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Showing posts with label Saudi Arabia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saudi Arabia. Show all posts
People And Nature ☭ The Labour government is helping to dress up Saudi Arabia’s criminal fossil fuel expansion drive in “green” colours.

Simon Pirani

As the prime minister flew to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, this month, his office told stories about hydrogen and carbon capture – technologies used by the Kingdom to pose as a friend of the “energy transition”.

Protest in Australia. Photo by Matt Hrkac.
See “The top photo” at the end

Keir Starmer and his colleagues hope that, in return for this “green” PR, Saudi Arabia will invest some of its vast oil wealth in the UK’s own technofixes.

Simultaneously, the government made a guarantee worth billions of pounds to the oil companies BP and Equinor, to stifle a legal challenge to Net Zero Teesside, their risky carbon capture project, and the expansion of gas production that goes with it.

The government’s dystopian friendship with Riyadh is underpinned by policies that will add substantially to Saudi fossil fuel exports, and to the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere when they are burned.

Saudi policy provides for a 60% increase in gas production by 2030, a 25% expansion of its fossil-fuelled power generation capacity and a doubling of its oil-to-chemicals processing capacity. There are no plans to cut the Kingdom’s oil production, the third highest in the world behind the US and Russia[1] – and no signs that it intends to abandon its decades-long obstruction of intergovernmental climate agreements.

Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, aims to retain its dominant position in export markets, with a commitment to achieve “net zero” by 2050 – which is almost worthless, because it excludes the emissions when the oil is burned, i.e. 85% of them.[2]

In place of climate policy, Saudi Arabia has a “changing communication strategy”, based not only on lavish plans to build wind and solar farms, but also on exaggerated claims that, when it opens the vast new Jafurah shale gas field next year, it will capture carbon from the gas, and use the hydrogen left over to make ammonia for export.

The Saudi “energy transition” will boost both fossil fuel output and profits: energy minister prince Abulaziz bin Salman boasted recently that Saudi Arabia is “probably the only country on planet Earth that will make real money out of the transition”.

Other Gulf states including Oman and the UAE are joining Qatar, already a leading gas exporter, in increasing gas output, while using carbon offsets, climate finance and oceans of PR to present it as “low carbon”.

Remember: for all the claims that hydrogen and carbon capture are “green”, the final result of the Saudi “transition” will be to increase fossil fuel output, and greenhouse gas emissions. Substantially. This is because:

1. Saudi Aramco bosses admit that its ambitious hopes for exporting “blue ammonia” (ammonia made by capturing carbon from gas, and using the hydrogen that is left over) could fail. Some or all of the gas would then be exported as … gas.

Saudi Aramco executive vice-president Ziad Al-Murshed last month said the company “will not be able to proceed” with ammonia projects, unless it can sign long-term commercial offtake agreements – an affliction suffered by would-be hydrogen exporters too.

Al-Murshed suggested that, to get the deals done, incentives would needed from governments of countries buying the ammonia, e.g. Japan, to which a test cargo was delivered last year.

If the ammonia plan fails, Saudi Aramco will “evaluate whether to use these volumes to produce liquefied natural gas”, industry journalists reported – a possibility Aramco has already discussed with oil giants TotalEnergies (France) and Sinopec (China).

So while plans are well advanced to raise Jafurah’s output by 2030 to 20 billion cubic metres of gas per year, equal to more than half the current UK North Sea gas output, the total that ends up being used to fabricate ammonia could well be zero.

2. Carbon dioxide captured and stored at a new plant at Jubail may be marketed for use in the petrochemical industry … or it could be used to boost fossil fuel production.

Most carbon dioxide captured globally is pumped into underground cavities (“reservoirs”) containing oil, to increase the pressure under which the oil is forced up wells to the surface. This technique, enhanced oil recovery, is already used at Saudi Aramco’s existing carbon capture plant at Hawiyah.

Carbon dioxide removed from fossil fuels mined yesterday is used to mine more, more efficiently, tomorrow.

3. Saudi Arabia’s plans for a gigantic “green” hydrogen factory – part of its controversial Neom project to build a new city in the desert – will divert renewable energy resources away from the electricity grid, where fossil fuel burning is projected to rise.

Neom Green Hydrogen,[3] a US-Saudi joint venture, plans to fabricate 220,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year, by electrolysis of water, powered by giant wind and solar farms.

