Omran Omar Abu Dheim, 41, from the Jabal al-Mukabbir neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the Al-Tur neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City of Jerusalem after he allegedly attempted to run over border guard police officers with his vehicle.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an the man tried to run over two police officers with his car, leaving them moderately injured. Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli officers then opened fire at a young man in a grey Land Cruiser at the main crossroads of Al-Tur, critically injuring him.
The Israeli forces sealed the area, preventing locals from accessing the injured young man to give him first aid. The young man succumbed to his wounds shortly after he was shot.
The forces reportedly fired stun grenades at those who attempted to access the man after he was shot, head of a local follow-up committee of Al-Tur, Mufid Abu Ghannam, told Ma’an.
Locals identified him as Omran Omar Abu Dheim, 41, from the Jabal Al-Mukabbir neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem.
An eyewitness denied the Israeli claims that the driver was trying to run over Israeli border guard officers.
“He was trying to make a U-turn in the middle of the road,” the witness claimed.
Targeting witnesses
Israeli forces later raided several commercial stores in Al-Tur, confiscating surveillance cameras which held footage of the shooting of Abu Dheim by Israeli forces. Al-Tur committee head Abu Ghannam told Ma’an that Israeli forces, intelligence officers, and undercover officers were deployed in the neighborhood after the shooting and raided all shops near the scene of the crime. The officers confiscated all surveillance cameras “which documented the killing of Abu Dheim,” Abu Ghannam added. Abu Dheim’s vehicle was also confiscated. Palestinian shop owners have been targeted by Israeli forces in the past when private shop surveillance cameras capture incidents involving Israeli forces. The Israeli military ordered shop owner Fakher Zayed to dismantle his surveillance cameras after capturing footage of Israeli forces shooting and killing two Palestinian teenagers during a demonstration in May 2014. Zayed was interrogated, threatened and ordered to remove his security cameras in 24 hours, and had his ID withheld, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.
Abu Dheim’s death and alleged attack are currently under investigation, Israeli sources said.
May 20, 2015
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Once again, The New York Times is taking up the issue of divestment debates on college campuses, subjecting readers to yet another discussion of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and how the boycott movement affects student feelings.
For the third time in as many months, the Times has published a prominently displayed article on the subject. The latest is titled “Campus Debates on Israel Drive a Wedge Between Jews and Minorities;” it appears on page 1 of the print edition and notes that many minority organizations are now supporting Palestinian rights and this “drives a wedge between many Jewish and minority students.”
It is difficult to understand why the Times gives such play to this story, which rehashes material from earlier ones centered on debates at UCLA and Stanford, but all the articles take aim at the divestment effort. The previous ones attempted to connect the boycott movement (known as BDS for boycott, divestment and sanctions) with anti-Semitism (see TimesWarp posts here and here); this one tells us that the movement is divisive.
Each of the stories is notable for avoiding the substance of the campus debates. In the latest article, for instance, we learn only that students are objecting to “what they see as Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians” and that “they have cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful force’s oppression of a displaced group.”
Readers would never know that students are motivated by the facts on the ground: the brutality of the occupation, the horrific attacks on Gaza, and a racist system that a South African jurist recently called “infinitely worse than those committed by the apartheid regime of South Africa.”
The Times obscures these facts in its daily reports from Israel and in its discussions of BDS, focusing instead on abstractions and political maneuverings. It attempts to change the subject from the very real Israeli oppression of Palestinians to talk of campus strife over the issue.
Meanwhile, it ignores another, more pernicious, BDS debate unfolding in the legislative bodies from Congress to state assemblies and senates. In these halls, Israel supporters are promoting attempts to outlaw and rein in BDS.
The U.S. House and Senate recently passed amendments authorizing negotiators for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership bill to push for efforts that would normalize trade with Israeli settlements on Palestinian land (even though these have been declared illegal under international law), effectively erase the boundaries between the West Bank and Israel and punish companies that resist collaboration with the occupation.
The House amendment openly identifies BDS as a target, saying that negotiators should discourage “politically motivated efforts to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel.” One observer has noted that some of the language in the amendments is identical to that in an Israeli bill adopted in 2011.
State legislatures, such as those in Tennessee and Indiana, are taking aim at BDS, with bills declaring that the movement is anti-Semitic and requiring state pension funds to withdraw money from companies that boycott Israel. The Tennessee bill (and the Congressional amendment) includes passages taken directly from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2014 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
There is something askew here: The Times finds the BDS debate newsworthy when it takes place on college campuses but not worth mentioning when it shows up in legislative bodies, even at the federal level. It may be that such coverage would bring inconvenient facts to light—Israeli breaches of international law, for instance, and European restrictions on trade with settlements.
We can trace a link from Israel to lobbyists in the United States and from the lobbyists to the halls of Congress and state legislatures. It appears to connect also with The New York Times, where we find some of the familiar techniques for protecting Israel in play: avoidance and diversion.
Thus Times readers, uninformed about the full extent of Israeli atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories (and within Israel proper), are directed away from the facts on the ground. They are sidetracked into discussions of anti-Semitism or divisiveness, all part of an effort to take the heat off Israel.
May 20, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Israel, New York Times, Palestine, Zionism |
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Haneen Al Zoubi in the US
Haneen Al Zoubi, champion of democracy and embattled Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, spoke in the northeastern US in late April. Al Zoubi is from Nazareth in the Galilee, northern Israel/Palestine, whose population stubbornly remains 50% Palestinian Arab despite nearly 70 years of intensive Judaization, to the consternation of Israel. She is an outspoken opponent of the Jewish state, and its oppression of the Palestinians, be they citizens, under occupation or in exile. She was aboard the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara in 2010 as it led a flotilla attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israeli commandos boarded it on the high seas and killed 9 activists; two days later she attempted to describe it to the Knesset and was vilified and physically attacked in a tumultuous session. Al Zoubi’s views and activism have made her an object of fear and loathing in Israel, the target of attempts to limit her parliamentary privileges, to prevent her from running in elections, to remove her citizenship; and the target of racist and sexist diatribes, death threats and physical attacks.
Israel’s antipathy toward its Palestinian citizens arises of course from its definition as the state of the Jewish people rather than of its citizens. The current radical antagonism has been building since the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel envisioned a “peace without Arabs,” as Israeli ex-patriate scholar Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin put it.1 The Oslo Accords did not recognize the Palestinian Arabs as equal inhabitants of historic Palestine, and the injustice done them by the establishment of Israel. Rather they expressed the idea of “separation,” which would remove the Palestinian Arabs from Israel’s midst and let it continue its separate, Zionist, Jewish destiny. The principle of “separation” introduced “a new mood of intolerance towards the Arab minority inside Israel,” as veteran journalist Jonathan Cook observed.2 This led to increased repression, which escalated sharply with the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September, 2000, and since, from the suppression of the al-Aqsa intifada, to the 2006 attack on Lebanon, to the massacres of Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014.
Al Zoubi spoke with great energy and conviction, to audiences in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Washington, on a tour organized by the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, NJ, an outpost of patriotism and culture in ultra-Zionist greater New York. The PACC’s web site features a stirring anthem about Jerusalem by Lebanese chanteuse Fairouz, and a wide variety of programs. New Jersey Palestinians raised the Palestinian flag at Paterson city hall on May 3, as the PACC raised $430,000 for a kidney dialysis center in Ramallah. The following remarks are from her address to the Palestine Center in Washington on April 27 (video and edited transcript, supplemented in a few spots by the author’s transcription).
Al Zoubi introduced herself as a representative of the “forgotten side of our people, of the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.” She acknowledged Israel’s heinous crimes against the Palestinians under occupation since Israel’s conquests of the West Bank and Gaza in the June, 1967 war, but insisted that
we cannot talk about peace, talk about justice (which is the aim of peace) if we forget that it is a refugee issue starting in 1948. We are talking about a creation of a state at the expense of the Palestinian people. We cannot talk about justice or peace unless we talk about the reason for the occupation, the definition of the state and aim of Israel, and the way it treats Palestinians wherever they are.
