Tag Archives: International

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International Law and the Problem of Enforcement

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Dr. Lawrence Davidson, 5 June 2011

Part I – Anthropomorphizing the Nation State

One of the defining characteristics of modern Western culture is individuality. Most people in the West take it for granted that they have the right to free expression and personality development. However, in practice, this right is not open ended. It is fine if you want to express yourself as a musician, a painter, a film maker, a writer, etc. Equally legitimate is your desire to express yourself as an engineer, accountant, bus driver or auto mechanic. Things become very different if you have a great desire to express yourself as a thief or want to develop your personality as a serial killer. There are rules, in the form of laws, against these latter avenues of expression. If you choose to ignore these laws there are police forces and courts systems that will seek to force you to do so. Another way of saying this is that within states or nations, people usually must confine their right of self expression to activities that do not impinge in a harmful or unwanted way on others in the community

It was at the end of the 18th and throughout the19th centuries that Western leaders of both established nations and aspiring nationalities began to apply this language of self expression to the nation state. In other words, they claimed the same right of self expression for the collective as for the individual. This represented a melding of romanticism and politics that allowed for the anthropomorphizing of the nation. That is, something that was not a human being (the nation) was being treated as if it was. The French Revolutionaries spoke of “France” as the growing embodiment of human freedom with a mission to export liberty to others, German nationalists such as Herder and Fichte believed that the “German nation” embodied a volkgiest, or “spirit of the people” that had to be free to create a unified and enduring state. Italian, Russian and other nationalists made the same argument for their nationalities or ethnic groups. In each case, the claim that the collective, with its unique cultural personality, had the right to unfettered development led to a serious and continuing problem.

Part II – The Problem

One half of the problem expresses itself in the form of “exceptionalism.” That is the assertion that the nation has rights because its culture and people are, in some way, superior to others and/or because they are “God blessed.” Being superior to others means the nation, striving to realize its uniqueness, has priority claims to a “homeland” and its resources. Those who stand in the way of this goal can be evicted or otherwise persecuted. Or, perhaps, the nation in question has evolved a special way of life (democracy, capitalism, communism, or some religion) that its leaders feel it must share with others–whether they want this gift or not. So it sends out missionaries and diplomats and then usually follows them up with gunboats. Empire building based on a claim of superiority often results. It turns out that almost all great powers, Western and non-Western, have expressed some form of exceptionalism.

The second half of the problem lies in the fact that these anthropomorphized nation states, with their insistence on the right of self expression, are acting in an arena of international relations that lacks sufficient rules to limit their behavior. There is nothing to actually force them to confine their acts of self expression to activities that do not impinge in a harmful or unwanted way on other states or populations. Certainly, traditional diplomacy and the use of standard treaties has not been able to do so. Until the end of the Second World War there were a few Geneva conventions that, with mediocre success, sought to ameliorate the treatment of civilians and prisoners during wartime. Come the world wars of the 20th century even these were ignored. The horrors of WWII gave new impetus to establishing enforceable international rules or laws, including laws against genocide and crimes against humanity, but over time these too have been eroded. And, here again, exceptionalism has been the motivator. We can see how this has taken place by looking at the case of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Part III – Undermining International Law

The ICC was created in 2002 by the a founding treaty known as the Rome Statute. The court was designed to be an independent body capable of prosecuting major transgressions such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, there were also conflicting amendments built into the founding document. Among others, the Court’s jurisdiction is usually limited to crimes committed by a national of a state that is party to the treaty or committed on such a state’s territory. Nonetheless, the Court is also obligated to investigate any case referred to it by the United Nations Security Council, whether the nation or individuals involved are covered by the treaty or not. Presently, 114 countries are party to the treaty and thus subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Some 34 others, including Russia, have signed the treaty but are yet to ratify it. Thus, they are still outside its jurisdiction. An additional 44 states, including China, have never signed the treaty. And finally, several states such as the United States and Israel, while having initially adhered to the treaty have subsequently “unsigned” it and thereby withdrawn from its jurisdiction.

