Human rights « Aletho News

Israel backs bill to allow secret police interrogations to continue

MEMO | June 24, 2015

The Israeli Knesset is to extend a temporary bill that permits police interrogators not to use audio or video recordings to document interrogations of people suspected of security offences, Arab48.com reported yesterday.

The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) condemned the measure and sent a letter to the Israeli Public Prosecutor and the government’s Judicial Advisor demanding they appeal against the bill.

“This amounts to severe violation of basic prisoners’ rights, including the legal right to remain dignified and have just judicial measures,” Adalah said. “Extending this bill clearly undermines any opportunity to monitor the legality of interrogation measures and confessions raised to the court.”

The Israeli Knesset approved a bill in 2002 demanding security services document the questioning of any prisoner who may get more than ten years in prison for his crimes. The bill included an article which made such documentation unnecessary in cases of security-related offences.

According to Adalah, this article was a temporary measure agreed to remain in place for six years. In 2008, the Knesset extended it until 2012 and then it was extended to 2015. Adalah said Palestinian prisoners are affected most by this article.

June 24, 2015 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Israel issues 30 administrative detention orders during June

Palestine Information Center – June 24, 2015

AL-KHALIL – Israeli courts issued, since the beginning of June, 30 administrative detention orders against Palestinian prisoners from al-Khalil, Prisoners Media Center said.

The center stated that 43% of administrative detainees held currently without charge or trial in Israeli jails are from al-Khalil.

As a whole, there are 450 administrative detainees in Israeli jails including four MPs.

The center pointed out that Israeli administrative detention policy mainly targets youth activists, students, MPs, and prisoners’ defenders as an attempt to prevent them from exposing the reported Israeli human rights violations.

June 24, 2015 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Hebron, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | Leave a comment

Charleston and Gun Rights

By Sheldon Richmann | Free Association | June 23, 2015

Dylann Roof’s racially motivated murders of nine black churchgoers have brought predictable calls for new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.

How ironic this is we shall soon see.

Advocates of gun rights argue that the best way to prevent such atrocities is for would-be victims to arm themselves; killers will break gun laws without hesitation (though Roof obtained his .45-caliber handgun legally), so legal obstacles to gun ownership only impede the innocent. Relying on the police for defense is futile — or worse.

This argument persuades few who are committed to “gun control” (a misnomer because law-abiding people, not guns, are subject to control). But those who demand it while grieving over the racist massacre at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C., ought to understand that “time and again, guns have proven pivotal to the African American quest for freedom.”

That sentence is found in Charles E. Cobb Jr.’s important book That Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

Guns made the civil rights movement possible? What about the philosophy of nonviolence embraced by most prominent civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.?

As Cobb, a journalist and veteran civil rights activist, explains, for many civil rights activists in the South, nonviolence did not rule out “armed self-defense,” which meant keeping firearms. “In these communities, where the law was generally weighted against them, armed self-defense was a natural response to white terror,” he writes.

True, many activists believed in a turn-the-other-cheek strategy. But others rejected strict passivism. “Whether the question was one of picking up a gun in response to attack by night riders,” Cobb writes, “or of curling one’s body tightly and protectively while being assaulted by a mob during a lunch-counter sit-in, or of shielding an elderly person under attack for trying to register to vote, the decision of what to do centered not on the choice between nonviolence and violence but on the question of what response was best in each situation.” As one Mississippi activist and farmer, Hartman Turnbow, put it after scaring off night riders with his gun, “I wasn’t being non-nonviolent; I was just protecting my family.”

Guns of course pervaded the South before the civil rights movement, and this was true of black culture too. Moreover, many black war veterans came home with guns, determined to win their freedom. As the black freedom movement emerged after World War II and the Korean War, it was only natural for guns to be seen as important in the defense against the daily threat posed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists.

Cobb’s book is filled with accounts of incidents in which brutal racists were persuaded to retreat by black men armed and ready to defend themselves and their families. For example, “There is … no shortage of examples of black resistance to the vicious and violent white supremacy that continued to prevail in Louisiana as CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] organizers began their work.” Guns were no guarantee against white aggression, but Cobb’s message is that more blacks would have been killed had they been unarmed.

This book taught me, among other things, that 1) Martin Luther King’s home in the 1950s was “an arsenal” and was always guarded by armed men, 2) that King in 1956 applied for a concealed-carry permit (and was turned down), 3) that Daisy Bates, who advised the Little Rock Nine, carried a .32-caliber handgun in her purse, 4) and that Medgar Evers always was armed. (Evers of course was murdered; guns are no panacea.)

Cobb understands that “America’s first gun control laws … were designed to prevent the possession of weapons by black people,” and he writes that “it can easily be argued that today’s controversial Stand Your Ground right of self-defense first took root in black communities.” (Whites expected blacks to “back down or submit — never to stand up for themselves.”)

He concludes, “There was a time when people on both sides of America’s racial divide embraced their right to self-protection, and when rights were won because of it. We would do well to remember that fact today.”

June 23, 2015 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Tory crackdown on Freedom of Information sparks transparency fears

RT | June 22, 2015

Conservative ministers are plotting a clampdown on Britain’s Freedom of Information (FoI) laws, a move that observers warn could signal the death knell for Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to cultivate a new wave of transparency in Westminster.

Justice Secretary Michael Gove is attempting to make it considerably more difficult for citizens to seek information from state bodies, the Financial Times revealed Monday.

Sources told the newspaper that a number of proposals have been floated and Gove is currently considering how they might be implemented.

Giving ministers the power to veto the publication of certain documents has been tabled, as was attempted when Prince Charles’ notorious “black spider” letters were recently published.

Altering government officials’ method of calculating the cost of sourcing government data has also been proposed. Both measures could seriously impact on Britons’ right to know, bolstering state secrecy in the process, critics warn.

These legal changes will also serve to create “think time” and redaction costs that will considerably drive up the cost of FoI requests. Transparency advocates warn they will leave government data inaccessible for many.

The planned crackdown on citizens’ right to know contrasts starkly with Cameron’s transparency rhetoric four years ago. Writing in the Telegraph, the PM promised the electorate a far-reaching “revolution in [government] transparency.”

“Information is power,” he wrote in 2011.

“It lets people hold the powerful to account, giving them the tools they need to take on politicians and bureaucrats.”

The state’s FoI Act was implemented in 2005, under Tony Blair’s Labour government. Current plans to reform the legislation will likely receive strong opposition from Labour Party and Scottish Nationalist Party MPs.

Critics maintain Westminster’s quiet assault on Britons’ right to access government data has already begun.

A number of Downing Street practices have recently surfaced, which reduce Whitehall’s ability to uphold the public interest.

On Tuesday, it emerged that emails sent from computers in 10 Downing Street are deleted within three months as a rule. The practice was leaked to the FT by a number of ex-Downing Street employees. It was reportedly put in place 10 years ago under Blair’s government.

One former Number 10 worker told the FT the system breeds dysfunctionality in Whitehall.

Speaking to the newspaper, director of Britain’s Campaign for Freedom of Information said citizens’ right to access information freely is under threat.

He warned many of the proposals being discussed by Tory ministers “could have had severe consequences for the right to know.”

The campaign called upon Labour MPs Jenny Chapman, Dan Jarvis, and Stephen Twigg to challenge Gove’s transparency crackdown plans in parliament on Tuesday.

June 22, 2015 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, UK | Leave a comment

Over 10,000 Soldiers Desert Ukrainian Army

Sputnik – 21.06.2015

More than 10,000 cases of desertion have been registered in the Ukrainian Army since the outbreak of the Donbass war in April 2014, Ukrainian Vesti reported.

