Erdoğan calls Israeli state “terrorist,” maintains flow of Turkish military supplies to Israel

Barış Demir

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ratchets up his rhetoric against Israel and the Turkish media writes stories about Turkey’s firm stance, new revelations are emerging that trade with Israel is continuing apace.

On Wednesday, at a Justice and Development Party (AKP) Parliamentary Group Meeting, Erdoğan said: “I am calling on Netanyahu from here. Do you have atomic bomb or not?... Israel, you have atomic bomb, nuclear bomb and you are threatening with it. We know this and your end is approaching. It does not matter what you have, you are a goner.” 

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on September. 6, 2022. [AP Photo/Armin Durgut]

“I say clearly that Israel is a terrorist state,” Erdoğan said, pledging to charge Israeli officials with genocide before the Hague Court of Justice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson to the Arab world, Ofir Gendelman, quoted Netenyahu’s response on X/Twitter: “P.M.Netanyahu: There are forces that support the terrorists. And one of them is Turkish President Erdogan, who calls Israel a terrorist state, but actually supports the terror state of Hamas. He has himself bombed Turkish villages. We’re not going to take any lectures from him.”

In the same speech, Erdoğan also criticised his NATO allies: “Those who do not speak out against Israel’s crimes against humanity are just as much accomplices in these crimes as the perpetrators. The blood of kids killed in Gaza sticks as a stain of shame to the foreheads of those who provide arms, ammunition and intelligence support to the Israeli administration… yet, none of those from the European Union or the U.S., who always talk about human rights and freedoms, can come forward and utter one single word…” 

He added, “Those who allow the unscrupulous to burn the Holy Quran under the pretext of freedom of thought detain, put under arrest, and resort to every method to silence conscientious people who speak out against the massacre in Gaza.”

The government’s conflict with its NATO and Israeli allies over genocide in Gaza reveals the Turkish bourgeoisie’s impossible dilemma. It is virtually impossible for the Turkish government to join the other NATO powers in supporting a genocide in Gaza and waging the war Washington is planning with Iran. On the other hand, it has the closest ties with imperialism, and has for decades asserted its foreign policy interests through NATO.

The Turkish government’s Gaza dilemma is reflected in its continued high volume of trade with Israel while sending humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

Erdoğan said that so far 10 planeloads of material had been sent to Egypt for delivery to Gaza, and a ship carrying 666 tonnes of aid had been sent to the region.

However, journalist Metin Cihan, using data from Marinetraffic, has listed the ships that have sailed from Turkey to Israel since 7 October. Cihan wrote on Twitter: “#StopShipmentsToIsrael calls are not working. I just checked, 8 more ships left just yesterday. This brings the total to 259 since the attacks began... Israel is being supplied with ships full of logistics every day.”

Turkey’s exports to Israel amount to around $6 billion. The biggest item in this figure is steel, which is critical to the arms and defence industries. There is also cooperation in the energy sector, including pipelines and oil pipelines. According to the Turkish Exporters Assembly, Turkey is the third-largest exporter to Israel after China and the United States.

On the other hand, the bourgeois opposition parties are implicated in the government’s hypocrisy, remaining silent on Turkey’s continued trade with Israel amid the genocide.

In one unusual statement, Sabri Tekir, deputy leader of the Islamist Felicity Party, was forced to criticise the government. Tekir said: “Shipments are still being sent from our ports to Israel every day. These shipments include gunpowder and steel. These are all materials used in the production of weapons. There is also fuel oil, there is also food. Whatever you are looking for. So much so that Turkey is the third largest exporter to Israel.”

Criticising the government’s symbolic boycott campaign, Tekir added: “‘Citizens are boycotting. Some state institutions are encouraging the boycott. It is a good initiative. [But] They [the government] are multiplying their trade volume... We want the government to show even a thousandth of the sensitivity that our housewives show when shopping, not to buy their [Israeli] products.”

The government’s ostensible boycott mainly reflects its fear of an explosion of public anger at strong trade links with Israel amid the genocide, including with mass political strikes.

