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New Zealand suspends funding to Palestinians through UNRWA

MEMO | August 28, 2019

The government of New Zealand has withdrawn and suspended funding to the United Nations’ (UN) aid agency which provides support for Palestinians.

The country’s suspension of aid and financial contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is to be implemented until the release of a report by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services in October, which would detail allegations of misconduct, corruption, links to terror groups, and anti-Semitism that have been levelled against the agency.

A statement released by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that “We expect UNRWA to cooperate fully with the investigation under way and to report back on the investigation’s findings and recommendations.” It added that “The Ministry will review the findings of the UN OIOS report once the investigation is complete and, after that point, will provide advice to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on future funding.”

The move by the island nation is in stark contradiction to its recent announcements that it will provide more aid to the agency and to Palestinians, such as in November last year when it vowed to increase its support to UNRWA and in May this year when it assured its commitment to back the organisation until at least 2021.

This shift in financial policy and the withdrawal of aid comes amid an ongoing campaign to deprive the UNRWA of funding and support from a variety of Western nations, most prominently the United States (US) when the Trump administration withdrew its funding for the agency last year. The most recent cases of the suspension of funds occurred last month when the Netherlands and Switzerland also froze financial support due to reports of alleged corruption within the agency.

The sharp reduction in funding has had a direct effect on the situation of Palestinians in refugee camps in particular. Since the US withdrawal from the agency, there have emerged widespread reports of worsening conditions in the camps scattered throughout Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, and the UN organisation continues to struggle financially amid the ongoing campaign against it, seeking urgent funds to maintain its work.

August 28, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s War on Innocence: Palestinian Children in Israeli Military Courts

By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | August 7, 2019

On July 29, 4-year-old Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan was reportedly summoned for interrogation by the Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem. The news, originally reported by the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, was later denied by the Israeli police, more than likely in an attempt to lessen the impact of the PR disaster that followed.

The Israelis are not denying the story in its entirety, but are rather arguing that it was not the boy, Muhammad, who was summoned, but his father. It was Rabi’ Elayyan, they claim, who was called into the Israeli police station in Salah Eddin Street in Jerusalem to be questioned regarding his son’s actions.

The child was accused of hurling a stone at Israeli occupation soldiers in the Issawiyeh neighborhood, which is a constant target for Israeli violence. The neighborhood has also been the tragic location of house demolitions under the pretext that Palestinians there are building without permits. Of course, the vast majority of Palestinian applications for such permits to build in Issawiyeh, or anywhere else in Jerusalem, are denied routinely, while Jewish settlers are allowed to build on stolen Palestinian land unhindered.

As such, Issawiyeh is no stranger to the ridiculous and unlawful behavior of the Israeli army. On July 6, for example, a mother from the beleaguered neighborhood was arrested in order to put pressure on her teenage son, Mahmoud Ebeid, to turn himself in. The mother “was taken by Israeli police as a bargaining chip,” Mondoweiss reported, quoting the Jerusalem-based Wadi Hileh Information Centre.

The Israeli authorities are justified in feeling embarrassed by the whole episode concerning the 4-year-old boy, thus the attempt to poke holes in the story. The fact is, though, that WAFA’s correspondent in Jerusalem had, indeed, verified that the warrant was in Muhammad’s, not Rabi’s, name.

While some news sources bought into the Israeli propaganda and readily conveyed the cries of “fake news”, one must bear in mind that this was hardly a one-off incident. For Palestinians, such news about the detention, beating, and killing of their children has been one of the most consistent features of the Israeli occupation since 1967.

Just one day after Muhammad was summoned, the Israeli authorities also interrogated the father of a 6-year-old child, Qais Firas Obaid, from the same neighborhood of Issawiyeh. This particular boy was accused of throwing a juice carton at Israeli soldiers.

“According to local sources in Issawiyeh the [Israeli] military sent Qais’s family an official summons to come to the interrogation center in Jerusalem on Wednesday [July 31] at 8 am,” reported the International Middle East Media Centre (IMEMC). In one photo, the little boy is holding the Israeli military order written in Hebrew up to the camera.

The stories of Muhammad and Qais are the norm, not the exception. According to the prisoners’ advocacy group, Addameer, there are currently 250 Palestinian children being held in Israel’s prisons. Approximately 700 Palestinian children are taken through the Israeli military court system every single year.

“The most common charge levied against children is throwing stones,” reports Addameer, “a crime that is punishable under military law by up to 20 years in prison.”

