The timing, as with so much in the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, was most appropriate. The Israeli Knesset had signalled its intent on crippling and banishing the sole agency of humanitarian worth for Palestinian welfare by passing laws criminalising its operations by 92 to 10 on October 28.

The attack on UNRWA also came with a contemporaneous legal effort, this time from South Africa. Pretoria had already made its wishes clear on December 28, 2023 in filing an application in the International Court of Justice alleging “violations by Israel regarding the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide […] in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Acts and omissions by Israel, argued the South African government, were alleged to be of a “genocidal” nature, “committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

By May 10, South Africa had filed four requests seeking additional provisional measures with modifications to the original provisional measures laid down by the ICJ. The momentum, and frequency of the actions, even gave certain commentators room to wonder: Was Israel’s own due process rights regarding judicial equality and the right to be heard compromised? Israel had promised to submit written observations by May 15 to the ICJ when faced with the sudden announcement on May 12 that the court would be holding an oral hearing instead.

These debates have been taking place before the concerted, dedicated, enthusiastic pulverisation of Gaza, and the ongoing killing, terrorisation and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. In these cases, due process remains fantasy and distant speculation, especially concerning civilians. With increasing regularity, there is chilling evidence that Israeli units have a programmatic approach to destroying a viable infrastructure and means of living on the strip.

On October 22, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem expressed horror at the sheer scale “of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left […] impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world.”

In a chilling overview of the exploits of the IDF’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion written by Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip for Drop Site News, a record of systematic elimination of cultural, structural and intellectual life in the Gaza Strip is evident. As members of the battalion’s official D9 company stated: “Our job is to flatten Gaza.” In an operation that saw the destruction of the Al-Azhar University, First Sergeant David Zoldan, operational officer of Company A of the battalion, delights with fellow soldiers on seeing the explosion: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, did you see?!”

Statements of this sort are frequent and easily found up the chain of command. They are also uttered with ease at the highest levels of government. On October 21, Israeli Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir had told a “settlement” conference held in a restricted military zone that Gaza’s inhabitants would be given the chance to “leave from here to other countries.” His reasoning for this ethnic cleansing has remained biblically consistent: “The Land of Israel is ours.”

In a media statement from its Department of International Relations and Cooperation dated October 28, the South African government announced its filing of a Memorial to the ICJ pertaining to its ongoing case against Israel. The Memorial itself runs into 750 pages, with 4000 pages of supporting exhibits and annexes. (Its December 2023 application had run into 84 pages.) “The problem we have is that we have too much evidence,” remarked South Africa’s representative to The Hague, Ambassador Vusimuzi Madonsela to Al Jazeera.

Zane Dangor, director-general of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, was more practical. Israel might well inflate its dossier of bloody misdeeds, but some line had to be drawn in the submissions. “The legal team will always say we need more time, there’s more facts coming. But we have to say you have to stop now. You [have] got to focus on what you have.”

While the formal contents of the Memorial remain confidential, the clues are thickly obvious. It contains, for instance, evidence that Israel “has violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”

Despite that comprehensive assortment of alleged crimes, the legal commentariat wonder how far this latest effort will necessarily go in linking the decisions of Israeli officialdom with genocidal intent. That Israel is committing war crimes and violating humanitarian law is nigh impossible dispute. The threshold in proving genocide, as international jurisprudence has repeatedly shown over the years, is a high one indeed. The dolus specialis – that specific intent to destroy in whole or in part the protected group – is essential to prove.

Cathleen Powell of University of Cape Town, for instance, has her reservations. “If they can find genocidal statements from state officials and show that that directly led to a particular programme that led to the destruction on the ground, then that’s probably a very strong case.” But making that link would be “very difficult”.

Dangor has no doubts. “Genocidal acts without intent can be crimes against humanity. But here, the intent is just front and centre.” Suffice to say that Israeli lawmakers and officials, aided by the exploits of the IDF, are making proving such intent an easier prospect with each passing day.

For decades, the cultural phenomenon known as Americanisation has taken place with diffusing ease. Momentum was gained with the retreat of communism from Europe’s eastern states with the end of the Cold War and the eventual termination of the Soviet Union in 1991. Global brands of Americana from fizzy drinks to Dallas became pervasive cultural presences. Not even children’s programming was exempt.

Converts and devotees would mimic accents, adopt terms of reference, and emulate patterns of behaviour. In terms of children’s programming, Sesame Street, the work of the non-profit organisation Sesame Workshop, has been the global standard bearer. Jenny Perlman Robinson and Daniela Petrova, writing for Brookings in 2015, delved into its significance as an informal educating tool, reaching millions of children across 150 countries. “What had started as an educational television program more than 40 years ago is now a multimedia platform that uses everything from radio, video, and books to the latest in interactive media and technology.”

In 2018, Australia made its own contribution in the field. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation released an animated series that has since become a giddying global phenomenon. The US has not been spared, suggesting that Americanisation, at least in some areas, can also be given hearty doses of its own medicine. The series in question, Bluey, features an Australian dog of the Blue Heeler variety: one Bluey, a six-year-old cattle dog who lives in the Queensland city of Brisbane with sister Bingo, and parents Bandit and Chilli.

By the end of March 2020, the series had won an International Emmy in the children’s preschool category, something no doubt helped by the enforced isolation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2023, Bluey became the second most popular streaming show in the US, logging 731 million hours. In 2024, the series became the most viewed show in the United States.

Such success was due, in no small part, to a distribution deal struck between the BBC and Disney in 2019. “The warmth and authenticity of Bluey’s family dynamic is what first captured our interest in the show,” explained Jane Gould, senior vice president of Disney Channels Worldwide. “Bluey reminds us all of our own families, and it plays out in the small but emotionally epic dramas of day-to-day life in surprising, heartfelt and very funny ways that will engage children and parents alike.”

