Yezidis and Palestinians
By T. Mayheart Dardar | Dissident Voice | August 8, 2014
Hawkeye: My father warned me about you…
Cora Munro: [interupting] Your Father?
Hawkeye: Chingachgook, he warned me about people like you.
Cora Munro: Oh, did he?
Hawkeye: He said “Do not try to understand them.”
Cora Munro: What?
Hawkeye: Yes, and, “do not try to make them understand you. That is because they are a breed apart and make no sense.”
– The Last of the Mohicans (Movie) 1992.
As an Indigenous person I really do struggle to understand what passes for political dialog in this country. While I long ago gave up on network news programs to provide me with any sort of unbiased analysis of world events, I do try to stay abreast of presentations of U.S. foreign policy.
That being said, I found myself perplexed today by the U.S. response to the plight of the Yezidis people in Iraq as they are attacked by ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). As the situation exists thousands of Yezidis have fled their homes in the city of Shingal to the surrounding mountains. The Yezidis are a minority religious sect in Iraq that are considered apostate by the fundamentalist Muslims of ISIS.
ISIS surrounds the refugees, seeks to prevent their access to food and water, and is threatening them with extermination. As ISIS battles to establish an Islamic State in the territory captured by them, groups like the Yezidis are not seen by them as a part of that building theocracy.
I find myself in total agreement with an effort to rescue this trapped population and to see them returned to a restored homeland. What has me confused is not the necessity of intervention but how the political talking heads can ignore the elephant in the room… Gaza.
In Gaza is a captive population that has been deemed by Israel as not part of a Jewish State. While a New York Times opinion piece today proclaims, “It is unconscionable in this day and age that the United States should not act to save minorities in Iraq from certain genocide,” there were few if any similar calls for the people of Gaza.
While there was no threat of immediate death for the Palestinians from the Israel military beyond the casualties from the current military incursion, the slow strangle hold of Israeli occupation has been no less deadly. Food, water, medical supplies, building materials, and freedom of movement have been severely restricted since the Gaza occupation began and will continue till the blockade is ever lifted by Israel.
Supporters of Israeli apartheid will immediately defer to the defense against rockets fired by Hamas. While I have no way of knowing for sure, my thought is that if the Yezidis had rockets they would be firing them at ISIS. The battle of a people under subjugation, a people whose homes and lands have been seized, a people whose faith puts them outside of an established or establishing theocracy has traditionally been called resistance and not terrorism.
The correlation between the two conflict seem obvious to me so I remained confused that it is not part of presentations of these esteemed political commentators that are currently explaining to me these events. Perhaps Hawkeye is correct, perhaps I should stop trying to understand them and admit that we are different people who will never view the world through the same lens.
T. Mayheart Dardar was born in the Houma Indian settlement below Golden Meadow, Louisiana. He served for sixteen years on the United Houma Nation Tribal Council (retired in Oct. 2009). Currently he works with Bayou Healers, a community based group advocating for the needs of coastal Indigenous communities in south Louisiana.
Israel’s ‘Hannibal Protocol’ and Two Criminally Insane Governments
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | August 7, 2014
The sickness of present-day Israel, on display over the past horrible month of the one-sided slaughter of nearly 2000 Palestinians (including over 400 children) in the fenced-in ghetto of Gaza, has finally reached its nadir with the ugly case of the deliberate Israeli Defense Force murder of captured IDF 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin.
According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, once it was determined that Goldin had been captured by Hamas fighters in the Gaza town of Rafah, the IDF initiated what it calls the “Hannibal Protocol” — the deliberate liquidation of the captive — to prevent his being used as a hostage to win concessions from Israel in future truce negotiations with the Palestinians. One reason for the almost instantaneous and ruthless Israeli decision to kill Goldin rather than attempt to rescue him, is that this captured soldier had the misfortune of being related to Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, making him a valuable prize indeed for Hamas.
And so began a massive bombardment of the entire residential area where Goldin was captured.
As Haaretz reports in an editorial about this case of deliberate sacrifice of an IDF officer, headlined “What Happened in Rafah?”, the ensuing high-explosive blitz on the area didn’t just kill Goldin, but also indiscriminately killed over 150 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Indeed, the paper states that the IDF “… shelled and bombed houses and their inhabitants indiscriminately, and as they tried to flee homes, hit them with shells and bombs in the streets.” The fatal bombing of a targeted UN-operated school in Rafah, which was condemned by the US government and by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who called it a “criminal act and a moral outrage,” was part of that Hannibal Protocol action.