The Turkish government’s hypocrisy is shared by most of the states of the corrupt Arab bourgeoisie. On the sidelines of the Extraordinary Joint Summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League, statesmen met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

At the Arab League’s preparatory meeting, a proposal to impose a comprehensive embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed after the Six Day War in 1967, was rejected. The proposals, which included embargoes on articles like oil, the exclusion of Israeli aircraft from Arab airspace, the non-use of US bases and the freezing of all diplomatic and economic relations, were rejected by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Bahrain.

Iranian President Ibrahim Reisi, who has called for an oil embargo from mid-October, presented a 10-point proposal at the Joint Summit. His proposals—like supporting Egypt in breaking the blockade of Gaza, cutting political and economic ties with Israel, declaring the Israeli army a terrorist organisation, setting up an international court to try Israeli and US leaders, and arming the people of Gaza—were rejected.

The Summit’s final resolution condemned Israel at length and appealed to the international community, while defending calls for an ethnically based “two-state solution” of the Palestinian question, which Israel has consistently rejected. The summit called the pro-imperialist Palestine Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, which is hated by the Palestinian masses, “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

Erdoğan will hold talks in Germany today. He is expected to meet with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It has been reported that Israel’s attacks on Gaza will be discussed during the talks.

Erdoğan’s statements that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, and his criticisms of the hypocrisy of the Western states led to calls in Germany for the government to cancel the visit. The statement of Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, pointed out the pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist attitude of the pseudo-left. Dağdelen called on the German government, saying: “The red carpet should not be rolled out for Erdoğan, who does not see Hamas as a terrorist organisation and questions the existence of Israel.”

Before the talks, Scholz felt obliged to comment on Erdoğan’s previous statements. On 10 November, Erdoğan had said, “those who usurped lands where the Palestinian people had lived for thousands of years, are seeking to build a state, whose history dates back 75 years at the most and whose legitimacy they have themselves made questionable with their own fascist acts.”

On 14 November, Scholz responded with a statement blatantly ignoring the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He declared: “Israel is a democracy and a country that respects human rights and international law and acts accordingly. That is why the accusations against Israel are absurd.”

Spain's Sánchez re-elected prime minister amid mass strikes, protests over Gaza

Alejandro López

Yesterday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) renewed a minority coalition government with the pseudo-left Sumar coalition of Podemos and 14 other pro-austerity parties. It followed months of talks between the PSOE, Sumar and the Catalan and Basque nationalists after the right-wing Popular Party (PP) won a plurality in the July elections but failed to form a majority.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

Sánchez was re-elected with 179 votes. With a 4-seat majority in the 350-seat parliament, his new government will be weak, fragmented, and dependent on external support from six parties to rule. Besides the 152 seats of PSOE and Sumar, Sánchez needed support from 7 lawmakers of the Catalan Republic Left, 6 from Together for Catalonia, 6 from the Basque-separatist Bildu, five of the Basque Nationalist Party, one of the Galician Nationalist Bloc, and one from the Canarian Coalition. 

Sánchez received 171 votes against, from the right-wing PP and neo-fascist Vox, the highest vote ever recorded against a standing prime minister. Had the Catalan or Basque nationalists voted against Sanchez, he would have been defeated. 

In return, Sanchez agreed to amnesty 400 people facing legal action over their role in Catalonia’s separatist movement in the past decade, and to forgive €15 billion in Catalan government debt. Among those amnestied will be Carles Puigdemont, the former regional premier of Catalonia who was deposed in 2017 after organizing an outlawed secessionist referendum. Puigdemont then fled to Belgium to avoid prosecution.

Sánchez faces mounting opposition from both left and right—from workers and youth mounting strikes and protests against his anti-worker policies, and fascistic, anti-Catalan groups calling for a coup.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of high school and university students across Spain went on strike against the genocidal war in Gaza waged by Israel’s fascistic Netanyahu regime and its imperialist accomplices led by the United States and the European powers, including Spain’s PSOE-Sumar government. 

