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Canadian court dismisses Bil’in claim

Ma’an – 21/08/2010

RAMALLAH — A Quebec Court of Appeal dismissed a case brought by Bil’in against Canadian companies involved in illegal settlement construction on the West Bank village’s land, legal rights group Al-Haq reported.

The claim was based on Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits an occupying power from “transfer[ing] parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The case against Green Park International Inc and Green Mountain Inc – which marketed, constructed and sold houses on the Modi’in Illit settlement – was dismissed on 11 August when the court ruled “the authorities of another country [Israel] are in a better position to judge the claim.”

Bil’in’s lawyers claimed that as Israeli courts refuse to rule on the issue of legality of settlements in occupied territory they could not decide the case.

The Quebec court responded that insufficient evidence was presented to demonstrate that claim.

Al-Haq said the court failed to grasp that this was not a dispute over private land, but over the legality of settlements in occupied territory.

The legal rights group added that “The Bil’in case is a glaring example of the importance of upholding the principle that domestic courts must hold their companies to account for actions which violate international law.”

The separation wall, which cuts through Bil’in, separates villagers from around 60 percent of their land, on which Modi’in Illit has been built.

Bil’in is well known for its non-violent resistance, organizing creative, peaceful rallies against the wall every Friday for more than five years.

August 21, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel refuses to lift ban on family unification

The Electronic Intifada, 20 August 2010

Jerusalem-born Firas al-Maraghi has been holding a hunger strike outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin, Germany, since 26 July, protesting a decision by the Israeli government to prevent his newborn daughter from being registered as a Jerusalem resident. Al-Maraghi, who is married to a German citizen, temporarily moved to Berlin to accompany his wife as she completed her doctoral thesis, and was informed by the Israeli embassy that the couple’s daughter, Zeinab, would not be granted the identification and residency papers needed to live in their home when the family moved back to Jerusalem.

During his temporary stay in Germany, al-Maraghi has frequently traveled back to his home in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, while refusing to apply for any travel visas or passports that may strip him of his Israeli-issued laissez-passer. The laissez-passer is a special travel document specifically for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in the stead of Israeli passports, since those Palestinians are not recognized as citizens of the State of Israel but rather “legal residents” of the area.

Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq stated in a 12 August press release that the decision to refuse Jerusalem residency rights to the couple’s newborn daughter “breaches Firas’ right to live in Jerusalem with his family” (“Palestinian on Hunger Strike in Berlin for Family Rights in East Jerusalem).

“Firas has been on hunger strike … drinking only water, refusing to end his strike until the Israeli embassy in Berlin revokes its denial of registering Firas’s daughter as Jerusalem resident,” the statement added.

Family unification frozen

Al-Haq remarked that this policy of disallowing family unification and residency status in occupied East Jerusalem is not new, nor is al-Maraghi’s case an isolated incident. “Since 1967, Israel has engaged in a deliberate policy of reducing the number of Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem while facilitating the increase of the Jewish population in the city,” al-Haq said. “To this end, Israel has used various legal and administrative means aimed at preventing the unification of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem with non-resident spouses and children.”

Al-Haq stated that in the past, Palestinians of occupied East Jerusalem were able to apply for family unification documents for their spouses and children through the Israeli interior ministry, in order to legally live in East Jerusalem and Israel with their families. They point out that this requirement does not apply to Jewish citizens and immigrants, who are free to marry Jewish Israelis and can easily obtain all residency, citizenship and travel documents required by the state.

However, in the past decade, Palestinians like al-Maraghi and his family have been subjected to administrative procedures aimed at thinning out the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. “In 2000, Israel de facto suspended all family unification procedures, impacting tens of thousands of Palestinians and their foreign spouses,” Al-Haq stated. “Moreover, since 2003, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) has regularly extended the discriminatory ‘Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law of 2003’ (most recently on 21 July 2010). This law formally denies family unification of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem with their spouses and children from other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories or abroad. Consequently, these families are prevented from living together in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, resulting in the separation and forced relocation of such families.”

On 29 July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) officially urged Israel to lift its draconian ban on family unification laws, as the group found “a large number” of violations of Israel’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. UNHRC stated that it “reiterates its concern with the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which adversely affects the lives of many families, remains in force and has been declared constitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court. The law should be revoked and Israel should review its policy with a view to facilitating family reunifications of all citizens and permanent residents without discrimination” (“UN Human Rights Committee Urges Israel to Revoke Ban …,” Adalah news update, 4 August 2010).

