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Israel’s contemptuous response to Goldstone findings

By Sayed Dhansay, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010
Israel’s investigation into the war crimes committed during the assault on Gaza, including the killing of 320 children, lacks credibility. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

After Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza last winter, the UN-commissioned Goldstone fact-finding team and subsequent report accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Released in September 2009, the Goldstone report recommended that both parties conduct impartial, independent investigations into these accusations within six months, failing which, the matter would be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

While both parties to the conflict were cited for possible war crimes, the Goldstone report reserved the majority of its condemnation for Israel because of the vast difference in casualties on the two sides — more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, and 13 Israelis. Four Israeli civilians were killed by rocket fire from Gaza, while more than 900 unarmed Palestinian civilians, including some 320 children, were massacred in Gaza.

Submitted to the UN on 29 January, the Israeli government’s response falls far short of a credible investigation however, and continues Israel’s long-standing policy of refusal to investigate and convict those responsible for crimes committed during its military campaigns.

A fundamental flaw of this “investigation” is that Israel has a military justice system for its armed forces. As stated in the report, Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps is “responsible for enforcing the rule of law throughout the IDF [Israeli military].” The three main organs of Israel’s military justice system are the Military Advocate General’s Corps, the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) and the Military Courts — all branches of the Israeli military.

While the Israeli government’s report goes to great lengths to argue that these bodies are “professionally independent” of the armed forces, the fact remains that they are all part of Israel’s overall military establishment, and therefore share a common interest. Furthermore, the fact that Israel’s military courts are located in military bases raises great doubt over whether the same rules of evidence and due process apply as would in public civilian criminal proceedings. Indeed, many human rights organizations have documented that Israel’s military court system does not come close to respecting international norms of justice.

This situation creates a clear conflict of interest, and practically renders the impartiality of such an investigation impossible — the Israeli military is certainly not going to incriminate and punish itself and its leaders. The final decision to institute criminal investigations regarding all complaints against the army rests with the Military Advocate General (MAG). The indisputable bias created by this self-regulating system is obvious throughout Israel’s report.

For example, the Israeli report claims that seven separate incidents were investigated in which “a large number of civilians not directly participating in hostilities were harmed.” According to the report, in four of these incidents, the MAG “found no grounds to open a criminal inquiry.” Included in these four incidents are the bombing of senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan’s home, killing Rayyan and 15 other civilians, and the shelling of the house of Dr. Izzedin Abu al-Aish, which resulted in the deaths of his three daughters and niece. The remaining three incidents are still “undergoing investigation.”

The Israeli government attempts to justify these indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets by claiming that it made thousands of phone calls and dropped leaflets on areas in which the army was operating. The Goldstone report found however that due to the deep shock and widespread damage caused by hundreds of air strikes during the first week of Israel’s campaign, Gaza residents were faced with “the dilemma of not only where to go, but whether it was safe to leave at all.”

The Goldstone report concludes that civilians in Gaza had no objective basis on which to believe that they would be safer elsewhere, because many of the central areas which Israel had instructed civilians to move toward, had suffered “intense aerial bombardment and destruction.”

On 15 January 2009, Gaza City’s al-Quds Hospital was struck by a number of white phosphorous shells. The ensuing fires caused widespread panic and chaos among the sick and wounded, necessitated two evacuations of the hospital under extremely perilous conditions and caused huge financial losses. As a result of the destruction of the hospital’s infrastructure, an eight-year-old girl who had been shot by an Israeli sniper could not receive the requisite care and died. Contrary to claims made by the Israeli government, the Goldstone commission found no evidence that Palestinian resistance fighters used the hospital’s premises to launch attacks against Israeli forces.

The Goldstone report also notes the destruction of three ambulances by Israeli tank fire and heavy damage to a nearby ambulance depot in the same attack. It concludes that by using white phosphorous to directly attack a civilian hospital and ambulances, the Israeli military breached the Fourth Geneva Convention, and violated international law.

The Israeli report devotes just one line to these allegations. While it mentions that there were allegations of ten incidents of its forces opening fire on medical facilities and buildings, it simply concludes that “the MAG found no basis to order criminal investigations of the ten incidents under review.”

Although the Goldstone report notes that white phosphorous is not proscribed under international law for concealing troop movements, the commission labeled Israel’s repeated use of the substance on civilian targets as “reckless.” After noting the horrific injuries and number of deaths caused by its use in Gaza, the commission actually called for serious consideration to be given to banning white phosphorous as an obscurant.

