Israeli assassinations: crime against humanity?
By Rachel Rudolph | Palestine Telegraph | February 21, 2010
Dominating the world news, even in the United States, is the Al-Mabhouh assassination. Israel has a long history of engaging in targeted killings and assassinations, so why has this one sparked media frenzy? Many outlets are focusing on the use of fake passports, while others are condemning the lack of action by those governments whose passports were used. Very few are actually focusing on the act of assassination itself and its consequences under international law. While targeted killings of specific individuals with government approval are permissible under international law under certain conditions, assassinations (an attack on an individual who believes there is no need to fear the attacker) are not. Was the murder of Al-Mabhouh an assassination? If so, is this another Israeli crime against humanity?
While I am sure Palestine Telegraph readers are well acquainted with the murder, a little background should be given to help understand the applicability of international law. Born in the Jabalya camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Feb. 14, 1960, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was murdered on Jan. 20 at a hotel in Dubai. There was no reason to suspect that this trip would be his last, as Al-Mabhouh had travelled to Dubai in the past and never encountered any problems. However, while he had no problems travelling to Dubai, Israel’s Mossad had attempted to take his life three times in the past: in 1991, 2004 and 2008. The last attempt followed the Israeli assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a top military leader with the Lebanese Hizbullah organization. (He was blamed for the kidnapping of Western hostages in Beirut – including the Briton Terry Waite – and a 1983 bombing that killed 240 U.S. marines in the Lebanese capital.)
Al-Mabhouh was murdered by a team consisting of 11 agents. The team of agents changed hotels, arrived from different locations and changed their clothes to thwart identification. All of them had Austrian mobile numbers and conducted encrypted calls from Dubai to Austria. None, however, had prior contact with one another, as all communication went through the Austrian office. Austrian authorities said they intended to open an investigation. Dubai also detained two Palestinian Fatah security officials in connection with the murder.
The team of 11 also used fake passports. Mossad has a history of using foreign passports to carry out its activities. In 1987, Margaret Thatcher deported 13 Israeli diplomats after the assassination of a Palestinian cartoonist in London. In 1997, Israeli agents traveling with fake Canadian passports were arrested in Amman after attempting to assassinate Khaled Meshaal, the elected head of the Hamas politburo. In 1998, Labour’s MP Galloway stated that four members of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq were Mossad agents working under false names and papers.
Israel’s response to Mossad’s involvement in the Al-Mabhouh murder was noncommittal. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said there was no evidence of Israeli involvement, but in any case, Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies. This response or lack thereof was to be expected given Israel’s policy on Mossad actions.
Prior to Efraim Havely becoming the ninth director of Mossad, the prime minister’s approval for such operations was needed. Havely disagreed with this policy, arguing that the prime minister needs “deniability” and must be insulated from any failures as well. While the procedure for selecting targets has not been made public, the overall sense of how decisions are made has emerged. According to Steven R. David (2003), Israeli intelligence agencies rely on the testimony of collaborators to identify those who pose a threat to security. A report on the target’s activities is complied and the potential for him or her to engage in future attacks is assessed. A recommendation is then made to target the individual, which is approved or disapproved by the Israeli government. Once approval is given, no further permission is sought for the operation in terms of timing, location, etc.
History of Israeli Assassinations
The history of Israeli assassinations actually predates the declaration of statehood by Israel. Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1997) examines the political assassinations carried out prior to and after the establishment of the State of Israel. According to his findings, up until 1988, 90 percent of the political assassinations occurred between 1939 and 1948 and were conducted by Hagana, Etzel or Lehi. Most of them (73 percent) targeted Jews rather than Brits or Arabs, motivated by revenge or the target’s reputation as “squealers” or “traitors.” The charge of “traitor/squealer” was used 91.2% of the time. Moreover, Ben-Yehuda’s research finds that the assassinations were all deliberate and planned in advance.
The policy of sanctioning targeted murder did not stop with the establishment of the state of Israel. In the 1970s, there was a wave of killings of pro-Palestinian individuals in Paris, Nicosia, Beirut and Athens; and, in 1978, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was killed. In 1988, during the first Intifada, the PLO’s Khalil al-Wazir was assassinated.
In the 1990s, there were three major waves of Israeli assassinations. Two of the prominent political targets were Fathi Shikaki and Yahya Ayyash. There was also the attempted assassination of Khaled Meshaal. Another wave began in 2000, following the second Intifada. Some of the high-ranking individuals targeted include Abu Ali Mustafa (PFLP), Raed al-Karmi (Tanzim Movement), Salah Shehada (a commander of the military wing of Hamas), Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (one of the founders of Hamas) and Abdel Aziz Rantisi (the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2004). Then, in 2008, Mossad assassinated Imad Mughniyeh. There were many other figures targeted, but these were the most high-profile. All, including those not listed, were killed without any trial or due process. It should also be noted that in the past, Israel’s policy of systematically targeting individuals has been condemned by Arab countries, Europe, the United Nations and even the United States (David, 2003). In 2002, the European Union even threatened sanctions.
Following the political murder of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, however, there have been no calls for an investigation or threats of sanctions by the International community. It was not until it was revealed that foreign passports were used to carry out the attack that foreign governments –namely, the British, French and Irish governments — called on Israel’s ambassadors to explain the situation. The UK and France have also increased pressure on Israel to provide them with information on the assassination. Britain has also launched an investigation due to the violation of its security and affront to its integrity. The investigation is to be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which will work closely with the Emirati authorities. British politicians have also called on Israel to launch an investigation into the matter.
Israeli press commentary suggests that there is no need to be concerned over the “unpleasantness with [the] governments,” since the “State of Israel will emerge from this affair unblemished and the Mossad will continue enjoying a reputation of fearless determination and nearly unstoppable capabilities.” Mossad’s strategy, according to Efraim Havely, is to think outside the box, including penetrating organizations it deems enemies and exploiting the differences between factions, movements and political parties. But is Israel’s systematic practice of political assassinations and willful disregard of the other states’ sovereignty consistent with international law?
