Recent statements by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Centre Party leader Benny Gantz and opposition leader Yair Lapid, underscore a significant Israeli consensus against the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Despite differences in rhetoric, the consensus among Israeli leaders effectively defines the official Israeli position against the formation of an independent Palestinian entity.
This consensus is at odds with the proposals of the United States and other Western leaders, who have stressed the importance of working towards the creation of a Palestinian state as a means of securing lasting peace in the region.
This position is in stark contrast to the international community’s long-standing support for a two-state solution as the way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s position complicates its relations with neighbouring Arab states and the wider international community, particularly with allies who support a two-state solution and who supported Israel in its war in Gaza.
While recent normalisation agreements indicate some willingness among Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia, to engage with Israel, the Palestinian issue remains a significant point of contention that could hinder further official progress.
President Joe Biden and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have emphasised the strategic imperative of pursuing a two-state solution, with Austin specifically noting that Israel’s tactical victories could lead to strategic losses, particularly in terms of normalisation efforts with Arab states.
In addition to straining relations with allies, Israel’s stance risks undermining broader strategic goals, including regional stability and normalisation with Arab states.
The Israeli government has unanimously adopted a draft resolution that firmly rejects the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, as articulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The resolution clearly states that a lasting solution with the Palestinians can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the two parties, without preconditions.
It underlines Israel’s continued opposition to unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, stating that ‘such recognition, especially in the aftermath of 7 October, would not only reward terrorism but would also significantly undermine any prospects for a future peace agreement
Palestinians’ superior right to self-defence is ignored, as usual
The UK’s leaders are tying themselves in knots in their desperate attempt to defend the indefensible.
In a debate on Israel and Palestine in Parliament last week, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs Leo Docherty got up and said:
There is no scenario in which Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. That is why we are not calling for a general ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to regroup and entrench their position. I am pleased to say that the government’s position is shared by the Opposition Front Bench. Instead, we are focused on urging respect for international law…
What a fatuous statement. If the UK government had any concern for international law Israel would not have been allowed to breach it continuous and with impunity for the last 75 years and the horrendous slaughter we’ve all been watching would never have happened.
As a foreign office minister, Docherty should be aware that Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, having won the last election fair and square. Israel, the US and UK might not like the result but that’s beside the point. What Docherty and his colleagues are contemplating is coercive regime change, which is hardly in line with international law or Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
Meanwhile, David Cameron, hurriedly parachuted in from outside Parliament as our new Foreign Secretary and breaching all democratic niceties, was telling everyone that there can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East if Hamas is still “armed to the teeth” and capable of attacking Israel. And he defended the UK’s decision to abstain on the UN vote for a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that the UN was calling for an immediate armistice plus a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and “those two things don’t go together… If you have an immediate ceasefire but Hamas [is] still armed to the teeth, launching rockets into Israel, wanting to repeat 7 October, you’ll never have a two-state solution.
“Long-term security I think requires there to be a state for Palestine as well,” he said, sounding wonderfully generous, adding that he did not agree with “disappointing” comments made by Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on Wednesday 13 December that Tel Aviv would not back a two-state solution.
Had he been paying attention Cameron would know that the apartheid regime, from its very inception in 1948, has refused to contemplate the existence of a Palestinian state. That would thwart Israel’s ambition to establish sovereignty over the entire territory “from the river to the sea”, which is the express aim of Hotovely’s (and Netanyahu’s) vile party, Likud.
Britain, on the other hand, promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continues to sidestep the issue while forever prattling on about a two-state solution.
Cameron is also saying that Israel “must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable”. But his lordship should be telling Israel to do much more than that. To comply with international law Israel must remove its settlers and its thuggish military from the West Bank altogether, remembering that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (and the Old City) and Gaza.
What needs eliminating is the threat posed by Israel
As I write, Cameron is changing tack slightly and now calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire because it has dawned on him that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel. A joint article in the Sunday Times by him and German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock comes amid growing pressure on Israel over its methods in the war on Gaza. It states: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward. It ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day.”
The usual misinformation. They ignore why the Palestinians are compelled to defend themselves, i.e. the brutal and murderous decades-long illegal occupation by Israel using military force.
“Hamas must lay down its arms,” say Cameron and Baerbock. And in a tepid warning to Israel, the two foreign ministers say: “Israel has the right to defend itself but, in doing so, it must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.”
But do they really? Where in international law does it say that an illegal occupier (such as Israel) can claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it illegally occupies?
Under UN Resolution 37/43, however, the Palestinians, as victims of illegal military occupation, have an unquestionable right to eliminate the threat posed by Israel in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
Resolution 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”.
The Palestinians’ right to armed struggle in self-defence is also confirmed in UN Resolution 3246, which calls for all States to recognise the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation and to offer them moral, material and other forms of assistance in their struggle to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
Resolution3246 reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle, and demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, and strict respect for article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
There’s no sign that Cameron and the rest of the UK government understand any of this.
And what right does the UK have to prevent Palestinians choosing their own government? None. The correct way to “eliminate the threat posed by Hamas” is to require Israel to end its occupation.
International law trampled to suit Israeli plans for domination
It is ludicrous to keep repeating that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has made that abundantly clear. Western governments and Western Christendom seem paralysed. The presumption must be that Biden and Cameron (both self-proclaimed Zionists, as were most of their predecessors) are overly sympathetic towards Israel and happy to trample international law to ensure the success of the apartheid regime’s criminal enterprise.
Many in the UK question why our parliamentarians are so concerned about the 1,200 Israeli dead following Hamas’s breakout attack and the 200-odd hostages when they couldn’t care less about the 10,651 Palestinians (including 656 women and 2,270 children) slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years before 7 October. Or the 7,200 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, including 88 women and 250 children. Over 1,200 are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial and denied due process.