Now recall that President Obama was quick to label the Hamas capture of Goldin “barbaric.”
The trouble is, having rather absurdly deployed that term to characterize the capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier who was at the time reportedly exploring a tunnel and trying to capture or kill enemy fighters, though, what then does Obama — what indeed does any person — call the indiscriminate slaughter of 150 civilians in the interest of eliminating one of one’s own captured soldier?
Certainly the Hannibal Protocol is in itself “barbaric” in its cool calculus of denying the enemy a bargaining chip. But that term hardly seems to capture the horror of what was done by the IDF in this case. Clearly implementing the Hannibal Protocol would have been okayed at the highest level of the Israeli government, particularly with the relative of a top government official involved. And when a military organization or a government moves beyond just killing the captive and his immediate captors to slaughtering everyone in the surrounding area, we’ve moved way beyond a word like “barbaric.”
I’m a journalist, and part of my job is being good with words, but I admit I’m at a bit of a loss here. Perhaps “criminally insane” is appropriate, but that is usually a term applied to an individual. In this case, though, we are talking about a whole government, or at least the military establishment and the senior leaders of that government, taken collectively.
The mind reels. Can an entire government be criminally insane? Certainly what happened with this Hannibal Protocol incident suggests that it can.
Recall, though, that this crime extends well beyond the borders of Israel. For the bombs and shells that were unleashed by the IDF on the people of Rafah as part of this murderous Hannibal Protocol campaign were, for the most part, manufactured and provided, at taxpayer expense, by the United States of America.
This massive war crime is thus as much a US atrocity as it is an Israeli one.
And if the Israeli government is criminally insane, so is the US government for uncritically and unthinkingly backing it.
We knew the US government and its military were criminally insane back in the Vietnam War, when we were told that peasant villages were being burned to the ground by US troops on the theory that “we have to destroy the village in order to save it.” Now we’ve moved a step further towards the depths of insanity in backing an Israeli policy of “slaughtering a village in order to kill one of our own soldiers.” Even in the moral cesspool that was America’s war on the Vietnamese people, the US military didn’t sink to that — they stopped at just slaughtering villlages.
Israel kills 10-year-old in renewed Gaza assault
Al-Akhbar | August 8, 2014
Updated 3:00 pm (GMT+3): Israeli shelling killed a 10-year-old boy at a mosque in northern Gaza Friday, medics said, making it the first death since fighting renewed following the expiration of a three-day truce.
Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said the boy, Ibrahim al-Dawawisa, was killed at the Nour al-Mohammedi mosque in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
Six others were injured in that attack, and five others wounded in other strikes, as Israeli occupation forces bombed a number of other sites across Gaza Friday.
Palestinians renewed rocket fire from the besieged strip after the 72-hour truce ended at 8:00 am Friday, in which Israel said two people were injured.
The latest killings bring to 1,894 the number of Palestinians killed over 32 days of Israel’s terror campaign against Gaza. Another 9,805 have been injured.
According to UN figures, at least 1,354 Palestinian civilians were killed in the fighting since July 8, including 447 children.
The interior ministry and witnesses said warplanes on Friday also struck targets in Jabalia in the north, Gaza City and in the center of the Palestinian enclave.
Witnesses also reported artillery shelling east and north of Gaza City.
The Israeli occupation army said Palestinian fighters fired 33 rockets from Gaza, wounding a civilian and a soldier in the south.
Hamas has not claimed responsibility for any of Friday’s rocket attacks. Claims instead came from rival armed factions including Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees.
In Gaza, some families who had returned home during the truce trickled back to shelter at UN-run schools.
At one school in Al-Tuffah in Gaza City, hundreds of refugees were seen living in classrooms.
“Of course we’re all scared, I’m scared, my children are scared, my wife is scared,” Abdullah Abdullah, 33, told AFP at the school.
“I’m afraid because the schools were targeted, because young people died, women and children,” he said, referring to seven UN schools that were hit before the truce.
(Al-Akhbar, AFP)
Demands Israel Has Accepted, And Rejected
IMEMC & Agencies | August 8, 2014
The following is a list of Palestinian demands presented to Israel by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, during indirect talks held in Egypt between Israeli and Palestinians teams, as published by al-Watan News :
1. Israel totally rejects establishing either a Seaport or an Airport in the Gaza Strip.
2. Totally rejects the release of all detainees who were released under the Shalit Prisoner Swap Deal, and rearrested by Israel.