That is why Israel has every right to be embarrassed. Since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, some 12,000 Palestinian children have been detained and interrogated by the Israeli army.

Moreover, it is not only children and their families who are targeted by the Israeli military but also those who advocate on their behalf. Just last week, on July 30, Palestinian lawyer Tariq Barghouth was sentenced to 13 years in prison by an Israeli military court for “firing at Israeli buses and at security forces on a number of occasions.”

As unlikely as the accusation of a well-known lawyer firing at “buses” may sound, it is important to note that Barghouth is well-regarded for his defense of Palestinian children in court. He has also been a headache for the Israeli military court system for his strong defense of Ahmad Manasra.

The then 13-year-old boy was tried and indicted in Israeli military court for allegedly stabbing and wounding two Israelis near the illegal Jewish settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in Occupied Jerusalem in 2015. Manasra’s cousin, Hassan, 15, was killed on the spot, while the wounded Ahmad was tried in court as an adult. It was Barghouth who challenged and denounced the Israeli court for the harsh interrogation and for secretly filming the wounded child as he was tied to his hospital bed.

On August 2, 2016, Israel passed a law that allows the authorities to “imprison a minor convicted of serious crimes such as murder, attempted murder or manslaughter even if he or she is under the age of 14.” The law was crafted conveniently to deal with cases like that of Ahmad Manasra, who was sentenced on November 7, the same year, three months after the law was approved, to 12 years in prison.

Manasra’s case, the leaked videos of his abuse by Israeli interrogators and his harsh sentence placed more international focus on the plight of Palestinian children in the Israeli military court system. “Israeli interrogators are seen relying on verbal abuse, intimidation and threats to apparently inflict mental suffering for the purpose of obtaining a confession,” attorney and international advocacy officer at Defence for Children — Palestine, Brad Parker, said at the time.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Israel has been a signatory since 1991, “prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Yet, explains Parker, “Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli military and police is widespread and systematic.”

So systematic, in fact, that videos and reports of arresting very young Palestinian children are almost a staple on social media platforms concerned with Palestine and Palestinian rights.

The sad reality is that Muhammad Elayyan, 4, and Qais Obaid, 6, and many children like them, have become a target of Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This horrendous reality must not be tolerated by the international community.

Israeli crimes against Palestinian children must be confronted effectively for the simple reason that Israel, its inhumane laws and iniquitous military courts must not be allowed to continue their uncontested brutalization of those who are, at the end of the day, children. Israel’s war on their innocence must be stopped.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London).

August 7, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 1 Comment

Food Shipment Destined For Venezuela Seized Due to US Blockade

teleSUR | August 7, 2019

Venezuela’s Vicepresident Delcy Rodriguez denounced Wednesday that a ship containing 25 thousand tonnes of Soya has been seized in the Panama Canal due to the U.S. blockade while calling on the United Nations to take action against the “serious aggression” that impede Venezuela “right to food”.

“Venezuela denounces before the world that a boat that holds 25 thousand tons of Soya, for food production in our country, has been seized in the Panama Canal, due to the criminal blockade imposed by Donald Trump,” the vice president said in a tweet.

“Venezuela calls on the UN to stop this serious aggression by Donald Trump’s govt against our country, which constitutes a massive violation of the human rights of the entire Venezuelan people, by attempting to impede their right to food.”

In a subsequent tweet, the Venezuelan senior official explained that the owner of the vessel carrying the merchandise of food was informed by the insurance company that it was prevented from moving that cargo to Venezuela.

The shipment seizure comes just days after Trump signed an executive order Monday that imposes a near-total blockade on government assets in that country, which includes an embargo against food suppliers, among other basic inputs. This is the first time in 30 years that Washington has taken such an action against a sovereign country.

August 7, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

‘There’s no law in the world that says you can cut water from humans’

This is the second of a series of reports documenting the control and devastation of water sources by Israel as a tool of oppression.*

A bulldozer destroys water wells while a Regavim drone hovers above
International Solidarity Movement | August 3, 2019

South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine – Israel is escalating its war on water in the South Hebron Hills, demolishing wells, ripping out kilometres of pipeline and even confiscating trucks carrying emergency water tanks to parched villages.

In the sweltering month of July, five demolitions targeting water infrastructure were carried out, leaving Palestinian farming villages without access to water.

The latest took place on Wednesday July 31, when the Israeli Civil Administration – the body that governs Area C in the West Bank – cut pipes supplying water to houses and farmland in the area of al-Jaway near At-Tuwani.

