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Month: December 2024

News from Berlin and Germany, 11th December 2024

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


11/12/2024

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Debate on austerity plans in Berlin accompanied by protests

Thousands of employees from welfare organisations demonstrated outside the House of Representatives in Berlin on Thursday while the Senate’s austerity plans were being debated inside the building. The protest was primarily directed against the cuts in the social sector. However, the cuts in the cultural sector were also criticised. The march was organised by AWO, Caritas, Diakonie, Paritätischer Berlin, the German Trade Union Federation and the Landesjugendring. According to the organisers, around 5,000 people took part in the demonstration. The police spoke of a peaceful rally. The supplementary budget for 2025 is to be passed in the House of Representatives on 19 December. Source: rbb

A cultural nation without money for culture?

Culture is really important in Germany. But if you look at Berlin these days, where there are fierce disputes over the funding of orchestras and cinemas, among others, it is expected to see budgets shrink by up to 12%. This affects established, traditional theatres as well as the independent scene. The reason, they say, is that Berlin must save money. But a similar picture can be seen all over the country: more and more municipalities, districts and federal states are getting into financial difficulties. The federal government, an important donor, is also looking to make cuts. Source: dw

Around 7% of Berlin “Anmeldungen” done online since new service started

When local authorities in Berlin launched an online version of the city’s “Anmeldung” address registration service in mid-October, there was optimism for the digital service for the city. But nearly two months after that service launched, just 5,500 of the around 75,000 address registrations filed in that time have been completed online. Completing this important step for a resident in the German capital requires an electronic ID (eID) card, which can be either a German residence permit or an ID card from another EU country. This means the online service prevents most international newcomers in Berlin from doing this via the Web. Source: iamexpat

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Inflation strengthens extremists

According to a study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), parties on the left and right can expect more votes in the early general election simply because of the recent unexpectedly high inflation and difficult economic situation. In its study “Inflation Surprises and Election Outcomes”, the IfW analysed 365 elections in 18 industrialised countries between 1948 and 2023. The result: an inflation shock of 10% during a legislative period leads to a 2.8% increase in the share of votes for populist and extremist parties in the following election if wages do not follow suit. Source: taz

Members of the Bundestag founded Maccabi fan club

Maccabi Germany is the umbrella organisation for Jewish sport in the country, and, as a sign against anti-Semitism, members of the Bundestag from various parliamentary groups have founded a Maccabi fan club. “The Bundestag Maccabees”, initiative carried on by MPs Thorsten Lieb (FDP), Stephan Mayer (CSU), Omid Nouripour (Greens) and Mahmut Özdemir (SPD), want to campaign against anti-Semitism in sport. The politicians are also concerned with making Jewish sport in Germany visible and to stand up for the protection of Jewish athletes, as in the statement published by the Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur (KNA). The founding of the Bundestag Maccabees comes in the wake of the events in Amsterdam, where fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv clashed with Palestine-supporting protesters. Source: zdf

Catholic Church expands offer for queer believers

The Catholic Church in Germany is strengthening its pastoral care for queer people. It wants to open up with measures such as comprehensive commitment, specially trained pastoral and care workers. The Catholic Archdiocese of Munich-Freising in Bavaria has for instance reorganised its pastoral care for queer people since the beginning of December. Kevin Hellwig, a Munich sacristan, has concrete expectations, though. He reminds that in Catholic sexual morality, the same-sex physical love, “remains a sin.” For him, relying solely on pastoral counselling and maintaining the doctrinal guidelines is just “consolation”. Source: dw

Manuel Ostermann “Incompatible with the office”

Amnesty International has filed an official complaint against Manuel Ostermann. In a video, the police officer and deputy head of the German Police Union called for the deportation of Palestine-supporting protesters and advocated violence, according to the statement on Instagram. Ostermann’s statements would promote discrimination, racism and police violence. The 34-year-old expresses his views almost daily in his posts on social networks. On the platform “X”, he describes the terrorist threat situation as “acute and omnipresent.” “The danger comes from Islamists and politicians are still in a deep sleep. Unbelievable.” Source: Welt

Why is the AfD Dissolving their Radical Youth Wing?