Israel has neither lifted its ban, nor responded to the United Nations’ appeal.

Ma’an News Agency reported that a letter “was also delivered to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, calling for rapid intervention by Israeli authorities and for the government’s respect of the human rights declaration” (“Jerusalem man on hunger strike over residency rights,” 15 August 2010).

Meanwhile, solidarity activists in Germany have requested portable heaters to help keep al-Maraghi warm during regular, seasonal thunderstorms, as his hunger strike enters its fourth week.

Widow deported

At the same time, in Washington DC, US citizen Bettye Brown faces an ongoing battle with the Israeli government as she fights for her rights after the death of her husband, Muhammed Nijjab, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank.

Brown, 71, told The Electronic Intifada that after the death of her husband of nearly fifty years, Israel has denied her entry from the West Bank. Brown inherited land in the village of Jibya that is threatened with further land confiscation to a nearby settlement colony.

“My husband had gone back to Jibya to retire about ten years ago,” Brown said. “I stayed in the Washington DC area, but when he got sick in 2005, I went to the West Bank to take care of him.” Nijjab was a research chemist, and developed silicosis from years of inhaling toxic substances. Brown said that she stayed in the village until his death in 2006, and inherited about 85 acres of the family’s land.

“It would have been a lot more, if the Israelis hadn’t confiscated a third of the original parcel of land for the settlement back in the 1908s,” Brown added.

Earlier this year, Brown said she intended to visit her land in Jibya and was subsequently deported from the country after enduring eight hours of humiliation and interrogation by Israeli soldiers in a detention cell at the Jordanian border.

“They didn’t give me any food or water, and they took me back while two women and a man interrogated me and screamed at me,” Brown said. “At some point, they fingerprinted me, took a mug shot and stamped ‘denial of entry’ on my passport. I went back to Amman.” She’s been back in Washington, DC since May.

Brown told The Electronic Intifada that she believes that Israel’s intentions to confiscate more land in her husband’s village contributes to their decision to deny her entry. “It’s a very small village, on the top of a small mountain. It’s beautiful. What they’ve done is redraw the map, designating an area to be under Israeli control, which I think is their plan to grab more land. [My husband’s] family has had the land surveyed and registered, in an attempt to protect it.”

In the meantime, Brown told The Electronic Intifada she has consulted an attorney and is appealing to her congressional representatives, as well as working with the West Bank-based advocacy group, Right To Enter (www.righttoenter.ps), which focuses on the protection of the rights of foreign passport holders and residents who have been denied entry by the Israeli authorities. She is also continuing her small business of selling handmade Palestinian and regional crafts to local community organizations and churches for fundraising events.

“My husband never got over not living in Jibya,” Brown remarked. “All his life, he talked about Jibya and how much he loved it. The people there are lovely. I’m the only non-Muslim in the village, but it doesn’t matter.”

In a related story, Ma’an reports that a Palestinian father from the West Bank was stopped at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem and prevented from accompanying his wife to a Jerusalem hospital when she developed serious complications during labor. Safi Abdul Hamid al-Tamimi told Ma’an that his wife gave birth earlier this month but he has not seen her nor his newborn baby yet, as he didn’t have a permit to enter Jerusalem when his wife was transfered. Israel has rejected his application to obtain a permit “without explanation” in the days following the birth (“Father says denied permit to visit wife and newborns,” 16 August 2010).

August 20, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Armed settler threatens farmers

Ma’an – 19/08/2010

NABLUS — An armed settler accompanied by settlement security guards prevented Palestinian farmers and peace activists from irrigating their land near Nablus on Thursday morning, witnesses said.

A resident of the illegal Itamar settlement, carrying a rifle and traveling in an armored vehicle with guards, approached farmers en route to water their recently planted olive trees. Witnesses said the settler threatened to shoot the farmers, from Awarta village, if they did not leave the area.

Israeli forces arrived and reiterated the settler’s orders, giving the farmers five minutes to evacuate the area, locals added.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said an armed security guard working at Itamar noticed a group of around 30 gathered near the settlement and notified the Israeli army, before approaching the group himself. Soldiers arrived and inspected the group’s documents, and permitted some farmers to work their land, she added. The spokeswoman was not aware of the presence of an armed settler.

Awarta Hassan Awad, head of Awarta village council, said that villagers will continue to work on their land every Thursday to protest the expansion of illegal settlements on their land.

