Author’s Note:An elaboration of the Israeli-imposed deprivations on the Palestinian population is presented in an extraordinary , data-driven web-site called “Visualizing Palestine”, which also formed the basis of a student presentation at Hamilton’s (ON, Canada) McMaster University.
Information from the site, and the McMaster outdoor presentation, form the basis of much of the information in this article.
Special thanks to McMaster Muslims For Peace and Justice, and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.
If Canada were to support real, productive change, it would support rather than condemn peaceful citizen initiatives such as the Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) campaign.
Instead, Canada continues to support international lawlessness abroad, and an on-going domestic policy of police state repression, welded to a nexus of complicit agencies — most notably mainstream media — to stifle our freedom of dissent.
International law presents a powerful case against apartheid Israel.
In an earlier article, for example, this author noted that,
“The International Criminal Court (ICJ) ruled in 2004 that the West Bank wall was ‘illegal in its entirety,’ and that compensation should be paid to those affected. Additionally, the U.N General Assembly passed a resolution supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.”
Not only is the wall a breach of international law, but it also represents a “land-grab”. 85% of the wall is located on the occupied West Bank. Upon completion, 46% of the West bank will be locked into ghettos. Even now, there are separate, apartheid road systems which separate Israeli from Palestinian drivers.
The territory of Gaza is accurately described as an “open air prison”. The illegal blockade of the land, air, and sea, is itself is a form of collective punishment, and a violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
According to REPORT TO UNRWA: THE GAZA HEALTH SECTOR AS OF JUNE 2014, 90 % of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption. A June, 2006 Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Power Plant contributed to a nexus of health deprivations, one symptom of which is that one third of Gazan households are provided with running (unclean) water for 6-8 hours once every four days. Whereas an Israeli uses about 300, liters of (clean) water per person, per day, Gazans are restricted to 70 litres (contaminated) water per day. Again all of these deprivations were pre-planned.
Meanwhile, cement quotas undermine rebuilding efforts: it would take 17 years to adequately rebuild infrastructure. Despite the fact of power shortages and poor healthcare infrastructure — 50% of Gazan hospitals were damaged in 2008/09 — 21% of medical permits to exit through the Eretz crossing are denied.
Engineered homelessness also adds to the deprivations: In 2014 alone, 18,000 Palestinian housing units were destroyed, and 108,000 Palestinians remain homeless.
Israel also breaches the Fourth Geneva Convention in terms of its treatment of Palestinian prisoners:
Whereas prisoners must not be detained outside the territory under occupation, Israel detains all Palestinian prisoners in Israel. There are 6,700 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, but there are no Israelis in Palestinian prisons.
Whereas prisoners are not to be subjected to torture, Palestinian prisoners are regularly tortured. 200 prisoners have been killed by torture, medical negligence, or the use of fatal force.
Whereas prisoners are not to be sentenced without a proper trial, since 2000, Israel has placed 20,000 Palestinians under administrative detention – without charge or trial.
The institutionalized racism, the war, the occupation, the imprisonment, and the intentional denial of human rights and freedoms takes a tremendous, sometimes hidden, toll. The United Nations (UN) estimates that about 370,000 children in Gaza require psycho-social support.
The totality of these imposed restrictions amounts to genocide:
“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide. ”
All of this illegality is an outgrowth of a racist settler-colonial dynamic where illegal discrimination is politicized. Political operatives have distorted and degraded the teachings of Judaism and Islam to the point that engineered religious facades are used as instruments of division to wage illegal war and genocide.
The duplicity of the Canadian government in condemning the BDS movement on the one hand, while publically stating on the other that Canada will be a “frank voice in the Middle East” is a symbol of Canada’s duplicity.
The “perception management” wing of our military –industrial-media complex presents Canada in a favourable, judicious light; whereas sustainable evidence demonstrates that our foreign policy posturing conceals a deeply-rooted and degenerate criminality.
We are approaching a pivotal time in America. With the aging of the older generation–that is to say those who grew up prior to the age of the Internet–the percentage of the population relying mainly upon mainstream media for its news will slowly diminish. A younger generation, consisting of those accustomed to getting most of their news and information off the Internet, will gradually begin to outnumber them.
What this means in practical terms is that Israel and its supporters will find it increasingly harder to dominate mainstream political discourse.
If we take 1990 as the base year or starting point of the information age, those who today are 26 years of age or younger will have grown up in households where computers, for the most part, are/were as commonplace as were TV sets in the 1960s.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America’s population at the time of the last census, in 2010, stood at 308,745,538. Those aged 29 or younger comprised 125,955,404, or roughly 40.8% of the population. And that was in 2010. Today the US population is estimated at some 323,000,000–meaning those in the post-1990 age group are likely to make up an even higher percentage of the population. At some point in the near future, their numbers are going to top the 50% mark. That this has been discussed with a sense of gravity by Israeli lobbyists and strategists is almost certain.