In Valencia, the strike was supported by 90 percent of the students in high schools and 70 percent in universities. Expressing widely shared sentiments, one student, Leiva, told the Catalan online daily El Nacional: “We ask the workers’ unions to call a general strike because we know that struggle is the only way.” Another student, Nina, said, “this conflict has made me think and see how important strikes are.”

It took place shortly after workers at Spain’s Navantia shipyard in Ferrol denounced the PSOE-Sumar’s dispatching of Spanish warships in a US-led battle group now patrolling off the Israeli-Gaza coast. They demanded the immediate return of the warships, which were built by Navantia, and the breaking of commercial and diplomatic ties with Israel. A week before, 1,200 dockworkers in Barcelona announced they would refuse to service any ships carrying war material to Israel.

A mass strike is also underway by 40,000 workers in the major logistics hub of Guadalajara, who are demanding wage increases.

The intersection of mass protests in defense of Gaza and strikes against the global cost-of-living crisis worsened by NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine shows the potential for the working class to mount its own, politically independent intervention into the world capitalist crisis.

These crises will only intensify in the months ahead. The PSOE-Sumar government has pledged to impose €24 billion in social cuts and tax hikes in 2024, as the European Union finances billions in military spending on the Ukraine war with Russia and Israel’s war on Gaza by attacks on wages and social conditions.

Sánchez for his part gave a cynical speech at the investiture, making appeals to gender and identity politics and lying through his teeth about his track record of attacks on the working class.

He said, “We must choose if we want to continue advancing in the dignity of work, the empowerment of women, respect for sexual diversity, the integration of migrants, and the belief that a plural society is a better society. Or if, on the contrary, we support the prophets of hate who want to lock women in kitchens, LGTBI people in closets, and immigrants in refugee camps.”

The previous government of Sánchez and Acting Deputy Prime Minister and Sumar leader Yolanda Díaz slashed pensions and labour law protections for workers, handed €140 billion in EU bailout funds to corporations and banks, and savagely cracked down on striking metalworkers and truck drivers. Its profits-over-lives policy on COVID-19 led to over 160,000 excess deaths. Its barbaric incarceration and oppression of migrants includes the infamous massacre of at least 100 refugees at Spain’s Melilla enclave.

Sánchez cynically claimed to be a bulwark against the far right. “In front of them,” Sánchez said, “there are progressive forces that will not take a step back, forces that know well the problems we face. And they are, furthermore, convinced that these problems can be overcome; and that, if we make the right decisions, Europe and the values it embodies have a bright future ahead of us and can illuminate the rest of the world with its model.”

In reality, Sánchez felt compelled to deploy 1,600 policemen to surround the parliament, for fear of a far-right coup. Not since Spain’s Transition to parliamentary rule in 1978, after the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, have explicit pro-coup threats been heard.

For weeks, Vox leader Santiago Abascal called for “patriotic resistance,” calling on the army and cops to intervene. For 12 days, far-right goons, including the American demagogue Tucker Carlson, occupied the street which hosts the PSOE’s headquarters in Madrid singing the fascist hymn Cara al Sol, making the fascist salute and shouting: “Franco, Franco, Franco.” One PSOE councilor in Cádiz was assaulted, and PSOE lawmakers were pelted with eggs yesterday as they made their way to the parliament.

At the end of the investiture, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, gave Sánchez a traditional congratulatory handshake as leader of the official opposition. However, Feijóo, who has repeatedly called the election results a “fraud,” threateningly told Sánchez: “this is a mistake. You will be the one responsible.”

The same security forces upon which the PSOE-Podemos government has rested for four years to assault strikers also threatened Sanchez. An association of paramilitary Guarda Civil declares themselves “ready to spill even the last drop of blood in defense of the sovereignty and independence of Spain and its constitutional order.”

The General Council of the Judiciary accused Sánchez of “abolishing the rule of law in Spain.” National Court judge García-Castellón suddenly brought up ludicrous charges of terrorism against Puigdemont to try to block the investiture.