Calls for a ‘Professionalisation’ of the AfD Lay Behind the Party’s Move Which Would Increase their Power over the Extremist “Junge Alternative”


10/12/2024

Protest against the election for prime minister in Thüringen

The AfD’s youth group Junge Alternative (JA) is known for its radical positions, even by AfD standards. The homepage on its website, featuring a chic design albeit irregular updates, lists positions such as “Control, instead of Mass Migration”, “Families, instead of Rainbow[s]” and “German Pride, instead of Self-Hatred”. It is widely considered the radical wing of the party and has been labelled as extremist and placed under observation by the German Verfassungschutz (internal state security), who consider it likely to adopt “non-peaceful behaviour” towards foreigners. Most recently, members of the JA were reportedly involved in the “Saxon Separatists”, who were mass-raided by police for planning an armed uprising against the German state.

Now, the leadership of the AfD has stated that it plans on dissolving the JA and forming a new youth structure under the name Junge Patrioten. The proposal would effectively take the currently independent JA and reconstitute it directly under the decision-making authority of the party. At the moment, approximately half of the JA’s members are not actually members of the AfD, while the proposed changes would make all AfD members under 36 years automatically members of the newly formed youth group. This is partially modelled on Jusos, the SPD’s youth organisation.

Making this change will require a two-thirds majority vote at the AfD’s upcoming party conference in Germany, as it requires changing the party’s constitution. The fact that the party is pushing forward this project now, shortly in advance of the February Bundestag elections when it hopes for its best ever German-wide results, is a statement to the perceived importance of this project within the party. Various parts of the AfD’s leadership have proposed several different reasons for why this move is being carried out now. The first was stated by the leader of the JA, Hannes Gnauck, who supports the proposal. He told Die Welt that the change was primarily a means of protecting the youth wing against a ban by the German state and Verfassungsschutz.

The JA is currently legally registered as a Verein, a German association. Vereins are relatively easy for the state to ban, as seen in the recent example of Palästina Solidarität Duisburg. By making the youth organisation a part of a political party instead of an independent Verein, it would have more legal protection. The idea of banning the JA has been floated lately, but despite this, the AfD’s co-leader and chancellor candidate Alice Weidel has stated that this is not why she supports such a proposal. In a Deutschlandfunk report on the proposed changes, both Weidel and the party’s federal spokesperson Kay Gottschalk repeat the same word in explaining why the proposed reforms are necessary: “professionalisation”. It is therefore no surprise that the still relatively young AfD party is modelling its reforms on the more historic SPD. Having the youth wing directly under the party’s leadership would give the party more control over the section of the party which seems most likely to take radical actions. It appears above all else as a centralisation of power, right as the party is set to become more powerful than ever.

It would also encourage the JA members who aren’t AfD members to join, potentially increasing the party’s radicalism. The automatic membership of all members under 36 would also raise the youth wing’s overall membership. TAZ reports that the JA currently has around 2,500 members, but the proposed change would create a youth wing with around 6,500 members. Some JA activists are against the reform, however, seemingly worried that it would actually curtail their radicalism. Member of the JA’s national board Anna Leisten is one figure, and she echoed calls for the JA to be maintained as a “Super PAC” in the American style, influencing the AfD to the right even if the Junge Patrioten is formed.

Many figures who observe the far-right have been pessimistic about any positive effect the proposed changes could have. Dominik Schumacher, a representative of the Bundesverband Mobile Beratung — which studies the far-right — is one such voice. “The change of Junge Alternative’s legal status or giving it a new name will not change its effectiveness. The activists of today will also be the activists of tomorrow,” he stated during a press conference. “The Junge Alternative is not the right-wing extremism problem in the AfD, that’s the AfD itself.” For her part, Weidel has said something similar while arguing that this was simply a proposal for a closer connection between the youth section and the main party. “I see no reason for moderation,” she responded to a question about JA’s calls for the deportation of millions of people. The message the AfD leadership is sending to the Junge Alternative and its radical wing seems clear: Discipline, instead of De-Radicalisation.

