Sunni-ruled Bahrain has deprived leading Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim of his citizenship, media reported Monday.
According to the BBC, Bahrain stripped Qassim, who is the spiritual leader of Al-Wefaq, Bahrain’s biggest opposition group, and holds the senior religious title of Ayatollah, of his citizenship.
On June 14, Bahrain’s Court of Cassation ruled to close all offices of Al-Wefaq in a response to an appeal lodged by the country’s Ministry of Justice.
Al-Wefaq has organized mass protest rallies against the current constitutional monarchy in Bahrain. Al-Wefaq’s leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to four years in prison for inciting hatred and disobedience as well as insulting public institutions in 2015. Earlier in June, the court decided to increase the sentence to nine years.
Since 2011, the Sunni regime in Bahrain became locked in a struggle with an opposition movement led primarily by Shiites, who form a majority in the country. The protesters were calling for political freedom, equality and a parliamentary system that operates independently of Bahrain’s Sunni royal family.
Deir Istiya, occupied Palestine – When Aziz ‘Aasee, the mayor of Qarawah Bani Hassan village drives through the streets, we’re stopped every few meters by one of his constituents, all of whom are asking the same question: When will we have water again? For some, the question is a joke; they are used to going without water for days, weeks, or even months each summer. Others are more aggressive, and the question comes off as a threat. People are looking for someone to blame for their thirst. The mayor, who is responsible for paying the town’s water bills, seems like an easy target.
In reality, there is little Aziz can do to ensure that his town has enough water. The village shares a water access network with two other municipalities, Sarta and Biddya. The three villages, with a combined population of approximately 30,000 people, depend on one 8 inch pipe, designed to deliver 145 cubic meters of water per hour. During the winter months when water tables are higher, the water flows at full capacity, ensuring coverage to the entire network. However for the past two months, the amount has been restricted to between 50 and 70 cubic meters per hour. With such a small amount in the pipes, the pressure is too low for the water to reach many of the houses at the end of the system. Qarawah, which sits at the highest elevation out of the three villages, suffers the most from the low water pressure: no house in the village has received water in over a week. The most remote properties have gone dry for over a month.
Qarawah’s only potable water source
Mekorot, the Israeli national water company which ostensibly owns the water infrastructure in question, and controls 87% of the aquifer located inside the West Bank, lies at the root of the problem. Since 1982, when the Israeli military sold their control of the West Bank’s water resources to Mekorot for a mere Shekel, the company has become the main enforcer of water apartheid between the Palestinians, and Israelis living in illegal settlements. While settlements enjoy a 24/7 supply of water year round, Mekorot caps its supply to Palestinians at the levels stipulated in the Oslo agreements over 20 years ago. Since then, the population of the West Bank has grown exponentially, and almost no improvements to Palestinian water infrastructure have been made. The Israeli military administration in the West Bank only makes matters worse. They routinely deny permits for new wells and pipes that would benefit villages like Qarawah by providing alternative sources of water or improving water pressure. In addition, the Israeli military has demolished 50 water and sanitation structures owned by Palestinians in 2016 alone. The result is that Palestinians have essentially no control over any of the water within their borders, or the infrastructure to deliver it.
Negotiations with Mekorot are almost impossible for small municipalities like Qarawah. Officials in the district capital of Salfit have spent the past two months trying to persuade the Israelis to increase the water supply without result. Even on the national level, appointees from the Palestinian Authority have refused to negotiate with Mekorot and the Israeli military administration. Aziz, for his part, chiefly contacts Mekorot through one of their Palestinian employees, and the communication is confusing at best. The representative will promise to show up on a certain day, and then never arrives. Or he’ll leave an update to say the water supply will be increased for one night to 100 cubic meters per hour, enough to ensure that at least some homes in Qarawah will receive water, yet the taps remain empty. Meanwhile, the illegal settlement of Kiryat Netafim, easily visible on a neighbouring hillside, boasts green lawns. It’s clear from a glance that the settlements are receiving more than adequate service from the same company.
A few times over the past weeks, the municipalities of Qarawah, Satra and Biddya have called for popular protests, gathering at the meter access point for their shared pipe. Small groups of children and young men beat empty water bottles with sticks and shouted “Bidna may, bidna may” – “we want water” – at passing cars. Regardless, many in the three towns are afraid of a backlash from the protests. Shortly after the protests, armed Israeli soldiers arrived at the meter, demanding that the organizers cancel, or face repercussions. While it’s unclear what sort of consequences might be imposed, some worry that the water might be cut off completely as an act of collective punishment.
“Bidna may” – we want water protest
With no solution in sight, the villagers of Qarawah are finding ways to mitigate the effects of living under water apartheid. Villagers are using bottled water for drinking and showers, and hauling water up from local springs, located 4-6 kilometres outside the village limits, to use in toilets and irrigation. The springs also provide a small amount of potable water. However, this is not nearly enough to meet the village’s needs. Some houses in the village also have private wells; but with the summer stretching ahead, these limited resources are sure to be depleted far too soon. So until Mekorot is disbanded, or agrees to give equal service to Palestinians, the people of Qarawah will continue to suffer.
