EL WAHDA
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Fisk lashes out at West in Middle East
RT's Peter Lavelle spoke to Robert Fisk in Lebanon, who's one of the most renowned journalists and authors on the subject.
SAIA Carleton Divestment Campaign
"It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians
at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.
Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through." --- Desmond Tutu
SAIA demands that Carleton University immediately divest its stock in BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and Tesco, and adopt a Socially Responsible Investment policy.
". . . the global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions, BDS, against Israel presents not only a progressive, anti-racist, sophisticated, sustainable, moral and effective form of civil, non-violent resistance, but a real chance of becoming the political catalyst and moral anchor for a strengthened, reinvigorated international social movement capable of reaffirming the rights of all humans to freedom, equality and dignity and the right of nations to self-determination." --- Omar Barghouti
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
My family's ongoing Nakba story
Mohammad Alsaafin writing from Doha, Qatar, Live from Palestine, 26 January 2010
Israel restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians through the imposition of an ID system. (Anne Paq/ActiveStills.org)
One of the most traumatic effects wrought upon Palestinian society by the 1948 Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine, is the physical separation it forced upon Palestinians, between those in the diaspora and the refugees, between those living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and those who became citizens of Israel. Yet this process is ongoing to this very day, and targets even individual families, like mine. This is our story.
My dad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962, the son of refugees, and left to the United Kingdom along with his wife and first son (myself) in 1990 to pursue his PhD at the University of Bradford. By 2004, I had a brother and two sisters, and our entire family moved back to Palestine, this time to the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. My father was working as a foreign journalist licensed by the Israeli Government Press Office and we were living in our country on yearly renewable Israeli work visas.
In 2005, I was turned back by Israeli border agents at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge as I attempted to cross into Jordan to visit my aunt. The agents told me that since I was born in the Gaza Strip in 1988 I had been issued a Gaza ID by the Israeli occupation authority and was therefore not allowed to legally reside in the West Bank. Additionally, I was informed that from then on, Israel would not recognize my British passport. I was able to return to Ramallah that day, but for the next four years I risked daily arrest by Israeli troops on the way to Birzeit University, where I was studying, and for a year after that while I was working in Ramallah. This summer, I left the West Bank to find work abroad, and was told by the Israelis that I would not be allowed to return home.
Despite this reprehensible situation, the rest of the family was thankfully spared such hardship. My dad continued working relatively unhindered as he moved across what is now Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and my mother and siblings enjoyed freedom of movement across the West Bank and inside Israel. This all changed very suddenly last August when, on a routine trip to Gaza where my dad had several assignments and where he wanted to visit his ailing father, he was detained by Israeli security at the Erez checkpoint, and was harassed, stripped of his press credentials and told -- as I was four years earlier -- that his British passport was worthless in Israel. He was also informed that he too had an Israeli-issued Gaza ID and thus would be treated as a Gazan, deprived of the most basic freedom of choice and movement and barred from ever returning to his wife and children in Ramallah. He was sent into Gaza, where he appealed to Israeli rights organizations, and as a British citizen to the British consulate and to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the Quartet's Middle East envoy, for the right to leave Gaza and see his wife and children, if only for a day. The Israeli organizations were unable to help, the consulate was unable to circumvent a wall of Israeli bureaucracy, and Tony Blair chose to ignore our letter calling for assistance. In order to save his job, my dad had to give up hope of being allowed back into the West Bank, and left Gaza through Egypt in December.
At the time that my dad was stripped of his press credentials and work visa, my mother and siblings back in Ramallah were forced to accept their own Israeli-issued ID cards. Incredibly, my mother was given a Gaza ID despite being born abroad, raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her original West Bank ID! She now lives in constant fear of arrest and deportation by Israeli troops; if she were to leave the West Bank she would also be banned from returning to our family and home in Ramallah.
Meanwhile my brother and sister, who were both born in the UK and are now university students, have bizarrely been issued with West Bank ID cards, even though their parents and older brother were given Gaza IDs.
As a result of all of this, our family has been torn apart. My father is finally out of Gaza, but he is unable to see his children unless they travel abroad to meet him. My mother is in the West Bank, afraid to even leave Ramallah and risk being detained and deported at an Israeli army checkpoint. She is unable to leave the West Bank while my father and I are unable to enter. We don't know how long it will be before we can see each other again -- the Israeli authorities have said that they will not change my mother's ID.
Israel has treated my family like criminals for being Palestinians. We have been punished, displaced and deprived from each other's company. Our extended family was torn from its land in 1948 and expelled to refugee camps. In the 1990s, Israel's policy of closure solidified our separation, particularly from my father's side in Gaza. Now Israel's racist and draconian demographic policies have separated my parents, my siblings and myself, just like they separate Jerusalemites who wish to marry other Palestinians from the West Bank, or Palestinian citizens of Israel who are legally barred from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.
This is one of the many faces of the ongoing Nakba today, and I urge more individuals and families who have suffered like this to speak out. The world must realize the true nature of Israeli apartheid, and the cruel separation of families is one more reason why Israel must be boycotted.
Mohammad Alsaafin is from the Palestinian village of Fallujah, ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1949. He was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and lived in the UK and US, before moving back to Palestine to study at Birzeit University.
Israel restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians through the imposition of an ID system. (Anne Paq/ActiveStills.org)
One of the most traumatic effects wrought upon Palestinian society by the 1948 Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine, is the physical separation it forced upon Palestinians, between those in the diaspora and the refugees, between those living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and those who became citizens of Israel. Yet this process is ongoing to this very day, and targets even individual families, like mine. This is our story.
My dad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962, the son of refugees, and left to the United Kingdom along with his wife and first son (myself) in 1990 to pursue his PhD at the University of Bradford. By 2004, I had a brother and two sisters, and our entire family moved back to Palestine, this time to the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. My father was working as a foreign journalist licensed by the Israeli Government Press Office and we were living in our country on yearly renewable Israeli work visas.
In 2005, I was turned back by Israeli border agents at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge as I attempted to cross into Jordan to visit my aunt. The agents told me that since I was born in the Gaza Strip in 1988 I had been issued a Gaza ID by the Israeli occupation authority and was therefore not allowed to legally reside in the West Bank. Additionally, I was informed that from then on, Israel would not recognize my British passport. I was able to return to Ramallah that day, but for the next four years I risked daily arrest by Israeli troops on the way to Birzeit University, where I was studying, and for a year after that while I was working in Ramallah. This summer, I left the West Bank to find work abroad, and was told by the Israelis that I would not be allowed to return home.
Despite this reprehensible situation, the rest of the family was thankfully spared such hardship. My dad continued working relatively unhindered as he moved across what is now Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and my mother and siblings enjoyed freedom of movement across the West Bank and inside Israel. This all changed very suddenly last August when, on a routine trip to Gaza where my dad had several assignments and where he wanted to visit his ailing father, he was detained by Israeli security at the Erez checkpoint, and was harassed, stripped of his press credentials and told -- as I was four years earlier -- that his British passport was worthless in Israel. He was also informed that he too had an Israeli-issued Gaza ID and thus would be treated as a Gazan, deprived of the most basic freedom of choice and movement and barred from ever returning to his wife and children in Ramallah. He was sent into Gaza, where he appealed to Israeli rights organizations, and as a British citizen to the British consulate and to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the Quartet's Middle East envoy, for the right to leave Gaza and see his wife and children, if only for a day. The Israeli organizations were unable to help, the consulate was unable to circumvent a wall of Israeli bureaucracy, and Tony Blair chose to ignore our letter calling for assistance. In order to save his job, my dad had to give up hope of being allowed back into the West Bank, and left Gaza through Egypt in December.