An authority on international law, Dr Ralph Wilde, has produced a legal opinion on the Israeli occupation which might be helpful in putting an end to Cameron’s & co’s claptrap.
He points out that:
There’s no valid basis in international law for the occupation and it is an unlawful use of force, an aggression, and a violation on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. And aggression is a crime on an individual level for senior Israeli leaders. “As a result, the occupation is existentially illegal and must end immediately.” _
What’s more, an end to the occupation cannot be delayed by Israel’s failure to agree to the adoption of a peace agreement or by the unreadiness of the Palestinian people, by ‘facts on the ground’, or by waiting for the approval of the UN, the Quartet, the White House, the British Foreign Office or anybody else. Every day the occupation continues is a breach of international law. _
Palestinian people are treated in international law as a collective entity with rights, notably the right of self-determination and the right to freely choose whether or not to enter into international agreements. Palestine is what’s called a Self-determination Unit. The territory it covers is everything that is ‘not Israel’, legally, and includes Al-Quds/Jerusalem in its entirety, the rest of the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem, and Gaza. _
Israel’s recognition and UN membership did not include sovereignty over any part of Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Palestinians also enjoy the right of external self-determination (i.e. freedom from external domination) which has been universally accepted and affirmed by states and UN institutions including the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice. _
And Palestine is a state in the international law sense because (a) there’s a presumption in favour of statehood for people with a right of external self-determination; and (b) a large majority (138) of the world’s states collectively recognized Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’. This had the effect of establishing statehood. _
External self-determination is a right to be free of any external domination, including occupation or other forms of non-sovereign territorial control which prevent the full exercise of that right. Such domination must end so that this right can be exercised. _
The right operates and exists simply and exclusively by virtue of the Palestinian people being entitled to it. It is not something that depends on anyone else agreeing to it, such as Israel, the Quartet, the UN, other states, etc. It is a right; so there is no need for Palestinians to negotiate or compromise with Israelis as the price for ending their occupation. _
Israel’s exercising control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, preventing the Palestinian people from full and effective self-governance, has for decades been a fundamental impediment to the realization of the right of self-determination which the Palestinian people are entitled to enjoy under international law. And there was no actual or imminent armed attack that justified the occupation as a means of self-defence prior to 7 October. _
Furthermore, there is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise. _
Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over those areas of the West Bank. _
Advice to Messrs Sunak, Cameron and Docherty is surely to first get on the right side of international law – and human decency – and recognise Palestinian statehood without any more foot-dragging. Furthermore, to join with other states and tell Israel, firmly, that all cooperation, collaboration and favoured nation privileges are cancelled until the apartheid regime ends its illegal occupation, removes its squatters, lifts its siege, ceases interference with free movement and fulfils its obligations under the UN Charter and resolutions. And completes a probationary period demonstrating good behaviour before being welcomed back into the community of nations.
Otherwise, what is international law worth? Our political leaders must realise that the British public don’t want a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wholesale destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and is as hateful, racist and disrespectful of human rights and norms as Israel has been for as long as most of us can remember.
Murder | craigmurray.orgHistorian, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist | 13 Dec 2023
Al Jazeera are leading their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.
On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them there is nothing to discuss.
Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining bakery.
It is worth stating why this is plainly a genocide in Gaza:
1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems, bakeries and fishing boats;
2) Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;
3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from universities to primary schools;
4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society, including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and deliberate destruction of administrative records;
5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;
6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8%. In Ukraine it is 6%. In Gaza it is 42%. This is indiscriminate destruction of an ethnic group;
7) Mass executions of civilians;
8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually abusing them;
9) Forced mass movement of population;
10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage buildings;
11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;
12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both civilian and military establishment.
This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Yesterday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.
The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.
The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.
The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.
A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social media.
But to the global 1% whose interests rule the world, no number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk. This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western and Arab states.
It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.
'Yesterday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of…
Secretary-General visits Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland. UN Photo/Evan Schneider
The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.
Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Convention has been ratified by 153 States (as of April 2022). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law. The ICJ has also stated that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (or ius cogens) and consequently, no derogation from it is allowed.
The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions. Many States have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law; others have yet to do so.
“DENVER, Nov. 20 — In a historic vote Friday night, the American Anthropological Association at its annual business meeting resoundingly approved a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions by a vote of 1040-136. The resolution will now be forwarded to the full membership for a final vote by electronic ballot in the coming months.”
The anthropologists against the resolution issued today the following statement after the vote was published by the organization they insist that it is injustice to boycott Israel when Palestine is not even a state.
“We, the undersigned anthropologists, oppose the recent call by some of our colleagues to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Today, there is a state of Israel but not yet a Palestinian state: this injustice should be rectified as soon as possible. ”
From all the movement of solidarity with Palestine today historical vote put Palestine at the at the level of Israel as a state.
Now is not only Prof Ilan Pappe the Israeli scholar telling the world that Israel is ethnic cleansing the indigenous population of Palestine, the AAA now can vouch that claim as well.
Since 2012 the issue of Palestine/Israel conflict was on the conversation in the organization and finally on 2014 the AAA sent a team of Anthropologists research team to Palestine and the Occupied Territories (Israel) to find facts of claims made by writers, journalists, activists and Palestinians regarding the situation. A report was issue on October 1, of the findings and today in their annual meeting the members of the AAA gave their scientific opinion and vote to boycott Israel.
The resolution enjoins the Association not to enter into any formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions. Individual Israeli scholars may continue to participate in AAA conferences and publications. Moreover, individual AAA members will remain free to determine for themselves whether and how to apply the boycott in their own professional practice.