Israel slaughters in Gaza, steals land in the West Bank and Judaizes Jerusalem, and claims “we are a democracy, and we defend ourselves from Hamas, from terrorists.” “I am a citizen—the 1.2 million who stayed in the homeland are the test of whether Israel is a democracy or not… in Israel there are 50 racist laws, I’m talking about the Israeli legal system, not the occupation, [not] Hamas… this is the test of democracy. So let’s for once talk about Israel itself.” The fifty racist laws are “apartheid laws which create two different systems toward two ethnicities/nationalities inside Israel, one for Jews, one for Palestinians.”
There is an Israeli law which prevents me from living in 700 communities which are built, of course, on my land. By law, [this means] I cannot live in over 60 percent of the land of Israel. It is a law that was not passed in 1948, or the 1950s or 60s when Israel felt weak and needed to control everything; this is a new law… it was passed in 2011! Of course the law doesn’t mention Palestinians; the law mentions that the [community’s] Acceptance Committee can reject anyone without the ability for me to appeal to the court. Before this law, I could appeal to the court. But now I can’t appeal and can be rejected—why? Because there is no social or cultural compatibility. Under social compatibility, we as Palestinians are rejected… What is this if not apartheid? Can you imagine the U.S. having a law like this for African Americans; an Acceptance Committee law regarding social ethnic groups that make up 20 percent of society? Can you imagine in Europe if a law were passed against Jews or another group?
Al Zoubi emphasized that “land is still the most conflicted issue between us and the state. Judaizing the land at the expense of the Palestinians, the slogan ‘the most amount of land with the least amount of Palestinians’—this is the summary of Zionism.” Thus the government plans to expel 30,000 (or more) Palestinian Bedouin who live in “unrecognized villages” in the Negev—half of Palestine. “You can build for Jews anywhere you want, but within these 12 million dunams [three million acres] they want to evacuate [Palestinians] and gather them in a small area to control the land.”
This is not even discrimination. Discrimination is to give “A” less than “B”. In Israel, to discriminate against us would mean to give us less than the Jews but no, [Israel] is taking from “A” and giving to “B”—[Israel is] stealing from us, everything. It is the treatment of not even the enemy—we are the obstacle of the Jewish state… We don’t exist. This is the real treatment. This is why we don’t accept the word “discrimination”—we don’t exist. [Israel] plans as if we are not there. Judaizing the Negev and using the word “develop” takes for granted that there are Palestinians. If they are there, [Israel] will throw them away—no problem.
Al Zoubi noted the brutal candor of Israeli officials.
In the Knesset they say “we are a Jewish state, and you are invaders.” You can find it in the protocol of the Knesset when a minister answered to me, “you are invaders, and the new crusaders,” a formal answer from an Israeli minister in 2013, yet Israel talks about how it is a democracy. Can any prime minister in the world talk like this to his citizens? “Invaders?” And still talk about itself as a democracy?
Such a system is inherently violent and repressive.
Fifty-one Palestinians [citizens] have been killed since 2000—none were Hamas. I thought the problem was Hamas? From the fifty-one who were killed, just one Israeli police officer went to jail for twenty-four months. This is a violent system: it is legitimate to discriminate against us. . . We are not just like the African Americans who struggle for democracy, we are also the indigenous people. We cannot struggle for civil rights within the existing definition of the state as a Jewish state, while African Americans can. They can struggle for civil rights within the definition of the American state, because America is a state for the citizens. In Israel, the state is for part of the citizenry—it is not for me.
The violence is also psychological.
The whole idea of citizenship is something awful and something disempowering and a way of colonizing my identity. [Israel is] giving me my citizenship on one condition: to lose myself, to have nothing to do with my people or my history, and logically I must thank [Israel] every day because they did not expel me… I remember reading in fourth grade, [translated from Arabic] “we build your schools and we pave your streets” so I’m primitive, and Israel came to develop my country and I must be so grateful.
Her Israeli education naturally omitted the thriving Palestinian society that Israel destroyed, including Jaffa, the most important seaport between Alexandria and Antakya, with its orange exports, its seven daily Arabic newspapers and seven sports clubs, Umm Kulthum’s theater and festivals. Israel is “not just confiscating land, but they are confiscating my homeland’s history – renaming the geography, renaming the bridges, streets, cities, trying to change the landscape in order for us to not recognize our homeland, our history. [Israel] has deleted everything.”
Yet Israel still lacks one thing, “legitimacy from its victim. Israel needs to be recognized as a Jewish state in order to ignore everything I say… We must learn how primitive we were and internalize our inferiority,” beginning by denying history.
The education system has pulled every textbook which has the word “nakba” because this is the [Palestinian] “narrative,” not the fact, it’s a narrative, maybe an imagined narrative that we were expelled in 1948, and Netanyahu’s ministry two to three years ago gave the direction to omit it from textbooks…
And in Israel there is a special law to prevent me from commemorating the Nakba… every institution which took its budget from the government … if any institution commemorates the Nakba in any way, the Ministry of Finance can freeze the budget of this institution.
This is from power, not weakness. “These insane laws—the Acceptance Committee Laws, omitting the word ‘nakba’—took place over the last six to seven years, not the beginning of Israel when it was weak and needed to be aggressive.”
I’m not talking about the right wing or Lieberman. Lieberman has not contributed to these racist lawa at all. We are talking about the “left wing,” the Labor Party. These are the Labor Party and Likud’s laws, not the right wing, as if the problem is a few extremists. The problem is the system itself. The definition of the state itself!
Israel tolerates Al Zoubi and her colleagues in the Knesset because they are powerless. Israel “is giving us these positions because our scream makes no difference. [Israel] steals my land, doesn’t permit me to study my identity, express my identity, struggle for democracy, calls me a terrorist—and then says, ‘Okay, scream.”’ This is possible only in a herrenvolk democracy.
How is there even a majority? Ethnic cleansing. Democracy was forced by ethnic cleansing— the “majority rule” was reached by ethnic cleansing. During the forty-seven years of occupation in Jerusalem, Israel has withdrawn the identity of 176,000 Palestinians. Imagine these numbers. It is a continuous ethnic cleansing… stealing land, land confiscation, oppression, Judaizing every single region, and Israeli intelligence still appoints teachers in the education systems.
Israeli Jewish society simply doesn’t believe in democracy.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute in 2012 (which makes a democracy index every year), fifty-five percent of Israelis don’t agree with full equality with Palestinians. I’m not even talking about the national struggle for independence, just equality. How can this society claim she wants peace when she doesn’t even want equality for her citizens? To shock you more, thirty percent of society agrees to put Palestinian citizens into reservations if there is a war between Israel and the Arab world in order for Palestinians to not collaborate. It is like the Japanese internment camps in World War II—thirty percent. It is legitimate to be racist, it is a part of the definition and political culture.
Palestinians do not exist for Israeli Jewish society, and Israel acts with impunity.
In the history curriculum, we don’t exist. When we want to live in “this” area or “that” area, we don’t exist. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli culture does not view Palestinians as “behind the wall,” they are “behind the ocean.” Israel doesn’t pay the price, they are economic friends with the US and when we speak in the Knesset, and when we say, the Arab MKs, the world will punish you, the world will isolate you, then a minister will come, and say, be calm, no one will punish us, we have very good relations with everyone, better relations with the USA, and better relations with… and we sit and say, yes, he’s right, we are alone.
Change will not come from within Israel.