The fascinating aspect about Bluey is its central premise: neither the viewing parents nor their engaged children are treated like passive imbeciles. Both groups can partake in the themes of the series without feeling infantilised. “It trusts,” wrote David Sim in The Atlantic in August last year, “that its young audience will be able to understand stories that are about the foibles and insecurities of parents too.” The web traffic site, Similarweb.com, yields an interesting statistic: the largest demographic of visitors to the official Bluey website (Bluey.tv) are those between 25-34, coming in at 28.86%.

Fantasy and imagination mingle with testing, even potentially contentious issues. There are questions about premature birth (“Early Baby”); the appearance of friends who proceed to vanish (“Camping”); even questions about the fine line between full blooded banter and unacceptable teasing. In a Father’s Day episode, Bluey’s dad, Bandit, openly wonders about the merits of getting a vasectomy.

Given such a format, it was bound to interest academics keen to tell us the obvious after generating the usual quantitative quarry of data. In a survey of 700 adults – part of a research project called Australian Children’s Television Cultures – we are told that Bluey was most keenly enjoyed by parents wishing to view a series with their children. Those behind the research project were keen to note the words of one of the respondents in describing the series. Bluey was “representative of an idealised Australian ethos – relaxed, curious, and hard-working.”

The influence of Bluey has also been noted in another respect. In 2022, a father in Massachusetts revealed that his child had begun using the term “dunny” instead of “toilet”. This brought much pleasure to ABC Sydney radio presenter, Richard Glover. “Finally,” he chortled in The Washington Post, “we have our revenge.”

According to Glover, US popular culture had ensured that Australians of his generation had “enrolled in a PhD program” on the subject. “We paid the price for our enthusiasm, regularly scolded by our parents for ‘using those terrible American words.’ These included ‘sidewalk’ instead of ‘footpath’ and ‘trash’ instead of ‘rubbish’.” Now, it was time for those in the US, notably children, to learn that breakfast could be called “brekkie”, a chicken a “chook”, and “tradie” a skilled tradesperson.

Little wonder that we can find a Master of Arts thesis dedicated to the adult fandom phenomenon around Bluey, including its appeal to those millennials who show “higher rates of anxiety, a greater distrust in the American government, and disbelief in American excellence than those of previous generations.” Anthropomorphised cattle dogs had become saviours of a sort.

Something else is at play here. If Bluey is naturalistic, touching on the raw end of life in parenting and children’s lives, it functions in a digital world that is less adult, increasingly infantile and increasingly disabling. Children and adults are becoming increasingly estranged from relations through technological parting and an addiction to the screen. Funny that it should fall to a family of animated Australian cattle dogs to tie parents and children in a gentle knot of play and accommodation.

The man has a cheek. Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks of the Palestinians), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keeping busy on further depriving access and assistance to those in Gaza and the West Bank. This comes in draft legislation that would prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from pursuing its valuable functions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli state has been relentless and pathological. Even before last year’s October 7 attacks by Hamas, much was made of the fact that the body seemed intent on keeping the horrors of the 1948 displacements current. Victimhood, complained the amnesiac enforcers of the Israeli state, was being encouraged by treating the descendants of displaced Palestinians as refugees. Nasty memories were being kept alive.

Since then, Israel has been further libelling and blackening the organisation as a terrorist frontbest abolished. (Labels are effortlessly swapped – “Hamas supporter”; “activist”; “terrorist”.) Initially came that infamous dossier pointing the finger at 12 individuals said to be Hamas participants in the October 7 attacks. With swiftness, the UN commenced internal investigations. Some individuals were sacked on suspicion of being linked to the attacks. Unfortunately, some US$450 million worth of donor funding from sixteen countries was suspended.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was always at pains to explain that he had “never been informed” nor received evidence substantiating Israel’s accusations. It was also all the more curious given that staff lists for the agency were provided to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in advance. At no point had he ever “received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

In April, Lazzarini told the UN Security Council that “an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is under way, with serious implications for peace and security.” Repeatedly, requests by the agency to deliver aid to northern Gaza had been refused, staff barred from coordinating meetings between humanitarian actors and Israel, and UNRWA premises and staff targeted.

Israel’s campaign to dissuade donor states from restoring funding proved a mixed one. Even the United Kingdom, long sympathetic to Israel’s accusations, announced in July that funding would be restored. In the view of UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, UNRWA had taken steps to ensure that it was meeting “the highest standards of neutrality.”

In August, the findings of a review of the allegations by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, instigated at the request of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres,were released. It confirmed UNRWA’s role as “irreplaceable and indispensable” in the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, a “pivotal” body that provided “life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”

In identifying eight areas for immediate improvement on the subject of neutrality (for instance, engaging donors, neutrality of staff, installations, education and staff unions), it was noted that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” that the agency’s employees had been “members of terrorist organizations.”

On October 24, UNRWA confirmed that one of its staffers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza,Muhammad Abu Attawi, had been in the agency’s employ since July 2022 while serving as a Nukhba commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion. Attawi is alleged to have participated in the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im in October last year. His name had featured in a July letter from Israel to the agency listing 100 names allegedly connected with terrorist groups. But no action was taken against Attawi as the Israelis failed to supply UNRWA with evidence. Lazzarini’s letter urging, in the words of Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications, “to cooperate … by providing more information so he could take action” did not receive “any response”.

Having been foiled on various fronts in its quest to terminate UNRWA’s viable existence, Israeli lawmakers are now taking the legislative route to entrench the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Two bills are in train in the Knesset. The first, sponsored by such figures as Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, would bar state authorities from having contact with UNRWA. The second, sponsored by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would critically prevent the agency from operating in Israeli territory through revoking a 1967 exchange of notes justifying such activities.