The Romanian Elections That Weren’t

An explainer and critique of a country’s failure to deal with the far right’s success


09/12/2024

A few weeks ago, very few people knew anything about Călin Georgescu. Besides the few times his candidacy for prime minister was floated, there was no indication that his run as an independent candidate for the Romanian presidency had any traction whatsoever. Then came the first shock: with almost 23% of the vote, Georgescu won the first round of one of the most contested elections in Romanian history after barely registering on pre-election polls.

This dark-horse result threw Romania along with the entire Euro-Atlantic media and policy apparatuses for a loop, scrambling for explanations and solutions for the rise of yet another far-right, anti-Western statesman in Europe. The explanation that they came up with is facile: Russia. And the solution came as the second shock: the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections and ordered that they be redone from scratch. This unprecedented ruling may have addressed the immediate trigger of the Georgescu surprise but does little about the causes of the rightward swing, leaving the future of Romanian democracy uncertain.

The actors

In the weeks since the November 24 elections, Romanian politics, media, and civil society have all moved extremely fast. The right is taking advantage of a highly fragmented political landscape, and to make sense of its rise, a brief overview of the main relevant parties and their central figures is useful. Here they are:

PSD (Partidul Social Democrat, the Social Democratic Party): seen by many as the inheritors of the Romanian Communist Party, PSD has been the main force in Romanian politics. It leans left on some matters, regularly raising pensions or social benefits, but it is a party of crony capitalism, always embroiled in scandals of corruption and abuse of power, and deeply conservative on social issues.

  • Marcel Ciolacu: presidential candidate (third place, 19.15%), current prime minister in a PSD-PNL grand coalition. A former provincial politician/fixer, he appeared center stage after PSD’s defeat in the 2019 presidential elections. His own loss would have caused the first presidential run-off without a PSD candidate.

PNL (Partidul Național Liberal, the National Liberal Party): the other dominant political party, PNL presents itself as the center-right alternative to PSD. It has been similarly plagued by corruption scandals, however, and its coalition with PSD has tainted it as part of “the establishment.”

  • Nicolae Ciucă: presidential candidate (fifth place, 8.8%), retired army general, and former prime minister in the PSD-PNL coalition. Completely lacking charisma or political flair, his humiliating results caused his resignation from PNL’s leadership, being replaced by Ilie Bolojan.
  • Klaus Iohannis: president for the last two terms, technically independent, as the sitting president is not allowed to be a party member. He won elections as the Western foil to PSD’s Balkan corruption, but his haughty, incommunicative presidential style, his interventions in coalition politics, and his high expenses in office have brought his approval rates to a historic low.

USR (Uniunea Salvați România, the Save Romania Union): young and socially progressive, but at the same time, neoliberal and right-wing, USR arose as the country’s hope to fight corruption and the establishment by appealing to entrepreneurs, students, and urban youth. Internal scandals and splinters, a failed coalition government with PNL, and the radicalization of some of its central figures toward nationalism and libertarianism have extinguished the hopes of many USR supporters.

  • Elena Lasconi: presidential candidate (second place, 19.18%), former journalist, currently mayor of a small city. She lost her position as the head of USR’s European elections list after declaring that she had voted yes in a 2018 anti-LGBT referendum but made a comeback after USR’s disappointing results in the European and local elections.

AUR (Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians): entered the Parliament in 2020, on a far-right, Covid-skeptical platform. The name references the union of Romania and Moldova, a key rallying cry for Romanian nationalists. Two parties that entered the Parliament in the 2024 elections, S.O.S. Romania and POT (Partidul Oamenilor Tineri, the Party of Young People), are splinters from it, but all three coalesce into a yet-informal “sovereigntist pole.”

  • George Simion: AUR presidential candidate (fourth place, 13.86%), a former ultras gallery leader who made his career in ultranationalist, unionist social movements.
  • Călin Georgescu: independent presidential candidate, but supported by POT (first place, 22.94%). He held positions at the UN and at the Club of Rome, working on issues of sustainability. Proposed by AUR as prime minister in 2021, he later left the party when Simion criticized his openly pro-fascist statements.

