This article appears in the April 12, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
International Peace Coalition Meeting
‘Create a Vision of How You Want the World To Be’
[Print version of this article]
I think the one element which is absolutely irreplaceable, is the idea of what we do to put the world together. And I also think that what Prof. Garzón said—how this can only function if you have regional integration—that is something which absolutely needs to be put on the agenda. We need a concrete plan of how to put the world back into order, of which the Oasis Plan is one big part. And as we will discuss next week, this is not a plan just about reconstruction of Palestine, of Gaza, but it is a plan to solve the problem between Israel and Palestine, by taking the entire region, from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Gulf: All of Southwest Asia has to be part of an integrated plan of reconstruction for it to work.
April 5—Helga Zepp-LaRouche offered this example of the “top-down” policy-formulation process that the International Peace Coalition, which held its 44th consecutive weekly meeting today, must engage in. Today’s featured speakers were:
• Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Founder of the Schiller Institute;
• Prof. Richard Anderson Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014;
• Jens Jørgen Nielsen, historian, author, former Moscow correspondent of the Danish newspaper Politiken, representative of the Russian-Danish Dialogue, Denmark;
• Francis Anthony Boyle, American human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois, counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Provisional Government of the Palestinian Authority;
• Prof. Fernando Garzón, architect, urban planner and leader of the Ecuadorian-Palestinian Union, adviser to various UN agencies, the Inter-American Development Bank, and others.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the proceedings with an update on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. She asserted that with all that has transpired in Gaza, the fact that leading nations are still sending weapons to Israel is indicative of “the collapse of the moral order of the world.” She said of the devastation there, that “the only way to stop it would be that the United States puts its foot down, which they could, but they’re not doing it.”
Noting the recent observances of the 75th anniversary of NATO, Zepp-LaRouche remarked, “If you look at the actual history of NATO, it was not a defensive alliance.” She reviewed the history of its illegitimate actions, and said that in particular, the Libyan war was the beginning of the destruction of the UN, noting that her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, said at the time that this was the beginning of the war against Russia and China. Since that time, Zepp-LaRouche concluded, “NATO wars have killed 4.5 million people.”
She asserted that the UN Security Council is effectively defunct due to the abuse of the veto, followed by the statement of White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby that UNSC resolutions are non-binding. “We are in a lawless situation,” she said. “We are about to enter the world of the rule of the jungle.”
Zepp-LaRouche concluded by encouraging all to participate in the Schiller Institute’s Oasis Plan conference next week.
Former UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Prof. Richard Falk, presented an impassioned defense of his colleague, who now holds that position, Francesca Albanese. She recently issued a formal report titled, “Anatomy of a Genocide.” Falk described her report as being “… in my judgment, the most objective and meticulously researched and analyzed assessment of the genocidal dimensions of what Israel has been doing in Gaza.” Falk recalled his own prior experience as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, during which he also endured “a series of smears, death threats and unpleasantness … and in my case, additionally compounded by being called a ‘self-hating Jew.’ ”
Falk called what is happening in Gaza “the most original, transparent genocide in all of history…. This is a case where the perceptions of people around the world are taking place in real time, with overwhelming evidence that is supplied by the imagery shown nightly on TV and by the self-justifying language used by Israeli leadership to dehumanize the Palestinian people.”
Jens Jørgen Nielsen offered his assessment of the strategic crisis, saying that leading politicians “regard the present situation as a sort of computer game.” “People wind up hating their counterparts so much that they are willing to hurt themselves to inflict harm on the other…. We are trapped in our own toxic narratives and psychological distortions.” Nielsen called for a return to diplomacy, like that which saved the world at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Instead, he lamented, “It seems that Western politicians have a race to see who can use the most derogatory terms about Putin.”
Prof. Francis Boyle proposed five measures that can be taken to resolve the crisis in Gaza:
• Suspend Israel’s participation in the activities of the UN General Assembly, along the lines of what the General Assembly did in response to apartheid in South Africa;
• Convene a war crimes tribunal against Israel, similar to the one against Yugoslavia to which he was a party;
• Sever diplomatic relations with Israel;
• Issue economic sanctions against Israel;
• Have the UN General Assembly admit Palestine as a full-fledged member.
This was followed by a dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who endorsed Boyle’s proposal to give Palestine full membership in the UN. She asked him to comment about her statement that the UN is defunct if the United States says resolutions are non-binding, to which he responded, “The statement that UN Security Council resolutions are non-binding is a bald-faced lie.... Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, all Security Council resolutions are binding.”
Professor Fernando Garzón described the conflict in Palestine as “consequences of a scorched Earth strategy ... to destroy any vestige of infrastructure,” following “75 years of continuous expulsion and elimination of its original population.” He emphasized the importance of creating a viable economy: “The Oslo agreements included a special chapter on development.... There never was implementation of this component.”
During the discussion period, a German participant proposed a “friendship concert” in Kaliningrad, preceded by a motorcade through European countries. Jack Gilroy of Veterans for Peace and Pax Christi, U.S.A., presented reports of anti-war actions around the country, including protests at weapons plants. Another participant described peace marches and related activity being held in Ibero-America.
