Bangladesh factory fire kills 20
Press TV – December 14, 2010
A fire has ripped through a garment factory in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, killing at least 20 workers and wounding over 100 others.
Around 5,000 people were at the factory when the fire broke out on the ninth floor.
About 50 people have been taken to hospital with severe burns. Many more are stranded on the roof of the 10-story building.
Police sources say others were injured in a stampede of hundreds of workers trying to escape to safety.
“It is a big fire and many workers are trapped on the roof of the building. We are mobilizing all our teams from around the city,” AFP quoted fire department Chief Abu Nayeem as saying.
Fire teams have been mobilized from across the capital to control the blaze.
Fires are common in Bangladesh clothes factories. Scores of workers are killed each year due to fires sparked by substandard electrical wiring in these factories.
This comes as thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh have launched a strike over low wages and poor working conditions over the past months.
At least four workers died on December 12 after Bangladeshi police opened fire with live ammunition on protestors, who had demanded the implementation of a hike in the minimum wage, approved by the government and industry in July.
The violence in the Asian nation erupted after the government refused to increase the minimum wage from $27 to $73 a month.
Union officials have argued that the pay rise is not sufficient to ensure a minimum standard of living for workers in the face of surging prices.
Moving the goal posts for Israel
Morning Star | 13 December 2010
MPs will vote today on the Police Reform Bill, which contains a plethora of proposals concerning election of police commissioners, setting up a police reserve force, alcohol licensing, drugs enforcement and banning permanent protests in Parliament Square.
But this massive Bill also contains one clause which has been inserted at the request of a foreign government.
Clause 151 would give the Director of Public Prosecutions a veto over whether an arrest warrant could be issued for war crime suspects.
This would essentially allow the government of the day a political veto over what is a legal question.
War crimes are closely defined under international law and all legal administrations have a responsibility to apply the law strictly and impartially.
Yet Israel believes that different rules should apply to itself or that conduct which would be a war crime in any other circumstance should not be viewed as such when committed by the zionist state.
And the British political Establishment supports Tel Aviv on this issue, which is why David Cameron and Gordon Brown undertook to propose this measure after former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to London to dodge a war crimes arrest warrant.
The Israelis were furious because, in common with the European Union and the US, they believe that war crimes are committed only by Africans or by countries at odds with the western allies.
Tel Aviv complained of being “singled out” for special treatment. The opposite is the case.
The demand to arrest Livni for the well-documented crimes carried out by Israeli forces in their merciless assault on Gaza was a bid to ensure that Israel is bound by the same international law as other states.
Such a principle would also have implications for people such as George W Bush and Tony Blair, who have drawn a line under their own war crimes, moving on to build their personal fortunes.
There are obvious problems to applying the law equally to rich and militarily powerful states, as there are to powerful and wealthy individuals in society, but MPs have a responsibility not to collaborate with squalid political manoeuvres such as clause 151.
People across the world can see the continued indifference of Nato and its allies to the Palestinians’ plight.
Washington formally conceded last week that it lacked the will to force Israel to end its illegal colonisation of the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
European Union foreign affairs commissioner Cathy Ashton echoed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s weasel words, expressing regret that Israel “has not been in a position to accept an extension of the settlement moratorium.”
On behalf of the EU, she rejected constructive proposals from 26 former EU and member-state leaders, including a ban on false labelling of settlement products, and paid lip service to a non-existent US-led peace process.
In doing so, she implicated the EU in the ongoing Israeli war crime of collective punishment against the people of Gaza, where the infrastructure, including drinking water provision, remains in ruins because of Israel’s callous blockade.
If MPs allow clause 151 to pass unchallenged, they too will be colluding in Israeli war crimes and providing the means for war criminals to come and go freely in Britain.
At the very least, MPs should read the Palestine Solidarity Campaign briefing on this issue – www.palestinecampaign.org/universal-jurisdiction – before casting their votes.