Even proclaimed moderates – the term is relative – such as former defence minister Benny Gantz support the measures, accusing the UN body of making “itself an inseparable component of Hamas’s mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it.” It did not improve the lot of refugees, but merely perpetuated “their victimisation.” Evidently for Gantz, Israel had no central role in creating Palestinian victims in the first place.

By barring cooperation between any Israeli authorities and UNRWA, work in Gaza and the West Bank would become effectively impossible, largely because Jerusalem would no longer issue entrance permits to the territories or permit any coordination with the Israeli DefenseForces.

UN Secretary-General Guterres was aghast at the two bills. “It would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.” Ambassadors from 123 UN member states have echoed the same views, while the Biden administration has, impotently, warned that the proposed “restrictions would devastate the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment” while also denying educational and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In their October 23 statement, the Nordic countries also expressed concern that UNRWA’s mandate “to carry out […] direct relief and works programmes” for millions of Palestinian refugees as determined by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) would be jettisoned. “In the midst of an ongoing catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, a halt to any of the organisation’s activities would have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of civilians served by UNRWA.”

The statement goes on to make a warning. To impair the refugee agency would create a vacuum that “may well destabilise the situation in [Gaza, and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem], in Israel and in the region as a whole, and may fundamentally jeopardize the prospects of a two-state solution.”

These are concerns that hardly matter before the rationale of murderous collective punishment, one used against a people seen more as mute serfs and submissive animals than sovereign beings entitled to rights and protections. Israel’s efforts to malign and cripple UNRWA remains a vital part of that agenda. In that organisation exists a repository of deep and troubling memories the forces of oppression long to erase.

Never let it be said that the European Union, whose officials self-advertise as staunch defenders of international law, that some bending can take place. Take, for instance, the recent revelations in The Intercept about legal advice sent to the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on July 22 on how to respond to the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on Israel’s illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories. The salient question: What would constitute the rendering of aid or assistance to Israel in maintaining those settlements?

EU policy towards Israel and its settlements has been one of schizophrenic “differentiation”, notably on the subject of trade. A 2015 policy brief from the European Council on Foreign Relations describes it as “a de facto policy of differentiating between Israel and settlement activities in the Occupied Territories within its bilateral relations.” This enables the EU to pursue a non-recognition platform regarding Israeli settlement activity while still formally engaging Israel proper. Like any policy that is neither here nor there, it had not “been sufficiently acknowledged or implemented in a consistent way” on the basis that it might impair the already stuttering and stalled Middle East peace process.

Whatever its merits – hypocritical, convenient, pragmatic, or a mixture of all three – the policy did give the EU some latitude to conduct standard trade and diplomatic relations with Israel while still adopting a different stance on its activities in the West Bank and Gaza. In terms of trade, the issue of accurate labelling on goods from the Occupied Territories became an ongoing source of discussion. While the European Commission issued relevant notices on how Union legislation applied, it was a matter for Member States as to how far they would go to enforce them.

A 2015 interpretative notice from the Commission, for instance, makes the following remark: “Since the Golan Heights, and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), are not part of the Israeli territory according to international law, the indication ‘product from Israel’ is considered to be incorrect and misleading in the sense of the referenced legislation.”

For the next few years, however, enforcement in terms of accurate labelling proved lax. A February 2020 study by the European Middle East Project proved illuminating in this regard. In a survey of 189 stores across the union in November 2019, the researchers focused onwines produced in Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights and the West Bank. “Only 10% of the settlement wines on sale in the EU have a correct or partially correct origin indication online in accordance with EU rules, i.e. ‘Product of West Bank/Golan Heights (Israeli Settlement)’.”

On November 12, 2019, the Court of Justice of the EU found in the Psagot case that the provisions of EU consumer law should be read broadly to require not only labelling indicating both the place or country of provenance but also the indication of that provenance (for instance, that the product came from an “Israeli settlement”).

In July, the International Court of Justice jolted the trading frameworks of many countries by handing down an advisory opinion on the status of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories after its views were sought by the UN General Assembly. It lacked all startling force and was almost banal in stating the obvious: that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with “the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.” The regime had been chokingly administrative, restrictive, altering in demographic composition, and discriminatory in targeting the Palestinians and favouring Israeli settlers.

It was therefore imperative, the Court advised, that international bodies – the UN Security Council and the General Assembly – along with members of the international community, not recognise the status of Israel’s occupation of the territories, nor supply aid or support in maintaining it. Israel was also “under an obligation to end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.” All further settlement activities were to cease, and all current settlers in the OPT areas evacuated.

Most significantly of all – at least for trade watchers – was the Court’s evident sinking of any tip-toeing policy on differentiation regarding trade connected with the Occupied Territories. Any sale of products from the OPT areas in, for instance, the EU, would surely constitute some form of aid and support for their continued illegal existence.

The official response from the United States was standard fare: alarm that an international institution was doing its work. The US State Department expressed consternation that the opinion had gone beyond what it needed to do. “We are concerned that the breadth of the court’s opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict and bring about an urgently needed just and lasting peace with two states living side by side in peace and security.”

The EU preferred a less candid, and inherently more flexible approach. And why would it otherwise? Between 2020 and August 2023, an estimated US$164 billion in loans and guarantees from European investors were advanced to businesses linked to Israeli settlements, with approximately $144.7 billion worth of shares and bonds being held in those same companies.