We cannot wait for the salvation inside Israel, and it is not related to internal dynamics. So when people ask, “what about the left wing,” we say “55% of the [Jewish] society doesn’t agree with equality.” No left wing. Meretz, even Meretz, has won four seats, and Meretz supported the war on Gaza for the first two weeks, the last war upon Gaza. Meretz! The most extremist left in the Knesset, supported the war on Gaza.
Absent external pressure, Israel has become more and more aggressive.
Since no Palestinian will accept our dictations and the maximum we give is less than the min- imum Palestinians will accept, [Israel] will solve it by ourselves. And they did. They did it by building the wall and the siege of Gaza we forget about. Israel says there is no occupation— when they control the sea, borders, travel, taxes, electricity, destroy schools, bomb everything, destroy society, put two million people in jail. Yet they say, “Israel is not occupying. There is no need to solve the struggle, just a need to maintain and manage it.” And they are managing it very well. Israel is able to strengthen its economy and everything is okay—they don’t pay the price.
Americans are responsible.
We need justice and we ask Americans not to be part of this racist policy. Because it’s your taxes. . . and this is your regime, and okay, you cannot be neutral, you cannot be neutral, so please be aware that you are part of this oppression. You are part of the oppression.
Al Zoubi eloquently inverted Israel’s moral ultima ratio.
And if anyone criticizes us [Israel] we will say anti-semitic. And we will mention the Holo- caust. But you cannot mention the Holocaust. Because you don’t represent the victims of the Holocaust. Because the whole lesson and the whole idea of the Holocaust is, don’t kill, and don’t be racist. And you kill, and you are racist. So we are the victims. We the Palestinians can represent the victims of the Holocaust, not you. And it is a humiliation of the victims of the Holocaust every time you mention them while you are racist. You are humiliating the Holocaust. You are humiliating the victims of the Holocaust. We are respecting the victims of the Holocaust as a tragedy. You are not, you are using them in order to justify your crimes against humanity and your war crimes and your oppression of the Palestinians.
Al Zoubi emphasized her progressive outlook. “I am a feminist, liberal woman. We want equality between men and women, not just Israelis and Palestinians or Jews and Arabs inside my homeland.” She concluded:
We are representing a vision of justice. To live together, in equality. We don’t want to throw the Jews, the Israelis, to the sea. We don’t. But there is no possibility with a racist definition. We demand right of return for the Palestinians to their homes. We demand total withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We demand East Jerusalem, and we demand a state for all of its citizens. We cannot live in peace and justice with Zionism and Jewish state as a racist state.
Like the Palestinians, the classical European liberal traditions descended from the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation rejected Zionism categorically. Classical Reform Judaism, Marxist internationalism and plain secularism, in their various ways, viewed Zionism as a reaction against liberal modernity, against the emancipation of Jews from pre-modern conditions and their assimilation and integration into gentile society. They found it reactionary and racist, the fraternal twin of the racialist anti-semitism that arose at the same time as Zionism.
In contrast, for nearly fifty years, US criticism of Israel has been limited to minimal and/or misleading terms: anti-occupation; international law and human rights; progressive Zionism; Israel as US strategic asset; Jewish identity politics; and anti-anti-Semitism. At most, criticism admits that Zionism is a form of colonial settler ideology and practice. It is that, but it is much more, a reaction against modernity. The fundamental opposition of Zionism is not Jewish settler vs. Arab indigene in Palestine, but Jew vs. gentile everywhere. On the Jewish left, this opposition gives us the minimal critique noted, a form of Zionism which dominates US criticism of Israel as completely as the “Israel lobby” does the mainstream.
Al Zoubi and her Palestinian colleagues are horribly correct; they are alone, and the first among the culpable are the left, the gatekeepers of criticism, who refuse to oppose Zionism, in the US and Palestine. The Palestinians will remain alone unless we can recover the basic liberal concepts and vocabulary which hegemonic Zionism has buried. In the words of Count Clermont-Tonnerre, in the debates over emancipation in the French National Assembly in December, 1789: “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals.”3 Today this is perhaps the most scandalous statement one can make, but the real scandal is that it is necessary, that the left has not been making it, and advancing such politics and analysis, as Zionism has come to genocidal fruition.
May 20, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Haneen Al Zoubi, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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A high-profile group of former European political leaders and diplomats has called for the urgent reassessment of EU policy on the question of a Palestinian state and insisted Israel must be held to account for its actions in the occupied territories.
In a letter to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, the group, known as the European Eminent Persons Group, also questioned the ability of the US to lead the negotiations between Palestine and Israel.
In a damning assessment of EU policy, the letter reads: “Europe has yet to find an effective way of holding Israel to account for the way it maintains the occupation. It is time now to demonstrate to both parties how seriously European public opinion takes contraventions of international law, the perpetration of atrocities and the denial of established rights.”
Signatories to the letter include Hubert Védrine and Roland Dumas, former foreign ministers of France, Andreas van Agt, former prime minister of the Netherlands, John Bruton, a former prime minister of Ireland, Michel Rocard, former prime minister of France, Javier Solana, former Nato secretary general and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former UK ambassador to the UN.
On Friday, the European United Left group of MEPs demanded an abolition of partnership agreements with Israeldemanded an abolition of partnership agreements with Israel.
May 13, 2015
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | European Union, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Leading actors, directors and other figures from the theatre world have condemned efforts by pro-Israel groups to silence a Palestinian production set to tour Britain.
‘The Siege’, by the Jenin-based Freedom Theatre, was attacked in the Mail on Sunday last week, after organisations such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews expressed concern about whether the Arts Council-funded project “promoted terrorism.”
Now, in response to what they describe as the “demonization” of Palestinian theatre, a letter signed by Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance, Young Vic artistic director David Lan and playwright Caryl Churchill among others, expresses support for the Freedom Theatre.
Neither the Daily Mail nor the Board of Deputies has seen Freedom Theatre’s play The Siege, yet both somehow feel qualified to suggest that it is “promoting terrorism”. Not for the first time, Palestinian voices are in danger of being drowned out by a vociferous pro-Israel lobby that smears all Palestinians as terrorists and antisemites. This lobby wants us to believe that theatre-goers in the UK cannot be trusted to hear these voices and make their own judgements.
The letter, an initiative of Artists for Palestine UK, comes as the Freedom Theatre prepares to embark on a 10-city tour of Britain over May-June, including dates in Manchester, London, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, and Glasgow.
Writer and performer Mark Thomas, a signatory to the letter, noted that “free speech for Palestinian artists is increasingly threatened, more often than not by supporters of Israel’s apartheid occupation. Palestinian voices not only have a right to be heard, we have duty to listen to them.”
The piece in the Mail by Sunday claimed that the play, based on dramatic events in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002, would be “an unashamedly one-sided drama” based on the testimonies of “men with blood on their hands.”
None of those smearing the play have seen the production, as they have admitted.
May 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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The European United Left group of MEPs has demanded the abolition of partnership agreements with Israel due to its indiscriminate aggression against the Palestinians, Arabs48.com reported on Friday. The demand was made in the wake of the acknowledgement by dozens of Israeli soldiers who took part in the last summer’s Israeli offensive in Gaza that they targeted civilians intentionally; some claimed that they targeted Palestinians “for fun“.
In a statement issued on Friday, a spokesperson for the EU group, Angel Vaina, demanded that Europe’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini answer several questions regarding the Israeli human rights abuses. Beside the witness statements of the Israeli soldiers, he noted, there is a UN report which proves that Israel killed 44 civilians and wounded 227 others in UN shelters during the Israeli war against Palestinian civilians.
Vaina said that the Geneva Conventions ban aggression against the offices of humanitarian organisations. “As such, we demand an end to economic preferences and dealing with this aggressive state.”
He pointed out that Israel signed an agreement in 2000 that guarantees human rights, but violates it repetitively. As an example, he cited Israeli violations in respect of 26 foreign activists on 3 May, when police cracked down on a peaceful demonstration in Tel Aviv against institutional violence and racial discrimination targeting Ethiopian Jews.