In 2014 the army suffered heavy desertion and nearly 30 percent of the servicemen called up in the first wave of mobilization (March 17) abandoned their positions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada has announced six waves of mobilization so far. By the end of 2014 the strength of Ukrainian Armed Forces grew from 130,000 to 232,000.Ukrainians have been protesting against the mobilization. They travel to work abroad or simply reside at their relatives’ in other countries. Almost 1,3 million Ukrainian draftees live in Russia.

Since April 7, 2014 the Kiev authorities have been waging war against Donbass self-defense forces who rejected the legitimacy of the coup-imposed Ukrainian government and declared the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Official figures estimate the number of victims to near 6,500. But the German intelligence reported of 50,000 victims in February 2015.

June 21, 2015 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Militarism | Human rights, Ukraine | Leave a comment

By Definition, An Aggressor Cannot Act in Defense

By Robert Barsocchini | Empire Slayer | June 17, 2015

The statement that Israel has the right to defend itself against Palestine is similar to the statement that if, say, the US annexed, occupied, and started building illegal settlements in Cuba (the parts the US isn’t already illegally occupying and using as a torture camp, Guantanamo), then the US would have the right to “defend” itself against Cubans acting in retaliation to US aggression.

Everyone aside from blind fundamentalists and/or the hopelessly corrupt would laugh at the notion that in such a situation, US action against resistant Cubans would be “defense”. Likewise, the world laughs at the idea that Israel can “defend” itself against the vastly more outgunned Palestinians resisting Israeli aggression.

International law reflects the common sense dynamics of this situation, which any child could easily understand and naturally grasp.

Georgetown International Law professor Noura Erakat explains the relevant rules:

… where an occupation already is in place, the right to initiate militarized force in response to an armed attack, as opposed to police force to restore order, is not a remedy available to the occupying state.

… the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population.

An occupying power cannot justify military force as self-defense in territory for which it is responsible as the occupant.

However, people exploiting weaker groups try to deny elementary common sense and rewrite rules to defend what they are doing, and/or make themselves feel better about their awful acts. For example, the Spanish inquisition made little rules for itself regarding its torture subjects, such as that they were not supposed to bleed. Thus, the Inquisition, instead of say using thumbscrews (a Euro favorite), would burn people alive, as this, they ludicrously argued, did not make people bleed and thus made the Inquisition perpetrators moral and law-abiding, at least in their warped and self-serving minds. (Also, they would make people bleed through various torture methods, anyway, and just ignore their own rules.)

Naturally, this is what Israel, the US, and all corrupt, nasty power-centers do. Erakat explains how Israel plays these games with International Law:

[Israel tries to get around International Law by saying it does] not occupy [the Palestinian territories] within the meaning of international law. The UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, as well as the Israeli High Court of Justice have roundly rejected the Israeli government’s position.

In its 2012 session, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination described current conditions following decades of occupation and attendant repression as tantamount to Apartheid.

[The International Court of Justice rules that “Article 51 of the Charter [the right to self defense] has no relevance” to Israel’s assaults and massacres against the territories it illegally occupies and colonizes.]

… Israel is distorting/reinterpreting international law to justify its use of militarized force in order to protect its colonial authority…

In doing this, Israel:

… forces the people of the Gaza Strip to face one of the most powerful militaries in the world without the benefit either of its own military, or of any realistic means to acquire the means todefend itself.

If Israel were concerned about small matters like honor, it would help or allow Gazans to acquire guided weapons for self-defense. However, the Israeli state prefers to use its civilian population as a human shield (a tactic constantly used by Israel) to absorb the few unguided rockets that make it into populated Israeli areas, rather than have guided rockets hit designated Israeli military installations, which are enmeshed throughout Israeli civilian society.

Erakat concludes that, since the Israeli state’s behavior is an “affront to the international humanitarian legal order”, “the onus to resist this shift and to preserve protection for civilians rests upon the shoulders of citizens, organizations, and mass movements who can influence their governments enforce international law. There is no alternative to political mobilization to shape state behavior.”

…

The next question is whether the Palestinians have the right to use arms to resist illegal Israeli occupation, annexation, settlement, and aggression.

If we return to our US-occupying-Cuba metaphor, the common sense/fairness answer is obviously yes, of course. And again, the only reason many US citizens do not answer yes immediately to the question of whether Palestinians are allowed to use force to defend themselves against Israel’s armed aggression is that US citizens utterly lack exposure to information representative of common sense and world opinion. What they are exposed to represents opinion and “reporting” heavily biased in favor of the US-backed aggressors, in ways that range from obvious to subtle and subconscious, from natural ethnocentrism to intentional insidiousness.

But again, international law, when we look at it, represents the common-sense interpretation of the situation at which any child would arrive.

Middle East scholars LeVine and Hajjar explain that Palestinians are not prohibited:

… from taking up arms to resist occupation.

Additional Protocol I established people’s right to use armed force to resist foreign occupation as well as colonial domination and to fight against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination. This Protocol was promulgated for the purpose of injecting IHL standards into asymmetric wars (between states and non-state groups).

Israel has refused to sign this Protocol (as has the US) and does not recognise the right of non-state groups to fight for those specified causes, even if they were to abide by the laws of war. Nevertheless, the lawfulness of the use of armed force is not contingent on the status of the adversaries but rather on whether those who fight do so in accordance with the principles of IHL (International Humanitarian Law) enumerated above [and, as Dr. Norman Finkelstein and others note, on whether a group under attack has the option or ability to retaliate within the technical bounds of IHL – ie, do Palestinians have guided, and thus legal, projectiles to use as a deterrent? They do not. Do they therefore lack the right to retaliate in the most effective ways they can?].

Further, as I have noted, the mostly symbolic and ineffective Palestinian projectile attacks – which have killed about 30 people in their entire history – are not only launched under illegal Israeli occupation, but also mainly “in retaliation for prior indiscriminate Israeli killings of Gazan civilians“, doubling both the illegality of Israeli action and the right to self defense of the Palestinians.

Examples of Israeli double-war crimes (occupation combined with further military assault/aggression) that have elicited defensive retaliation from Palestine include:

… the November 5 [2012] killing of a 23-year-old mentally disabled man who strayed too close to the border fence, and at least one boy killed while playing football five days later. Two other Palestinians who rushed to the latter scene to help the victims were themselves immediately killed by three more shells fired by Israeli forces [in 2012, and similar attacks by the Israeli occupier in 2014 that spurred retaliatory rocket firing, as Israel concedes.]

[In 2012, for example, Israeli] attacks prompted a retaliatory strike by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which launched an anti-tank missile at an army jeep near the border, wounding four soldiers. That attack by a group not under the operational control of Hamas in turn triggered the targeting of Jabari and the all-out assault on Gaza by Israel.

The second factor that undercuts the self-defence rationale is that Jabari was involved in negotiating an Egyptian-brokered comprehensive, long-term cease-fire with Israel when he was assassinated. In a November 17 New York Times op-ed, Israeli academic Gershon Baskin (who was a mediator in these negotiations) declared that Jabari had been given a near-final version of the agreement hours before he was killed.

… the immediate causes of the most violent wave of rocket fire were precisely the indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces and the assassination of the official who was engaged in negotiations to permanently curtail such rocket attacks. Moreover, Israeli officials had to know and anticipate that killing Jabari would precipitate a violent Palestinian response, raising serious questions about their moral and political responsibility for the ensuing violence.

The circumstances noted above are exactly similar to Israel’s 2014 massacre in Israeli-occupied Gaza, which began with Israeli killings of Gazans, including killing children on video, against the background of an imminent agreement between Hamas and the West Bank leadership, with US and EU approval. This enraged Israel due to the prospect of another “Palestinian peace offensive”, which might mitigate Israel’s ability to continue illegally colonizing territory outside its legal and internationally recognized borders.