The Israeli government initially repeatedly denied that its armed forces were using white phosphorous. Now, the report says rather casually that “The MAG found no grounds to take disciplinary or other measures for the [Israeli military’s] use of weapons containing phosphorous, which involved no violation of the Law of Armed Conflict.”

One of the main incidents detailed in the Goldstone report regarding indiscriminate attacks by Israeli forces against civilians in Gaza is the shelling of al-Fakhura Street in Jabaliya, where the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) had opened a school for fleeing civilians to take refuge. UNRWA confirmed to the Goldstone commission that the Israeli army was “fully aware” that more than 1,300 civilians were taking refuge in the school.

However, on 6 January 2009, four Israeli mortar shells were fired into the street outside the school, killing 35 civilians, including 11 members of the al-Deeb family. Witnesses described scenes of “chaos and carnage” as at least 40 more persons were injured by the blasts, the situation exacerbated by the difficulties in reaching ambulance services at the time. This incident, like several others, is not even mentioned in the Israeli response.

The Goldstone report devotes an entire chapter to Israeli attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza. It finds that Israeli forces were responsible for premeditated and systematic destruction of food production facilities, water and sanitation services and construction industries, thereby violating the civilian population’s fundamental human rights to food security, means of subsistence and adequate housing. The Goldstone report notes that 324 factories were either partially or completely destroyed, resulting in the loss of 40,000 jobs, and notes that none of these attacks were necessary for the achievement of military objectives.

Following a typical pattern, the Israeli response glosses over these accusations with limited detail and factual evidence. It states that of the 34 major incidents discussed in the Goldstone report, only nine are the subject of ongoing criminal investigations by the MPCID, without disclosing which incidents these claims refer to. In its rebuttal of the Goldstone report’s claims that the Israeli army systematically destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, the report states simply: “Regarding certain incidents … the MAG has reviewed the entire record and concluded that there was no basis for a criminal investigation.”

The report then lists three incidents of damage to civilian infrastructure, which it claims were the subject of investigations. The Namar Wells, which supplied more than 25,000 persons with drinking water, were completely destroyed by several Israeli air strikes. The Goldstone commission reported that no evidence existed to suggest that Hamas used the wells for military purposes. The Israeli report claims it to be a legitimate target because it was a “Hamas military compound” and the incident thus unworthy of a criminal investigation.

Similarly, the Israeli report claims that the area surrounding the al-Bader flour mills, one of Gaza’s few remaining food production facilities, was “hit by several tank shells when responding to Hamas fire in the area.” This was proven untrue, when several news outlets reported that a UN bomb disposal team had in fact found the remnants of an MK-82 bomb used by the Israeli Air Force in the mill. This incident was also deemed unworthy of a criminal investigation by the Israelis.

The Hamas investigation, also effectively an internal probe, faces the same issue of lack of impartiality. It should be noted however, that while Israel has the deaths of more than 900 civilians to answer for, Hamas is responsible for four Israeli civilian casualties. Furthermore, Hamas strictly abided by the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire for four months preceding Israel’s attack, drastically reducing rocket fire into the country’s south. This resumed only when the Israeli army broke the ceasefire and assassinated six Hamas members on 5 November 2009, in an attempt to lure the group back into hostilities, thereby justifying its upcoming offensive.

In its conclusion, the Israeli report claims to have launched investigations into 150 separate incidents, including 36 criminal cases. More than one year after the offensive however, there have been no criminal convictions or legal cases of note. Aside from two soldiers who were “disciplined” for exceeding their authority by authorizing the firing of explosive shells in populated areas, the Israeli report makes no other specific mention of guilty verdicts.

Israel’s feeble response to the Goldstone report continues the country’s long and consistent history of impunity and unaccountability regarding serious allegations of war crimes made against it. In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission found Israel “indirectly responsible” for the massacre at the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut the previous year. Ariel Sharon, the architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and then defense minister, was found to bear “personal responsibility” for ignoring and not preventing the massacre. Although he reluctantly resigned as defense minister, he remained in Israel’s Cabinet and would return almost two decades later to become the country’s prime minister, never facing any criminal charges.