Special guest: The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), one of the highest courts in Romania, ruling on issues of constitutionality. Its nine members are nominated politically by the President and the Parliament. Its current line-up: four PSD nominees, three Iohannis, one PNL, and one UDMR (the political party of the Hungarian minority).

The action

The battle lines of the Romanian elections were both clearly drawn and muddled. The dominance of PSD and PNL and its contestation by multiple other parties created the appearance of two camps: the establishment (or “the system,” as Romanians tend to call it) and the anti-establishment. PSD banked on its incumbency and took its traditional base for granted, while PNL tried to center the hopeless Ciucă’s military laurels (the promotion of his 2024 memoir, A Soldier in the Service of the Country, ran up a €2-million bill).

On the other side of the divide, USR and AUR tried to find an identity that appealed to the negatively defined anti-establishment bloc by breaking out of their respective bubbles. Lasconi upped her conservative profile by wearing two ostentatious crucifixes around her neck, symbols of her attempt to overcome the limitations of a party targeting students and entrepreneurs. Simion moderated his far-right messaging to appeal to more than an ultranationalist niche. The other far-right candidate with a public profile, MEP Diana Șoșoacă (S.O.S. Romania), fell prey to narrative foreshadowing: in a decision decried by many as undemocratic, the CCR banned her candidacy due to her anti-Western discourse.

After Georgescu’s win, it became obvious that the clarity of this two-sided contest had always been an illusion. With both PSD and PNL candidates at historic electoral lows, the vague category of “anti-establishment” came on top but lost any unitary meaning. Lasconi’s success in qualifying for the run-off, celebrated by neoliberal, pro-European groups, was balanced by the victory of an independent, far-right, pro-Russian minor politician. Anxieties about where Georgescu’s 23% would go in the parliamentary elections on December 1 were only partly alleviated: the sovereigntists gained around 32% of the vote, with AUR coming second overall, but PSD, which came first with 22%, will probably be able to etch out a highly unstable coalition with PNL, USR, and UDMR.

Political reactions were mixed. Although he himself lost, Simion celebrated a sovereigntist victory. Bolojan, whom Lasconi had put forth as prime minister under her potential presidency, endorsed the USR candidate and declared his support against anti-democratic forces. Ciolacu delayed his own endorsement (unsurprisingly, given that USR campaigns have always demonized PSD and its voters) but came through after investigations into Georgescu’s campaign picked up steam.

This patchy popular front, however, is far from an antifascist show of strength. In the wake of the parliamentary elections, both Ciolacu and Bolojan reacted by reaffirming their commitment to traditional and national “values.” Their history shows that their support for heteronormative families, Orthodox Christianity, and anti-LGBT policies is not only empty words. In the meantime, the far-right was emboldened, as a commemoration of an interwar fascist leader just outside of Bucharest took place with open Nazi salutes.

But the mainstream parties’ electioneering quickly became obsolete when intelligence agencies came into play. After an emergency session of the Supreme Council of National Defense, its president, Iohannis, decided to declassify intelligence reports alleging that Georgescu’s campaign received funding and social media support from foreign state and non-state actors. The evidence is circumstantial and the only mentioned name is Sputnik, although even this is a mere “potential” connection. But there is no doubt that Russia is the main suspect, and Georgescu himself has not hidden his Russian sympathies. The allegations might also be true—Georgescu had registered his campaign funding as zero, which, even as his reach was primarily on TikTok, is an obvious, brazen lie.

Things escalated quickly after the declassification. The CCR had denied a challenge to the first round of the presidential election, although it ordered a recount, a hastily organized logistical mess that loomed over the parliamentary election and ultimately only confirmed the results. The reports, however, led to new challenges on the Thursday before the December 1 run-off, admitted by the Court on Friday, when the early voting for Romanians living abroad had already started. Ciolacu praised the reestablishment of order and Ciucă called for calm. But the anti-establishment candidates, Lasconi and the sovereigntists, cried foul – and went crawling to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The decision, however, is final; the elections have been annulled, and will have to be redone from scratch, starting with collecting signatures and validating candidacies.