Systematic Murder under International law
International law is complex in terms of the protection, rights and treatment of non-state actors, especially when they are the target of state violence. Official state actions are governed by the UN Charter. Article 2 of the charter specifically prohibits the aggressive use of force by states. The only exception to this prohibition is Article 51, which authorizes military action for self-defense. This right, however, can only be invoked when the threat of aggression is imminent and force is necessary as a last resort. If force is used, the state’s response must be proportionate.
It is hard to argue Israel’s applicability of Article 51 in the case of Al-Mabhouh’s murder. First, Israel’s actions were not taken against another state actor. Second, he posed no imminent danger. Al-Mabhouh lived in Syria and was traveling on a diplomatic mission for Hamas. Threat of imminent aggression was not present. Israel, however, argues that it is involved in an ongoing armed conflict with the Palestinians, especially with the political movement Hamas. Therefore, it says, there is a constant, imminent threat of aggression. However, this argument is a stretch for the Al-Mabhouh murder because he was not living inside the Palestinian Territories. This fact in itself reduces the imminent nature of any perceived threat he may have been. Third, Article 51 states that force is to be used only as a means of last resort. The Israeli agents could have subdued and arrested Al-Mabhouh or contacted the Emirati authorities to seek his arrest. The use of force was not proportionate.
In addition, Israel violated Article 2 of the UN Charter. Article 2 requires that states respect the sovereignty of other countries. The use of fake passports of another country and the carrying out of murder on another state’s territory, without its permission, is a clear violation of this article. Israel also violated the sovereignty of Austria, given that its territory was used as the command center for carrying out the attack. There is no plausible argument that Israel can give to justify this violation, particularly since Al-Mabhouh posed no imminent threat.
However, while Article 51 of the UN charter is not plausibly applicable to the Al-Mabhouh murder, the United States has set a precedent in its so-called war on Al-Qaeda. Due to the U.S. targeting of Al-Qaeda, the definition of a non-international conflict has been extended to include one between a state and non-state actor outside the state’s territory. Thus, Article 3 (as well as the Provisions of Additional Protocol II) of the Geneva Conventions are applicable when a state engages in violence against a non-state actor outside of its territory or the territories in which there is ongoing conflict.
Given this U.S. precedent, there are several other criteria that must be met. First, the individuals targeted must be of the armed forces of the non-state actor. And while there is no obligation to attempt to arrest members of the armed forces before they are targeted, combatants can only be killed when they cannot be prevented from perpetrating an attack that endangerw the lives of others. In all other circumstances, combatants should be arrested, prosecuted and punished for their crimes under law. Second, those who play a purely political role for a non-state group cannot be targeted. Third, targeting must meet the requirement of proportionality under customary international law. Fourth, permission must be sought from the government on whose territory an attack is believed to be imminent.
Israel did not seek the permission of the UAE to carry out an attack on its territory and there has been no evidence presented that Al-Mabhouh was planning to perpetrate an attack. Moreover, the Israeli agents were able to locate him at his hotel. Even if Israel attempted to make the weak argument that he was planning to perpetrate an attack, there is no plausible argument that he could not have been prevented from carrying it out. Al-Mabhouh could have been arrested, prosecuted and punished for whatever so-called crimes that Israel claims he violated. Nothing changes the fact that he deserved due process and Israel violated his rights granted under international law. Israel willfully murdered Al-Mabhouh. The question now is whether the murder was in fact an assassination.
Targeted Killing versus Assassination
Targeted killing is the intentional slaying of a specific individual or group of individuals undertaken with explicit government approval. It is permissible to target combatants under international law, especially when a state is in armed conflict. For a targeted killing to be permissible, the targets must be combatants or part of the military chain of command; they must pose an imminent threat to the security of the state; and, the means used must not be “treacherous.” A targeted killing must be an option of last resort and arrest not possible. Finally, when conducted in a foreign territory, permission must be obtained for it to be legal under international law. If it is not, then the act is in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter. This is even the case when the individual targeted is a non-state actor. Therefore, even if Al-Mabhouh’s murder is considered a targeted killing and not an assassination, Israel violated Article 2 because permission was not granted by the UAE. Given the means used to carry out the murder, it is questionable whether it was in fact a targeted killing.
Assassination is defined as “murder by treacherous means”; therefore, the method used is important for determining the legality of the action. Treachery is an attack on an individual who believes there is no need to fear the attacker, especially in incidents when the attacker pretends to be a non-combatant civilian. There was no reason to believe that Al-Mabhouh feared the attackers, who knocked on his hotel room door. The woman who knocked was dressed as a hotel employee and the other agents were all dressed in civilian clothing. Thus, the means used were treacherous and it was an assassination, not a targeted killing. It is clear from the press photos released that Al-Mabhouh was treated in a cruel, humiliating and inhumane way. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment.
A Crime Against Humanity?
A crime against humanity is one that is part of a systematic or widespread pattern of attacks against a civilian population. In addition, if an assassination that targeted a particular person was part of a broader plan to destroy the individual’s entire group, it could be viewed as genocide. As has been demonstrated, there was a systematic use of murder and political assassination carried out before and after the establishment of the state of Israel. Since Israel’s declaration of independence, the Israeli government has engaged in a systematic and widespread pattern of attacks on Palestinian civilians. Moreover, it has engaged in a systematic pattern of assassinations that target particular persons in a group.
Therefore, Israel has engaged in crimes against humanity and genocide. Israel has continuously and systematically violated international law. The British, French, Irish, Austrian and Emirati governments, as well as the international community, have a duty to do more than call for an investigation into Israeli action. Condemnation and sanctions are necessary.
Rachael M. Rudolph, PhD
__________________________
Sources:
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades-Information Office
BBC News, “Dubai suspects on Interpol list,” 18 February 2010.