Indeed, Israel’s assaults on occupied refugee camps such as Gaza, “must be judged against a reality which, although vehemently rejected by Israeli officials … enjoys an overwhelming international consensus: Namely, that the entirety of the territories captured by Israel in 1967 remain occupied according to international law.”

The professors sum up:

Put simply, an occupying state has no legal right to wage a full-scale military war against an occupied population. Rather, the occupying state is legally obligated to protect the rights and prioritise the interests of this population, something Israel has manifestly not done in any part of the Occupied Territories.

The occupying power has rights, too, including the right to maintain order and to take steps to ensure for its own security. But in a context of occupation, these options are limited to police actions and at most use of small arms to address an immediate threat, not full-scale war.

Israel practices “continual deployment of large-scale, indiscriminate force against people and space of Gaza – and, equally important, the West Bank as well…”

These acts constitute “not merely the context for war crimes but for crimes against humanity and, because of their clearly aggressive nature, a crime against peace.”

Like all aggressive criminal actors, Israel would prefer to meet no resistance, and thus naturally insists that the Palestinians do not have “any right to use force, even in self-defence”. Such desperate claims give “important insight into how Israel interprets the law to project the legality of policies and practices it wishes to pursue.”

…

Recognized as the most important and authoritative moral voice on the issue of resistance to tyranny, Mahatma Gandhi spoke specifically on the issue of Israeli tyranny against Palestine, and said,

[Israelis] can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs … nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

Also see: The Hateful Likud [Israeli ruling organization] Charter Calls for the Destruction of Any Palestine State

@_DirtyTruths

June 18, 2015 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Bush-era officials can be sued for abuse of 9/11 detainees – court

RT | June 18, 2015

A federal appeals court reinstated a lawsuit against former Justice Department and law enforcement officials for violating the rights of men perceived as Arab or Muslim who were rounded up after 9/11 and held for months, sometimes in solitary confinement.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Bush-era heads of the Department of Justice, FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), can be sued for violating the constitutional rights of 762 men, described as “out-of-status aliens” because they either overstayed their visas or worked without permits.

The case, known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft, was filed in 2002 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). It names as defendants the former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service James Ziglar. The CCR is also suing the officials in charge of the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, and the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey, where the plaintiffs were being held for anywhere from three to eight months.

A federal court dismissed the case in 2013, after concluding there was no evidence the officials had any “intent to punish” the plaintiffs. However, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, ruling that the Justice Department officials were not entitled to “qualified immunity,” and that the confinement conditions of the immigrants were actually established with “punitive intent.”

“We believe, then, that the challenged conditions—keeping detainees in their cells for twenty‐three hours a day, constructively denying them recreation and exposing them to the elements, strip searching them whenever they were removed from or returned to their cells, denying them sleep by bright lights—were not reasonably related to a legitimate goal, but rather were punitive and unconstitutional,” judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley wrote in the majority opinion.

Pooler and Wesley said the government officials presumed that “all out‐of‐status Arabs or Muslims were potential terrorists until proven otherwise,” and justified the detentions on national security grounds.

The lawsuit claims the mass detentions were part of the FBI’s “hold-until-cleared policy,” holding the men described as “potential recruits” for Al-Qaeda solely because of their Middle Eastern, North African, or South Asian origin. Of the eight current plaintiffs, six are Muslim, one is Hindu, and one is Buddhist.

“It might well be that national security concerns motivated the defendants to take action, but that is of little solace to those who felt the brunt of that decision,” the two judges wrote.

“We are thrilled with the court’s ruling,” said CCR attorney Rachel Meeropol. “The court took this opportunity to remind the nation that the rule of law and the rights of human beings, whether citizens or not, must not be sacrificed in the face of national security hysteria.”

Benamar Benatta, one of the plaintiffs, said he was “delighted” by the ruling. Cleared for release on November 14, 2001, Benatta remained in solitary confinement until April 30 the following year. … Full article

June 18, 2015 Posted by aletho | Subjugation - Torture | 9/11, DHS, FBI, Human rights, Immigration, USA | Leave a comment

Ex-Israeli foreign minister avoids Gaza war crimes arrest thanks to UK diplomatic immunity

RT | June 18, 2015

Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was granted diplomatic immunity by the British government during a visit to the UK this week to avoid possible arrest over alleged war crimes.

The Zionist Union politician was attending the Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit in London, where she spoke on the Israeli political climate and the future of Israel and Palestine.

Livni was able to qualify for legal immunity by arranging meetings with British officials, exploiting a legal loophole that protects Israelis on official visits to the UK.

She has had to use the loophole since pro-Palestine activists successfully petitioned a British court to issue an arrest warrant in her name ahead of a visit in December 2009.

As Israeli Foreign Minister during the 2008-09 Gaza War, Livni was involved in the decision to take military action in response to rocket fire coming from the Gaza Strip. The rocket fire itself was in response to a November 4, 2008 incident, when IDF soldiers killed several Hamas fighters in a military incursion.

Livni told reporters at the time: “We have proven to Hamas that we have changed the equation. Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.”

A UN investigation found Israel had used excessive force which unfairly impacted on civilians, as well as using Palestinians as human shields by forcing them to enter houses which might be booby trapped.

Some 926 Palestinian civilians were killed in the conflict, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

The report concluded Israel had violated articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Palestine supporters hold Livni accountable for these war crimes.

Livni, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, abandoned her trip to the UK in 2009. Then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband subsequently issued Livni a personal apology.

The British government is theoretically able to prosecute Livni on suspicion of war crimes.

By using “universal jurisdiction,” UK law permits British courts to cover serious offenses such as war crimes, torture and hostage-taking, regardless of where they were committed.

However, the British government amended the law in September 2011 to avoid further diplomatic incidents.

Parliament changed the legislation so that the head of public prosecutions must give approval to a request for arrest warrants under universal jurisdiction.

The UK government has also granted automatic immunity to all Israelis on official visits to Britain, according to the Times of Israel.

As a result, British courts rejected a request for a new arrest warrant against Livni ahead of this week’s visit.

The Zionist Union member exploited the legal loophole to attend the Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit, according to the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

During her London visit, she met with Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood MP to present a copy of Israel’s 275-page report on Operation Protective Edge, last summer’s deadly assault by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) against Gaza.

The report places blame for the war’s casualties on Hamas in Gaza and declares Israel’s attack to be “lawful” and “legitimate.”

More than 2,000 Palestinians died in the conflict, the majority of them civilians. Some 73 Israelis were killed, all but six of whom were soldiers.

Livni told Ellwood: “It is important that the British government have an accurate picture of the factual, ethical, and legal reality, because the UN report is expected to be so twisted and anti-Israel.”

During her visit, a BBC Newsnight interviewer challenged Livni over her parents’ involvement in Irgun, a paramilitary organization that used violence against the British in its struggle for an independent Israel. Livni was asked if she would describe her parents as terrorists.

The former Israeli foreign minister denied there was any comparison between Hamas and Irgun.

She told BBC journalist Evan Davis: “There is a huge difference between those fighting an army, the British Army, and between all those terrorist organizations in our region that are looking for civilians to kill.”

Israeli soldiers who beat handcuffed Palestinian get suspended sentences

Missile killing of 4 Gaza boys not a crime, Israel rules

‘Outrageous’: Saudi diplomat who kept workers in ‘slavery’ immune from law

June 18, 2015 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Crime, Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, War | Leave a comment

The “occupation” of medical journals by pro-Israel professionals without any “preoccupation” about health issues

Missing the target, forgetting the point, forgetting the profession

MEMO | June 18, 2015

I am the author, with 23 other health and science professionals, of an Open Letter for the People in Gaza (1) published in The Lancet on 22 July 2014. The letter prompted friends of Israel in the medical profession to demand the dismissal of the magazine’s editor, Dr Richard Horton and the withdrawal of the publication; there was also a defamation campaign against the authors.

