Author: Sheldon Richman

This article was posted shortly before the International Court of Justice ruled provisionally that Israel’s Gaza military operation can plausibly be described as acts outlawed by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICJ ordered Israel to take all actions possible to prevent the acts forbidden by the convention. But the court did not order a ceasefire. A full ruling will come later. The complaint against Israel had been filed by the Republic of South Africa.

What’s more off-putting than seeing U.S. government officials and their spokesmen trying to wriggle out of embarrassing questions about American support for Israel’s continuing atrocities against the people of the Gaza Strip? That’s the location of just the latest conflict into which we Americans have been dragged by our caring rulers without our consent. The previous one, in Ukraine, is still going on, though largely forgotten. Isn’t the state a wonderful thing?

Continue reading “Without the State, Who’d Drag Us Into Other People’s Wars?”

The unspeakable violence that plagues Israel and Palestine daily relates in part to the assertion of an ancient, ancestral, and even divinely bestowed property right to a parcel of land, which is often called “holy” and “promised.” For background, here are a few influential – which is not to say factual – passages from a perennially bestselling book (or set of books) deemed important by the three Abrahamic religions.

From the Book of Genesis:

[15:18]In that day [the Lord] made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt [Nile] unto the great river, the river Euphrates [Iraq]; [15:19][the land of] the Kenite, and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, [15;20]and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, [15:21]and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.’

Continue reading “Inspiration for the Nakba?”

In the fateful year 1917 the British cabinet had one Jewish member: Edwin Montagu. He was also the only cabinet member to oppose the Balfour Declaration of that year, which paved the way for the self-declared creation of the state of Israel, the so-called Jewish State, 31 tumultuous years later. The declaration was a brief letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader in Britain of the Zionist project, launched in the late 19th century by Theodor Herzl, to establish a Jewish state in Palestine The letter stated,

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Continue reading “Jewish Dissent on the Balfour Declaration”

No one I know who criticizes America’s post-Cold War policy toward Russia — including the U.S. position on Ukraine — thinks Vladimir Putin is a good guy. Indeed, the case against U.S. bellicosity toward Russia in no way depends on a favorable view of the Russian ruler. On the contrary, it is because Putin is who he is (an aggrieved nationalist) and because of Russia’s place in history that the U.S. policy of ignoring, when not belittling, Russia’s security concerns is so dangerous. Russia’s history — including multiple invasions from the west — is what it is, and that huge nuclear power isn’t going anywhere, no matter what America’s warmongers would like. Neither are its neighbors going to relocate anytime soon. So a regional modus vivendi is imperative. If the U.S. government continues to stand in the way — remember the U.S.-backed coup against the elected Ukrainian government in 2014 and the repeated eastward expansion of NATO since the Cold War — it is an agent of war, not peace.

Joe Biden, who says the buck regarding Afghanistan stops with him in the White House, claims that the Taliban’s final takeover of the capital, Kabul, provoking mass panic reminiscent of Saigon, 1975, happened more quickly “than anticipated.” If that’s true – spoiler alert: it ain’t – then we taxpayers should demand the mass firings and resignations of anyone in the America intel apparatus having anything to do with Afghanistan. We should also demand our money back. Intel isn’t cheap.

The U.S. government has been in that country for nearly 20 years with a political, military, and Intel presence. The American taxpayers are forced to cough up about $85 billion a year for the lying, spying, killing, and torturing agencies benignly called the “Intel community.” I realize that not all of that targets foreigners; some of it is devoted to spying on us. But still…

So even if Biden were telling the truth, it would mean that we’ve just witnessed a colossal failure and the clearest demonstration of incompetence imaginable.

What will be the consequences? There will be none.

Of course, Biden was lying, just as Trump, Obama, and Bush 2 and their people systematically lied to the American people about Afghanistan. This has been documented over and over. About this there can be no doubt.

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute, senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society, and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies, former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest book isWhat Social Animals Owe to Each Other.