Tariq Hathaleen, a local activist from the South Hebron Hills, says that the number of demolitions on water sources has “more than doubled,” this year compared to previous years.

He told ISM: “Now in the summer it sounds like the Civil Administration has a plan to restrict Palestinian access to water in the South Hebron Hills, in Area C in general, and that’s actually to put more pressure on those people to move them away from those villages.

“Because the Civil Administration don’t have a direct excuse to expel those people from their land but the plan is to put more pressure to make them leave by cutting their water sources.”

On July 4, bulldozers destroyed three water wells outside the town of Dkeika, a day after they came to the same area and uprooted over 500 olive trees.

The destruction of the wells and trees have affected around 1,200 people, 60 per cent of them registered as refugees. according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Four water cisterns were also destroyed on July 24 in a park between the villages of Umm al-Kheir and Umm Daraj

“I know the reality of these people,” Tariq, who was at the demolition, adds. “I call them the enemies of life and they prove this by cutting trees, by cutting water pipes, by cutting the lives of people.”

The Good Shepherd Collective, a group that advocates human rights predominantly in the South Hebron Hills, puts the escalation of demolitions down to the actions of far-right settler NGO Regavim.

Regavim, which receives Israeli tax-payers money and has charitable status, spies on Palestinian communities, looking out for structures built without a permit and reporting them to the ICA. They then speed up demolition cases in the courts through petitions.

Their devastating impact can be seen by the steep rise in demolitions in the South Hebron Hills; 65 structures have been bulldozed or confiscated so far this year, compared to 23 structures in the same period last year, according to OCHA.

The al Dababsh family watches as their home is razed to the ground in the village of Khalet al Dabeh

“For anyone who still has qualms about the placement of blame on the state or Civil Administration for the act of demolitions, the message of these continued demolitions in natural areas should serve as a clarifying message,” the Good Shepherd Collective said.

“The state, the settlers and the organizations like Regavim that push forward the destruction of these areas, structures and resources for Palestinians are not motivated by the preservation of humanitarian rights, environmental laws, or the protection of the natural environment.”

The series of attacks on water sources in July comes after Israel ripped out a huge pipe network earlier this year that had supplied 12 Palestinian towns in the South Hebron Hills with running water.

The pipes were built in secret and took four months to install. But just six months later, Israel destroyed them, cutting the 20km lifeline.

The 12 villages have had to return to the old method of accessing water – by transporting tanks on tractors along poor roads which wears down the tyres and wastes precious work days.

Transporting water in this way adds to the economic burden of the area’s small villages, costing 30 shekkles for one cubic metre. In contrast Israelis pay just 8 shekkles per cubic metre.

And even the trucks are not safe from Israel’s war on water; on July 15, 18 water tanks were confiscated by Israeli soldiers. In the same raid, several thousand dollars of water pipeline and drilling equipment to install the pipes were also taken.

“The feeling is hard to accept, the fact that those people, those humans out of blood and flesh agree on themselves to cut other peoples’ lives by cutting the water,” Tariq tells ISM.

“It’s far from doing something legal. There’s no law in the world that says you can cut water from humans and forbid him from having water access. Its insane.”

The South Hebron Hills is in Area C of the West Bank which means it is under full Israeli control. Palestinians in this region are denied building permits even to install water pipelines or wells, and are not allowed to hook up to the water network that Israel has laid across Palestinian land to supply illegal settlements.

As a result, villages in the area are subject to unrelenting attacks on not only their water sources but farmland and homes.

* Water Series: IOF destroy farmland east of Hebron – ISM speaks to owner Ghassan Jaber

August 3, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 5 Comments

Israel summons 8-year-old Palestinian girl for interrogation

Israeli forces summoned an eight-year-old Palestinian girl, Malak Sadr for interrogation in the West Bank city of Hebron

MEMO | August 1, 2019

Israeli authorities yesterday summoned an eight-year-old Palestinian girl from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron for interrogation, making her the third minor to be called in for questioning this week.

According to sources who informed the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Hebron resident Shadi Sadr last night and gave him a summons for his eight-year-old daughter Malak to appear at an interrogation centre. Her crime, the father was told, was allegedly harassing the military-backed Israeli settlers.

The incident comes amid a recent spate of summons and interrogations of extremely young Palestinian children this past week for a number of alleged crimes including throwing cartons at occupation forces and “harassing” settlers and settlement projects. The first arrest was that of four-year-old Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan on Tuesday and the second was issued to the father of six-year-old Qais Firas Obaid yesterday, both of whom were residents of the same east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya.