Certainly we have seen a proliferation of disinformation websites, but truth has a way of resonating in a way that lies do not–and even when people don’t immediately recognize it as truth per se, the resonance is still there. What the Internet offers, then, is a means by which truth can be viewed on an equal footing with lies, much as it once was in the centuries before mass media began to play such a dominant role in society. And this is obviously having its impact upon the public.
According to a poll conducted last year, 70 percent of Americans disagree with the statement that the media “tries to report the news without bias.” The poll was conducted by the Newseum Institute, which found that trust in the media had dropped by 17 percentage points from a similar poll conducted just the year previous, and by 22 points since 2013. “In fact, the 24% who now say the media try to report news without bias is the lowest since we began asking this question in 2004,” the study states. Perhaps most significant of all, confidence in the media was lowest among those ages 18 to 29–only 7 percent.
A sense of desperation clearly is overtaking Israel and its supporters in the West these days. This is most visible in the multitude of attacks we have seen recently on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS movement. And there are indications now that the Jewish state may be about to carry these attacks to a higher level.
According to a report here, Israel will pour $26 million this year into covert cyber operations aimed at combating BDS, with Israeli tech companies planning to introduce, among other things, “sly algorithms to restrict these online activists circle of influence.” The initiative will be accompanied simultaneously with distribution of a flood of “content that puts a positive face on Israel,” a nonprofit called Firewall Israel being the main spearhead of this latter. Presumably Israel’s already-considerable force of paid Internet trolls is about to be increased–perhaps substantially. Firewall Israel, by the way, is sponsored by the Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute.
“The delegitimization challenge and the BDS Movement are global and require a global response,” Reut asserts on its website. The site goes on to add:
Victory will be achieved when there is a political firewall around Israel and the right of the Jewish People to self-determination, meaning that delegitimization of Israel brings with it a heavy political, societal, and personal price due to its being seen and framed as an act of prejudice and anti-Semitism. Because of its anti-Semitic foundations, delegitimization cannot be eliminated, but it can be contained and kept at bay. As mentioned, because of the network architecture of the BDS Movement, there is no silver bullet against it, and victory will be achieved incrementally through countless of small wins.
In other words, BDS will be “framed” as anti-Semitic, a tour de force that will be achieved through cyber attacks as well as mainstream media power, with BDS supporters paying a heavy “personal price” by result. The final victory, Reut believes, will be achieved not all at once but through “countless small wins” racked up by the Zionists, wins that will erect a “political firewall” around the apartheid paradise, making it immune or insulated from global criticism.
That’s the theory at any rate. How it all plays out in reality remains to be seen, but clearly new BDS battles are cropping up virtually everyday. One of these is a movement at Vassar College, whose student body association, the VSA, just this past Sunday voted to approve a resolution expressing support for the BDS movement. The resolution was accompanied by an amendment that would also have prohibited purchases from 11 companies that profit from or explicitly support the occupation. While the resolution itself passed by a wide majority, 15 to 7, the amendment, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, failed by a vote of 12 in favor to 10 opposed. Were you to take a wild guess that the amendment’s failure was due to pressure by the college administration, you would be right.
“The VSA could stand to lose all funding if the student body votes to pass the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Amendment, the center of an ongoing campus-wide debate,” the student newspaper reported on March 5, one day before the scheduled vote.
The article reports on a meeting between the college president and the VSA’s Executive Board, with members of the latter being specifically warned of the cutoff in funding. After the meeting, the president and one of the college deans issued a joint statement clarifying their position on the matter.
“All along, we have said that the VSA has the right to endorse the BDS proposal, given our commitment to free speech. But the college cannot use its resources in support of a boycott of companies,” they wrote. “Were the VSA to adopt the amendment currently proposing such a policy, the college would have to intervene in some way.”
Vassar College is located in Poughkeepsie, New York. Last year in June, the New York State Legislature passed an anti-BDS measure, and then in November a second measure, creating in effect a blacklist of BDS supporters, was also introduced and is now in committee. The language of the measure passed in June is Orwellian, citing BDS– rather than Israel’s occupation–as being “damaging to the causes of peace, justice, equality, democracy, and human rights for all peoples in the Middle East.” And similar measures are making their way through legislatures in other states as well.
Obviously, the Vassar College administration has seen the writing on the wall, but at the same time, Vassar faculty members are summoning the courage to push back in a show of support for the BDS movement and the vote taken by the VSA. Forty-one of them have signed onto a statement of support that reads in part, “We emphatically condemn any form of intimidation tactics from all individuals or parties who have threatened students supporting BDS or any other form of conscientious objection.”
While BDS quite obviously is high on the Zionist list of priorities, what’s also emerging now is a drive to clamp down on any criticism at all of Israel or voicing of support for Palestinian rights–and colleges and universities dependent upon wealthy private donors seem especially vulnerable to this.