The fallout

Is this the end of Romania’s descent into far-right chaos? No. The CCR decision might have stopped Georgescu’s election, as he is unlikely to be allowed to run again. The intervention of intelligence services and courts into the electoral process, however, weakens democratic accountability and only stokes the anti-establishment fire. The ruling itself is highly contestable, as it refers strictly to financing and intervention that went on during the electoral campaign. One does not have to be a far-right nationalist to paint an ugly picture: a politically nominated court relied on vague intelligence reports to invalidate an uneventful election (which had already been confirmed by the same court) literally overnight. All at the initiative of an unpopular president who will now get a few more months in office.

The morning after the annulment, large-scale investigations against Georgescu’s network started forcefully. This is undoubtedly an absolute positive. Georgescu has run on a platform of conspiracy theories, ultranationalist messaging, and economic promises. He is not a random far-right lunatic, but embedded in international and domestic networks of fascist armed groups and capitalists who, yes, have business connections to Moscow and to various Romanian nationalist movements. The fact that organized right-wingers are arrested in Romania is not bad news.

But, again, one does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask an obvious question: why so late? Georgescu’s declarations praising the Legion of the Archangel Michael, Romania’s larger interwar antisemitic fascist movement, and Ion Antonescu, the country’s WWII military leader, Hitler ally, and Holocaust perpetrator, have been so obvious that even AUR forced him out for courting legal trouble. Nonetheless, he was never prosecuted for his statements. And that was only the most visible manifestation of his far-right radicalism. The organized networks he is a part of did not just appear overnight, and the elections were certainly not the first time that intelligence services heard about them.

One theory is that PSD secretly supported the far right in the hope that it would eat into Lasconi’s own anti-establishment base, a strategy that obviously backfired. Regardless of whether this is true, there is a bigger picture here: Georgescu is the tip of a societal iceberg that reaches into the establishment itself (the far-right parties had the highest share of retired intelligence and military officers among their parliamentary nominees). The conservatism of the mainstream parties is not an electoral strategy, but the light version of the nationalism that has been brewing across the political elites and society of large and gives rise to ultranationalist groups and parties.

Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime, communist as it may have been, was deeply nationalist in a way that continued after 1989, with an added twist—the glorification of interwar culture, society, and anti-communist fighters. The same interwar that created the Legion and other fascist organizations, from which much of the anti-communist resistance was drawn. Popular culture, newscasts and highbrow publishing houses have all legitimated Romanian interwar society and made Holocaust perpetrators, Orthodox fascists, and war criminals palatable as symbols of a better, pre-communist past. AUR and Georgescu are simply the most extreme expressions.

This fascist lineage and nostalgia is legitimated by their willingness to criticize Romania’s capitalist present. This does not make them in any way left-wing: their social base are the petty bourgeoisie, expropriated by transnational capital, and Georgescu’s economic proposals are the same mixed bag of some welfare measures, protectionism, and corporatism we see everywhere on the populist right. But his simple message of “food, water, energy” appealed to an immiserated population that continues to pay the cost of the transition to capitalism while capital runs wild. No surprise, as well, that his message gained the support of the part of the diaspora that has been used and abused in European factories and warehouses and who have been building a nationalist understanding of themselves since Romania’s post-communist mass outmigration began.

The people who voted for him are not dupes. They are not fooled by false economic promises, but simply support a person who tells them that the transition has failed them, and not that they have failed to become the proper capitalist entrepreneurial subjects needed in the Western world. They are no innocent angels either, as Georgescu’s explicitly fascist messaging resonates with values and behaviors of much of Romanian society. The simple truth of the matter is that Georgescu and the far-right have a broad base among Romanians, one with material interests and a coherent ideology.

That base will not disappear if Georgescu is arrested after winning an election. And that base will also not disappear if they are forced to make an abstract geopolitical choice between the West and Russia. That choice has been made for them, and it did not go in their favor. The Romanian left needs to wrestle the critique of this choice and the critique of capitalism back from the far right. As real as Russian intervention in the electoral campaign might have been, it’s only possible consequence is that it was Georgescu, and not Simion or another right-winger who won the election. Undemocratic crackdowns and geopolitical browbeating will only continue to legitimate and hide the extent to which, in direct continuation of its history, the right is gaining ground across all groups of Romanian society.