With such matters in mind, the director of the EU Foreign Service’s legal department, Frank Hoffmeister, penned a seven-age memorandum on July 22 for Borrell’s eyes. The memorandum suggests that the ICJ opinion lacks clarity on duties not to enter economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the OPT “which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory” and taking steps to prevent trade or investments relations that aid in maintaining “the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Having confected a false conundrum in terms of interpretation, Hoffmeister goes on to call the EU labelling of foodstuffs from the settlements “a matter of political appreciation of whether further measures are needed in this respect.” The Union’s “policy vis-à-vis the import of goods from the settlements” might need to be revisited, but only as a matter of political consideration.

He also broods about such “legal consequences” arising from the opinion, including further litigation in national courts over “arms sales or other form of assistance to Israel” based on the nexus with the OPTs and the exacerbation of “the already existing boycotts and citizens petitions for a total ban on trade with products originating in the settlements.”

Legal analysts have been unimpressed by Hoffmeister’s analysis, seeing it as a confusion of aims. Susan Akram of the Boston University School of Law’s International Human Rights clinic put it simply: “Current [EU] policy is non-compliant with the ICJ opinion, and that is not a matter, as the EU opinion states, ‘of further political appreciation whether to revisit EU policy’.” The ICJ’s opinion was hard to mistake or misinterpret: all aid and assistance of any kind by the international community had to cease. For Akram, this meant a revision of EU policy “to end any and all trade, funding or other assistance that in any way supports the Israeli occupation.”

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, also takes strong issue with such “bending of rules for political convenience” thereby creating a precedent by treating obligations under ICJ advisory opinions “as optional, especially amid ongoing atrocities.” The approach was “legally flawed, politically damaging, and morally compromised.” Not an inaccurate assessment, and most applicable to the bloc’s approach to other areas of international law, most strikingly that of refugees. On such matters, a visible political latitude arises in defiance of legal obligations. Just don’t publicly mention it.

It was never a good look. Advertised as the world’s largest, complex and most colourful of democracies, India’s approach to certain dissidents, notably of a Sikh patriotic sensibility, has not quite matched its lofty standing. The strength of a liberal democratic state can be measured by the extent it tolerates dissent and permits the rabble rousers to roam.

When it comes to the Sikhs outside India, located in such far-flung places as Canada and Australia, the patience of the Indian national security state was worn thin. Concerned that the virus of Khalistan – the dream of an independent Sikh homeland – might be gathering strength in the ideological laboratories of the diaspora, surveillance, threats and assassinations have become a feature of India’s intelligence services, benignly named the research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

The case of Canada is particularly striking, given the audacious killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 last year by two-masked men just as he was about to leave the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. In September, Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, told the House of Commons that Canada’s security services were investigating links between New Delhi and the murder. Canadian officials, including the director of the CSIS, had travelled to New Delhi to put their case. Pavan Kumari Rai, the Canadian chief of RAW, had been expelled and four Indian nationals charged in connection with the killing.

When it took place, the Modi government wondered why the Canadians were getting themselves into a tizz over the demise of a man deemed by Indian authorities to be a terrorist. Trudeau was having none of the balletic sidestepping Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become so used to from foreign leaders.

Over the course of this year, matters have only worsened. Since October 14, the pot has been boiling over. Evidence had been presented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) making a compelling case that agents of the Indian government had engaged in, and continued to engage in, activities described as a significant threat to public safety.

In a statement released on that day, Trudeau spoke of his country being one “rooted in the rule of law”. Protection of its citizens was a “paramount” consideration. “That is why, when our law enforcement and intelligence services began pursuing credible allegations that agents of the Government of India were directly involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen […] we responded.” Trudeau went on to explain that the evidence uncovered by the RCMP included “clandestine information gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder.”

The response from New Delhi was one of unbridled indignation. In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal claimed that Canada had “presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats.”

Trudeau, in turn, had hoped that the matter could have been handled “in a responsible way” that left the bilateral relationship between the two countries unblemished. Indian officials, however, had snubbed Canadian efforts to assist in the investigation. “It was clear that the Indian government’s approach was to criticise us and the integrity of our democracy.” A series of tit for tat expulsions of top envoys from both countries has figured.

New Delhi’s global program against the Sikh separatist cause has also made its presence felt in the United States. Last November, the US Department of Justice alleged that an Indian official, identified as CC-1, oversaw a plot to assassinate a Sikh US national, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York earlier in the year. The DOJ, in an unsealed superseding indictment, alleged murder-for-hire charges against Nikhil Gupta, who had been recruited by CC-1. (Gupta was subsequently arrested by the Czech authorities and deported back to the US.)

Gupta’s curriculum vitae, featuring narcotics and weapons trafficking, was that of a standard gopher in such an operation, while his target was described as “a vocal critic of the Indian government and leads a US-based organization that advocates for the secession of Punjab”. The plot was foiled largely through the intervention of an undercover official from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), who had been contacted by Gupta for assistance in contracting a gun for hire. The going price for murder: $100,000.

On October 17, FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that CC-1, one Vikash Yadav, had “allegedly conspired with a criminal associate and attempted to assassinate a US citizen on American soil for exercising their First Amendment rights.” The second unsealed superseding indictment notes Yadav’s prominent role: an employee of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Indian government, “which houses India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (‘RAW’).” Charges include murder-for-hire conspiracy, murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Pannun has certainly been vocal about the Modi government. When interviewed about his response to India’s banning of a CBC Fifth Estate documentary dealing with Nijjar’s killing, he offered a grim assessment: “India, no matter what it claims, is an authoritarian regime run by a fascist [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s BJP.” India had operated as “an authoritarian state under the garb of democracy since 1947” and “usurped the religious identity of Sikhs in the Constitution and committed genocidal violence against Sikhs to suppress the movement for restoration of their religious identity and growing political dissent in the 1980s and 90s.”