August 19, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

India employing Israeli oppression tactics in Kashmir

Jimmy Johnson, The Electronic Intifada, 19 August 2010

The 2010 summer in the disputed area of Jammu and Kashmir, administered by India, has been marked by popular protests by Kashmiris and crackdowns by India’s military. The stream of violence has left more than fifty dead, mostly young protestors. The situation in Kashmir has some parallels with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even borrowing the term intifada to describe the uprising. But the connection is more than analogy — Israel’s pacification efforts against Palestinians have proven valuable for the Indian police, army and intelligence services in their campaigns to pacify Jammu and Kashmir with numerous Indian military and security imports from Israel leading the way.

India and Israel had a limited relationship prior to 1992. India, as a prominent member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), had helped to form the NAM political positions on Palestine as part of the “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, racism, including Zionism and all forms of expansionism, foreign occupation and domination and hegemony” (1979, Havana Declaration). Beyond its anti-colonial and Third World solidarity politics, India also had realpolitik reasons for keeping a distance from Israel. The nation had a developing economy with a huge need for petroleum resources, of which it had no domestic source. Good relations with the Arab League and the Soviet Union helped to secure access to resources necessary for India to become the regional and global economic power it aspires to be.

With the beginning of the Oslo negotiations process between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s and the end of the Cold War, India was free to pursue relations with Israel from a NAM standpoint. An end to the Israeli occupation was assumed a formality under Oslo by most international observers, especially early on — and had, by that time, gained the economic strength to pursue a policy taking it, as described in a US Army War College (USAWC) analysis, “from a position of nonalignment and noncommitment to having specific strategic interests taking it on a path of ‘poly-alignment.'” The report states that India has been in a “scramble to establish ‘strategic relationships’ with most of the major powers and many of the middle powers,” including Israel.

Israel rendered limited military assistance to India in its 1962 war with China and the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan. It was not until after the Oslo process began though, that the limited military contacts developed into a fuller strategic relationship. According to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in 1994 “India requested equipment to guard the de facto Indo-Pakistan Kashmiri border. New Delhi was interested in Israeli fences, which use electronic sensors to track human movements” (Thomas Withington, “Israel and India partner up,” January/February 2001, pp.18-19). The remaining years of the decade were peppered with arms sales from Jerusalem to New Delhi, most notably unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electronic warfare systems.

The strategic military relationship picked up even more steam in the new millennium and annual arms sales average in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The shift of Israel being a major defense supplier to a strategic partner was formalized in a September 2003 state visit by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to India where the Hindu nationalist government then in power, the Bharatiya Janata Party led by then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, hosted the Israeli delegation and coauthored the Delhi Statement on Friendship and Cooperation between India and Israel. The statement’s longest segment is on terrorism. It declares that “Israel and India are partners in the battle against this scourge” and that “there cannot be any compromise in the war against terrorism.” The relationship has expanded drastically since 2000 with, in some recent years, Israel even supplanting Russia as India’s largest arms supplier. Surface-to-air missile systems, naval craft, advanced radar systems and other remote sensing technologies, artillery systems and numerous joint production initiatives ranging from munitions to avionics systems have all further boosted the relationship.

But as the Kashmiri uprising enters its third decade, the most telling part of the relationship is the export of Israeli pacification efforts against Palestinians to India, and their use in Jammu and Kashmir (and elsewhere as India faces multiple popular revolts). Israel has trained thousands of Indian military personnel in counterinsurgency since 2003. According to a 2003 JINSA analysis, “Presumably to equip these soldiers, India recently concluded a $30 million agreement with Israel Military Industries (IMI) for 3,400 Tavor assault rifles, 200 Galil sniper rifles, as well as night vision and laser range finding and targeting equipment.”

In 2004, the Israeli intelligence agencies Mossad and General Security Services (Shin Bet) arrived in India “to conduct the first field security surveillance course for Indian Army Intelligence Corps sleuths.” The Globes article on the topic cites an Indian source stating “The course has been designed to look at methods of intelligence gathering in insurgency affected areas, in keeping with the challenges that Israel has faced.” The further acquisition of UAVs, their joint production and the acquisition of other surveillance systems, notably 2010 agreements for both spy satellites and satellite communications systems, have all helped to further India’s pacification campaigns in Jammu and Kashmir. A notable example of how deeply embedded in India the Israeli counterinsurgency and homeland security industries are is the May 2010 agreement whereby Ra’anana-based Nice Systems will provide security systems and a command and control center for India’s parliament. Parliament security head Sandeep Salunke noted the context for the $5 million contract being “In light of the recent increase in global terrorism” (Nice Systems press release, 25 May 2010).