After hurdling procedural barriers, a congressional attempt to protect privacy and encryption failed on the House floor yesterday, falling short of a majority by a mere 24 votes.
Two years ago, the House stood united across party lines, voting by a remarkable margin of 293–123 to support the same measures, which would enhance security and privacy by limiting the powers of intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless backdoor searches targeting Americans, and to undermine encryption standards and devices.
This week, the intelligence community broke that consensus by inappropriately politicizing the recent tragedy in Orlando. Before Thursday’s vote, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), circulated a letter falsely claiming that:
If this amendment were enacted, the Intelligence Community would not be able to look through information lawfully collected under FISA Section 702 to see if… the Orlando nightclub attacker was in contact with any terrorist groups outside the United States.
As members of the intelligence committee well know, the government will have no problem securing warrants to search the Orlando attacker’s online communications. Warrants are not difficult to secure when appropriate. The only thing a warrant requirement would do is prevent the government from abusing its powers, as it repeatedlyhas in the past.
The clever misrepresentations about the proposed amendment, and unproven and ultimately spurious claims that it would undermine national security, prompted efforts to correct the debate and inform policymakers of the truth, leading dozens of members of Congress to switch sides in both directions. Ultimately, the House chose to reverse two previous votes overwhelmingly supporting precisely the same amendment.
We are greatly disappointed that the House chose to abandon its prior votes defending the rights of constituents, and particularly in those members who accepted the canard that simply requiring the government to obtain a judicial warrant before searching Section 702 intelligence databases would hinder investigations.
Observers who share our concerns have opportunities to impact the debate going forward. First, contact your federal representative to share your views, especially if yours was one of the dozens who shifted their position.
But don’t stop there: August will present a key point in time when—visiting their districts just a few months before an election with likely high turnout driven by a presidential election cycle—members of Congress will be at their most politically vulnerable, exposed, and therefore receptive to grassroots concerns.
If you’d like to take advantage of the opportunity to share your views with your representatives in a forum more influential than a phone call, confirm how your representative voted, recruit a handful of friends to form a local group, and join the Electronic Frontier Alliance.
One of the most celebrated qualities of the people of Gaza is their sumoud, their steadfastness and capacity to endure the woes inflicted by Israeli terror. Media coverage of the tiny strip is full of soppy stories about how, regardless of the number of times Israel mows the lawn or casts lead, farmers will always sow their buffer zone farmlands and medics will never cease to improvise with what little they have.
The question is not whether the people of Gaza have given up on their professions and fell to their knees before their occupiers, but the cheap reproduction of them as an extraordinary population who will continue to endure all sufferings imposed on their lives and cling to their cause. What is more disturbing is that foreign journalists on the ground often steer the conversation to get the answers they are looking for. The people of Gaza have memorised the right answer: No matter what, we will never leave.
The truth, however, is that the “people of Gaza” are for the most part sick of this framing and, in fact, a considerable number of them are leaving. In September 2014, nearly five hundred Palestinians from Gaza drowned in the Mediterranean as they attempted to reach Europe. To risk one’s life with smugglers and brave seas in pursuit of a better life elsewhere should tell us something about people’s limited capacity to endure inhumane conditions as well as the limited truth of the sumoud narrative. This is not to say that people are abandoning their struggle for justice and their liberation ideals; many join activist groups or dedicate years of research to them. However, it is time to step back a little and reassess the sumoud narrative; it is perhaps time to understand Gaza and its people on their own terms. To do so, one should look critically at blanket narratives and long-held assumptions, as well as changes that have occurred to established concepts.
There are, to my mind, two primary dangers in trumpeting this narrative of sumoud. The first lies in transforming an ordinary population into mythical creatures able to overcome the most excruciating of circumstances. This transformation places a high, and utterly unjustified, expectation on Gaza’s Palestinians to endure Israel’s relentless aggression and to hold on to the land regardless of the level of destruction implemented. This expectation winds up minimising the power and consequences of Israel’s occupation because, no matter how filthy and bloody it becomes, the Palestinians are predisposed to endure.
For Palestinians on visas abroad, questions on whether they plan to go back to Gaza at the end of their studies are often posed by -without generalising- some Palestine supporters. To be sure, what motivates the question is a principled concern for the liberation of the land. Leaving Palestine, they would say, is exactly what Israel wants. This objection is often, and understandably, voiced by exiled Palestinians and their younger descendants. It is understandable because their varied experiences of Palestine are defined less by daily reality and more by the vision of what Palestine was and will be again. The present certainly plays a role but actual daily experience makes a lot of difference. Questions of this sort, nevertheless, place a lot of pressure on those in Gaza who already have so much to deal with or live abroad under the threat of deportation. What I am calling for is a more comprehensive understanding of the conditions in Gaza and a re-examination of what sumoud means in contemporary reality.
The second danger is that the sumoud narrative paints steadfastness as a choice rather than a forced reality. Palestinians in Gaza are not given the choice between enduring Israel’s aggression and seeking opportunities elsewhere. Palestinians, at least in part, continue to plough, sow, dig tunnels, and improvise because there is no other option. Simply put, Palestinians endure because they have to, not because they choose to. It is perhaps more worthwhile to write stories on the disgraceful visa processes and mistreatment and degradation of Palestinian asylum seekers than pretend as though we have chosen to suffer and, therefore, to endure. As though we are naïve enough to allow ourselves to hope when no signs of improvement can be glanced anywhere.
The Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza have taken this narrative of a mythical people to heart. Each feels it necessary to act as if the Palestinians are not only doing fine under their dysfunctional governments but are flourishing too. Mahmoud Abbas, for example, is still “state building” and constructing mythical cities such as Rawabi when hardly any land is left. The obscene complicity of both governments, together with the collective efforts of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, have made it impossible for Palestinians trapped in Gaza to leave and, consequently, they are forced endure.
HEBRON – Human Rights Defenders (HRD) in Palestine released a video last week showing an Israeli soldier kicking a knife toward the body of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif — who was shot point-blank in the head by an Israeli soldier in March — an action the group said represents a clear violation of international law.
The video shows an Israeli soldier casually kicking a knife — allegedly used by al-Sharif during an attempted stabbing attack — to the other side of the road in the town of Tel Rumeida in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, as al-Sharif’s body lay a few meters away.
The footage was taken before al-Sharif was shot execution-style in the head by an Israeli soldier, a graphic video of which was released in March, leading to widespread condemnation by rights groups and the UN demanding an investigation into the apparent “extrajudicial execution.”
Badi Dweik, an activist from HRD, said in a statement released Saturday that the group decided to make the video public in order to challenge current narratives unfolding at the ongoing military trial of Elor Azaria — the Israeli soldier charged with manslaughter after killing al-Sharif. Azaria has claimed that he shot the immobilized Palestinian because he saw al-Sharif reaching for the knife, or feared he had explosives strapped to his chest.
An additional video surfaced at the start of June, showing an Israeli ambulance driver kicking the same knife near to al-Sharif’s body after he was killed.
The video footage, obtained by Israel’s Channel Two, was expected to be shown to an Israeli military court to disprove claims by the Israeli soldier who killed al-Sharif that he shot the young Palestinian point-blank in the head after al-Sharif moved to grab a knife, according to the Israeli media outlet Ynet.
The footage shows that the knife allegedly used in the attack was far from al-Sharif when he was shot, notably showing an ambulance driving over the knife before it was kicked closer to al-Sharif’s body.The Israeli military prosecutor reportedly said that an Israeli ambulance driver, Ofer Ohanna, who was near the scene kicked the knife towards al-Sharif’s body following his murder, according to Hebrew-language news outlet Maariv.
The new video that has surfaced reveals that the ambulance driver was not the only one to tamper with evidence at the crime scene, but that an Israeli soldier also manipulated a piece of key evidence by moving the knife, which Dweik emphasized was a violation of international law. Al-Sharif was shot alongside Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi after the two Palestinians allegedly stabbed and moderately wounded an Israeli soldier at a military checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron on March 24.Although it was widely believed that Al-Qasrawi was killed immediately, new witness accounts documented by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have since emerged that “raise concerns that al-Qasrawi was also executed with a shot to the head, as he lay injured on the ground after having been hit by gunfire elsewhere in his body.”
Al-Sharif, meanwhile, was left severely wounded for several minutes without treatment, before Azaria stepped forward and put a bullet through his head, killing him.Azaria was charged with manslaughter, rather than murder as had initially been expected, and is being held on a military base in “open detention” where he is free to roam and has received visits from his family. His trial opened in early May.
Palestinians have long held fears that Israeli soldiers and settlers tamper with crime scenes involving Palestinians, with human rights groups accusing Israel of practicing a policy of extrajudicial executions since a wave of violence erupted in October, leaving more than 200 Palestinians and some 30 Israelis killed.
The U.S. Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2017 with provisions that will force women to sign up for potential military draft and continues the practice of indefinite detention.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate approved a $602 billion annual defense budget that President Obama has promised to veto because the bill does not allow for the closing of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Senate Bill 2943, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, passed with a vote of 85 Senators in favor and 13 against.
Before the vote, Senator John McCain tweeted that “It’s never been more urgent to give our troops the resources they need to succeed.” The majority of Congress have no issue taking money from the American people and redistributing it to fund their empire. The conflict arises when lawmakers begin debating whose pet projects are going to get a boost. The major conflicts in passing the bill stemmed from various amendments dealing with how the military budget will be spent.
One issue the entire Congress seemed to agree on was voting against closing military bases around the world. While the Pentagon called for budget cuts stating that the military has more space than they need, Congress refused to go along with the cuts. “Besides, several lawmakers have argued that the Pentagon has cooked the books to justify its conclusions or at least didn’t do the math completely,” the Associated Press reports. The Senate also voted against an amendment to close the infamous military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Another contentious area of debate was the mandate to force women who turn 18 on or after Jan. 1, 2018 to register for Selective Service. Males are already required register within 30 days of their 18th birthday. The United States has maintained a volunteer military force since 1973, but through Selective Service the military could reinstate a draft and call upon registered males and females. Those who do not register could face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, although the penalty has rarely been enforced.
The most horrendous part of the NDAA 2017 is that that the annual military budget continues to include a provision which allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without a right to trial. Many of you may remember that President Obama had no problem signing the NDAA 2012 in 2011, which legalized the indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of ties to terrorism. The indefinite detention provision is still contained in the NDAA, and has been approved by Congress and signed by President Obama every year since it first passed.