Neither of the first two demands succeeded, but a smear campaign against the letter’s signatories continues. A recent letter by a group of doctors led by Dr M Pepys (2) unleashed again the defamatory accusation against myself and my fellow signatories as well as Dr Horton. An invited comment by J Yudkin and J Leaning (3) in the British Medical Journal supported the decision by The Lancet to publish and was followed by a number of smear letters in the BMJ against us (referenced as responses in 4), taking advantage of the duty for the journal to publish responses.

Here I will write about facts and the lack of facts, and the absence of intellectual, moral and professional adequacy. First, though, some context behind the original letter.

My main concern in asking colleagues to co-author the open letter, after the first 10 days of Israel’s attacks on Gaza last summer, was to draw attention to what was the predictable great loss of civilians’ lives and damage to health in the already fragile situation that the Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in.

We acknowledged that the fragility was a consequence of the Israeli-led blockade of the Strip; the main keys to the doors of Gaza are not in the hands of any of the Palestinian players, but with the Israeli government. We noted endless public declarations in the media by Israel’s political and governing elite over the past 10 years which are unanimous in their conviction that Gaza has to be silenced; the debate, if there was one, was about how to keep Gaza quiet, not necessarily only by political means. We also registered the menacing reaction of Israel’s prime minister to the attempts at political and factional reconciliation made by the Palestinians, indicating that an autonomous Palestinian government, let alone a state, is not regarded by him as an option.

This point notwithstanding, our opinion about Middle East politics was not the motivation for writing the letter to a major medical journal; nor was that the core message.

Our shared main motivation to send the letter was to address the concern for that fragile, almost collapsing, health sector meant to cater to 1.8 million people effectively “caged” in the Gaza Strip. We wanted to share our knowledge of the accumulating scientific and clinical evidence of the effects that war and post-war environmental conditions pose on people’s physical and mental health, while very few in-depth studies or remedies have been developed. We felt a responsibility to “avoid further damage” and illustrated the situation as we knew it to be, to encourage attention for studies, professional support and for remedies, even if we knew that we could not immediately stop the war.

My colleagues and I, and the linked medical journals, were then attacked because we wrote about Gaza and not Syria or any of the other dire situations around the world. Why Gaza? From our perspective is was the obvious choice because we all had direct experience of the situation there; in modesty and professional truth, therefore, we could speak about what we knew and the consequences we could predict in our areas of competence and knowledge.

So there was no conspiracy; it was simply the fact that we knew the situation on the ground which inspired us to write the letter and gave the editorial team at The Lancet the confidence to publish it. I believe that if medical or other professionals have equal knowledge about the situation in, say, Syria or Yemen, and submit an article or letter for publication, it too would be published in the same journal.

For the time being, I guess that we who sent the letter and the editor who published it will have to accept the attacks against us merely for publicising the truth about the situation in the Gaza Strip. We hope, however, that we may have a role in encouraging positive steps for health preservation and care, each through our own independent work and activities. I can only express the utmost gratitude for the medical journals that care enough to provide a space for contributions about the relationships between health and occupation, and health and wars, wherever and whoever they come from. The editorial staff fulfil their duty to free speech by keeping that space open, while we authors fulfil ours by sticking to what we know.

Let me emphasise here that none of the hundreds of letters sent by our detractors, all of whom appear to be health professionals, raised any health-related issues. Their contribution to medicine and related matters in this case was negligible, and so their motivation in writing at length about what we said has to be questioned. It is interesting, too, that few demonstrated any in-depth knowledge of the local issues in question. Accusing a medical journal of not giving coverage to all wars around the world as a means to attack a specific published item – in this case our letter – is neither a medical nor a scientific point of value.

The final sentence from Tony Demonthe in the Christmas 2014 editorial in the BMJ (5) expresses well what we aimed at as signatories of the open letter: “I think future generations will judge the journal harshly if we avert our gaze from the medical consequences of what is happening to the occupants of the Palestinian territories and to the Israelis next door.” This applies to journals as well as to individual professionals.

Our decision to send this letter to The Lancet and not to the mainstream media was motivated in part by the hope that medical journals will host an open debate on the issue, and that this would be achieved by signalling the ongoing damages and their potential consequences of such professional attention. More specifically, we hoped that this audience would contribute to the opening of medical and scientific investigations and generate help for the health sector which we knew was dire from the very first acts in the war

It turns out that we were correct in our expectations about the dire nature of the consequences, and even modest in our anticipation of the amount and severity of the damage caused. And the extent of the damage to health is wide despite the claims of the Israeli NGO Amuta or Israel’s Terrorism and Intelligence Information Centre (6, 7) about “bias” by the sources of the numeric data of victims reported by UN organisations. To put the record straight, these Israeli sources used the same database as the UN agencies but lowered their published number of civilian victims by reducing the age of majority to 15 years old; male victims were also excluded from the list of civilian victims on the basis of imprecise and secret information about them.

What has happened after the Israeli offensive?

Following the ceasefire in August 2014, reduced access due to Israel’s ban on almost anyone entering the Gaza Strip, hindered both independent and institutional investigations, including those looking at the health sector. The official UN commission of inquiry has not been allowed to travel to Gaza, nor has the UN rapporteur. Nonetheless, those few who managed to skip the blockade were reliable for first views and interviews of a cohort of victims and situations, verifying a number of registered accidents and their modalities (8-18). Their reports illustrate different angles taken of the events and their conclusions about Israel’s responsibility under international laws and conventions will not be disclaimed easily in a fair analysis, but they are not directed specifically at the health sector.

Thus, it remains true, once again, that every independent fact-finding investigation was obstructed by the Israeli government, including that of the “UN special enquiry commission” (19) by refusing permission to enter the enclave. Similarly, most EU political representatives were stopped from visiting Gaza, and there has since August 2014 been even greater difficulties for anybody trying to be a direct witness to the damage caused by Israel, including that within the health sector. There is no doubt that Israel created serious hindrances to fact-finding and support in health by denying entry permits.

The issue that we presented in our letter last July was what could be done “to avoid harm”. The issue for medical journals has never been pro-this or anti-that – especially not anti-Semitism – among individual contributors or editors. The journal did not present the case of Palestine and not of Syria for the sake of it; the professional issue at hand was, “What can be done to limit and then heal the damage?” This is the sort of issue to be debated in medical journals by anyone and everyone who has pronounced the Hippocratic Oath or sticks to the ethics of scientific research.

As an issue, “What can be done to limit and then heal the damage done?” is rooted in the Gaza situation, both for the physical and mental damage, as well as the long-term consequences of the war. There aren’t the same numbers of physically damaged civilians in Israel and there may be a lot fewer mental health issues among Israeli civilians as a result of the war. I guess that they would be proportionate to the stress and number of people involved in or affected directly by the conflict.

Turning then to the real issue, professionals and medical journals are required to document, assess, discuss and produce support for those who would like to work in the healing and reduction of damage, working with those who can help the structures still active in the health sector to provide care and support to those who are permanently disabled (of which there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, including many women and children), the traumatised and the children.

In the Gaza Strip, the consequences of the war for the health sector are even worse than we predicted. Gaza and its people remain unhealed, and the possibilities for receiving help are limited, while the worst environmental conditions persist.

The severe limitations put in place by Israel to reduce both access and the effective working capabilities of professionals in the health and science fields, while the needs have actually increased since the war, have not diminished. Such professionals could provide support and training in Gaza, and Palestinian professionals could leave the enclave for training abroad (and many have fellowships to do just that) but this is not being allowed. Even travel by patients seeking expert help overseas has been restricted by the Israeli blockade.