And after the Israeli army’s invasion and destruction of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 — which then UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen described as “horrific beyond belief” — and allegations of war crimes from a number of human rights organizations, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send a fact-finding mission to the camp. In another callous move to evade international scrutiny, then Israeli prime minister Sharon arrogantly declared that the composition of the UN team was “unacceptable to Israel.” After failing to twist the UN’s arm on the composition of the team and its terms of reference, Israel prevented its entry into the country.

More recently, after the 2006 shelling of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, the UN Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission led by former South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu. The mission was denied access to Gaza by the Israeli government on three separate occasions. When it finally reached Beit Hanoun almost two years later, the mission concluded that the Israeli attack possibly constituted a war crime. Tutu sharply criticized not only the incident, but also Israel’s “lack of an adequate investigation into the killings.”

The Israeli report into its conduct in Gaza last winter appears to be a haphazard excuse of an investigation, using dual tactics of denial and delay, purely to stave off pressure from the international community. Blatant violations of human rights and humanitarian law are shamelessly denied in the report. In other cases, few details are given about the numerous “ongoing investigations.” The high number of incidents that were merely discarded by the MAG indicates that international standards required for a proper investigation into violations of international law have not been met. Lending further doubt to Israel’s process is the fact that several incidents were not criminally investigated, but probed through internal Israeli army operational debriefings.

The Israeli investigation, conducted without public scrutiny, and entirely within the realm of the army’s structures, lacks credibility, consistency and transparency. An army accused of serious violations of law cannot be expected to impartially investigate itself. Throughout its history, Israel has demonstrated time and again its belligerent disregard for Palestinian human rights and contempt of international law. Its outright refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone commission came as no surprise, and continues a consistent pattern of impunity and unaccountability for egregious war crimes. It is imperative that the international community view the Israeli response to the Goldstone report as a blatant attempt to whitewash its crimes in Gaza, and refer the matter to the ICC without further delay. To do otherwise will only continue to encourage Israeli intransigence and its crimes against the Palestinian people.

Sayed Dhansay is a South African human rights activist and independent freelance writer. He volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2006 and is an organizer of the South African delegation for the Gaza Freedom March. He blogs at http://sayeddhansay.wordpress.com.

Source

February 22, 2010 Posted by | War Crimes | Leave a comment

Montreal Gaza Photo Exposition to Stay Open

CJPME and Cinema du Parc win battle to host Gaza Exposition

CJPME | February 22nd, 2010

Montreal – It was with great satisfaction and relief that Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) received the news Wednesday that its Photo Exposition Human Drama in Gaza would continue until its scheduled closing on Feb. 28th. Around noon, an email from legal representative Lieba Shell advised the management of Cinema du Parc, the exposition host, that after “reviewing its options,” Management Redbourne retracted its previous position and was no longer seeking to close the photo exposition on Gaza. Given the lack of justification for its demand, Redbourne backed down on its request when hundreds of emails of support from the public were received.

Two days earlier, on Monday, Feb. 15th, the real estate management firm owning the shopping center housing the Cinema du Parc – one of whose shareholders is based in Israel – had indeed ordered Cinema du Parc to dismantle the exposition immediately, failing which it threatened to use legal action. Citing a clause in its lease, Redbourne had argued that the Cinema du Parc had violated the terms of the lease with the Photo Exposition. This claim, however, was contradicted by the preceding clause, which clearly mentions the possibility for Cinema to host all kinds of related activities, such as “presentations, meetings, viewing, or other similar activities.” Cinema du Parc had frequently exercised this right in the past, with the hosting of nearly forty exhibitions of a socially progressive nature, without there ever having been a problem in the past. “People should know what happened,” said Thomas Woodley, the President of CJPME.
“Redbourne sought to intimidate the Cinema du Parc into shutting down the Exposition. This behaviour is unacceptable and had absolutely no legal basis. It was clearly a political manoeuvre intended to block access to information regarding the Israeli assault on Gaza last winter, and during which several violations of human rights have been identified.” CJPME had hoped that the dialog around the Exposition would help Canadians grasp the gravity of crimes committed during the Israeli assault, and would facilitate a free public debate on the incidents. CJPME was naturally alarmed when Redbourne, prompted by pro-Israeli voices, sought to shut down this free exchange. As publicized since its inception, Human Drama in Gaza sought to transcend labels and stereotypes, and wanted to help people understand the human catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. The Exposition aimed to put a human face on the misery of the people of Gaza, and to show the poignant resilience of a people facing severe adversity. The captions accompanying the photos cite statistics and legal analyses of Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza of last winter.