According to the Palestine branch of the rights group Defence for Children International, at least 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system since 2000.

August 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 2 Comments

Human Sacrifice: A Grand Old American Political Tradition

By Thomas L. Knapp – Garrison Center – July 31, 2019

On July 25, US Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to update its execution protocol and schedule five executions starting this December.

Whether you support the death penalty or not — I don’t because I prefer limited government and the power to kill disarmed prisoners in cold blood and with premeditation is by definition unlimited government — it’s worthwhile to ask:  Why? More to the point, why now?

Politics, that’s why.

There’s a presidential election next year. US president Donald Trump’s re-election strategy, for lack of ability to grow his electoral “base,” is to keep that base energized and enthused so that they’ll turn out to vote instead of sitting at home catching up on re-runs of their favorite TV shows. And that base overwhelmingly supports capital punishment.

With this move Trump is quite literally throwing his supporters some red meat.

There’s nothing new about the idea. Indeed, the history of public human sacrifice for political purposes runs all the way back to ancient history in the Americas.

The last large-scale pre-Columbian example of the practice, that of the Aztecs, involved removing the beating heart of the victim atop a pyramid temple before flinging his or her corpse down the steps to the approval of a roaring crowd.

In this way, Aztec kings not only maintained support from their own populace through religious appeals, but kept smaller tribes too busy raiding each other (for sacrificial captives to be given to the Aztecs in tribute) to ally with each other against the Aztecs themselves.

If these five executions occur, they will be the first federal executions since 2003. There have only been three since 1963.

So, again, why? And why now?

Deterrence isn’t an answer that fits. Overall, violent crime (including murder) in the US has trended downward, not upward in recent decades (from 758 per 100,000 population in 1992 to 383 per 100,000 in 2017).

Neither is reducing the costs of incarceration. Of the more than 200,000 federal prisoners, only 61 are on “death row.” It’s unlikely that killing every last one of them would make a big dent in the Bureau of Prisons’ $7.3 billion annual budget.

Speaking which, if money was the problem, all five of the prisoners to be killed could as easily have been left to the justice systems of the states in which their crimes were committed and would have likely been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment without involving federal tax dollars in the first place.

The same is true regarding any moral “eye for an eye” imperative.  Handling this kind of crime, and this kind of criminal, was never supposed to be the federal government’s job.

That leaves politics. Trump is playing Montezuma in hopes of holding on to his adoring crowd.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).

July 31, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | 1 Comment

Venezuela: Six Chavista Militants Killed in Fresh Rural Violence

By Ricardo Vaz | Venezuelanalysis | July 30, 2018

Caracas  – Six activists from the grassroots Revolutionary Bolivar and Zamora Current (CRBZ) were assassinated in Barinas State on Saturday.

The victims, including one pregnant woman, were part of the so-called Hugo Chavez Popular Defense Brigades organized by the CRBZ in Barinas, Tachira, and other states regularly plagued by landowner violence against campesinos.

No information is yet known about the assailants, with the CRBZ claiming in a statement that they had “military training.”

“We want to denounce to the country and the world the murder of six comrades, presumably by mercenaries paid by right-wing landowners in the region,” the group declared, before adding that the six would remain present “in every battle and in every day of struggle.”

The incident reportedly took place on Saturday morning as the Chavista militants were repairing a motorbike in the Ticoporo Reserve, Barinas State.

The killings sparked immediate outrage and shows of solidarity from Venezuelan and international activists alike, with participants in the Sao Paulo Forum demanding justice.

“On behalf of the Patria Grande movement [in Argentina] I want to express my solidarity and repudiate this action of landowners who want to subjugate campesinos,” said Silvana Broggi during the meeting currently taking place in Caracas.

Chavista popular movements likewise voiced their solidarity and cry for justice in a Twitter storm, with the hashtag “no more Chavista killings” (#NoMásChavistasAsesinados) becoming the top trend in Venezuela on Monday evening.

For his part, National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said that paramilitary violence in the countryside was not something new and demanded an investigation into the assassinations.

“We strongly condemn this violence and demand a thorough investigation to find the culprits,” the Chavista leader said on Sunday, vowing that the crimes would not go unpunished. The Attorney General’s Office has yet to issue a public statement, though the CICPC investigative police has appeared on scene to gather evidence.