On Thursday June 9, Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Dianne Feinstein of California spoke on the floor of the Senate in support of an amendment bill which would have removed the indefinite detention clause from NDAA 2017 and offered protections to American citizens weary of a federal government with too much power. The “Due Process Guarantee Amendment to the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2017” would have clarified “that an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States.”
“This amendment addresses a little known problem that I believe most Americans would be shocked to discover even exists,” Senator Mike Lee said from the floor of the U.S. Senate. “Under current law, the federal government has proclaimed the power, has arrogated to itself the power to obtain indefinitely without charge or trial U.S. Citizens and lawful permanent residents who are apprehended on American soil. Let that sink in for just a minute.” Senator Lee also reminded the Congress that the last time the U.S. federal government detained Americans was the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
Senator Rand Paul noted that President Obama recognized the danger of granting the federal government the power to indefinitely detain Americans. Upon signing the bill in 2011 President Obama added a signing statement promising not to use the power. “He said, this is a terrible power and I promise never to use it. Any president who says a power is so terrible he’s not going to use it should not be on the books,” Paul stated. “Someday there will be someone in charge of the government that makes a grievous mistake, like rounding up the Japanese. So we have to be very, very careful about giving power to our government.”
Unfortunately, the federal government will continue to have the ability to indefinitely detain American citizens. This is especially worrisome going into 2017 when a new president, one who hasn’t promised not to detain you, will be claiming the Oval Office. What will he or she do with the power to indefinitely detain Americans? Only time will tell.
Slavery has been abolished in the United States since 1865, when the 13th Amendment was passed in the ashes of the Civil War.
Well, almost abolished. Actually, the amendment included a caveat: “except as punishment for a crime.” Since then, prison and forced labor have always gone together.
In fact, with over 2 million people behind bars in this country, the American prison system is a massive — albeit largely invisible — part of our economy and social fabric.
Recent years have seen a rise in both private prisons and the use of prison labor by private, for-profit corporations. This has created perverse incentives to imprison people and exploit them for cheap labor — often at 50 cents an hour or less.
Corporations such as Microsoft, Target, Revlon, and Boeing have all made products with prison labor. With over a third of home appliances and 30 percent of speakers and headphones made using prison labor, it’s likely most American households own inmate-made products.
(Photo: popularresistance.org)
Even Whole Foods, a famed destination for ethical consumers, was forced to stop selling certain artisanal cheeses last year when those “artisans” were revealed to be prisoners who made a base wage of 60 cents a day
We won’t even get into what Whole Foods — sometimes called “Whole Paycheck” — was charging consumers for prisoner-made products, which also included organic milk and tilapia.
The problem is making its way into popular culture as well. A season three episode of the Netflix prison dramedy Orange Is the New Black, for example, illustrated a similar scam.
In the episode, a thrilling new job opportunity is marketed to the inmates. Most are beside themselves at the idea of working for $1 an hour — well above the compensation offered for any other job in the prison. A scheme is hatched to trick the women into clamoring for the job in a fake competition.
The episode closes with a scene showing the chosen women as their new job is revealed to them. They walk into a warehouse. The lights click on, and the viewer first sees the shock and disappointment on their faces. Then the camera turns to show rows and rows of sewing machines and a corporate logo overhead.
They’d competed to work in a sweatshop.
Real-life prisoners are starting to organize against this kind of abuse. This April, prisoners in Texas held a coordinated work stoppage with the help of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee — an arm of the global IWW union.
The striking inmates refused to do work assigned to them by Texas Correctional Industries, an arm of the state Department of Justice that uses inmate labor to make everything from personal care items to toilets. Incarcerated workers there are paid as little as 17 cents an hour, even as phone calls can cost $1 a minute and medical care requires a $100 copay.
Another union-coordinated strike is underway at several Alabama prisons, where inmates labor in deplorable conditions even as they generate profits for private industries. Unions and rights groups are gearing up for a national strike this September to derail this exploitative system.
Those most directly and negatively affected, the prisoners and their families, need and deserve our support. But the rest of us need to finish the work of the Civil War and end forced labor in our country for good.
Lauren Karaffa is a New Economy Maryland fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Quite revealingly, the self-proclaimed crusader against genocide, Samantha Power, was awarded the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize in Berlin. That Power would be awarded a prize named after one of the world’s great génocidaires, and that she would happily accept it, proves what many of us have believed all along – that she is more the clever apologist for U.S. crimes than a bona fide human rights advocate.
The problem with Power all along has been that her refusal to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that the U.S., as exemplified by such figures as Henry Kissinger himself, is in reality the world leader in war crimes commission, and an active facilitator of genocide. The U.S. is not, as Power has claimed throughout her career, a force for halting such evils. However, Power has done an impressive job in advancing this myth, and in the process in perpetuating the false belief that the world would be better off if only the U.S. were more active militarily throughout the world. In so doing, Power, who is lauded as some great human rights advocate, probably does more than any other public figure to harm the cause of global human rights.