Just what is going on here? It would seem that the leaders of many of the major world powers, China, Russia and the United States, know that they operate in the world on the basis of exceptionalism. They actually are or likely will occupy foreign lands, pursue foreign wars, massacre civilian populations, etc. In other words, the behavior of their nationals is very likely to transgress the laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity, and perhaps genocide as well. So they seek to stay clear of the ICC’s jurisdiction. And, in the case of the United States, the government is tied so closely to the criminal behavior of the Israelis that it has dedicated itself to protecting Israeli nationals also.

That is why, if you look at the record of ICC prosecutions, all of them have to do with smaller states, mostly African, who have relatively little power and no great power patrons. Yet this skewed record gets worse, for the United States and other great powers, which are not even a party to the Rome Statute, have found a way to turn the Court into a weapon to be directed at their assumed enemies. They have done so by taking advantage of the treaty clause requiring the ICC to pursue cases referred to it by the UN Security Council. This harmful bit of hypocrisy has recently been examined in an article by Stuart Littlewood, using information and analysis supplied by Dr. David Morrison of Ireland. Here are some of the points they make:

1. “Libya is not a party to the ICC….Yet three months ago the UN Security Council voted unanimously, in Resolution 1970, to refer the situation in Libya to the prosecutor of the ICC. Five of the states that voted for this referral [including the United States]…are not parties to the ICC and don’t accept its jurisdiction. So here we see the U.S. among those forcing Libya to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, when it refuses to do so itself.”

2. This is a situation that cannot happen to countries like the United States because they can “wield their veto to block any attempt by UN colleagues to extend ICC jurisdiction to their territory.”

3. David Morrison concludes that “a court with universal jurisdiction is fair. A court whose jurisdiction you, as a state, can choose to accept or reject has some semblance of fairness. But a court like the ICC, whose jurisdiction can be targeted, at the whim of the Security Council, on certain states that have chosen not to accept it, but not others, is grossly unfair.”

Part IV – Conclusion

It is the sad height of hypocrisy when the United States, whose leaders claim to have the secret to world salvation (both politically and economically), not only corrupts international law to target others, but simultaneously goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its own nationals from that same law. For instance, if Americans were to commit war crimes in the territories of states party to the Rome Statute, those states could refer the matter to the ICC and the Court could then go after U.S. citizens. Washington has negotiated bi-lateral agreements with over one hundred nations that specifically forbid those states from doing just that. No nation can receive military aide from the U.S. without making this pledge.

This is the behavior of a government that knows it acts in a criminal fashion, be it on a small scale or large, and claims the exceptional right to do so with impunity. The leaders of the U.S. do this because, as so many presidents have told us time and again, the free expression and expansion of the American way of life is best for the world. God has decreed it so. This is extraordinary hubris in action and it is why so much of the rest of the world have, at best, a love-hate relationship with the U.S. and what it claims to stand for.

The notable English thinker and politician, Edmund Burke (1729-97), once observed that “the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” What can be more powerful, and therefore more abusive, than great powers claiming the right of free expression in an international arena devoid of restraining rules? In a world that is, like ours, mostly lawless.

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

The author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com.More articles can be found on RamallahOnline.com, Logos Journal, and Dr. Davidson also maintains an online blog, you can find it at http://www.tothepointanalyses.com

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Remembering Sabra and Shatila

Sami Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah, 17 Sept 2010

I remember very well the day the news broke out of the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla… I was in Riyadh awaiting the birth of my first child Jamil. I also remember very well the statement of Yasser Arafat calling on Palestinian women to produce more children so they can die for his reckless leadership and I asked my self how he dare ask us to give his corrupt, reckless and inept revolution our children so they can meet the same fate of those in Sabra and Shatilla.

When Arafat left Beirut he simply walked away, turned his back on all those who gave everything they have including their lives and the lives of their children to a reckless, incompetent and collaborative leader like the late Yasser Arafat.