This “green” hydrogen is indeed very low carbon, but is also more than twice as expensive as “blue” hydrogen produced from gas[4] – so could encounter even greater problems finding buyers.

Economies of scale might make it cheaper: certainly Saudi Arabia’s desert could accommodate huge wind and solar farms – although how easily ENOWA, a partner company, will produce the necessary 5.4 million litres of fresh water per day for the process is anyone’s guess.

The biggest problem, though, is about cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In the climate emergency, the first call on renewable electricity should, in principle, be to supply the electricity grid, so that oil- and gas-fired power stations – from which 99% of Saudi electricity is currently generated – can be closed.

By diverting renewable resources from that priority, the Neom project will ensure that total fossil fuel use keeps rising.

Saudi Arabia has also said nothing about substituting its current use of disastrously emissions-intensive “grey” hydrogen (produced from gas without capturing the carbon).

Keir Starmer’s visit heralds a new chapter in the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, in which London will use its ill-deserved reputation for “climate leadership” to help Riyadh greenwash the horror of mounting oil and gas production.

It builds on a long UK-Saudi friendship. Our governments have approved weapons sales to Riyadh for decades, notwithstanding the Kingdom’s treatment of women as second-class citizens, its cruelty towards migrant workers and suppression of dissent.

In return for greenwash, the government hopes to attract investment.

By far the most significant sum of money mentioned in Number Ten’s press release is £785 million that HyCap, a private equity fund, intends to invest, to “develop hydrogen mobility clusters […] creating more than 1000 jobs”.

Keir Starmer said that this would “support Saudi Arabia’s plans to reach net zero emissions by 2060”, and presumably some of these funds may come from the Kingdom.

HyCap was launched in 2021 by Jo Bamford, son of billionaire Anthony Bamford, whose family controls JCB, the multinational equipment manufacturer.

Number Ten claims that HyCap will “deliver hydrogen buses, trucks and critical components”, while “removing 25 million tonnes of transport-related CO2” (with no details on how).

HyCap’s biggest success so far has been at bus maker Wrightbus of Ballymena in northern Ireland, which was brought out of administration in 2019 and now employs more than 2000 people.

But the big sales deals it has announced – including for GoAhead, Stagecoach and First Bus – are for electric buses, not hydrogen – except that the GoAhead contract includes just 43 hybrid electric-hydrogen vehicles, out of 1100.

This underlines the warnings made by engineering researchers for years, that electric buses are more efficient than hydrogen ones. Hydrogen may be suitable for powering heavier vehicles, surely a reason for JCB’s interest, but firm orders for those lie in the future.

The electric buses jobs are welcome – but will not help Saudi Arabia “reach net zero”!

HyCap has also invested in other companies controlled by Jo Bamford, including Ryze Power, which plans to supply and distribute, but not produce, hydrogen – and whose PR team assures the world that hydrogen is the future aviation fuel, despite widespread scepticism.

Ryze may source hydrogen from HyGen Energy, another Bamford-linked company, which, on top of £27 million from HyCap, received a slice of government funding to build a factory in Bradford.

The Tasnee petrochemicals plant, Saudi Arabia.
Photo: Creative commons

Bamford’s success in attracting state funds under the last Tory government led to claims of a possible conflict of interest by former energy minister Claire Coutinho. She took donations from Anthony Bamford, including a £7000 private helicopter ride, before her department approved the Bradford funding, plus grants of £3.2 million and £21 million for Ryze’s planned hydrogen refuelling network.

One HyCap investment that will certainly help to increase greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning is in Yamna, which together with EDF and J-Power plans to develop 4.5 GW of solar and wind power to produce “green ammonia” in Oman.

Like the Saudi Neom venture, this will divert renewable electricity from the grid, which in Oman is 95% reliant on gas.

Other projects mentioned by Number Ten include:

□ Carbon Clean, a London-based technology company, will supply carbon capture technology to the Jubail project, established by Saudi Aramco, SLB and Linde earlier this month. Number Ten claims Carbon Clean is “aiming to create 2000 UK jobs”, but there is no detail about how that might happen.

🔴 Graphene Innovation Manchester will produce graphene-enriched carbon fibre for use in the Neom project. Number Ten says this is “expected to create more than 1000 skilled jobs”.