May 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | European Union, Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Bothaina Al-Najjar, 42, is fearful and cautious while harvesting the wheat and barley on her farm. She can hear the Israeli tanks roaring just a couple of hundred metres away from the Gaza Strip city of Kuza’a. On Friday, Israeli snipers positioned on the Gaza border in the north of the besieged territory shot a Palestinian farmer, causing him serious injuries.
This is an almost daily experience, she told Anadolu reporter Hani Al-Shaer. Israeli tanks could be seen from time to time aiming their barrels towards them during the interview. They also felt that they were in the cross-hairs of Israeli snipers.
Wearing her traditional dark dress and almost hidden by the wheat crop, she said, “I come to my farm in the early morning and start working very fast in case I am targeted by the Israeli forces.” She does not know why the Israelis target the Palestinians in their land. “We are civilians and they know very well that we pose no danger to them.” Al-Najjar added that she and her family have been there for decades.
Nearby, the Anadolu journalist spotted a 70-year old man who was, along with his wife and sister, harvesting their barley crop. Mahmoud Qdeeh had arrived on his farm at 9:30am. When Al-Shaer approached to speak to him, gunfire could be heard, fired from the Israeli side of the border.
Qdeeh ignored the shots, but his sister insisted that he should leave. They collected what they had harvested, packed it onto a donkey cart and fled.
Recalling her youth, Al-Najjar told the journalist that at harvest time the farmers used to prepare big meals and invite their neighbours to eat. “But, after 2000, the Israeli occupation razed hundreds of acres of Palestinian farmland and made our lives hell.”
May 10, 2015
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Natalie Abed Rabbo
JERUSALEM – A young Palestinian woman from occupied East Jerusalem has accused security guards at an Israeli light rail station, along with Israeli police officers, of physically and verbally assaulting her on Thursday.
Natalie Abed Rabbo, 18, told Ma’an that she had bought a light rail ticket and was boarding the tram, when “all of a sudden, a security guard approached me and accused me of boarding the tram without a ticket.”
She said that she showed her ticket to the the guard, but that he ignored it. She added: “I asked him to check the surveillance cameras to make sure that I had bought a ticket, but he refused.”
Abed Rabbo said that she then asked to speak to an officer to submit a complaint, but before she was able to do so, “eight security guards attacked me and pushed me into a corner, grabbing me by the neck.”
She said that a female Israeli police officer tried to take away her handbag, but that she held onto it.
Abed Rabbo said she was able to use her mobile phone to call her family, and that her mother and brother soon arrived on the scene.
However, she said: “Special force officers then arrived and they beat my mother and brother, and they cuffed my hands and my feet.”
The young woman said she was taken to the Russian Compound police station where she said she was again physically assaulted.
The interrogator “accused me of boarding the tram without a ticket, as well as assaulting security officers and police personnel,” she said.
Abbed Rabbo was released several hours later having paid a bail of 3,000 shekels. She said she was also forced to pay a fine of 200 shekels for breaching tram regulations.
On Monday, a Palestinian man was shot in the foot by a security guard at a light rail station near the illegal Israeli French Hill settlement in East Jerusalem.
The security guard alleged that Hatem Salah had been attempting to stab passengers, although police later withdrew the allegations after it became clear that Salah had not been in possession of any sharp objects at the time.
Early investigations showed that Salah had been physically assaulted by two Israeli light rail guards on Sunday, the day before he was shot.
The light rail service began operating in 2011 along a 14-kilometer (nine-mile) route which begins at Mount Herzl and passes through West Jerusalem before heading through the Palestinian east of the city and ending at the illegal settlement of Pisgat Zeev.
Land belonging to Palestinians in Shuafat was confiscated in 2001 by the Jerusalem Municipality for the construction of the light rail, which will eventually link more illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem upon its expected completion in 2016.
May 9, 2015
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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At-Tuwani, Occupied Palestine – The entire Palestinian village of Susya is in danger of demolition and expulsion. By refusing to issue an interim order preventing preemptive demolitions before their case is heard, the Israeli High Court is allowing for the demolition of the entire Palestinian village of Susya and subsequent expulsion of its 340 residents. The refusal of the State to commit to not demolishing before the conclusion of proceedings suggests it has plans to destroy the village in the near future.
On one hand, the High Court of Justice is willing to hear the village’s petition to legitimize its status, but on the other hand, the court allows the village to be destroyed before even deciding on the case.
On May 5 2015, High Court Judge Noam Solberg rejected the request for an interim order by the Palestinian village of Susya, represented by Rabbis for Human Rights, in a petition against the Civil Administration’s decision to reject the master plan prepared by the village and subsequent demolition of the entire village.
The village argued that their plan was rejected for non-professional reasons and that the village should be legalized due to its unique history. The residents sought an interim order to freeze the implementation of the demolitions until the petition is heard, as is standard practice in these sort of cases.It was against this request for an interim order that Justice Solberg, without even conducting a hearing on the request, made the unusual move of granting the state’s request not to freeze the orders. This decision means that the Civil Administration can now destroy Susya at any time. The demolition of the village will lead to hundreds of residents living in the desert with no roof over their heads and may result in their displacement. The state’s refusal to commit to waiting for a conclusion to the court proceedings raises great alarm that it intends to implement the demolition order in the near future; tragically, it seems the villagers are in real danger.
In the petition, Susya’s residents claimed that the army is obliged to legalize their village as it was the one to confiscate their land and their caves in 1986, leaving them without a housing solution and forcing them to move to their adjacent agricultural lands. As evidence to the life in the village prior to the expropriation, various testimonials and photographs of life in caves were presented to the judge. Among other things, there were documented photos of a visit by the US Consulate to the village at the beginning of 1986. The photos and testimony clearly shows that the Palestinian village of Susya is an old village formed prior to the Israeli occupation and the declaration of the area as an archaeological site.
Among the evidence was the opinion of the late governmental legal adviser Plia Albeck (considered to be very pro-settlement and who wrote in her memoirs that she tried to find legal ways to declare Palestinian land as State land), indicating the existence of a Palestinian village in 1982 where today the archaeological site stands.
Despite the evidence presented before him, revealing the many injustices done to the villagers – from the expropriation and dispossession of their lands, to the refusal by the state to recognize the status of the village in its new location – Judge Sohlberg did not agree to hear the case before allowing the demolition of the village and setting the fate of its inhabitants.
Attached to the petition, inter alia, was an expert opinion by Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, a renowned expert in international law, stipulating that the demolition of the village of Susya constitutes a war crime.
This week, a report by radical right-wing NGO “Regavim” (which has close ties to the settlement enterprise) was exposed indicating that in the nearby Jewish settlement, also called Susia, there are 23 illegal homes built on private Palestinian land. We have no indication of any attempt by the state to demolish these illegal structures in the settlement Sussia or in its nearby outposts. We see in this current situation that this Jewish settlement, whose very existence is prohibited by international law, and where some of its homes are sitting on private Palestinian land, is prosperous, while the Palestinian village of Susya, whose inhabitants are on their own private land, is at risk of displacement and loss of their entire village.
Background:
In 1986 the village of Susya was declared an archaeological site, its land expropriated, and its inhabitants, who lived in caves, were deported. While the Palestinians were told that they could not reside in an archeological site, Israeli settlers live in an illegal outpost located inside the archeological site.
After the expulsion, villagers were forced to move to their neighboring agricultural plots. Because there was no willingness to grant a zoning plan, they involuntarily became illegal builders. Dozens of villagers followed procedures in attempts to obtain building permits, but those attempts were rejected. In 2012 the villagers raised funds and submitted a proposed master plan, drawn up by Professor Rassem Khamaiseh, for the Civil Administration for review. The plan would authorize construction in the village according to accepted standards of professional planning.