About CJPME – Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is a non-profit and secular
organization bringing together men and women of all backgrounds who labour to see justice and peace take root again in the Middle East. Its mission is to empower decision-makers to view all sides with fairness and to promote the equitable and sustainable development of the region.

For more information, please contact Grace Batchoun at 514-745-8491or grace.batchoun@cjpme.org.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
http://www.cjpme.org

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Civil Liberties | Leave a comment

Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy that isn’t a Democracy

By Anis Hamadeh | February 19, 2010

Dr. Norman Finkelstein wrote several books in the field Israel/Palestine/Holocaust and is one of the most sagacious analysts of our time. Similar to Professor Ilan Pappe, he formulates sharp criticism in respect to past and presence of the State of Israel, and both use very rational argumentations and are reliable researchers. Especially since the mass murders in Jenin and in Gaza, these two men and many other Jews (also in Germany) speak out, because they do not want to be taken in for violent purposes by a state that arrogates to speak and act in the name of all Jews.

As is known now, both the Heinrich Boell Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation have canceled Finkelstein talks that were already scheduled in Berlin. While the foundation close to the Green party did not even bother to explain its behavior, the board of the foundation close to the Left party explained its drawback in a media info with the empty statement that such a talk would be “explosive” (“brisant”).

What is going on there, one wonders. Does Finkelstein call for violence? Are his views outside legal norms, does he disesteem the human rights? Nothing of all this. On the contrary. The reason for banning him is the veto of groups that seek to avert criticism of Israel, connecting this issue with the reproach of anti-Semitism. This is an old chestnut and not specifically interesting. What is interesting, though, is that the German public buys this nonsense and denies a man, who lost his family in German concentration camps, to talk on German soil, tolerating that he is labeled an anti-Semite for his reflections on violence in Israel. The same thing actually happened only some months ago to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in Munich, when the city’s Lord Mayor canceled a scheduled talk. Pappe then wrote in an open letter that his father “was silenced in a similar way as a German Jew in the early 1930s”.

The German Self-Conception

So let us revisit the German self-conception and then take a short look at the historical background to understand this apparantly great fear that is going around in Germany. Recently, when the Israeli politician Shimon Peres talked on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day in the German Bundestag, he received standing ovations. The few, who did not stand up for their refusal of Peres’ and Israel’s violent policies, were publically attacked. There is, for example, the quote of a member of the Bundestag: “The Nazi crimes, the Shoa, and the war of annihilation are the original crime of humanity. (…) The Jewish victims of National Socialism are memorized on January 27 in the Bundestag memorial. On this occasion, only they and the reminder of ‘Never again!’ can be the topic. Everything else in this context is a relativization of the Nazi crimes.” It is a quote typical for Germany and reveals the German angst as well as the great danger that goes with it.

The genocide of the Jews in this quote is taken out of any historical context and declared a unique event. Firstly, this reveals a “We (We!) are the greatest” narcissism. Secondly, it reveals a pro-Jewish racism, as if one racism could make up for another one. Not the victims are important, no, the Jewish victims are. The Nazi killing of Sinti and Roma thus is kind of OK. And how much then will the killing of Palestinains be OK if conducted by Jews. Put in a more general way: while calling the genocide of the Jews the “original crime”, the unique and incomparable act, every other crime is relativized and thus not so important. Finkelstein and Pappe do not fit in here, they disturb the celebration by entering the historical framework, which is all the more embarrassing as they are Jews with family ties to Nazi victims. Banning them shows that in the end even Jewish Nazi victims are not what the whole circus is about, despite all the pathetic oaths and solemn declarations. This is what Germany fears, that people realize that public “Remembering the Holocaust” is a fake and that Finkelstein and Pappe are eloquent and powerful enough to unmask this pharce.

Germany has decided to do penance for the Nazi crimes by means of supporting the State of Israel. When it stands in solidarity with the Zionist state, then Germany would fulfil its historical responsibility. This dogma is not questioned, although it is beyond any logic to support Zionism of all things in order to do penance. Beyond logic not in the first place because there had been fruitful cooperations between Nazis and Zionists. (It was in the interest of both ideologies to bring Jews out of Germany.) What is much worse is that violence is not recognized as the problem. Thus Hitler has won in the end, for the violence that made this criminal a criminal in the first place, this violence has not stopped. On the contrary: the compulsive “Never again!” serves as a justification of violence and killing. This works only because the genocide of the Jews was taken out of its historical context and floats around freely.