The broader problem here remains how states – notably those with Sikh populations – have approached Modi’s transnational efforts to snuff out the Khalistan movement. The mood in New Delhi is also one of discrimination. While India has remained stroppy with Canada, the same cannot be said about its response to the United States. Instead of dismissing allegations made by the DOJ with cold stiffness, the Ministry of External Affairs announced an inquiry indicating “that India takes such inputs seriously since they impinge our national security interests as well, and relevant departments were already examining the issue.” The United States, declared the India’s First Post, had “pursued the case through proper channels” while Canada had “indulged in mudslinging throughout.”

New Delhi also sees little reason to be concerned about the response of another ally, Australia, in terms of how the Sikh community is treated. The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shown himself to be disgracefully timid before calls by Modi that he restrain the Khalistan movement in Australia. This, despite the quiet expulsion of Indian foreign agents in 2020 – up to four of them – for engaging in activities described by the domestic intelligence chief, Mike Burgess, as including the monitoring of India’s “diaspora community”. “I don’t propose to get into those stories,” stated the Treasurer Jim Chalmers. “We have a good relationship with India… It’s an important economic relationship.”

It’s precisely that sort of attitude that has certain parliamentarians worried. Greens Senator David Shoebridge sums up the mood. “Not only would’ve [it] been good to have an honest baseline for our relationship with India, but it would’ve also sent a message to the diaspora communities here that we’ve got your back.”

Not when matters of economy and trade are at stake. Modi may not have the saintly attributes of being able to walk on water, but he continues to prove adept in escaping condemnation for his sectarian vision of India that has, through activities of the RAW, been globalised in murderous fashion.

The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring security, will merely serve to make it more vulnerable and unstable than ever. In that mix and mess will be its greatest sponsor and guardian, the United States, a giant of almost blind antiquity in all matters concerning the Jewish state.

In a measure that should have garnered bold headlines, the Biden administration has announced the deployment of some 100 US soldiers to Israel who will be responsible for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. They are being sent to a conflict that resembles a train travelling at high speed, with no risk of stopping. As Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised in the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile assault on his country, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising.” It would be of such a nature that “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”

In an October 16 meeting between the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Gallant, the deployment of a mobile THAAD battery was seen “as an operational example of the United States’ ironclad support to the defense of Israel.” Largely meaningless bits of advice were offered to Gallant: that Israel “continue taking steps to address the dire humanitarian situation” and take “all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security” of UN peacekeepers operating in Lebanon’s south.

The charade continued the next day in a conversation between Austin and Gallant discussing the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. THAAD was again mentioned as essential for Israel’s “right to defence itself” while representing the “United States’ unwavering, enduring, and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” (“Ironclad” would seem to be the word of the moment, neatly accompanying Israel’s own Iron Dome defence system.)

A statement from the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, was a fatuous effort in minimising the dangers of the deployment. The battery would merely “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system,” affirm the ongoing commitment to Israel’s defence and “defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks from Iran.”

The very public presence of US troops, working alongside their Israeli counterparts in anticipation of broadening conflict, does not merely suggest Washington’s failure to contain their ally. It entails a promise of ceaseless supply, bolstering and emboldening. Furthermore, it will involve placing US troops in harm’s way, a quixotic invitation if ever there was one.

As things stand, the US is already imperilling its troops by deploying them in a series of bases in Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Iran’s armed affiliates have been making their presence felt, harrying the stationed troops with increasing regularity since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7 last year. A gradual, attritive toll is registering, featuring such attacks as those on the Tower 22 base in northern Jordan in January that left three US soldiers dead.

Writing in August for The Guardian, former US army major Harrison Mann eventually realised an awful truth about the mounting assaults on these sandy outposts of the US imperium: “there was no real plan to protect US troops beyond leaving them in their small, isolated bases while local militants, emboldened and agitated by US support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, used them for target practice.” To send more aircraft and warships to the Middle East also served to encourage “reckless escalation towards a wider war,” providing insurance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he could be protected “from the consequences of his actions.”

Daniel Davis, a military expert at Defense Priorities, is firmly logical on the point of enlisting US personnel in the Israeli cause. “Naturally, if Americans are killed in the execution of their duties, there will be howls from the pro-war hawks in the West ‘demanding’ the president ‘protect our troops’ by firing back on Iran.” It was “exactly the sort of thing that gets nations sucked into war they have no interest in fighting.”

Polling, insofar as that measure counts, suggests that enthusiasm for enrolling US troops in Israel’s defence is far from warm. In results from a survey published by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in August, some four in ten polled would favour sending US troops to defend Israel if it was attacked by Iran. Of the sample, 53% of Republicans would favour defending Israel in that context, along with four in 10 independents (42%), and a third of Democrats (34%).

There have also been some mutterings from the Pentagon itself about Israel’s burgeoning military effort, in particular against the Lebanese Iran-backed militia, Hezbollah. In a report from The New York Times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., is said to be worried about the widening US presence in the region, a fact that would hamper overall “readiness” of the US in other conflicts. Being worried is just the start of it.

The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or at least as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess in war. Such prowess promises much: redrawing boundaries; overthrowing governments; destroying the capabilities of adversaries and enemies. Nothing, in this equation, contemplates peace, let alone diplomatic resolution. It’s playground pugilism that rarely gets out of the sandpit.

In Washington, a fever has struck regarding Israel’s advances. The outbreak has stirred much enthusiasm in a doctrine that has been shown, time and again, to be wretchedly uncertain and grossly dangerous. With no concrete evidence of imminent harm to US interests, it featured in the highest policy planning circles that oiled an invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the stated objective was the disarming of Saddam Hussein’s regime for having Weapons of Mass Destruction it turned out not to have, the logic was one of pre-emptive strike: we attack the madman in Baghdad before he goes nuclear and loses it.