India’s political trend towards poly-alignment whereby it can have both strategic energy agreements with Iran and strategic defense agreements with Israel is part of a broader strategy the USAWC report noted by which “India will fiercely protect its own internal and bilateral issues from becoming part of the international dialog (Kashmir being the most obvious example).” This hostility towards international engagement with its occupation is not the only resemblance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Both were born out the the end of the British colonialism, both are seen as front lines of the “War on Terror,” both the Kashmiri and Palestinian armed groups are erroneously seen as illegitimate in their own right, being mere tools of a foreign aggressor (Pakistan for Kashmir and Iran or Syria for Palestine), both have widespread abuses of human rights, and the Israeli public’s general apathy about or hostility towards Palestinian self-determination is surpassed by the domestic discussion in India, where Kashmiri self-determination isn’t even an issue, though pacifying Kashmir and securing the border with Pakistan is.

The analogy between the two conflicts can only be taken so far, but the direct connection by which Israel’s pacification industry exports tools of control developed for use against the Palestinians (and Lebanese) to be deployed against Kashmiris (as well as against the Naxalites and others in India) shows a deep linkage between the two conflicts and how one feeds the other. So long as Israel seeks to maintain control over Palestine it will continue to develop pacification tools, and so long as India continues its campaigns in Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiris can expect to taste the fruits of Palestinian pacification.

Jimmy Johnson is a Detroit-based mechanic and an organizer with the Palestine Cultural Office in Dearborn. He can be reached at johnson [dot] jimmy [at] gmail [dot] com.

August 19, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Settlers beat 10-year-old Palestinian girl

Ma’an – 18/08/2010

HEBRON — Israeli settlers assaulted a 10-year-old Palestinian girl on Sunday evening and an Israeli military jeep struck an 8-year-old boy in Hebron, witnesses said.

Inas Mazen Qaaqour was beaten by residents of the illegal Tel Rumeida settlement and treated at the Hebron Government Hospital where medics said she was bruised all over her body. Sameh Natshe Jacob was taken to the same hospital, and medics described his condition as stable.

An Israeli military spokesman did not respond to several requests for comment.

The presence of settlements in the center of Hebron means that Palestinians and Israelis live closer in the city than anywhere else in the West Bank, sometimes on the same street.

The Israeli military controls 20 percent of the city including the Old City and the market area and imposes severe restrictions on Palestinians’ movement.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem says settlers routinely abuse Palestinians in the city, sometimes using extreme violence. Filmed incidents include settlers shooting, stoning, and beating Palestinians with clubs. The organization has reiterated Palestinian complaints that Israeli soldiers often witness these attacks but rarely intervene, and perpetrators are seldom prosecuted.

August 18, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Massive anti-US rally held in Afghanistan

Press TV –  August 18, 2010

In eastern Afghanistan, hundreds of people have taken to the streets to protest against the mounting civilian death toll in US-led raids in the war-torn country.

Some 600 demonstrators blocked the main highway linking the Capital, Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday. The protesters were chanting slogans against the growing foreign presence in the country and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

An Afghan father and his son were killed when their house in Nangahar Province was stormed overnight by NATO soldiers, triggering an outcry that led to the demonstrations.

The US-led forces in the country say they killed two militants in the operation, a claim local villagers have firmly rejected.

Earlier this week, a similar rally was held in the eastern province of Wardak.

A UN report published earlier this week said that 386 civilians were killed by NATO or Afghan forces in the first six months of 2010.

On Monday, at least five Afghan civilians, including a woman and her three children, were killed after a NATO supply vehicle hit their motorcycle in southern Afghanistan. According to Afghan officials, the accident took place on a road in Helmand province, a Press TV correspondent reported Sunday.

Civilians have been the main victims of violence in Afghanistan, particularly in the country’s troubled southern and eastern provinces. The issue of civilian casualties has caused friction between Washington and the Karzai government in Kabul.

August 18, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Polish soldiers blow up Afghan dwelling “for fun”

The News | 13.08.2010

A new video has been released of a group of soldiers from the Polish Army blowing up a dwelling in a deserted area of Afghanistan, a move which goes against the Geneva Convention.

“What a beauty!” comments one of the soldiers when the building is blown to pieces in the 3-minute video (see here), recorded by Polish soldiers from the Army’s 6th rotation during their tour of duty between October 2009 and April 2010.