At the time that my dad was stripped of his press credentials and work visa, my mother and siblings back in Ramallah were forced to accept their own Israeli-issued ID cards. Incredibly, my mother was given a Gaza ID despite being born abroad, raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her original West Bank ID! She now lives in constant fear of arrest and deportation by Israeli troops; if she were to leave the West Bank she would also be banned from returning to our family and home in Ramallah.
Meanwhile my brother and sister, who were both born in the UK and are now university students, have bizarrely been issued with West Bank ID cards, even though their parents and older brother were given Gaza IDs.
As a result of all of this, our family has been torn apart. My father is finally out of Gaza, but he is unable to see his children unless they travel abroad to meet him. My mother is in the West Bank, afraid to even leave Ramallah and risk being detained and deported at an Israeli army checkpoint. She is unable to leave the West Bank while my father and I are unable to enter. We don't know how long it will be before we can see each other again -- the Israeli authorities have said that they will not change my mother's ID.
Israel has treated my family like criminals for being Palestinians. We have been punished, displaced and deprived from each other's company. Our extended family was torn from its land in 1948 and expelled to refugee camps. In the 1990s, Israel's policy of closure solidified our separation, particularly from my father's side in Gaza. Now Israel's racist and draconian demographic policies have separated my parents, my siblings and myself, just like they separate Jerusalemites who wish to marry other Palestinians from the West Bank, or Palestinian citizens of Israel who are legally barred from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.
This is one of the many faces of the ongoing Nakba today, and I urge more individuals and families who have suffered like this to speak out. The world must realize the true nature of Israeli apartheid, and the cruel separation of families is one more reason why Israel must be boycotted.
Mohammad Alsaafin is from the Palestinian village of Fallujah, ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1949. He was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and lived in the UK and US, before moving back to Palestine to study at Birzeit University.
Friday, January 22, 2010
"Jerusalem is in danger"
Nimer Sultany, The Electronic Intifada, 21 January 2010
Israeli authorities have attempted to silence Sheikh Raed Salah (center) through physical violence, movement restrictions and jail time. (Meged Gozani/Activestills.org)
Once again, Israel resorts to show trials. Sheikh Raed Salah, a prominent political and religious leader of the Palestinian minority, was sentenced on 13 January by an Israeli court to nine months of imprisonment. This is his second conviction in recent years. This time the allegation was that he assaulted a policeman and obstructed police work during a demonstration at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The legal jargon notwithstanding, the persecution of Salah is part and parcel of two processes already underway -- the crackdown on Arab leaders and political activists inside Israel and the Israeli campaign for creating facts on the ground in Jerusalem to entrench the illegal occupation.
Indeed, in recent years Israel has been intensifying its Judaization of Jerusalem by building new Jewish neighborhoods, evicting Arab families from their homes, house demolitions, refusing to grant building permits to Palestinian Jerusalemites to force them to leave, stripping them of their residence status under dubious excuses, isolating Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and restricting the numbers and ages of Palestinians allowed to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque.
The attempt to change the geography and demography of Jerusalem has been a relentless Israeli project since the occupation of the city in 1967 and its subsequent de jure annexation. While this "legal" annexation has been rejected by the international community as a violation of international law, action has been limited to verbal protests and condemnation.
This project shows that Israel is making genuine efforts to undermine peace prospects by complicating the core issues. By unilaterally precluding certain options and transforming Palestinian legitimate aspirations into unrealistic fantasies these policies render any negotiations futile and add to the absurdity of the defunct "peace process." The gravity of these policies is only magnified when one takes into account the expansive Israeli territorial understanding of "Jerusalem."
The connection between the sheikh and the city is well-known. Salah, who has been prevented by Israeli orders from entering Jerusalem in recent months and has been prevented by other orders from leaving the country, has actively challenged these Israeli policies. When Israel restricted West Bankers from visiting al-Aqsa, Salah brought thousands of Palestinian citizens to pray in the mosque and visit Jerusalem. When Israel performed excavations in the al-Aqsa surroundings, Salah and his followers were the first to protest. When Israeli extremists announced their plans for the destruction of al-Aqsa mosque, Salah held rallies to raise awareness. When Israel tried to separate the Palestinian citizens from their brethren in the occupied territories, Salah and his movement organized aid to the latter. In short, Salah turned al-Aqsa into a rallying cry to defend the Arab and Islamic identity of Jerusalem and Palestine -- an identity that Israel is denying and trying to erase.
Salah has also a vision for the empowerment of the Palestinian citizens, calling them the "self-sufficient society." Salah, who was the mayor of one of the largest Arab communities inside Israel, reached the conclusion that there is a need to build civil society institutions to proffer the social services that the state has failed to provide. This need arises given the collective, systematic and long-standing discrimination against the Palestinian minority.
Given this backdrop, and given Salah's vocal opposition to the Israeli practices in the occupied territories, it is no wonder that Israel is trying to criminalize his political activity, silence him, restrict his movement and deter his community. The transformation of ideological struggles into legal proceedings in court rooms is an old trick. It is an attempt to avoid political contestation and public dialogue on Israeli taboos. It is an attempt to stigmatize the opponents of the regime as outlaws.
It is hard to conceal the political nature of Salah's trial, however. Salah, the head of the extra-parliamentary Islamic movement, has been identified by the security apparatus as a threat to the ideology of the state and was the target of several physical assaults by policemen, and was even shot in October 2000. Some of his movement's nongovernmental organizations were closed by military orders and their newspaper was subject to temporary closure orders. And he has been repeatedly demonized in the Israeli media for more than a decade.
Thus, it is hard to believe that in the Israeli judicial system, which disproportionately convicts more Arabs than Jews, an average judge would look impartially at this pious, yet politically active, Muslim. Indeed, the judge could not help himself but express in the ruling his dislike of Salah's facial expressions during the trial. Salah, then, was supposed to respect the mockery of justice masquerading as law.
This is by no means the only irony at work. Facing a group of "witnesses" from the police force, Salah's testimony had no chance. While Salah is going to prison, Israeli policemen who killed 13 Arab demonstrators in October 2000 remain at large. In show trials like these, in which the legal outcome is predictable, the legal system becomes no more than a tool at the hands of the establishment to advance its ideological goals.
Israel hopes that its silencing of a prominent voice of protest will advance its goals towards the colonization of Palestine in general and the Judaization of Jerusalem in particular. However, the intensification of oppression invites an intensification of protest. Thus, Israel's moves will bring peace neither inside nor outside its 1967 borders.
As the Israeli crackdown on Palestinian activists increases, it becomes necessary for all those who care about freedom, equality and justice to voice their protest as well. Indeed, as Salah would say, "Jerusalem is in danger."
Israeli authorities have attempted to silence Sheikh Raed Salah (center) through physical violence, movement restrictions and jail time. (Meged Gozani/Activestills.org)
Once again, Israel resorts to show trials. Sheikh Raed Salah, a prominent political and religious leader of the Palestinian minority, was sentenced on 13 January by an Israeli court to nine months of imprisonment. This is his second conviction in recent years. This time the allegation was that he assaulted a policeman and obstructed police work during a demonstration at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The legal jargon notwithstanding, the persecution of Salah is part and parcel of two processes already underway -- the crackdown on Arab leaders and political activists inside Israel and the Israeli campaign for creating facts on the ground in Jerusalem to entrench the illegal occupation.