BBC News, “UK inquiry into ‘fake ID’ murder, 17 February 2010.
BBC News, “Arab press glee at ‘Mossad exposed,” 18 February 2010.
Havely, E. (2006). Man in the Shadows, St. Martin’s Press.
BBC News, “UK: ‘Undercover Mossad agents in UN team,” 3 November 1998.
David, S (2003). “Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing,” Ethics and International Affairs.
Ben-Yehuda, N (1997). “Political Assassination Events as a Cross-Cultural Form of Alternative Justice,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology.
BBC News, “Long History of Israel’s covert killing,” 29 January 2010.
BBC World Service, “Dubai Hamas killing: ‘fraudulent’ passports fuel Mossad suspicion,” 17 February 2010.
BBC News, “UK ‘outrage’ at passport killing, 18 February 2010.
BBC News, “Israel press on Hamas killing,” 18 February 2010.
Cullen, P (2008). “The Role of Targeted Killing in the Campaign Against Terror,” JFQ: National Defense University.
Mossad’s Murderous Reach: The Larger Political Issues
By James Petras | 02.21.2010
On January 19 Israel’s international secret police, the Mossad, sent an eighteen member death squad to Dubai using European passports, supposedly ‘stolen’ from Israeli dual citizens and altered with fake photos and signatures, in order to assassinate the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh.
The evidence is overwhelming: The Dubai police presentation of detailed security videos of the assassins was corroborated by the testimony of Israeli security experts and applauded by Israel’s leading newspapers and columnists. The Mossad openly stated that Mabhouh was a high priority target who had survived three previous assassination attempts. Israel did not even bother to deny the murder. Furthermore, the sophisticated communication system used by the killers, the logistics and planning surrounding their entry and exit from Dubai and the scope and scale of the operation have all the characteristics of a high-level state operation.
Furthermore, only Mossad would have access to the European passports of its dual citizens! Only Mossad would have the capacity, motivation, stated intent and willingness to provoke a diplomatic row with its European allies, knowing full well that Western European governments’ anger would blow over because of their deep links to Israel. After meticulous investigation and the interrogation of 2 captured Palestinian Mossad collaborators, the Dubai police chief has stated he is sure the Mossad was behind the killing.
The Larger Political Issues
Israel’s policy of overseas assassination raises profound issues that threaten the basis of the modern state: sovereignty, rule of law and national and personal security.
Israel has a publicly-stated policy of violating the sovereignty of any and all countries in order to kill or abduct its opponents. In both proclamation and actual practice, Israeli law, decrees and actions abroad supersede the laws and law enforcement agencies of any other nation. If Israel’s policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority. Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation’s citizens or residents with impunity. Israel’s extra-territorial assassinations make a mockery of the very notion of national sovereignty. Extra-territorial secret police elimination of opponents was a common practice of the Nazi Gestapo, Stalin’s GPU and Pinochet’s DINA and has now become the sanctioned practice of the US “Special Forces” and the CIA clandestine division. Such policies are the hallmark of totalitarian, dictatorial and imperialist states, which systematically trample on the sovereign rights of peoples.
Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassinations, exemplified by the recent murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room, violates all the fundamental precepts of the rule of law. Extra-judicial killings ordered by a state, mean its own secret police are judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner, unrestrained by sovereignty, law and the duty of nations to protect their citizens and visitors. Evidence, legal procedures, defense and cross examinations are obliterated in the process. State-sponsored, extra-judicial murder completely undermines due process. Liquidation of opponents abroad is the logical next step after Israel’s domestic show trials, based on the application of its racial laws and administrative detention decrees, which have dispossessed the Palestinian people and violated international laws.
Mossad death squads operate directly under the Israeli Prime Minister (who personally approved the recent murder).The vast majority of Israelis proudly support these assassinations, especially when the killers escape detection and capture. The unfettered operation of foreign state-sponsored death squads, carrying out extra-judicial assassinations with impunity, is a serious threat to every critic, writer, political leader and civic activist who dares to criticize Israel.
Mossad Murders – Zionist Fire
The precedent of Israel killing its adversaries abroad, establishes the outer boundaries of repression by its overseas supporters in the leading Zionist organizations, most of whom have now and in the past supported Israel’s violation of national sovereignty via extra-judicial killings. If Israel physically eliminates its opponents and critics, the 51 major American Jewish organizations economically repress Israel’s critics in the US. They actively pressure employers, university presidents and public officials to fire employees, academics and professionals who dare to speak or write against Israeli torture, killing and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.
So far, most critical comments, in Israel and elsewhere, of Mossad’s recent murder in Dubai focus on the agents’ “incompetence”, including allowing their faces to be captured on numerous security videos as they clumsily changed their wigs and costumes under the camera gaze . Other critics complain that the bungling Mossad is “tarnishing Israel’s image” as a democratic state and providing ammunition for the anti-Semites. None of these superficial criticisms have been repeated by the US Congress, White House or the Presidents of the Major Jewish American organizations, where the mafia rule of Omerga, or silence, reigns supreme and criminal complicity is the rule
Conclusion
While the critics bemoan the clumsy Mossad job, making it harder for Western powers to provide Israel with diplomatic cover for its operations abroad, the fundamental issue is never addressed: The Mossad’s acquisition and alteration of official British, French, German and Irish passports of dual Israeli citizen’s underscores the cynical and sinister nature of Israel’s exploitation of its dual citizens in the pursuit of its own bloody foreign policy goals. Mossad’s use of genuine passports issued by four sovereign European nations to its citizens in order to murder a Palestinian in a Dubai hotel room raises the question of to whom ‘dual’ Israeli citizens really owe their allegiance and just how far they are willing to go in defending or promoting Israel’s overseas assassinations.