The plan was rejected in 2013 on very questionable grounds, indicating a double standard in planning, and blatant discrimination against the Palestinian population. For example, it was argued that the number of residents in the village, which is a few hundred people, is not substantial enough to grant it independent planning as its own entity. On the other hand, dozens of unauthorized outposts which are built housing only a handful of residents are approved by the Civil Administration’s planning body. In addition, it was argued that the plan will prevent the population from properly developing and moving out of poverty, and therefore, they should be moved to an adjacent city. It should be noted that the city is, of course, in Area A, and what actually prevents the progress of Susya is the lack of infrastructure which they are prevented from building. Also important to note is that Israelis are permitted to choose their preferred way of life – be it urban or rural, and are not forced by the state into one or the other.
In 2014, Rabbis for Human Rights petitioned the High Court on behalf of the Susya village council and its residents against the decision to reject the village master plan (HCJ 1420/14). As mentioned, on May 5th the court rejected the request for an interim injunction, leaving the whole village vulnerable to imminent demolition.
The big picture:
The danger of demolishing and expropriating the village of Susya reflects the systemic problem of planning for Palestinian villages located in Area C; in these villages, planning is done by military planning committees, without representation of Palestinians, with the intent of preventing residents from building on their own land based on reasonable and professional planning standards. A recent High Court petition, submitted by the village council Dirat, Rabbis for Human Rights, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Society, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and St. Yves – Catholic Human Rights Center, demands planning authority be returned to Palestinian villages for their own communities in order to prevent the tragic demolitions of hundreds of homes every year due to the impossibility of obtaining building permits.
May 9, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing | Human rights, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Book description:
Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza’s population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured.
In these pages, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel’s assault. The images he records in this extraordinary chronicle are a literary equivalent of Goya’s “Disasters of War”: children’s corpses stuffed into vegetable refrigerators, pointlessly because the electricity is off; a family rushing out of their home after a phone call from the Israeli military informs them that the building will be obliterated by an F-16 missile in three minutes; donkeys machine-gunned by Israeli soldiers under instructions to shoot anything that moves; graveyards targeted with shells so that mourners can no longer tell where their relatives are buried; fishing boats ablaze in the harbor.
Throughout this carnage, Omer maintains the cool detachment of the professional journalist, determined to create a precise record of what is occurring in front of him. But between his lines the outrage boils, and we are left to wonder how a society such as Israel, widely-praised in the West as democratic and civilized, can visit such monstrosities on a trapped and helpless population.
302 pages • Paperback ISBN 978-1-939293-92-3 • E-book 978-1-939293-93-0
Available from OR Books
May 9, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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An Israeli soldier said that he and his colleagues bombed civilian targets in the Gaza Strip during last year’s war on the enclave for entertainment.
During an interview with French Le Monde newspaper in Jerusalem yesterday, the soldier who identified himself as Arieh, 20, said: “I was called to service early on July 2014 and was deployed to the Gaza Strip but until that time the operation [Operation Protective Edge] was not announced yet. Only some soldiers speculated that there will be war, but later our commander told us to imagine a 200 metre radius and to immediately shoot anything moving inside this circle.”
“We bombed civilian targets for entertainment,” he said, adding that “one day at about 8am we went to the Al-Bureij; a highly dense residential area in central Gaza, and the commander told us to select a random target and shoot it, at the time we did not see any Hamas fighters, no one shot at us, but the commander told us jokingly: ‘We have to send Bureij a morning greeting from the Israeli army’.”
“I remember that one day, a soldier from our unit was killed and our commander asked us for revenge so I drew the tank randomly towards a huge white residential building, just four kilometres away from us and fired a shell at the 11th floor. I must have killed civilians who were absolutely innocent,” he continued.
He pointed out that the target was to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure, not only Hamas, saying: “We entered the Gaza Strip on July 19 2014 to search for Hamas’s tunnels between Gaza and Israel, but our goal was to destroy Hamas and the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure and to create the largest possible damage to the agricultural land and the economy. Hamas had to pay an expensive bill in order to think twice before entering into a new conflict with us.”
“We destroyed many Palestinian buildings, farms and electricity poles. They told us that ‘we must avoid civilian casualties as much as possible’, but how could you do that when they ask you to leave behind so much destruction,” he added.
He stressed that what happened in the Gaza Strip violates what he learned in the army. “I learned in the army that you are responsible for setting goals and hitting them. We have also learned during our training that you cannot play with the trigger, even on a trial basis, but what happened in the enclave was contrary to our consciences.”
Arieh said: “During the operations in the Gaza Strip, the unit commander said: ‘If you see someone in front of the tank who does not immediately flee, you must kill them.’ so he could see that there are civilians.”
Arieh added that the limits for the battle were very broad and based on personal decision.
“If you see something suspicious in the window of a Palestinian home, or were afraid while you approached a house with a tank, you could fire immediately, even if there was no actual threat. This principle was contrary to everything we have learned in previous military exercises before the July 2014 operation in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
“We used shells excessively, when I saw anything moving, if an open window, I would shell it. If I saw a moving car, I would fire a rocket. We fired missiles at moving objects and not individuals. We did not see moving individuals in our surroundings, but we fired anyway. We only saw women and children and elderly in the ceasefire which lasted only for a few hours, but I was so afraid that there were suicide bombers among them that I thought to shoot near them.”
“I can confirm that we only saw civilians, we did not see any Hamas fighters. We knew they moved through tunnels. We would enter an area and suddenly they would start firing at us and we would retreat. We were more afraid than Hamas spies who stood on rooftops with their phones to reveal our locations,” the soldier explained.
Arieh said the Israeli army would fire at any house if they saw someone holding a telephone and standing on the rooftop. “We considered anyone with a telephone on a rooftop a Hamas spy, even if that person was a woman.”
Arieh is one of about 60 Israeli soldiers who agreed to testify in a report prepared by Israeli human rights organisation Breaking the Silence.
The 237-page report concluded that the Israeli army left “unprecedented harm” among Palestinian civilians during the war through random firing and the application of loose rules of engagement.
The Israeli army launched a 51-day war on the Gaza Strip on 7 July 2014, resulting in the death of more than 2,000 Palestinians and wounding about 11,000 others, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Meanwhile, 68 Israeli soldiers and four civilians were killed and 2,522 more were injured including 740 soldiers, according to official Israeli figures.
May 6, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Amnesty International has issued four reports on the Israeli massacre in Gaza in 2014.1 Given the scale of the destruction and the number of fatalities, any attempt to document the crimes committed should be welcomed. However, these reports are problematic, and raise questions about the organisation itself, including why the reports were ever written at all.2 They also raise questions about the broader human rights industry that are worth considering.
Basic background
July 2014 marked the onset of the Israeli massacre in Gaza (I will dispense with the Israeli sugar-coated “operation” name). The Israeli army trained for this attack for several months before finding a pretext to attack the Gaza Strip, shattering an existing ceasefire; this was the third such post-“disengagement” (2004) attack, and possibly the worst so far. At least 2,215 people were killed and 10,000+ wounded, most of them civilians. The scale of destruction was staggering: tens of thousands of houses were rendered uninhabitable; several high-rise buildings were struck by huge American-supplied bombs; schools and hospitals were targeted; 61 mosques were totally destroyed; water purification and sewage treatment plants were damaged; Gaza’s main flour mill was bombed; and all chicken farms in the territory were ravaged. There was incalculable devastation.3
Israeli control over Gaza has been in place for decades, with violence escalating over time, and the Palestinians there have been under siege for the past eight years. The Israelis have placed Gaza “on a diet”,4 permitting only a trickle of strictly controlled goods to cross the border, enough to keep the population above starvation levels. The whole Gaza Strip is surrounded on all sides, blocked off from the outside world: military bulldozers raze border areas, snipers injure farmers, and warships menace or destroy fishing boats with gunfire. Periodically, the Israelis engage in what they term “mowing the lawn” massacres and large scale destruction. It is this history that must serve as the foundation of any report that attempts to describe both the intent of the participating parties and the relative consequences.