Unprecedented: master’s thesis on Jewish white privilege and Israel attacked in Canadian legislature
By Cecilie Surasky | MuzzleWatch | December 10 2010
Canadian grad student, Jewish anti-Zionist activist, and descendant of Holocaust survivors Jenny Peto is breaking new ground with her University of Toronto master’s thesis The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education, though perhaps not in the way she intended.
The Canadian National Post reports:
It has provoked intense debate online, in academia and even the political realm. Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark raised it in the legislature Tuesday in response to sharp criticism in the Jewish community, calling it “shockingly anti-Semitic.” Citizenship and immigration minister Eric Hoskins likewise condemned the thesis in the legislature saying he was “greatly disturbed and, in fact, disgusted,” when he read media coverage about it.
These attacks (by some if not many who haven’t actually read it) on a master’s thesis, one that has already been through an academic review no less, are unprecedented. Also from The National Post:
Michiel Horn, a York University history professor and author of Academic Freedom in Canada: A History: “I know not of a single case where a master’s or a phD paper has been subject of discussion in the legislature of any province in Canada,” he said.
You can read Jenny Peto’s thesis yourself by downloading it here. Her abstract states:
This paper focuses on issues of Jewish identity, whiteness and victimhood within hegemonic Holocaust education. I argue that today, Jewish people of European descent enjoy white privilege and are among the most socio-economically advantaged groups in the West. Despite this privilege, the organized Jewish community makes claims about Jewish victimhood that are widely accepted within that community and within popular discourse in the West. I propose that these claims to victimhood are no longer based in a reality of oppression, but continue to be propagated because a victimized Jewish identity can produce certain effects that are beneficial to the organized Jewish community and the Israeli nation-state. I focus on two related Holocaust education projects – the March of the Living and the March of Remembrance and Hope – to show how Jewish victimhood is instrumentalized in ways that obscure Jewish privilege, deny Jewish racism and promote the interests of the Israeli nation-state.
I myself can’t wait to read it. There’s not a lot here that those seriously familiar with these Jewish institutions and Israeli history and politics could really argue with. For too long, the central organizing principle of much of institutional Jewry has been fear, which has been essential in, among other things, enabling an unaccountable Israel. And few programs more dramatically reflect this than the March of the Living which inflicts a proxy Holocaust trauma on Jewish teenagers (without proper context and support, so I hear from friends who have gone) as an essential right of passage into Jewishness.
To the young N. American Ashkenazi Jews especially who can’t help but notice that Jews as a whole occupy places of real economic and racial privilege in their communities, the messages of perpetual victimhood (and the implied privileges that might go with it, as in the case with the free pass that Israel tends to get) just don’t compute.
I’d imagine that in addition to her own experience, Peto had plenty to draw on from work and discussions happening in academic environments these days regarding Holocaust studies, Israeli politics, white privilege and so on. Is it possible that Peto’s crime is to have thought too complexly –in an academic setting.
Wall Street bonuses cashed in for sex, food and art
RT | December 9, 2010
If the impressionist artist were to illustrate something of today’s New York City, it just might be moneybags.
Amid the lackluster American economic climate, Christies Auction House is seeing sunny days, with more than 600-million dollars worth of impressionist and modern art sold this year.
“Since 2008, we have seen an increasing return of confidence to the art market,” said Conor Jordan, of Christies New York.
New York has once again, become one of the Christies premier selling sites.Just as Wall Street’s wealthy and powerful, are back to indulging.
Pampering at the La Prairie Spa at the Ritz Carlton, involves wearing decadent hors d’ oeuvres. A 90-minute skin caviar facial costs more than $300 and 3.4 ounces of La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Luxe Cream sells for $710.
“This time of year, a lot of our business comes from corporate gift certificates,” said Spa Manager, Sandra Sadowski.
As corporate America is banking record breaking profits this year, it may be no coincidence that business at Wempe Jewelers has spiked. The $158,000 dollar price tag of some luxury watches exceeds the average annual income of three US households combined.
