American Bombs, Israeli Slaughter

CrossFireArabia
Opinion
May 25, 2024

Congressmen Bernie Sanders Tells Joe Biden ‘You Can Stop This War’ right now, just don’t provide Israel with any more weapons.

Congressmen Bernie Sanders said the US government needs to stop financing the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. He was speaking on the X platform, stressing the fact there are thousands of children who are being starved in Gaza.

He told CNN the weapons used by the Israeli army in the latest “flour massacre” that killed 112 people and upwards to more than 700 people through Israeli snipers and tanks, was paid from the pockets of the American taxpayer. He stressed Washington needs to stop financing the Israeli army.

Sanders, a US Senator for Vermont, is one of the strongest critics of the stand of the American government supporting Israel and he is not a lone voice in America.

Washington has been the main financier and military supplier in this Israeli war against Gaza. At the start of the third month of the war on Gaza, the US already supplied Israel with 10,000 tons worth of arms to Israel through 200 cargo planes. Today, and six-month into the war, the military supply chain is still going strong with more of the same.

In the initial stages of the war following 7 October 2000 so-called military “advisors” were sent to Israel with US warships – USS Gerald Ford USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – scurrying to the east Mediterranean Sea. Today, these advisors are being beefed up by US mercenaries.

An American war

It would appear that most of the bombs dropped on Gaza are US made. In addition to the bunk busters which borrow deep into the ground before exploding turning Gaza into a graveyard, Washington has allowed itself to be an active participant in this war by supplying different types of bombs and shells that are too numerous to mention and name like the MK 82, MK 84 bombs, dumb bombs, air-to-surface munitions as well as thousands and thousands of ammunitions.

In terms of mass destruction Israel has been dropping two- three- and even four-ton bombs on Gaza. This has never been the case even when the US has been bombing ISIS-strong holds in Syria and even Afghanistan. The devastation of 2000-pound-bombs dropped have been analyzed on CNN.

This is certainly an American war on Gaza, but throughout this conflict, Washington has also tried to look reasonable. While supplying weapons to Israel through the White House and bypassing the US Congress, US President Joe Biden and his team have said they are for the status quo in Gaza, against the expulsion of the Palestinians into neighboring Sinai and want to see the revival of a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

But this has fallen on deaf ears despite the daily contact between US and Israeli officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long ignored such utterances and even recently introduced a draft law against the two-state solution that was passed by the Knesset making such recognition of a two-state solution as a illegal. This is seen as an snub to the American administration that refuses to increase pressure on Israel despite the mass onslaught and the “plausible genocide” as termed by the International Court of Justice that is being committed by Israel in Gaza.

Israel is riding roughshod on the Americans precisely because of the fact Biden keeps reiterating the fact he is a committed “Zionist” and refuses to stop the flow of weapons into Israel while the US Congress continues to support Israel with direct aid and monies even though a sizable group in the Democratic Party are criticizing the actions of the American president.

‘You can’t beat the resistance’

Meanwhile the American president continues to watch the murderous actions of the Israeli army and the refusal of Netanyahu to stop the war against Gaza and his insistence on eliminating Hamas. But in his heart, Netanyahu must feel, as everyone else, including the US administration he can’t do that, after six months of bombing the living day light out of Gaza.

What the Israeli army is doing now, is continuing to kill civilians on the ground – the figure dubbed currently at over 30,000 with more than 70,000 injured. As well, rather than combing Gaza from the north to the south and working, Israeli soldiers are finding out that Gaza is a tough series of battles.

Instead of concentrating in the south which they have promised to do in the stages they planned, they are bogged in below-center areas like Khan Younis and are having to go and fight in northern areas like Al Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, Jabalia and Biet Lahia where the Palestinian resistance is putting up stiff resistance and where Israeli tanks are dying by the die in their thousands and their tanks continue to be destroyed in their hundreds.

Ninety percent for instance, of the underground tunnels are intact. These Hamas and Jihad fighters are still below ground and keep come up for the kill and battle despite the fact Israeli politicians and military keep saying they are destroying the “terror infrastructure.” But by their own admission also, Palestinian resistance fighters keep coming up and destroying.