The Israeli Self-Conception

Both Finkelstein and Pappe write about the missing historical context and this is what people are afraid of, for both use their arguments brilliantly, even compelling, and they are concerned as Jews whose families have Nazi experiences. Like Goldstone, Chomsky, and some others, the two academics are subject to hate and rejection of the ruling Zionism and its strenuous friends. Finkelstein lives in the USA, where Zionism is even stronger than in Israel, and he does not lead an easy life. Pappe needed to go to exile in England, because life in Israel became unbearable for him. He wrote the book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” in which he clearly shows how the Israeli state was built on heavy violence. Considering that both authors face bans in Germany it is no wonder that there is not much heard of the events around 1948 other than flat stereotypes.

According to the Israeli self-conception the Zionist state emerged out of a “War of Independence”. In this view, the Jewish victims of National Socialism have created a state to protect themselves and were immediately attacked by their evil Arab neighbors. This version of the story is sacrosanct and is defended with great hysteria, be it in Israel or in Germany, because it does not bear with a neutral analysis. For when Israel was founded in May 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine had already been going on for half a year. This was called “Plan Dalet/Plan D” and everybody can read about it. Hundreds of indigenous Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands were expelled from their villages by Zionist militias. According to the Israeli self-conception many Palestinians went away voluntarily, as if anybody would voluntarily leave their home and property just like that.

International pressure led to the UN partition plan which deprived the native population of a little more than half of Palestine which was to be given to the Zionists. Yet the Zionists were not content with that. They received weapons and took more of the land by force. When they then built a state on this land, they did not do it in agreement with anybody, but unilaterally and surprisingly. The dogma of the “right of existence” was invented so that people would not talk about these events anymore. Here is the seed of the problems we are confronted with until today. It is possible to begin earlier, with the Sykes Picot Treaty or the first settlers from abroad who for the most part did not integrate, but appeared aggessively. One can talk about the British and about Zionist and Arab terrorism, about Jabotinsky and other pioneers. But it is the founding of the state and Plan D which show most clearly why history is escalating until today.

The massacre of Deir Yassin happened in the framework of this plan, it was covered in the world press. Nobody was ever held responsible for this blood-spree and thus a precedence was created which is working until today. Nobody has been taken to account for the mass murder in Gaza, neither, and all the other massacres that Israel habitually commits. The Plan D land theft is another precedence, for up to this day the Israeli territory gets wider while the Palestinian territory shrinks. All this is inherent in the biased concept of “right of existence”, as are the race laws from 1950 which guarantee all Jews in the world a “right of return” to Israel while the expelled native population had to keep out, an unprecedented act in the long history of the country. Their land and property was confiscated by the new masters who clinged to a blood-and-soil ideology. A lot of this reminds one of the Nazis, which by no means is a wonder, when you consider the victim/perpetrator dynamics. It is known that victims, because of their traumas, are prone to become perpetrators and it is so obvious that it takes a whole lot of energy to suppress the respective discourse. It is suppressed, in militarized Israel just like in Germany, it is taboo. For this reason, a government of right-wing extremists in Israel is not a problem. Right-wing extremism is not right-wing extremism, when it comes to Israel.

The Tip of the Iceberg

The cancelation of Finkelstein’s talks are but the tip of a huge iceberg. While these lines are written, Palestinian houses in Barta’a Ash-Sharqiya are being demolished and in Sheikh Jarrah/Jerusalem new land thefts are scheduled. A big historic Arab graveyard is to be confiscated to build a “Museum of Tolerance” on it while in Bil’in the nonviolent resistance against the wall enters its sixth year. The protesters are injured by the army on a regular basis, and also killed. The world press says almost nothing about the heroes of nonviolent resistance, because it does not fit the image. Russian Jews in Be’er Sheva in the Negev have just killed a bedouin boy and heavily injured another, while a group of fundamentalist settlers have injured a Palestinian child in Hebron. About 11.000 Palestinians are kept in Israeli prisons. The “checkpoints” to Nablus have been closed down recently so that nobody can enter. The Gaza fishermen are being shot at by the Israeli navy and Gaza is still under siege. The head of the Dubai police just confirmed that according to police investigations there is a very high probability that the Mossad is behind the murder of a Hamas politician in the Emirates. Every day you can read on http://www.theheadlines.org what happens in the country and that since 1948 there has been no change of the routine. In Germany, the Palästina Portal is one of the sources one can turn to.