The Venezuelan countryside has seen a recent increase in targeted killings of campesinos in the context of escalating disputes over land rights. Landowner violence was one of the issues driving the Admirable Campesino March in July 2018 which saw dozens of campesinos march over 400 kilometers on foot to demand a meeting with President Maduro in order to change the state’s rural policies. A high-profile televised meeting took place, and Maduro ordered the creation of commissions to resolve land disputes and end impunity for rural violence.

However, campesinos have repeatedly denounced that little to no progress has been made, with several new campesino murders taking place since then. The continued setbacks have led campesino activists to return to Caracas and set up a vigil at the Land Institute to demand answers from authorities.

According to campesino groups, since the inauguration of Venezuela’s revolutionary land reform law in 2001, over 300 small farmers have been murdered by hired guns in the employ of large landowners. While in some cases the assassins have been convicted of their crimes, impunity continues with respect to the role of landed elites financing the killings.

July 31, 2019 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

Israel sentences prisoners’ lawyer to 13 years behind bars

Tariq Barghouth, a prominent lawyer known for defending Palestinian prisoners held by Israel
MEMO | July 31, 2019

An Israeli court sentenced the lawyer of the PLO’s Prisoners’ Committee to 13 years, six months in prison on Tuesday, Quds Press has reported. Tariq Barghouth was arrested by the Israeli occupation forces on 27 February this year before undergoing harsh interrogation.

To put pressure on him in order to give what are said to be false confessions, the Israelis also arrested his wife and sister. The two women were released later.

Barghouth is one of the most prominent lawyers known for defending Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. He is currently in Nafha Prison in the south of Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli prison service has detained Shorouq Mohammed Al-Badan, 25, from Taqu village near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. She has been given an administrative detention term of six months with neither charge nor trial.

The Prisoners’ Committee said that the occupation authorities arrested Al-Badan on 15 July during a night raid on her house. She was taken to the Etzion interrogation centre and then to HaSharon Prison for five day; she is now in Al-Damoun Prison.

Whilst in HaSharon, Al-Badan was held in a very small room which was extremely hot due to the prevailing high temperature. This led to her suffering from acute pain in her kidneys, presumably as a result of severe dehydration.

The Committee said that there are currently around 500 Palestinian prisoners being held under administrative detention orders inside Israeli jails, including nine who are on hunger strike in protest against their detention. Such orders can be renewed indefinitely.

July 31, 2019 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

Crimes in limbo: SDF commits horrific crimes against Syrians under the cover of the international coalition

Euro-Med | July 30,2019

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) in a brief report today, shed light on numerous extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations carried out by the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against civilians living in the eastern part of the country.

SDF continues to violate the rights of Syrians in the face of unjustifiable silence from the international community and continues to receive military and logistical support and air cover from the US-led international coalition forces, Euro-Med said.

The SDF was established in the city of Qamishli in northern Syria on the 10th of October 2015 to fight against the Islamic State. At that time, they defined themselves as “a unified national military force for all Syrians, Arabs, Kurds, Syriac, and all other components.” But the ethnic composition of the SDF forces suggests this is not the case, and it is in fact dominated by Kurdish forces. Currently, 70% of its troops are Kurds, while Arabs and other communities account for just 30%.

In their report, Euro-Med highlighted the continued suffering of thousands of Syrians in the cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zour following the defeat of the Islamic State in the region and the takeover of the eastern part of Syria by the SDF.

The report authors were particularly concerned by some of the alleged recruitment practices of the SDF. It was alleged that the SDF had been undertaking forced recruitment of civilians in their battle against the Islamic State, even compelling children to fight in some cases.

Other atrocities committed by SDF forces that were brought to the attention of Euro-Med staff included the torture and extrajudicial killing of civilians. A video was recently leaked to the Al Forat Network by a member of the SDF that showed the torture and execution of two Arab youths in an SDF prison. It was alleged that the young men were killed because of their refusal to submit to the forced recruitment campaign.

Euro-Med staff later obtained a different video of a similarly appalling crime. It showed a member of the SDF torturing a girl and a man for refusing to go to a recruitment camp. The video also showed a different masked soldier beating the girl and the man after handcuffing them and insulting them.

The report also referenced a widely-circulated video clip from various social media sites that shows a member of the SDF executing a married couple just for walking past a wall marked with anti-Kurdish slogans.

Another video showed SDF fighters torturing two handcuffed civilians to try to extract the hiding places of Islamic State forces. The video shows one of the soldiers beating a detainee around the head with a plastic chair.