Thanks to Israel’s use of British passports to enter Dubai and murder an adversary, every British businessperson or tourist traveling in the Middle East will be suspected of links to Israeli death squads. With elections this year and the Labor and Conservative parties counting heavily on Zionist millionaires for campaign funding, it remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown will do more than whimper and cringe!
Clashes reported in Hebron over Israeli heritage decision
Ma’an – 22/02/2010
Hebron – Confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces were reported in Hebron on Monday, as public figures declare a general strike across the city, amidst growing anger at the Israeli cabinet’s decision to include two religious sites in the occupied West Bank, including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque.
Protesters in the southern part of the city set tires alight, while in the city center, an Israeli military outpost at the entrance of Ash-Shuhada’ street, closed off to Palestinians, was pelted with stones. According to locals, Israeli soldiers used stun grenades against demonstrators.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said that about 100 Palestinians were rioting in the area, “hurling rocks in a violent and illegal riot.” One soldier was lightly injured as a result, she said.
Confrontations reportedly erupted near the Tariq Ibn Ziad school, between students and Israeli soldiers in the southern part of the city.
Students left schools early and rallied across the city calling for an intervention in the “Judaization of the Ibrahimi Mosque.”
Public figures react
In Yatta, south of Hebron, a strike was also called for. Governor of the city, Zahran Abu Qbeita denounced the Israeli decision to include both the Ibrahimi Mosque and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem on the Israeli heritage list, saying it violates Palestinians’ right to access holy sites and impedes efforts to restart the peace process.
The Mufti of Palestine Sheikh Muhammad Hussein said “the occupation has devoted all of its efforts to steal Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Palestinian cities to change their Arab and Islamic character to prove the country is Jewish.”
Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs Mahmoud Habbash said the decision was an attack against Muslims across the world, humanity and civilization as a whole, and reiterated that it would have a negative impact on peace talks.
“This is an attempt to seize Palestinian cultural and religious symbols and use them to serve the Zionist scheme on Palestinian lands, aimed at obstructing the efforts of the Palestinian leadership and the international community to end the occupation and achieve peace in the region,” Habbash said.
In Hebron, Fatah further called for a general strike and condemned the action as an attempt to steal Palestinian heritage and culture. “This is a new crime in the occupation’s lexicon,” a party statement said, which called on Arab nations to break their silence.
The Israeli heritage site list
Following a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that two religious sites in the occupied West Bank would be among 150 Israeli heritage sites considered for renovation within his “Plan to Rehabilitate and Strengthen Israel’s National Heritage Infrastructures.”
The upgrade affects Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, known to Israelis as the Cave of the Patriachs, and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.
Renovation projects are tipped to cost 400 million Israeli shekels (approximately 110 million US dollars).
‘An act of aggression against cultural and religious rights’
Palestinian Authority officials immediately condemned the initiative.
“This announcement is an act of aggression against the cultural and religious rights of the Palestinian people,” said Dr Hamdan Taha, director of the PA Tourism Ministry’s antiquities department, in a telephone interview.
“Instead of making use of heritage to promote peace, it is being used as a means to promote war,” Taha said, maintaining that the proposal’s timing could not be discounted: “This is clearly intended to obstruct the peace process.”
Also noting that the shrines in question are holy to many faiths, Taha insisted that Netanyahu’s plan to designate them as Israeli heritage sites “reflects an artificial history that solely serves Israel’s settlement policy.”
Cut the “ambiguity”, ambassador, or pack your bags
Challenging UK support for Israeli criminals
By Stuart Littlewood | 22 February 2010
Hey, Mr Foreign Secretary Miliband,
Let me tell you something. If I were the British foreign secretary there would be no more “friendly chats”. The Israeli ambassador would have 24 hours to find a cure for his “ambiguity” or pack his bags. How dare that lawless, racist regime smugly sit in its London offices and keep us guessing whether or not they have abused our sovereignty and hijacked our passport system?
Britain is far too cosy with the Israelis. Given their thieving, power-crazed ambitions in the Middle East (and beyond), how reliable is the intelligence they are said to share with us anyway?
Our government is riddled with Zionist sympathizers right up to the top. Our most important security bodies – the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee – are all chaired by Israel flag-wavers. Whose bright idea was that?
Blair and Brown are patrons of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that acquires stolen Palestinian lands and helps fund illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Are they mad?
When Labour bites the dust in the elections in May, we can expect no better from the Conservatives who are waiting in the wings, if the findings of Peter Oborne’s recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme are anything to go by. Cameron has declared himself a Zionist and is also a patron of the JNF, as are the Israeli ambassador and the Chief Rabbi. So there’ll be a seamless transfer of Zionist influence to our new government and business as usual with that pseudo-democracy (yes, you can drop the pretense; everyone knows Israel is an ethnocracy with apartheid knobs on).
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission reports that your “true friend” Israel has a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, possibly larger than our own. It has a plutonium production reactor and reprocessing facility, and possibly a uranium enrichment capability.
You’ll also know that Israel is the only state in the region not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor has it signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Nevertheless, the rogue regime and its stooges screech their eagerness to obliterate Iran and involve us in their dirty work, even though the Islamic state as yet has no nuclear capability – unless Tehran managed to get its hands on one of the warheads rumoured to have been mislaid by the US. Is that why everyone is wetting their pants?
Back to the extra-judicial assassination in Dubai. Given all the amazing intelligence we’re supposed to receive from our “trusted allies”, any foreign secretary worth his salt would at least know if and how Britain was implicated in the crime, which, according to Sunday Times, was OK’d by your good buddy the Israeli prime minister.
Or are you seriously telling us you haven’t a clue?
Talking of atrocities, you know perfectly well that we are solemnly obligated – and rightly so – to seek and prosecute all who have allegedly committed war crimes. Your enthusiasm for changing the law of universal jurisdiction and turning the UK into a safe house for Israeli psychopaths to freely walk the streets of London, makes our country and particularly yourself a laughing stock in the civilized world.