“It was done for fun,” a non-commissioned officer at the time serving in Afghanistan told the Rzeczpospolita daily, adding that there were more deserted buildings in the area, the remains of a village.

General Janusz Bronowicz, head of the 6th rotation of the Polish Army’s Armoured Units and Mechanised Infantry in Afghanistan was not told about the activity, only acknowledging the blowing up of a cave where explosive materials were found.

“If it’s true, it is criminal and impermissible,” Bronowicz tells the Rzeczpospolita daily, which breaks the story.

The blowing up of civilian buildings is against the Geneva Convention and is “a foundation of international law, regardless of the fact whether the building is worth a million dollars or if it is just a shack,” remarks Dr. Elzbieta Mikos-Skuza, vice-chairwoman of the Polish Red Cross and a humanitarian expert.

“Such objects can only be blown up in special circumstances, in training exercises or with the explicit agreement of local authorities, for example,” says General Waldemar Skrzypczak, former head of the Polish Armed Forces.

The Polish Army is also to investigate the means used to blow up the village huts.

The video shows that the ammunition used was of a large calibre, and fired from a Rosomak armoured transportation vehicle. “Ammunition for the Rosomak is very expensive, I cannot believe that we could have afforded such activity,” Skrzypczak states. Each shell for the Rosomak costs between 600 and 1,400 zloty (150-350 euro).

So far three soldiers have been accused of the activity, including a platoon warrant officer. If found guilty, they may be sentenced up to 8 years in prison. The video is also being used as evidence in the case.

August 14, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Netanyahu: “No Peace Talks Based on 1967 Borders”

Al Manar – 12/08/2010

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday rejected a Palestinian demand that direct negotiations be based on a statement by the Quartet confirming its position that the “future Palestinian state” will be based on the “1967 borders”, Haaretz newspaper reported Thursday.

Meeting in occupied Jerusalem with U.S. envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu repeated his demand for the renewal of direct talks without preconditions. Mitchell briefed Netanyahu on his meeting on Tuesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and gave the prime minister the Palestinian proposal.

According to Palestinian sources, Mitchell did not dismiss Abbas’ proposal. Abbas is demanding a clear framework for the direct talks and an Israeli commitment to cease construction activity in the settlement during the negotiations.

The Quartet – the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia – issued the statement after a meeting in Moscow on March 19. It calls for 24 months of talks between “Israel” and the PA that would result in an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The statement said that the “founding of the Palestinian state would end the occupation that began in 1967”. It also called on Israel to institute a total freeze of construction in West Bank settlements and to refrain from home demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem. The declaration even went so far as to mention that the international community does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem.

Haaretz said senior officials in Tel Aviv who are involved in the efforts to renew direct talks said yesterday that Abbas’ latest formula was unacceptable to Netanyahu because it sought to impose preconditions that the Israeli public would oppose.

Mitchell told Netanyahu that Washington has not taken a position on the proposal yet, noting that his job was simply to present Abbas’ offer to Israeli. The U.S. envoy told Netanyahu that Abbas indicated to him that if Israel were to accept the offer, he would be ready to enter direct talks immediately.

After Netanyahu’s rejection, it appears that Mitchell’s latest visit to the region has ended in failure.

According to Palestinian sources, the United States rejected two earlier proposals put forth by Abbas to jump-start direct talks. One called for U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials to meet in order to reach agreement on a framework for direct talks. The other called for U.S. President Barack Obama to issue a statement spelling out the terms of the framework.

Palestinian journalists who met with Abbas this week said they came away with the impression that he is determined to move forward in negotiations with Israel but will not back down on long-established Palestinian positions. Abbas is insistent on an agreed framework for discussions prior to the start of direct talks.

An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times urged Abbas to renew talks with Israel, warning him to avoid a clash with Obama, who is keen to see the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

August 12, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

BDS court victory in London: ‘Ahava four’ found not guilty of trespass

11 August 2010 | ISM London

Four campaigners against Israeli apartheid were acquitted yesterday (August 10th) of all charges related to two direct action protests against the Israeli cosmetics retailer Ahava in Covent Garden, London. The campaigners locked themselves onto concrete-filled oil drums inside the shop, closing it down for two days in September and December of 2009.

The campaigners insist that they are legally justified in their actions as the shop’s activities are unlawful. All cosmetics on sale in the shop originate from Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, and are deliberately mislabelled “Made in Israel”.