Most of what happens remains unknown to us, our media skips most of it, in fear of an increasing “anti-Semitism”. It is for the same reason that we are not to listen to Finkelstein and Pappe, for they verify the terrible events and the historical development sketched above. Instead, we are fed with “information” on “terrorism”. It is well-known to some of the leading politicians and opinion-leaders that the Israeli policy can only lead to the self-destruction of the State of Israel. Call it a culture of death. Maybe self-hatred is another reason for this behavior, something human rights advocates like Finkelstein and Pappe are labeled by exactly those who display it themselves. But even according to our mainstream dogmas we have a big problem here, for this development is bad for the Jews, too, the Zionists among them and the anti-Zionists.

Norman Finkelstein (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com) will talk about Gaza in Munich on Feb. 24, 7 p.m. Amerikahaus, Karolinenplatz 3, and on Feb. 25, 7 p.m., Kulturhaus Milbertshofen, Curt-Mezger-Platz 1

SOURCE – Also available in German

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Jerusalem Post analysis: Finkelstein’s Germany tour sparks protest

BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL – 21/02/2010 – Excerpts

The controversial American Jewish political scientist Norman Finkelstein’s attempt to secure locations last week in Munich and Berlin to deliver anti-Israel lectures

Finkelstein, whose scheduled talk – “One year after the invasion of the Israeli army in Gaza and the responsibility of the German government in the starvation of the Palestinian population” – generated protests and cancellations last week…

Initially, he was scheduled to speak in the Trinitatis evangelical church in Berlin, with organizational and financial support from the political foundations of the Green Party, Left Party, German-Palestinian organizations, and a fringe group of anti-Zionist Jews.

Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel in 2008 because of his pro-Hizbullah solidarity activity in Lebanon. According to a February New York Times review of a documentary on Finkelstein, he waved a banner during a protest against the First Lebanon War in 1982, “urging ‘Israeli Nazis’ to ‘stop the Holocaust in Lebanon.’”

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, affiliated with the Green Party, pulled the plug on its involvement and said in a statement: “We regret our decision… and because of careless, insufficient research we made a fiercely bad decision. Finkelstein’s behavior and his theses take place, in our view, not within the framework of justified criticism.”

There has always been an insatiable market, particularly among the Left, for Finkelstein’s views in Germany, largely because he allows many Germans to air anti-Israel sentiments in a politically and socially correct way. A spokeswoman from the respectable Piper publishing house in Munich, which publishes his books, told The Jerusalem Post that Finkelstein’s anti-Israel Holocaust Industry sold 150,000 copies in 2001, catapulting it to best-seller status.

It’s not hard to explain the popularity of Finkelstein in Germany: If the son of Holocaust survivors can equate Israel with Nazi Germany and charge American Jewish organizations with exploiting the Holocaust to tap into the guilt and financial chords of Germans, then Germans can breathe more easily and alleviate their sense of guilt and connection to the Shoah.

Finkelstein’s background serves as a social-psychological crutch that allows many Germans to invoke his Jewish biography to insulate themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism.

After the cancellation of the support of the Green Party foundation and the Trinitatis church, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with the Left Party, offered to provide a venue for Finkelstein. A diverse group of pro-Israel organizations – including the BAK Shalom Working Group within the Left Party – protested the foundation’s decision. Henning Heine, a spokesman from the foundation, issued a statement, saying “we underestimated the political explosiveness of Finkelstein’s lecture” and rescinding its offer.

BAK Shalom is a group of young Left Party members who seek to end their party’s adherence to flourishing anti-Zionist positions within the party.

Rising pressure from the pro-Israel community also prompted the Amerika House in Munich to walk away from its support of Finkelstein’s appearance.

The last refuge for Finkelstein is the headquarters of the notoriously pro-Islamic Republic leftist Junge Welt daily, a leftover from the former communist East Germany. Finkelstein will deliver his talk on Friday in the gallery of the paper’s building in Berlin. – Full article

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israel’s new ‘attack on freedom of speech’

By Jonathan Cook | The National | February 21, 2010

NAZARETH // The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.

In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.

The measure is a response to claims by right-wing lobbyists that Israel’s human-rights advocates supplied much of the damaging evidence of war crimes cited by Judge Richard Goldstone in his UN-commissioned report into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

Human-rights groups funded by foreign donors, such as the European Union, would be required to register as political bodies and meet other demands for “transparency”.