The establishment wonk on empire and espionage at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, offers a fairly meaningless assessment in terms of claimed Israeli dominance over Iran and its proxies. After a year of conflict, Israel had “gained what military strategists call ‘escalation dominance’.” The implication: a decisive attack on Iran is imminent.

The point here (at this juncture, the mind lost seeks sanctuary in a mental asylum of lunatic reassurances), is that attacking Iran in toto will not result in much by way of retaliatory detriment. Some bruising, surely, but hardly lingering flesh wounds. Israel has, it would seem, been working some magic, spreading its own view that Iran has a gruesome plan in its military vault: eliminating Israel by 2040.

In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing. The reason for such an attack lies in a presumption. Yet again, the doctrine of pre-emption, one hostile to international law and the UN Charter, plays out its feeble rationale. Evidence, in such cases, is almost always scanty. Kroenig, however, is certain. Iran will secure one bomb’s worth of weapon-grade material within a matter of weeks. The rest is obvious. No evidence is offered, nor does it even matter, given Kroenig’s longstanding zeal in wishing to rid Iran of its nuclear facilities.

The Atlantic Council has also suggested a policy that what is good for the goose of Christian-Jewish freedom is not good for the gander of Persian Shia ambition. It is exactly this full-fledged hypocrisy that the despots of the secular tyranny in North Korea realised in dealing with Washington. Beware the nostrums against nuclear armament.

In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”

Instead of resisting belligerent chatter, the authors suggest that the US threaten Iran through announcing “yearly joint exercises with Israel, such as Juniper Oak and seek additional funding in the next budget cycle to speed research and development of next-generation military hardware capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear program.”

Kroenig shows his usual stuffing. Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so. (The Sunni powers, for their own reasons, agree.) This form of perennial idiocy could apply to all the powers that have nuclear weapons, including Israel itself. At one point, no state should have had that relic of sadism’s folly. Then they came in succession after the United States: the Soviet bomb, the Britannic bomb, the Gallic bomb. Throw in China, India, Pakistan, Israel. Plucky, deranged North Korea, was wise to note the trend, showing lunacy to be eternally divisible.

It is precisely that sort of logic that has drawn such comments as this from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a May interview: “Iran’s level of deterrence will be different if the existence of Iran is threatened. We have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb, but we will have to change our nuclear doctrine if such threats occur.” This month, almost 40 legislators penned a letter to the Supreme National Security Council calling for a reconsideration of current nuclear doctrine. The greater the fanatic’s desire to remove a perceived threat, the more likely an opponent will give basis to that threat.

For all the faux restraint being officially aired in Washington regarding Israel’s next round of military assaults, there is enormous sympathy, even affection, for the view that wrongs shall be righted, and the mullahs punished. Bedding for a more hostile response to Iran also features in the inane airings of the presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview with 60 minutes, remarked that, “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” In making that claim, she suggested that Tehran was somehow Washington’s greatest adversary.

In response to this fatuous remark, Justin Logan of the Cato Institute offers an ice-cold bath of reason: “This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940.” The path to dominating the Middle East hardly involves such tools as propaganda, proxy operations and psychological warfare “much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.”

The nuclear option is now available to governments that should never have had them. But acquiring the dangerously untenable followed. To assume that brutal, amputation loving theocrats in Tehran should not have them defies the trajectory of a certain moronic consistency. The Persian bomb is probably imminent, and it is incumbent on the murderous fantasists in Israel and the United States to chew over that fact. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the fetish against acquisition risks expanding a conventional conflict through testing the will and means of a power that, while wounded, hardly counts as defeated.

The United Nations is an easy body to hate. At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone. It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred briefly stemmed. Over the ruins of the Second World War, the builders were favoured over the destroyers and mischief makers – at least for a time.

On its establishment, the UN became a hostage to the political intrigues and power blocs that have continued to plague it for its duration. Of particular concern was the body’s pursuit of international law protocols – formulation, drafting and implementation. A central feature of this: resolutions passed by various bodies, the most significant being by the UN Security Council. Such measures are followed by nation states when convenient, ignored when not.

One such nation state in the mischief making class is Israel. Its relationship with the UN has often been tetchy. The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, admits that the body “played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Jewish State by passing UN Resolution 181 in 1947.” The resolution, with its hefty consequences, called for “the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.” The same organisation, however, goes on to note with satisfaction the remarks in April 2007 by then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: “Unfortunately, because of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, Israel’s been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias – and sometimes even discrimination.”

For various periods of its history, Israel has felt hard done by in the international forum. The folder of resolutions against it has burgeoned. Notable ones include UNSC Resolution 242 (1967) which asserts, in accordance with the UN Charter principles, that a “just and lasting peace in the Middle East” includes the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from territories occupied during the Six Day War and the termination of territorial claims and affirmation of sovereignty of all States in the area. UNSC Resolution 338 (1973), passed in response to the Yom Kippur War between Israel, Egypt and Syria, called on the parties to cease hostilities within 12 hours and implement Resolution 242 “in all its parts.”

UN Resolution 2334, passed in December 2016, particularly hurt, striking at the expansionist, displacing drive of the Jewish state through settlements in occupied territory that amount to de facto colonisation. It particularly condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.” This included, among other matters, the expansion of the settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land and the displacement of Palestinian civilians.

Instead of seeing such a measure as a clear assessment of predation in breach of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it an unnecessary reward to the Palestinians “to continue down a dangerous path they have chosen” in avoiding direct negotiations with Israel. That Israel cared not a jot on that score hardly mattered.