A case in point is Harvard Law School, which recently saw $250,000 yanked by a funder who took exception to a panel discussion entitled “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack,” sponsored by the campus Justice for Palestine group. The program reportedly began with a “3-minute video of students and professors discussing how they were censored, punished or falsely accused of anti-Semitism for taking a principled stance for Palestinian rights.”
But it isn’t only speech that can arouse Zionist ire. The public display of a piece of art can also result in loss of funding. Such happened at York University in Toronto when Canadian TV and film industry executive Paul Bronfman took exception to a painting hanging in the university’s student center. The painting depicts a Palestinian holding rocks in his hand as an Israeli bulldozer is about to destroy an olive tree.
The text at the bottom of the painting features the words “justice” and “peace” written in various languages. Bronfman complained about the artwork to the university’s president, and, after failing to win a commitment to have it removed, accused the school of “allowing hate propaganda to be displayed” and pulled all assistance to its Cinema and Media Arts department.
“The upshot is that if that poster is not gone by the end of day today,” fumed the media mogul, “then William F. White (Bronfman’s film company) is out of York. York is going to lose thousands of dollars of television production equipment used for emerging student filmmakers…”
But much like at Vassar, the faculty at York has come out in favor of freedom of expression, noting–in a statement signed by 91 full-time faculty and nine retired faculty–that the painting depicts “one artist’s response to the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and the feeling that there is no end in sight.”
Roger Waters has also waded into the controversy with an open letter sent to the York University Graduate Students Association in which the musician accuses Bronfman of “trying to use his economic muscle” to have the painting removed. He also observes:
The figure in the foreground appears to be a protester considering throwing a stone or stones at a bulldozer about to destroy an olive tree. The protester may be Palestinian. If the scene depicted is anywhere in the territories occupied since 1967, this person has a legal and moral right, under the terms of article 4 of the Geneva conventions to resist the occupation of his homeland.
As may be expected, a concerted effort appears underway in some media outlets to exact the aforementioned “heavy political, societal, and personal price” upon York, with theToronto Sun, for one, publishing charges that the university “has been infiltrated with anti-Semitism” and has become one of the “most hostile campuses” in North America.
But in the attack on academic freedom, universities aren’t the only entities being hit with smear campaigns. Individual professors are also being singled out. Attacks on professors who criticize Israel of course are not new. Steven Salaita lost his job at the University of Illinois after posting tweets against Israel’s Gaza onslaught in the summer of 2014, and other professors have faced similar repercussions over the years. But what seems to be emerging now is an intensification of the character assaults, with Jewish and mainstream media ganging up en masse on targeted academics.
One such academic is Oberlin College Professor Joy Karega, who, like Salaita, has taken heat over social media postings. But the hostilities directed at Karega have incorporated a level of volume and viciousness not formerly seen in the Salaita case. This in part is because Karega’s criticisms of Israel have been stronger. She has accused the Zionist state of being behind 9/11. She has also discussed the Rothschild banking empire, depicted ISIS as a CIA/Mossad front group, suggested the Charlie Hebdo attack was a false flag, and she has even, courageously, taken on the issue of Zionist control of the mainstream media.
But her comments on 9/11 are probably the ones that have set off the most alarm bells, or at least seem to be among the most consistently cited. Accusations that her views are “anti-Semitic and abhorrent” have been aired by the New York Times, while Fox News posted an article referring to her, in the headline no less, as a “crackpot prof.” The Washington Post, Slate Magazine, the Times of Israel, and others have also piled on.
Karega has her defenders, however, and one of them is Kevin Barrett, author of the book We Are Not Charlie Hebdo. In two articles published at Veterans Today (see here and here ) Barrett accused the Oberlin professor’s detractors of hurling ad hominem insults at her rather than “using logic and evidence.” In one article he particularly took to task the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, which published a singularly virulent attack piece entitled, “Inside the Twisted Anti-Semitic Mind of Oberlin Professor Joy Karega.” The piece quotes an Oberlin alumna who says, patronizingly, that she thought Karega had perhaps expressed her views out of “ignorance” and that maybe she was “not educated on the history of anti-Semitism.” Barrett’s response was that The Forward article itself “drips” with a certain amount of “implicitly racist condescension toward proud African-American intellectual Joy Karega.”
The piece also accuses Karega of spreading “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” which leads us to wonder: Is it really possible The Forward’s writers haven’t heard of the 5 dancing Israelis or that their virgin eyes never saw a controlled demolition video on the Internet? Is it conceivable their suspicions were not aroused in the slightest by Larry Silverstein’s $4.5 billion pay-out bonanza on a property filled with asbestos and worth not nearly what it was insured for? If so, then the editorial staff at The Forward must surely be among the most credulously uninformed in the province of professional journalism.