Meanwhile, bombs and munitions in a constant stream, continues to be provided by the Americans as they talk of the necessity of peace to all good men and satisfying themselves with making the first American food airdrop on Gaza whilst determined not to be outwitted by other countries like Jordan, Egypt, France and Italy. But rather than moaning about Netanyahu, America can stop this war rather than be engaged in this new campaign to attempt to save Gaza from starvation imposed by its very good friend and strategic partner Benjamin Netanyahu who fears jail if he stops bombing Gaza because of his corruption accusations.

Everyone is hoping still there would be some kind of a ceasefire come the Muslim month of Ramadan shortly. If Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are not convinced, the blood bath will likely continue because of the expected onslaught on Rafah and with the Israeli hostages held in Hamas tunnels be ever more in peril. Their number, originally thought at 136 are down much lower according to Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida who says at least 70 of them have been killed so far by Israeli bombs.

Will they be any left by the time the war is put to an end?

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

Opinion

Is There a New Regional Order Emerging?

marwan
August 10, 2026

By Mohammad Abu Rumman

The trilateral Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani agreement, signed in Mecca last Friday and already being referred to as the “Mecca Mutual Defense Agreement,” should not be seen as just another diplomatic event in the region’s long history of security arrangements. What took place at Al-Safa Palace—where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif agreed that an armed attack against any one of their countries would be considered an attack against all three—may signal the beginning of a new phase in Middle Eastern politics: one that could reshape regional alliances and, more importantly, the region’s relationship with the major powers.

The immediate context is clear. The agreement comes amid renewed US-Iranian tensions and escalating Houthi threats. But interpreting it simply as an attempt to “protect Saudi Arabia from Iran” misses the larger strategic picture. What is emerging goes beyond the immediate Iranian question. It points toward an effort to construct a regional order that is less dependent on the binary that has dominated Middle Eastern geopolitics for years: the US-Israeli axis on one side and Iran and its network of allies on the other.

There is another important dimension. The agreement effectively redraws the geopolitical boundaries of the Middle East by bringing Pakistan more directly into its security architecture while consolidating Turkey’s role as a central regional actor. This represents a departure from the conventional understanding of the regional system as primarily comprising the Arab states, Iran, Israel and Turkey. It comes, moreover, at a moment of profound transformation following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the weakening of the old division between the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” and the traditional Arab “moderate camp.

In practical terms, the new arrangement offers a different model—one that could provide regional powers with greater strategic and security autonomy. In that sense, it differs fundamentally from the regional vision advanced by President Donald Trump through the Abraham Accords, in which Israel occupies a central position in a US-backed regional security architecture. After the Gaza war, that model increasingly raises another question: whether integration with Israel means accepting not only normalization, but also an Israeli claim to military primacy in the region.

Seen from this perspective, the trilateral alliance may be less about confronting Iran than about challenging the underlying logic of the Abraham Accords.This may also explain Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings several months ago about the emergence of what he described as a “radical Sunni axis.” Israel, meanwhile, has been pursuing its own countervailing network of partnerships. India—Pakistan’s historic rival—has become increasingly important in this calculus, alongside Israel’s strategic relationships with Greece and Cyprus and, more recently, Argentina. These relationships serve strategic purposes of their own, but they also help Israel counter the growing perception of regional isolation in the aftermath of the Gaza war.

Nor should the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani framework necessarily be viewed as a closed alliance. It has the potential to evolve into a broader regional umbrella centred on the Middle East’s increasingly influential middle powers. Other Arab states could eventually find a place within such a framework, including Jordan, Qatar and Egypt, and perhaps even Syria, which now faces Israeli military encroachment and the occupation of additional territory in its south following the collapse of the Assad regime.

Barry Buzan’s theory of regional security complexes provides a useful lens through which to understand the significance of this development. From this perspective, the emerging alignment represents change on three interconnected levels.

First, it expands the geopolitical boundaries of the Middle Eastern regional security complex, particularly by integrating Pakistan more directly into its strategic calculations. Second, it intensifies competition over the hierarchy of regional power: which states will emerge as the principal poles of influence within this enlarged security system? And third, it forces a reconsideration of the familiar categories of alliance, rivalry and cooperation that have shaped our understanding of Middle Eastern politics for decades.

The significance of the Mecca Agreement, therefore, lies not only in what the three countries have formally committed themselves to, but in what the agreement potentially represents: the search for a regional security architecture that is neither entirely dependent on Washington nor organized around Israel, while at the same time avoiding subordination to an Iranian-led regional order.