Top active and retired military officers are rumored to be drafting a manifesto against the PSOE-Sumar government and its amnesty of Puigdemont and other Catalan nationalists. In December 2020, hundreds of retired officers sent letters to King Felipe VI calling him, as head of the armed forces, to launch a coup against the PSOE-Podemos government. One officer proclaimed his loyalty to Franco and called for the murder of “26 million” left-wing voters and their families to “extirpate the cancer.”

Biden meets Indonesia’s Widodo ahead of APEC summit

Ben McGrath

Indonesian President Joko Widodo traveled to Washington for a meeting on Monday with United States President Joe Biden. The two leaders agreed to elevate their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), the highest level of diplomatic cooperation. Widodo is also in the US to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit being held this week in San Francisco, California.

President Joe Biden meets with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]

The meeting provided Biden the opportunity to push his administration’s confrontation with China. The US president no doubt placed ample pressure on Widodo in private to distance Jakarta from its traditional non-aligned foreign policy stance and move closer into Washington’s orbit.

During a joint press conference, Biden declared that the new CSP would develop the US-Indonesian relationship “across the board, affecting everything. It includes enhancing security cooperation, particularly maritime security. And it includes expanding our work together to build a secure and resilient supply chain.”

The two sides announced collaboration in significant sectors including semiconductors, a key product for the US military. Biden and Widodo declared that the two countries would work together “to create a more resilient, secure, and sustainable global semiconductor value chain” while carrying out a review of Indonesia’s semiconductor industry in order to develop it, ultimately to meet the needs of US imperialism.

The two leaders also stated that they would elevate military ties with a new Defense Cooperation Arrangement, which includes the expansion of both bilateral and multilateral military exercises. It also includes stepped up cooperation in regards to cybersecurity and so-called counterterrorism.

While avoiding direct mentions of China, the joint statement released at the meeting declared, “Both leaders underscore their unwavering support for freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea and respect for sovereignty and for sovereign rights and jurisdiction of coastal states over their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and continental shelves in accordance with the international law of the sea, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).”

The purpose of such a statement from Washington’s point of view is to inflame tensions in the region with what is a thinly-veiled denunciation of China.

Indonesia has a territorial dispute with China around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. In recent years, Chinese fishing vessels have operated in waters Indonesia considers part of its EEZ around these islands where Beijing has its own claims, leading to Jakarta increasing its military presence. An EEZ stretches 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast.

Washington is essentially encouraging Indonesia to take a more hardline stance against China through the signing of a bilateral Work Plan on Maritime Security Cooperation deal “to prevent and counter illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing.” This will raise the prospect of a clash.

It is these sorts of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, once minor, that Washington has whipped up to pressure China and justify US-led war games in the region as well as operating militarily on China’s doorstep, claiming “freedom of navigation.” It must also be noted that while the US demands Beijing adhere to the former’s interpretation of UNCLOS, Washington refuses to adopt this UN convention.

Furthermore, increased military cooperation is already underway. On October 23, senior officials from the US State and Defense Departments met senior Indonesian officials in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministries for their first ever “2+2 Foreign Policy and Defense Dialogue.”

Washington’s aim is to build a system of alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific region with the intention of economically and militarily surrounding China. This includes working to encourage members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), such as Indonesia, to move into the camp of US imperialism.

Washington and Indonesia also held the 2023 Super Garuda Shield exercises from August 31 to September 13 in multiple locations across Indonesia. Additional participants included Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and Singapore. Twelve more nations attended as observers, including South Korea, New Zealand, Canada, and the Philippines, all of which the US considers key components of its war plans with China. These sorts of US-led military exercises in the region have become almost daily occurrences.

Washington is also using its other alliances to pressure nations. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in South Korea on Monday where he and his South Korean counterpart Defense Minister Sin Won-sik agreed to leverage their alliance to pressure Southeast Asian and Pacific Island nations.

The two sides asserted that “the Alliance seeks to play a more active role in contributing to regional security, including by bolstering defense cooperation with Southeast Asia and Pacific Island Countries to cultivate a well-networked region, which is critical to protect the values of freedom, peace, and prosperity.”