“We’re expecting a very busy time. The busiest time of the year,” said Raik Kraise, Wempe manager.
Busyness boosted perhaps by big bonuses coming mainly from one street, Wall Street, a symbol of the finance industry, the financial collapse and record breaking compensation that will reportedly reach $144 billion dollars this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, 2010 bonuses will be up 4 percent from last year’s record haul.
If anyone would know about business, it would be those who work at Rick’s Cabaret. At the New York Gentlemen’s Club, happiness bares lots of skin and beauty, but it doesn’t come free.
“For an evening, six, seven eight thousand dollars, 10-thousand dollars, it’s hard not to have a good time when you’re surrounded by nearly naked women,” said Rick’s Cabaret Communications Manager, Allan Priaulx.
Female entertainers working at Rick’s said they are continuing to benefit from a boom in business following Wall Street’s rebound.
“These guys are getting much-deserved bonuses.They want to celebrate the bonuses and party and have a great time,” said Randi Newton, an entertainer at Rick’s Cabaret.
From sex cravings, to food cravings, some of Wall Street’s cats have gotten fat by forking up $175 for a 10-ounce Kobe beef hamburger.
“We still sell a handful of them every month. A good handful,” Heather Tierney, co-owner of Wall Street Burger Shoppe said.
On Main Street where more than 15-million Americans are officially unemployed, the US Poverty Population reached nearly 44 million, a 50-year high.
Ironically, that figure marks New York City’s most expensive residential sale this year. A seven-floor, 5th Avenue mansion was purchased for $44 million dollars. This, as more than two million homes have been swallowed up by foreclosure in 2010.
In this so-called rebounding US economy, purveyors of all things luxury are, in fact, resurging. All while the majority of Americans are left wondering when life will finally begin looking as pretty as the painting.
Mike Norman, the chief economist at John Thomas Financial explained there is an expanding gap between the rich and poor in America.
“The resources of the government have been directed almost completely towards one sector of the economy, that’s been the financial, that’s been the huge beneficiary when most working people, and by far, the rest of the economy has been left to flounder,” Norman commented. “It’s very disturbing.”
He said the US now ranks near the bottom of global income inequality lists, and it is a direct result of US government policies.
The failed policies transcend American party politics, he argued, both Republicans and Democrats continue to support the financial sector at the expense of all others. … Full article and video report
Israel’s Racist Rabbis: ‘Hate the Gentile’
By Jonathan Cook – Palestine Chronicle – December 9, 2010
Jews must not rent homes to ‘gentiles’. That was the religious decree issued this week by at least 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then “ostracise” fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.
The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel’s most influential rabbis.
In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country’s Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population.
His followers turned words into deeds by attacking Arab students in the city and threatening to burn down the homes of Jewish landlords renting to the students.
Similar edicts have recently been backed by dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei Brak, a suburb of 150,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have threatened to “expose” any Jews who rent to “foreigners” — in this case, a reference to migrant workers and African refugees who are crowded into neglected neighbourhoods in the centre of the country.
After many weeks of silence on these declarations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was finally forced to issue a condemnation yesterday, describing the rabbis’ call as undemocratic and contradicting the bible, which, he said, called for Jews to “love the stranger”.
Nonetheless, racism in Israel is increasingly enjoying high-level sanction among the most influential sectors of the religious establishment.
The latest ruling was signed by Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of Israel’s national-religious camp; Yosef Elyashiv, a senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi; and Avigdor Neventzal, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Its sentiments have also been echoed by Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of Shas, an important political and religious party in Mr Netanyahu’s government. “Selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won’t let them take control of us here,” Mr Yosef said recently.
Two months ago, Mr Yosef explained the logic behind his views and those of like-minded rabbis.
“Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us.” Explaining why God allowed non-Jews long lives, he added: “Imagine that your donkey would die, you’d lose your income. [The donkey] is your servant. … That’s why he [the gentile] gets a long life, to work well for the Jew.”