The presence of thousands of newly-handicapped people, young and old alike; of traumatised children and adults; of conditions potentially inductive of long-term effects on fertility, reproductive health and diseases at large (20); and of the difficulties to cope with chronic illness for lack of medicines and instruments, continue to persist. Indeed, all are in a much worse situation than before the war.

It has not been possible to reduce this toll, due to the blockade which prevents professionals and medical supplies from entering Gaza. Under Israel’s restrictions and control, much-needed health and professional support is largely inaccessible.

Thus Gaza is, to this day, experiencing the destruction of infrastructure; food and medicine insecurity; mental problems among thousands of homeless civilians and families which have experienced loss, and children; the scarcity of energy and water; and a broken sewage system that flows untreated into the sea and pollutes the wells. Potentially toxic powders still fly in the air; its hospital and clinic facilities are reduced in effectiveness due to destruction; and medical supplies are always limited and erratic in delivery. All of these are health issues that should and could be dealt with, but all are impossible to resolve because of the blockade by Israel.

Considering the impossibility of people escaping all of this, assuming that they would want to, of course, the issue is something that should be debated, discussed, evaluated and reported on in medical journals. What is the impact on people’s health of Israel’s policies and what can be done to overcome the limitations facing the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip? This is what the medical media should be engaged with instead of the racist, ethnic or religious discrimination that we have seen for the past 11 months. Such “exercises of free speech” can and should be hosted elsewhere.

The seriously worrying aspect of the endless accusations of “anti-Semitism” hurled at us represents a “determination to abuse a medical tribune” for a sectarian “witch hunt”, without entering into discussion of the relevant medical points. It is a waste of energy in the context of medical care.

Furthermore, this emphasis also confirms how racism, ethnicity and confessional divides, as handled by the medical professionals who have made it their job to attack us, are indeed a main political determinant of Gaza’s health. I am afraid that the professionals responsible for the smears have, in a personal capacity, forgotten their medical oaths and scientific ethics.

I submit that there are possibilities other than the present debate on Semitism and anti-Semitism which need to occupy the space about Palestine in medical journals. The current state of the health sector there should be the subject for discussion in a medical journal, within the framework of the medical profession’s mission to define how we can “not collaborate to do harm, and heal when possible”, without fear or favour in terms of race, creed, age or gender.

So let us ask Dr Pepys and the others if they intend to continue diverting attention from the health sector crisis in Gaza. If the answer is no, then let them act by encouraging Israel to lift the ban for health professionals from abroad to travel and collaborate with our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza; and for Israel to let Gaza’s medical and science professionals – men and women of any age – to travel abroad for training. Let our critics ask their Israeli contacts to allow medical supplies, drugs, instruments, prosthetics, surgical necessities and other items to get into Gaza; and allow the hospitals and clinics destroyed by Israel’s bombs to be rebuilt, instruments and machines to be replaced, and ambulances to be repaired. Such pressure on the authorities is the responsibility of medical professionals everywhere.

Will they, according to their professional standards, lobby for the blockade on health care and professional work to be lifted; for patients, trainees and local professionals to travel out of Gaza; and for international professionals to have free access to Gaza? Will our critics submit research papers if they feel that Israel is under-represented in journals? This seems to be a burning issue for them, though it is unclear how it can be requested simply on a nationalistic basis for debatable reasons. Or will they simply rewrite their defamatory pamphlet? Will doctors and scientists in general, as authors in medical and science journals, carry out research and studies on the impacts of war on health and submit the results for peer review?

I labour this point because it is worrying that for the 11 months that the pro-Israel “lobby” has been engaged in what I believe is “defaming” the authors of the Open Letter for the People of Gaza and the editor of The Lancet, our detractors appear to be completely oblivious to the health consequences of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. I take it as sign of their personal and professional inadequacy that they have only attempted to deflect the responsibility for maiming, destroying and killing their own civilians onto the Palestinians in Gaza, as if they staged some form of collective suicide.

Although our “detractor colleagues” have missed all of the facts that motivated our warning in July 2014, the same is not true of 20,000 others who co-signed the letter on line within a week. They did so in order for us not to be the only ones taking the pro-Israel flak. I believe, therefore, that we achieved what we set out to do; we raised awareness of the real problems facing the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip among an audience who may be able to do something to help in the field.

Eleven months down the line, though, and the detractors – along with that Israeli NGO – still ignore the health-related topics in their comments. It’s time to say enough is enough and push them to explain how they mean to fulfil the terms of their professional oath and square up to the breach of the requirement to “do no harm” and “possibly heal”. Everyone in the medical profession should ask themselves this question before taking sides.

The context of the facts is not a unilateral whim, nor is there only one narrative being masticated for months while insults are thrown at us. Acceptance of a broad narrative does not depend on force or intimidation, nor by the repetition of wrongs. Frankly, the discourse of the detractors who have dedicated themselves to harassing my colleagues and The Lancet editor for almost a year reveals a particularly nasty mindset; it is not intended to change anyone by appealing to hearts and minds. How can it when respect for the facts and truth is completely absent?

I am not so naïve as to think that the narrative promoted on behalf of the more vulnerable members of society, in this case the Palestinians, is ever likely to win in the short-term; the pro-Israel lobby is too well organised and influential for that, even when what it promotes is not factually accurate. Yet, we will have to see to it that the narrative which takes into account the facts and the people’s health wins in the end over that of any other party whose aim is to hide reality underneath a barrage of insults.

In conclusion, and hopefully to put an end to speculation about my personal position, I believe that I am innocent of the charge of anti-Semitism. I am appalled that within a European culture of freedom of information and expression I can be attacked so viciously for sharing information already in the public domain, albeit being unpalatable. That I can be labelled, without any evidence, as an “anti-Semite” and “white supremacist” for publishing facts in a well-respected medical journal is a disgrace in a continent which professes freedom of speech.

I am a scientist, and a woman, and I have struggled for freedom of information, opinion, differences and debate which we still (temporarily) enjoy in Europe. Should I exercise self-censorship and refrain from sharing information to any of my contacts? Should I not let my peers, friends and students form their own opinion and then discuss the issue? Who are my detractors to attack me and hang me out to dry, and threaten me? Europe cast off the shackles of fascism decades ago; the pro-Israel lobby should not be allowed to bring them back.

Since this article was written on 15 June, the Israel government has published its own report on the attack on Gaza, acknowledging as a source the data quoted here. It has also refused entry in Gaza for the second time to Makarim Wibisono, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who is supposed to report to the UN Human Rights Council on 29th June.

Statement of interests

I am a Geneticist and experimental biologist, with a curriculum in molecular, cell and development biology in mammals. I retired in 2014 from the position of Professor in Genetics in the University of Genoa, Italy. I have worked in Gaza since 2010 and I also work in Italy. In both places I am an unpaid volunteer professional doing research on determinants of reproductive health. To have transparency in the position of investigator and access to donations and their utilisation for research expenses, I am a member of the volunteer association for research, NWRG.

In Gaza, I have learnt about the good aspects and shortcomings of the hospital and health provision, and about the needs of the patients, the rise in infertility and the difficulties in treating serious chronic diseases; the impact of the blockade on the specialisation of doctors and nurses; and about obtaining suitable medical instruments. Being a simple person, I also learnt in Gaza about the cost and availability of food and other market products, the cost of living, the ongoing reduction in the availability of supplies, electricity cuts and poor water quality; and about the limited assistance available for the needy, the multiple shifts in schools, and so on. In doing so I have observed how the Palestinians overcome all such difficulties, educate their children and work, even when wages are cut.

From my colleagues I learnt how they do their best to help their patients with the meagre means at their disposal; how they struggle for a permit to send a child for treatment abroad; how they wait in frustration for the missing drugs for their patients; and how they desire to develop their professional competencies.