Indeed, in recent years Israel has been intensifying its Judaization of Jerusalem by building new Jewish neighborhoods, evicting Arab families from their homes, house demolitions, refusing to grant building permits to Palestinian Jerusalemites to force them to leave, stripping them of their residence status under dubious excuses, isolating Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and restricting the numbers and ages of Palestinians allowed to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque.
The attempt to change the geography and demography of Jerusalem has been a relentless Israeli project since the occupation of the city in 1967 and its subsequent de jure annexation. While this "legal" annexation has been rejected by the international community as a violation of international law, action has been limited to verbal protests and condemnation.
This project shows that Israel is making genuine efforts to undermine peace prospects by complicating the core issues. By unilaterally precluding certain options and transforming Palestinian legitimate aspirations into unrealistic fantasies these policies render any negotiations futile and add to the absurdity of the defunct "peace process." The gravity of these policies is only magnified when one takes into account the expansive Israeli territorial understanding of "Jerusalem."
The connection between the sheikh and the city is well-known. Salah, who has been prevented by Israeli orders from entering Jerusalem in recent months and has been prevented by other orders from leaving the country, has actively challenged these Israeli policies. When Israel restricted West Bankers from visiting al-Aqsa, Salah brought thousands of Palestinian citizens to pray in the mosque and visit Jerusalem. When Israel performed excavations in the al-Aqsa surroundings, Salah and his followers were the first to protest. When Israeli extremists announced their plans for the destruction of al-Aqsa mosque, Salah held rallies to raise awareness. When Israel tried to separate the Palestinian citizens from their brethren in the occupied territories, Salah and his movement organized aid to the latter. In short, Salah turned al-Aqsa into a rallying cry to defend the Arab and Islamic identity of Jerusalem and Palestine -- an identity that Israel is denying and trying to erase.
Salah has also a vision for the empowerment of the Palestinian citizens, calling them the "self-sufficient society." Salah, who was the mayor of one of the largest Arab communities inside Israel, reached the conclusion that there is a need to build civil society institutions to proffer the social services that the state has failed to provide. This need arises given the collective, systematic and long-standing discrimination against the Palestinian minority.
Given this backdrop, and given Salah's vocal opposition to the Israeli practices in the occupied territories, it is no wonder that Israel is trying to criminalize his political activity, silence him, restrict his movement and deter his community. The transformation of ideological struggles into legal proceedings in court rooms is an old trick. It is an attempt to avoid political contestation and public dialogue on Israeli taboos. It is an attempt to stigmatize the opponents of the regime as outlaws.
It is hard to conceal the political nature of Salah's trial, however. Salah, the head of the extra-parliamentary Islamic movement, has been identified by the security apparatus as a threat to the ideology of the state and was the target of several physical assaults by policemen, and was even shot in October 2000. Some of his movement's nongovernmental organizations were closed by military orders and their newspaper was subject to temporary closure orders. And he has been repeatedly demonized in the Israeli media for more than a decade.
Thus, it is hard to believe that in the Israeli judicial system, which disproportionately convicts more Arabs than Jews, an average judge would look impartially at this pious, yet politically active, Muslim. Indeed, the judge could not help himself but express in the ruling his dislike of Salah's facial expressions during the trial. Salah, then, was supposed to respect the mockery of justice masquerading as law.
This is by no means the only irony at work. Facing a group of "witnesses" from the police force, Salah's testimony had no chance. While Salah is going to prison, Israeli policemen who killed 13 Arab demonstrators in October 2000 remain at large. In show trials like these, in which the legal outcome is predictable, the legal system becomes no more than a tool at the hands of the establishment to advance its ideological goals.
Israel hopes that its silencing of a prominent voice of protest will advance its goals towards the colonization of Palestine in general and the Judaization of Jerusalem in particular. However, the intensification of oppression invites an intensification of protest. Thus, Israel's moves will bring peace neither inside nor outside its 1967 borders.
As the Israeli crackdown on Palestinian activists increases, it becomes necessary for all those who care about freedom, equality and justice to voice their protest as well. Indeed, as Salah would say, "Jerusalem is in danger."
Thursday, January 21, 2010
"Humanity cannot be divided": Gaza shows solidarity with Haiti
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 20 January 2010
The relatives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails gather symbolic donations in solidarity with earthquake-stricken Haiti, 18 January 2010. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)
"We have been living a man-made disaster actually for the past 62 years," said Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, a chairman of the Gaza-based Committee to Break the Siege. "We would like to send out a message of solidarity to the people of Haiti, who are now facing a natural disaster. Despite the harsh conditions Gaza people live under here -- the Israeli blockade and military actions -- people here sent symbolic assistance to their brothers and sisters in Haiti."
The committee collected a a symbolic amount of food and some cash donations for earthquake-stricken Haiti, where tens of thousands have been killed and countless others were injured and displaced.
Here in Gaza, the Israeli occupation's measures -- including the blockade that has been imposed for more than two and a half years now -- have had their own devastating impact.
"As a humanitarian worker here, I can say that it has been really amazing to see that some needy people including women and children wanting to deliver food, toys, clothes and cash to disaster-affected people in Haiti. The scene in front of the office for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza was really amazing," Gaza City resident Hussam al-Madhoun told The Electronic Intifada.
However, for some in Gaza, the lack of attention paid by the "international community" to their plight leaves a bitter taste.
Fatima al-Helou, a mother of three children, expressed her full solidarity for those currently suffering in the impoverished island but added, "I think that the world that is now supporting the Haiti region, should also help Gazans get rid of a three-year-old Israeli siege on Gaza. Humanity cannot be divided. I definitely sympathize with those currently suffering in Haiti, but I also call upon the international community to help me, for I am suffering as well."
Since June 2007, Israel has enforced a nearly hermetic closure of Gaza's border crossings, preventing the free movement of both people and goods, only opening the border intermittently. According to international aid agencies, Israel has allowed only 42 trucks of raw building materials into the coastal enclave during 2009, despite that several thousand homes, governmental buildings, schools and mosques were destroyed during Israel's attack on Gaza last winter. More than 1,400 were killed and thousands more were injured during the three-week-long attack.
Israel's siege has had a devastating impact on Gaza's economy. Ninety-five percent of local industries in the region have been forced to shut down, the unemployment rate has risen to more than 60 percent, while more than 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 residents are dependent on food aid.
Despite Gaza's own dire situation, there are those anxious to show their solidarity and empathy with Haiti.
Yaser al-Yazji, a lawyer with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, said, "We hope to collect [donations] as best as we can to help the people of Haiti. We do feel sad for the people of Haiti as they have been killed or displaced, the way we are being affected by the Israeli occupation. As earthquakes kill or displace thousands of people, the Israeli occupation does the same to us."
The relatives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails gather symbolic donations in solidarity with earthquake-stricken Haiti, 18 January 2010. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)
"We have been living a man-made disaster actually for the past 62 years," said Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, a chairman of the Gaza-based Committee to Break the Siege. "We would like to send out a message of solidarity to the people of Haiti, who are now facing a natural disaster. Despite the harsh conditions Gaza people live under here -- the Israeli blockade and military actions -- people here sent symbolic assistance to their brothers and sisters in Haiti."
The committee collected a a symbolic amount of food and some cash donations for earthquake-stricken Haiti, where tens of thousands have been killed and countless others were injured and displaced.
Here in Gaza, the Israeli occupation's measures -- including the blockade that has been imposed for more than two and a half years now -- have had their own devastating impact.
"As a humanitarian worker here, I can say that it has been really amazing to see that some needy people including women and children wanting to deliver food, toys, clothes and cash to disaster-affected people in Haiti. The scene in front of the office for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza was really amazing," Gaza City resident Hussam al-Madhoun told The Electronic Intifada.
