War Mongers as "Leaders of the World"

Iqbal Jassat

Why are war criminals in their capacity as heads of state who despite being consistently in breach of global conventions governing human rights, treated as royalty?

What sets them apart from common criminals by having red carpets rolled out and celebrated with pomp and ceremony?

Do they belong to a special class of untouchables? A distinct class who enjoy status, privileges and worst of all, immunity?

To list them is not difficult, for not only are they prominent as they parade on global arenas like proud peacocks, they are feted as celebrities too by no less than members of the mainstream media.

Sounds difficult to comprehend and quite inexplicable that supposedly informed media personalities would find it hard to haul such criminals over the coals.

Tough and robust interviews to interrogate, shame and humiliate thugs who masquerade as leaders seem not to matter anymore. Instead embarrassingly, journalists find it cool to jostle with each other to obtain - wait for it, not a scoop but a selfie!

From Delhi to Tel Aviv; from Riyadh to Dubai; from Rangoon to Beijing; from Cairo to Washington, the misfits who claim to be leaders of their respective nation states are no more than usurpers causing untold harm to millions under their brutal reign.

Whether its Narendra Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu, the list of crimes committed by them including gross human rights violations ought to have them face prosecution at the Hague. Instead they are revered as respected leaders without any accountability.

Kashmir and Palestine - despite the weight of international law being on their side, share a bitter experience of having their rights ignored by the United Nations.

Their occupiers, India and Israel, are brutally repressive and utterly unmindful to the point of being dismissive about repercussions from international bodies such as the United Nations.

India is among Israel’s biggest importer of arms and Modi’s security forces have been receiving training for “anti-terror” operations that Netanyahu’s regime conducts against Palestinians.

Widespread suppression of freedoms and fundamental human rights are conducted within a post-9/11 framework, defined as defeating the “scourge of Islamic terrorism”.

It is this manufactured terror frame that is sold to the world to justify the aggressive nationalisms of Zionism and Hindutva.

India and Israel thus inaugurate the colonial occupations of Kashmir and Palestine.

It is important to recall that Modi’s culpability during the 2002 Gujarat massacres that resulted in mass murder of Muslims, earned him the title of the “Butcher of Gujarat”.

Given the atrocities being committed by his occupying forces in Kashmir, we can add the title, the “Butcher of Kashmir” as well.

As the “Butcher of Palestine”, Netanyahu continues plundering land and destroying lives via ethnic cleansing.

His overt apartheid policies are cheered on by over-zealous supporters, who have allied themselves with white supremacists in Europe and America.

It is a shame that the world is adorned with ethno-nationalist presidents and prime ministers whose ideologies are defined by racism and religious extremism.

Some gain power by ostensibly “democratic” means, while others via hereditary privileges which enthrone them as “kings”, “princes” and “emirs”.

The Arabian Peninsula is littered with unelected despots and tyrants who masquerade as leaders. The impunity associated with their iron-fisted rule makes a mockery of religious values they supposedly subscribe to.

While Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and other Gulf fiefdoms claim to be Muslim governments, their representation of Islam is far removed from its pristine teachings.

Neither civil right activists nor political opponents are tolerated in these oligarchies.

The brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the circumstances that led to his death, illustrate the rogue conduct of Mohamed bin Salman.

Yet despite the evidence that implicates him directly, MbS is feted as a “moderate” and embraced on the global stage.

The devastation caused in Yemen by the Saudi-led war is yet another example of literally getting away with murder.

MbS and his Emirati mentor MbZ have since 2015 wreaked havoc leading to the UN declaring Yemen to be the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.

Human rights monitors report that the Saudi coalition has conducted scores of indiscriminate and disproportionate airstrikes killing thousands of civilians.

That this illegal war has failed to achieve any of the coalition’s goals apart from reducing Yemen to ashes seems of no concern to the warmongers, as they continue exacerbating crisis after crisis by blowing up civilian targets.

Saudi Arabia’s status as a client-state of America and having inched closer to publicly embracing the Zionist project which dispossessed Palestine, leads MbS to believe that repercussions if any, will be limited and managed by Trump.