3. Israel “reserves the right” to act against the tunnels in Gaza.
4. Israel “reserves the right” to conduct targeted killings.
5. Agrees to consider the Rafah Border Terminal as an Egyptian-Palestinian issue.
6. Agrees to release the fourth phase of veteran detainees “as a goodwill gesture toward president Mahmoud Abbas.”
7. Agrees to extend the Palestinian fishing zone in Gaza territorial waters.
8. Agrees to allow the transfer of money for paying salaries in the Gaza Strip.
9. Agrees to ease restrictions on Palestinians crossing the Erez terminal, will not relax restrictions on goods.
10. Agrees to the entry of construction equipment, but only under international supervision.
Just before the 72-hour ceasefire ended on Friday morning, Israeli sources said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to remain ready for any possible escalation.
When the period came to an end the resistance fired a missile into the Nahal ‘Oz military base, across the border and the army bombarded several areas in the Gaza Strip.
Armed groups also fired shells into Asqalan (Ashkelon) and a number of areas.
Zionist Lies
By Raji Abuzalaf | Dissident Voice | August 7, 2014
“There is no such thing as Palestine”
• I am Palestinian. My ancestors have lived in Palestine and were called “Palestinians” for 100 generations. I still have my parents’ Palestine passports.
• Before history is completely rewritten by Zionists, research plainly shows that the land has been called “Palestine” and her inhabitants “Palestinians” since 500 BCE.
• The United Nations partitioned “original Palestine” into two states: Israel (55%) and Palestine (45%) – (U.N. Resolution 181 – 11/29/1947).
Conclusion: Palestine has existed (by that name) for over 2500 years. Although the Zionist state of Israel was illegitimately formed on 78% of the land (which was conveniently overlooked by the U.N.), the remaining 22% is internationally recognized as Palestine. There are millions of Palestinians living in the world:
• In Palestine (living in terror under illegal Israeli occupation)
• In Israel (living as 3rd class citizens)
• In neighboring Arab countries, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
“Israel has the right to defend itself”
In theory, everyone has the right to self-defense. However, this right is forfeited when the party claiming that right is in the midst of an illegal or immoral act.
Example: If a criminal breaks into a home and lays siege upon it, the homeowner has the right to dispel the intruder – and in turn, any violence used by the criminal to repel the homeowner’s resistance can never be misconstrued as “self-defense” (although that ruse has been attempted many times by criminals in American courtrooms).
Fact: In 1967, Israel attacked the Palestinian Territories and began its military occupation. Both the attack and ensuing occupation were immediately condemned by the United Nations (U.N.S.C. Resolution 242 – 11/22/1967). Despite that and numerous subsequent resolutions, Israel has imposed military rule upon the Palestinians and has perpetrated a long list of crimes against humanity (also condemned by the U.N.):
• Attacks on neighboring Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq
• The prevention of medical and food supplies to Palestinians
• The control of water sources in Palestine
• The building of illegal settlements in Palestine – Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem
• The population of these settlements with illegal settlers – armed thugs
• The bulldozing of Palestinian homes killing people in them (or in front of them, e.g., Rachel Corrie)
• The building of the “Apartheid Wall” separating Palestinians from their families, farmlands, water sources, and medical facilities
• Collaboration with Apartheid South Africa to develop non-sanctioned nuclear weapons, along with biological and chemical weapons
• Establishment of “Administrative Detention” which subjects Palestinians – including women and children – to arrest and detention without charges, legal representation, or due process
• Attacks, arrests, and murders of international humanitarians offering assistance to Palestinians
Conclusion: Israel is in violation of a plethora of international and moral laws. Its presence in Palestine amounts to no less than illegal entry, robbery, destruction of property, assault, and murder. Since the international community has failed to enforce international law with regards to Israel’s war crimes, the Palestinians are justified in any attempt to rid themselves of their oppressor – Israel. Any devious attempt on Israel’s part to mislabel its heinous acts as “self-defense” is completely unwarranted and downright deceptive.
“Hamas is to blame! Hamas should stop bombing Israel”
Again – this is the case of the criminal pointing the finger at the victim. Israel’s brutal presence in Palestine is in violation of numerous international and moral laws. The acts of Hamas are akin to the Minutemen who did everything in their power to fight off the British forces in 18th Century America.
Conclusion: Although I am a pacifist and would opt for non-violent resistance against the criminal presence of Israel in Palestine, I must acknowledge in all good conscience that Hamas is legally and morally justified in defending the cause to free Palestine – both in Palestine and in Israel.
“Israel is friend and ally to the United States”
Israel is the United States’ daddy.