To date, no campaigner has been successfully prosecuted and Ahava has consistently refused to cooperate with the prosecuting authorities.

On the first day of trial, prosecutors dropped aggravated trespass charges. This would have required the prosecution to demonstrate Ahava was engaged in lawful activity. Significantly, the CPS decided that this was not something they would attempt to prove.

The primary witness for the prosecution, Ahava’s store manager, refused to attend court to testify despite courts summons and threats of an arrest warrant leading to the activist’s acquittal on all remaining charges.

Ms Crouch, one of the four  acquitted today said: “This is a small victory in the wider campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. We’ll continue to challenge corporate complicity in the occupation and Israel’s impunity on the international stage.”

Mr Matthews, another acquitted campaigner, added: “The message is clear.  If your company is involved in apartheid and war crimes and occupying Palestinian land, people will occupy your shop.”

The British government, the European Union, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice all consider Israel’s settlements to be illegal, as they are in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention are also criminal offences under UK law (International Criminal Court Act 2001).

For more information please contact the defendant’s solicitor Simon Natas on: 0208 522 7707 (UK)

August 11, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

White Men Rescue Brown Women From Brown Men..

Introduction by Lila Rajiva | August 10, 2010

The media is, again, drumming up support for expansion of the war in Afghanistan by appealing to women’s rights. This was precisely the same strategy employed during the war in Iraq, when statistics about female kidnapping, honor killings and so on were massaged to argue that further American intervention in the area was needed, when, in point of fact, the opposite was true – it was the US intervention that had  provoked the deterioration in the general economic picture and, as a consequence, the treatment of women. This is in keeping with the old colonial strategy described by post-colonial feminist critics –  “White men rescuing brown women from brown men…”. Bretigne Shaffer has an excellent analysis:

“The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported in March of 2008 that violence against women had nearly doubled from the previous year, and a 2009 Human Rights Watch report concludes that “(w)hereas the trend had clearly been positive for women’s rights from 2001–2005, the trend is now negative in many areas.” Other reports (including one from Amnesty International in May of 2005) call the first part of that statement into question:

Says Ann Jones, journalist and author of Kabul in Winter, “For most Afghan women, life has stayed the same. And for a great number, life has gotten much worse.”

Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, says “the attacks against women both external and within the family have gone up. Domestic violence has increased. (The current) judiciary is imprisoning more women than ever before in Afghanistan. And they are imprisoning them for running away from their homes, for refusing to marry the man that their family picked for them, for even being a victim of rape.”

Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, says “The situation for women in the Pashtun area is actually worse than it was during the Taliban time. …(U)nder the Taliban, women were kept in burqas and in their homes, away from education. Today, the same situation persists. They’re kept in burqas, in homes, away from education, but on top of that they are also living in a war zone.”

“Five years after the fall of the Taliban, and the liberation of women hailed by Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, thanks to the US and British invasion,” wrote The Independent’s Kim Sengupta in November of 2006, “such has been the alarming rise in suicide that a conference was held on the problem in the Afghan capital just a few days ago.”

The US military has made life worse for women in Afghanistan, not better. Is it possible that a US exit will result in their lives becoming even worse than they are now, as Bret Stephens and Time magazine fear? Of course it is possible. But what is certain is that the occupation has had a harmful effect on the lives of the vast majority of Afghan civilians – not a positive one as the promoters of war as a vehicle for social change assert. Also indisputable is that the Taliban has grown in strength since the occupation began, and it only continues to do so. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has looked closely at the motives for terrorism. Even US intelligence agencies have acknowledged that the US occupation of Iraq has strengthened Islamic fundamentalism and .”..made the overall terrorism problem worse.”

To call for even more certain death and destruction as a defense against imagined, possible worse bloodshed reveals a curious kind of moral reasoning. For let’s not forget what it is that Time magazine (despite its protestations to the contrary) and Stephens are defending: The indiscriminate killing of innocent men, women and children, in the pursuit of what they believe to be some greater good.”

August 10, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Media gag in occupied Kashmir

By Khalid Awan | The News | August 08, 2010

In Occupied Kashmir, working on a two-pronged strategy, India has been trying to suppress the freedom movement by unleashing death and destruction and at the same time making every effort to hide the truth from the world.

For the latter, it has been muzzling the right to expression and freedom of the press by subjecting the media to stringent curbs. Presently, there is a new surge in the uprising and the Kashmiri people are coming to the streets, thousands in number, to demand their right to self determination. Forceful demonstrations all across the occupied territory have become a routine. The occupation authorities are responding by resorting to brute force, randomly killing the innocent people.