Washington has demonstrated preciously what it means by “freedom, peace, and prosperity” through its complete backing of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. For all of the talk of “rule of law” in the Indo-Pacific, it amounts to nothing more than a tool to demonize Beijing. And while Widodo called on Biden to support a ceasefire in Gaza, through the signing of the CSP, he made clear that the mass murder of civilians is no barrier to working with Washington.

This does not mean Jakarta is rushing to join the US war drive against China, which is Indonesia’s largest trading partner. At the same time, Indonesia is dependent on Washington for security, with the US also being Indonesia’s second-largest trading partner.

Jakarta is therefore attempting to balance between the two, conscious that conflict between Washington and Beijing will have a negative impact on its economy. Widodo stated in Washington that “Indonesia is always open to cooperate with any country, and not to take the side of any power, except to take the side of peace and humanity.”

This is ultimately unacceptable to Washington, which considers Indonesia a major factor in maintaining its hegemony in the region. Indonesia was the site of one of the most vicious crimes of the 20th century: the mass murder of one million workers, peasants, and Indonesian Communist Party members during the 1965–1966 CIA-organized coup led by Suharto. Having spilt this blood, Washington is not prepared to allow the country to go its own way.

Biden’s meeting with Widodo also came two days before the US president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit. Rather than reduce tensions, Biden’s discussions with these and other leaders have been used to ratchet up the danger of war in the Indo-Pacific.

Israeli War Crimes and Propaganda Follow US Blueprint

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies

A young child holding a flag Description automatically generated

Girl holds improvised white flag, to tell Israel to respect Geneva Conventions and spare her fleeing family. Photo credit: Yasser Qudih

We have both been reporting on and protesting against U.S. war crimes for many years, and against identical crimes committed by U.S. allies and proxies like Israel and Saudi Arabia: illegal uses of military force to try to remove enemy governments or “regimes”; hostile military occupations; disproportionate military violence justified by claims of “terrorism”; the bombing and killing of civilians; and the mass destruction of whole cities.

Most Americans share a general aversion to war, but tend to accept this militarized foreign policy because we are tragically susceptible to propaganda, the machinery of public manipulation that works hand in hand with the machinery of killing to justify otherwise unthinkable horrors.

This process of “manufacturing consent” works in a number of ways. One of the most effective forms of propaganda is silence, simply not telling us, and certainly not showing us, what war is really doing to the people whose homes and communities have been turned into America’s latest battlefield.

The most devastating campaign the U.S. military has waged in recent years dropped over 100,000 bombs and missiles on Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, and other areas occupied by ISIS or Da’esh. An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul, while Raqqa was even more totally destroyed.

The shelling of Raqqa was the heaviest U.S. artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War, yet it was barely reported in the U.S. corporate media. A recent New York Times article about the traumatic brain injuries and PTSD suffered by U.S. artillerymen operating 155 mm howitzers, which each fired up to 10,000 shells into Raqqa, was appropriately titled A Secret War, Strange New Wounds and Silence from the Pentagon.

Shrouding such mass death and destruction in secrecy is a remarkable achievement. When British playwright Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, in the midst of the Iraq War, he titled his Nobel speech “Art, Truth and Politics,” and used it to shine a light on this diabolical aspect of U.S. war-making.

After talking about the hundreds of thousands of killings in Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua, Pinter asked:  “Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy,”

“But you wouldn’t know it,” he went on.” It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

But the wars and the killing go on, day after day, year after year, out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. Did you know that the United States and its allies have dropped more than 350,000 bombs and missiles on 9 countries since 2001 (including 14,000 in the current war on Gaza)? That’s an average of 44 airstrikes per day, day in, day out, for 22 years.

Israel, in its present war on Gaza, with children making up more than 40% of the more than 11,000 people killed to date, would surely like to mimic the extraordinary U.S. ability to hide its brutality. But despite Israel’s efforts to impose a media blackout, the massacre is taking place in a small, enclosed, densely-populated urban area, often called an open-air prison, where the world can see a great deal more than usual of how it impacts real people.