Context-challenged – by design
The ongoing crimes perpetrated against Gaza are chronic and, indeed, systematic. Arnon Soffer, one of Israel’s Dr Strangelove types and “intellectual father of the wall”, had this to say about the enclave:
Q (Ruthie Blum): Will Israel be prepared to fight this war?
Arnon Soffer: […] Instead of entering Gaza, the way we did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what’s waiting for them. Second of all, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.5
To determine the reasons behind Israeli actions, one only has to read what such Dr Strangeloves say; it is no secret. The aim is to create miserable conditions to drive the Palestinians off their land, warehouse the population in an open air prison called Gaza, and to repress any Palestinian resistance disproportionately. Israelis have to “kill and kill and kill, all day”. Such pathological reasoning puts Israeli actions into perspective; they are major crimes, possibly genocidal. Recognition of such crimes has some consequences.
First, the nature of the crimes requires their recognition as crimes against humanity, arguably one of the most serious crimes under international law. Second, Israeli crimes put the violence of the Palestinian resistance into perspective; Palestinians have a legitimate right to defend themselves against the occupying power. Third, the long history of violence perpetrated against the Palestinians, and the resulting power imbalance, suggests that one should be in solidarity with the victim, not the aggressor.
Amnesty, though, refuses to acknowledge the serious nature of Israeli crimes, by using an intellectually bankrupt subterfuge. It insists that as a rights-based organisation it cannot refer to historical context; doing so would be considered “political”, in its warped jargon. An examination of what Amnesty considers as “background” in its reports confirms that there is virtually no reference to relevant history or context, such as the prior Israeli attacks on Gaza, who initiated those attacks, the Goldstone Report, and so on. Hey presto! Now there is no need to mention serious crimes. It also doesn’t recognise the nature of the Palestinian resistance, and their right to self-defence. Nowhere does Amnesty International acknowledge that Palestinians are entitled to defend themselves against Israel’s military occupation. Finally, the rights group cannot express solidarity with the victim because, hey, “both sides” are victims!
At this point, once Amnesty has chosen to ignore the serious Israeli crimes, it takes on the Mother Teresa role of sitting on the fence castigating “both sides” for non-compliance with international humanitarian law that determines the rules of war. Thus, Amnesty criticises Israel not for the transgression of attacking Gaza, but for utilising excessive force or targeting civilians. The group’s favourite term to describe such events is “disproportionate”. This is problematic because it suggests that there is no problem with the nature of the action, just with the means or scale of it. While Amnesty bleats that a one-ton bomb in a refugee camp is disproportionate, it would seem that using a 100kg bomb would be acceptable. Another favoured term is “conflict”, a state of affairs where both sides are at fault, both are at once victims and transgressors.
Notice that while Amnesty avoids recognising major crimes by using its rights-based framework, it suddenly changes its hat, and takes on a very legalistic approach to criticise the violence perpetrated by the Palestinians. It manages then to list the full panoply of international humanitarian law which it deems to be applicable.
The key thing to watch in the upcoming International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of the 2014 massacre will be whether the court will copy the Amnesty approach. Any investigation that doesn’t focus on the cause of the violence and who initiated it will result in another fraud, and no pixel of justice.
Criminalising Palestinian resistance
Amnesty dispenses with the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves by stating that the rockets fired from Gaza are “indiscriminate”, and proceeds to call their use a war crime. Palestinian resistance groups are also told not to hide in heavily populated areas, not to execute collaborators, and so on. While Palestinians are told that their resistance amounts to war crimes, the Israelis aren’t told that their attacks are criminal per se; for them, it is only a matter of scale.
The “Unlawful and deadly rocket and Mortar Attacks…” report condemns repeatedly Palestinian rocket firing with inaccurate weapons, deems these “indiscriminate”, and ipso facto war crimes. Amnesty confuses the term “inaccurate” with “indiscriminate”. Examining the table below suggests that Israel killed proportionately far more civilians, albeit with more accurate weapons. It is quite possible to target indiscriminately with precision munitions. There is also a possibility, which Amnesty International appears to disregard, that the Israeli military targeted civilians intentionally. Indeed, it is likely that Israeli drones targeted children intentionally. A report by Defence for Children International states: “As a matter of policy, Israel deliberately and indiscriminately targeted the very spaces where children are supposed to feel most secure.”6
Regardless of the accuracy of the weapons, the key issue is one of intent. Amnesty dwells on an explosion at the Shati refugee camp on 28 July. On the basis of one field worker’s testimony, Israeli-supplied evidence and an unnamed “independent munitions expert”,7 the organisation concludes that:
Amnesty International has received no substantive response to its inquiries about this incident from the Palestinian authorities. An independent and impartial investigation is needed, and both the Palestinian and Israeli authorities must co-operate fully. The attack appears to have violated international humanitarian law in several ways, as the evidence indicates that it was an indiscriminate attack using a prohibited weapon which may well have been fired from a residential area within the Gaza Strip and may have been intended to strike civilians in Israel. If the projectile is confirmed to be a Palestinian rocket, those who fired it and those who commanded them must be investigated for responsibility for war crimes.
Mother Teresa certainly provides enough comic material; an occasional joke makes it easier to read a dull report. The evidence for the provenance of this missile is taken at face value although it is supplied by Israel, but, of course, it requires an “investigation”; Amnesty is suggesting that both Israel and the Palestinians should investigate this incident. If the Palestinian resistance was responsible for this explosion, then it was caused by a misfire; thus, there was no intention to cause the consequent deaths. Suggesting that this amounts to a war crime is rather absurd, but the title of the section advertising the report on the Amnesty International website suggests a motive for harping on about this incident: “Palestinian armed groups killed civilians on both sides in attacks amounting to war crimes”. This conveys a rather warped and negative view of the Palestinian resistance – they kill civilians on both sides – and it suggests that it is not possible to be in solidarity with them.
Tyranny of reasons
After any Israeli attack, the pro-Israel propagandists offer a rationale about why a given target was struck. They claim that there were Palestinian militants firing rockets from hospitals, schools, mosques, the power plant and other civilian buildings. At a stroke, such locations are legitimised as Israeli targets whether or not the propaganda statements are true. What is disconcerting in the two reports on Israeli crimes is that Amnesty International imputes reasons for the targeting of buildings or families.
One finds, for example, statements such as:
- Amnesty International believes this attack was targeting one individual.
- The apparent target was a member of a military group, targeted at a time when he was at home with his family.
- The fighters who were the apparent targets could have been targeted at a different time or in a different manner that was less likely to cause excessive harm to civilians and destruction of civilian objects.
- The apparent target of Israel’s attack was Ahmad Sahmoud, a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing. […] Surviving family members and neighbours denied this.
Amnesty parrots the rationales provided by the Israeli military; one only needs to look at the footnotes of its reports to check the veracity of this claim. And Amnesty discounts the intentional bombing of buildings to create misery among the Palestinian middle class and demoralise a key sector of society; and that destroying the power plant amounts to collective punishment. But don’t worry, Mother T will always check with the Israeli military to determine why something was targeted.
AI is not an anti-war organisation
One would expect a human rights organisation to be intrinsically opposed to war, but Amnesty International is a cheerleader of so-called humanitarian intervention, and even “humanitarian bombing”.8 Despite such a predisposition, it was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, yet another questionable recipient of a prize meant to be given only to those actively opposed to wars. Today, one wonders if AI is going to jump on the R2P (Right to Protect) neocon bandwagon. A consequence of its “not-anti-war” stance is that it doesn’t criticise wars conducted by the United States, Britain or Israel; it is only the excesses that merit Amnesty’s occasional lame rebuke, often prefaced with the term “disproportionate” or “alleged”. This stance is evident in its latest reports; here the premise is that the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip was legitimate, but it is the conduct of “both sides” that is the object of the reports’ criticism.