Statement on my expulsion from die Linke

My expulsion is a politically motivated response to my activity for Palestine


08/12/2024

Today [Saturday, 7th December 2024] the Landesschiedskommission (District Administration Commisson) of die Linke expelled me from the party with immediate effect upon request by Katina Schubert and Martin Schirdewan.

I would like to reply to this decision with the following statement:

Although the charges levied against me were refuted in the hearing, the same unsubstantiated allegations were once more used as justification for my expulsion, and their refutation was ignored.

One of the main arguments for my expulsion was that there had been a media campaign waged against me because of my activities in support of Palestine solidarity, which resulted in institutions questioning cooperation with die Linke.

While the oral argumentation of the decision certified that no accusations of antisemitism had been made and that I had inflicted no intentional damage to die Linke, I was expelled with immediate effect.

The oral argumentation shows the political motivation of the Landesschiedskommission. My conviction that all people should have the same rights, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, or atheist, was dismissed as a “beautiful dream”.

The Landesschiedskommission is thus following the logic of unconditional support for the State of Israel, in accordance with German Staatsräson, which it has put above the right to existence of and equal rights for Palestinian people.

The current development of the mass killing of the Palestinian civil population, which has also been confirmed by Amnesty International as a genocide, was given no import in the judgement of the context of my statements.

My expulsion cannot be justified, either factually or politically.

The failure of the verdict to acknowledge the most recent decision of the International Criminal Court is a damning indictment of a left, internationalist party. It inflicts damage upon everyone who is fighting for universal human rights.

I thank everyone within and external to die Linke who have shown solidarity with me in recent weeks, and who have exposed themselves to the danger of media defamation. Their presence at the rally that took place at the proceedings showed me that I am not alone. Many thanks for this.

I will continue to do everything possible with comrades within and external to die Linke to build the solidarity movement with Palestine. The delivery of weapons for Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be ended. Human rights are indivisible – that is more than a “beautiful dream”. Let us stand up for them together:

This statement first appeared in German. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission

Book Review – “Environmental Warfare in Gaza”

From Colonial Ecology to Weaponized Ecocide


Shourideh Molavi’s latest book, released earlier this year, is a historical journey through the wars and incursions on Gaza aiding us in developing our understanding of their impacts on Gaza’s built and cultivated environments.. Molavi serves as the lead researcher for Palestine at Forensic Architecture (FA) at Goldsmiths, University of London. The field of forensic architecture works on “spatial evidence within legal, political, and cultural contexts, and takes architecture to include not only buildings, but shaped environments of cities and territories.”

The research agency’s work has been used as evidence in courts and in citizens’ tribunals across the world, combining techniques such as spatial modeling and audio and video documentation of state violence and violations of human rights. In its investigations of states and corporate entities, Forensic Architecture says it wants to aid the legal and public struggle against “historical and contemporary colonial violence, including the destruction of traditional environments and life worlds.”

In “ Environmental Warfare in Gaza”, Molavi builds on her previous investigations along Gaza’s Eastern “border”, which she extends to cover the colonial history of Palestine’s environment.

Over years, Israel widened the “protective” zone along its borders, progressively reducing the arable land by flattening the land through airstrikes and bulldozers. In recent years, this process has been extended through the deliberate targeting of lands with high concentrations of pesticides, sprayed alongside the fence onto Gazan farmlands, creating the perfect “buffer zone.”Molavi concludes that this so-called “no-go zone,” ranging from 300-1000 meters, turns Gaza’s border into the ideal “one-sided” border, allowing for permeation from one side only. This constantly affects the livelihood of Palestinians in proximity to the border.

To clear the view on protestors and agriculturalists alike, specific types of plants were criminalized due to their height or banned from the environment altogether. . Whereas crops up to 80 cm height were permitted in earlier years, the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights reported that by 2018 farmers were forced to reduce the height of their plants to only 40 cm (~15 in) (Molavi 2024, 33).