Israel has killed a record number of journalists in Gaza, and this appears to be a deliberate strategy, as when U.S. forces targeted journalists in Iraq. But we are still seeing horrifying video and photos of daily new atrocities: dead and wounded children; hospitals struggling to treat the injured; and desperate people fleeing from one place to another through the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Another reason this war is not so well hidden is because Israel is waging it, not the United States. The U.S. is supplying most of the weapons, has sent aircraft carriers to the region, and dispatched U.S. Marine General James Glynn to provide tactical advice based on his experience conducting similar massacres in Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq. But Israeli leaders seem to have overestimated the extent to which the U.S. information warfare machine would shield them from public scrutiny and political accountability.

Unlike in Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa, people all over the world are seeing video of the unfolding catastrophe on their computers, phones and TVs. Netanyahu, Biden and the corrupt “defense analysts” on cable TV are no longer the ones creating the narrative, as they try to tack self-serving narratives onto the horrifying reality we can all see for ourselves.

With the reality of war and genocide staring the world in the face, people everywhere are challenging the impunity with which Israel is systematically violating international humanitarian law.

Michael Crowley and Edward Wong have reported in the New York Times that Israeli officials are defending their actions in Gaza by pointing to U.S. war crimes, insisting that they are simply interpreting the laws of war the same way that the United States has interpreted them in Iraq and other U.S. war zones. They compare Gaza to Fallujah, Mosul and even Hiroshima.

But copying U.S. war crimes is precisely what makes Israel’s actions illegal. And it is the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable that has emboldened Israel to believe it too can kill with impunity.

The United States systematically violates the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force, manufacturing political justifications to suit each case and using its Security Council veto to evade international accountability. Its military lawyers employ unique, exceptional interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which the universal protections the Convention guarantees to civilians are treated as secondary to U.S. military objectives.

The United States fiercely resists the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), to ensure that its exceptional interpretations of international law are never subjected to impartial judicial scrutiny.

When the United States did allow the ICJ to rule on its war against Nicaragua in 1986, the ICJ ruled that its deployment of the “Contras” to invade and attack Nicaragua and its mining of Nicaragua’s ports were acts of aggression in violation of international law, and ordered the United States to pay war reparations to Nicaragua. When the United States declared that it would no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ and failed to pay up, Nicaragua asked the UN Security Council to enforce the reparations, but the U.S. vetoed the resolution.

Atrocities like Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bombing of German and Japanese cities to “unhouse” the civilian population, as Winston Churchill called it, together with the horrors of Germany’s Nazi holocaust, led to the adoption of the new Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, to protect civilians in war zones and under military occupation.

On the 50th anniversary of the Convention in 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is responsible for monitoring international compliance with the Geneva Conventions, conducted a survey to see how well people in different countries understood the protections the Convention provides.

They surveyed people in twelve countries that had been victims of war, in four countries (France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.) that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and in Switzerland where the ICRC is based. The ICRC published the results of the survey in 2000, in a report titled, People on War – Civilians in the Line of Fire.

The survey asked people to choose between a correct understanding of the Convention’s civilian protections and a watered-down interpretation of them that closely resembles that of U.S. and Israeli military lawyers.

The correct understanding was defined by a statement that combatants “must attack only other combatants and leave civilians alone.” The weaker, incorrect statement was that “combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible” as they conduct military operations.

Between 72% and 77% of the people in the other UNSC countries and Switzerland agreed with the correct statement, but the United States was an outlier, with only 52% agreeing. In fact 42% of Americans agreed with the weaker statement, twice as many as in the other countries. There were similar disparities between the United States and the others on questions about torture and the treatment of prisoners of war.

In U.S.-occupied Iraq, the United States’ exceptionally weak interpretations of the Geneva Conventions led to endless disputes with the ICRC and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), which issued damning quarterly human rights reports. UNAMI consistently maintained that U.S. airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas were violations of international law.

For instance, its human rights report for the 2nd quarter of 2007 documented UNAMI’s investigations of 15 incidents in which U.S. occupation forces killed 103 Iraqi civilians, including 27 killed in airstrikes in Khalidiya, near Ramadi, on April 3rd, and 7 children killed in a helicopter attack on an elementary school in Diyala province on May 8th.