Barrett also sent an email to a number of recipients at Oberlin, including the president and key faculty and administrators, defending Karega and offering to meet any one or more of her slanderers in an on-campus debate on “these critically important issues.” The email was sent February 29. Barrett says he still has not received a response. His defense of the embattled professor has, however, led to an attack–on both him and Veterans Today–in a Jewish media outlet, The Tower Magazine.
“Kevin Barrett, a writer for Veterans Today, a website that prominently features anti-Israel conspiracy theories, offered his support for Karega and her 9/11 theories last week,” Tower said in an article that makes no mention of Barrett’s debate challenge but which attempts to link him to “the neo-Nazi website Stormfront.”
And so the ad hominem attacks flow like lava down the side of a spewing volcano while the Zionist defamers and detractors don surgical masks to avoid any and all dangerous contact with “logic and evidence.” Meanwhile the societal pivot draws closer.
Creating a “firewall” around Israel in effect means a concerted assault upon free speech, or at least upon the freedom to speak freely, if we might phrase it that way. It means making sure a “heavy personal price” is paid by anyone who criticizes Israel. As Voltaire said, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you’re not allowed to criticize,” and as more and more Americans learn who they’re not allowed to criticize (many of course already know), the inevitable result will be an increasing spread of “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” about Jewish power. Has the Reut Institute thought of this? Or was that maybe the general ideal all along?
At any rate, by publicly aligning themselves with politicians widely viewed as corrupt, Israel is probably speeding up the process of its own “delegitimization.” What after all is the net effect when Americans watch their Congress members routinely expressing their fervent support for Israel, extolling its putative “shared democratic values”–the same Congress members who day after day go on capitulating to Wall Street and other big-moneyed interests? Does this result in Israel’s gaining support among the public… or losing it? I would say probably more of the latter. And the fact that the very same state–which people like Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton voice their adoration for–engages in relentless war crimes and extrajudicial executions while spitting on international law with impunity only serves to aggravate the situation even further.
Yet in spite of all this, Israeli strategists somehow believe, or at least are hoping against hope, they can put a “firewall” around the Jewish state by attacking BDS, flooding the Internet with “content that puts a positive face on Israel,” and exacting a “heavy personal price” from outspoken critics like Karega. It is either, a) a naive hope, or, b) a vastly overblown confidence in the extent and reach of their own power.
Or maybe it’s a little of both. Yes, they may achieve some “small wins” in the short term. But one fact cannot be hidden, no matter how much hasbara you try to bury it under, and that is that Israel stole the land upon which its state was founded in 1948. And not only did it not pay reparations to the land’s rightful owners, but it has gone on stealing more and more from them, bit by bit, piece by piece, settlement by settlement, up until this very day. And if support for Palestine is growing, it probably, at least in part, has to do with the fact that most of us have little trouble imagining a scenario in which we, ourselves, could be forced out of our homes and end up in the streets homeless.
As for the allegations about 9/11, the evidence that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, and that one of them never was even hit by an airplane, is irrefutable, and the more people become aware of this (which is happening because of the Internet), the harder it’s going to be for Israel to keep the lid on everything. And the more stridently and vociferously the media gang up to attack scholars and academics for simply talking about the matter, the more it’s ultimately going to serve only to raise public consciousness even further.
Perhaps it’s time for Israel’s supporters to take some anti-anxiety medication and to start looking at reality. And maybe, too, they should keep in mind the words of P.T. Barnum: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.”
British private security giant G4S has announced plans to sell its entire Israeli business within the next 12 to 24 months. The news has been welcomed by activists in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, for whom G4S has been a long-standing target.
The decision to leave Israel was revealed in the company’s full-year results released Wednesday, when the company reported a 40 per cent fall in its pre-tax profits.
The company said its plans to exit Israel were part of a “continuing portfolio management programme” designed to “materially improve our strategic focus.” The Israeli business employs 8,000 people with a turnover of £100 million.
According to the Financial Times, G4S “is extracting itself from reputationally damaging work, including its entire Israeli business”, noting that human rights campaigners and BDS activists “have repeatedly attacked G4S’s work in [Israel].”
G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli prisons and detention centres, in which thousands of Palestinian prisoners are tortured and held – including without charge or trial. Israel also violates international law by jailing Palestinians outside of the occupied territory.
The company also has contracts with the Israeli authorities to provide equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank that form part of illegal Apartheid Wall.
In 2012, Palestinian groups “called for action to hold G4S accountable for its role in Israel’s prisons”, and since then, the campaign has inflicted growing economic and PR damage on the company. Activists say that G4S has since lost contracts worth millions of dollars around the world, with lost clients including private businesses, universities, trade unions, and United Nations bodies.
In 2014, the Bill Gates Foundation divested its $170m stake in the company following international protests. In the UK, at least five student unions voted to cancel contracts with G4S, and students successfully pressured two other universities not to renew contracts with the company.