Yet this is precisely where the real questions begin. The agreement faces three major tests. The first is whether it can move beyond political declarations towards credible institutional and military mechanisms. The second is whether Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan can develop a sufficiently coherent strategic agenda despite their different interests, alliances and regional priorities. The third—and ultimately decisive—test will come when one of the three countries faces an actual security crisis and collective commitments collide with the national calculations of the other two.

The Mecca Agreement may indeed mark an important turning point in the architecture of Middle Eastern security. But regional orders are not created by communiqués alone. Between declaring an alliance and proving that it exists lies the most difficult test of all: what its members are prepared to do when their commitments carry a real political and strategic cost.

By Mohammad Abu Rumman is a columnist in The Jordan Times

Opinion

Kareem Khan – Chronology of a Scandal: A View From Amman

Saleem Ayoub Quna
July 29, 2026

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

Another somber episode in the ongoing Middle East saga is about to be quietly scrapped by manipulative overt hands and emerging developments, that are no less than disappointing!

The story of the main character of this episode began long time ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1970, when a child was born to a dermatologist Scottish mother and a Pakistani father of the same trade!

The child was named Kareem Asad Ahmad Khan, who grew up to educate himself in Law, later to pursue a judicial career, until he landed as top job in The Hague, the Netherland, in 2021, and eventually becoming the Chief Persecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

It was at this juncture that he replaced Ms. Fatou Bensouda, a lady of Gambian origin, who was seeking to investigate the never-ending tragic situation in Gaza and the West Bank under the Israeli military occupation.

Scuffle With Mossad

Bensouda stepped down after 17 years of service at the ICC, including the last nine years as Chief Prosecutor. On her point of departure, she made it clear that the Israeli head of intelligence, Yossi Cohen, met her more than once and told her to drop the charges she was making against Israel’s actions in the two Palestinian territories, but she would not bow, until she officially resigned on 15 June, 2021.

And so since the beginning of his new appointment the new chief prosecutor, and like his predecessor, Khan was charged of continuing to investigate cases, situations and/or individuals suspected of offenses such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression, where and whenever, they occurred, whether in Ukraine, Darfur, Belarus, Afghanistan or in Gaza and which indeed become his nightmare, magnified by an Israeli genocide on all accounts that began on 7 October 2023 and lasted for 2 years, 9 months and more, and was declared ‘De Jure’ in October 2025.

No one warned Mr. Khan that he was stepping into a thick minefield, or if they did, he would only listen to his heart and conscience! For that, he must have been bracing for the worse, for himself, and probably for the thousands of war victims he was investigating.

The war in Gaza led to the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, (nearly 75,000 dead and more than 200,000 injured), whereas for the Israelis, they suffered 1200 dead and at least over 5000 injured.

So, in May 2024, Khan adopting a “balanced” position despite the flagrant disparity between the two sides on all levels, announced the arrest warrants for five main individuals directly involved in Gaza war: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and the top three leaders in Hamas: Yehya Sinwar, Mohammd Dief and Ismail Haniyeh.

Days after the issuance of these arrest warrants, the name of a certain local female employee (known only as Sarah) suddenly popped up at the ICC, as the alleged victim of sexual harassment at the hands of non-other than the honorable Chief Prosecutor, Kareem Khan!

In an orchestrated follow up, the US Treasury Department in February 2024 imposed sanctions on Khan, after President Donald Trump sanctioned the ICC judges for issuing the said arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galant.

And in May 2025 Khan stepped down as Chief Prosecutor due to the said allegations of sexual misconduct, and was suspended pending a vote by the state members of the ICC.

In July 2026 Khan was ousted from his post as 82 out of 125 ICC member states voted, in secret, in favor of his dismissal!

As for the Palestinian leaders who were also involved in that war, Israel took things in their hands and ended the life of the three Hamas leaders: Mohammd Deif was killed in Khan Younes on 13 July 2024, Yehya Sinwar killed in the same city on 16 October, 2024 and Ismael Haniyeh was assassinated in faraway Tehran on 31 July, 2024.

The question now is whether the candidate for the Chief Prosecutor post at the ICC, will follow suit in the footsteps of his two predecessors, regarding the unfinished business of atrocities and war crimes around the globe, or will he/she be somebody of a new breed of international prosecutors?

Soon we may have a clue! But personally, I am not optimistic!