Power’s acceptance speech, entitled, “Remarks on ‘Twenty-First Century Realism’ at the Awarding of the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize,” is very illustrative of the delusions Power promotes in the interest of U.S. power projection and the grave harms done by this projection. [1]
First of all, Power, in full agreement with Kissinger, condemns what she refers to as “the rise of extremist and isolationist voices in the U.S.” who dare challenge “the internationalist assumptions that have undergirded U.S. foreign policy across party lines since the Second World War.” This statement is pregnant with meaning and deserves some dissecting.
As an initial matter, it is stunning that Power would characterize those who call for the U.S. to stop, or even slow, its aggressive, interventionist policy around the globe as “extremist” when it’s so clear to any rational observer that it is this interventionist policy itself which is so extremist as to be insane.
Indeed, it is hard to point to any great successes, especially in terms of human rights, that the U.S.’s post-WWII “internationalism” (I would prefer to call it imperialist aggression) achieved, and Power in her speech tellingly does not point to even one such success. And, how could she with a straight face? The innumerable U.S. interventionist adventures since WWII have done nothing to advance human rights or even national security, at least if national security means the protection of U.S. citizens like you and me.
Rather, the U.S.’s “internationalism” has consisted of overthrowing constitutional democracies in countries like Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Haiti (2004), Honduras (2009), just to name a few. It has consisted of carrying out mass slaughter in an attempt to put down national liberation struggles, for example in Vietnam and in Southern Africa, costing the lives of millions. And, it has involved sowing instability throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, in such countries as Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Power’s complete blindness to such realities – though she ironically entitles her speech, “Twenty-first Century Realism” – is hard to fathom. For example, she explains the current rise of ISIL in Iraq as the product of “the deeply sectarian, corrupt, and abusive rule of Prime Minister Maliki . . . .” There is no mention, however, of the 1991 and 2003 military interventions in Iraq by the U.S., nor of the intervening sanctions regime, which destroyed the social fabric of that country and left hundreds of thousands of civilians, including at least half a million children, dead. No, those acts of “internationalism” apparently do not deserve even a mention in Power’s distorted view.
In addition, Power does not mention the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, though that was an intervention which she and her soulmates Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice played a key role in bringing about. Again, the undisputed result of this intervention has been instability in Libya and surrounding countries, such Mali and Tunisia, and the accompanying rise of armed extremist groups in those countries. But again, this deserves no mention. Instead, Power attempts to explain the “instability roiling the Middle East” as the product of almost mystical forces beyond the purview of the U.S., thus criticizing those who would “presume that the United States had within our control to put the Arab Spring genie back in the bottle . . . .”
Power, repeating her long-time refrain which has given her the reputation as a human rights advocate, ends her speech by stating that “we no longer live in an era in which foreign policymakers can claim to serve their nations’ interests treating what happens to people in other countries as an afterthought. . . . What happens to people in other countries matters. It matters to the welfare of our own nations and our own citizens.” Of course, there is nothing particularly profound about this statement, and it would be hard to find many who would admit to disagreeing with it.
However, as with all Power says, what is absent is any discussion about how the actions of the U.S., and of even of Power herself, has undermined the welfare of people in other countries. For example, in addition to her role in pushing for the disastrous intervention in Libya, Power has also been active in giving diplomatic cover to the U.S.-backed Saudi slaughter in Yemen which continues to this day. Thus, in an episode quite reminiscent of those she criticizes in her Pulitzer-prize winning book, A Problem From Hell, Power helped the Saudis scuttle a resolution at the United Nations that called for an investigation into the civilian toll of the Saudi coalition war against Yemen [2], in which at least 6,000 civilians have been killed and 14 million civilians find themselves on the brink of starvation. In the end, even for Power, whether “people in other countries matter” inevitably depends upon who the people are, and whether the state impacting their interests is a friend of the U.S. or not.
In short, Power is really the perfect exemplar of U.S. foreign policy. She is a hypocrite and a phony idealist who believes her own lies about the role of the U.S., and even herself, in the world, and who does a great job of convincing the public that these lies are truth. But sadly — like Kissinger himself who will never be able to wash the blood of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Chileans, Argentines and East Timorese off his hands, but who nonetheless is treated as an elder statesman — Power will most likely never be brought to account. She will continue to live out her days watching Boston Red Sox games and hanging out with the rich and powerful, while other, lesser criminals are sent to The Hague. Regrettably, this is what passes for human rights these days . . .
In a precedent-setting decision Tuesday, the Israeli military decided not to press charges against a senior officer who ordered his troops to bombard a hospital in Gaza in 2014 to reportedly “raise their morale” with a “revenge attack” after another officer was killed.
The officer, Lieutenant Colonel Neria Yeshurun, told military investigators that he was mad that he and the soldiers were unable to attend the funeral of an officer who was killed a few days before, so “we decided to fire a volley of shells toward the point from which he lost his life.”
According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, Major Amihai Harch, Yeshurun’s commander, said at the time, “The only unusual thing [Yeshurun] did was that he put the incident on top of the eulogy to Dima, the company commander who was killed. That was certainly to raise [morale]. And I say to you on the level of facts — that raised morale and encouraged the soldiers to continue the mission.”