War crimes indeed! Yet despite going on unabated for four years, the criminals responsible for it are sought after as “celebrities” instead of facing prosecution and lifelong jail terms.

Turning our gaze to Myanmar, it is necessary to repeat the question Mehdi Hasan posed: why hasn’t Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi been indicted for war crimes and genocide at the International Criminal Court?

Two years have passed since the Burmese military launched a renewed campaign of terror and violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine region.

Documented evidence point to dastardly crimes committed as Hasan reminded us: “Rohingya men hacked to death; children burned alive; women and girls raped and sexually-assaulted in their hundreds and thousands. Scores of villages were pillaged and razed to the ground as more than 700,000 Rohingya were driven from their homes.”

In listing some of the corrupt “leaders” engaged in genocidal crimes against their own people, others and those occupied by them, does not suggest that the list is complete.

Egypt’s military dictator who may now have donned a three-piece suit cannot escape the fact that his ascension to power was via a violent bloody coup.

General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was America’s chosen candidate to betray Egypt’s revolution by deposing its only democratically elected leader Mohamed Morsi and placing the entire country under siege.

Not surprisingly, the rogue elements who financed and supported the overthrow of Morsi, banned the Muslim Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders along with thousands of civil rights activists, journalists and opponents, are none other than Bin Salman, Bin Zayed and Netanyahu.

Sisi’s authoritarian rule has crushed democracy and taken the country back to a state of emergency which Egyptians revolted against and succeeded by removing the tyranny of Hosni Mubarak.

Paradoxically, instead of facing the ICC prosecutors, Sisi has been rewarded with the chairmanship of the African Union - much to the shame of the continent.

Why, one may ask has the world allowed murderers to hold high office with impunity?

Is it due to the current construct of global politics being skewed in favor of the rich and powerful? Is it as the result of the ease whereby corruption at all levels of society allows manipulation of political power?

Or is it a combination of both and more that says to Modi, Netanyahu and fellow warmongers: go on, your fascist policies are untouchable?

India annexes Kashmir under the dark shadow of Netanyahu and Modi’s far-right embrace

Nasim Ahmed

The depth of the love between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi has few parallels. Many traits unite the current crop of populist, power-hungry, authoritarian strongmen that have been on the rise of late, but few have enjoyed the kind of relationship that has blossomed between Modi and Netanyahu. The two are in a league of their own; conjoined twins some may say, whose friendship is forged through similar racist ideologies and deep dislike of minorities.

Both leaders again expressed their affection for each other yesterday. Netanyahu responded to Modi’s declaration of “eternal” friendship by saying: “Thank you, my friend, Indian PM @narendramodi. I could not agree with you more. The deep connection between Israel and India is rooted in the strong friendships between Israelis and Indians. We cooperate in so many areas. I know our ties will only strengthen in the future!”

Netanyahu’s adoration was prompted by a Modi tweet in which he thanked an Israeli Embassy message on Twitter: “May our ever-strengthening friendship & #growingpartnership touch greater heights.” Replying in Hebrew, Modi said: “Thank you; I wish the great citizens of Israel and my friend @netanyahu a happy Friendship Day. Israel and India have proved their friendship over time. Our ties our eternal and strong. I hope that our friendship will continue to thrive and grow even further.”

The exchange took place as India prepared to more or less annex the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir by revoking its special status. Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist government pushed forward with a hostile move to revoke the part of the constitution that gives Indian-administered Kashmir special status in what is seen as an unprecedented move. It is not unlike Israel’s ongoing attempt to seize the whole West Bank and is just as likely to spark unrest.

Article 370 is sensitive because it guarantees significant autonomy for the disputed territory by allowing the 12 million people who live in Jammu and Kashmir to have their own constitution, a separate flag and independence over all matters except foreign affairs, defence and communications. India’s decision has been denounced by the former chief minister of the state, Mehbooba Mufti, who is reported by the BBC as saying that the move effectively made India an occupying force. “Today marks the darkest day in Indian democracy,” she tweeted, adding that the government’s “unilateral decision” is “illegal and unconstitutional.”