Popular support for the clampdown was revealed in a poll published last week showing that 57 per cent of Israeli Jews believed “national-security” issues should trump human rights.

In a related move, right-wing groups have launched a campaign of vilification against Naomi Chazan, the Israeli head of an American Jewish donor body called the New Israel Fund (NIF) that channels money to Israeli social justice groups. The NIF is accused of funding the Israeli organisations Mr Goldstone consulted for his report.

Billboard posters around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and a newspaper advertising campaign, show a caricature of Ms Chazan with a horn growing from her forehead under the title “Naomi-Goldstone-Chazan”.

“We are seeing the evaporation of the last freedoms of speech and organisation in Israel,” said Amal Jamal, head of politics at Tel Aviv University and the director of Ilam, a media-rights organisation that would be targeted by the new legislation. The Israeli political system, he added, was being transformed into a “totalitarian democracy”.

Leading the charge against human-rights groups – most of which are officially described as “non-governmental organisations” – has been a self-styled “watchdog group” known as NGO Monitor. Its activities have won support from the government following the international censure faced by Israel for its attack on Gaza.

The bill, approved by a ministerial committee last week, is the product of a conference staged in the parliament in December by Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s director, and a settler-backed organisation known as the Institute of Zionist Strategies.

A professor at Bar Ilan University, Prof Steinberg presented a report to MPs and ministers that referred to peace groups as “Trojan horses” and argued for imposing constraints on funding from European governments and the NIF.

In a statement at the time, Prof Steinberg said: “For over a decade European governments have been manipulating Israeli politics and promoting demonisation by funding a narrow group of favored non-governmental organisations.”

He has reserved special criticism for advocacy groups for the country’s Arab minority and for Jewish groups opposing the occupation, accusing both of promoting an image of Israel as an “apartheid” state that carries out “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing”.

According to his report, 16 Israeli peace NGOs received US$8 million (Dh29m) in European funding in the previous three years.

Pressure has been building in the government for action. This month Yuli Edelstein, the diaspora affairs minister and a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told reporters the cabinet had been “concerned for a time with a number of groups under the guise of NGOs that are funded by foreign agents”.

One of the MPs who participated in December’s conference, Zeev Elkin, also of Likud, initiated the legislation.

Although the bill will need to pass a vote of the parliament, backing from the government has dramatically increased its chances of success.

According to the legislation, human-rights groups will have to satisfy a long list of new conditions. They include: registering as political bodies; submitting ID numbers and addresses for all activists; providing detailed accounts of all donations from overseas and the purposes to which they will be put; and declaring the support of foreign countries every time an activist makes a speech or the organisation stages an event.

Senior officials in NGOs that fail to meet the requirements face up to a year in jail.

Hagai Elad, head of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human-rights law centre, said there was “a very hostile political climate” and that freedoms were being attacked “one step at a time”.

“These are classic McCarthy techniques, portraying our organisations as enemies of the state and suggesting that we are aiding Hamas and terror groups.”

He added that NGOs were heavily regulated under Israeli law. “Which leaves me with a troubling question: given that we are already transparent, what is the real motivation behind this legislation?”

Caught in the middle of the campaign against the NGOs has been Ms Chazan, a former dovish MP.

Maariv, a populist newspaper, published a report last month by a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu that blamed Ms Chazan and the NIF for funding human-rights groups responsible for 90 per cent of the criticisms of Israel contained in the Goldstone Report that were from non-official sources.

A counter-report last week suggested that in reality only about four per cent of the citations were from NIF-funded groups, and many were unrelated to the Gaza operation.

But the attack on Ms Chazan has rapidly gained traction, with commentators denouncing her in the media and the derogatory billboard posters springing up across the country.

The campaign against the NIF was backed this month by a petition signed by a long list of former generals, including Giora Eiland, the previous head of the National Security Council, and Doron Almog, a recent chief of the army’s southern command.

Ms Chazan has also been sacked by the right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper after 14 years serving as one of its few liberal columnists, while an article accusing Ms Chazan of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas” was distributed to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office.

Ms Chazan said: “They’re using me to attack, in the most blatant way, the basic principles of democracy.”

NIF has pointed out that Im Tirtzu’s funders include Christians United for Israel, a group led by pastor John Hagee, who made the headlines in the US presidential race in 2008 when in a speech supporting contender John McCain he said “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will”.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae  – Source

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

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