As heirs to a long tradition of scholarship on colonialism, anthropologists affirm, through this resolution, that the core problem is Israel’s maintenance of a settler colonial regime based on Jewish supremacy and Palestinian dispossession. By supporting the boycott, anthropologists are taking a stand for justice through action in solidarity with Palestinians.
Today’s historic result is due to over three years of organizing within the Association to educate and mobilize members to stand against Israel’s widespread, systematic, and ongoing violations of Palestinian rights, as well as to protest the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in these abuses. The vote was also a powerful act of protest against U.S. support for Israel’s actions.
Original posted at: Posted in Censorship and Freedom , Calls by paginatransversal on June 7, 2015
On Saturday June 5, In the Al-Andalus Library in the city of Cordoba, it was held the “Conference for Palestine. Memorial To Naji Al Ali.“ The event was organized by the International Organization Against Impunity, HOKOK, such event was structured around the memory of the famous Palestinian cartoonist killed in London in 1987, Naji Al Ali, and had as main themes besides: denouncing the brutal Palestinian occupation by the Zionist entity called Israel, the claim of freedom of expression and the free exercise of the right to information, both severely hampered by the Zionist occupation forces and their lobbyists groups throughout the world.
The relevance and the need to hold events like this were demonstrated even before the celebration of the event (Days of Palestine), by the repressive totalitarian attitude, and censorship by certain associations that takes the arrogant attitude of exclusivity to address the Palestinian issue in Spain and, accompanied by the usual spokesmen ideological persecution from his journalistic tribunes, have highlighted the need to persevere in the defense of pluralism and freedom of expression and against the attacks of totalitarianism and ideological persecution, wherever they come from, whether from the international Zionism, since the allegedly democratic penal code, or from sectarian organizations and democratic proceed doubtful that, relying on the label “Red Solidaria”, intended to hijack the free and plural voice of the Palestinian people.
PALESTINE CONFERENCE HOKOK
However, the impunity, the nerve to use lies of victimization and hysteria that characterizes totalitarian regimes, are these Zionists in disguise or “solidarity,” usually little or nothing can be doneagainst the will of those who are free enough to avoid being drag by hate and yes by compromise. Thus, those attending the ceremony in Córdoba could see first hand the terrible situation facing the Palestinian people and the difficulties of journalists to do their work in the occupied territories – at least the truthers, and not the mere intoxicators that are the voice of their master.
Chérifa Serrajd, teacher and social educator opened the conference with presentations dedicated to gloss the figure and works of Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali, and focused on the censorship of the media about the unprecedented situation that exists in Gaza, the situation of the Palestinian people following the recent acts of genocide perpetrated by the Zionist occupation forces, especially the attacks of 2014 that left about 2,500 dead and 11,000 wounded, and destroyed much of Gaza, whose reconstruction work have not yet begun.
Adnan Ezzeddine, lawyer and secretary general of HOKOK, denounced the impunity of the Zionist state called Israel and its strategy of applying the politics of fear and accusation of “anti-Semitism” in both the media and through the courts, as well of terror through military force, all under coverup by governments and institutions worldwide. Similarly he denounced the bigots who had called to boycott the event on absurd charges of “racism”, “anti-Semitism”, etc. With whom he would rather sit at a round table to interexchange positions. He then proceeded to describe a brief overview of the current situation in the Middle East, and accused the US and the Zionist entity called Israel of being behind the terror of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State,” terror already used since the war in Afghanistan to achieve the geopolitical objectives and economic of their sponsors.
PALESTINE CONFERENCE MEMORIAl to AL Naji al SANCHEZ RAFAEL ALI AVELLO:
Rafael Sanchez Avello
Meanwhile, veteran journalist Rafael Sanchez Avello, professional TVE, information coordinator and editor, specialized in scientific journalism and in the Sahara conflict. He focused his speech on the right of free expression, to ensure human rights and the need for a committed journalism (see journalists as “fetters of our consciousness” that only active solidarity will silence some day). Then he drew the raw data recorded in 2014 with regard to the exercise of journalism (128 journalists killed, 16 in the attack on Gaza, 13 in Syria, 12 in Pakistan, 10 in Iraq, 60 etc .; killed so far in 2015, etc.) and reported the situation of conflict, journalist that before were protected under the media outlet that them to report, and now mostly professionals independent (freelance) underpaid. In this sense he also denounced the installed prejudice in society regarding the exercise of journalism, which they attribute to journalists dishonesty or truth or misrepresenting it, prejudices and recalled what he heard from the mouth of the well-known journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski: “There are no more journalists but mediaworkers, “ so we should not blame the true professionals, but the media themselves and their owners. Avello Sanchez recalled that without free press there is no democracy and that the fundamental mission of the journalist is to give voice to the voiceless and to make visible the invisible.
Then spoke the young Palestinian Mohammed Matter, who came from Germany, where he lives and
Mohammed Matter-Palestinian political activist from Gaza, Palestine
studies, to tell his personal experience and daily life of Gazawans, especially during the criminal attack on Gaza in 2014 by the army of the Zionist occupation. He denounced the obstacles to the free movement of Gazawans locked in “the biggest prison in the world” and the complicity of the Egyptian authorities in collusion with Zionist and United States in relation to the closure of the borders and passage of supplies and people (when is not closed, the border opens and only can cross a maximum of 50 people a day from a list of more than 42,000 people who want to leave Gaza for some reason or other). Matter emphasized the heroism of Gazawans to defend their meager assets against the Zionist aggression ( for example arriving in mass to a private house after receiving the call in the same the occupation forces threatening to bomb it), and by individual and communitarian examples of struggle and resistance by the Palestinian people, and more specifically by Gazawan in an area without water, without light, and controlled by the Zionists to the number of daily calories consumed by every Palestinian. Matter expressed doubts about a possible peace between Israelies and Palestinians because, on the one hand, “the Israelies do not want peace” and on the other, the Palestinian people can not embrace the Israeli people as it is literally “amputated” by bombing and Zionist aggression. He also denounced the Palestinian Authority for its collusion with the Zionists even though they consider the Palestinians as “terrorists.” To achieve any kind of peace, Matter stressed the need to do justice first and urged the audience and citizens in Europe and around the world to increase their support to Palestine and the Palestinian people, making this visible support through mobilizations on the streets, and by boycotting products of the Zionist entity called Israel.
