Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Nabatieh al Faouka. Lebanese authorities said on April 11 that Israeli strikes had killed 2,020 people since the start of the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah last month.
Image: ABBAS FAKIH / AFP
DONALD Trump is looking extremely unhinged and wasted. During the holiest time of the Christian calendar, Easter weekend, more than a week ago, Trump was busy tweeting “F-bombs”, and talked about “wiping out entire civilisations all at once”.
For someone who believed mainly whites were being massacred in South Africa, this was not unsurprising.
Like a spoilt brat, he demanded that the "Strait of Hormuz be f–ing opened”, or his dragon fire would come forth.
After that fizzled out like a damp squib exactly a week ago, he then claimed victory with a ceasefire for two weeks.
But just across the borders of Lebanon, Beirut was being carpet bombed by the illegitimate child of the US, Israel.
Over 1.1 million people have been displaced within Lebanon, accounting for nearly 20% of the population.
One of the deadliest days, April 8 saw over 250 people killed in a single day of strikes with the total number of civilians slaughtered as of Saturday sitting at 2,000 as a minimum.
Attempting to walk away from all the chaos he had unleashed, Trump proclaimed victory, and he started attacking Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly, among others (his original most avid alternative-media supporters), this past Friday as having “low IQs”.
There is no honour among thieves at all in the scheme of events. But this present administration is now descending down a slippery rabbit hole.
His own secretary of war, instrumental in the attack on Iran, Pete Hegseth, has a history of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and public misconduct.
Hegseth was grilled in the past by senators about his behavior, including excessive drinking, extramarital affairs and allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied. These are some of the shady characters making up the Trump regime.
Even during the heights of the war-mongering, the more militarily powerful Bush administration 23 years ago, there was a structured and intellectual ideological framework led by think tanks such as the Project for the New American century which provided a ready-made "neoconservative" lucidity that heavily influenced foreign policy, post-9/11.
If the Bush show was run by conspiratorial ideologues, the Trump administration is just pure insanity run by an overweight man-child surrounded by insane yes-men that will blow up the entire country if they found it transactional. Right now, the US is being controlled by the illegitimate step-child steering American foreign policy; Israel, which has now completed its inevitable descent into total fascism. As an example, during the commencement of April, Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed what can only be described as a “genocide law”, the so-called "Penal Bill (Amendment –Death Penalty for Terrorists)," making the tyrannical legislation the law of the land.
National security minister and convicted terrorist Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the far-right Jewish Power ("Otzma Yehudit") party, with support from Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, was foremost in leading the call for torture and the implementation of the death penalty. During Ben-Gvir's tenure as minister for national security, Israeli human rights groups such as Physicians for Human Rights have reported an increase in cases of abuse and torture in Israeli prisons, as well as rape of male and female Palestinian prisoners, within its torture dungeons such as the notorious Sde Teiman Prison, by IDF soldiers.
Ben-Gvir has published videos of himself taunting Palestinian prisoners in prison and boasting that they are being held under "minimum conditions". Last year, he oversaw the cancellation of the indictment of five soldiers accused of anally raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel.
"In light of developments arising out of the indictment that was filed in the Yemen Field case, the military prosecution has decided today to cancel the indictment," the Israeli army said in a statement.
The torture case dates back to July last year, when Israeli soldiers tortured and anally gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner with an object at the Sde Teiman detention facility, causing near-fatal injuries and a tear in the rectum. This is a norm according to the NGO Btselem, in its report, "Welcome to Hell", where rape of Palestinian women and men is normative in Israeli dungeons.
Ben-Gvir’s criminal history includes convictions for 13 offences, including supporting a terrorist organisation, incitement to racism, propaganda for a terrorist organisation, participation in an illegal gathering, rioting, and property damage. But if he represents the worst excesses of Jewish-Zionist supremacist fanaticism; he is not far off from Netanyahu or the majority of the Knesset which voted for same or Israeli society in general, which has now fully embraced racism as an ideology and hatred of Palestinians as a national doctrine.
The death penalty having now been passed as law applies only to Palestinians living in the West Bank, (Gazans are simply blown up with 2,000 pound bombs) and Palestinians living in Israel, but not Israeli Jews. This is a direct derivative of Jewish Talmudic racism at play in a state that claims to be a “democracy”. The Palestinians in the West bank are charged under military law and are kept in administrative detention, sometimes not being charged for years on end. If convicted in a military court they face a mandatory death sentence or, in the wording of the bill “... his sentence shall be death, and this penalty only".
Even during the height of South African apartheid, white people were also executed, though the death penalty was applied disproportionately. The landmark S v Makwanyane case unanimously declared the death penalty unconstitutional and abolished capital punishment. The court ruled it violated fundamental rights to life, dignity, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment under the interim Constitution. Compared to apartheid South Africa, Jewish-Zionist racism is on another level of evil entirely.
Only Palestinians who are viewed as sub-humans can now be “officially” murdered by the state, but not Israeli Jews. And to top it all, the death penalty is being applied on people who are under perpetual illegal occupation. While the prospect of legally sanctioned state executions may appear shocking, it represents a logical extension of an already lethal system. In South Africa presently, such insanity is being supported by the Zionist Board of Deputies, fanatical extremists like apartheid-apologist Rob Hersov, and educational centres where children are indoctrinated into following the excesses of Zionist fascism, such as in Herzliya School in Cape Town.
Why such schools are not shut down is a similar question as to why Orania is not disbanded. No surprises there though, when even Israeli children were taught to sing genocidal songs of mass murder such as the cynically-titled Friendship Song during the epoch of the Israeli genocide. When the chief rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein, condemns South Africa as “useless” but endorses Israeli apartheid, we live in dark times. This is a product of being emboldened by three years of Israeli genocide, and the world turning a completely blind eye.
I have challenged all of the above local Zionists to a public debate and challenge them via this paper once again, but none of them will turn up because Zionism is intellectually and morally bankrupt. B'Tselem executive director Yuli Novak said prior to the laws passing that "Israel is reaching a new low in the dehumanisation of Palestinians, enshrining their cruel treatment in state law..."
A Knesset legal adviser, Ben-Itzhak, criticised the bill prior to its passing, arguing that it "does not provide for the pardon of a person sentenced to death”, which contradicts international conventions.
Further, the new death penalty law specifies its application based on the nature of the crime rather than the age of the offender. There is no explicit clause that excludes minor Palestinians from facing the death penalty, which means children between 12 and under 18 could theoretically be subject to hanging. This would be unprecedented globally. Not even China executes minors.
There is a solution to all of this psychosis. The complete disbandment of Israel as an apartheid state in the same way as apartheid South Africa was disbanded, and the granting of votes to all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In such a situation, we would have a one-nation state with Palestinians being given equal rights as Israelis, and the illegal occupation would become moot. The "Global South” should also counter US aggression through a combination of diplomatic, economic and civil society actions.
All African and non-imperial nations should strengthen their ability to protect their own resources, economic policies and territorial integrity against foreign interference; and take back their mineral wealth from private foreign companies immediately. And we need an urgent call on the United Nations and other international bodies to act legally and physically, not just symbolically against unilateral wars, uphold international law, and protect the sovereignty of nations by taking a more physically active role.
Any alternative to this is desolate, and can only lead to summons for the resistance to continue, and the dark cycle of violence to perpetually gulf the Middle East, with ramifications for us globally.
Yusuf Ismail
Image: Supplied
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.