A number of recent incidents reveals the poor regard the United Nations is held in, notably within Israel’s warring circles. Its agency aiding Palestinians, UNRWA, is threatened by two bills before the Israeli parliament that will significantly hamper its operations by evicting the body from its premise in territories within Israel’s control. The proposed laws will also abolish any associated privileges and immunities. Having failed to convince all major donors to the organisation that it should be defunded for being packed with Hamas apologists and operatives (the evidence has always been paltry on that score), the Israeli government is using a legal sledgehammer fashioned by the Knesset.

The passage of the bills, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.” The provision of shelter, food and healthcare “would grind to a halt” without the agency. Some 600,000 children “would lose the only entity that is able to re-start education, risking the fate of an entire generation.”

With Israel’s broadening campaign against Hezbollah to the north, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is facing continuous harassment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Established in 1978 by the Security Council to confirm the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon and aid Lebanese authorities restore peace and security in the area, UNIFIL has been a source of endless irritation to the IDF’s operations.

In an October 13 statement, UNIFIL revealed that two IDF Merkava tanks at 4.30 that morning had gone about the business of destroying the main gate of their post in Ramyah, near the Israeli border. The tanks forcibly entered, after which Israeli personnel demanded that the base turn out its lights. “The tanks left about 45 minutes later after UNIFIL protested through our liaison mechanism, saying that IDF presence was putting peacekeepers in danger.”

At 6.40 am, peacekeepers at the same post reported the firing of several smoke emitting rounds 100 metres to the north. “Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp.”

On October 14, persisting in its approach of impeding and harrying the peacekeeping force, the IDF halted “a critical UNIFIL logistical movement near Meiss ej Jebel, denying it passage. The critical movement could not be completed.”

The statement goes on to remind the IDF about its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers and property. Breaching a UN position violated UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), while any deliberate attack on peacekeepers was aserious violation of international humanitarian law, in addition to breaching resolution 1701.

In an almost disdainful manner, the IDF suggested in a statement that the peacekeepers had entirely misunderstood the brutal encroachment. The actions had been motivated by goodwill to evacuate soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile. “For the sake of evacuating the wounded, two tanks drove backwards, in a place where they could not advance otherwise in light of the threat of shooting, a few metres towards the UNIFIL position.” The smokescreen had been created to aid the evacuation, while the entire operation was conducted throughout with continuous contact with the UN peacekeepers. After a time, the dressing of lies becomes tatty and banal.

Typically, it fell to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to shed some light on the mendacious fog. UNIFIL, he suggested, had to immediately withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. “It is time for you,” stated the PM in a pointed message to Guterres, “to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.” Yet again, international law which, in this case, provides legitimacy to the UN peacekeeping operations in the area, could be treated as a tissue easily torn.

Free markets? Free trade? The modern economic world has little time for these erroneous, misdirected terms. More evident are the feelings of resentment, prejudice and indignant parochialism more accurately called My Country First, and Everyone Else Last. Back your industries; hobble the competitors. And everyone is doing it, except certain ideologues who, childishly, cling to the view that there ever was such a thing as a true laissez-faire world.

Free trade remains, in general, a fantasy, dangerous for the naïve who feel that by embracing it, they are somehow enlarging their appeal and standing. Often, countries extolling its value are only those desiring exclusive or privileged access to a market. From 2016 onwards, the free traders have been pummeled. With Donald Trump in the White House, America First meant imposing, among other things, tariffs of 25% on US$50 billion on Chinese goods under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. More rises followed.

Under the Biden administration, Trump’s tariff legacy remained in place, though some suspensions were made. (These were subsequently reimposed.) This enabled President Joe Biden to sharpen the focus on specific categories: electric vehicles (EVs), semiconductors, lithium ion batteries. Tariffs on Chinese semiconductors spiked to 50%, while Chinese EVs received a bruising 100% increase.

In April last year, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered an address to the Brookings Institution tearing the free-market consensus to shreds with what he called the “new Washington consensus”. China was the convenient excuse for doing so, a country that had subsidised “at a massive scale both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, as well as key industries in the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies.” US competitiveness had, as a result, been eroded.

The response from foreign affairs pulpit huggers such as Walter Russell Mead was excoriating. Sullivan’s position represented a wish to “return to the system of relatively closed and highly regulated national economies that characterised the immediate post-Second World War era.”

Even those on the consultancy front are proclaiming the end of free trade. The Boston Consulting Group, for instance, declared in May that global free trade, an era “spanning the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has ended, and a new geopolitical landscape has emerged: a multipolar world characterized by distinct economic and political blocs.”

Little wonder, then, that the stomp on a forced, generally fictional notion has also appealed to European Union officials who have now made their entry into the thorny undergrowth ofTariff Land. On October 4, the European Union voted to place tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles after a yearlong investigation into the role played by Chinese subsidies and export dumping practices. The vote was split: ten EU states agreed to the measure, while five voted against it, with twelve abstentions.

The European Commission had already imposed provisional duties in July. The move prompted China to file a request with the World Trade Organisation in August requesting consultations with the EU over alleged protectionist measures arising out of the provisional countervailing duties on EVs.

This has left the European Union in an interesting situation. For one, they are not exactly unflinching on the exercise. The Commission has more than hinted that a negotiated settlement is tenable. Were Chinese EV companies to propose an acceptable minimal minimum price for their vehicles, the tariffs would be lifted.

The reasoning on that score is clear enough: the EU has, ideologically and foolishly, imperilled itself to a free trade agenda that has enabled Beijing to make considerable inroads into the European market regarding EV technology. While the United States huffs and struts in imposing 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, such a policy can be pursued with assurance. The US market was only ever going to suffer negligible losses, there being negligible Chinese EV imports to begin with. For the European Union, up to 25% of all EVs sold this year will have a Chinese origin.