Over 18 youth, most of them teenagers have been killed by Indian troops during the last five weeks while firing on peaceful demonstrations. The All Parties Hurriyet Conference Chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has been confined to his residence in Srinagar by placing him under house arrest.

The octogenarian leader, Syed Ali Gilani, senior pro-movement leader Shabbir Ahmad Shah, President High Court Bar Association (HCBA) Mian Abdul Qayoom and almost all other Hurriyet leaders have been sent to jails, booking them under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA). Curfew and other restrictions are in place to prevent people from holding demonstrations.

To keep the international community blind to all these happenings, the occupation authorities have imposed more curbs on the media and are engaged in terrorising the Kashmiri journalists. On many occasions, they were fired upon, subjected to humiliation, thrashing and beating besides prevented from covering events. After the imposition of curfew in the occupied territory, the authorities banned the movement of media-persons and cancelled all the curfew passes issued to them.

At least, 12 media persons were critically injured, including President of Kashmir Photojournalists Association, Tauseef Mustafa, when Indian paramilitary forces and police attacked them with batons at Tengpora-bypass in Srinagar on the morning of 6th July 2010. The incident took place when the media persons were covering protests that had erupted after the killing of two youth by the police in the area. While giving details of the incident, Bilal Bhadur, a photojournalist of Times of India said: “We were taking picture of the dead bodies, when suddenly seven of us were surrounded by CRPF and police personnel and we were beaten up mercilessly.”

The restrictions on the movement of media persons resulted in the non-publication of newspapers in the Valley, the total number of which is around 60, both in Urdu and English languages. Jammu and Kashmir remained a territory without newspapers for four days.

Amidst all this state of muzzling of the media, the authorities banned the beaming of Pakistani channels and the cable operators were directed to block PTV, Geo TV, Dawn News and others, instituting a total blackout of information. Banning of Pakistani channels, which are widely viewed in IOK, was a shameful attempt by the Indian authorities to give an impression to the world community that Pakistan is instigating the local youth to come on the streets. It speaks of the Indian negative mindset to level the blame on Pakistan for its every wrongdoing as ever before.

Since 1989, it has become commonplace that Kashmiri journalists are being beaten up and injured by Indian troops and are subjected to abductions, murder attempts and death threats.

They are also being detained on fake charges and subjected to humiliating interrogation. Nine Kashmiri journalists have so far been killed in the occupied territory while carrying out their professional duties eversince the freedom struggle has started off.

August 8, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Dismembering Afghanistan

By Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy In Focus | August 5, 2010

Wars are rarely lost in a single encounter; Defeat is almost always more complex than that. The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have lost the war in Afghanistan, but not just because they failed in the battle for Marjah or decided that discretion was the better part of valor in Kandahar. They lost the war because they should never have invaded in the first place; because they never had a goal that was achievable; because their blood and capital are finite.

The face of that defeat was everywhere this past month.

According to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, “In terms of insecurity, 2010 has been the worst year since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001.”

A recent U.S. government audit found that despite $27 billion spent on training, fewer than 12 percent of Afghan security forces were capable of operating on their own.

Some 58 percent of the American public think the war is “a lost cause,” and 60 percent think the United States should begin to withdraw in July 2011. Only Republican votes in Congress saved the Obama administration’s request for $33 billion to fuel the war in the coming fiscal year. The war is currently hemorrhaging money at a rate of $7 billion a month.

The British public — the United Kingdom is the second largest armed contingent in Afghanistan — opposes the war by 72 percent, and other coalition forces are quickly abandoning the effort in the war-torn Central Asian nation. Poland announced it would withdraw its 2,600 troops in 2012. The Dutch will be out this August. The Canadians in 2011. The Australians, along with the rest of the NATO allies, declined a plea in July to send more combat troops.

In a sign of the dire circumstances of the war effort, twice in this past month, Afghan soldiers turned their guns on NATO soldiers.

A poll by the International Council on Security and Development reaffirms that the NATO alliance is failing to win over Afghan civilians, a cornerstone of success in the current strategy employed in Afghanistan. The poll found that in the two provinces currently at the center of the war — Helmand and Kandahar — 75 percent of Afghans believe foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions; 74 percent think working for foreign forces is wrong; 68 percent believe NATO will not protect them; and 65 percent think Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar should be part of the government.