The United Methodist Church, the largest protestant church in the USA, divested from G4S after coalition campaigning brought the issue to a vote. Just recently, as reported by Middle East Monitor, G4S lost a major contract in Colombia and a contract with UNICEF in Jordan, in both cases following campaigns by BDS activists.
Responding to the news of G4S’s planned withdrawal from Israel, Palestinian BDS National Committee spokesperson Mahmoud Nawajaa compared the pressure being felt by Israel to the boycott of Apartheid South Africa, and stated that BDS “is making some of the world’s largest corporations realize that profiting from Israeli apartheid and colonialism is bad for business.”
He added: “investment fund managers are increasingly recognizing that their fiduciary responsibility obliges them to divest from Israeli banks and companies that are implicated in Israel’s serious human rights violations, such as G4S and HP, because of the high risk entailed. We are starting to notice a domino effect.”
Nawajaa said the BNC was grateful “to all of the dedicated grassroots organizers around the world who are working in solidarity with Palestinians seeking freedom, justice, and equality”, but noted that the boycott of G4S “will remain among the BDS movement’s top priorities until we actually see its back out of the door of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
The caution is well-founded; G4S announced in 2013 that it would end its role in illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and one Israeli prison by 2015, but did not follow through. In 2014, G4S announced it “did not intend to renew” its contract with the Israeli Prison Service when it expired in 2017 but is yet to implement that decision.
In addition, Nawajaa claimed that owing to G4S’s involvement in the “racist mass incarceration business” in countries such as South Africa, UK, and USA, the BNC is “determined to work closely with partners to hold G4S to account for its participation in human rights abuses.”
In the last eight months, French multinationals Veolia and Orange and CRH, Ireland’s biggest company, have all exited the Israeli market. In January, the United Methodist Church put five Israeli banks from Israel on a “blacklist” due to their complicity in human rights violations, including the financing of illegal Israeli settlements.
Nawajaa said Israel is unable to “stop the impressive growth of BDS”, despite its efforts “to smear and delegitimize our nonviolent movement, including with anti-democratic laws in Europe and the US aimed at silencing dissent and suppressing our freedom of speech.”
“We believe strongly that our ethical approach and just cause will prevail, as this latest G4S announcement shows.”
Israeli forces, on Tuesday night, have kidnapped iconic activist against the apartheid wall and settlements, and mother of six, Manal Tamimi, aged 43, from her home in Al-Nabi Saleh village, near Ramallah.
On International Women’s Day, 8th of March, at 1:30 AM, dozens of soldiers stormed Manal’s home, raided it and detained her family in one room, while female Israeli soldiers have taken Manal to another room in the house, thoroughly inspected her, then abducted her.
Manal’s husband, Bilal Tamimi, 50, said that, a few hours following the arrest, the family knew that Manal was taken to Benyamin Israeli police center near Ramallah, calling it “the Israeli gift to the Palestinian women on women’s day.”
Manal’s lawyer, Gabi Lasky, said, according to the PNN, that Tamimi underwent interrogation at the police center, and he has asked for a hearing session to take place as soon as possible, to know the charges held against her.
Manal and her family have maintained a high-profile in nonviolent popular resistance.
She was also part of Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which presents community-based resistance rooted in a belief in the power of nonviolent struggle, taking various forms, such as strikes, protests, and legal campaigns, as well as supporting the call to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), Munther Amira strongly denounced the kidnapping, calling it a new Israeli crime against women, especially taking place on international women’s day.
Amira said that this act displays the Israeli brutality against all values of freedom and democracy, and against all women, and Palestinian women in particular.
PSCC demanded all women’s associations and human rights organizations to expose Israeli crimes against women and focus on Manal’s case, at the moment.
Two close relatives from the family, Ahed and Wa’ad Al-Tamimi have repeatedly stood up for Israeli soldiers during demonstrations.
In September of 2015, a story about an Israeli soldier that attacked Mohammad Tamimi, brother of Ahed and Wa’ad, while his arm was broken and in a cast, went viral. Manal’s close relative, Nariman, and her daughters saved the child from the soldier and defended him.
For the past six years, the village of Al-Nabi Saleh held a peaceful demonstration every week, against the Israeli wall and settlements that are engorging the village.
Bilal Tamimi said that Manal was unable to participate in the demonstrations during the past three weeks, because she developed a bad allergy towards teargas, which was fired intensely during protests.
Manal was shot and injured in her legs twice before, in 2013 and 2015.
Cuba is known for sending medical personnel overseas as part of its medical brigade program which was launched during the 1959 Revolution.
The Bolivian Health Ministry thanked Cuban doctors and the Cuban government Friday for the solidarity offered to their country as part of Cuba’s medical internationalism over the past 10 years.
Ariana Campero, the head of agency of the decade-long program, congratulated the local partners and conveyed greetings from President Evo Morales. “Thank you very much to Fidel Castro, Commander Raul Castro and the Cuban people. We are sending you all an embrace of solidarity from Bolivia.”