These admissions were made directly to the military investigators in Yeshurun’s case, but were not deemed sufficient to place any charges on the officer.
Although Israeli military policy says that revenge attacks are not allowed, former soldiers have reported that they are common practice in Israeli military units.
The shelling of the clinic was part of a larger attack on the Sheja’eyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza, in which more than 120 Palestinian civilians were killed in a single night during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014. The 50-day long invasion resulted in more than 1400 Palestinians killed, including more than 400 children, and 91 Israelis, mainly soldiers killed during the invasion of Gaza.
The night of killings in Sheja’eyya became known to Palestinians as the Sheja’eyya massacre. Throughout the night, the shelling of the neighborhood was continuous, affecting every home – most of the neighborhood was completely destroyed, and many of those killed were crushed in the rubble of their own homes. Survivors ran through the streets carrying babies and children, desperate to escape the continuous Israeli assault.
The attack took place on July 31st, 2014, just a day after the bombing of a school where families had taken refuge. About the attack on the school, UN Secretary General stated, “I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable, and it demands accountability and justice. Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” Since the time of the attack, there has been no accountability for the soldiers involved, and no charges.
Former Israeli soldier turned whistleblower Eran Efrati published accounts at the time, in August 2014, from soldiers in two different units reporting that their commanding officers had ordered them to carry out attacks against civilians in order to ‘revenge’ for soldiers who had been killed.
A new report says governments must continue to make social investments and place focus on marginalized populations.
As many as 30 million people in Latin America, who were recently lifted out of poverty, could go back to being poor, a report from the United Nations Development Programme warned Tuesday.
Thanks to investments in social programs and wealth redistribution policies over the past 15 years, approximately 72 million Latin Americans were lifted out of poverty and a further 94 million moved into the middle class.
However, according to the UNDP, 2015 and 2016 saw a rise in the number of people living in poverty in the region for the first time in decades.
The report, entitled “Multidimensional Progress: Well-Being Beyond Income,” says more than a third of those who left poverty since 2003 are now at risk of becoming poor again.
The UNDP report stressed that the economic slowdown being experienced throughout the region is only one factor.
“Every Latin American generation decides which structural changes to pursue: there are pending citizenship and resilience challenges that will not be solved with economic growth alone,” said George Gray Molina, lead author and UNDP chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Molina specified that recent achievements were not attributable to free market policies, but rather direct government intervention.
The UNDP is calling on governments to support vulnerable or marginalized groups through social investment and subsidies.
“Right now, on the one hand, we must protect the region’s past achievements, including preventing millions from of people from falling back into poverty; on the other hand, we must also promote inclusive policies and comprehensive strategies for populations suffering from historical discrimination and exclusion,” said United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Jessica Faieta.
Left-wing governments, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, have pledged to maintain social investment, despite the downturn in the economy.
However, right-wing governments, such Mauricio Macri’s in Argentina, have pursued policies that have made living more expensive for the poor. According to an April report by the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic Church, in only a few months over 2 million Argentines have been pushed into poverty.
The report also suggested that reforms to tax codes to make them more progressive could lessen the burden on low-income people. Governments throughout Latin America largely depend on revenue from resource extraction and value-added taxes, which tend to be regressive.
A 2015 report by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean called for a reform of tax codes to reduce inequality and improve tax collection on high-income earners.
An industry-dominated “multistakeholder process” convened by the Commerce Department recently produced a set of voluntary privacy “best practices” for commercial drones that are so riddled with exceptions and vague language that companies could engage in all sorts of practices that would violate the public’s privacy expectations, while still claiming to comply with these guidelines.
The idea of the process was to produce a set of voluntary best practices to ensure that commercial drone use protects privacy rights. It was convened at the direction of President Obama in an executive order on drone privacy that he issued in February 2015.
Last month, before the document was finalized, we, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Access Now, urged the corporate participants to make a clear commitment to actual best practices, rather than a weak document designed primarily to ensure maximum flexibility in what companies can do with drones. We proposed a set of changes to the document’s language that would have strengthened it enough to allow us to endorse it. Unfortunately, these changes were rejected.
Why won’t Amazon and other industry players in the drone space make a clean commitment to good privacy practices when it comes to drones? To take just one example, I think one thing most Americans would definitely not want to see companies doing with their drones is engaging in persistent and continuous surveillance of people without their consent. Yet this industry-led draft says the best practice is to avoid doing that “in the absence of a compelling need to do otherwise.” A compelling need? What is that? Is Amazon planning to engage in such surveillance with its delivery drones? If not, why wouldn’t it agree to a more straightforward statement? There were a lot of industry players, so I don’t mean to pick on Amazon. Except actually I do, because apparently that company led the meeting negotiations for industry on what turned into the final product.
Perhaps one could dream up scenarios where a company engages in persistent, continuous surveillance of people without their consent, in a way that nobody would find objectionable. I’m not sure what that scenario would look like, but that certainly wouldn’t be a best practice, and the inclusion of such language is far more likely to be abused than to cover such a remote eventuality.
Other areas where we thought the documents language was too weak were around issues such as consent, the collection of data where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, the sharing of data with third parties, and data retention. We spell out these and other problems in our letter. As it now stands, the document shows more promise as a corporate consciousness-raising document than an assurance that any complying company isn’t doing anything objectionable.