UNAMI demanded that “all credible allegations of unlawful killings by MNF (Multi-National Force) forces be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”

A footnote explained, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”

UNAMI also rejected U.S. claims that its widespread killing of civilians was the result of the Iraqi Resistance using civilians as “human shields,” another U.S. propaganda trope that Israel is mimicking today. Israeli accusations of human shielding are even more absurd in the densely populated, confined space of Gaza, where the whole world can see that it is Israel that is placing civilians in the line of fire as they desperately seek safety from Israeli bombardment.

Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are echoing around the world: through the halls of the United Nations; from the governments of traditional U.S. allies like France, Spain and Norway; from a newly united front of previously divided Middle Eastern leaders; and in the streets of London and Washington. The world is withdrawing its consent for a genocidal “two-state solution” in which Israel and the United States are the only two states that can settle the fate of Palestine.

If U.S. and Israeli leaders are hoping that they can squeak through this crisis, and that the public’s habitually short attention span will wash away the world’s horror at the crimes we are all witnessing, that may be yet another serious misjudgment. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1950 in the preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism.

“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”

The Hidden Script of Capitalism

Thomas Klikauer

Despite the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism – featuring the hallucination of a deregulated market – in reality, capitalism still depends on the state and rafts of legal statutes regulating capitalism. Without state, there is no capitalism. For example, it is the state that issues money – the ultimate exchange object.

Worse for the ideologues of the free market, the state also regulates commercial transactions by providing a legal framework. There are, at least, two further commercial statutes that are imperative for capitalism: property and copyright laws.

The first enables property and wealth to exit while the second protects good and services from being copied. Both are inextricably linked to capitalism and without a legally secured property, there would be no capitalism.

Similarly, if anyone can copy any product and sell it, capitalism would end very shortly. In other words, without legal statutes – the invisible scripts that run in the background of capitalism – there would be no capitalism.

In a way, law almost creates capitalism and wealth. Yet, legal statutes also create – and ideologically justify – one of the inextricable consequences of capitalism: inequality. Yet, the growing levels of inequality do threaten the social fabric of democratic-parliamentarian systems – and inevitably, of capitalism’s.

Interestingly, even the most astute observers of capitalism tend to treat the legal statutes that have underpinned capitalism ever since its inception, as a minor or even as an irrelevant ornament. In sharp contrast to that, legal statutes are the obligatory codes of capitalism.

For example, all computers need a code. Computer programs need, for example, Kathleen Booth’s alphabet code that runs in the background – unseen by the user. In the same way, the legal statute runs in the background of capitalism. In short, without a code, a computer is useless. Without a legal code, capitalism is useless.

Of course, the ideologues of neoliberalism love to assert that it is an individual’s special skills, hard work, and – naturally – it is the personal sacrifices that the rich have that justify their ever-increasing wealth. This justification also extends to their parents, grandparents and so on. And it is for this reason that they have the wealth they hold today.

In the belief system of neoliberalism, it is the individuals’ factors that have contributed to their fortunes. In reality however, without legal statutes, nearly all of their wealth would have been short-lived or never existed at all. Accumulating financial riches over a long period demands regulated means of fortification to safeguard their booty.

In capitalism, only legal statutes backed by the state’s coercive powers – police, criminal law, courts, prisons, the army, etc. – can offer this. Despite the deregulation ideology of neoliberalism, capitalism and the wealthy depend on the state and legal statutes.

Of course, under capitalism’s legal statutes, some are more equal than others. Perhaps, this is the raison d’être of legal statutes in capitalism. This has a long history.

Today’s understanding and use of the common law of property, for example, was originally invented and enforced for and by the ruling classes. It came at a time when the bulk of their capital was still locked in land. Just as French philosopher Rousseau once said,

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society … how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes … came from that.

It is imperative to realize that it is NOT the property itself – but capitalism’s legal statutes that protects the owner of wealth. It also protects the rich and corporations from the uncertain headwinds of capitalism’s business cycles.