Fact: Israel perpetrates crimes against humanity with impunity and the United States not only condones these actions, it funds them.
• Our government has been infiltrated by Zionist judges, legislators, and executive administrators from both the Republican and Democratic parties. This is not to mention AIPAC and other Zionist-controlled lobbies which manipulate finances and legislation at federal, state, and local levels.
• Our financial system (banks, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve) is controlled by Zionists.
• Our entertainment industry (Hollywood, Broadway, Nashville, NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, etc.) is predominantly owned and operated by Zionists.
• Mainstream media (all major news networks, television and radio stations, newspapers) are owned and operated by Zionists.
Conclusion: The result of all this is twofold: Zionists greatly influence and manipulate the U.S. government into enabling and funding Israel’s war crimes against Palestine and humanity.
Zionists convince the masses that Israel is the “good guy” and Muslims, Arabs, and especially Palestinians are the “bad guys”.
No true friend or ally would manipulate a friend into being complicit in a myriad of war crimes! Zionist Israel is, in fact, a devious enemy of the United States.
Epilogue
Anyone who clings to these and other Zionist myths must fall into one of three categories:
• Liar: Zionist supporter (Jewish, Christian, or other) who knows the facts and is yet involved in the scheme to mislead the public
• Ignorant: common citizen who has fallen prey to Zionist propaganda and has made little or no effort to validate the information
• Fool: one who has learned the truth, but ignores it in a vain display of “loyalty” to a political or religious position.
Raji (Roger) Abuzalaf is a Christian Palestinian (Haifa) refugee raised in Houston, now a long-term Honolulu resident and a U.S. citizen. He is a guitarist, singer, composer, and poet. Raji participates in local progressive/activist causes, at present co-producing pro-Palestine filmfare for Oahu’s main cable provider’s public-access TV network.
If a Genocide Falls in the Forest
By David Swanson | War is a Crime | August 7, 2014
There’s a wide and mysterious chasm between the stated intentions of the Israeli government as depicted by the U.S. media and what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza, even as recounted in the U.S. media.
With the morgues full, Gazans are packing freezers with their dead children. Meanwhile, the worst images to be found in Israel depict fear, not death and suffering. Why the contrast? If the Israeli intent is defensive, why are 97% of the deaths Gazan, not Israeli? If the targets are fighters, why are whole families being slaughtered and their houses leveled? Why are schools and hospitals and children playing on the beach targeted? Why target water and electricity if the goal is not to attack an entire population?
The mystery melts away if you look at the stated intentions of the Israeli government as not depicted by the U.S. media but readily available in Israeli media and online.
On August 1st, the Deputy Speaker of Israel’s Parliament posted on his FaceBook page a plan for the complete destruction of the people of Gaza using concentration camps. He had laid out a somewhat similar plan in a July 15th column.
Another member of the Israeli Parliament, Ayelet Shaked, called for genocide in Gaza at the start of the current war, writing: “Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
Taking a slightly different approach, Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University has been widely quoted in Israeli media saying, “The only thing that can deter [Gazans] is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.”
The Times of Israel published a column on August 1st, and later unpublished it, with the headline “When Genocide Is Permissible.” The answer turned out to be: now.
On August 5th, Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, published a column with the headline “In Gaza, There Is No Such Thing as ‘Innocent Civilians’.” Eiland wrote: “We should have declared war against the state of Gaza (rather than against the Hamas organization). . . . [T]he right thing to do is to shut down the crossings, prevent the entry of any goods, including food, and definitely prevent the supply of gas and electricity.”
It’s all part of putting Gaza “on a diet,” in the grotesque wording of an advisor to a former Israeli Prime Minister.
If it were common among members of the Iranian or Russian government to speak in favor of genocide, you’d better believe the U.S. media would notice. Why does this phenomenon go unremarked in the case of Israel? Noticing it is bound to get you called an anti-Semite, but that’s hardly a concern worthy of notice while children are being killed by the hundreds.
Another explanation is U.S. complicity. The weapons Israel is using are given to it, free-of-charge, by the U.S. government, which also leads efforts to provide Israel immunity for its crimes. Check out this revealing map of which nations recognize the nation of Palestine.
A third explanation is that looking too closely at what Israel’s doing could lead to someone looking closely at what the U.S. has done and is doing. Roughly 97% of the deaths in the 2003-2011 war on Iraq were Iraqi. Things U.S. soldiers and military leaders said about Iraqis were shameful and genocidal.