🔴The UK and Saudi Arabia “are working together to establish a new Joint International Institute for Clean Hydrogen”, with the participation of Newcastle, Durham and other universities.

All Number Ten’s references to new jobs are speculative. And no wonder. The government has shown scant interest in well-thought-out proposals for regeneration of northern industrial areas, e.g. by the Institute for Public Policy Research, who prioritise joined-up government, tax reform and restoring the public sector, rather than hopes of Saudi investment.

While the prime minister was in the Gulf, the oil company BP announced that, with its partners, it had reached financial close on Net Zero Teesside, the UK’s own fossil fuel project with “green” advertising.

BP and Equinor of Norway plan to build a gas-fired power station on Teesside, capture carbon dioxide emissions from it and store them under the North Sea – but face a challenge in the Court of Appeal in March next year from Andrew Boswell, an environmental consultant, who argues that it unlawfully breaches climate commitments.

Within days of BP announcing it is going ahead, investigative journalists found that it had only committed funds to the venture after the government had promised to underwrite loans by BP and Equinor, if the court blocks the development.

The Labour government’s Faustian pact with Saudi Arabia, and its unprecedented gamble with billions of pounds to steamroller opposition to Net Zero Teesside, make much clearer what it means by “energy transition”.

It has joined the “transition” mapped out by international energy companies and governments of fossil-fuel-producing countries: fossil fuel burning will continue to expand for decades; hydrogen and carbon capture will be used to give it a “green” face; and renewables will be added to fossil fuels, rather than used to replace them.

In order to counter this effectively, and to fight for a different kind of transition – one that really takes us away from fossil fuels in a socially just way – we need first to understand exactly what road the government is taking. 

□ Please support the crowdfunder for Andrew Boswell’s action against Net Zero Teesside. And make a date in your diary: his supporters will demonstrate outside the Court of Appeal at the Strand, London, at about 12.30pm on Tuesday 4 March.

🔴 Read People & Nature’s introductions to hydrogen and carbon capture.

🔴 The top photo was taken by Matt Hrkac at a protest against carbon capture greenwash in Torquay, in Australia’s Victoria state, in 2021. Coastal community groups have kept working together against oil companies’ assaults on their environment – most recently, proposals to do seismic blasting to explore for oil deposits in the Southern Ocean nearby. In September this year came a big success: a project by the oilfield service giants TGS and Schlumberger, which would have been the largest seismic blasting project in world history, was axed.

[1] Saudi oil production has changed little, ranging between 520-580 million tonnes, since 2013, while gas production has risen by almost one-fifth. See the Energy Institute Statistical Review

[2] The commitment covers “scope1” and “scope 2” emissions, i.e. those caused by the company’s own mining and preliminary processing operations, but not “scope 3” emissions caused by the use of its products – in this case, the burning of its oil and gas

[3] Neom Green Hydrogen Company is an equal production joint venture of ACWA Power of Saudi Arabia, which is 44% owned by the government’s Public Investment Fund, NEOM of Saudi Arabia and Air Products of the US

[4] The International Energy Agency’s most recent Global Hydrogen Review (2023) reports the levelised cost of “grey” hydrogen at $1-3 (which accounts for 99% of global production and dumps twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire UK economy), “blue” hydrogen from fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage at $1.5-3.6, and “green” hydrogen produced by electrolysis with low-emission electricity, at $3.4-12

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Labour Embraces Saudi Arabia’s Dystopian ‘Energy Transition’

Peter Anderson 🏸 The biggest take away from Rory McIlroy's appearance on Sky Sport's The Overlap was that he has thrown in the towel on his opposition to LIV golf. 

It was, unfortunately, inevitable. Rory had been leading the defence of the U.S. PGA tour. He was the most vocal in his attacks on the Saudis and those pros that had joined the LIV tour. But recent developments, like hearing the PGA were in secret discussions with LIV and the defection of world number one, Jon Rahm, has led the Holywood man to admit defeat. Money talks. And the Saudis have plenty of it.

Rahm's betrayal really sticks in the craw given that he made a speech last year attacking the Saudi regime's record and defending the traditional American tour series, but in the end the multi-millionaire decided that he needed more money. In Rory's interview on The Overlap he explained how the media battle with his LIV colleagues was making his golf suffer and that there was just too much money involved. C'est la vie.