Mr Yosef’s remarks against “gentiles” were greeted with respectful silence by Israeli officials and most of the media. It was left to the United States government and the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to issue rebukes. Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s head, accused the rabbi of advancing “hateful and divisive ideas”.
The rabbis’ use of theology to support racial discrimination is being applied to more than just housing.
This summer, Yosef Elitzur and Yitzhak Shapira, who head an influential seminary in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, published The King’s Torah, a 230-page guide to how Jews should treat non-Jews.
The two rabbis concluded that Jews were obligated to kill anyone who posed a danger, immediate or potential, to the Jewish people, and implied that all Palestinians were to be considered a threat. On these grounds, the pair justified killing Palestinian civilians and even their babies.
Last month Mr Shapira also backed the use of Palestinians as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a practice that Israel’s supreme court has outlawed.
The King’s Torah, far from being condemned by moderate rabbis, has been greeted with a general silence and enthusiastic support from a number of notable religious leaders.
Arik Ascherman, head of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, said the growing extremism of the the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel reflected the increasingly right-wing atmosphere in Israel that made the expression of ultra-nationalist views permissible.
In the current climate, he said, moderate rabbis were reluctant to speak out against their colleagues. Many of these rabbis belong to the Conservative or Reform streams of Judaism, which are not officially recognised in Israel.
“The religious sanction being given to the political right by these rabbis is dangerous. It makes their opinions seem more acceptable,” he said.
That is being reflected in public surveys, in which many Israeli Jews express support for anti-Arab views. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute published last week showed that 46 per cent of the country’s Jews did not want to live near Arab citizens, and 39 per cent felt the same about foreign workers.
Even more, 53 per cent, wanted Arab citizens to be encouraged to leave Israel and half believed Arabs should not have equal rights with Jews. Among the religious public, racist sentiments were more popular.
Israeli prosecutors, meanwhile, have turned a blind eye to the refusal of several prominent endorsers of The King’s Torah to obey a summons calling them for investigation. “Our holy Torah is not a subject for investigation or trial by flesh and blood,” the rabbis said.
In all, the rabbinical establishment is growing increasingly bold in promoting its vision of a Jewish state run according to holy law, according to Zvi Barel, a commentator with the daily newspaper Haaretz.
“They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful The King’s Torah into the mainstream,” Mr Barel wrote recently.
The general trend towards extremism has not happened by chance, said Sefi Rachelevsky, a prominent Israeli writer critical of the Orthodox rabbinate. Israel’s public coffers pay the salaries of some of the most extremist rabbis, and the education system regularly falls under the political control of religious parties like Shas.
Mr Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva — a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.
The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 per cent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.
Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Mr Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: “inanimate”, “vegetable”, “animal” and “speakers” — or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National – www.thenational.ae – published in Abu Dhabi.)
Indian envoy ‘frisked’ at US airport
Press TV – December 9, 2010
Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar
India is to file a diplomatic complaint with the US after its ambassador to Washington was singled out and frisked at a US airport.
The incident took place on December 4 at the Jackson-Evers International Airport when the Indian envoy to the United States, Meera Shankar, was about to board a flight to Baltimore after attending an event at Mississippi State University.
The Indian Embassy in Washington has strongly protested the incident.
Shankar was pulled out of the security line and frisked at the airport. She was subjected to a hands-on search despite staff being told about her diplomatic status, Press Trust of India news agency quoted an Indian Embassy official as saying.
“This is unacceptable to India and we are going to take it up with the US government and I hope things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” India’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.
The incident has also embarrassed the university officials who invited Shankar to give a speech for an international studies program.
“It was a wonderful program, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here,'” said Janos Radvanyi, chair of Mississippi State University’s international studies department.
“We are sending her a letter of apology.”
A US Transportation Security Administration spokesman said, “Diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Shankar was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures.”
Shankar suffered a similar experience in September when she was patted by a security officer at a Chicago airport, AFP reported.