According to Dr. Pavel Noa, the national coordinator of the mission, the most important results that protrude from the mission encompass more than 63 million consultations offered to the Bolivian people, 179,282 surgical interventions performed and a total of 86,983 lives saved.
Medical workers are often believed to be Cuba’s most important export, having served in countries all over the world and in particular in Latin America, Africa and, more recently in Oceania.
Dr. Alina Ochoa, head of Medical Assistance Brigade, stressed the importance of cooperation in the healthcare sector and said the aim was to ensure the health of the Bolivian people. “Cuba has a long and successful history in providing medical staff worldwide, which was ratified in Bolivia with the presence of more than 700 collaborators.”
The representative of the Pan American Health Organization, Luis Fernando Leanes, acknowledged the work of the Cuban mission, which he described as wonderful and very important. “How nice to be in this country and see Cubans and Bolivians working together for peace and welfare”, he said.
Cuba´s efforts in providing medical services to the poor have been acknowledged internationally as it was among the first countries to respond when the World Health Organization called for medical staff to help with the Ebola crisis. Fidel Castro proudly described the 12,000 medical volunteers who signed up as “an army of white coats”.
Fresh protests have broken out in Honduras during a mourning ceremony for an indigenous environmental activist who was recently shot dead after receiving numerous death threats.
More than 1,000 people converged on Friday at the memorial service for renowned environmentalist Berta Caceres as her coffin was turned over to her family at a labor union headquarters.
The ceremony, however, turned into a protest rally, with the participants shouting “Justice!”
Reports say clashes erupted between the protesters and security forces, who intervened to disperse the crowd.
The demo came less than a day after rock-throwing students clashed with riot police at the University of Honduras in the capital Tegucigalpa amid outrage over the government’s failure to protect the high-profile activist who had repeatedly been threatened with assassination.
She was shot dead in the early hours of Thursday at her home in the western town of La Esperanza.
A 45-year-old mother of four, Caceres gained prominence for leading the indigenous Lenca people in a struggle against a hydroelectric dam project that would have flooded a massive region of native lands and cut off water supplies to hundreds of local people.
She continued with her efforts against the project despite receiving numerous death threats, winning the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize.
The family of Caceres has accused government officials of trying to mask her death as a random murder, insisting that she was assassinated due to her efforts against environmental destruction by major mining and hydroelectric companies.
Meanwhile, the Civic Council of Indigenous and People’s Organization (COPINH), which was founded by Caceres, revealed that other members had received death threats from “hit men” allegedly hired by energy company DESA, whose hydroelectric project is being opposed by the group.
“In the past six months, Berta had been the target of constant, intensifying threats, shots fired on her car, and verbal and written threats from the army, the police, the mayor (in the project site) and DESA,” the COPINH said.
The 12th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) has been a remarkable success, with more than 250 cities worldwide marking the week of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Although it doesn’t please everyone, those who criticise IAW activities were brought abruptly to their senses last week when Israel demolished a Palestinian primary school in Al-Azariyeh, east of occupied Jerusalem. It is an action of the kind that highlights why IAW activism remains essential.
Israel’s deliberate targeting of the Palestinian education sector is, in fact, nothing new. During its 51-day war on the Gaza Strip in 2014, the Israel “Defence” Forces (IDF) completely destroyed six government and private schools, eleven kindergartens and three higher education institutions. Around 450 other education facilities – more than half of them kindergartens – sustained minor, partial, major or severe damage; 83 UNRWA-run schools were also damaged.
At the time, the justification given was that the schools were either being used to store weapons or as bases from which to fire rockets at Israel. Of course, no rockets were ever fired into Israel by the Abu Al-Nawar Bedouin of Al-Azariyeh. Nevertheless, their school was demolished. The only difference is that whereas F16 bombers were deployed to destroy education facilities in Gaza, bulldozers were used in Al-Azariyeh.
So why was the school knocked down by the Israelis? Did it pose a threat to Israel’s national security? Hardly. Palestinians believe it was because it was located too close for comfort to the illegal Ma’ale Adumim settlement, which Israel wants to expand still further. Even the most dedicated friends of Israel find the actions of its government revolting and indefensible in this respect. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron described the settlements around Jerusalem last week as “genuinely shocking”.
There is no doubt that the sorry sight of children sitting on the ground in the bitter Jerusalem cold, or the image of them scurrying for shelter from the rain, brought back memories of the bad old days of South African apartheid. It is no wonder, therefore, that this year’s IAW was marked with 200 events at over 20 campuses in South Africa, and endorsed by more than 85 national organisations.
Not satisfied with the demolition of the Abu Al-Nawar School, the IDF confiscated its benches and tables, according to the school director Asma Sheha. While the demolition of a primary school is about as vile as it can get, taking its benches and tables speaks of an official mindset that is much worse; it is the sort of petty, vindictive action for which the white-run government in Pretoria used to be reviled.