However, for some in Gaza, the lack of attention paid by the "international community" to their plight leaves a bitter taste.
Fatima al-Helou, a mother of three children, expressed her full solidarity for those currently suffering in the impoverished island but added, "I think that the world that is now supporting the Haiti region, should also help Gazans get rid of a three-year-old Israeli siege on Gaza. Humanity cannot be divided. I definitely sympathize with those currently suffering in Haiti, but I also call upon the international community to help me, for I am suffering as well."
Since June 2007, Israel has enforced a nearly hermetic closure of Gaza's border crossings, preventing the free movement of both people and goods, only opening the border intermittently. According to international aid agencies, Israel has allowed only 42 trucks of raw building materials into the coastal enclave during 2009, despite that several thousand homes, governmental buildings, schools and mosques were destroyed during Israel's attack on Gaza last winter. More than 1,400 were killed and thousands more were injured during the three-week-long attack.
Israel's siege has had a devastating impact on Gaza's economy. Ninety-five percent of local industries in the region have been forced to shut down, the unemployment rate has risen to more than 60 percent, while more than 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 residents are dependent on food aid.
Despite Gaza's own dire situation, there are those anxious to show their solidarity and empathy with Haiti.
Yaser al-Yazji, a lawyer with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, said, "We hope to collect [donations] as best as we can to help the people of Haiti. We do feel sad for the people of Haiti as they have been killed or displaced, the way we are being affected by the Israeli occupation. As earthquakes kill or displace thousands of people, the Israeli occupation does the same to us."
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
The United States, Israel and the retreat of freedom
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 14 January 2010
Epitomizing freedom: an Israeli soldier aims a gas grenade launcher at a Palestinian demonstrator in the occupied West Bank. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
The world is suffering from a "freedom recession" according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House ("Freedom in the World 2010," 12 January 2010).
Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as "an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights." Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who's who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government.
Not surprisingly then, Freedom House's report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment -- especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel's supremacy -- than it does about the countries surveyed.
Focusing on two categories of "freedom" -- "civil liberties" and "political rights" -- the report divides the world's 194 countries into three groups: "free" (89), "partly free" (58), and "not free" (47).
Interestingly, Freedom House records "declines in freedom" in "countries that had registered positive trends in previous years, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan." Jordan was one of only six countries to move from the "partly free" category to "not free." What does it say about US "democracy promotion" that Jordan, Bahrain and Kyrgyzstan -- major political and military operating bases for the "war on terror" and US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have become less free as their dependence on the US has increased?
Sadly, while the report frets that "the most powerful authoritarian regimes [such as Russia and China] have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising," it has nothing at all to say about the US role in restricting freedom and spreading mayhem around the world. Sometimes this is truly absurd as the report points to "continued terrorist and insurgent violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen," but fails to note that two of these countries are under direct US military occupation (Afghanistan and Iraq) while the US is intervening militarily in the other three. (The report presents a mixed picture for the US-occupied countries; both are "Not Free" but Iraq allegedly became more free during 2009 and Afghanistan less free.)
Rather than offer any introspection on the inverse relationship between US efforts at global domination on the one hand, and the spread of freedom on the other, the report's overview essay concludes with a call for more vigorous intervention: "The United States and other democracies should take the initiative to meet the authoritarian challenge ..."
Freedom House's approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, "remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free." We are informed euphemistically that "The beginning of the year [2009] was marred by fierce fighting between the Israeli military and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip."
There is no mention of the deliberate targeting by Israel of Gaza's civilian infrastructure and the resulting massive destruction, and death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nothing is said of the denial of fundamental political, civil and human rights, or freedom of movement, association and education to four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no mention of the systematic discrimination, and social and political exclusion faced by 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, nor of the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.
There is an acknowledgment that "Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations against the Gaza conflict, and the parliamentary elections committee passed a measure banning two political parties from national elections, though the ban was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court."
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, "Israel" receives the highest score of "1" for political rights, and a very respectable "2" for civil liberties -- on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary "Western" democracy.
Then on a separate table of "Disputed Territories" we find "Israeli-occupied territories" and "Palestinian Authority-administered territories" both listed. Both are given the designation "Not Free" and nearly the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties. There is no narrative to explain who is responsible for this dire state of affairs. This convenient separation allows for all the ugly realities of what "free" Israel does in the occupied territories to be pushed out of sight and ignored.
But in what scheme can Israel be awarded freest of the free status when for two-thirds of its existence, since 1967, it has ruled directly over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians through violence and repression? The idea that the political regime in Israel's pre-1967 boundaries can be looked at as a "democracy" even while the situation in the occupied territories can be criticized as undemocratic is very widespread among Israelis and American liberals.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has been excoriated (and recently forced to apologize) by the Israel lobby for calling the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "apartheid." Yet even he had simultaneously claimed that within its pre-1967 boundaries, "Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew." True, Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and are accorded civil rights far wider than their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But even Israeli Jews commonly concede that Palestinian citizens suffer systematic and severe disadvantage and total exclusion from key political decisions about the country.
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy -- perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a "Jewish state" with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of "ending the occupation" through a "two-state solution." Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others.
But it is not just the discrimination and limited rights of Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews that undermine the claim that Israel -- considered separately from the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is a democracy. Nor is it even that Israeli settler-citizens in the West Bank have full voting rights for the Israeli parliament while Palestinians in the same territory have none. It is that "Israel" and the "occupied territories" are two sides of the same coin.
Israel's 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.
To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can "freely" elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this "liberal democratic" Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.
Palestinian citizens of Israel -- who form 20 percent of the population within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries -- are, as noted, accorded limited liberal rights. This helps boost Israel's external image as a "wonderful democracy," but if the exercise of these rights ever threatens Jewish domination, they are curtailed. Examples include the constant legal harassment of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and various legislative projects for loyalty oaths or to ban commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. Overwhelming Israeli Jewish opposition to calls by Palestinians in Israel for the country to be a "state of all its citizens" is an indication that Israeli Jews value their own supremacy over democracy.
Israel has sometimes been described as an "ethnocracy" -- a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.
In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel's ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city. (Separately Salah was also sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a 2007 demonstration; a conviction condemned as political persecution by other Palestinian leaders inside Israel.)
Such repression does not only affect non-Jews. The United Nations-commissioned Goldstone report noted "that actions of the Israeli government" within Israel, during and after Israel's invasion of Gaza last winter, "including interrogation of political activists, repression of criticism and sources of potential criticism of Israeli military actions, in particular nongovernmental organizations, have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions in the Occupied Territories is not tolerated."
These means of "internal" repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the "liberal democratic" space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country's black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians -- an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees -- is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled.
As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.
Epitomizing freedom: an Israeli soldier aims a gas grenade launcher at a Palestinian demonstrator in the occupied West Bank. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
The world is suffering from a "freedom recession" according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House ("Freedom in the World 2010," 12 January 2010).
Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as "an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights." Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who's who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government.
Not surprisingly then, Freedom House's report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment -- especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel's supremacy -- than it does about the countries surveyed.
Focusing on two categories of "freedom" -- "civil liberties" and "political rights" -- the report divides the world's 194 countries into three groups: "free" (89), "partly free" (58), and "not free" (47).
Interestingly, Freedom House records "declines in freedom" in "countries that had registered positive trends in previous years, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan." Jordan was one of only six countries to move from the "partly free" category to "not free." What does it say about US "democracy promotion" that Jordan, Bahrain and Kyrgyzstan -- major political and military operating bases for the "war on terror" and US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have become less free as their dependence on the US has increased?