The Arithmetic of Defeat

So does one calculate the arithmetic of defeat. But “defeat” does not mean the war is over. Indeed, the moment when it becomes obvious that victory is no longer an option can be the most dangerous time in a conflict’s history. The losers may double down, as the French and the United States did in Vietnam. They may lash out in a frenzy of destruction, as the United States did in Laos and Cambodia. Or they may poison the well for generations to come by dividing people on the basis of ethnicity, religion and tribe, as the British did when their empire began to disintegrate.

Faced with rising opposition at home, increased casualties on the battlefield, and growing isolation from its allies, the United States is casting about for a way to salvage the Afghan disaster, and coming up with schemes that may end up destabilizing not only Afghanistan, but much of Central and South Asia.

The most radical of these schemes is being floated by the former U.S. ambassador to India, Robert Blackwell, a neoconservative mainstay and currently a lobbyist for India. Blackwell proposes partitioning Afghanistan into two countries: an independent, Pashtun-dominated south, and a northern and western section where Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras make up the majority. According to the scheme , “Pashtunistan” would be kept in line by armed drones and 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. Special Forces.

Such an independent country would almost certainly destabilize Pakistan’s Northern Frontier and Tribal areas , where 40 million Pashtuns currently reside. Many of those Pashtuns have never accepted the 1893 Durand Line that the British used to divide Afghanistan from what was then India.

Pashtunistan would also be a template for an independent Baluchistan, further dismembering Afghanistan — certainly something the Indian Army would be delighted with — and serve as a rallying cry for marginalized ethnic groups all over the region, including those in Kashmir, China, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Russia, and areas in northern India.

It is not clear how much support the partition plan has, given the deep opposition of countries like Pakistan and China, but Blackwell has sprung the genie, and getting it back into the lamp will not be easy.

A second proposal — to create an army of local militias to fight the Taliban — is already underway, in spite of the disastrous experience with similar armed groups during the Soviet occupation. Those militias turned into warlord armies, which shook down local residents, protected the growing drug trade, and fought over tribal turf.

U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus insists that the armed groups will not be “militia,” but more like police — uniformed, armed, and paid by the government of President Hamid Karzai. But given that the Kabul government has virtually no presence outside the capital, how these groups will be controlled is not obvious. Furthermore, if for some reason these militias do confront the Taliban, they will be outgunned by more experienced guerilla fighters.

A June 9 incident in Kandahar is a case in point. The Taliban attacked a local militia that had gathered to celebrate a wedding, killing 40 and wounding 87. The unit had been recruited by U.S. Special Forces, which promised weapons and ammunition. But according to the New York Times, when militia commander, Mohammed Nabi Kako went to the Special Forces, the commander fobbed him off to the Karzi regime, which turned down his request — whether from fear of forming independent militias, or plain old corruption is not clear. When the Taliban attacked, the militia couldn’t defend itself.

The United States has a long track record of recruiting local people to fight and then abandoning them. The Montagnards in Vietnam’s highlands and the Hmong in Laos come to mind.

The model that has the most parallels with the situation in Afghanistan, however, is Guatemala, where the United States helped the military dictatorship create village militias to fight insurgents. If the militias did not fight the guerillas, the Guatemalan Army slaughtered the villagers. If the militias did fight, the villagers became targets in the long-running civil war.

Indeed, an argument can be made that the very idea of militias violates the Geneva Conventions against using civilians to fight in a war, although the United States could finesse that argument by claiming the militia members are “uniformed.” What is certain is that entire villages will be pulled into the war by making them targets for retaliation by a more experienced and better-armed Taliban.

However, the most obvious use for the militias will be to protect the vast drug trade that has made Afghanistan the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium. It is a trade that corrupts not only Afghans, but the police and military of surrounding countries. Indeed, it is a poisonous chain that leads into the heart of Europe, leaving dead and maimed in its path. More than 30,000 addicts die of heroin overdoses each year in Russia alone.

Arbitrary partitions and local militias will not salvage the war for the United States and NATO. The only way out is to cut a deal with the people we are fighting. That will not be easy. The Taliban offered a reasonable peace plan in 2007, and it was turned down. Given the obvious collapse of the allied effort, why should the Taliban want to negotiate? But the Pakistanis say the deal is doable, and of all the counties in the region, Islamabad has the closest ties to the mélange of groups waging war in Afghanistan.

We have lost the war. It is time to recognize reality and start talking.

August 6, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

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