Now we hear that snooker is next. After China's attempt to dominate the sport failed with several leading pros getting done for fixing matches, we now see the Arabs having a go. They are proposing jazzing the game up with a new "golden ball" worth 25 points. As I said in my blog post about darts, I love what the darts authorities have done with darts but with snooker I am definitely more of a conservative. I really hope the Saudis fail, but throw enough money and . . . 

It comes at an important time for the Saudis and their sportswashing agenda. Apparently many of the European players are unhappy with life in the strictly Islamic kingdom. Who'd a guessed? Ex-City centre half Aymeric Laporte spilled the beans last week only to be slapped down by the Saudis, leading to Laporte claiming his revelation was "mistranslated". Certainly Jordan Henderson was unhappy enough to take a huge wage decrease to join Ajax. Playing in constant heat in front of sparse crowds must be bad enough, never mind the culture shock of living in such a state as Saudi Arabia. According to The Guardian, Henderson's team played a game last autumn in front of 600 supporters.

There are widespread reports of mostly empty stadiums, proving that you just can't buy tradition. Derby and Bolton Wanderers, in the English 3rd tier, have a higher average attendance than almost all of the Saudi Pro League's teams. I sincerely hope it withers on the vine, like the U.S. and Chinese varieties that went before.

I understand that the Saudis claim they are simply trying to change the culture in their nation, modernise, provide entertainment and increase sporting participation, and I understand the minefield of moral relativism as I sit in my safe European home, but I just can't accept Saudi Arabia's interference in sport. If the Saudis approached me, offering great riches to write in support of them, would I be able to say no? Maybe we all have a price and I shouldn't get so wound up.

Rory has thrown in the towel, should the rest of us follow suit?

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports

Money Talks

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Six Hundred And Ninety Five

Stanley Cohen ✊ How long ago was it that Colin Powell sat before the United Nations Security Council with his twisted trove of compelling evidence that Iraq was host to a veritable mountain of weapons of mass destruction just awaiting the right moment to unleash its Shia ravage upon the stainless West?


Of course, it was a lie, a conscious pretext to justify what was to follow where tens of millions throughout the Middle East paid for this US “hard intelligence” with their liberty, their lives, and their yearning for little more than the universal right for them and their families to pursue the freedom of life. Some twenty years later the weapons of mass lie continue to propagate daily with an unbroken fabricated flood of deadly Western puffery about an innocent pastoral Israel under siege not at all by virtue of its own long and well-established regional hands of occupation filth, but of course by the voracious anti-Semitic appetite of Iran, Palestine, and Hamas. It’s a lie.

Gaza City under Israeli airstrikes, screengrab
from Al Jazeera’s live feed.

When expedient, for years we have been apprenticed by largely Western Christian and Jewish tutors along with purchased “Islamic scholars” about the branded unresolvable divide between Sunni and Shia denominations which, they preach, all but guarantees periodic eruptions within the Islamic world. After all, was it not this internecine scriptural split that explains away the horrors inflicted in Yemen upon the impoverished Iranian-supported Shias by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia and UAE largely with weapons that were made in the USA?

Although the Saudi/UAE inflicted casualties continue, when the world last cared reliable sources report that over 150,000 people were killed in Yemen, as well as more than 227,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine and lack of healthcare facilities due to the war.

Not packaged, let alone understood, for the internal civil war it was, how much easier and politically convenient to simply blame Iranian support and “control” over Houthi Shias against a Sunni government as the trigger for what was clearly an Indigenous political rebellion. How often were we told that Houthis were fighting as Iranian proxies rather than as combatants in a native uprising largely directed at the lingering legacy of European colonialism? Sound familiar?

So, tell me, if the marriage of an uprising in the Middle East is ultimately fueled not by aboriginal aspiration but strict theological obedience, how is it that the Shias of Iran are dictating to the Sunnis of Hamas what to do and when? They ain’t.

There is nothing I can say at this point in history that will move the lockstep sentiments of personally invested or reality-disconnected Israeli cheerleaders to understand, let alone accept, that Hamas is an Indigenous national liberation movement, born not from abstract thought, religious fueled hate or the chase of personal fortune, but rather from the hardscrabble roads of Gaza itself. So, I will not try.