It is exactly 10 years since the Guardian’s Chris McGreal wrote his devastating two-part appraisal of South African and Israeli apartheid. He quoted John Dugard, the former UN human rights rapporteur in Palestine, who said that under South African apartheid the best parts of the country were reserved for the whites while blacks were sent to the least habitable and desirable areas: “One can draw certain parallels with respect to South Africa that, during the heyday of apartheid, population relocation did result in destruction of property, but not on the same scale as the devastation in Gaza in particular, [or in] the West Bank.”
Having funded the Abu Al-Nawar School, the French government rightly condemned its demolition by the occupation forces. A statement by the foreign ministry deplored the demolition policy and called “on the Israeli authorities to end it.”
Unfortunately, “concern” and timid calls of this kind will not bring an end to the destructive campaign, which many view as a form of 21st century ethnic cleansing. Last week, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nikolay Mladenov, told the Security Council that since the beginning of 2016, Israel has demolished, on average, 29 Palestinian structures per week, three times the weekly average for 2015. Although 79 of the destroyed structures were funded by international donors, their response has not gone beyond verbal condemnation.
In Britain, the Conservative-led government has, despite the prime minister’s apparently genuine shock, moved to reward Israel by threatening to withdraw funds from public bodies which support the international Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) campaign against the Zionist state. It is precisely because of this kind of calculated indifference and collusion by Western governments that IAW has grown among caring citizens around the world; ordinary people are determined to make a difference by turning their backs on racism and religious bigotry.
Like the BDS campaign, IAW has provided a platform for people from across the political divide, of all racial backgrounds and faiths, including many Jews, to support what is right and just in Palestine.
The destruction of the Abu Al-Nawar School is a gross injustice and, above all, an act of naked racism, the type of which could only come out of an apartheid state. Israel’s claim that the inhabitants did not have a permit to build on the land epitomises its arrogance. It is Israel which is on the wrong side of the law. Thankfully, through the efforts of initiatives such as Israeli Apartheid Week, the world has woken up to what is going on in the name of Israeli democracy. If you have any doubts about the travesty of the latter, just ask the children of Abu Al-Nawar School what they think.
Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners will march alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in London on Saturday to protest the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. The Labour leader’s opposition to Trident has been sharply criticized by trade union bosses.
The national demonstration is organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and has drawn the support of peace activists, academics, students, celebrities and others. Political heavyweights Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are also expected to attend.
The Stop Trident anti-nuclear rally has also secured the backing of the National Union of Students (NUS), which passed a motion to support it this week.
NUS Vice President for Further Education Shakira Martin, who will speak at the Trafalgar Square protest, said the billions of pounds used to maintain Trident should be spent on education.
“Today the National Union of Students, which represents 7 million students, voted to support this Saturday’s Stop Trident national demonstration,” she said.
“If Trident was ever used, then hundreds of millions of people would be killed. Instead of spending over £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction, I believe we should be funding free education.”
The high-profile demonstration has also drawn support from celebrities such as fashion designer Katharine Hamnett and comedian Jeremy Hardy.
Commenting on the costly nuclear deterrent, Hardy said he opposes the program because “it’s based on this idea of mutually assured destruction.”
“In order to keep us safe, you’ve got to be insane enough to use a nuclear weapon, and the other person’s got to be insane enough as well,” he said.
“But neither of you have got to be so insane that you actually use it. So you’ve only got to be insane enough to be prepared to use it but not quite insane enough to actually use it.
“And so long as we just keep that balance of insanity absolutely perfect and equal on all sides we’ll be fine. Sounds like a good gamble to me.”
The Stop Trident rally comes as Labour’s shadow defense secretary Emily Thornberry conducts a review into the Trident missile system.
Leaders of some trade unions, who normally support Labour’s policies, have said the abolition of Trident would cost tens of thousands of jobs.
Lashing out at Corbyn’s anti-nuclear stance, Gary Smith, a leading official with the GMB Union, told the IB Times the debate should focus on the predicament of workers.
“This is not a debate for the wine bars of Islington and Edinburgh – this is real life for the workers and their communities,” Smith said.
“This is not a fight we picked,” he added. “The people who started this argument clearly have no idea of the massive ramifications for not renewing Trident and they don’t understand how the whole shipbuilding industry and defense sector is linked together.”
Iran will pay $30,000 to every family whose home was demolished by the Israeli occupation forces during the ongoing Jerusalem Intifada and $7,000 for every family who’s lost a relative, the ambassador to Lebanon said yesterday.
Mohammad Fateh Ali made the announcement in a press conference in Beirut, calling on the Arab and Muslim nations to unite around the main Arab and Muslim project – Palestine.
Former Hezbollah MP Hassan Hoballah called on Arab and Muslim countries to open their embassies to support Palestinians.