Yes, we’ve been well and truly stitched up at government level. But here at street level we’re not so stupid.
The Seven Laws of Noah
By Ben White | Pulse Media | February 21, 2010
In a recent post on Israel’s PR campaign, Tali Shapiro mentioned an article “about something called the “Jewish Values Lobby” trying to get employers in Zefed to force “Arab” (Palestinians don’t exist in NRG) workers to sign a statement, where they’ll keep the Seven Laws of Noah, as a prerequisite to their employment.”
Here’s more on that story, courtesy of a translated item from Maariv.
Do Arab workers in businesses in Tzefat and the surrounding area need to fulfill commandments from the Tanach? This is the opinion of activists from the “Jewish Values Lobby,” who are starting a campaign to persuade employers to ask their workers to sign a religious statement according to which they will undertake to observe the Seven Noachide Laws. These include prohibitions against eating parts of a live animal, serving idols, desecrating Hashem’s name, immorality, robbery, and violence.
This initiative, which is expected to take Israeli Arabs by storm, was officially launched today. Lobbyists will visit businesses in Tzefat and the surrounding communities, which employ hundreds of Arabs living nearby, and they will ask them to sign their employees on a commitment to observe the Seven Noachide Laws.
“I hereby sign that I will undertake to observe the Seven Noachide Laws and declare my faithfulness to the Jewish nation according to Jewish values,” it is written in the statement. “I know that if I am caught violating any one of these laws, my employer will be allowed to fire me with no prior notice nor compensation.”
The Jewish Values Lobby explained that this campaign does not contradict a directive from one of the Jewish leaders of the generation from two years ago against employing Arab workers in public places. “We recommend that people don’t employ Arab workers,” a spokesman from the lobby explained. “But unfortunately, there are many Jews who employ Arabs in their stores, so we decided to deal with reality.”
David Brooks’s dilemma (and ours)
By Scott McConnel | February 21, 2010
Consider one of David Brooks’ dilemmas. In last Friday’s Times he wrote a pretty good column about the contemporary American power elite. As he described it, sixty and more years ago, blue blood WASPs ran America’s financial institutions and foreign policy (something of a simplification, but let it pass), ethnic bosses ran the cities, and engaging working class drunks filed the newspaper stories. Now those critical sectors are run and staffed by the meritocracy, people who did well on the bubble tests and went on to succeed at elite universities. We have, Brooks explains, “opened up opportunities for women, African-Americans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Hispanics and members of every other group. “
Then he acknowledges the new regime isn’t working out as well as expected. None of these major institutions is now doing its job adequately, and the country knows it. We need, Brooks concludes, to reevaluate our definitions of merit, and leadership because “very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.” This is true, and for a newspaper column, a profound observation.
But there is a salient body of fact that Brooks elides, and therein lies a tale. While opportunities have opened up for women and all the non-Wasp groups Brooks mentioned, all groups have not rushed with equal force into the breach. If one takes, for example, the issue of Mideast diplomacy, it has been noted recently that most of the country’s important Mideast diplomats are Jews, most of writers covering the Israel-Palestine conflict for the New York Times are Jewish, as are two of three of the president’s top political advisers. Dig in a different direction, and one finds a similar kind of thing, as observed on this site, of the financial players engaged in selecting the next senator from New York.
There is no need to exaggerate the phenomenon, and indeed a need not to—outside of New York, there are plenty of rich Protestant power brokers, the South is important politically and Jews are seldom influential there, etc. But to say the least, the collapse of the WASP ascendancy has not been equally rewarding to all of the groups Brooks cites at the top of his column. Indeed for some of them, like Catholics, that collapse has probably coincided with a net reduction in cultural and political influence.
Brooks avoids mentioning this, as do virtually all writers. The reason is obvious: nearly any analysis, indeed any mention, of Jewish power is overburdened with sensitive historical associations. Unspecified but ominous reference to this history is the main polemical weapon Leon Wieseltier uses in his effort to take down Andrew Sullivan for his writing on Israel and Palestine. Some of Sullivan’s arguments, Wieseltier asserts “have a sordid history”; Sullivan is one of those who proclaim “without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea that Jews control Washington”; Sullivan adopts an explanation which “has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people.” No need then to examine the truth or the untruth of Sullivan’s argument, a vague allusion to history suffices. Criticism of Israel is tied to the modern history of European anti-semitism, and to an extensive bibliography of generally tendentious books about Jewish power, from Alphonse de Toussenel’s Les Juifs, Rois de L’Epoch (published in 1845) forward. Of course this discourse was an auxiliary to the holocaust. About this Wieseltier (and the countless others who polemicize in this manner) are correct: discussions of Jewish power have sometimes had terrible consequences.
But where does that leave 21st century Americans? One example is the case of David Brooks, who clearly knows what he leaving out of his column about the American power elite. Brooks is Jewish, and a Zionist, and in no danger of being labeled an anti-Semite by Leon Wieseltier or anyone else. But still he is hesitant; presumably because he doesn’t want to write something that either might encourage anti-Semitism, or (more likely considering his readership) enhance public understanding of the Israel lobby. At least the first of these motives is commendable. But the reticence has a consequence: when Brooks writes a column about the American power elite and its weaknesses, he needs to avoid one of the essential aspects of his subject. That can’t really be satisfactory to him, or to his readers. It’s a dilemma with no obvious solution to it.
‘Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination’
Press TV – February 21, 2010
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly authorized the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh early January in Tel Aviv.
According to a report published by Times Online Netanyahu held a meeting with Mossad chief Meir Dagan in early January inside the briefing room of the headquarters of the spy agency where “some members of a hit squad” were also present.
Citing Mossad sources, the report said “as the man who gives final authorization for such operations, Netanyahu was briefed on plans to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.”
Sources said Mossad had received intelligence that the Hamas commander was planning a Dubai trip and they started preparing for an operation to assassinate him.