US immigration authorities in the O’Hare Airport in Chicago questioned the visiting Indian Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel in September after his name and birth date matched with that of another Praful Patel, who is on the United States watch list.
See also:
Sari-clad India ambassador gets pat-down at Miss. airport
AP | December 8, 2010
… The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson quoted witnesses as saying Shankar was told she was singled out for additional screening because of her dress. She had on a sari, which drapes across the body and is worn by many Indians… Full article
Settler visit closes Salit village overnight
SALFIT — Residents of the northern West Bank town of Kilf Haris were ordered to close their shops early Wednesday as Israeli soldiers evacuated the area ahead of a visit by religious Israelis to a nearby tomb.
Locals said they believed the military escort of at least 10 armored vehicles was for a group of settler rabbis heading to a shrine in the village.
During the visit, witnesses said, a series of checkpoints and guard posts were erected and remained in place until the group withdrew.
An Israeli military spokesman said a group of 30 Israeli civilians were escorted on an “arranged, pre-authorized secured visit to the grave of Yehoshua Ben-Nun … for a Hanuka candle-lighting ceremony.” He said the visit proceeded without incident.
Security sources confirm that similar visits are carried out at night every few months, with one source saying Israeli forces do not close the area, but “advise local residents to stay indoors to avoid friction.”
As a lame duck, Grayson, do you think you could just quack once for Corrie, Henochowicz and Dogan?
By Susie Kneedler | Mondoweiss | December 7, 2010
Yesterday Mondoweiss posted about an appeal by Florida Congressman Alan Grayson at Huffpo to hear from the grassroots so as to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. Susie Kneedler sent Grayson, who was defeated last month, a letter.
Dear Representative Grayson,
Thanks for asking for ideas. As a life-long liberal Democrat, I ask you to defend liberal values and at long last rescue the Democratic Party from its ridiculous enslavement to the extremist right-wing government of Israel and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Otherwise, people of conscience will have no choice but to turn away from the “neo-conservative Dems” to form a truly progressive alternative, for propping up reactionary aims in one area perverts all. Two years ago, newly-elected President Barack Obama had a mandate to achieve an historic realignment of the United States against wars of aggression. Instead, he betrayed every campaign pledge by pursuing (neo-conservative, Pro-Israel) Bush-Cheney military and civic repression.
Please support equal rights and equal self-determination for the people of Palestine and Israel. Please cease your inexplicable support for Israeli-government Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. Please introduce a resolution to stop the U.S. government’s terrible donations of billions for illegal Israeli theft of Palestinian lands and water, as well as Obama’s unconscionable offer of $3 billion in new fighter aircraft, a gift that would enable an Israeli nuclear first-strike.
Remember our U.S. Founders’ cry: “No taxation without representation!” Please work for “one person, one vote” in all Palestine and Israel, rather than the current system in which Palestinians pay taxes not only without representation, but without services, and–most cruelly–for their own imprisonment.
Please stop catering to the Israel lobby’s fetish with making the world safe for Israeli expansion through its targeting of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon–after destroying Iraq. Iran, unlike Israel, has not attacked its neighbors–or the U.S. Israel, however, has done both. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has disgraced itself and violated its oath of office by refusing to probe Israeli-government assaults on American citizens: the U.S.S. Liberty, Rachel Corrie, Tristan Anderson, Furkan Dogan, and Emily Henochowicz–as well as on countless Palestinian civilians.
Our representatives are obliged to defend our own people rather than the crimes of an alien nation. Rep. Grayson, while you remain in Congress–yet are free from the AIPAC puppeteers–you’re uniquely able to press for Congressional hearings on Israeli-government breaches of International Law, including the findings of the Goldstone Report about Israel’s bombardment of imprisoned Gaza.