Any company that is operating drones should certainly comply with the practices laid out in this document. But doing so represents the very bare minimum of what companies should do on privacy, not best practices. The NTIA should reject this document, and discussions in the multi-stakeholder process should continue until adequate privacy protections can be included.
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Can we say that the United States is a sovereign State when we see the historical weight of the Zionist lobby on its policy decision?
Alison Weir: Adherents of political Zionism have influenced U.S. policies for decades and have often played a central role in elections. Despite this, Americans will be able to forge independent policies when enough people become aware of the facts and demand different policies.
You cite the staggering US aid to Israel, either $ 10 million per day or 7,000 times more per capita than other countries. What justifies such help to Israel from the United States?
I personally don’t feel it is rational or justified. It is the result of political lobbying by well-funded organizations and obfuscation by the American media. Most Americans have no idea that our government gives such an enormous amount of money to Israel. For this reason, our organization is placing billboards around the U.S. informing people of this fact.
You are threatened with death, you undergo pressures, because of your commitment to the Palestinian cause. Where are the Western values such as “democracy” and “freedom of speech” in all this?
Zionists have little attachment to principles such as democracy or freedom of speech. However, I believe that the majority of Americans believe in these and are disturbed when they are violated. Again, however, most are unaware of how deeply these principles are being damaged by Israel partisans.
As an intellectual committed to the Palestinian cause, how can you explain that when people like you are disparaged, defamed and threatened, some leaders of the Arab-Muslim world collaborate actively with Israel, including some Palestinians themselves? Is not the Palestinian cause the cause of all the humanity?
A group in Malaysia has a wonderful name: “the Movement for a Just World.” I feel that the Palestinian cause is part of that. All people should work for justice for all people, without exceptions.
You were supported in 2015 by 2000 activists and world-famous personalities, among them the Professor Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied, Hedy Epstein, Ann Wright, Arun Gandhi, Ray McGovern, Cindy Sheehan, and James Abourezk former Senator and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Can you tell us about this open letter they signed?
Some individuals who say they are “pro-Palestinian” seem to wish to control the discourse on this issue and keep aspects of it, such as the power of the Israel lobby, hidden. A group called “Jewish voice for peace” that was formed about the same time that I began “If Americans Knew” has always contained Zionists among its members and, while its stances have evolved as more people have become involved in the Palestine solidarity movement, it has a history of taking weak stands on some fundamental aspects of this issue and failing to support full justice for Palestinians; it refuses to consider Zionism racist. This group has become quite powerful and currently has a budget of over $2 million. While the organization has done much valuable work and worked to build relationships with many groups and individuals, it has also used its power to try to control the movement and marginalize committed activists who support full justice for Palestinians. When JVP’s actions against me became public, many people opposed them and called for such attacks to end. Some created an Open Letter supporting me and opposing the divisive attacks, and over 2,000 people signed it, including many members of JVP. It appears that the majority of activists support me and If Americans Knew. Some, however, taken in by JVP’s accusations, or who themselves wish to dominate the movement, support what JVP is doing.
Why do the Zionist lobbies persecute Mrs. Alison Weir? Are they afraid of a Righteous bringer of light?
I think that Zionists of all stripes fear exposure of the full facts on this issue. While open Zionists, soft Zionists (people who only oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank but support Israel’s core, discriminatory identity), and many people who say they are no longer Zionists but who still seem to have an emotional attachment to Israel have long opposed If Americans Knew, my book seems to have particularly triggered escalated attacks on me. This book, which is thoroughly cited, exposes the fact that Zionists have worked to manipulate the U.S. since the late 1800s and contains facts that Israel partisans clearly wish to keep hidden. Fortunately, despite their attempts to bury the book and to prevent my speaking engagements, the book is enjoying considerable popularity and we have now sold over 25,000 copies. It is now listed on Amazon as a bestseller in several categories. I expect its success will lead to even more attacks on me of all sorts ; some of the most insidious, sadly, will quite likely continue to be from those who claim to be part of the Palestine solidarity movement.
How is it that we saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to terrorist Al Nusra treated in Israeli field hospitals? Do Daesh and Al-Qaeda come from the same terrorist matrix as the State of Israel?
From its earliest beginnings, the Israeli strategy has been one of “divide and conquer.” Israeli leaders feel that any and all actions that cause strife within and among its neighbors benefits Israel, and Israel has often played a role in creating and/or nurturing such strife. This tactic has been discussed in a number of Israeli strategy papers.
You lived with Palestinians in the occupied territories, what is your testimony about their daily life under Israeli occupation?
In some areas they are shelled and invaded frequently, people killed and injured routinely. Even in the areas that are usually free of this outright violence, Palestinians are living in prisons in which Israel controls their lives and prevents their ability to protect their children – Israel decides where and whether they can travel and takes any action against Palestinians it wishes, strip searching women and children; abducting men, women, and children at will; imprisoning them without trial; perpetrating physical and psychological torture against them with impunity; preventing them from free contact with the rest of the world.
Does not Israel constitute a threat for peace in the world notably with its nuclear power?