Being a scientist, I usually learn from all of the sources that I can possibly find, or are presented to me, which report facts and/or interpretations. I discuss them with my peers often, before I formulate a judgement or hypothesis; only then do I act on this and take the next research step.

The same rules apply to the task of understanding the social and political determinants of health. I am not infallible, but I can say with all humility that what I understood is nearer to the truth than my detractors are; I do not lie for convenience or personal benefit.

1-Manduca P, Chalmers I, Summerfield D, Gilbert M, Ang S, Hay A, Rose S, Rose H, Stefanini A, Balduzzi A, Cigliano B, Pecoraro C, Di Maria E, Camandona F, Veronese G, Ramenghi L, Rui M, DelCarlo P, D’agostino S, Russo S, Luisi V, Papa S, Agnoletto V, Agnoletto M (2014a). An open letter for the people in Gaza. Lancet 384:397-8. http://www.thelancet.com/gaza-letter-2014

2- Pepys M (2015). Complaint to Reed Elsevier. Email sent to 58 Israeli recipients. 24 February. https://handsoffthelancet.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/pepys-24-feb-2015.pdf

3- John S. Yudkin and Jennifer Leaning, “Politics, medical journals, the medical profession and the Israel lobby,” The British Medical Journal,http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2377,May 12, 2015,

4- “Politics, medical journals, the medical profession and the Israel lobby,” The British Medical Journal rapid responses http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2377/rapid-responses

5 -Tony Delamothe. Don’t look away now, 2014. http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7622

6- Issues Related to UNOCHA’s “Protection Cluster” Regarding Gaza- Written statement* submitted by the Amuta for NGO Responsibility, a non-governmental organisation in special consultative status, august 25, 2014.

7- Meir Amit Terrorism & Intelligence Information Centre, “Preliminary, partial examination of the names of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge and analysis of the ratio between terrorist operatives and non-involved civilians killed in error,” http://www.terrorisminfo.org.il/Data/articles/Art_20687/E_124_14_1121292827.pdf http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20715July 28, 2014,

“Based on the examination of the lack of appropriate methodologies and independent verifiability regarding the claims of the three key NGOs, the civilian casualty statistics and claims produced by the OCHA are unreliable”… When the names of alleged civilian casualties were examined by the Terror Information Centre in Israel, many were shown to be members of terrorist groups. UNOCHA, however, has failed to respond to the analysis published by this Israeli NGO, magnifying Protection Cluster framework must be considered unreliable.”

8-https://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_19_07_2014.pdf

Situation Report (as of 18 July 2014, 1500 hrs): “The impact of hostilities on Palestinian children has been particularly devastating: 59 killed (11 in the past 24 hours) and 637 injured since 8 July… 48,000 persons hosted at UNRWA shelters and another 700 displaced families hosted by relatives, are in need of emergency food and other assistance… The vast majority of households receive electricity only four hours a day, due to damage to ten feeder lines; water supply has been further undermined”

9-http://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/documents/WHO_Situation_Report_3_-_July_21.pdf?ua=1&ua=1

“As of 20 July (16:00), a total of 425 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza (112 children, 41 women and 25 elderly over 60 years) and a total of 3008 Palestinians have been injured (904 children, 533 women and 119 elderly over 60 years). The ongoing ground incursion, begun July 18, has greatly accelerated the casualty rate over the past two days, as well as the numbers of displaced families… during 12 days of escalated violence in Gaza (July 7-19), 2 medical staff, 3 paramedics and 15 emergency medical services staff and volunteers were injured in attacks. A pharmacist was killed in his home. 17 health-related facilities have been damaged by that hit the structure directly or in the area of the facilities (2 MoH hospitals, 1 NGO hospital; 4 MoH clinics, 5 UNRWA clinics, 3 NGO clinics; 2 NGO nursing care centers; 1 NGO emergency medical services centre). Four Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances have been damaged. There are critical concerns with hospital supplies, as both medicines and medical disposables are in serious shortages, both in MoH and NGO hospitals due to the large number of casualties and serious shortages even before the escalation of violence.”

10- UN OCHA opt, 2014. “Fragmented lives. Humanitarian overview 2014. March 2015. http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/annual_humanitarian_overview_2014_english_final.pdf

11- Defence for Children International – Palestine. Operation Protective Edge: A War Waged on Gaza’s Children. http://issuu.com/dcips/docs/ope.awarwagedonchildren.160415?e=0April 2015.

12- Bachmann J, Baldwin-Ragaven L, Hougen HP, Leaning J, Kelly K, Özkalipci O, Reynolds L, Vacas L (2014). Gaza, 2014.Findings of an independent medical fact-finding mission. Physicians for Human Rights Israel.https://gazahealthattack.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/gazareport_eng.pdf

13- B’Tselem. Black Flag: The legal and moral implications of the policy of attacking residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, Summer, 2014. January 2015. http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/2015_black_flag

14- Amnesty International. Families Under The Rubble. Sept 2014. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/8000/mde150322014en.pdf

15- https://aoav.org.uk/2015/new-report-shows-changes-in-israels-use-of-artillery-raises-risks-to-civilians/

16- Breaking the Silence http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/pdf/ProtectiveEdge.pdf , May 2015

17- Drone footage shows how entire neighbourhoods in Gaza were razed to the ground by Israel’s bombardment last summer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ54x5x9CuQ

18- Satellite recognition http://www.unitar.org/unosat/maps/PSE

19- Netanyahu: UN inquiry commission’s report on 2014 Gaza war is “waste of time”http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.661066, June 14, 2015

20- P.Manduca http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5106/rr/763475

The author is a professor of genetics at the University of Genoa, Italy

June 18, 2015 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

How Palestinians Die in The NY Times

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | June 17, 2015

Abdullah Iyad Ghanayim, 22, died under an Israeli army jeep last Sunday in the West Bank village of Kafr Malik. The New York Times barely took notice. Other news media inform us that there is a story here and one that is in dispute.

Eyewitnesses in the village east of Ramallah say soldiers shot Ghanayim in the back and then ran him down with a jeep, crushing him against a wall, which collapsed on the vehicle and knocked it over. The soldiers got out, observers say, left the man pinned under the jeep and prevented medics from attending to him.

According to witnesses, Ghanayim was throwing stones when he was shot and bled to death after being left unattended for more than an hour. The mayor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam, told reporters that soldiers killed Ghanayim “in cold blood.”

The Israeli army had a different story: Ghanayim was throwing a Molotov cocktail at the jeep, and this caused it to swerve and crash. After the vehicle turned over on the victim, the army claimed, “forces later entered the village to try and provide medical assistance,” but the man had already died.

In spite of the army’s failure to explain why “forces” had to enter the village to provide aid when soldiers were already present, The New York Times goes with the army account. This appears in the form of a three-paragraph Associated Press story, which made an obscure and fleeting appearance online and none at all in print. The article gives a brief nod to the eyewitness accounts, saying the mayor of the village claimed the man was shot first.

It’s possible the Times was unable to assign one of its three reporters in Israel to get a firsthand account, but the paper also omitted the story from its World Briefing section, where it frequently runs AP and Reuters news.

The Times had a choice. It could have run a Reuters story by Ali Sawafta and Dan Williams, which states in the lead that “military and locals gave conflicting accounts” and also quotes witnesses who said the man was “run down and then crushed.” Instead it chose the AP version, which relies almost entirely on the Israeli army.

We find fuller reports elsewhere, such as in The National, Agence France-Presse, and Maan, but the Times treatment falls short. It has chosen a biased wire service piece over a more complete and honest report. Thus it avoids revealing unsavory charges against the Israeli army and allows one more Palestinian death to pass unnoticed.

