiciary that contradict Israel’s stated democratic tenets, reorders the way the occupation of Palestinian territory is administered, and pursues a variety of policies that likely violate international law.

Yet throughout the trip, Blinken’s comments felt retrograde, like they came from another era...

Read more: The US’s empty commitment to a two-state solution