War is the biggest U.S. investment, and contemporary war is almost always a one-sided slaughter of civilians. If seeing the horror of it in Israeli actions allow us to begin seeing the same in U.S. actions, an important step will have been taken toward war’s elimination.
Yes, how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
Jordanian Family: “Israel Tortured Our Son To Death”
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | August 7, 2014
A Jordanian family is accusing Israel of arresting and torturing their son to death, after detaining him during a protest, in Tel Aviv, in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
The family in Amman, Jordan said Wa’el Salim Mustafa, 39, told AFP news agency that he was detained by the Israeli police during a protest against the Israeli war on Gaza, was subject to extreme torture by Israeli interrogators, and died around a week ago, on the third day out the Muslim feast of al-Fitr.
His brother, Qoteiba, stated that the Israeli Authorities contacted the family asking them to come over and sign documents permitting Israeli doctors “to perform a needed surgery”, but once the family arrived in Tel Aviv, they were told he was dead.
Qoteiba added that the body of his brother showed clear marks of extreme torture, and also had a swollen face, swollen eye sockets, several broken ribs, and various cuts and bruises all over his body.
He left Jordan around 18 months ago, and travelled to Tel Aviv and Haifa, where we worked construction jobs.
Israel is refusing to provide further details on the issue, while the family has filed an official complaint against Israel and the Israeli Prison Administration, and is asking for another autopsy to reveal the causes of death.
A Jordanian security source said Jordan formed a committee to oversee the autopsy that would be performed at a Jordanian Hospital, adding that initial examination shows clear bruises, and fractures, in the head, chest and several other body parts.
It also revealed that a sharp blow to the head caused brain hemorrhage, that eventually led to death. An official report will be issued at a later stage.
Israel alleges Wa’el “fell during interrogation, and died later on”.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement in 1994. Despite the fact that all Israelis can travel to Jordan, most Jordanian males are not allowed to travel to Tel Aviv, and are forced to go through the Arab side of the border terminal with Jordan, thus, are “granted” access to the West Bank and not to historic Palestine, including Jerusalem.
Rachel Maddow, Rand Paul and Israel
By Michael Arria | CounterPunch | August 6, 2014
The beef between Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has been going on for four years now. It was famously kicked off during Paul’s Senate campaign when Maddow began grilling him about his position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul’s strict devotion to the free-market had led him to the conclusion that, maybe, some of its business regulations were unjust. “Libertarians are like that,” wrote, the late, Alexander Cockburn, at the time. “On some big and important things they’re admirable and staunch. Many of them, on some big and important things, are rancid.” Later, in the same piece, Cockburn explained the allure of Maddow’s takedown, “It’s the easiest thing in the world for a grandstanding liberal to push a libertarian into a corner…Liberals love grandstanding about what are, in practice, distractions. You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the US Senate?
MSNBC remains intrigued by the story, as evidenced by Paul’s recent appearance on The Cycle, where co-host Ari Melber recently asked if his views on the Act had evolved. “What I would say to be fair to myself, because I like to be fair to myself, is that I’ve always been in favor of the Civil Rights Act,” claimed Paul. “People need to get over themselves writing all this stuff that I’ve changed my mind on the Civil Rights Act. Have I ever had a philosophical discussion about all aspects of it? Yeah, and I learned my lesson: To come on MSNBC and have a philosophical discussion, the liberals will come out of the woodwork and go crazy and say you’re against the Civil Rights Act, and you’re some terrible racist. And I take great objection to that, because, in Congress, I think there is nobody else trying harder to get people back their voting rights, to get people back and make the criminal justice system fair. So I take great offense to people who want to portray me as something that I’m not.”
Paul makes some valid points here, although there’s a wider issue: do the policies he advocates address the systemic issues of economic racism? This question is, probably, worth debating on a show like Maddow’s, but she fired back in a different vein.
“You cannot base a presidential campaign on something that is not true about [himself] or try to cover up something that you have said now that you don’t like the way that sounds,” Maddow explained in a rant about Paul’s MSNBC comments. “Nobody expects you to be perfect, but nobody expects you to be a petulant person who lies and is constantly threatening imagined adversaries about it,” she concluded.
This is pretty blatant for Maddow criticism, as she generally likes to attack GOP politicians in a much more jovial manner. It’s clear that she has a real problem with Paul and, perhaps, believes he supports racist policies. This is actually true, but Maddow doesn’t have to travel back fifty years to find them. She need look no further than a recent National Review op-ed in which Paul criticized the Obama administration for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. “I think it is clear by now: Israel has shown remarkable restraint. It possesses a military with clear superiority over that of its Palestinian neighbors, yet it does not respond to threat after threat, provocation after provocation, with the type of force that would decisively end their conflict.”