To a question on how to avoid war with Russia, Zepp-LaRouche said, “You have to make the effort to understand the complexity of the whole world and put the one humanity first…. Treat other cultures as if they were your sons and daughters and grandparents.”
A video was showed of Kynan Thistlethwaite’s intervention against reporters and editors from the New York Times, Politico and The Guardian. (Thistlethwaite is a leader of the LaRouche Youth Movement.) Moderator Dennis Speed reported that “they basically froze and took an adjournment for five minutes.”
A final question was posed: “What does it mean to be optimistic under today’s circumstances?” Zepp-LaRouche referred to great thinkers, including astronomer Johannes Kepler, who said that the more you study the laws of the universe, the more you recognize the beauty of the plan of the Creator, and to the great German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who said that every evil will cause an even greater good to emerge. She concluded, “You must create within yourself a vision of how you want the world to be.... If you do it, you will be happy.”
Prof. Richard Falk to the IPC
It’s Time To Defeat the ‘Politics of Deflection’
This is an edited transcript of remarks by Prof. Richard A. Falk, delivered to the 44th meeting of the International Peace Coalition on April 5, 2024. Prof. Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. He served as the United Nations “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” from 2008 to 2014, the position now held by Francesca Albanese, whom Prof. Falk discusses in this statement. Prof. Falk himself was stopped by Israeli officials upon his first visit to the region after his 2008 appointment as Special Rapporteur in Palestine, was held in a filthy holding cell, and was regularly subjected to personal attacks during his tenure.
Friends, I’m sorry not to be able to be with you in person and for the duration of the meeting. But I did want to take this opportunity to say something about the vicious attack that has been directed at Francesca Albanese, who is the UN Special Rapporteur for occupied Palestine, and has recently issued a report in that role, a formal report with the title, “Anatomy of a Genocide,” which is, in my judgment, the most objective and meticulously researched and analyzed assessment of the genocidal dimensions of what Israel has been doing in Gaza since October 8th or 9th—however you want to delimit the start of their onslaught—against the people of Gaza, numbering 2.3 or possibly 2.4 million. Francesca succeeds in this role.
In my own prior experience as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, I also endured a series of smears, death threats and unpleasantness, both from very pro-Zionist, Geneva-based NGOs and the organized sort of Jewish press around the world, and from various officials that were aligned with Israel. I had the insight that those that were making the smearing remarks knew they were untrue; [that] they were not trying to identify anti-Semites, which is what the principal accusation was; that this kind of criticism of Israel could only be understood as a form of anti-Semitism and, in my case, additionally compounded by [my] being a “self-hating Jew.”
Those who made those smears realized they were doing something that was dishonest and untruthful. But they were motivated pragmatically and opportunistically by what I have called a “politics of deflection”—making people focus on the messenger rather than to examine the message. And it’s a very effective means of sidelining substantive criticism and discussion. It has been called the weaponizing of anti-Semitism, and it draws on European guilt about the Holocaust that lingers, particularly in Germany, but also generally the base of Zionist support in the U.S. Those are the two principal foundations of this kind of behavior.
But for an unpaid civil servant like Francesca, who has devoted incredible time and energy to the task of depicting a pattern of violating the basic rights of the Palestinian people, it is deplorable to treat her in this manner, and shocking that the U.S. State Department spokesman echoed the sentiments of this kind of smear diplomacy, by confirming their belief that Francesca Albanese is indeed an anti-Semite, which is completely false, and just helps distract attention from, in this case, a crucial substantive focus on the most original, transparent genocide in all of history, in the sense that other genocides and past genocides, including the Holocaust, have all been understood only in retrospect.
This is a case where the perceptions of people around the world are taking place in real time, with overwhelming evidence that is supplied by the image of injury that is shown nightly on TV and by the self-justifying language used by Israeli leadership to dehumanize the Palestinian people. So, the genocide is hidden beneath an avalanche of misleading and dehumanizing statements of genocidal intent. And what has also appalled me from the beginning is the willingness of the liberal democracies of the West to endorse this behavior. It exceeds my sense of what this kind of unholy alliance, which has gone on for decades with Israel, would be prepared to do.
One context has been the U.S. contempt for international law that has been exhibited throughout the crisis and can be summarized by its attack on South Africa for daring to bring a complaint to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, by saying that it was an allegation without merit. Yet, a near-unanimous number of judges among the 17 that participated found that not only had it legal merit, but it was persuasive legally that Israel was guilty of what they called a “plausible genocide.”
Let me only add to this the view that we are at a real inflection point in human experience, in the sense that those societies that have presented themselves to the world as the custodians of democracy and human rights, have now so dramatically and systemically discredited themselves, and at the expense of a heroic personality who has been willing to swim against this bloody tide. We should all support people of good will and strong conscience; should support Francesca Albanese in resisting this kind of smearing effort to discredit her report and to practice this diplomacy and politics of deflection.