June 17, 2015 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Human rights, Israel, New York Times, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Eritrea, Human Rights, and Neocolonial Propaganda

By Eric Draitser | New Eastern Outlook | June 17, 2015

The East African country of Eritrea is once again being demonized internationally as a systematic violator of human rights. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued an allegedly damning report detailing what it claims are “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” taking place in Eritrea. Media coverage has similarly echoed those claims, presenting Eritrea to a western audience as a backward and “brutal dictatorship,” playing on the traditional stereotypes of totalitarianism from East Germany to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

However, a closer and more critical analysis of both the report, and the true agendas of the western institutions promoting its narrative, reveals a vastly different motivation to this report and the continued anti-Eritrean narrative. It could be called politically motivated propaganda, and that would be correct. It could be called a distorted and biased perspective rooted in fundamental misunderstandings of both politics and history, and that would also be correct. It could, quite simply, be called abject neo-colonialism of the worst sort, and that too would also be correct.

For while the UN and western media portray Eritrea – a country most westerners know nothing about, if they’ve ever even heard of the country at all – as little more than a “Third World dictatorship” because of its alleged violations of human rights, they conveniently ignore the actual human rights issues that Eritrea champions, making it a leader on the African continent, and a country that in many ways should be held up as a model of human development and adherence to true human rights.

Eritrea leads the way in Africa on issues ranging from the prevention and treatment of malaria, HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases, to access to clean drinking water, literacy promotion, and countless other issues. But none of this is deemed worthy by the UN for inclusion in a report about “human rights.”

This is of course not to suggest that Eritrea, like every other country in the so called “developing” and “developed” worlds, is without problems, as that would be simply false. Rather, it is to note that a truly objective report that actually sought a substantive analysis of human rights in Eritrea, rather than a politically motivated propaganda campaign, would have revealed a country busy transforming itself and its people, leaving behind the decades of colonial oppression and subjugation, beating an independent path for itself.

But of course, this is the gravest sin of all in the eyes of the western ruling class and the institutions it controls. Abject poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, death from preventable diseases, and many other hallmarks of African underdevelopment – these are all fine in the eyes of the West, so long as you follow their IMF, World Bank, UN rules of the game; so long as you “respect opposition,” “respect democracy,” and act “inclusively.” But, when a country chooses to create its own system, and pursue its own national development (white neocolonial opinions be damned), it is immediately cast as the great villain. So too with Eritrea.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at the facts.

The UN Report: A Critical Look

The UN OHCHR report presents a vision of Eritrea that is, in many ways, at odds with reality. While forms of political repression and non-conformity to western conceptions of democracy are highlighted and repeated ad nauseam, other critical aspects of human rights are entirely ignored. Moreover, the UN report was limited in its scope because of lack of access to the country, thereby forcing the report to rely exclusively on the testimony of expatriate Eritreans and those with an obvious political bias and grudge against the government of Isaias Afewerki. So, far from being objective, the report is, by its very nature, a one-sided portrayal of the situation in the country. The report notes:

The commission finds that systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Government of Eritrea and that there is no accountability for them…The enjoyment of rights and freedoms are severely curtailed in an overall context of a total lack of rule of law. The commission also finds that the violations in the areas of extrajudicial executions, torture (including sexual torture), national service and forced labour may constitute crimes against humanity. The commission emphasizes that its present findings should not be interpreted as a conclusion that international crimes have not been committed in other areas.

While of course there is a shock value associated with phrases like “extrajudicial killings,” “torture,” and “crimes against humanity,” these claims need to be interrogated carefully. It is impossible to say the extent to which these claims are either wholly true, complete fabrications, or partially true embellishments concocted by expatriates with an anti-government personal and political agenda; it is not unreasonable to assume that it is a combination of all three.

However, it is useful here to ask whether countries like the United States, for instance, would also be guilty of “extrajudicial killings” and “torture” were a similar investigation conducted into the seemingly endless, dare I say systematic, police murders of American citizens, especially people of color? Or what about the now universally accepted fact – publicly acknowledged even by President Obama who blithely declared “We tortured some folks” – that the United States systematically tortured prisoners throughout the so called “War on Terror”? Or that the US continues to hold countless inmates, again disproportionately people of color, in long term solitary confinement, a common US practice decried as torture by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan E Méndez of the very same OHCHR?

But of course none of these uncomfortable truths are good for the narrative of “backwards African dictatorship,” and therefore, they are not part of the story. Nor does the report define exactly what it means by “national service.” However, those with knowledge of Eritrea’s domestic policies, which is almost no one in the West, understand that “national service” especially includes national military service, a practice used by many countries, including the US darling Israel, among many others.

Of course, it would be wise to here make the distinction that, unlike the apartheid state of Israel which uses its military for the purposes of oppression and occupation, Eritrea fought a protracted and bloody war against the former colonial masters in Ethiopia, having had ongoing military conflicts with their neighbor for nearly the entire, short existence of Eritrea as an independent nation. With a relatively small population and, proportionately speaking, a long and porous border with a hostile nation with a history of subjugation of Eritreans, it is not at all unreasonable to have a robust military apparatus fueled by mandatory military service.

One should also recall the way in which such reports, and brazen distortions, have been used by the UN and the OHCHR in the recent past. In perhaps its most shameful moment in recent history, the former High Commissioner Navi Pillay was instrumental in building the justification for the disastrous, illegal, and blatantly neocolonial, imperialist war against Libya. Pillay actually took the lead in disseminating anti-Gaddafi propaganda in the first weeks of the destabilization campaign, making her the leading edge of the propaganda assault, lending her reputation and position with the UN in order to bolster the anti-Gaddafi narrative. In late February 2011, Pillay stated:

More needs to be done. I encourage all international actors to take necessary measures to stop the bloodshed… thousands may have been killed or injured over the past week… Although reports are still patchy and hard to verify, one thing is painfully clear: in brazen and continuing breach of international law, the crackdown in Libya of peaceful demonstrations is escalating alarmingly with reported mass killings, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of protestors… Tanks, helicopters and military aircraft have reportedly been used indiscriminately to attack the protestors… The Libyan leader must stop the violence now… Libyan forces are firing at protestors and bystanders, sealing off neighbourhoods and shooting from rooftops. They also block ambulances so that the injured and dead are left on the streets.

The facts that have been gathered since the illegal aggression against Libya have all contradicted every assertion that Pillay and the OHCHR made in early 2011. As Dr. Alan Kuperman wrote in his report Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene, published by the prestigious Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University:

Contrary to Western media reports, Qaddafi did not initiate Libya’s violence by targeting peaceful protesters. The United Nations and Amnesty International have documented that in all four Libyan cities initially consumed by civil conflict in mid-February 2011—Benghazi, Al Bayda, Tripoli, and Misurata—violence was actually initiated by the protesters. The government responded to the rebels militarily but never intentionally targeted civilians or resorted to “indiscriminate” force, as Western media claimed. Early press accounts exaggerated the death toll by a factor of ten, citing “more than 2,000 deaths” in Benghazi during the initial days of the uprising, whereas Human Rights Watch (HRW) later documented only 233 deaths across all of Libya in that period.

Needless to say, the credibility of the OHCHR took a major hit in 2011 with that ghastly episode of outright lying, propaganda, and service to the foreign policy agenda of the West. So too should one be skeptical of their similar distortions on issues such as Eritrea, which in many ways are similar to Libya.

In fact, it is no coincidence that Eritrea’s closest ally in the world was Libya and Gaddafi. As the US Government-funded Center for Naval Analyses wrote in a 2010 report,

“In the 1990s, Qadhafi made numerous attempts to mediate the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, but Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi was uninterested in separate negotiations… Qadhafi even went so far as to propose a Sahelian-Saharan peacekeeping force, to which Eritrea agreed and Ethiopia did not. Qaddafi subsequently helped finance Eritrea’s military campaign against Ethiopia.”