Sadly, while the report frets that "the most powerful authoritarian regimes [such as Russia and China] have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising," it has nothing at all to say about the US role in restricting freedom and spreading mayhem around the world. Sometimes this is truly absurd as the report points to "continued terrorist and insurgent violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen," but fails to note that two of these countries are under direct US military occupation (Afghanistan and Iraq) while the US is intervening militarily in the other three. (The report presents a mixed picture for the US-occupied countries; both are "Not Free" but Iraq allegedly became more free during 2009 and Afghanistan less free.)
Rather than offer any introspection on the inverse relationship between US efforts at global domination on the one hand, and the spread of freedom on the other, the report's overview essay concludes with a call for more vigorous intervention: "The United States and other democracies should take the initiative to meet the authoritarian challenge ..."
Freedom House's approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, "remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free." We are informed euphemistically that "The beginning of the year [2009] was marred by fierce fighting between the Israeli military and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip."
There is no mention of the deliberate targeting by Israel of Gaza's civilian infrastructure and the resulting massive destruction, and death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nothing is said of the denial of fundamental political, civil and human rights, or freedom of movement, association and education to four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no mention of the systematic discrimination, and social and political exclusion faced by 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, nor of the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.
There is an acknowledgment that "Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations against the Gaza conflict, and the parliamentary elections committee passed a measure banning two political parties from national elections, though the ban was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court."
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, "Israel" receives the highest score of "1" for political rights, and a very respectable "2" for civil liberties -- on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary "Western" democracy.
Then on a separate table of "Disputed Territories" we find "Israeli-occupied territories" and "Palestinian Authority-administered territories" both listed. Both are given the designation "Not Free" and nearly the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties. There is no narrative to explain who is responsible for this dire state of affairs. This convenient separation allows for all the ugly realities of what "free" Israel does in the occupied territories to be pushed out of sight and ignored.
But in what scheme can Israel be awarded freest of the free status when for two-thirds of its existence, since 1967, it has ruled directly over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians through violence and repression? The idea that the political regime in Israel's pre-1967 boundaries can be looked at as a "democracy" even while the situation in the occupied territories can be criticized as undemocratic is very widespread among Israelis and American liberals.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has been excoriated (and recently forced to apologize) by the Israel lobby for calling the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "apartheid." Yet even he had simultaneously claimed that within its pre-1967 boundaries, "Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew." True, Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and are accorded civil rights far wider than their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But even Israeli Jews commonly concede that Palestinian citizens suffer systematic and severe disadvantage and total exclusion from key political decisions about the country.
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy -- perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a "Jewish state" with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of "ending the occupation" through a "two-state solution." Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others.
But it is not just the discrimination and limited rights of Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews that undermine the claim that Israel -- considered separately from the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is a democracy. Nor is it even that Israeli settler-citizens in the West Bank have full voting rights for the Israeli parliament while Palestinians in the same territory have none. It is that "Israel" and the "occupied territories" are two sides of the same coin.
Israel's 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.
To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can "freely" elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this "liberal democratic" Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.
Palestinian citizens of Israel -- who form 20 percent of the population within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries -- are, as noted, accorded limited liberal rights. This helps boost Israel's external image as a "wonderful democracy," but if the exercise of these rights ever threatens Jewish domination, they are curtailed. Examples include the constant legal harassment of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and various legislative projects for loyalty oaths or to ban commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. Overwhelming Israeli Jewish opposition to calls by Palestinians in Israel for the country to be a "state of all its citizens" is an indication that Israeli Jews value their own supremacy over democracy.
Israel has sometimes been described as an "ethnocracy" -- a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.
In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel's ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city. (Separately Salah was also sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a 2007 demonstration; a conviction condemned as political persecution by other Palestinian leaders inside Israel.)
Such repression does not only affect non-Jews. The United Nations-commissioned Goldstone report noted "that actions of the Israeli government" within Israel, during and after Israel's invasion of Gaza last winter, "including interrogation of political activists, repression of criticism and sources of potential criticism of Israeli military actions, in particular nongovernmental organizations, have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions in the Occupied Territories is not tolerated."
These means of "internal" repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the "liberal democratic" space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country's black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians -- an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees -- is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled.
As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.
Monday, January 11, 2010
ALL OUT AGAINST THE 2010 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES!
ALL OUT AGAINST THE 2010 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES! The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. We call on all anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents. We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games. * BASIC SCHEDULE: The basic plan thus far is: - Conference and People’s Summit on Wed Feb 10- Thurs Feb 11 - Fri Feb 12: Take Back Our City! “Welcome” the 2010 Olympic Torch with Free Games, Free Speech, and Free Food! Beginning with a festival at the Vancouver Art Gallery at 3 pm, followed by a parade and protest to BC Place Stadium. Details, including childcare arrangements, at: http://2010welcoming.wordpress.com/
- Autonomous days of action on Sat Feb 13 and Mon Feb 15 including
anti-corporate actions, rallies to oppose militarization, and more.
- On Sun Feb 14th, we will be standing with the 19th Annual Women’s
Memorial March to honour all the missing and murdered and women in the
DTES (this is not an anti-Olympic protest). Details at:
http://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/
We will also be updating our website with additional anti-Olympic events
occurring during the month of February:
http://olympicresistance.net
or
http://no2010.com
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
La Rage - Keny Arkana
La Rage (The Rage) by French female rap artist Keny Arkana. Released in 2006, La Rage refers to global politics and the 2005 riots in the banlieues (ghettos) of Paris which spread to other cities in France:
Keny Arkana is part of La Rage Du Peuple (The Rage of the People), a music collective formed in 2004 in Marseille, activists in the alter-globalization movement.
Gaza and the path to accountability
Sunera Thobani, The Electronic Intifada, 5 January 2010
Sunera Thobani teaches Women's Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (University of Toronto Press: 2007). She traveled to Gaza in September 2009 with the Rachel Corrie Foundation Delegation.
(Hatem Omar/MaanImages)
By protecting Israel from accountability for its war crimes in Gaza, the US, UK and Canadian governments are also ensuring their own impunity.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs David Milliband acted swiftly to withdraw the warrant for the arrest of former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, one of the architects of last winter's Israeli attack on Gaza. A British magistrate issued the warrant under universal jurisdiction laws in response to allegations of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. This prompted Brown to phone Livni and assure her she was "welcome" in Britain, and Milliband stated his government's intention to remove the power of UK magistrates to issue any such future warrants against Israeli politicians.
As foreign minister, Livni used the Israeli-dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" to brand herself as an astute politician who would ride to power on the bodies of dead Palestinians. She became a media darling in the West, and the Gaza attack was to be the ticket to her rise to prime minister. However, although the attack killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and wounded thousands more, Livni's political ambitions did not materialize quite as planned. Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman out-hawked her, and the Palestinians are still paying the price for the invasion. Gaza remains under a murderous siege, enforced by the Israelis and backed by its Western allies and Egypt.
A number of reasons have been put forward for the British government's eagerness to protect Israeli politicians from the threat of arrest. These include Britain's staunch support for the State of Israel since its inception; the organizational strength of Zionist lobbies, and in particular, their ability to impact the outcome of electoral politics; and lastly, the desire to avoid being branded anti-Semitic. While these are certainly important considerations, there is yet another pressing concern that has received little attention. This is a concern shared by the Americans and Canadians, and it speaks directly to the specificity of this particular moment in the so-called War on Terror. Indeed, this concern may well eclipse all other considerations for the moment.