Can’t see the wood for the trees
Amnesty International is a small organisation with insufficient resources to conduct a proper report on the massacre in Gaza last year. Given the fact that it didn’t have direct access to Gaza approved by Israel, it chose to focus on two aspects of the Israeli attack: the targeting of entire families and the destruction of landmark buildings. Within these two categories it chose to focus on a handful of examples of each. The main problem is that Amnesty harps on about a few cases to the exclusion of the totality; it can’t see the wood for the trees. There is no mention of some of the most significant total figures, say, of the number of hospitals and schools destroyed, the tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza,9 the tens of thousands of artillery shells used, and so on. The seriousness of the crime is lost by dwelling on a subset of a subset of the crimes committed. Amnesty isolates a few examples, describes them in some detail, and then suggests that unless there were military reasons for the attacks, then there should be an “investigation”. Oh yes, and it has sent some polite letters to the Israeli authorities requesting some comment, but the Israelis have been rather unresponsive. Quite possibly the likes of Netanyahu, Ya’alon, Ganz and their colleagues are too busy rolling on the floor laughing.
Given such a warped framework one would expect symmetry in the way that the attacks are described, but no. While Amnesty provides the total number of rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance, it gives no similar numbers of the tens of thousands of Israeli artillery shells fired, nor the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza. The Israeli military propagandists were all too happy to provide detailed statistics about the Palestinian rockets, and Amnesty does not seem to express any misgivings about using this data. It is also clear that Mother T didn’t ask the propagandists to supply statistics on the lethal Israeli tonnage dropped on Gaza.
Methodology and evidence
Every report contains a methodology section admitting to the fact that AI didn’t have direct access to Gaza. All of its research was done on the Israeli side, and by two Palestinian fieldworkers in the besieged and occupied territory. The inability to enter Gaza possibly explains the reliance on many Israeli military statements, blogs and the foreign ministry about the Palestinian rocket attacks. One can verify all the footnotes to find a significant number of official Israeli statements to provide so-called evidence. It is rather jarring to find Amnesty relying on information provided by the offensive military forces to implicate Palestinian resistance in war crimes. How appropriate is it to use “Hamas’ Violations of the Law” issued by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or “Declassified Report Exposes Hamas Human Shield Policy” issued by the Israeli military?
It is also jarring to find Amnesty referring to Israeli claims that rockets were fired from schools, hospitals and the electricity power plant. This information was provided as a justification for Israel’s destruction of such sites, but in the report Amnesty uses it to wag its finger at the Palestinian resistance.10
Amnesty International’s access to Israeli victims of Palestinian rockets produced emotional statements by the victims, and complied with Israeli propaganda needs. Israeli PR was keen to take journalists or visiting politicians to the border towns to show the rocket damage, and Amnesty seems to have been pleased to tag along. At the same time, Israel prevented any Amnesty access to Gaza; clearly, any information coming out of the territory would not be compliant with Israeli PR requirements. Thus, why send any researchers to the Israeli border area?
Execution of collaborators – who will be criticised?
Amnesty has announced the publication of a forthcoming report on the execution of collaborators, and one can only speculate on its contents. It is odd that while AI is not opposed to wars it is opposed to the death sentence; it is opposed to some deaths, but silent about others. Couple this stance with an unwillingness to recognise the Palestinian right to self-defence and, consequently, AI will inevitably deem the execution of Palestinians who collaborate with Israel as abhorrent.
There are many collaborators in the West Bank and they are evident at all levels of society, even in the so-called Palestinian Authority. The PA has even committed itself to their protection. Collaboration with Israel in the West Bank is thus a relatively low-risk activity. In Gaza there are also collaborators, who are used to infiltrate and inform on the armed resistance groups, and also to sow black propaganda. During the 2014 massacre, collaborators were instrumental in pinpointing the location of the resistance and its leadership. In most countries, treason and espionage in time of war merits execution, but it is doubtful that Amnesty International will accept this, and will instead urge a judicial process with no death sentence.
The key aspect of the forthcoming report will be whether the organisation deems the Israeli use of collaborators as an abhorrent practice. Israel not only uses collaborators to gather information, but they are also meant to fragment Palestinian society, and to sow discord. With a society already under massive stress due to economic hardship and military repression, collaborators are a pernicious means to break morale and undermine Palestinian resilience. Will Amnesty criticise Israel’s use of collaborators, or will its report merely castigate Hamas for the way it deals with collaborators?
Why were these reports written at all?
All Amnesty International reports follow the same formula: a brief overview, a methodology section about data sources, some emotional quotations by the victims, a section on accountability, and then some recommendations. They are trite, barely readable and certainly not very useful either for legal purposes or to educate its volunteers. So why are these reports published and who actually reads them? Amnesty would like to be known as one of the leading human rights organisations and it must be seen as reporting on major human rights violations and crimes. Its volunteers must be given the impression that the organisation cares for some of the wholesale atrocities, and not merely the retail crime or violation.
The timing of the publication of one report (“Unlawful and deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks…”) is rather curious. The report dealing with the Palestinian rockets was published a few days before the Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court. A coincidence? While some Palestinians are gearing up to prosecute Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a leading human rights organisation publishes a report which goes on about Palestinians being guilty of war crimes. Amnesty has published reports in the past that were exploited for propaganda purposes; the Iraqis throwing-the-babies-out-of-the-incubators propaganda hoax, for example.11 Those reports were published just in time to provide a justification for war.
Impotence by design
All the reports contain a list of recommendations for Israelis, Palestinians and other states. One is struck by the impotence of the recommendations. The group urges Israel to cooperate with the UN commission of inquiry; allow human rights organisations access to Gaza; pay reparations to some victims; and ensure that the Israeli military operates within some legal limits. Given that Israel can more or less do as it pleases in any case – ignoring commissions of inquiry, proclaiming loudly that it will engage in disproportionate attacks (that is, the Dahiya doctrine), and that it refuses to compensate any Palestinian victim of its previous massacres – all these recommendations ring hollow.
Amnesty urges Palestinians to address their grievances via the ICC. It is curious that while international law apparently provides the Palestinians with no protection whatsoever, they are urged to jump through international legal hoops. It is also questionable to suggest a legal framework meant for interstate conflict when dealing with a non-state dispossessed native population. Of course, Amnesty fails to mention that Israel has avoided and ignored international law with the complicity and assistance of the United States.
Finally, Amnesty International requests other governments to assist the commission of inquiry and to assist in the prosecution of war criminals. It remains to be seen whether the commission of inquiry will actually publish a report that has some teeth. The group also urges other countries to stop supplying weapons to “both sides”. There is no mention of the fact that the US resupplied Israel with weapons during last year’s massacre in Gaza. It is very unlikely that the US or Britain will stop arming Israel; as such, Amnesty’s recommendations are ineffective rhetoric.
Amnesty trumpets that it has 7 million supporters world-wide;12 a few months ago this number was 3 million; two years ago it was 400,000, and a few more years ago it was 200,000. One should marvel at this explosive growth. If the organisation really can tap into the support of even a fraction of these volunteers, then it can urge them to do something that has tangible results; it could, for example, ask its members and supporters to boycott Israeli products or products made by western companies complicit in Israeli crimes. Such action would be far more effective than the meaningless recommendations that are ignored regularly by Israel and its western backers. Alas, it is difficult to conceive that Amnesty will issue a call for a boycott to its ever expanding army of supporters. It is difficult for Mother T to change her stripes.