“The team had already rehearsed, using a hotel in Tel Aviv as a training ground without alerting its owners,” according to the report.
Thanks to Dubai’s extensive system of CCTV cameras, the work of the assassination team was revealed.
Dubai police released the identities of 11 people carrying European passports, including six Britons, three Irish and two French and German, who allegedly were Mossad agents carrying fake European documents.
Interpol has issued “red notices” for the 11 suspects to help find and arrest them anywhere in its 188 member countries.
Dubai police also threatened earlier to arrest Netanyahu, if it determined that Mossad was behind the assassination.
Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do
By Paul Craig Roberts | February 18, 2010
Hank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.
Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.
As there is no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration, Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock prices.
Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as “putting Social Security on a sound basis.”
Along the way Americans were told that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent revenues. When the “trust funds” are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs.
Social Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from Social Security retirees to other uses.
We constantly hear from Wall Street gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can’t afford; an “unfunded liability.” This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax. People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are retired.
Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the 1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against Muslims.
Having diverted Social Security revenues to war and Wall Street, Paulson says there is no alternative but to take the promised benefits away from those who have paid for them.
Republicans have extraordinary animosity toward the poor. In an effort to talk retirees out of their support systems, Republicans frequently describe Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and “unsustainable.” They ought to know. The phony trust fund, which they set up to hide the fact that Wall Street and the Pentagon are running off with Social Security revenues, is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security itself has been with us since the 1930s and has yet to wreck our lives and budget. But it only took Hank Paulson’s derivative Ponzi scheme and its bailout a few years to inflict irreparable damage on our lives and budget.
Years ago with stagflation defeated and a rising stock market, I favored privatizing Social Security as a way of creating a funded retirement system and producing greater savings and larger incomes for retirees. At that time Wall Street was interested, not for my reasons, but in order to collect the fees from managing the funds.
Had Social Security been privatized, I doubt that Wall Street would have been permitted to deregulate the financial system. Too much would have been at stake.
After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street’s dishonesty and greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone’s old age pension requires a leap of faith that no intelligent person can make.
Wall Street has got away with its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the elderly’s old age security.
Social Security, formerly an untouchable “third rail of politics,” is now “unsustainable,” while the real unsustainables–a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror–are the new untouchables. This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests.
Related article
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How Israel’s Lobby Challenges Rule of Law in America [Video]
Press TV – February 17, 2010
This week the Iranian satellite television channel PressTV is broadcasting a 25 minute interview with IRmep director Grant F. Smith about the Israel lobby’s history of challenges to rule of law and governance in the United States. “Autograph” with Susan Modaress reviews key findings from the book “Spy Trade
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
The full video of this program may also be downloaded and viewed with the Windows Media Player at:
http://217.218.67.244:8181/getfile?file=program/Autograph/0208_ATG.wmv
or online with the MS Silverlight plug-in at:
http://www.presstv.com/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510529
Audio MP3 files are available at:
http://www.IRmep.org/mp3/02082010PressTV_lo.mp3 (AM quality)
http://www.IRmep.org/mp3/02082010PressTV.mp3 (FM stereo quality)
US-NATO Aggression to ‘Win Hearts and Minds’
Civilian deaths are merely political setbacks, say ‘independent’ news media.
By Dan Alba | February 14, 2010
Anyone aspiring to write or edit textbooks for the Department of Education should study U.S. news-wire reports. Rarely will you see imperial aggression being so expertly spun into peaceful liberation within the context of U.S. exceptionalism.
Take for example a February 13, Associated Press report, “US troops fight, then work to win hearts and minds,” where the editor mourns the mission:
[I]n the revised U.S. war strategy, the fight against the insurgents is as important as winning the allegiance and confidence of Afghan citizens. For American soldiers here, their days are often a mix of winning hearts and minds and fighting a determined enemy.
How many of those “determined enemies” are actually “insurgents“?
How many are lawfully defending themselves and their property from the foreign invaders, whose “key goal is to prop up Haji Zair, who was appointed as the Marjah governor but hasn’t been able to actually travel there, let alone set up residence”? [Jason Ditz, “US to Launch Massive Helmand Offensive ‘Within Days,'” AntiWar.com, 2/3/10.]
Readers are told that the invaded inhabitants are threatened only by the local resistance:
It’s a tall order in a Taliban-controlled area where some villagers are scared to take money from the Americans. . . .
The conversation with a farmer seemed positive at first. But it was ultimately inconclusive — an illustration, perhaps, of the difficulty of winning over civilians who know the Taliban are a longterm presence, and that the Americans will eventually leave. . . .
“A lot of guys are unwilling to do anything,” he said. “They’re worried about the Taliban.”
But how many are offended by the aggressive invasion and political bribery of the foreign occupiers? How many non-aggressive villagers are being terrorized by the effects of the U.S.-NATO mission?
Silly questions, of course, considering the mission’s obvious righteousness:
Repairing the irrigation canals is an important step toward reviving agriculture in the area. And the Americans were offering hard cash for anyone willing to work.
In other words: American taxpayer dollars, hard at work, forcing non-aggressive self-determining people to live under the absolute authority of an empire-made national government.
But according to the empire and the “independent” news media, such is the proper way to “win hearts and minds.”
Besides, who would argue against creating jobs and “reviving” the economy?
Moreover, who would bite the hand that “cleaned and bandaged the injured finger of an elderly man at the farmhouse”? [para. 17]
Only insurgents and Taliban, and the folks who would shower the foreign invaders with affection if not for their existential fear of their own families and neighbors.
– – – – –
In a follow-up report, readers learn that 12 Afghan civilians were killed by those innocuous foreign invaders.
In the 28-paragraph February 14 release, “NATO rockets miss target, kill 12 Afghan civilians,” six paragraphs are pertinent to the headline; four of which analyze the civilian deaths as merely a political setback. To wit:
The civilian deaths were a blow to NATO and the Afghan government’s attempts to win the allegiance of Afghans and get them to turn away from the insurgents. . . .
