Day 411: Stopping Israel’s weapons flow
Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada Podcast22 November 2024
According to the judges in The Hague, there are reasonable grounds to believe that each man bears criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
They also found grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant are criminally responsible as “civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
This long overdue decision is a historic and unprecedented breach in Israel’s bubble of impunity.
The ICC’s announcement came the day after The Electronic Intifada’s 20 November livestream, the full episode of which can be watched in the video at the top of this page.
The announcement is likely to have far-reaching consequences beyond the fate of Netanyahu and Gallant, or even other Israelis involved in the genocide whose arrest warrants may follow.
For one, the scale and scope of the Israeli crimes described by the judges in their announcement may well accelerate decisions by governments, even those friendly to Israel, to halt arms supplies to Tel Aviv, lest they too face criminal liability for their complicity.
That’s where the connection to our most recent Livestream comes in.
Israel could not perpetrate its ongoing wars of extermination in Palestine and Lebanon without a global supply chain to import weapons and other materiel.
“A people’s arms embargo”
One major link in this chain of death and destruction is the Denmark-based container shipping company Maersk. It’s the world’s second largest logistics firm by number of ships and cargo capacity.
After this week’s news brief from Nora Barrows-Friedman, we spoke to Kaleem Hawa and Nas Abd Elal from the Palestinian Youth Movement about the Mask off Maerskcampaign which aims to pressure the company to end its complicity in the Israeli genocide.
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024, Maersk has shipped significant quantities of military goods to the Israeli army from the United States, across more than 2,000 shipments. These include hulls, engines and specialized parts for armored personnel carriers and tactical vehicles, as well as parts for aircraft and artillery.
“On the question of US complicity, we were able to link many of these shipments to existing US foreign military sales, which we know this year alone have totaled more than $6.8 billion” from the United States to Israel, Hawa explained.
But the trade also implicates other countries, especially Spain whose port of Algeciras is a major transshipping point for the weapons being moved by Maersk.
“This is a positive development, certainly, but it’s going to require maintaining pressure across the various Mediterranean ports and the movement groups that are active there to ensure that this is not a one-off situation,” Hawa said.
According to Hawa, Spain’s move has prompted Maersk to start routing vessels through the Moroccan port of Tangier.
“The people of Morocco have begun to push back against the government because of the ways that they’re aiding and abetting the genocide,” Hawa said. In addition to mass protests in Tangier, some dockworkers have refused to handle these cargoes.
“People have also been leaking photos of these tactical vehicles at the port, which has caused a great deal of embarrassment for the Moroccan regime,” Hawa added.
“We understand that longshoremen, truckers and workers in logistics have a very key role to play in disrupting the supply chain of genocide,” Abd Elal said. “We’re also at the same time working to get Maersk added to ethical investment screens so that unions in any sector can divest their pension funds from Maersk.”
Abd Elal noted that in July, seven major US trade unions representing millions of workers across a range of industries called on the Democratic Party administration of President Joe Biden to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
“So we see things moving more generally in our movement in the direction of an arms embargo from the bottom up, a people’s arms embargo, one that is led by institutions that represent working class people and working class power in this country, in the UK and globally,” Abd Elal added.
“The bloodiest month” for athletes in Gaza
At the start of the program, we were joined from Gaza by regular Electronic Intifada contributor Abubaker Abed.
“It’s absolutely hellish, nightmarish, what people are going through here,” Abed said. “There’s no way to cope with the current situation.”
On top of the relentless Israeli bombing, people face persistent difficulty obtaining food and other life necessities amid a near-total absence of any humanitarian aid and looting of the supplies that do come in by organized gangs protected and supported by Israel.
According to Abed, a handful of flour that may well be bug infested may cost $10, while a single eggplant could cost as much as $4 – prices far beyond the reach of most people.
“I have to say that this is by far the best article I’ve ever done in my life,” Abed said, reflecting his love of sport and his vocation as a sports journalist.
He described the last few weeks as “the bloodiest month ever for sports in Gaza, where more than 60 athletes were killed.”
As for Morsy, Abubaker said that he is the only player at his level who is using his platform to raise awareness about Palestine, in interviews, on social media and even on the field.
Morsy even shared Abubaker’s article, calling the writer a “superhero.”
New York Times email slip-up reveals how story was “killed”
Earlier this week, The Electronic Intifada revealed how The New York Times killed an investigation by one of its own reporters into Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam earlier this month.
Asa Winstanley told the Livestream about the inadvertently leaked email that led to his scoop, and the fallout within the Times.
Resistance groups intensify defense of Gaza, Lebanon
In his resistance report this week, Jon Elmer covered all the latest from the battles in northern Gaza and southern Lebanon.
You can watch the whole program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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