Modi’s decision, which upheld a promise made by his right-wing Hindu nationalist party during its 2019 election campaign, is expected to lead to violence and arrests. Activists on the ground in Kashmir spoke to MEMO of the “total communication blackout since midnight” and reported that the “whole of Kashmir is under strict indefinite curfew.” In recent days, the Indian government has also moved 10,000 troops to what is already one of the most militarised regions in the world and ordered tourists and Hindu pilgrims to leave the Himalayan valley.

The newly dispatched soldiers will join the nearly 700,000 Indian soldiers already deployed in Indian-administered Kashmir, where civilian protesters and armed rebels either want freedom for the Muslim-majority Kashmir from India or merger with Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan claim the region of Kashmir in full and have fought two of their three wars over it.

Modi’s plan for India-administered Kashmir has uncanny similarities with the way in which Netanyahu, with a similar right-wing extreme nationalist government, is looking to annex the West Bank. The ideological bond between the extreme version of Zionism represented by Netanyahu and the extreme Hindu nationalism of the Hindutva, represent by Modi, is almost identical: both are political ideologies; both subscribe to the same concept of a far-right ethno-nationalist movement that uses religion to achieve its aims, and both misrepresent history to justify atrocities against minorities in pursuit of an exclusivist and discriminatory political vision.

Hinduvta members, like their ideological counterparts in Israel, speak openly of ethnic cleansing and expelling minority communities: that includes Dalits, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Ravidassias and Buddhists in the case of the extremist Hindus, and Christian and Muslim Palestinians in the case of Israel. Their vision is rooted in fascism and white supremacy. Hindutva is identified commonly as the guiding ideology of the Hindu Nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of which Modi is a member.

A profile of RSS ideology shows that its leaders draw their inspiration from right-wing, fascist European groups and their leaders, including Hitler and Mussolini. Its long-time chief, M S Golwalkar, is said to have openly admired Hitler’s “final solution” and wanted to apply the same approach in India to eliminate the country’s minorities. This makes the strong bond between Modi and Netanyahu even harder to understand.

While the two countries under their current rulers can be said to enjoy an ideological affinity and subscribe to the exclusivist political vision of the far-right, both are also locked in a struggle with a large minority group challenging military occupation and human rights abuse, thus making them allies in ways that are rare on the global stage. Relations between the two countries have never been better. India is now the largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade; the two countries carry out joint military exercises; and Israel uses the Negev Desert to train Indian soldiers in the tactics of suppressing civilian populations, its expertise learned through the suppression of Palestinians in the Gaza and the West-Bank.

It’s in this regard that Israel, perhaps more than any other right-wing government, has excelled. It is in an enviable position, according to Israeli author Jeff Halper, to “secure insecurity” having had decades of experience suppressing Palestinians. In his 2015 book, War Against the People Halper argues that Israel’s security exports are unmatched due to its ability to develop weapons and techniques for urban warfare, surveillance and intelligence; what Halper calls “full-spectrum domination”. Israel’s success is put down to its knowledge and experience of developing control technologies and battle-tested weapons that have become the “must-have” items in the armoury of every authoritarian dictator facing a restive population. This was demonstrated clearly when Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” were used by the Indian air force in its strike against Kashmiri “terrorists” inside Pakistan in February.

Beyond trade and arms sales, Israel has also found an ally in Modi on the international stage where the Zionist state regularly comes under sharp criticism from the UN and other international bodies. In June, New Delhi’s representative at the global body voted in favour of Israel in a vote to grant consultative status to a Palestinian human rights NGO, which eventually lost its bid to join the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The vote marked an unprecedented stage in relations between the two countries. India’s history in the anti-colonial movement once made it a strong ally of the Palestinian cause. Previous Indian prime ministers, including the country’s founder and revered leader Mahatma Gandhi, opposed Israel, believing it to be a colonial enterprise. The leader of the Indian independence movement against the British was strongly opposed to the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine, he believed it was an an expression of ethnonationalism that was inimical to the values of secular liberal democracy.

With his embrace of Netanyahu, Modi has turned his back on the legacy of Gandhi and his vision of a secular democracy based on civic nationalism and equality for all, irrespective of race and religion. Indian democracy has indeed taken a serious hit.