Karzai ordered an investigation into who fired the rocket. Before the offensive began on Saturday, Karzai pleaded with Afghan and foreign military leaders to be “seriously careful for the safety of civilians.”
In other words, the killing of civilians is not an immoral or illicit act that reflects badly on the policy in general. No. Quite the opposite is true: the remaining 22 paragraphs mourn the dangers to the U.S.-NATO invader-occupiers, whose stated intentions — “providing some building for the people there, better security, better economic opportunity, better governance, more of an Afghan face” — are taken as Gospel.
Christian Right kidnappers
Nicole Colson reports on the accusations against missionaries who were arrested after trying to take Haitian children out of the country–and the media’s tolerant attitude.
February 17, 2010
“HELP US…That’s the message I would give to Mr. Obama and the State Department. Start helping us.”
You might think that was the plea of a Haitian citizen following the devastating earthquake in January. But no, those words came from Carla Thompson–one of a group of 10 U.S. missionaries arrested by Haitian authorities on January 29, accused of trying to kidnap 33 Haitian children and take them across the border into the Dominican Republic.
At least 22 of the supposed “orphans” were found to have at least one parent still alive in Haiti.
The 10 missionaries are mostly from a Baptist church based in Idaho. Following the earthquake, the group apparently set out with a trailer full of children’s clothes and a vow to help Haiti’s orphans “find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ.” The group’s creepy leader, Laura Silsby, told reporters: “God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that. Our hearts were in the right place.”
But Silsby at least knew that the missionaries were flouting the law. In a letter to the United Nations, Anne-Christine d’Adesky, a writer and human rights activist, said she met with Silsby on January 24 in a hotel in the Dominican Republic. Silsby allegedly told d’Adesky that her authorization to pick up Haitian orphans and bring them into the Dominican Republic came from an unnamed Dominican official.
“I informed her that this would be regarded as illegal, even with some ‘Dominican’ minister authorizing, since the children are Haitian,” d’Adesky wrote, adding that she directed Silsby to UN agencies dealing with orphans and adoptions in the country.
D’Adesky told the Wall Street Journal that Silsby responded: “We have been sent by the Lord to rescue these children, and if it’s in the Lord’s plan, we will be successful.”
Silsby’s personal motives may not have been so noble. Back home in Idaho, she faces a string of lawsuits for allegedly failing to pay employees of her Web site shopping business. MSNBC noted that “the $358,000 house at which she founded her nonprofit religious group, New Life Children’s Refuge, was foreclosed upon in December.” Which raises the question of whether Silsby thought she might have profited from arranging for Haitian children to be adopted by people in the U.S.
The other people with Silsby on her “mission,” including at least two teenagers, may have been victims of their own arrogance and stupidity–but that doesn’t excuse their crime. On the contrary, there’s something stomach-turning about using a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti to promote religious beliefs. (Right-wing Christians aren’t the only ones guilty–the Church of Scientology flew in volunteers after the quake to “minister” to Haitians.)
In the case of Silsby’s group, the Eastside Baptist Church Web site laid out the missionaries’ plans for a “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission.” According to the itinerary for January 23, the group would “Drive bus from Santo Domingo into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the D.R.”
The group apparently planned to take the children to a hotel in the Dominican Republic, where they would live until a permanent orphanage was constructed. According to the New York Times, the Web site said the group would “strive” to “provide opportunities for adoption through partnership with New Life Adoption Foundation,” which subsidizes adoptions “for loving Christian parents who would otherwise not be able to afford to adopt.”
There’s no evidence that the missionaries were in any way prepared to care for the children they planned to “gather” from the streets–it’s unknown whether any spoke Haitian Kreyol or had any familiarity with the country’s culture or legal system.
Even in the best of times, international adoptions can be fraught with corruption and difficult questions about the rights of birth parents. Those questions are especially complicated when the adoptive parents are white and wealthy, and the birth parents and children are poor and people of color. Closed adoptions, where all ties are cut between children and their birth parents, are especially prone to abuses.
In Haiti, it seems that the desperate parents contacted by the missionaries weren’t told that their children might one day be adopted. Instead, they were told the children would be cared for and schooled in the Dominican Republic–and that they could visit one another. “If someone offers to take my children to a paradise,” a mother told the New York Times, “am I supposed to say no?”
As adoption expert David Smolin of Cumberland Law School commented in the New York Times:
The risks are very high that children with families would be “adopted” into families in the United States, based on the pretense that they are “orphans.” We know from past history that those children most likely would never be returned to their original families, even if those original families were able to find them and sought their return.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
IN SPITE of the fact that the missionaries are accused on strong evidence of kidnapping and child trafficking, the U.S. media has positively fawned over them–stopping just short of portraying them as the victims.
In one story after another, the missionaries have been allowed to plead their innocence–and even complain that the Obama administration has not done enough to help them. Typical was the Today show, which described the “frustrating few days” in jail for people “who insist they had only the best intentions.”
Imagine the level of sympathy in the media if the disaster had been, say, a hurricane in South Florida, and a group of Black missionaries, or perhaps Muslims, from another country came to “rescue” white children in the U.S.–with “only the best intentions.”
One writer for the right-wing National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez, even stooped to citing a Human Rights Watch report detailing the deplorable conditions in Haiti’s prisons–as if the American missionaries have been suffering like an ordinary prisoners. On the contrary, the alleged kidnappers have been giving access to the media, were allowed to speak to relatives via satellite phone, have a large legal team of American lawyers standing by and were allowed to receive food and other supplies from other missionaries.