The US, UK and Canadian governments are all embroiled in attempts to immunize themselves from accountability under international law for their own actions in the War on Terror. Protecting Israel from international law has therefore acquired an added urgency, not only in the interests of the Zionist regime, but also in the interests of the US and its two staunchest allies in the War on Terror, Britain and Canada, to remain beyond the reach of international law. In other words, if Israeli politicians can successfully be taken to court under international law for committing war crimes, the precedent would greatly embolden attempts to do likewise with American, British and Canadian politicians in relation to their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In September 2009, the UN-mandated Goldstone report on Israel's invasion was released. Placing the treatment of civilian populations at the heart of the investigation, Judge Richard Goldstone, who was the Prosecutor for the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, found Israel's attack on Gaza (as well as specific actions by Palestinian groups, including Hamas) to amount to war crimes. The Israelis refused to cooperate with the Goldstone mission, unlike the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas. Public hearings were held in Gaza. The Goldstone report called for credible independent internal investigations of Israel's actions in Gaza which included: the deliberate bombing of civilian sites (including the Palestinian Legislative Council building, a Gaza prison, two hospitals, shelters and houses); the killing of civilian police forces; the use of mortars to hit "armed" Palestinian groups in the vicinity of large numbers of civilians; the destruction of food production factories, of water and sewage treatment facilities; and the direct killing of civilians. All were deemed violations of international law. In the absence of such independent investigations, the report called for the matter to proceed to the International Criminal Court.
In light of Israel's refusal to cooperate with its mission, the Goldstone report unequivocally stated its "support for reliance on universal jurisdiction" as an avenue for further investigation and action on "grave breaches" of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and to "prevent immunity and promote international accountability." Israel rejected the report's findings, accusing Judge Goldstone -- a Zionist and strong supporter of Israel -- of anti-Israel bias. Other supporters of the report were likewise attacked as being anti-Semitic. The US ambassador to the UN, Dr. Susan Rice, admonished the report's authors, and the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 to call on the Obama Administration to reject it. The Obama Administration has maintained this position and also exerted immense pressure on the Palestinian Authority to withdraw the report from consideration at the General Assembly of the UN. Neither the UK nor Canada supported the Goldstone report.
Many of the acts identified in the Goldstone report as constituting violations of international law are reported to have taken place in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The disproportionate killing of civilians in both countries is being tracked by human rights organizations; civilian sites are regularly reported to have been bombed, and targeted assassinations of "terrorists" are also reported to routinely kill family members of these alleged "terrorists," as well as other bystanders. Collective punishment also seems to be meted out regularly, and the civilian infrastructure has been demolished in many places. There is also the question of the torture of detainees captured, held or transferred by US, British and Canadian forces. Indeed, some legal scholars have questioned the very legality of both the Afghan and Iraq "wars" and occupations.
As the Guardian reported on 26 November 2009, the UK's Chilcot Inquiry recently heard that the government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to participate in the American invasion of Iraq a year before it actually took place. Any concern about Saddam Hussein's alleged amassing of weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al-Qaeda were nothing more than a red herring, and in any event, proved to be the result of falsified intelligence reports. Moreover, on 14 November, the Telegraph reported that British soldiers -- men and women -- have been dogged since 2003 with allegations of torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in their custody. Noting that 33 allegations of torture, rape and sexual abuse have surfaced about particular incidents, the Telegraph stated that "a pre-action protocol letter has been served on the [Ministry of Defense]" by a lawyer representing Iraqis subjected to this abuse. It also cited British Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell calling for "formal investigations" into the matter.
Meanwhile, Canadians are mired in their own allegations of complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees. Senior diplomat Richard Colvin testified to a parliamentary committee that many of the Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers were innocent civilians who were most likely abused or tortured by the Afghan authorities to whose custody they were delivered. He has further testified that despite his warnings to the Canadian government about this likelihood, no action was taken by the government to avert this possibility. Malalai Joya, the Afghan Member of Parliament who fled the country after being suspended from that body, has substantiated Colvin's claims. She has also added that many of those tortured and raped were women and children. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on 26 November that Defense Minister Peter McKay and former Chief of Defense Staff General Rick Hillier both denied Colvin's allegations. However, if Colvin's claims are vindicated, it could well be the case that the Canadian government was complicit in the torture and abuse of these detainees under the rules of international law.
If Israel can now be hauled before the International Criminal Court, who might it be next? If Israeli politicians can be arrested by warrants issued under universal jurisdiction, why not officials from the US, Britain and Canada as well? Who knows how quickly and how far things could unravel? If one occupying power could be held liable for war crimes, why not the other occupying powers who may have also engaged in collective punishment, in the destruction of civilian infrastructure, in the torture and killing of civilians? Where might it all end?
In seeking to protect Israel from the Goldstone report and Israeli politicians from the threat of arrest in the UK, the British, American and Canadian governments might well be engaged in a battle to save their own skins in the face of an emboldened legal activism. Gaza may well be the gateway to anti-imperialist accountability in the 21st century.
Sunera Thobani teaches Women's Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (University of Toronto Press: 2007). She traveled to Gaza in September 2009 with the Rachel Corrie Foundation Delegation.
(Hatem Omar/MaanImages)
By protecting Israel from accountability for its war crimes in Gaza, the US, UK and Canadian governments are also ensuring their own impunity.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs David Milliband acted swiftly to withdraw the warrant for the arrest of former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, one of the architects of last winter's Israeli attack on Gaza. A British magistrate issued the warrant under universal jurisdiction laws in response to allegations of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. This prompted Brown to phone Livni and assure her she was "welcome" in Britain, and Milliband stated his government's intention to remove the power of UK magistrates to issue any such future warrants against Israeli politicians.
As foreign minister, Livni used the Israeli-dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" to brand herself as an astute politician who would ride to power on the bodies of dead Palestinians. She became a media darling in the West, and the Gaza attack was to be the ticket to her rise to prime minister. However, although the attack killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and wounded thousands more, Livni's political ambitions did not materialize quite as planned. Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman out-hawked her, and the Palestinians are still paying the price for the invasion. Gaza remains under a murderous siege, enforced by the Israelis and backed by its Western allies and Egypt.
A number of reasons have been put forward for the British government's eagerness to protect Israeli politicians from the threat of arrest. These include Britain's staunch support for the State of Israel since its inception; the organizational strength of Zionist lobbies, and in particular, their ability to impact the outcome of electoral politics; and lastly, the desire to avoid being branded anti-Semitic. While these are certainly important considerations, there is yet another pressing concern that has received little attention. This is a concern shared by the Americans and Canadians, and it speaks directly to the specificity of this particular moment in the so-called War on Terror. Indeed, this concern may well eclipse all other considerations for the moment.
The US, UK and Canadian governments are all embroiled in attempts to immunize themselves from accountability under international law for their own actions in the War on Terror. Protecting Israel from international law has therefore acquired an added urgency, not only in the interests of the Zionist regime, but also in the interests of the US and its two staunchest allies in the War on Terror, Britain and Canada, to remain beyond the reach of international law. In other words, if Israeli politicians can successfully be taken to court under international law for committing war crimes, the precedent would greatly embolden attempts to do likewise with American, British and Canadian politicians in relation to their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In September 2009, the UN-mandated Goldstone report on Israel's invasion was released. Placing the treatment of civilian populations at the heart of the investigation, Judge Richard Goldstone, who was the Prosecutor for the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, found Israel's attack on Gaza (as well as specific actions by Palestinian groups, including Hamas) to amount to war crimes. The Israelis refused to cooperate with the Goldstone mission, unlike the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas. Public hearings were held in Gaza. The Goldstone report called for credible independent internal investigations of Israel's actions in Gaza which included: the deliberate bombing of civilian sites (including the Palestinian Legislative Council building, a Gaza prison, two hospitals, shelters and houses); the killing of civilian police forces; the use of mortars to hit "armed" Palestinian groups in the vicinity of large numbers of civilians; the destruction of food production factories, of water and sewage treatment facilities; and the direct killing of civilians. All were deemed violations of international law. In the absence of such independent investigations, the report called for the matter to proceed to the International Criminal Court.