Please ensure that representatives of Israel register as a agents of a foreign government, as required by law. Please investigate the Israeli government’s repeated transgressions of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Please urge President Obama to push for Israeli compliance with International Law, rather than vetoing resolutions that properly condemn illegal Israeli aggression and human rights’ violations. Defend Americans by making friends with the world rather than siding with the Israeli war-machine.
I tell you sadly, Rep. Grayson,–as a former admirer–that flattering yourself that you are a “person with a conscience,” while defending Israeli ethnic cleansing under a mendacious claim of “security,” is beyond hypocrisy. It is a lie.
Please stand up for peace and peace of mind for all–not just for one religio-ethnic group of a foreign country. Please do your duty to defend the United States by loving all people in all places, including Palestine. Thank you.
Sincerely, Susie Kneedler
New Religious Ruling to Forbid Rental of Homes to Arabs
By Alessandra Bajec – IMEMC & Agencies – December 07, 2010
Dozens of top Israeli rabbis have signed on to a new ruling that would call on Jews not to rent homes to Arabs, Haaretz claimed.
The religious ruling comes a few months after a call signed by a group of 18 prominent rabbis, including the chief rabbi of Safed, which urged Jews to not rent or sell property to non-Jews.
Amongst those who signed on to the new ruling are the chief rabbis of Ramat Hasharon, Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, Rishon Letzion, Carmiel, Gadera, Afula, Nahariya, Herzliya, Nahariya and Pardes Hannah, and other cities.
Most of the signatories are from Safed, a city with an increasing number of Arab students enrolled at the town’s local college. The chief rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, the most prominent one to sign the call, has been criticized in the past for his inflammatory remarks against the Arab population.
Signatories of the ruling also appealed to the religious community to support Eliyahu, who could be tried for incitement against Arabs. Minority Affairs Minister, Avishay Braverman, has asked Justice Minister, Yaakov Neeman, to begin the process of suspending Rabbi Eliyahu immediately from his post of municipal rabbi, a position paid by public funds. “Moreover, as an appointee of the state, the rabbi is obligated not to work against it. His continued incitement against the Arabs in the Galilee does not serve the needs of the state,” Braverman stated.
The rabbis’ call, initially published a few months ago and reprinted in October, demands Jewish property owners reconsider renting their apartments to Arabs believing that it would deflate the value of their houses as well as those in the neighborhood.
“Their way of life is different than that of Jews…Among [the gentiles] are those who are bitter and hateful toward us and who meddle into our lives to the point where they are a danger.” the letter says.
The rabbis’ ruling also calls on neighbors of anyone renting or selling property to Arabs encouraging them to deliver warning notices to the general public and inform the community.
The ruling reads to that effect: “The neighbors and acquaintances [of a Jew who sells or rents to an Arab] must distance themselves from the Jew, refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly [ostracize] him until he goes back on this harmful deed.”
In May, the Anti-Deflamation League condemned Rabbi Eliyahu’s controversial call against selling or renting apartments to Arabs, and required him “to reverse the discriminatory ruling, which negates Israeli law.”
The Mayor of Safed, Ilan Shohat, also criticized Eliyahu’s ruling in a press release, saying that the city “respects every student, Jewish or Arab, who has chosen to study here.”
Considered one of Judaism’s four holy cities, Safed does not have a large Arab population.
Professor Richard Falk on Universal Jurisdiction
Dr. Hanan Chehata | Middle East Monitor | 03 December 2010
The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) hosted UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Richard Falk for a series of events this week including a parliamentary briefing on the issue of Universal Jurisdiction. The following is an extract from the talk he delivered in the House of Commons:
The issue of universal jurisdiction is of special interest at this time because of the apparent effort to give assurances to Israeli leaders that they won’t be subject to a legal process if they come here (to the UK); and that of course is in reaction to the problems that the former Foreign Minister [Tzipi] Livni had when she cancelled her trip [to the UK last year].