That’s a far cry from conditions a couple hundred miles to the west, at the U.S. government’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. As Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, referring to one of the missionaries, Jim Allen, singled out by right wingers:
Why would National Review–which endorses far worse abuses when perpetrated on Muslims convicted of nothing–take up the cause of an accused child smuggler and possible child trafficker, and suddenly find such grave concern over detainee conditions?…Because, as a Christian, Allen is deemed by National Review to deserve basic human rights, unlike the Muslim detainees whose (far worse) abuse they have long supported…
The very same people who have been demanding for years that Muslims be imprisoned for life, tortured and killed with no trials or charges of any kind suddenly become extremely sensitive to the nuances of due process and humane detention conditions. They start sounding like Amnesty International civil liberties extremists–the minute it’s a Christian, rather than a Muslim, who is subjected to such treatment.
PACBI: Intellectual responsibility and the voice of the colonized
Statement, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, 17 February 2010
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has recently encountered a number of projects that while intending to empower the colonized Palestinians, in essence end up undermining their will and choice of method of struggle for freedom, justice and self-determination. The publication of a new book entitled The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories belongs to this category. The book project represents a classic example of how the collective voice of the colonized is ignored in the production of a scholarly work supposed to empower them.
While it is crucial for scholars in relevant fields to expose and analyze the colonial situation in Palestine, this academic imperative should not imply that one overlooks how scholarship engages this colonialism. That is, this book, as a collaboration of various scholars — Israeli and non-Israeli contributors — was completed with support from the Van Leer Institute. In other words, through working under the aegis of the Van Leer Institute, this project has cooperated with one of the very institutions that PACBI and an overwhelming majority of Palestinian academics and intellectuals have called for boycotting. As such, the research project which led to the production of the volume violates the criteria of the academic and cultural boycott as set by PACBI and widely endorsed in Palestinian civil society, including by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and University Teachers’ Association in Palestine (UTA).
Contrary to the claims of some left-wing Israeli academics that the Van Leer institute is an incubator for cutting-edge critical thinking and oppositional politics, the institute is firmly planted in the prevailing Zionist consensus and is part and parcel of the structures of oppression and domination. It subscribes to the “vision of Israel as both a homeland for the Jewish people and a democratic society, predicated on justice, fairness and equality for all its residents,” ignoring the oxymoron presented by this inherently exclusionary vision — a “Jewish State” of necessity discriminates against its “non-Jewish” citizens. The Van Leer Institute receives financial support from other Israeli universities and state institutions that are subject to boycott. Among its financial contributors and institutional “friends” are the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University; the Edelstein Center at the Hebrew University; the Israel Ministry of Science; the National Insurance Institute, Israel; and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Furthermore, Van Leer, like all other Israeli academic institutions, has never taken a stance against Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination, nor against the recent war of aggression on Gaza or the ongoing illegal siege of 1.5 million Palestinians there. The Van Leer is, therefore, an institution with strong links to establishment institutions in Israel. As such, it is complicit in maintaining and entrenching Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.
Though intellectual projects may aim to rigorously articulate the complex matrix of control that exists in Palestine, the intellectual process has a fundamental ethical and political component. As such, it is incumbent upon all scholars to realize that any collaboration which brings together Israeli and international academics (Arabs or otherwise) under the auspices of Israeli institutions is counterproductive to fighting Israeli colonial oppression, and is therefore subject to boycott.
A project involving only Israeli academics, on the other hand, receiving support from an Israeli academic institution, may be seen as a justifiable exercise of a right or an entitlement by Israeli scholars as tax payers and, as a result, may not per se be boycottable.
As the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gains momentum globally, an increasing number of voices are emerging in support of this strategy as the most effective, nonviolent route to bring about change towards justice and durable peace based on international law and universal principles of human rights. The endorsement by various artists and academics of specific boycott actions in the past few years is welcome and well-known. It is the responsibility of the boycott supporters to understand the broadly-accepted boycott criteria and guidelines upon which this boycott is based and adhere to it, rather than attempting to invent or suggest idiosyncratic criteria of their own, as the latter would undermine the Palestinian guiding reference for the global boycott campaign against Israel.
It is crucial to emphasize that the BDS movement derives its principles from both the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call, signed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005, and, in the academic and cultural fields, from the Palestinian Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a year earlier in July 2004. Together, the BDS and PACBI Calls represent the most authoritative and widely-supported strategic statements to have emerged from Palestine in decades; all major political parties, labor, student and women groups, and organizations representing Palestinian refugees all over the world have endorsed and supported these calls. Both calls underline the prevailing Palestinian belief that the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people is direct action aimed at bringing an end to Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was abolished, by isolating Israel internationally through boycotts and sanctions, forcing it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.
Since the formulation of these calls, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on defining the principles of the boycott movement. Rooted in universal values and principles, the BDS Call categorically rejects all forms of racism, racial discrimination and colonial oppression. PACBI has also translated the principles enshrined in its Call into practical guidelines for implementing the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. However intellectually challenging and avant-garde some projects may be, by being oblivious to the Palestinian-articulated boycott criteria they in effect work against the internationally-embraced Palestinian struggle for justice.
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From the Archives
Trans ‘milk’ as good as the real thing – NHS
RT | February 18, 2024
The drug-induced nipple secretions of trans women are as good as mothers’ breast milk for babies, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust claimed in a letter to campaigners made public in a report by British think tank the Policy Exchange on Sunday.
The healthcare trust’s medical director, Rachel James, argued that the off-label prescription drug cocktail men transitioning to female take in order to produce milk was “similar to the natural hormones which encourage lactation to develop when the baby is newly born.”
“The evidence which is available demonstrates that the milk is comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby,” James wrote in the letter, sent to Children of Transitioners last August.
Biological men who wish to lactate must first take hormones to grow milk glands and then take high doses of either domperidone or metoclopramide to stimulate milk production. Neither drug is approved for this use, though they are occasionally prescribed off-label to biological women who have trouble lactating.
However, domperidone’s own manufacturer, Janssen, warns patients the drug “may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby” and “should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.” … continue
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