With this call to commitment and denouncing the Zionist outrage, extended to other abuses, ridiculous in comparison but also fruit of the hatred of freedom, plurality and coexistence, the “Conference for Palestine were closed. Memorial Naji Al Ali “, in the city of Cordoba.
Last day of the 2015 World Social Forum ended with a parade through Tunis streets to celebrate Palestine land day. and to show solidarity with Palestinian people. Participants to the event calls it “Land Day rally.” The parade marched through Tunis’ streets to the Palestine embassy .
Universal Youth Club for Palestine (UYC4Pal), Iranian branch, is a social movement composed mostly of youth found between facebook users.
Worldwide, there are over 1.39 billion monthly active Facebook users which is a 13 percent increase year over year. (Source: Facebook as of 1/28/15) What this means for you: In case you had any lingering doubts, statistically, Facebook is too big to ignore.
Taking advantage of this social phenomenon called facebook the founder of UYC4Pal decided to act forming this movement.
UYC4Pal was present at the World Social Forum 2015 celebrated in Tunis from 24-28 March, at Al Manar University Campus where 4398 organizations engaged the participants in its different activities.
Organizations from around the world find this social forum the perfect avenue to bring ideas and discuss solutions for the our world’s problems.
Iran society find itself at the vanguard on the international fight for the liberation of Palestine from the Zionist entity and its youth take active role in this initiative.
The Palestine issue is one of the focal points in the event:
“This situation makes difficult any perspective of fair solution to the Palestinian issue, and gives to Israel all the space to reinforce its hold on the occupied Palestinian territories and its domination in the region.
Beyond the Palestinian issue, it’s the existence of the nation-states themselves that is challenged. Whether it is in Syria or in Libya, there is a major risk to see the definitive explosion of the historical balances that founded those States existence, and to watch the born of autonomous territories on bases of religion or ethnicity, subject to manipulation by the big and regional powers of time.” WSF2015 official page
UYC4Pal was founded last year by a group of Iranian youth that thought on taking advantage of social networks youth participation, said Whaid Mardane in a facebook interview. Knowing that young people spend great part of their life engaged in internet forums and specially social networks like facebook they thought on bringing them together using facebook walls.
Wahid Mardane, one of the representatives of the Iranian branch of UYC4Pal said, that ‘Universal Youth Club for Palestine’ was formed on 2014 with a group of Iranian students found in facebook.
As we speak, this Iranian social network movement has nearly 400 members and the Tunisian group has reached 1000, he said.
Being at the Tunisia World Social Forum was a very great opportunity to meet the youth and invite other groups to participate, hundreds of students signed out for membership for the UYC4Pal at the event.
Palestinian ambassador to Tunisia, Salman Al Harfi greets Reza Barekati, the Iranian representative for Universal Youth Club for Palestine, at Al Manar University during the World Social Forum 2015
Mardane said that facebook is full with youth that supports Palestine so they decided to form UYC4Pal to bring them together and help them organize the strategies to fight for Palestine in the social networks. The UYC4Pal was well received and had resulted very fruitful said Mardane, between the two clubs, more than 1000 participants signed at the event for UYC4Pal membership.
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Mardane as one of the members of the Iranian branch of UYC4Pal stated that one of the activities at the event was to enroll new members in the club and participate in the “Land Rally,” an event that follows at the end of the forum. Thousands of Palestinian activists took part on this parade throughout Tunis major streets and finalized at the Palestinian Embassy building.
Some young Palestinian activists from different nationalities decided to make a social network named ” Universal Youth Club for Palestine, this is a social movement that trying to find youth in social networks as facebook to have a unity and awareness regarding Palestine’s plight. Nowadays the youth live in facebook more than in their home and rooms! in this regard we as Iranian branch of this movement were invited and participated in World Social Forum 2015. On the other hand the Tunisian branch of Universal Youth Club for Palestine was formed as to strengthen the Palestinian Youth movement. Our wish is to see other branches of this movement in other countries, the most important of this movement is a total virtual movement and they can form their own clubs if they wish to develop their own activities, but the main emphasis should on absorbing facebook’s youth to use their time on humanity, specially in activities for Palestine in any modern ways they prefer. Whaid Mardane, Iranian activist and representative of UYP4Pal, Iranian branch.
“The International Council’s decision to organize the WSF 2015, again in Tunis (Tunisia) was decided in Casablanca (Morocco), last November. It responds to a wish formulated by regional and international social movements, after evaluating the social impact of the WSF 2013 in Tunisia, they estimated that it was still necessary to; consolidate the dynamics of changes born thanks to the Tunisian revolution and to the democratic movements in the region.
To deepen the debates held about the liberal model crisis and about the civilization crisis, and to expand the debates about new geopolitical issues, and to promote new alternatives which respect the people rights, and which are based on peace and social justice.” Official World Social Forum webpage.
Human rights groups , non-profit organizations, cultural institutions and a variety of grassroots organizations gather every year at the World Social Forum to present their ideas and discus alternative solutions for the present world problems, “Many organizations, networks and movements participates at the WSF 2015, to make another world possible,” states WSF official website.
Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and Reza Barekati Iranian-representative of Universal Youth Club for Palestine. Al Manar University during the 2015 World Social Forum. photo/Ali Bagheri
The Iranian branch for UYC4Pal encourages the youth to form their own clubs in their nations of origin to strengthen the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, that is growing rapidly and strong every day around the world said Mardane, stating that the Tunisian branch was formed also and it is growing very fast, he said at the moment the Iranian UYC4Pal facebook official forum has almost 2500 members.
Intelligence agencies have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for past five years, government admits
The admission comes ahead of a legal challenge brought on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, over allegations that security services unlawfully intercepted their communications with lawyers. Photograph: PA & AFP
The regime under which UK intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6, have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for the past five years is unlawful, the British government has admitted.
The admission that the activities of the security services have failed to comply fully with human rights laws in a second major area – this time highly sensitive legally privileged communications – is a severe embarrassment for the government.
It follows hard on the heels of the British court ruling on 6 February declaring that the regime surrounding the sharing of mass personal intelligence data between America’s national security agency and Britain’s GCHQ was unlawful for seven years.
The admission that the regime surrounding state snooping on legally privileged communications has also failed to comply with the European convention on human rights comes in advance of a legal challenge, to be heard early next month, in which the security servicesare alleged to have unlawfully intercepted conversations between lawyers and their clients to provide the government with an advantage in court.
The case is due to be heard before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). It is being brought by lawyers on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, who, along with their families, were abducted in a joint MI6-CIA operation and sent back to Tripoli to be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004.
A government spokesman said: “The concession the government has made today relates to the agencies’ policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the European convention on human rights.
“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since [January] 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy). This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.
“It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on their part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligations to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously. Nor does it mean that any of the agencies’ activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings.”
He said that the intelligence agencies would now work with the interception of communications commissioner to ensure their policies satisfy all of the UK’s human rights obligations.
Cori Crider, a director at Reprieve and one of the Belhaj family’s lawyers said: “By allowing the intelligence agencies free reign to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial.
“Reprieve has been warning for months that the security services’ policies on lawyer-client snooping have been shot through with loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.
“For too long, the security services have been allowed to snoop on those bringing cases against them when they speak to their lawyers. In doing so, they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law. Today they have finally admitted they have been acting unlawfully for years.
“Worryingly, it looks very much like they have collected the private lawyer-client communications of two victims of rendition and torture, and possibly misused them. While the government says there was no ‘deliberate’ collection of material, it’s abundantly clear that private material was collected and may well have been passed on to lawyers or ministers involved in the civil case brought by Abdel hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, who were ‘rendered’ to Libya in 2004 by British intelligence.
“Only time will tell how badly their case was tainted. But right now, the government needs urgently to investigate how things went wrong and come clean about what it is doing to repair the damage.”
Government sources, in line with all such cases, refuse to confirm or deny whether the two Libyans were the subject of an interception operation. They insist the concession does not concern the allegation that actual interception took place and say it will be for the investigatory powers tribunal hearing to determine the issue.
An updated draft interception code of practicespelling out the the rules for the first time was quietly published at the same time as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling against GCHQ earlier this month in the case brought by Privacy International and Liberty.
The government spokesman said the draft code set out enhanced safeguards and provided more detail than previously on the protections that had to be applied in the security agencies handling of legally privileged communications.
The draft code makes clear that warrants for snooping on legally privileged conversations, emails and other communications between suspects and their lawyers can be granted if there are exceptional and compelling circumstances. They have to however ensure that they are not available to lawyers or policy officials who are conducting legal cases against those suspects.
To demonstrate that its policies satisfy legal safeguards, MI6 were required in advance of Wednesday’s concession to disclose internal guidance on how intelligence staff should deal with material protected by legal professional privilege.
The MI6 papers noted: “Undertaking interception in such circumstances would be extremely rare and would require strong justification and robust safeguards. It is essential that such intercepted material is not acquired or used for the purpose of conferring an unfair or improper advantage on SIS or HMG [Her Majesty’s government] in any such litigation, legal proceedings or criminal investigation.”
The internal documents also refer to a visit by the interception commissioner, Sir Anthony May, last summer to examine interception warrants, where it was discovered that regulations were not being observed. “In relation to one of the warrants,” the document explained, “the commissioner identified a number of concerns with regard to the handling of [legal professional privilege] material”.
Amnesty UK’s legal programme director, Rachel Logan, said: “We are talking about nothing less than the violation of a fundamental principle of the rule of law – that communications between a lawyer and their client must be confidential.
“The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so – this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.
“This is the second time in as many weeks that government spies have been rumbled breaking the law.”
Like many children, 13-year-old Mohammed Tuaiman suffered from nightmares. In his dreams, he would see flying “death machines” that turned family and friends into burning charcoal. No one could stop them, and they struck any place, at any time.
Unlike most children, Mohammed’s nightmares killed him.
Three weeks ago, a CIA drone operating over Yemen fired a missile at a car carrying the teenager, and two others. They were all incinerated. Nor was Mohammed the first in his family to be targeted: drones had already killed his father and brother.
Since president Barack Obama took office in 2009, the US has killed at least 2,464 people through drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones. The figure is courtesy of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which says that at least 314 of the dead, one in seven, were civilians.
Recall that for Obama, as The New York Times reported in May 2012, “all military-age males in a strike zone” are counted “as combatants” – unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.
It sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
The week after Mohammed’s death, on February 5, Mr Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, and discussed the violence of ISIL.
“Lest we get on our high horses”, said the commander-in-chief, “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
These comments prompted a (brief) media storm, with Mr Obama accused of insulting Christians, pandering to the terrorist enemy, or just bad history.
In fact, the president was simply repeating a point often made by liberals since September 11, namely, that all religions have blots on their copy book through the deeds of their followers.