It is little wonder that there is no true European consensus on how to euthanize the free trade patient. Germany, as one of the countries voting against the imposition of tariffs (a third of new German cars are sold annually in China), failed to exert sufficient influence on the final vote, hardly surprising given disagreements within its own political ranks. “Germany and European industry can no longer convince the Commission to be reasonable,” lamented Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. “But then again, who can?”

How different it was from 2013, when the country, under the stewardship of Angela Merkel, convinced then European Commission president José Manuel Barroso that China should be exempt from tariffs in favour of a minimum price threshold.

If nothing else, the values of Tariff Land are revealing. The decarbonising program seen as essential to stay a rise in global temperatures has balkanised. Disputing trade officials, not technological innovators or scientists, dominate the discussions. The US government is even chewing over banning the use of Chinese technology in autonomous and connected cars, showing how far this will go.

Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, expresses the sentiment. “The EU – as well as other US allies, especially Australia – do not appear to be grappling with the real and uncomfortable tensions between decarbonization objectives on the one hand, and the security risks Chinese-linked connected vehicles pose on the other.” Yet again, the free trade globalists have been shown up, leaving way for the chest beating patriots to take centre stage over the corpse of an idea.

It was a spectacular example of a non-event, alloyed by pure symbolism and cynicism. Here was a British government offering – how generous of them – to return sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, whose residents had been brutally displaced between 1965 to 1973, to Mauritius.

In an October 3 joint statement between London and Port Louis, all but one of the Chagos Islands will be relinquished to Mauritian control. “Following two years of negotiation, this is a seminal moment in our relationship and a demonstration of our enduring commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rule of law.” Negotiations had “been conducted in a constructive and respectful manner, as equal sovereign states, on the basis of international law,” a point made so explicitly it had to be questioned.

Attention would have immediately shifted to the status of the largest island, Diego Garcia, where the US strategic military base crudely nicknamed the “Footprint for Freedom” is located. “Under the terms of this treaty the United Kingdom will agree that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia.” Then comes the big, fat qualifier: both countries had agreed to ensure that the base, which played “a vital role in regional and global security” (read US global military dominance) would continue to operate unimpeded. “For an initial period of 99 years, the United Kingdom will be authorised to exercise with respect to Diego Garcia the sovereign rights and authorities of Mauritius required to ensure the continued operation of the base well into the next century.” To buy favour with Mauritius, Britain promises “a package of financial support.”

In 1965, the UK effectively bought off Mauritius regarding its hold over the Chagos Islands for the less than princely sum of £3 million. Displacement of the 3,000 islanders to Mauritius and the Seychelles followed the bribery, a splendid example of British observance of peaceful resolution and the rule of law. In 1966, the UK Permanent Under-Secretary remarked in a note of abundant nastiness that, “The object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a Committee (the Status of Women does not cover the rights of Birds).”

A hand scribbled comment on the same note also observed that, “along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays” who had to be moved on. The eviction of the locals became the prelude to the construction of the US military facility.

In its efforts to spoil and foil any claims for resettlement by the Chagossians, the British government could be inventive. As humble servitors to the US occupants on Diego Garcia, the UK Foreign Office proposed turning the area around the archipelago into a Marine Protected Area (MPA). Counterfeit environmentalism could be used in power’s favour.

In 2015, the Permanent Court of Arbitration found that the declaration of such an MPA in April 2010 was incompatible with Britain’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The declaration failed to acknowledge, for instance, undertakings made in 1965 that Mauritius held binding rights to fish in the waters around the archipelago and the eventual return of the islands to Mauritius once it had ceased being militarily useful.

In 2019 the International Court of Justice found that “the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when that country acceded to independence in 1968, following the separation of the Chagos Archipelago.” Britain was “under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible.” The UK Foreign Office, again showing how respectful it can be of international law when cornered, diminished the standing of the ICJ decision. “This is an advisory opinion, not a judgment,” it concluded.

The UN General Assembly begged to differ, adopting a resolution that same year demanding the unconditional withdrawal of Britain’s colonial administration from the islands within six months. The resolution recorded favourable 116 votes, with 56 abstentions. Only six statesopposed the measure, including such noisy paragons of the “rules-based order” as Australia, Israel and the United States.

The treaty, according to the joint statement, “will address the wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to the welfare of Chagossians.” It does nothing of the sort, limiting any resettlement program to the wishes of Mauritius while exempting Diego Garcia altogether from such arrangements. In doing so, the agreement, states UK Foreign Minister British Lammy, will “strengthen our role in safeguarding global security” while also preventing “any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK.”

US President Joe Biden, however, has the most reason to delight in the outcome. Washington retains its warmaking facility in the Indian Ocean on the pretext of demonstrating a “shared commitment to regional stability” while supposedly reaching “peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes.”

Coy, congratulatory assessments can even be found among the cognoscenti. Peter Harris, for instance, makes an unpardonably inaccurate assessment in The Conversation: “The deal announced is a good one – a rare ‘win-win-win-win’ moment in international relations, with all the relevant actors able to claim a meaningful victory: Britain, Mauritius, the US, and the Chagossians.”

The last group can claim, accurately, to have again been treated as ongoing victims of callous colonial rule, despite the hopeful optimism of such individuals as Isabelle Charlot, chair of the Chagos Islander Movement. The advocacy group, Chagossian Voices, deplored “the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland.”

Raymonde Desiree, who was 25 when evicted from the islands made her intentions clear. “Going back to the Chagos Islands under Mauritian rule, that’s not going to happen.” Now a resident in the West Sussex town of Crawley, which hosts a large Chagossian diaspora, she makes the emphatic point: “We were not consulted… They should have given us the right of self-determination.” That, it would seem, was never going to happen.