The Deputy Head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Talal Naji, said that this is not the first time Iran has made a generous offer to Palestine.
Dublin – Exactly 100 years ago a bunch of no nonsense Irish nationalists took over Dublin’s General Post Office and changed the world. This Friday something similar might happen. On February 26 the Irish vote in a general election and one of the favourites in this race for power is the same bunch of no nonsense nationalists who took over the GPO in 1916: Sinn Féin.
In 1916 the world was the British Empire and the Irish outsiders who took it on inspired the rebellion of colonised people everywhere (for example, in India). Indeed anyone with an Irish passport will acknowledge the goodwill they receive around the world (particularly in the Third World) because of the Irish refusal to submit to Britain in 1916.
In 2016 the world, on this side of the Atlantic, is the European Empire (the EU). And it is obvious that only outsiders will ever take it on. And if half or even a quarter successful they could inspire freedom movements not only in Europe, but everywhere else that feels the jackboot of Europe. This week history is glancing in the direction of Irish nationalism again.
This is not hyperbole but simply how the dice have rolled. Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal have all had their chance to take on the Euro imperialists and each have backed down. Why should Ireland be any different?
Sinn Féin, to begin with, is not a bunch of clowns (Italy’s Five Star Movement); nor is it led by middle class engineers and economists (the Greek Syriza party); neither is it a group of politely indignant professors (Spain’s Podemos party) nor über constitutional leftists (Portugal’s lefty coalition).
Among Europe’s anti-austerity parties Sinn Féin is the odd man out because it is a national liberation movement. It’s a throwback to modern times when national liberation meant something. And so it has more in common with America’s old Black Panther movement than with Podemos or Syriza. And that is exactly Sinn Féin’s strength.
Despite its name – in English it means “ourselves” – Sinn Féin is not a narrow minded nationalist organisation. On the contrary, it’s internationalist credentials are impressive. It fought alongside the ANC when no one else (apart from the Communists) dared to do so. It assisted the FARC when Clinton & co. were implementing Plan Colombia. It also is a comrade of ETA in Euskadi – the Basque region (Spain). And it has close links to Free Cuba – as it did with Libya when it was Free.
Added to this honourable past and present Sinn Féin of course has fought Britain in a war during the 1970s and 1980s. And in “peace” time it has the audacity to ignore the British made border that divides Ireland in two. It alone among those racing for power this week operates on an All-Ireland basis.
In a word: Sinn Féin has the backbone every other anti-austerity group in Europe lacks. And if it gets into a position of real power it can use it. Berlin has yet to encounter such an anti-imperialist movement. And if Berlin is to break – Sinn Féin might be the one to instigate it.
All of this is conditional however. Does Sinn Féin want to fight Berlin? The signs are not good. Sinn Féin like most anti-austerity parties in Europe remains loyal to the European Union. And in the Irish election the Sinn Féin slogan is “A Fairer Recovery”. This implies a commitment to Ireland’s comprador capitalist structure. It implies a naivety that threatens to mimic all the other political parties (Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens) which have betrayed the Irish people.
That said, a fight against Berlin is still a real possibility. If so it doesn’t have to be a suicidal head on confrontation – as 1916 was. In its recent war against Britain, Sinn Féin mastered the art of guerrilla warfare. If it chooses to do so, it can use this deep experience to reinvent the resistance to the European Empire. As an outsider Sinn Féin has thrived at the expense of the Dublin and London establishments. Now it can be the turn of the European Elite to suffer a Sinn Féin “attack”.
Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, once famously said that “the IRA haven’t gone away”. If Sinn Féin finds itself in power next week the fighting spirit of the IRA must be quickly found again and used creatively. If it is – Europe’s anti-austerity movement may find the backbone it so badly needs. To have a chance it needs a strong dose of no nonsense anti-imperialism.
Argentine public sector workers will converge in front of the presidential palace Wednesday as part of a national strike to protest the policies of President Mauricio Macri.
Macri has fired approximately 10,000 state workers since the beginning of 2016, with even more layoffs expected in the coming months as government ministries continue to review contracts.
Wednesday’s national strike is being organized by the Association of State Workers, known as ATE, together with the Argentine Workers Union.
ATE President Hugo Godoy added that there would be marches and demonstrations in provincial capitals as well.
President Macri is ideologically disposed to reducing the public sector, arguing that private investment should be the source of new employment.
During an event where he announced the elimination of retention taxes on mining, Macri said the public sector employment generated during the previous five years, under the administration of his predecessor, was “unnecessary” and a product of “clientelism.”
Vice-President Gabriela Michetti has accused public sector workers of being “Kirchner militants,” referring to the supporters of the governments of the late Nestor Kirchner and his successor and wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Wednesday’s demonstrations will be an opportunity to observe the reaction of state security forces in light of a new security protocol implemented by the Macri government, which now allows police to break up protests.
Critics have said the security protocol opens the door to criminalization and repression of protest.
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