Israel has long been a major threat to peace. It has caused numerous wars and encouraged still more. Its possession of nuclear weapons threatens the region and beyond and its actions could trigger a global conflagration.
More and more voices in the world are protesting against Israeli domination, as we saw it during the last open-air massacre in Gaza. How do you explain this change in favor of the Palestinian cause?
With the Internet, more and more people are learning the facts. People are increasingly seeing Israeli violence that used to be hidden from the world.
How do you explain that the Zionist state of Israel is called the Jewish state by referring to the Hebrew religion; and why are those who are against the Israeli criminal policy or the Zionist lobbies qualified anti-Semitic?
Israel does not define “Jewish” as a religious designation, it defines it as an ethnic identity. Israel claims that anyone who exposes or opposes its human rights violations is “anti-Semitic” as a tactic to prevent such opposition and to marginalize those whose facts they wish to hide. As a former Israeli Knesset member said a while ago, “It’s a trick; we always use it.”
Is not the Christian fundamentalism the real creator of the Zionist State of Israel, as it is found in some ancient texts either in Britain or the United States?
No, this isn’t what led to the creation of Israel. While there are some passages within Hebrew and Christian texts that some individuals have long interpreted as meaning that all Jews are meant to go to Israel (these interpretations are contested by most respected theologians, including fundamentalist theologians), such groups never brought this about. It was the political Zionist movement largely begun by Theodor Herzl in the late 1800s that Israel and others accurately consider the movement that founded Israel. This movement worked to propagandize every sector of the United States, including both Christians and Jews. There is quite a bit of information about this in my book. Today, while many Christian fundamentalists support Israel because of the manipulation that occurred and still occurs in the U.S., more and more of these individuals are changing their views when they learn the facts. There are now many Christian fundamentalists (and Jews) who are working fervently for justice for Palestinians.
You founded If America Knew and you are President of the Council for the National Interest, can you explain to us what is the role of these two organizations?
I founded If Americans Knew to give Americans the full facts on Palestine and on the role of the United States in this conflict. Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government gives massive amounts of money to Israel and shields it from deserved international condemnation. Similarly, most Americans have no idea of the history of this issue, and of the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. Finally, most Americans have no idea of the size, history, and significance of the Zionist lobby in the U.S. and the degree to which it influences policies that are immoral, irrational, and that cause great harm to people throughout the world, including Americans.
The Council for the National Interest was founded in 1989 to counter the Israel lobby. Its goal was to work for policies that would be in the interests of all Americans, an extremely diverse population, rather than for one tiny interest group. Its two main founders, former Congressmen Paul Findley and Pete McCloskey were both pushed out of office by Israel partisans when these men began to advocate for justice for Palestinians. Both are deeply principled individuals who had also opposed the Vietnam War and racism.
What can a world scale activist as you are say to all resistants worldwide against Zionism and the fascist State of Israel?
I’m very surprised, but honored, to see you refer to me as a “world scale activist.” I’m just one of a multitude of people who are joining together to work for justice for Palestinians and to oppose violence, racism, and oppression. I have no doubt that we will eventually succeed. The main point is to continue our work, to refuse to be divided from one another, and not to give up. We are an extremely diverse movement and I believe that is part of our strength, along with the worthiness of our cause and the nobility and courage of those who came before us. We are of all different faiths and backgrounds, of all ages and races, and we won’t be stopped.
Who is Alison Weir?
Alison Weir is an American writer and an activist for the Palestinian cause. She is the founder and director of the non-profit organization If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. In 2001, Alison Weir left her job as editor of a weekly newspaper and traveled alone to the Palestinian territories during the Second Intifada. She visited the West Bank and Gaza and witnessed the scenes of violence, seeing the truth of the conflict on the ground, and from where she wrote about her encounters with Palestinian suffering and with the “incredible arrogance, cruelty, selfishness” of Israelis. She was amazed by what she learned: That the truth of the conflict, on the ground, bore almost no resemblance to the stories told in US media. She returned to the US determined to change that. She began to speak and write on the topic and founded If Americans Knew, a nonprofit dedicated to accurately informing Americans. More recently, she also accepted a position as president of the Council for the National Interest.
Alison Weir was a civil rights activist and Peace Corps volunteer. Alison Weir has spoken all over the United States, including two briefings on Capitol Hill, presentations at the National Press Club in Washington DC (broadcast nationally on C-Span), Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (one also broadcast on C-Span), at World Affairs Councils, and at numerous universities including Harvard Law School, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Georgetown, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Vassar, the Naval Postgraduate Institute, Purdue, Northwestern, and the University of Virginia.She has given papers at various international conferences, lectured in Ramallah and at the University of Qatar, presented at the Asia Media Summits in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and given speaking tours in England, Wales, Iran and Qatar.
Alison Weir has also written widely on Israel-Palestine, the US connection, and media coverage. Her first book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, was published in February 2014 and has received high praise. Her essays and articles have appeared in a number of books and magazines, among them The New Intifada (Verso), Censored 2005 (Seven Stories Press), Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Rienner), The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, CounterPunch, and The Link.
Alison Weir has received various awards and in 2004 was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society, founded in 1845 at Illinois College. The award cited her as a “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights, the first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history.”
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alamoffers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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