In light of Israel's refusal to cooperate with its mission, the Goldstone report unequivocally stated its "support for reliance on universal jurisdiction" as an avenue for further investigation and action on "grave breaches" of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and to "prevent immunity and promote international accountability." Israel rejected the report's findings, accusing Judge Goldstone -- a Zionist and strong supporter of Israel -- of anti-Israel bias. Other supporters of the report were likewise attacked as being anti-Semitic. The US ambassador to the UN, Dr. Susan Rice, admonished the report's authors, and the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 to call on the Obama Administration to reject it. The Obama Administration has maintained this position and also exerted immense pressure on the Palestinian Authority to withdraw the report from consideration at the General Assembly of the UN. Neither the UK nor Canada supported the Goldstone report.
Many of the acts identified in the Goldstone report as constituting violations of international law are reported to have taken place in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The disproportionate killing of civilians in both countries is being tracked by human rights organizations; civilian sites are regularly reported to have been bombed, and targeted assassinations of "terrorists" are also reported to routinely kill family members of these alleged "terrorists," as well as other bystanders. Collective punishment also seems to be meted out regularly, and the civilian infrastructure has been demolished in many places. There is also the question of the torture of detainees captured, held or transferred by US, British and Canadian forces. Indeed, some legal scholars have questioned the very legality of both the Afghan and Iraq "wars" and occupations.
As the Guardian reported on 26 November 2009, the UK's Chilcot Inquiry recently heard that the government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to participate in the American invasion of Iraq a year before it actually took place. Any concern about Saddam Hussein's alleged amassing of weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al-Qaeda were nothing more than a red herring, and in any event, proved to be the result of falsified intelligence reports. Moreover, on 14 November, the Telegraph reported that British soldiers -- men and women -- have been dogged since 2003 with allegations of torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in their custody. Noting that 33 allegations of torture, rape and sexual abuse have surfaced about particular incidents, the Telegraph stated that "a pre-action protocol letter has been served on the [Ministry of Defense]" by a lawyer representing Iraqis subjected to this abuse. It also cited British Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell calling for "formal investigations" into the matter.
Meanwhile, Canadians are mired in their own allegations of complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees. Senior diplomat Richard Colvin testified to a parliamentary committee that many of the Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers were innocent civilians who were most likely abused or tortured by the Afghan authorities to whose custody they were delivered. He has further testified that despite his warnings to the Canadian government about this likelihood, no action was taken by the government to avert this possibility. Malalai Joya, the Afghan Member of Parliament who fled the country after being suspended from that body, has substantiated Colvin's claims. She has also added that many of those tortured and raped were women and children. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on 26 November that Defense Minister Peter McKay and former Chief of Defense Staff General Rick Hillier both denied Colvin's allegations. However, if Colvin's claims are vindicated, it could well be the case that the Canadian government was complicit in the torture and abuse of these detainees under the rules of international law.
If Israel can now be hauled before the International Criminal Court, who might it be next? If Israeli politicians can be arrested by warrants issued under universal jurisdiction, why not officials from the US, Britain and Canada as well? Who knows how quickly and how far things could unravel? If one occupying power could be held liable for war crimes, why not the other occupying powers who may have also engaged in collective punishment, in the destruction of civilian infrastructure, in the torture and killing of civilians? Where might it all end?
In seeking to protect Israel from the Goldstone report and Israeli politicians from the threat of arrest in the UK, the British, American and Canadian governments might well be engaged in a battle to save their own skins in the face of an emboldened legal activism. Gaza may well be the gateway to anti-imperialist accountability in the 21st century.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Israel resembles a failed state
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2009
(Nidal El-Khairy)
One year has passed since the savage Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, but for the people there time might as well have stood still.
Since Palestinians in Gaza buried their loved ones -- more than 1,400 persons, almost 400 of them children -- there has been little healing and virtually no reconstruction.
According to international aid agencies, only 41 trucks of building supplies have been allowed into Gaza during the year.
Promises of billions made at a donors' conference in Egypt last March attended by luminaries of the so-called "international community" and the Middle East peace process industry are unfulfilled, and the Israeli siege, supported by the US, the European Union, Arab states, and tacitly by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, continues.
Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: of Gaza's 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed.
Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 percent were damaged or destroyed.
Ninety percent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for four to eight hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade.
Forty-six percent of Gaza's once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza's exports of more than 130,000 tons per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero.
That "much of Gaza still lies in ruins," a coalition of international aid agencies stated recently, "is not an accident; it is a matter of policy."
This policy has been clear all along and it has nothing to do with Israeli "security."
From 19 June 2008, to 4 November 2008, calm prevailed between Israel and Gaza, as Hamas adhered strictly -- as even Israel has acknowledged -- to a negotiated ceasefire.
That ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched a surprise attack on Gaza killing six persons, after which Hamas and other resistance factions retaliated.
Even so, Palestinian factions were still willing to renew the ceasefire, but it was Israel that refused, choosing instead to launch a premeditated, systematic attack on the foundations of civilized life in the Gaza Strip.
Operation Cast Lead, as Israel dubbed it, was an attempt to destroy once and for all Palestinian resistance in general, and Hamas in particular, which had won the 2006 election and survived the blockade and numerous US-sponsored attempts to undermine and overthrow it in cooperation with US-backed Palestinian militias.
Like the murderous sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s, the blockade of Gaza was calculated to deprive civilians of basic necessities, rights and dignity in the hope that their suffering might force their leadership to surrender or collapse.
In many respects things may seem more dire than a year ago.
Barack Obama, the US president, whom many hoped would change the vicious anti-Palestinian policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, has instead entrenched them as even the pretense of a serious peace effort has vanished.
According to media reports, the US Army Corps of Engineers is assisting Egypt in building an underground wall on its border with Gaza to block the tunnels which act as a lifeline for the besieged territory (resources and efforts that ought to go into rebuilding still hurricane-devastated New Orleans), and American weapons continue to flow to West Bank militias engaged in a US- and Israeli-sponsored civil war against Hamas and anyone else who might resist Israeli occupation and colonization.
These facts are inescapable and bleak.
However, to focus on them alone would be to miss a much more dynamic situation that suggests Israel's power and impunity are not as invulnerable as they appear from this snapshot.
A year after Israel's attack and after more than two-and-a-half years of blockade, the Palestinian people in Gaza have not surrendered. Instead they have offered the world lessons in steadfastness and dignity, even at an appalling, unimaginable cost.
It is true that the European Union leaders who came to occupied Jerusalem last January to publicly embrace Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister -- while white phosphorus seared the flesh of Gazan children and bodies lay under the rubble -- still cower before their respective Israel lobbies, as do American and Canadian politicians.
But the shift in public opinion is palpable as Israel's own actions transform it into a pariah whose driving forces are not the liberal democratic values with which it claims to identify, but ultra-nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism, settler-colonialism and a Jewish supremacist order maintained by frequent massacres.
The universalist cause of justice and liberation for Palestinians is gaining adherents and momentum especially among the young. I witnessed it, for example, among Malaysian students I met at a Palestine solidarity conference held by the Union of NGOs of The Islamic World in Istanbul last May, and again in November as hundreds of student organizers from across the US and Canada converged to plan their participation in the global Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the successful struggle against South African apartheid in the 1980s.