It seems then that, far from being a coincidence, Eritrea is, in effect, getting the Libya treatment in terms of the propaganda and distortions.

But the real question is why? Why is Eritrea so reviled by the vaunted so called “international community”?

Eritrea’s Real Sins: Independence and Human Rights

All countries demonized by the West, attacked economically and politically, have done something to earn them the ire of the so called “liberal democracies” of the developed world. Of course, it is never the seemingly innocuous pretexts that institutions such as the UN OHCHR invoke.

First and foremost among Eritrea’s grave sins is its stubborn insistence on maintaining full independence and sovereignty in both political and economic spheres. This fact is perhaps best illustrated by Eritrean President Afewerki’s bold rejection of foreign aid of various sorts, stating repeatedly that Eritrea needs to “stand on its own two feet.” Afewerki’s pronouncements are in line with what pan-Africanist radicals, Marxists such as Walter Rodney, and many others have argued for decades, namely that, as Afewerkie put it in 2007 after rejecting a $200 million dollar “aid” package from the World Bank,

“Fifty years and billions of dollars in post-colonial international aid have done little to lift Africa from chronic poverty… [African societies] are crippled societies… You can’t keep these people living on handouts because that doesn’t change their lives.”

Naturally, such a radical departure from the tried and true cycle of financial aid and debt servitude, corruption and endemic poverty, is seen as a threat by the neocolonial establishment as manifested in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other financial institutions. But the real danger is not simply the ideology, but its success. As the LA Times noted in its profile of Eritrea in 2007:

The self-reliance program began a decade ago but accelerated sharply in 2005. Relying on its meager budget and the conscription of about 800,000 of the country’s citizens, the program so far has shown promising results. Measured on a variety of U.N. health indicators, including life expectancy, immunizations and malaria prevention, Eritrea scores as high, and often higher, than its neighbors, including Ethiopia and Kenya… It might be one of the most ambitious social and economic experiments underway in Africa.

In the eight years since 2007, Eritrea has made even greater strides, becoming the only African nation to reach its Millennium Development Goals in 2015. Eritrea now boasts a roughly 98% immunization rate, incredible reductions in malaria, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS, and other preventable diseases. Eritrea has reduced infant mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by nearly 80% since independence. Literacy rates have increased dramatically, access to basic health care, clean drinking water, and many other essential human rights have all been greatly expanded, all while accepting no foreign aid.

Christine Umutoni, the UN Resident Coordinator in Eritrea, explained that “What we see as development partners, what is responsible for this success is community participation, the enabling environment, leadership, strong mechanisms for prevention, value for money and coordinated inter-sectoral approaches.” Umutomi also added that Eritrea has put a tremendous amount of energy into developing innovative alternatives to tackling difficult health and human issues including temporary maternal clinics and mobile medical units, as well as knowledge of migration patterns and remote areas.

In other words, Eritrea has managed to rapidly, and in earnest, embark on a process of economic and social transformation that the West is constantly advocating for African nations. However, Eritrea has done it on its own terms, without being enslaved by the financial institutions of global capitalism, and that is what makes it a target for demonization rather than praise. Why, one might ask, are the human rights of the rural poor, the unborn and infants, those living in grinding poverty, not taken into consideration in the so called OHCHR report? Are human rights only restricted to a small minority of political discontents whose grievances, even if justified, are relegated to the realm of politics and speech? This is not to diminish the importance of such issues, but rather to illustrate the sheer hypocrisy of the selective use of the term.

Of course, there are also other critical political and economic reasons for Eritrea’s pariah status in the eyes of the so called “developed world,” and especially the US. Perhaps the most obvious, and most unforgivable from the perspective of Washington, is Eritrea’s stubborn refusal to have any cooperation, formal or informal, with AFRICOM or any other US military. While every other country in Africa with the exception of the equally demonized, and equally victimized, Zimbabwe has some military connections to US imperialism, Eritrea remains stubbornly defiant. I suppose Eritrea takes the notion of post-colonial independence seriously.

Eritrea also rejects the neocolonial notion that it, and Africa broadly speaking, should be little more than a cash cow of natural resources, especially mineral resources, for the developed world to exploit. Eritrea’s President Afewerki said in a recent interview:

Your location could be a comparative advantage. If you have a long coastline, then you develop fisheries, develop your services industry – shipping, transportation – air, land. Provide industry and manufacturing… Africa can produce its own food and grow more. Why aren’t we able to do that? You have to produce something. Emphasize sustainable sectors. Agriculture is a sustainable sector. You need to put in place agriculture infrastructure. It’s a strategy commodity for communities… You need to think least on mineral resources (for economic development)… Gold glitters but it blinds people… If you forgo agriculture because you have gold, you go into a trap. If you forgo comparative advantage that you have because you have gold, then you make a big mistake… Food sovereignty and local production, local manufacturing and development are more critical than depending on resource exploitation. You must have a balance, comprehensive program that takes stock of your comparative advantages in different sectors and local needs first… Local markets are everything.

Is it any wonder that Afewerki and his government are demonized by the West? What is the history of US and European behavior towards independent African leaders who advocated self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideology? The answer is self-evident. Such ideas as Afewerki expressed in the interview are seen by Washington, London, and Brussels as not only defiant, but dangerous; dangerous not only because of what they say, but dangerous because they’re actually working.

You do not see Eritrea depending on US and European NGOs, nor do you see the major western financial institutions enslaving the country with the unsustainable feedback loop of debt and aid. Instead, you see a country steadily emerging from decades of war and oppression, building a society from the ground up. Certainly there are problems, and changes of various kinds will need to be made as with all systems as they mature and evolve. But this is not what the US and its allies want: they need Eritrea to be brought to heel. And this simply cannot and will not be accepted by Eritrea, no matter the sanctions, no matter the demonization, no matter the demagogy.

Neocolonialism comes in many forms: political, economic, social, cultural, philosophical, psychological, etc. It is undeniably true that Africa, and indeed most of the Global South, continues to be enslaved by the neocolonialism of the former colonial masters. It is also true that the neocolonial status quo is not to be challenged. Eritrea is one of the few countries doing precisely that. And it is for this reason, that it is demonized and vilified.

And it is for precisely this reason, that it must be defended.

June 17, 2015 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Africa, Eritrea, Human rights, Navi Pillay, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | Leave a comment

Israeli forces raid homes in Qaryut to intimidate local activists

International Solidarity Movement | June 17, 2015

Qaryut, Occupied Palestine – In the early hours on Tuesday 16th of June Israeli occupation forces raided several Palestinian homes in the village of Qaryut, near Nablus. The soldiers invaded the homes in search of the Palestinian activist Bashar al-Sadiq Yusuf Moammar (Bashar Qaryouti).

The incident is possibly sparked by the fact that villagers of Qaryout have recently taken up weekly demonstrations, arranged by the PSCC, which Bashar Qaryouti is part of. These are demonstrations against the illegal Israeli settlements that surround the city and continue to annex Palestinian land.

Soldiers invaded at least five different houses in order to find Bashar, and trashed the family homes in the process. Abdullah Qaryouti, whose family fell victim to one of these raids, explained how this included the soldiers locking up the family in one room whilst ransacking the rest of their house using K9’s.

According to Abdullah Qaryouti this is common behaviour for the occupation forces, who invade and ruin Palestinian homes on a regular basis.

The local activists presume the most recent house raids to be part of the ongoing efforts of Israeli forces to intimidate and threaten any resident that participates in non-violent resistance.

Bashar Qaryouti

Credit to PSCC for the photos, they do not belong to ISM.

June 17, 2015 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | Leave a comment

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Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.

By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.

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