The report also accuses the SDF of preventing civilians forced from their homes by the Islamic State or those who escaped Islamic State-controlled areas from returning to their homes, while also detaining hundreds of civilians in prisons lacking even the most basic amenities.

According to information collected by the Euro-Med from local human rights organisations, the SDF tortured hundreds of displaced Syrians and imprisoned them in detention centres for days on end in the hope of extracting any information relating to the Islamic State.

The Euro-Med report also contains testimony from Syrian civilians suggesting an intentional policy on the part of the SDF to alter the demographic makeup of areas under their control. The SDF confiscated dozens of houses in villages they captured, before annexing them to “self-managed” status within the framework of their planned Kurdish federal territory.

Mohamed Imad, Euro-Med’s legal researcher, described recent events in eastern Syria Syria as a serious violation of the most basic legal rights guaranteed by international law. He added that the right to a dignified life, freedom of movement, safe living and access to basic services for Syrian civilians is guaranteed under multiple international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“The human and legal violations and executions carried out by SDF members outside the framework of the law represent war crimes and crimes against humanity. They should be held responsible for their actions before the International Criminal Court,” Imad stressed.

Imad expressed his concern at the uncritical support of the SDF amongst the international community, which continued despite the obvious human rights violations being perpetrated by the opposition group.

The report concludes by calling on the United Nations Security Council to intervene urgently to halt the SDF atrocities. Euro-Med also called for an end to all material and logistical support for the SDF from the international community, as well as an end to all coordinated military operations.

Euro-Med also called on the United Nations to set up a special investigation into the atrocities in Eastern Syria and demanded that the perpetrators appear before the International Criminal Court to face justice for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

July 31, 2019 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israel Has “The Most Moral Army in the World”?

The creepy French “intellectual” Bernard-Henri Levy gets it wrong

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 30, 2019

Eight days ago eleven Palestinian buildings containing seventy family apartments located in the illegally Israeli occupied East Jerusalem village of Wadi al-Hummus were demolished in a military-led operation by more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers, policemen and municipal workers using bulldozers, backhoes and explosives. Residents who resisted were beaten by the soldiers, kicked down flights of stairs and even shot at close range with rubber bullets. The soldiers were recorded laughing and celebrating as they did their dirty work. Occupants who did not resist and who held their hands up in surrender were also not spared the rod, as were also foreign observers who were present to add their voices to those who were protesting the outrage. The injuries sustained by some of the victims have been photographed and are available online.

Twelve Palestinians and four British observers were injured badly enough to be hospitalized. The British reported that they were “stamped on, dragged by the hair, strangled with a scarf and pepper sprayed by Israeli border police.” One who was hospitalized described how Israeli soldiers dragged him by his feet, lifting him up, and kicking him in the stomach, while one soldier stamped on his head four times “at full force” before standing on his head and pulling his hair. Another suffered a fractured rib after “[the policeman] then stamped on my throat and others started punching my torso. It was a sadistic display of violence…”

Yet another foreign observer was dragged out of the house, “… her hands were crushed so badly that she suffered a fractured knuckle on her left hand, and her right hand suffered severe tissue damage ‘which will be permanently misshapen unless she gets cosmetic surgery.’”

Edmond Sichrovsky, an Austrian activist of Jewish origin, who was in one of the houses, described how Israeli forces broke the door down, first dragging out the Palestinians, “knocking the grandfather to the floor in front of his crying and screaming grandchildren.” Cell phones were forcibly removed to eliminate any picture taking or filming before soldiers began attacking him and four other activists. “I was repeatedly kicked and kneed, which left a bloody nose and multiple cuts, as well breaking my glasses from a knee in the face. Once outside, they slammed me against a car while shouting verbal insults at me and women activists, calling them whores.”

The buildings were destroyed due to claims that they were too close to Israel’s illegal separation wall, with the Benjamin Netanyahu government citing “security concerns.” The families living in the buildings that did not have either the time or ability to remove their furniture and other personal items will now have to comb through the rubble to see what they can recover, if the Israeli soldiers will even allow them that grace. They will also have to find new places to live as the Israelis have made no provision for housing them.

The homes were legally constructed on land that is nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), a fine point that the Israeli authorities chose to consider irrelevant. When the Palestinians object to such arbitrary behavior, they are sent to Israeli military courts that always endorse the government decisions. And the Netanyahu regime of kleptocrats has made clear that it does not recognize international law about treatment of people who are under occupation.