Are there Palestinians who disagree, even at times despair, of Hamas… of course. But after 75 plus years of ethnic cleansing, you will not find any wanting for wholehearted support for the resistance–be it from millions still occupied by a deadly colonial project, or those long ago exiled at gun-point from their age-old homeland by Europeans who tore across it with unrestrained bombast and endless thirst for blood. For without defiance, whether from movements or “lone wolf” … be it by armed struggle or passive resistance … one comprised of Muslims, Christians and non-believers alike–of women and men, students and scholars, only fools or desperate wizards believe that if left to its own unchecked device, a kinder gentler Israel would emerge to ensure justice and human rights for those whose dwindling land they thirst and liberty they detest.

Has Iran provided financial aid to Hamas, some of which was used for the purchase or production of weapons? Of course. Why not. It is not the only country that has chosen sides in this struggle against ethnic cleansing and for righteous justice. After all, the United States has funded Israel to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars these many years which has financed the use of phosphorous and cluster bombs against civilians in Gaza in violation of Protocol III to The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1983 and The Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2008. It has also armed snipers who have shot tens of thousands of peaceful protestors on the Gaza border in violation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Not one to limit its backing of Israeli butchery to but the air and land of Palestine, the US has long subsidized an Israeli navy whose prime function is to attack and destroy Palestinian fishing and humanitarian aid vessels be they in the Port of Gaza or afloat in the Mediterranean Sea.

Never one to suppress its own geo-political thirst or economic appetite, The Convention on Cluster Munitions was ignored earlier this year when the US elected to arm Ukraine with thousands of cluster bombs. So too, it disregarded the transfer of American-made weapons it provided to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners in Yemen later transferred to al Qaeda-linked fighters, and other so-called radical Salafi militias. Nothing new about this. Independent of its invasions and occupations of Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, in the last thirty-five years alone the United States has intervened or proxied up in numerous international hot spots through money or weapons including Syria, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. With an unbroken sordid record of meddling, there is abundant evidence that the US has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions of one sort or another between 1776 and 2023. But Iran is the problem.

Over the years, billions in humanitarian aid have come to Gaza from Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey and Algeria to name but a few of the supportive sister states. Donated largely for reconstruction of essential infrastructure, schools and hospitals targeted and laid to waste by Israeli bombs, ribbon cutting in Gaza one of the world’s most densely populated and impoverished territories has proven time and time again to be but a momentary tease–with each restoration quickly lost to the next Israeli onslaught and the next and the next.

Once upon a time, before the lure of US dollars and Israeli shekels purchased a new generation in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia armed Hamas with rockets and other weapons for the defense of Gaza. However, that solidarity was to change with the arrival of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman who the very year he had Jamal Khashoggi murdered, told Jewish leaders in New York City that Palestinians should “start accepting peace proposals or shut up.” Five years later at the urging of Biden and with the blessing of his personal hedge fund banker, Jared Kushner, in the run-up to the Hamas strike, bin Salman was expected to sign the Abraham Accords. With that signature, he would have joined UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in a treacherous pact with Israel which places their own economic and geo-political interests ahead of not just palpable Israeli violations of international law, but all standards of decency and humanity. Trading in his bisht and red & white keffiyeh for Armani pinstripes, how can anyone avoid the overpowering stench of a regional double standard?

And what of the “proof” that Iran provided the skill set and dictated the nature and timing of the most recent Hamas strikes against the occupation? Now streaming in from predictable Zionist echo chambers at AIPAC and ADL to the halls of a cheap ill-informed Congress to the amplified one-sided MSM breaking news cycle… there is none. To be sure, like it or not, as a seasoned national liberation movement with an armed wing that has successfully battled to a stand-still Israeli jets, tanks, and battleships for decades, Hamas needs not, nor does it accept direction from non-Palestinian actors on how or when to proceed in its struggle against the occupation. Any such claim oozes with pejorative ignorance and racist superiority. Bearing the reek of classic hasbara, these shouts are but another in a long line of played deceits that Israel is an enlightened democracy under perpetual siege in the midst of doctrinal fired anti-Semitism.