This “remarkable restraint” has shocked the world, for the past few weeks, as over 1,900 Palestinians have been killed; most of them civilians and many of them children. The backdrop of this brutal attack is an illegal occupation and a system of segregation that many, throughout the world, view as apartheid. Maddow’s producer, Steve Benen, criticized Paul, via MSNBC blog post, for flip-flopping on the subject of Israel. In 2011, Paul actually made a number of comments suggesting that the US cut aid to Israel. “The senator could take this opportunity to explain how and why his position has changed,” wrote Benen. “Maybe he could say he’s learned more about foreign policy over the last few years and this knowledge has caused him to reevaluate some of his previous positions.”
To Benen’s mind, Paul’s flip-flop is the crucial issue, not his indefensible position. This, naturally, begs the question: does Rachel Maddow refuse to criticize Paul’s stance on Israel because she agrees with him?
~
Michael Arria is the author of the new CounterPunch book, Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.
Will there be accountability for Brits fighting in Israel?
By Shazia Arshad | MEMO | August 6, 2014
The Israeli army is currently waging a cold blooded campaign against the Gaza Strip, the third of its kind in less than six years. As thousands of Palestinians are killed and injured by Israeli forces, attention is slowly but surely turning towards those who are committing some of the most cruel and gruesome acts of war.
After Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) there were attempts to use universal jurisdiction to bring about the arrest of senior Israeli officials visiting the UK who were accused of war crimes. Although the laws on universal jurisdiction were changed by the current British government, inevitably the spotlight remains on the illegality of the IDFs actions during the course of war.
During this war, however, the spotlight has shone upon a slightly different element, those British nationals who are serving in the IDF. In recent months there has been much scrutiny of British nationals who have left the UK for Syria. A letter to the Home Secretary and MP for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell, highlighted that 20 British nationals have had their citizenship withdrawn as a result of their activities in Syria. Media reports have suggested that hundreds of British nationals were going to Syria to take part in activities against Assad as the civil war in Syria continues to rage on some three years later. As these reports filtered out, the British government voiced concerns that upon their return these British nationals would be radicalised and become involved in extremism. This is not the first time that government officials have linked foreign affairs to extremism in the UK, but almost exclusively the conversations about extremism in the UK have consistently focused on the Muslim community.
Yet what these conversations have missed is another potential force for radicalisation. This has been missed because this radicalisation will not be of Muslims by Muslims nor at the hand of Muslims; in short it is because that spell happens in Israel.
The IDF do not actively recruit foreign nationals in the UK, yet despite this figures from Channel 4 News suggest that at least 100 Brits are currently active in the Israeli army. The Israeli army do not provide figures for the number of foreign recruits they currently have and whilst British MPs have quizzed the government on this, ministers have been unable to report back on the exact numbers. Indeed, when Lord Ahmed of Rotherham asked the then minister about this in 2009, the minister reported that this information would only be available from the Israeli government.
However, back in 2010 the Independent newspaper reported that a new organisation, Aish Malach, had been established to help foreign nationals enlist in the army. Most can join through a programme known as Mahal, which allows a person who is Jewish or of Jewish ancestry to join the army; they need not be a citizen of Israel in order to do so.
With or without structured recruitment programmes young British Jewish recruits are keen to sign up to the IDF. When the Guardian covered this in 2006, they spoke to a British recruit who said that he was joining, along with other recruits, to show his love and support for Israel. And it seems according to one report in the New Statesman that this indoctrination into support for the IDF starts early, with 16 and 17 year-olds joining the Marva programme, which echoes the training of the IDF soldiers in order to encourage the young participants to empathise with the army. These young British recruits are encouraged to join by youth groups such as the RSY Netzer and the Federation of Zionist Youth. Many of these participants did go on to join the IDF.
Whilst many of these recruits do go on to take Israeli citizenship with many becoming dual nationals, this is not the case for all recruits. Some recruits choose not to take on citizenship and remain British nationals only. Whether or not they have citizenship, these foreign recruits take on a full role in the army and serve in the same way as any other recruit in the IDF. And this inevitably means that they will take part in those same actions which the British public have watched unfold in Gaza over recent weeks resulting in the death of nearly 2,000 Palestinians.