One of the consequences, however, of this invocation of the Crusades – unintended, and all the more significant for it – is to seal away the West’s “sins”, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship to the Middle East, in events that took place a thousand years ago.
The Crusades were, in one sense, a demonstration of raw military power, and a collective trauma for the peoples of the regions they marched through and invaded.
In the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, a witness described how the Europeans ordered “all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses”.
He added: “No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids.”
Or take the Third Crusade, when, on August 20, 1191, England’s King Richard I oversaw the beheading of 3,000 Muslim prisoners at Acre in full view of Saladin’s army.
Just “ancient history”? In 1920, when the French had besieged and captured Damascus, their commander Henri Gourard reportedly went to the grave of Saladin, kicked it, and uttered: “Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.”
But the US president need not cite the Crusades or even the colonial rule of the early 20th century: more relevant reference points would be Bagram and Fallujah.
Bagram base in Afghanistan is where US soldiers tortured prisoners to death – like 22-year-old taxi driver and farmer Dilawar. Before he was killed in custody, Dilawar was beaten by soldiers just to make him scream “Allah!”
Five months after September 11, The Guardian reported that US missiles had killed anywhere between 1,300 and 8,000 in Afghanistan. Months later, the paper suggested that “as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention”.
When it was Iraq’s turn, the people of Fallujah discovered that US forces gave them funerals, not democracy. On April 28, 2003, US soldiers massacred civilian protesters, shooting to death 17 during a demonstration.
When that city revolted against the occupation, the residents paid a price. As Marines tried to quell resistance in the city, wrote The New York Times on April 14, 2004, they had “orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not”.Months later, as the Marines launched their November assault on the city, CNN reported that “the sky…seems to explode”.
In their bombardment and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US and UK armed forces rained fiery death down on men, women and children. Prisoners were tortured and sexually abused. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. No one was held to account.
It is one thing to apologise for the brutality of western Crusaders a thousand years ago. It is quite another to look at the corpses of the victims of the imperialist present, or hear the screams of the bereaved.
In his excellent book The Muslims Are Coming, Arun Kundnani analysed the “politics of anti-extremism”, and describes the two approaches developed by policymakers and analysts during the “war on terror”.
The first approach, which he refers to as “culturalism”, emphasises “what adherents regard as inherent features of Islamic culture”. The second approach, “reformism”, is when “extremism is viewed as a perversion of Islam’s message”, rather than “a clash of civilisations between the West’s modern values and Islam’s fanaticism”.
Thus the American Right was angry with Mr Obama, because for them, it is about religion – or specifically, Islam. Liberals, meanwhile, want to locate the problem in terms of culture.
Both want to avoid a discussion about imperialism, massacres, coups, brutalities, disappearances, dictatorships – in other words, politics.
As Kundnani writes: when “the concept of ideology” is made central, whether understood as “Islam itself or as Islamist extremism”, then “the role of western states in co-producing the terror war is obscured”.
The problem with Mr Obama’s comments on the Crusades was not, as hysterical conservatives claimed, that he was making offensive and inaccurate analogies with ISIL; rather, that in the comfort of condemning the past, he could mask the violence of his own government in the present.
The echoes of collective trauma remain for a long time, and especially when new wounds are still being inflicted. Think it is farfetched that Muslims would still care about a 1,000-year-old European invasion? Then try asking them about Guantanamo and Camp Bucca instead.
Ben White is a journalist and author of Israeli Apartheid
by Marivel guzman
Artists and Intellectuals Including Junot Díaz, Chuck D, and Boots Riley Call for Boycott and Divestment from Israel
Junot Diaz, becoming an author in Oprah.com Photo: Nancy Crampton
More #Celebrities4Pal openly coming out endorsing Palestine, the voices are growing louder and thicker. Every day we discover more celebrities adding their voices to Cultural Boycott against Israel.
Junot Diaz, the 45-year-old Dominican-American Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Diaz is Pulitzer winner author of several books; This is How you Lose her, Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, (Wikipedia)
Last September Diaz called on the Brooklyn Book Festival to reject sponsorship from Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs. In an open Letter to the Brooklyn Book Festival advising against accepting Israeli Sponsorship
Tell the Brooklyn Book Festival to no longer accept partnerships with the Israeli government or complicit institutions.
“It is deeply regrettable that the Festival has chosen to accept funding from the Israeli government just weeks after Israel’s bloody 50-day assault on the Gaza Strip, which left over 2100 Palestinians – including 500 children – dead, displaced a fourth of the population, destroyed homes, schools, and hospitals, and involved numerous potential war crimes. Sustaining a partnership with the Israeli Consulate at this time amounts to a tacit endorsement of Israel’s many violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.” An excerpt from the open letter to the Brooklyn Book Festival
On September 30, during his Lecture at Clark University he made mention of the pressure scholars feel when they speak out for Palestine, and shared his personal experiences as a call to support the Palestinian people.
“We are extremely excited to have an author of Diaz’s stature visit Clark,” said Paul Posner, director of the University’s Latin American and Latino Studies concentration and faculty organizer of the event. “His work deals with issues – colonialism’s legacy in Latin America, cultural identity and language, immigration and gender relations, among others – that are of central importance to many of our students and faculty.”
Endorsing The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel a statement from Diaz was published as a Press release saying that Diaz joins Chuck D and Boots Riley as prominent artists who have recently endorsed the boycott
” If there exists a moral arch to the universe then Palestine will eventually be free but that promised day will never arrive unless we, the justice-minded peoples of our world, fight to end the cruel blight of the Israeli occupation. Our political, religious and economic leaders have always been awesome at leading our world into conflict, only we the people alone with little else but our courage and our solidarities and our invincible hope can lead our world into peace.” Junot Diaz
Every day we discover a new Celebrities4palestine showing either they disgust for Israel Apartheid policy of segregation or their open support for Palestine.