Of course, Israelis tutor the West that they and they alone love and care for their families and young while the dominant regional Arab and Palestinian populations are more than willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters to a nihilist agenda in the name of Islam. Very much a living lie, for decades this marketing lure has enticed the neo-colonial West to ignore Israel’s marriage of hate and violence providing the money, weapons and Security Council vetoes it needs to keep it just beyond the reach of universal law and international accountability. Zionists would have us believe that Palestinians, per capita among the most highly educated people and culture in the world, know not what they want and or how to get there, but rather are mere dutiful vassals of Iran as it seeks to impose its brand of Shia fundamentalism upon the rest of the region. Nonsense.

Hamas is a national liberation movement dating back some 40 years to a time and place where an earlier generation of explosive, deadly Kahanists sought to corrupt if not rid Palestine of any collective aspiration of self-determination, independence and justice. The notion that all these years later the movement, now among the most sophisticated and successful in the region, if not the world, needs guidance, training and edict from any other state or people to fight on is but seductive sophistry in search of a vulnerable and ill-informed audience to bite the poison political pill. At its core, the tired screed that the Islamic Resistance Movement’s self-determination is determined by others not born of Palestinian families and heritage is but a shoddy deflection from the horrors unleashed by Zionists these past 75 years upon an Indigenous community dating back not decades or centuries but millennium.

For days now deceitful politicians and traditional media across the globe have parroted the sculpted Zionist talisman that there is war between Hamas and Israel. Not true. It is a battle for survival between a “nation state” of occupiers and a people long beleaguered … but not defeated. To be sure, if Hamas were to disappear tomorrow, the global Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberty and justice would and will continue till it be had. To hear the unbroken chant of “terrorists” by Israel and its funders beggars the undeniable history of nonstop Zionist terrorism beginning well before the Irgun, Haganah and Palmach hanged British soldiers, bombed the King David Hotel, sent mail bombs across Europe and assassinated Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator for Palestine all in the name of a theft of a land they had not known, if at all, for thousands of years.

With its leadership prominently displayed and well deserved on “wanted” posters throughout Palestine and in Europe for heinous offenses against civilians and repeated violations of settled international law, these Europeans went on to inspire generations to come with a dark deadly vision of a homeland not theirs to reclaim or to reconstruct and where, to them, no crime was too disturbing … no rationale too obtuse.

No matter what the Zionists rewrite, Palestine is a land stolen from age-old Indigenous communities with hundreds of thousands driven at gunpoint from their homes, but not their history. For the fortunate, they were exiled to refugee camps in and out of their homeland; for the less so, mass assassination, rape and a final rest rotting in wells were left as a message for others across Palestine. In the years since, that nightmare has continued unabated with millions of Palestinians living under the often-deadly, always despotic yoke of Zionist expanse and excuse; with many more eking out existence as stateless refugees living long and far from their native land.

In the years since the onset of the unchanged Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians including children and the elderly have been shot, crippled and murdered always in the name of a perverse ideal built fundamentally upon the suffering of others. Even more have seen the damp dark cellblocks of political prisons, uncharged or tried, stripped of their families and lives for little more than a voice, a prayer, a hope. For years, Gaza has been the world’s largest open-air prison, one bounded on all sides by the hatred and terror of Israel and the complicity of its partner in cruelty–Egypt. But a short recast reminds us it is no stranger to Israeli war crimes.

With an opening salvo on December 27, 2008, Israel bombed the main police headquarters in Gaza City, killing 42 cadets standing in formation–none bearing weapons. Later it blew up 18 other police stations throughout the Gaza Strip. In total, 248 police officers were killed having not fired a single shot at Israeli forces. Over the twenty-one days that followed, Israel deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and made widespread use of prohibited weapons, such as white phosphorous, in highly populated areas in clear violation of international law. During the onslaught, Israel targeted 23 U.N. buildings and/or compounds killing numerous civilians who had taken shelter there. In the deadliest case, 43 civilians were killed by an Israeli shelling of one such compound. Palestinian schools were also targeted. On January 5, an aerial strike killed three men who had sought shelter at the Asma Elementary Co-Ed A School. Twelve days later, a military ordinance struck the Beit Lahia Elementary School while it was being used as an emergency shelter… killing two young boys and injuring 13 others. Human Rights Watch documented at least seven instances where Israeli soldiers executed civilians… including five women and four children who were standing together waving white flags to convey they posed no threat. In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed several members of the al-Najar family in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. Following orders from soldiers to leave their neighborhood, and while waving white flags, Rawiya al-Najjar and her family were gunned down. When the carnage ended, some 1440 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 injured… most of them civilians. According to the Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, 252 minors under the age of 16 (boys and girls) who did not take part in any fighting were killed along with 111 women and girls over 16.