The human rights industry
There are thousands of so-called human rights organisations. Anyone can set up such a group, and thereby specify a narrow focus for the NGO, determine the parameters within which it will operate – even define who is human – and then the new organisation can chime in with press releases, host wine and cheese receptions, bestow prizes, lobby politicians, launch investigations and castigate the enemy du jour. Bono, Geldof and Angelina might even hop along and sit on the NGO’s board. The human rights framework is elastic and can be moulded to fit legitimate purposes, but it can also be manipulated for propaganda purposes. The history of some of the largest human rights organisations shows that they were created originally with the propaganda element foremost in mind.13 This suggests that NGO output, such as Amnesty’s reports, for example, merit scrutiny not so much for what they say, but for what they omit. In the Palestinian context, a simple test on the merits of a so-called human rights organisation is whether it challenges state power, calls for accountability and the prosecution of war criminals, and urges its supporters to do something more than write out cheques or very formal and polite letters to governments engaged in criminal acts.
Another test for the merits of a human rights NGO is whether it is in solidarity with the victims of violence, and whether victims are treated differently depending on their support or demonisation by “the west”. In Amnesty’s case, consider that on the one hand it provides long lists of “prisoners of conscience” pertaining to prisoners held in Cuba, Syria, etc., but on the other hand it explicitly does not make such a list of Palestinian prisoners available.[14] We have no means of knowing how many Palestinian political prisoners Amnesty actually cares about, and whether its volunteers engage in letter writing campaigns on their behalf. One thing is certain, though, that while the majority of Cuban political prisoners are considered prisoners of conscience, only a tiny fraction of the Palestinian political prisoners have been given such status. In reality, of course, Mother Teresa doesn’t give a hoot about political prisoners who might have been involved in violence, so Palestinians are just a stone’s throw away from being ignored by Amnesty International. Some victims are more meritorious than others.
In trying to justify the organisation’s double standard, Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme, stated:
“By its nature, the Israeli administrative detention system is a secretive process, in that the grounds for detention are not specified in detail to the detainee or his/her legal representative; inevitably, this makes it especially difficult for the detainee to challenge the order for, by example, contesting the grounds on which the detention was made. In the same way, it makes it difficult or impossible for Amnesty International to make a conclusive determination in many cases whether a particular administrative detainee can be considered a prisoner of conscience or not.”15
It thus provides yet more comic material. AI admits that Israeli military courts can determine who can be considered a Palestinian prisoner of conscience. The only thing that those courts need to do is to keep their proceedings secret or not reveal “evidence”. Alternatively, they can simply imprison the victims without trial or declare that they are members of a “banned” organisation16 and then the Israelis won’t have to reply to those pesky polite letters written by AI volunteers. Once again, double standards in the treatment of victims raise questions about the nature of any human rights NGO.
Human rights is denatured justice
Pushing for the observance of human rights doesn’t necessarily imply that one will obtain justice. The human rights agenda merely softens the edges of the status quo. As Amnesty’s position on the Israeli attacks on Gaza illustrates, pushing human rights can actually be incompatible with obtaining justice. Human rights are a bastardised, neutered and debased form of justice. The application and effectiveness of international law is bad enough, but a pick and choose legal framework with no enforcement is even worse. If one seeks justice, then it is best to avoid the human rights discourse; above all, it is best to avoid human rights organisations.
Palestinians should be wary of Mother Teresas peddling human rights snake oil. In exchange for giving up their resistance and complying with Amnesty’s neutered norms, they are unlikely to obtain any justice. One should be wary of human rights groups that don’t push for justice, play the role of Israel’s lawyer, and are bereft of solidarity with the victims. When the likes of Amnesty International come wagging their finger, it is best to keep the old blunderbuss near to hand.
Further Reading
- Nabeel Abraham, et al.; International Human Rights Organizations and the Palestine Question, Middle East Report (MERIP), Vol. 18, No. 1, January-February 1988, pp. 12 – 20.
- Dennis Bernstein and Francis Boyle, Amnesty on Jenin: an interview, CAQ, Summer 2002, pp. 9 – 12, 27.
- Paul de Rooij, AI: Say It Isn’t So, CounterPunch, 31 Oct. 2002
- Paul de Rooij, Amnesty International: The Case of a Rape Foretold, CounterPunch, 26 November 2003
- Paul de Rooij, Double Standards and Curious Silences / Amnesty International: A False Beacon, CounterPunch, 13 October 2004.
- PIWP database: list of articles on the politics of human rights
Footnotes
- Families Under the Rubble: Israeli Attacks on Inhabited Homes (MDE 15/032/2014), 5 November 2014.
“Nothing is immune”: Israel’s destruction of landmark buildings in Gaza (MDE 15/029/2014), 9 December 2014.
Unlawful and deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict (MDE 21/1178/2015), 26 March 2015.
The fourth report about the execution of collaborators has not been published yet.
- I distinguish between Amnesty International, the international organization, and its well intentioned letter-writing volunteers.
- Possibly the best overview of the Gaza Massacre 2014 is Al Haq’s Divide and Conquer; http://alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/divide-and-conquer
- Statement made in 2006 by Dov Weisglas, one of Israel’s Dr. Strangeloves and close confidant of Ariel Sharon. Source: http://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?qid=1013
- Ruthie Blum interviews Arnon Soffer, ONE on ONE: It’s the demography, stupid, Jerusalem Post, 10 May 2004
- Ali Abunimah , Israel “directly targeted” children in drone strikes on Gaza, says rights group, Electronic Intifada, 17 April 2015.
- Amnesty loves to trot out military experts and dwell on the type of weapons used. First, there is an issue about the military expert, and who they are. What is the ethics about showing up in Gaza with a military person who might still be in the armed forces of, say, the UK? One can hardly expect them to be “independent”. And why dwell on the type of munitions if their use is already criminal to begin with? Focusing on the type of weapon deflects attention from the damage and the victims – that should be the emphasis.
- Alexander Cockburn, “How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More?”, CounterPunch newsletter, April 1-15, 1999.
- While AI reports the total number of Palestinian rockets fired, there is no equivalent number to the totals used by the Israeli military. That number would be of interest because it would indicate the scale of the crimes committed. Tens of thousands of artillery shells were used, requiring them to be restocked by the United States in the middle of the offensive.
- The UN report on the Israeli attacks against schools lists several incidents where the Israelis falsely accused the Palestinians of firing on these schools. Such evidence should reduce the credibility of Israeli statements. See, e.g., Ali Abunimah, UN finds Israel killed dozens at Gaza schools but ducks call for accountability, Electronic Intifada, 28 April 2015.
- In the lead up to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait/Iraq, Amnesty issued a report on the so-called babies out of incubators story. President Bush Senior showcased the report on the eve of the attack, and used it for its full propaganda potential. When it was pointed out to Amnesty that they were pushing a propaganda hoax, it doubled its estimate of the number of children dumped from the incubators. To this day, the organisation has never apologised for playing a role in selling an American war.
- See: https://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/ And notice that in the page after title page of Amnesty International’s reports the number of supporters increases from one report to the next.
- Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, Sutton Publishing, 29 April 2002. Herein she discusses the origin of Human Rights Watch.
- Malcolm Smart, Letter: Amnesty International’s Prisoner of Conscience lists and the reason for double standards, 9 August 2010 http://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?aid=133223.
- Ibid.
- Another technique to rule out sympathetic treatment of Palestinians is to suggest that they are members of a banned organisation. NB: it is Israel which does the banning. Any organisation seeking liberation or to confront the Israeli dispossession or violence is deemed by the Israelis to be a “terrorist organisation”. Currently, Amnesty plays along with this charade, and also ignores Palestinians belonging to “political” organisations.
May 6, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Amnesty International, Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, ICC, International Criminal Court, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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