It is commendable to recognize their openness, knowing that they are risking their careers. In the US it is career suicide to support Palestine, but when in comes to persons of integrity they can’t hide it, it is against their moral compass.
We are putting the world on notice, with very heavy hearts, that we believe that something [terrible] will happen. –Ahdaf Soueif
Every time the operations are getting worse, the massacres are getting worse – I’m telling you that this massacre will happen again.– Eran Efrati
There is no reason that [we] can say we don’t know. We know. – Dr. Mads Gilbert
On September 24th, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) held an Extraordinary Session in Brussels on Operation Protective Edge, followed by a press conference and presentation to the European Parliament on September 25th. Several members of Humanity for Palestine were there.
Founded by Bertrand Russell in 1966, the Russell Tribunal is intended to be a “Tribunal of conscience,” investigating injustices and violations of international law that the international community fails to adequately address. Since the first Tribunal on war crimes in Vietnam, headed by Jean-Paul Sartre, Tribunals have been formed to examined human rights violations in Argentina and Brazil (1973), Chile (1974-76) and Iraq (2004), and Palestine (2009-2012). Having held five sessions and delivered a Final Report, the RToP decided, during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, to hold a supplementary session due to the gravity of the situation on the ground.
Three of the four Gazan witnesses invited by the Tribunal were prevented from leaving Gaza, due to such Kafkaesque restrictions as having to physically obtain Israeli approval for their Belgian visas in Jerusalem, while being denied access to Jerusalem (the very fact that this requirement held even though the witnesses were attempting to exit via Egypt itself belies the myth that Israel is not the Occupying Power, effectively controlling all access by land sea and air). The only one who managed to get out, Palestinian journalist Mohamed Omar, was able to do so only with his Dutch passport, after having first had his Gazan passport refused. The European Parliament Members who had attempted to enter Gaza two weeks earlier were also denied access.
The session was extraordinary in more ways than one. The intellectual caliber, humanity and commitment of the Jurors and witnesses were impressive. The testimonies were detailed, comprehensive and chilling, and the patterns that emerged from them constellated a compelling case for systematic and deliberate war crimes committed in a broader social context of racism, impunity and genocidal discourse. While the legal definition of the “G-word” sets a high bar, the Tribunal’s conclusion – and that of many present – was that we are all too close and getting inexorably closer to the mass-scale willful extermination of an entire people.
Attacks on Civilians
The deliberate targeting of civilians, prisoners and wounded, abductions, beatings, humiliation and torture, the use of children as human shields, systematic attacks on journalists and medics, massive destruction of property, homes, mosques, churches and cemeteries, farms, factories, businesses and basic infrastructure including water, food, sanitation and electricity, revenge attacks and other possible war crimes – all committed against a backdrop of rising ethno-religious supremicism, racist and genocidal speech and hate crimes – lend a new urgency to the international struggle in support of the Palestinian people.
To cite a just a few of the grim specifics, 89 families were completely liquidated – one after being ordered to stay in their home or shot, and the house bombed several hours later with them inside. Handcuffed bodies were found with bullets to the head and chest and bullet casings by the heads, in classic “shoot to kill” fashion. A video was shown of the murder of a man while searching for a family member in the rubble accompanied by international solidarity workers, including a coup de grace as he was lying wounded on the ground. There were several examples of groups being asked who spoke Hebrew and anyone who answered affirmatively being promptly shot in the chest. One man was told to step forward and hold up his lighter and, when he did so, shot. A 17-year-old boy was held by the IDF for 5 days, stripped, beaten, tortured and used as a human shield (this just one of multiple cases of children being used as human shields by the IDF during the operation). A 55 year-old Imam was ordered to strip naked in front of women and to tell people to leave their homes over the mosque’s PA. The men were then taken at gunpoint, also forced to strip and marched away, while the Imam himself was placed against a bulldozer, a bottle placed at his neck, and used for target practice. One family sheltering in their basement from an F-16 attack when IDF soldiers broke in and held them captive were refused use of the toilet and told to “do it on yourself.” A 65-year-old man was shot at close range by an IDF solider in front of his family while pleaded with the soldiers in English. His last words were: “Please don’t shoot me.”
Massive and Systematic Destruction
The totality of the evidence suggested that such examples were not isolated, but consistent with broader policies, attitudes and practices – the low level of convictions and light sentences for such crimes when investigated, being one (“systemic impunity is the status quo,” said Yvan Karakashian).
The sheer scope of the damage – including deaths of at least 1658 civilians, the wounding of 11,231, and the destruction of 18,000 housing units (or 13% of available housing in Gaza), leaving 110,000 people homeless – is itself evidence of a systematic and willful campaign against the civilian population of Gaza. The 51-day assault dropped an estimated 700 tons of explosives – 2 tons per square kilometer – equal to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The use of such armaments as white phosphorous, depleted uranium, DIME, flechettes, fuel-air and thermobaric munitions, and cluster bombs suggested a deliberate antipersonnel strategy against a trapped civilian population in one of the most densely populated places on earth, denied of their basic right to flee a conflict zone.
The destruction of businesses, food production, and 220 factories (including a soap factory and a candy factory), 68% of the arable land, fishing equipment that had been stored for protection, and 130 cows on one farm (“none of the cows were Hamas,” said their owner, “they were secular cows”), coming as it did on the heels of an 8-year embargo and four major attacks, amounted to the effective destruction of a once healthy economy.
The destruction of 50% of the hospitals and 63% of the medical clinics; the shooting of ambulances and refusal to allow ambulances in (donkey carts were being to replace them); and the shooting of medics attempting to help people (one medic was shot in the hip and chest and bled to death and when his colleagues tried to help him, they were also shot); with a total of 144 healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, medics, firefighters killed or injured.