Five years later, in the summer of 2014, the world was reminded of what it is to be a Palestinian in the crosshairs of a colonial fiend hell-bent on relegating them en masse to the ranks of the disappeared. During Israel’s unhinged six-week rampage it dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on more than 5200 “targets” throughout Gaza. At its end, some 2200 Palestinians were slaughtered, including 550 children, with some 10,000 others injured. Almost all the victims were civilians. More than 1900 children were orphaned, and hundreds of thousands were internally displaced with 20,000 homes, 26 NGO service providers, a half-dozen UNRWA facilities, 23 hospitals and health-care facilities, 133 schools, 360 factories, and 50,000 acres of croplands destroyed or damaged by Israel. Half of Gaza’s poultry stock was slaughtered along with thousands of family pets.

These are but a few of the more glaring examples of the recent yet unbroken mayhem long unleashed by Israel against a Palestinian community that never left its roots or lost the call of its collective claim. To keep track of this havoc is to bear witness to unspeakable crimes typically against the frail, the young, the passive who carry hope and horror-not weapons. According to Save the Children in the run-up to the most recent explosion, 2023 had already proved to be the deadliest year for Palestinian children since records began with at least 38 of them killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. That number has increased exponentially over the last several days with, it has been reported, some 500 additional children killed in Gaza. The Defense for Children International, a Palestinian human rights organization focused on child rights, reports that since 2005 major Israeli military offensives have killed more than 1,000 children in the 140 square mile prison of Gaza.

Meanwhile, there are some 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons including 33 women and 170 children held largely on what are described as “security grounds.” Detained essentially indefinitely, they never see the inside of an Israeli civilian courtroom with the benefit of meaningful counsel, and the rights to due process and a trial. For them, it is very much a military star chamber–one overseen by a military judge and a military prosecutor with endless six-month detention extensions absent any cap, or established evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

In the most recent battle, the list of dead and injured civilians continues to grow on both sides and must stop. Yet the narrative of what has happened and why is no less destructive. No matter how many times politicians and theists of all callings seek to control and market the account by blaming Hamas and victimizing Israelis alone, even a cursory search establishes it is an obscene escape from reality. Long before Hamas arrived, Palestinians of all faiths, politics and aspirations fought against the expulsion, hatred and violence forced upon them by European terrorists in the name of a desperate historical rewrite. One which sought and continues to justify ongoing ethnic cleansing as so much an absolute historical rite of passage–a claim that defies the reality of time and long-settled decency and humanitarian law.

Tragically, after all the millennium we still live in times not unlike the dark march of history where struggles are judged not by the equal application of international law or the will and wail of justice but by the color of one’s skin, the echo of one’s words, the pose of one’s prayer. All too often, the scale of righteousness is weighted not by the credence of the cause but the partisan of one’s cheer. A double standard at best, it is a jury of institutional inequality–one that passes judgment not by the virtuous but the powerful; not by equal application of law but the coercive command of presence. It is specious posturing at its finest; an opportune script sculpted by occupiers across the globe, and not the occupied. It must stop.

Until the community of onlookers imposes the same standards upon colonizer as they do the colonized; upon Jews and Christians as they do Muslims; on skin tones of white as they do of color, the history of yesterday and that unfolding before us today remains locked in a dismissal falsified story-line. Ultimately, that description instills upon us all the bleak chronicle that the difference between “freedom fighter” and “terrorist” is not the justness of the cause … but who wins.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.

Weapons of Mass Lies

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Six Hundred And Seventy Six

Peter Anderson ⚽ What a big weekend of soccer in Saudi Arabia! 

Al-something beat Al-something else 4-3 in the big "Al Clasico" derby. I'm sure the locals loved it. We know that Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud wants to turn the whole Middle East into "The New Europe" with his Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund. This means buying Western sport and culture to whitewash his country's appalling human rights record. The reality is that it will look fuck all like Europe. In Europe, for example, it is perfectly fine to be gay. In Saudi Arabia, it can mean beheading or 500 lashes and along spell behind bars, depending on who you are, who you know, how rich you are and the whims of the Sharia judges. 

