By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
October 10, 2024
The author is a Venezuelan anti-imperialist, former soldier and diplomat.
Translation: John Catalinotto.
“Death is not true when the work of life has been well accomplished.”
José Martí
Wound if you want to wound
Serene, I await the blow
for I, on the other hand, condemn you
to the torment of living
Where can you flee to
that the punishment will not reach you?
You will look in vain for shelter
on other mountains, other beaches
and wherever you go
your crime will go with you.
Epigraph − Jesus Orta Ruiz, the Naborí Indian
September 30, 2024. They killed José Martí, and the struggle of the Cuban people did not stop. They killed General Augusto C. Sandino, and years later Commander Carlos Fonseca and the struggle of the Nicaraguan people did not stop. They killed Yasser Arafat, and the struggle of the Palestinian people did not stop. Though it has not been proven, some conjecture that they killed Commander Hugo Chávez, and the struggle of the Venezuelan people did not stop.
Do you think that because they killed Hassan Nasrallah, the struggle of the anti-Zionist resistance in West Asia is going to stop?
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Credit: al-Awda
To suppose that is to underestimate the peoples, to believe that the struggle depends solely on a personality or even a leader. Of course the loss of a leader is hard and painful, but never has the history of the struggle for independence and freedom stopped because of that.
It has been proven that Israel is an imperialist spawn and that Zionism is sustained by the endorsement that the United States and Europe give it to commit its crimes. But it is also true that the greatest triumph of imperialism and Zionism — and therein lies the fundamental cause of its success — is to have managed to keep the Islamic and Muslim world divided and to prevent the unity necessary to fight the Zionist enemy.
As of October 7 last year, some Arab countries had even signed the Abraham Accords and initiated the “normalization” of relations with Israel. Before that, the Camp David Accords were signed in 1978 and the Oslo Accords in 1993. More recently, by unleashing the so-called “Arab Spring,” by striking at the Axis of Resistance in order to destroy it, imperialism and Zionism were aiming at disunity.
It is more than 45 years of effort by the United States to seek partial agreements that paralyze the struggle of the Palestinian people and the resisting countries. Never have a firm and tenacious people and their leaders signed any agreement with the Zionist entity.
Today, once again it is clear that religious and national identity have a subordinate character when it comes to defending class interests. That is why some Arab and Muslim countries and leaders keep mouthing the rhetoric of “returning to Al Quds” [Jerusalem] and “rejecting” the Zionist massacres, while in reality they seek to ally themselves — and even do business with them — through states that seek to join with them in order to stop the liberating impulse of the resistance.
Everything will change
Some 300 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims have been unable to unite to confront Zionism; Israel’s population includes 6.9 million Jewish people (and not all of them are Zionists). Division, the interests of corrupt medieval monarchies and their desire to subordinate themselves and serve the United States and the West allow this situation in which Israel can act as it pleases in violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. The day will come when the peoples of the region will call their elites to account for their hesitation and doubts about confronting Zionism. And when that day comes, everything will change.
Article 1, paragraph 1 of the Charter of the U.N. established as the first purpose of the organization: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”
Earlier in the preamble to the Charter, it is stated that the U.N. was determined “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
In the light of these precepts, it is evident that the U.N. has failed and that it must disappear and give way to an organization that is capable of fulfilling these objectives. To this end, it is basic, fundamental and necessary that the right to veto disappears. The right to veto is a dictatorial instrument that provides the tools that guarantee the Zionist genocide in West Asia.
The U.N. is no longer an instrument for peace, to the point that the Zionist leader — by telephone from New York — and without caring if the world was listening to him, ordered the attack on Lebanon and the assassination of resistance leader Hassan Nasrallah. When it has become evident that the U.N. is no longer a tribune to promote peace but to stimulate war, it should be natural for it to disappear.
U.S. backs Israel’s wars
All this can be done only because the United States allows it, endorses it, supports it, finances it and arms the perpetrator of the war even when it is evident that they have committed the crime of genocide as established in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” adopted in 1948 and put into force in 1951. The U.N. is so ineffective that it has not been able to enforce this convention which was intended to prevent “a crime committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
At the end of World War II, in order to punish those guilty of such an abominable act that caused the death of 60 million people (2.5% of the world’s population at the time), the Nuremberg trial was held. One of its main objectives was to conduct a fair trial and play a concrete role in the prevention of future genocides. Despite the efforts of Soviet prosecutors, their Western colleagues were concerned with “softening” the sentences and safeguarding many war criminals.
Thanks to the support of the United States, the Vatican, the International Red Cross, Franco’s Spain and defeated Italy, but with a strong presence of Mussolini’s supporters, Nazism and fascism survived and today take shape in Europe (last Sunday’s elections in Austria are a clear reflection of this situation), in Latin America and in other regions of the world. Yesterday, in Austria, like Hitler, the fascists came to power by electoral means.
Today, the unfinished extirpation of Nazism is being passed on to the world. Zionism, as a reactionary nationalist current and expression of the racist extreme right that emerged at the end of the 19th century in Europe, sustains its performance on the myth of the inherent superiority and exclusivity of Jewish people. [Within Israel, there exists discrimination against Jewish people with origins in Africa and Asia.]
Like the United States, Zionism considers the occupied territory to be a land promised by God. It is sustained by an exacerbated chauvinism, anti-communism and extreme nationalism. This allows the Zionists to justify the extermination of Palestinians and Arabs.
We must take action
I wonder if it will be necessary to wait for the end of the war in West Asia with the defeat of Israel to organize a new Nuremberg [trial], or if it will be necessary for Russia, another country or alliance of countries, to carry out a new Special Military Operation, in order to paralyze the development of the ongoing genocide, as in Ukraine.
And what will the “civilized” Europeans, the social democracies and the cowardly left say when this happens? Or should we continue to watch from the tranquility of our homes and our lives as the world is not even capable of organizing itself to prevent the mass death of tens of thousands of people? The burden of inability and complicity in this genocide will weigh heavily on the conscience of the inhabitants of this planet.
Declarations of rejection and repudiation are no longer enough. We must take action, and there are multiple ways to do so in political, legal, economic and military terms. But I repeat once again, the initiative must come from the Arab and Muslim world, because expecting the West and first and foremost Europe to do something is nothing more than a pipedream.
Moreover, the Western imperialists are the executors of the worst genocides in the history of mankind. That is how they became rich and powerful: through death, usurpation, robbery, piracy, larceny, depredation, plunder and rapine. Those are the instruments that allowed them to become a “garden,” remember … the rest of us are just “jungle.” [reference to a crude October 2022 comment by European Union foreign policy chief, Joseph Borell]
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