The destruction of basic civilian infrastructure was also massive and systematic. The bombing of water facilities for 450,000 people comes in a context of the diversion by Israel of water from Gaza to Negev leading to the drying up of three major local wadis and expected depletion of coastal aquifer by 2016 and refusal to allow the importation of the chemicals needed to purify the remaining – and heavily contaminated – Gazan water. The destruction of Gaza’s only power plant further affected water treatment, sanitation, food and the capacity of medical facilities to treat the wounded and displaced. Even UN-sponsored and controlled infrastructure was bombed, including three UNRWA schools being used as refugee shelters.
As the IDF claimed a 90% success rate for its bombing campaign, one can only conclude – along with the Tribunal – that this destruction was willful. “There was no justification at all,” said journalist Martin Lejeune of the bombing of factories: “I think it was really to harm the civilians and to harm the population of Gaza. That was the reason they committed these attacks.”
War Crimes
An established military protocol (“Dahiya Doctrine”) for disproportionate revenge attacks on local populations (including a policy of shooting anything that moves in pre-designated areas) was invoked in Shuja’iyya after 13 IDF soldiers were killed during the 4-day occupation by Golani Brigade on July 19th-23rd. Within 7 hours, at least 600 shells (most contained depleted uranium), and 120 1-ton bombs, were dropped in the neighborhood. The infantry entered the area on foot with orders to break windows, and destroy property and houses.
A policy was described by IDF veteran and journalist Eran Efrati of drawing a “red imaginary line,” beyond which anyone would be immediately killed, around the houses in which the IDF set up temporary field posts. He claimed that, unlike in earlier campaigns, the lines during Protective Edge were drawn as much as hundreds of meters from the posts and that neither the locations nor the presence of the lines was communicated to locals. He concluded that it was not loss of life that caused the IDF to launch the Shuja’iyya bombing so much as the humiliation of sustaining losses: “What we are doing here is trying to revenge and trying to kill people for an insult.”
An IDF protocol for killing its own soldiers in order to avoid their capture and eventual use in prisoner exchanges (the “Hannibal Directive”) was reportedly invoked when an Israeli raid on a tunnel in Rafa went awry minutes before the start of a ceasefire. The IDF immediately blamed Hamas for the soldier’s death and launched an assault on Rafa along the lines proscribed by the Dahiya Doctrine.
Genocidal Discourse
As horrifying as the many individual stories of violence detailed by the witnesses were to those present (complete with unmistakable elements of humiliation, torture and sadism), the most chilling testimony was arguably Israeli journalist David Sheen’s panoramic depiction of Israeli hate speech, anti-Arab racism, and incitement to genocide. Sheen’s examples were drawn from top political leaders, religious figures and other influential figures, and were so numerous that there was no time to present all his slides. The cumulative effect of his evidence was to place the violence and destruction described by other witnesses in the socio-political context of a broader nationalist project, the collapse of the Israeli political center, and the rise of Settler extremism within the IDF itself (with and messianic nationalists now comprising nearly a third of the officer corps). As the Tribunal concluded:
…the Israeli state is implementing an apartheid system based on the dominance of Israeli Jews over Palestinians. Beyond the prolonged siege and collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza, the ongoing settlement project in the West Bank, and the now regular massive military assaults on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, one must add the increase in aggravated racist hate speech. … The jury has listened to alarming evidence over the course of this extraordinary session; we have a genuine fear that in an environment of impunity and an absence of sanction for serious and repeated criminality, the lessons from Rwanda and other mass atrocities may once again go unheeded (Russell Tribunal on Palestine 2014:10).
Implications for the Peace with Justice Movement
Up until now, many of us in the pro-Palestine movement have framed it as a human rights struggle, along the lines of the Civil Rights and anti-Apartheid Movements. The case presented in Brussels with such comprehensiveness and clarity, however, challenges us all to reframe our mission as nothing less than the staunching of a nascent genocide that, if left unchecked, will only express itself in ever-mounting numbers of murdered men, women and children.
One thing that distinguishes this particular crisis from other attacks on civilian populations, such as in Iraq, Syria or Congo is that here the solution is simple: boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS), legal action against states and corporations that collude in these crimes, suspension of arms sales and financial aid, prosecutions in the International Criminal Court – in a word, putting the Israeli government on notice that it can no longer commit these crimes with impunity, but must answer for its actions. Until this is done, we are all complicit.
Dr. Peter F. Cohen is an anthropologist and Founder of Humanity for Palestine.
On Saturday June 5, In the Al-Andalus Library in the city of Cordoba, it was held the “Conference for Palestine. Memorial To Naji Al Ali.“ The event was organized by the International Organization Against Impunity, HOKOK, such event was structured around the memory of the famous Palestinian cartoonist killed in London in 1987, Naji Al Ali, and had as main themes besides: denouncing the brutal Palestinian occupation by the Zionist entity called Israel, the claim of freedom of expression and the free exercise of the right to information, both severely hampered by the Zionist occupation forces and their lobbyists groups throughout the world.
event (Days of Palestine), by the repressive totalitarian attitude, and censorship by certain associations that takes the arrogant attitude of exclusivity to address the Palestinian issue in Spain and, accompanied by the usual spokesmen ideological persecution from his journalistic tribunes, have highlighted the need to persevere in the defense of pluralism and freedom of expression and against the attacks of totalitarianism and ideological persecution, wherever they come from, whether from the international Zionism, since the allegedly democratic penal code, or from sectarian organizations and democratic proceed doubtful that, relying on the label “Red Solidaria”, intended to hijack the free and plural voice of the Palestinian people.
| truthaholics 