Into this wonderful culture are walking dozens of European footballers, Jordan Henderson included. The so-called LGBT rights campaigner signed a big deal with one of the AL-somethings to the utter dismay of his erstwhile LGBT buddies. On his new club's social media announcement, the picture of Henderson that they used had been doctored so that his rainbow captain's armband was changed to black and white! On Saturday night before the England game. Jill Scott, ex-England footballer, pundit and notable lesbian said, "I'm a Jordan Henderson fan . . .  but I would not be welcome to watch him". That says it all. He has faced a mountain of criticism for what looks very like rank hypocrisy.

Henderson himself said that it may actually be a good thing to have a LGBT campaigner in Saudi Arabia, though he added that he wouldn't do anything that disrespected the religion or culture in his new home country. So, what good will his presence actually do then? He added, "What I’m saying is people know what my values are and the people who know me know what my values are". Presumably if the Saudis don't like his values, he has others. 

This in a week when ex-Real Madrid star Sergio Ramos signed for boyhood club Sevilla. He was offered €14M a season to play in the Saudi Pro League, but went to Sevilla for €1M a season. Surely, if you have earned tens of millions in your career, it is much better to finish it at a club you love and to give something back. Easy for me to say, I know. Every man has his price, and all that, but I just can't imagine why anybody would want to live in that country or participate in the activities of its sovereign wealth fund.

Ex-Watford striker Troy Deeney, who recently signed for Forest Green Rovers, told journalists last week that he was holidaying in Dubai over the summer and bumped into some ex-Premier League players who were hanging around trying to get a contract from Middle Eastern agents. He said:

People think we (footballers) are entitled. We are not entitled. I think we have just got so comfortable with the luxuries that are the Prem and now the Championship that it’s like ‘Oh, I am not going to League Two’. Well. Think about when you started. It was your dream. You would have done anything to say football was your job.

I suspect that the Saudi Pro League will go the way of its Chinese equivalent a few years ago, and Western footballers are faced with the reality of living in such fundamentally different countries. Until then, let's hope for more Troy Deeneys and fewer Jordan Hendersons.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports

Henderson Hypocrisy

Peter Anderson ⚽ You can't really blame a Premier League player for topping up the retirement fund with a move to the Saudi Pro League. 

The news that Jordan Henderson will be joining ex-team mate Stevie G in the Arab kingdom came as no real shock. Henderson is 33 and has only a few years left as a pro footy player before retirement. If he were to stay in England it would be, most likely, with a Championship team on a few grand a week. Why not cash in and get the millions with a move to Saudi Arabia, just like his predecessors who moved to China and the USA? 

What is more surprising is that younger players are going too. Ruben Neves has already signed and Aleks Mitrovic is reportedly close to going. These are players that attracted interest from big clubs in Europe. Why would you spend the best years of your life and career in an inferior league? Well, for the dough obviously. Not for the lifestyle, weather or the quality of the league. I just don't get it.

The Saudi Sovereign Wealth fund is changing sport. They have already bought golf and boxing and are now trying to take over football. Already there is pressure on FIFA to expand the World Club Cup to a 32-team competition to rival the UEFA Champions League. With the recent attempt to create a European Super League, you get the impression that big change is coming to football. There is just too much money and too many opportunities for sportswashing for the status quo to remain. 

Jealousy is a problem too. The Spanish and Italian giants are jealous of the English and the rest of the world is jealous of UEFA. Are we facing a 16-team European Super League where the top 8 qualify for a 32-team World Club Cup? Would that be a bad thing if it did happen? 

The Saudis are footy mad, Maybe we should just be happy that they are seeing their league prosper and attracting the best players. I just get a bad feeling about all of this. This is probably based on my dislike of the Saudi government and its attempts at sportswashing. But at the end of the day are they any worse than the Chinese, Russians or Americans? Footy is, most definitely, a victim of its own success.

Now that City have won the treble, maybe I should just go back to my roots at Windsor Park, support the wee Blues again and let the big leagues get on with it.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports

Saudi Sportswashing

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Four Hundred And Eighty Four

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