These enforced changes to the agricultural environment include citrus orchards, central to Gaza’s role as a coastal trade hub. Molavi notes that the role of the orange in the “formation of Gazan identity, including local knowledge production, socio-economic relations and migration patterns, domestic and international cultural exchange. . . is largely under-studied” (p. 27). we do know, however, that Gazan traditional citrus cultivation is closely linked to the Palestinian Nakba or “catastrophe”. Thousands of families lost access to fruit orchards and vegetable plots that lay beyond today’s militarized borders. After they became refugees and settled in Gaza, many Palestinians had to adapt to an urban lifestyle. Only a small percentage of Gazans today cultivate farmland, much of which is owned by a small percentage of large-scale landowners.

Similarly, Gaza lost many of its olive groves, often near the “buffer zone” due to clearing processes by Israel or the prohibition of taller plants. Oxfam estimates that Israel uprooted roughly 112,000 olive trees between 2000 and 2008. In addition to their symbolism, olive trees have provided Gazan grove keepers and their families with an income, and served as a critical food source during curfew-times imposed by the Israeli army in the form of oil and olives.

Early in Israel’s ongoing genocide on Gaza, many Gazans had to cut down trees for firewood to survive the winter. Gazans stress the loss they felt and the role these trees, many of which were inherited, had in their lives.

From 2017 to 2019, Gazans protested for their internationally recognized Right of Return (UNGA Res. 194 (III)). In these years the cleared and flattened area near the fence enabled the targeting and injuring of thirty six thousand Gazans, who resorted to burning tires and utilizing the toxic smoke to take cover from snipers. Roughly 29% of these injuries were brought on by live ammunition and rubber bullets, leading to many Gazans undergoing amputations. Especially for small-scale farmers, this can mean the loss of their livelihoods.

Investigations of the pesticides sprayed by Israel onto Gazan lands have resulted in the conclusion that the while plants subjected to the deliberate spraying of herbicides along Gaza’s borders showed traces of insecticides and pesticides, “damaging levels of herbicides were not detected” (Molavi 2024, 72) by the consulting Katif Center Laboratories. Contrary to these findings, farmers reported severe losses of crops, and resorted to planting different crops, often resorting to cultivation in greenhouses to shield them from herbicides. This shift changed the landscape and removed Gazan people’s access to ancestral foods and traditions, such as foraging Khobeiza (Palestinian Common Mallow) and grazing animals on the land.

Palestinian filmmaker and artist Emily Jacir questioned FA’s approach in her film Letter to a Friend (2019), dedicated to FA founder Eyal Weizmann. Given often repeated crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ranging from extrajudicial executions to war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with global arms exporting firms, Jacir raises the question: why does her friend’s focus remain on proving that a crime has been committed instead of working to prevent it from being repeated or exacerbated?

Jacir’s Letter to a Friend can nourish movements for social and ecological justice and calls for the proactive protection and defense of lives and livelihoods. This call could form the basis of more strictly enforced policies determining what will harm the environment and local populations and inform new ways of preventing the crimes. This very necessity of protecting the soils and livelihoods from being weaponized to create scarcity can connect movements for a joint cause and a more just future.

In Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional, Saeed Bagheri, Lecturer in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law, writes that “the natural environment remains the silent victim of Israel’s war on Gaza.” He highlights the Israeli military’s stance towards the environmental destruction it is causing in Gaza: while there is a military necessity to clear areas, “there appears to be little evidence of ‘widespread, long-term, and severe environmental damage’ from Israel’s air strikes on the heavily civilian-populated Gaza.”

Bagheri argues that Israel is using the “widespread, long-term, and severe” standard — an ambiguous international standard of humanitarian law — in combination with the inability of scientists to undertake careful studies of air, water, and soil quality, to screen its enormously damaging impacts in Gaza.

Even though Palestinian and Lebanese farmers, as well as international researchers have provided evidence of widespread environmental destruction over decades, we must not wait until the accepted evidence of an already destroyed environment surpasses military need. Under the precautionary principle, the burden of proof lies with the party profiting from the actions. That is why some researchers advocate for the use of the precautionary principle in armed conflict. They assert that although under International Humanitarian Law the focus rests on “all feasible precautions,” the precautionary principle provides protective guidelines and takes parts of the decision out of the hands of military personnel.