The buildings were destroyed a few days after rampaging Israeli settlers on the West Bank continued their campaign to destroy the livelihoods of their Palestinian neighbors. Hundreds of olive trees were burned on the West Bank on July 10th, a deliberate attempt to drive the Arabs from their land by making it impossible to farm, strangling the local economy. Olive trees are particularly targeted as they are a cash crop and the trees take many years to mature and produce. The Israeli settlers have also been known to kill livestock, poison water, destroy crops, burn down buildings, and beat and even kill the Palestinian farmers and their families. And in Hebron the settlers have surrounded the old town, dumping excrement and other refuse on the Palestinians shops below that are still trying to do business. It should surprise no one that the Jewish settlers who engage in the violence are rarely caught, even less often tried, and almost never punished. The ghastly Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has declared that what was once Palestine is now a country called Israel and it is only for Jews. Killing a Palestinian by a Jewish Israeli is considered de facto to be a misdemeanor.

And meanwhile the carnage continues in Gaza, with the death toll of unarmed demonstrating Palestinians now at more than 200 plus several thousand wounded, many of them children and medical workers. Recently, orders to the Israeli army snipers direct them to shoot demonstrators in the ankles so they will be crippled for life. This is what it takes to be the “most moral army” in the world as defined by French fop pseudo intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, demonstrating only yet again that the tribe knows how to stick together. But the war crimes carried out by Israel also require unlimited support from the United States, both in money and political cover to allow it all to happen. Israel would not be killing Palestinians with such impunity if it were not for the green light from Donald Trump and his settler-loving mock Ambassador David Friedman backed up by a congress that seems to cherish Israelis more than Americans.

How is it that the horrific treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis as aided and abetted by the worldwide Jewish diaspora is not featured in headlines all over the world? Why isn’t my government with its highly suspect but nevertheless declared agenda of bringing democracy and freedom to all saying anything about the Palestinians? Or condemning Israeli behavior as it once did regarding South Africa?

Can one even imagine what The New York Times and Washington Post would be headlining if American soldiers and police were evicting and beating the residents of a housing project in a U.S. city? But somehow Israel always gets a pass, no matter what it does and politicians from both parties delight in describing how the “special relationship” with the Jewish state is cast in stone.

In the wake of the home demolitions, Washington yet again shielded Israel from a United Nations censure for its behavior by casting a Security Council veto. The Jewish state is consequently never held accountable for its bad behavior, and let us be completely honest, Israel is the ultimate rogue regime, dedicated to turning its neighbors into smoking ruins with U.S. assistance. It is evil manifest and it is not in America’s own interest to continue to be dragged down that road.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

July 29, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 5 Comments

Siemens wins huge defense contract at notorious US Guantanamo base in Cuba

RT | July 26, 2019

A unit of German multinational Siemens has been awarded an $829 million contract from the Pentagon “for energy savings and performance measures” at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to a statement by the US Department of Defense, the work to be performed provides for the construction, operations and maintenance of energy conservation measures to improve energy efficiency and reliability.

That includes heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades, lighting upgrades, commercial refrigeration upgrades, distributed generation, renewable energy photovoltaic for both demand and supply sides, energy storage, power control, supervisory control and data acquisition, water retrofits and wastewater.

Work is expected to be completed by April 2043, the Pentagon said.

“No funds will be obligated with this award, as private financing obtained by the contractor will be used for the 31-month construction (i.e. implementation) phase of the project.”

According to the report, eight proposals were received for the task order. It specified that the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Port Hueneme, California, is the contracting activity for the task order.

The Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Golden, Colorado, is the contracting activity for the basic contract.

The US naval base in Guantanamo Bay is also known for its notorious prison, which has been widely criticized for violations of human rights. Established in 2002, it is known for indefinite detention without trial and numerous tortures which have led to scores of suicides and unsuccessful suicide attempts by detainees.

July 26, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

No Accountability in Washington. The CIA Wants to Hide All Its Employees

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 25, 2019

Government that actually serves the interests of the people who are governed has two essential characteristics: first, it must be transparent in terms of how it debates and develops policies and second, it has to be accountable when it fails in its mandate and ceases to be responsive to the needs of the electorate. Over the past twenty years one might reasonably argue that Washington has become less a “of the people, by the people and for the people” and increasingly a model of how special interests can use money to corrupt government. The recent story about how serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided any serious punishment by virtue of his wealth and his political connections, including to both ex-president Bill Clinton and to current chief executive Donald Trump, demonstrates how even the most despicable criminals can avoid being brought to justice.