This week, thousands of people from dozens of countries are attempting to reach Gaza to break the siege and march alongside Palestinians who have been organizing inside the territory.
Each of the individuals traveling with the Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, or other delegations represents perhaps hundreds of others who could not make the journey in person, and who are marking the event with demonstrations and commemorations, visits to their elected officials and media campaigns.
Against this flowering of activism, Zionism is struggling to rejuvenate its dwindling base of support. Multi-million dollar programs aimed at recruiting and Zionizing young American Jews are struggling to compete against organizations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which run not on money but principled commitment to human equality.
Increasingly, we see that Israel's hasbara (propaganda) efforts have no positive message, offer no plausible case for maintaining a status quo of unspeakable repression and violence, and rely instead on racist demonization and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims to justify Israel's actions and even its very existence.
Faced with growing global recognition and support for the courageous nonviolent struggle against continued land theft in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its violence and kidnapping of leaders of the movement in Bilin and other villages (Mohammad Othman, Jamal Juma' and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh are among the leaders of this movement recently arrested).
In acting this way, Israel increasingly resembles a bankrupt failed state, not a regime confident about its legitimacy and longevity.
And despite the failed peace process industry's efforts to ridicule, suppress and marginalize it, there is a growing debate among Palestinians and even among Israelis about a shared future in Palestine/Israel based on equality and decolonization, rather than ethno-national segregation and forced repartition.
Last, but certainly not least, in the shadow of the Goldstone report, Israeli leaders travel around the world fearing arrest for their crimes.
For now, they can rely on the impunity that high-level international complicity and their inertial power and influence still afford them. But the question for the real international community -- made up of people and movements -- is whether we want to continue to see the still very incomplete system of international law and justice painstakingly built since the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust dismantled and corrupted all for the sake of one rogue state.
What we have done in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine is not yet enough. But our movement is growing, it cannot be stopped, and we will reach our destination.
(Nidal El-Khairy)
One year has passed since the savage Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, but for the people there time might as well have stood still.
Since Palestinians in Gaza buried their loved ones -- more than 1,400 persons, almost 400 of them children -- there has been little healing and virtually no reconstruction.
According to international aid agencies, only 41 trucks of building supplies have been allowed into Gaza during the year.
Promises of billions made at a donors' conference in Egypt last March attended by luminaries of the so-called "international community" and the Middle East peace process industry are unfulfilled, and the Israeli siege, supported by the US, the European Union, Arab states, and tacitly by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, continues.
Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: of Gaza's 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed.
Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 percent were damaged or destroyed.
Ninety percent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for four to eight hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade.
Forty-six percent of Gaza's once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza's exports of more than 130,000 tons per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero.
That "much of Gaza still lies in ruins," a coalition of international aid agencies stated recently, "is not an accident; it is a matter of policy."
This policy has been clear all along and it has nothing to do with Israeli "security."
From 19 June 2008, to 4 November 2008, calm prevailed between Israel and Gaza, as Hamas adhered strictly -- as even Israel has acknowledged -- to a negotiated ceasefire.
That ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched a surprise attack on Gaza killing six persons, after which Hamas and other resistance factions retaliated.
Even so, Palestinian factions were still willing to renew the ceasefire, but it was Israel that refused, choosing instead to launch a premeditated, systematic attack on the foundations of civilized life in the Gaza Strip.
Operation Cast Lead, as Israel dubbed it, was an attempt to destroy once and for all Palestinian resistance in general, and Hamas in particular, which had won the 2006 election and survived the blockade and numerous US-sponsored attempts to undermine and overthrow it in cooperation with US-backed Palestinian militias.
Like the murderous sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s, the blockade of Gaza was calculated to deprive civilians of basic necessities, rights and dignity in the hope that their suffering might force their leadership to surrender or collapse.
In many respects things may seem more dire than a year ago.
Barack Obama, the US president, whom many hoped would change the vicious anti-Palestinian policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, has instead entrenched them as even the pretense of a serious peace effort has vanished.
According to media reports, the US Army Corps of Engineers is assisting Egypt in building an underground wall on its border with Gaza to block the tunnels which act as a lifeline for the besieged territory (resources and efforts that ought to go into rebuilding still hurricane-devastated New Orleans), and American weapons continue to flow to West Bank militias engaged in a US- and Israeli-sponsored civil war against Hamas and anyone else who might resist Israeli occupation and colonization.
These facts are inescapable and bleak.
However, to focus on them alone would be to miss a much more dynamic situation that suggests Israel's power and impunity are not as invulnerable as they appear from this snapshot.
A year after Israel's attack and after more than two-and-a-half years of blockade, the Palestinian people in Gaza have not surrendered. Instead they have offered the world lessons in steadfastness and dignity, even at an appalling, unimaginable cost.
It is true that the European Union leaders who came to occupied Jerusalem last January to publicly embrace Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister -- while white phosphorus seared the flesh of Gazan children and bodies lay under the rubble -- still cower before their respective Israel lobbies, as do American and Canadian politicians.
But the shift in public opinion is palpable as Israel's own actions transform it into a pariah whose driving forces are not the liberal democratic values with which it claims to identify, but ultra-nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism, settler-colonialism and a Jewish supremacist order maintained by frequent massacres.
The universalist cause of justice and liberation for Palestinians is gaining adherents and momentum especially among the young. I witnessed it, for example, among Malaysian students I met at a Palestine solidarity conference held by the Union of NGOs of The Islamic World in Istanbul last May, and again in November as hundreds of student organizers from across the US and Canada converged to plan their participation in the global Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the successful struggle against South African apartheid in the 1980s.
This week, thousands of people from dozens of countries are attempting to reach Gaza to break the siege and march alongside Palestinians who have been organizing inside the territory.
Each of the individuals traveling with the Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, or other delegations represents perhaps hundreds of others who could not make the journey in person, and who are marking the event with demonstrations and commemorations, visits to their elected officials and media campaigns.
Against this flowering of activism, Zionism is struggling to rejuvenate its dwindling base of support. Multi-million dollar programs aimed at recruiting and Zionizing young American Jews are struggling to compete against organizations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which run not on money but principled commitment to human equality.
Increasingly, we see that Israel's hasbara (propaganda) efforts have no positive message, offer no plausible case for maintaining a status quo of unspeakable repression and violence, and rely instead on racist demonization and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims to justify Israel's actions and even its very existence.
Faced with growing global recognition and support for the courageous nonviolent struggle against continued land theft in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its violence and kidnapping of leaders of the movement in Bilin and other villages (Mohammad Othman, Jamal Juma' and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh are among the leaders of this movement recently arrested).
In acting this way, Israel increasingly resembles a bankrupt failed state, not a regime confident about its legitimacy and longevity.
And despite the failed peace process industry's efforts to ridicule, suppress and marginalize it, there is a growing debate among Palestinians and even among Israelis about a shared future in Palestine/Israel based on equality and decolonization, rather than ethno-national segregation and forced repartition.
Last, but certainly not least, in the shadow of the Goldstone report, Israeli leaders travel around the world fearing arrest for their crimes.
For now, they can rely on the impunity that high-level international complicity and their inertial power and influence still afford them. But the question for the real international community -- made up of people and movements -- is whether we want to continue to see the still very incomplete system of international law and justice painstakingly built since the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust dismantled and corrupted all for the sake of one rogue state.
What we have done in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine is not yet enough. But our movement is growing, it cannot be stopped, and we will reach our destination.
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