Some, like Bagheri, do not think that this is enough. Already in April 2024, six months after the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza, Bagheri said that “the UN, in general, and the ICC in particular, should have done more to attenuate the substantial risk of mistreatment of the natural environment, concerning more particularly the ecology, health and survival of Palestinians.”

This sentiment is shared by many and goes far beyond the ongoing genocide—those who read Shourideh Molavi’s research closely will see that an intervention should have long preceded the currently ongoing destruction, given the vast amount of evidence provided.

Environmental Warfare in Gaza is an essential book to understand the ongoing war on Gaza. Following the acknowledgements that reflect Molavi’s many years of collaboration with her local colleagues, she pays tribute to her collaborator Roshdi Yahya Al-Sarraj, co-founder of the investigation’s journalistic partner organization, Ain Media Gaza, who was killed in an airstrike on his home.

Since the book’s release early this year, much has changed. Molavi, has re-edited her book to include the newest developments, but she could not have predicted the destruction that has been brought upon Gaza since. As she continues to investigate Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the continued ecocide in Gaza that enhances the famine, one section of the book brings us closer to the people and the future of Gaza:

“Refusing to limit her output to low-growing fruits and vegetables, Mona would strategically place olive trees among her crops. […] Responding to the forced biopolitical modifications of [the] otherwise familiar landscape, such acts of resistance interrupt the colonial and imperial gaze, also emphasizing the inextricable role of the environment in modern warfare.” (p.43)

Like the farmers interviewed by Molavi in 2018, the people of Gaza still refuse to be helpless in the face of a man-made famine. Initiatives such as Thamra have resorted to planting amidst the ruins to have access to food independent of the arrival of aid. Before evacuating, Yousef Abu Rabea, a Palestinian farming engineer and co-founder of Thamra, collected seeds from his family’s farm in Beit Lahia.

Thamra’s aim is to promote food stability, but Abu Rabea remained concerned: “The genocide has left the farmland all but devastated by artillery-borne white phosphorus, a potent carcinogen that lingers in the soil, poisoning farmers and making their crops unsafe to eat.” On October 7, 2024, new evacuation orders for Gaza’s North were issued, and bombing of densely populated areas of the North increased. Yousef Abu Rabea was killed by an Israeli drone strike on October 21, 2024.

While most research on effects of discharged ordnance focuses on the effects of white phosphorus on the human body, investigations by the American University of Beirut are also underway to better understand the result of soil contamination in South Lebanon’s targeted areas.

Although white phosphorus is officially an incendiary agent., it is clear that in the case of Gaza and Lebanon it is used beyond its official purpose of illumination. Nonetheless, white phosphorus is not yet deemed a chemical weapon, even thoughthe United States’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health already states that absorption of white phosphorus by means of ingestion is possible for humans and grazing animals because of soil and plant contamination.

Many insist that conclusive investigations can only be done after the end of Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Gaza, but Lebanese farmers have already lost thousands of trees due to white phosphorus fires. Previous attacks with white phosphorus have led to diminished harvests and contaminated streams. Earlier research has linked white phosphorus particles in Alaska’s Eagle River Flats to the death of thousands of waterfowl.

In a recent blog post published by the Earth Law Center, an ecocentric legal organization based in Durango, Colorado, Elena Tiedens concluded that where the precautionary principle fails to prevent damage done to the environment, ecocide is a path through which the destruction of the environmentcould be persecuted and punished. Subsequently, co-violations to human rights could – and should – be approached from this angle too, bringing justice to those whose livelihoods and health have been destroyed in the near and far future.

Ecocide in Gaza is not just a local issue. Most recently, Reuters’ reported on how the release of asbestos through urban bombing will affect the health of generations to come. In the words of Cenk Tan, ecocide is “a phenomenon that has serious international impact. It represents humanity’s toll on Earth.”

 

Book details: Environmental Warfare in Gaza, , Shourideh C. Molavi Pluto Press February 2024