I think it is important to realise that the whole idea of universal jurisdiction is to take account of the weakness of international institutions in upholding international criminal law. There has always been the sense that national judicial institutions reinforce the norms of international law and take account of that institutional vacuum that exists in international society; this has been a historical practice in relation to piracy and to other kinds of international crimes that were a threat to the international community as a whole. The idea of Nuremberg after World War Two was that crimes against the peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes are also offences against the whole of international society. There is an interest on the part of all states in trying to implement those norms of international criminal law. The American Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg said the law the state applied to the German survivors of World War Two will not be respected unless those who sit in judgement uphold it in relation to their own behaviour; that it was a promise to the future.
It seems to me that if a country such as Britain, which has a proud constitutional tradition, reserves the implementation of international criminal law just for those the government doesn’t like at the time – in other words if international criminal law is used for prosecuting Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic but not the friends of the government – then you discredit, in a fundamental way, the rule of law which really does depend on equals being treated equally. If that is not done then double standards become very manifest; it also has the effect of saying that geopolitics and foreign policy always trump the law. Again, that is an unfortunate way of thinking in an increasingly globalised world where the discipline of international law is very important as a way of restraining and containing foreign policy within appropriate boundaries. I’ve said often that US foreign policy would be much more successful had the Americans chosen to respect international law in the last several decades; that most of the failures of American foreign policy have correlated with deviations from international legal norms. Hence, in that sense I think a lot is at stake with this whole idea of universal jurisdiction.
Putting it now in the Israel-Palestine context, universal jurisdiction is part of the struggle against impunity for the Israeli military and the country’s political leaders. That impunity has been possible both because Israel itself doesn’t impose accountability on those who perpetrate violations of international criminal law and because the US, and to some extent European countries, have given a geopolitical insulation to Israel in relation to its responsibilities as a sovereign state.
Thus, part of the wider stage of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a shift in tactics on the Palestinian side much more in the direction of non-violent symbolic instruments of soft power. They include this much more robust global solidarity movement that has concentrated on building a boycott and divestment campaign which has been surprisingly effective, even in the United States. It has been increasingly a matter for university campuses, for instance, even at conservative universities. Part of this issue of impunity and accountability was also raised by the UN’s Goldstone report and by the international law panel appointed after the flotilla incident of May 31st;all of these issues converge to suggest that at this time the most effective way of implementing international law is both through the activism of civil society and through national legal institutions. One of the dimensions of the flotilla incident that is interesting and worth noticing is that Israel, for the first time, abandoned the claim that it was entitled to impose a comprehensive blockade. Everything the UN tried to do had had no effect, but this flotilla incident and the outrage associated with the way in which it was attacked led the Israeli leadership to say that henceforth humanitarian goods, fuel, food and medicine would be allowed to enter Gaza without restriction. Of course, even though Israel then “eased” the blockade it hasn’t ended it and the most recent statistics show that the blockade has actually been tightened in such a way that the people of Gaza get only about 28% of the goods that they were receiving prior to the blockade. So there is still very severe pressure on the Gazan population, which is forcing them to rely on some black market economy through the tunnels and which is generally an extension of the collective punishment of a whole population; that is a violation of Article 33 of the Geneva Convention that unconditionally prohibits collective punishment as an instrument of occupation.
Following the main text of his talk Prof. Falk and the MPs discussed a number of issues in addition to universal jurisdiction, including the issue of the illegal arrest of Palestinian children.
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- JNS Policy Summit to kick off in Israel
- Fatalities From Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted
- ‘Reproductive genocide’ in Gaza; death toll in Lebanon tops 4,000 (during a ceasefire) – Daily Update
- Israelis Invaded Lebanon And Then Cried Victim When Their Soldiers Got Killed
- FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches
- Why US presidents from both parties end up cursing Benjamin Netanyahu
- Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show
- Deaths in Gaza undercounted, possibly by 100s of thousands; “Psychopath” Ben-Gvir talks trash – Daily Update
- UNICEF: “Trauma is woven into the very fabric of childhood in Gaza”
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- No Tricks Zone
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
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