This erosion of what one might describe as republican virtue has been exacerbated by a simultaneous weakening of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was intended to serve as a guarantee of individual liberties while also serving as a bulwark against government overreach. In recent cases in the United States, a young man had his admission to Harvard revoked over comments posted online when he was fifteen that were considered racist, while a young woman was stripped of a beauty contest title because she refused to don a hijab at a college event and then wrote online about her experience. In both cases, freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment was ruled to be inadmissible by the relevant authorities.

Be that as it may, governmental lack of transparency and accountability is a more serious matter when the government itself becomes a serial manipulator of the truth as it seeks to protect itself from criticism. Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is seeking legislation that will expand government ability to declare it a crime to reveal the identities of undercover intelligence agents will inevitably lead to major abuse when some clever bureaucrat realizes that the new rule can also be used to hide people and cover up malfeasance.

A law to protect intelligence officers already exists. It was passed in 1982 and is referred to as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (I.I.P.A.). It criminalizes the naming of any C.I.A. officer under cover who has served overseas in the past five years. The new legislation would make the ban on exposure perpetual and would also include Agency sources or agents whose work is classified as well as actual C.I.A. staff employees who exclusively or predominantly work in the United States rather than overseas.

The revised legislation is attached to defense and intelligence bills currently being considered by Congress. If it is passed into law, its expanded range of criminal penalties could be employed to silence whistle blowers inside the Agency who become aware of illegal activity and it might also be directed against journalists that the whistleblowers might contact to tell their story.

The Agency has justified the legislation by claiming in a document obtained by The New York Times that “hundreds of covert officers [serving in the United States] have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization… C.I.A. officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to carry out C.I.A.’s mission regardless of where they are based. Protecting officers’ identities from foreign adversaries is critical.”

Some Congressmen are disturbed by the perpetual nature of the identification ban while also believing that the proposed legislation is too broad in general. Senator Ron Wyden expressed reservations over how the C.I.A. provision would apply indefinitely. “I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.

Agency insiders have suggested that the new law is in part a response to increasing leaks of classified information by government employees. It is also a warning shot fired at journalists in the wake of the impending prosecution of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the seldom used Espionage Act of 1918. Covert identities legislation is less broad than the Espionage Act, which is precisely why it is attractive. It permits prosecution and punishment solely because someone either has revealed a “covert” name or is suspected of having done so.

But up until now, government prosecutors have only used the 1982 identities law twice. The first time was a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and the second time was the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to providing a reporter with the name of an under-cover case officer who participated in the agency’s illegal overseas interrogations. Kiriakou has always claimed that he had not in fact named anyone, in spite of his plea, which was agreed to as a plea bargain. The covert officer in question had already been identified in the media.

John Kiriakou also observes how the I.I.P.A. has been inevitably applied selectively. He describes how “These two minor prosecutions aside, very few revelations of C.I.A. identities have ever led to court cases. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously leaked Valerie Plame’s name to two syndicated columnists. He was never charged with a crime. Former C.I.A. Director David Petraeus leaked the names of 10 covert C.I.A. operatives to his adulterous girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to impress her, and was never charged. Former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the covert SEAL Team member who killed Osama bin Laden. He apologized and was not prosecuted.”

Kiriakou also explains how the “… implementation of this law is a joke. The C.I.A. doesn’t care when an operative’s identity is revealed — unless they don’t like the politics of the person making the revelation. If they cared, half of the C.I.A. leadership would be in prison. What they do care about, though, is protecting those employees who commit crimes at the behest of the White House or the C.I.A. leadership.” He goes on to describe how some of those involved in the Agency torture program were placed under cover precisely for that reason, to protect them from prosecution for war crimes.

Even team player Joe Biden, when a Senator, voted against the I.I.P.A., explaining in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that, “The language (the I.I.P.A.) employs is so broadly drawn that it would subject to prosecution not only the malicious publicizing of agents’ names, but also the efforts of legitimate journalists to expose any corruption, malfeasance, or ineptitude occurring in American intelligence agencies.” And that was with the much weaker 1982 version of the bill.

The new legislation is an intelligence agency dream, a get out of jail card that has no expiry date. And if one wants to know how dangerous it is, consider for a moment that if it turns out that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was indeed a C.I.A. covert source, which is quite possible, he would be covered and would be able to walk away free on procedural grounds.

July 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

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