The current conflict in Gaza has undoubtedly seen a breach of international law and it would be no stretch of the imagination to assume that war crimes had not been committed. As Palestinian officials met with International Criminal Court prosecutors, a group of senior British lawyers wrote to the ICC urging them to investigate noting that the ICC had a duty to do so given the UN’s recognition of Palestine. And if Israel is found guilty of war crimes at the ICC, then it follows that Israeli officials would have to be held to account over their actions. And under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Britain would have a duty to ensure that it plays its role in ensuring that justice is served.
With British nationals active in the IDF, there is no doubt that some of these recruits will have taken part in the current campaign in Gaza. As Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch Brown, noted after Operation Cast Lead: “anybody who has broken the fourth protocol of the Geneva Convention deserves to meet justice in some court or another.” The minister also said that it would not be right to draw a distinction between “British nationals and others”. Should British nationals return to the UK having partaken in such crimes it should be inevitable that justice would follow. In reality, it is unlikely that any such action would be taken by British courts against British IDF soldiers.
Whilst there have been no moves to prevent Brits enlisting in the IDF, there is a law which states it is an offence for a British national to enlist in a foreign army and should they do so it would be an offence “punishable by fine and imprisonment.” The law however has been barely used and became almost redundant when British nationals left the UK to join the struggles during the Spanish civil war. With no laws to effectively prevent Brits joining the IDF, British nationals remain vulnerable to arrest – if they choose to leave the country and take up arms with the Israeli army, who have been killing and wounding civilians in Gaza they are culpable of committing crimes against a besieged civilian population, almost certainly illegal under international law.
Britain has always been troubled by its role in the Middle East and the effect of its foreign policy on communities at home in the UK. When the current government launched its report into British nationals fighting in Syria, the focus was on how to prevent radicalisation of the Muslim communities in the UK. Those Brits arrested after returning from Syria have been accused of partaking in terrorist activity, but those Brits in the IDF are no less guilty of that. The only difference being that the the Israeli army’s actions are state sanctioned and as of yet have not been condemned by the British government.
When British Foreign Office Minister Baroness Warsi resigned she noted that the UK needs to end its complicity by looking to bring about an arms embargo. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg went on to call for a suspension of arms export licenses within hours of Warsi’s resignation, but if the UK is to fully end its complicity in Israeli war crimes, it needs to look closely at the actions of its citizens who are taking part in the IDFs assault of the Palestinian people.
Gaza’s children will not forget
By Roqayah Chamseddine | Al-Akhbar | August 6, 2014
As Israel withdraws its ground forces from Gaza “to defensive positions” outside the Gaza Strip there are already obscene calls for Israel to re-engage so that Israel may “finish the job” and “go all the way” by demilitarizing Gaza, purging the 360 sq. km strip of its native Arab inhabitants and reoccupying it. Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed and at least 500,000, who are already refugees, have been internally displaced once more as a result of 29 days of implacable Israeli attacks. Parts of Gaza have been emptied, with entire neighborhoods eradicated as though they had never existed. From space the Gaza Strip was captured veiled in black, with Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment glowing bright — the widespread pockets of shelling luminous amongst the darkness, like blazing sulfur. If this is what was witnessed from space imagine what horrors the people of Gaza will see on earth as the dust settles.
Citizens of Gaza’s southern town of Khuza’a who fled unwavering bombing campaigns describe harrowing scenes of bodies lining the streets, children being kept in ice cream freezers as morgues could no longer accommodate the dead, and tell of being deliberately targeted by Israel, some narrowly escaping with their lives.
In one incident, reported by 15-year-old Akram al-Najjar to Human Rights Watch, after Israeli soldiers found more than 100 people huddled together in one house, they were all forced out: “The first one to walk out of the house was Shahid al-Najjar. He had his hands up, but the soldiers shot him. He was shot in the jaw and badly injured, but he survived. Two of the people in the house spoke Hebrew and asked the soldiers why they shot him, and the soldiers said that the rest of the men had to take our clothes off before we walked out.”
In another eye-witness account in Khuza’a, the Israeli military had trapped at least 32 people in a home and then prevented the Red Cross from evacuating them before then shelling the area. After they moved to a neighbor’s house they sought refuge in the basement where they found families already inside. “By that point we were 120 people, 10 men and the rest women and children,” Kamel al-Najjar told Human Rights Watch. After dawn, without warning, Israel struck the house, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
The toll this war had on Gaza’s children has been “catastrophic” according to the United Nations. At least 429 children have been killed in this latest Israeli onslaught, and those who have not been buried have had their innocence entombed, another casualty in this war against all things daring to live and resist in Gaza. “I watched the missile falling on my home. My home burned. It burned all my toys, clothes and my room. I think I will not survive,” a nine-year-old girl from Rafah told a UNRWA counselor.