It assures the rich, corporations, and capitalism that there is wealth longevity – that their wealth is safe, particularly in the long run. Simultaneously, legal statutes set up, solidify sustained inequality, and ideologically justify inequality.

As for the ideological justification of capitalism and inequality, legality issues a powerful vindication against anyone challenging wealth, inequality, and capitalism. For the catch-cry: but it’s legal remains a powerful calling card.

Meanwhile, the extraordinary rise of global trade, commerce, and finance would have never been feasible without legal statutes. In a way, it certifies capitalism.

Of course, realizing the imperative of the power of legal statutes to enable, certify, and ideologically legitimize capitalism has very important repercussions on our understanding of not just the history of capitalism but its political economy. Capitalism and its code should not be seen as separated or independent of each other.

For a long time, wealthy elites have also liked to claim freedom of contract as an essential freedom. What they like to – rather conveniently – neglect is the fact that these freedoms are guaranteed by the state’s legal statutes.

While the basics of the legal statutes that make capitalism function are – more or less – the same in every country, there are, nevertheless, different local jurisdictions offering slight variations of a theme, as German philosopher Adorno would say.

This somewhat decentralized characteristic of legal statutes that is, nevertheless, used to code global capitalism offers two key advantages for the global corporate elite:

1) For one, global finance, globalization, and earth-spanning capitalism can blossom without the need for one single global state and one single global law.

2) This arrangement allows regime-picking, i.e. the corporate elite and the rich can pick and choose those countries with local rules that best suit their or their clients’ interests. This creates a particular neat form of global corruption – otherwise known as tax havens.

All too often, the entire setup has also been ideologically framed via Adam Smith’s invisible hand. This rather doctrinaire framing of the delights of capitalism has a long history. It is not just a feature of 19^th century capitalism but has continued deep into the age of present day financial-global capitalism – previously known as imperialism. Even before imperialism, the wonders of the legal statutes of exploitation already worked its magic.

For example, at the time when slavery was legal – it was legal but it was always immoral, inhuman, and dehumanizing – slaves were not just owned. The legal statutes offered provisions that slaves could be used as collaterals to secure loans, for example.

With 50 million slaves globally in existence today, we should never be tempted to think that slavery is a thing of the past.

Whether with or without slaves, capitalism owes its wealth-creating capacity to “its” legal statutes. Even better, the ability of the legal statute of corporate capitalism can buffer corporate assets from its direct creditors and even secure it against workers. It secures it even against a corporation’s own shareholders – the actual owners of a corporation.

This handy setup has allowed corporations to become the most enduring swindles (the corporation as a natural person) of corporate capitalism with all its pathological consequences.

In other words, all modern economies are constructed around a complex legal network of legal statutes that are – always! – backed by coercive state powers. The fruitful interface between capitalism and the state is absolutely essential for the global ascent of capitalism.

Even today, the state and its legal and policing powers remain indispensable to capitalism. Worse, the more diverse corporate assets and wealth become and the more uneven their distribution shifts, the greater the demand for powerful law enforcement that protects capitalism and the rich.

This hidden motive is the reason why the state and capitalism are inextricably linked. This mutual dependency in times of monopoly capitalism is used to be known as state monopoly capitalism.

This inevitable mutual capitalism-state dependency shows that – despite the ideology of deregulation – the state is not (in fact cannot be) neutral. Worse, those with an interest in wealth, assets, corporations, and the wealthy as such will nearly always be given priority by legal statutes.

Camouflaged by today’s ideology – as broadcasted by corporate media – many remain unaware that property rights are not given facts. They are not even God-given. Instead, they are acquired rights often granted by the state to secure wealth, corporations, and capitalism. Meanwhile, economists like to think of the corporate organization – the corporation – as a legal fiction.

We have been made to accept treating corporations as legal persons that can buy and sell things even though corporations are anything but a legal person. Yet, the legal statute of capitalism makes this possible. It is even made to sound plausible, and, once ideologically legitimized, appears to be normal.

It is the normality of a pathology. Madness becomes normalized. The madness of capitalism prevails as enshrined in its legal codes and statutes.