Gaza’s children were robbed of hundreds of blissful mornings, from witnessing the sun rising to kiss the earth as they sit restless, listening to the reassuring pulse of their parents’ voices, tasting the sugar of happiness from their smiles. Some will no longer feel their mother’s soothing arms rock them still into the night, nor see the inspiring glimmer of hope, like constellations, dancing in their father’s eyes, nor will they hear stories told by their grandparents of golden sunsets in Palestine bleeding into mornings — and when the homes are rebuilt there will be corners of emptiness inside that had once been filled to the brim with the laughter of a sibling or cousin, as they sat amongst flat bread and plates of labneh, za’atar and olive oil.
Israel has forced the children of Gaza to lay flowers atop headstones, and watch helplessly as coffins that are filled with not only their most beloved family members, teachers, neighbors, and friends but also their most treasured memories, lullabies, lessons learned and those that will never come, descend into the belly of the earth. Their lips will memorize and form prayers for the dead and the stars that defied the siege, that flickered freely high above them, will be snatched from their skies. In so many interviews after countless attacks we hear Palestinians, both young and old, say: “Israel has stolen everything beautiful in our lives,” and Israel’s barbarity continues to reaffirm this sentiment.
Yet despite the blood soaking the dirt beneath the feet of mourners, despite this cataclysmic butchery and theft, Palestinians continue to resist. Israel has attempted with all of its militaristic might to remove not only the Palestinian will to resist but to extract Gaza, the land and the identity, from the Palestinian character as a whole, by way of the siege — but it is a part of Palestine as much as one’s heart is a part of the body.
Gaza is Palestine. So long as a single voice remains in Gaza calling for resistance, for an end to the siege and the greater occupation, come what may, Israel will answer for the destruction of villages, the arbitrary detention of children, the normalization of indefinite detention without charge or trial for political prisoners, the detainment of asylum seekers, the racism that has become part and parcel of the occupation. Israel will answer for its culture of impunity.
The children of Gaza will not forget the people and the land that Israel has snatched from them and so long as a single flag stands amongst the rubble, so long as a single voice cries for justice, despite the sounds of drones buzzing up above, the people of Palestine shall endure.
Roqayah Chamseddine is a Sydney based Lebanese-American journalist and commentator. She tweets @roqchams and writes ‘Letters From the Underground.‘
Israel ‘withholding information’ about Gaza detainees
Israeli soldiers hold Palestinians in Gaza on July 24, 2014
Ma’an – 06/08/2014
RAMALLAH – The Ministry of Prisoner Affairs said Wednesday that it has not received information about Palestinians detained in Gaza during Israel’s offensive.
“The occupation army, during its current aggression on the Gaza Strip, has detained dozens of Palestinians and taken them to unknown locations,” Minister of Prisoner’s Affairs Shawqi al-Ayasa said in a statement.
Al-Ayasa said the ministry was yet to receive crucial information about the prisoners, including their ID numbers, locations, and conditions.
The fact that Israel has withheld the information is worrying, al-Ayasa said, adding that there were “growing fears that some of the prisoners have been executed.”
He called on international organizations, specifically the International Committee of the Red Cross, to intercede to obtain the information on the ministry’s behalf.
Al-Ayasa also requested that families in Gaza who suspect their relatives have been detained contact the Ministry of Prisoner Affairs.
The ministry said in a statement Sunday that more than 200 Palestinians had been detained in Gaza while Israeli forces were on the ground, but that some of them had been released.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma’an that Israeli forces had arrested 159 Palestinians in Gaza who were “actively doing terrorist attacks.” The prisoners were transferred to the Shin Bet intelligence agency for questioning, she said.
The spokeswoman did not have information regarding how many of those Palestinians were still being held, and did not comment on allegations that Israel was withholding information about the prisoners from the prisoner’s ministry.
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The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent.
A dust storm originating in the Sahara Desert swept across parts of Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland last month. In addition to bringing a red tinge to the sky, the dust caused a slight, yet noticeable, spike in radiation in the areas it reached. This radiation spike was caused by the presence of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear weapons. A legacy of French nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Algeria during the 1960s, the cesium-137 contamination is a reminder that while the testing of nuclear weapons may have been halted for the time being, the consequences of these tests live on through the poisoning of the planet mankind calls home.
The Saharan radioactive dust cloud is but the most recent visible phenomenon of a plague that has infected much of the world. … continue
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