It is so ironic that of all countries or organizations involved with or have any thing to do with the massacre, only Israel mustered the courage to open a formal investigation into the massacre resulting in the dismissal of Ariel Sharon as the defense minister and the architect together with the late Alexander Haig (former US Secretary of State) of the War on Lebanon. It is also so ironic that only in Israel where hundreds of thousands of protesters went to the streets in anger over the massacre.

Not a single Arab capital saw the number of protesters as that of Tel-Aviv. It is also ironic that not the PLO, not Fatah, not Syria certainly not Lebanon or the US or the UN ever opens a formal investigation or board of inquiry into the massacre. Arafat and the PLO did not have the courage, certainly were cowards abandoning people behind and entrusting them to the US, a country that was part of the War on Lebanon and the leadership was so incompetent so inept, so fraudulent that it never mustered the courage to demand a UN investigation into the massacre and never held the US accountable for the crime committed under its own eyes.

It seems that Oslo was in the making the day Arafat and the PLO left Lebanon. Of course we need to keep in mind, while Israel dismissed a cabinet member found accountable, albeit (with no direct responsibility) while Syria and Lebanon appointed the man responsible for the massacre as a minister. True the Palestinian leadership has no sense of shame and the Arabs especially revolutionary and nationalist have no sense of shame either. We need to keep in the mind that the Palestinian PNC which supposedly represents the people never demanded from the leadership a formal inquiry and never mustered the courage to open one on its own.

This is the kind of Palestinian leadership we have utterly corrupt, incompetent, useless, self serving certainly collaborative and does not deserve to represent the people. Of course no one ever talks of the massacre in Tel-Zaater where 5,000 were killed and murdered and over 15,000 were forced to flee. No one talks of the “Harb El-Mokhaimant/ Wars of the Camps) were Palestinians were reduced to eating cats and dogs to survive. All the while the leadership was enjoying itself in 5 stars hotels, the benefits of the best brothels East Europe can offer and the best cocktail parties Arab and European capitals can offer. The message was very clear; let the stupid fools die for the cause while the leadership reaps the benefits of their deaths.

Sami Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner)

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Lieberman’s ‘peace’ plan: Strip Palestinians of citizenship

Palestine Israel Flag

Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, 28 June 2010

Blueprint requires pure Jewish state

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel’s future borders.

Warning Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border, Mr Lieberman said that, if such a partition were implemented, “the conflict will inevitably pass beyond those borders and into Israel”.

He accused many of Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of acting against Israel while their leaders “actively assist those who want to destroy the Jewish state”.

Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party campaigned in last year’s elections on a platform of “No loyalty, no citizenship” and has proposed a raft of loyalty laws over the past year targeted at the Palestinian minority.

True peace, the foreign minister claimed, would come only with land swaps, or “an exchange of populated territories to create two largely homogeneous states, one Jewish Israeli and the other Arab Palestinian”. He added that under his plan “those Arabs who were in Israel will now receive Palestinian citizenship”.

Unusually, Mr Lieberman, who is also deputy prime minister, offered his plan in a commentary for the English-language Jerusalem Post daily newspaper, apparently in an attempt to make maximum impact on the international community.

He has spoken repeatedly in the past about drawing the borders in a way to forcibly exchange Palestinian communities in Israel for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But under orders from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, he has kept a relatively low profile on the conflict’s larger issues since his controversial appointment to head the foreign ministry more than a year ago.

In early 2009, Mr Lieberman, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, upset his own supporters by advocating the creation of “a viable Palestinian state”, though he has remained unclear about what it would require in practice.

Mr Lieberman’s revival of his “population transfer” plan — an idea he unveiled six years ago — comes as the Israeli leadership has understood that it is “isolated like never before”, according to Michael Warschawski, an Israeli analyst.

Mr Netanyahu’s government has all but stopped paying lip service to US-sponsored “proximity talks” with the Palestinians after outraging global public opinion with attacks on Gaza 18 months ago and on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla four weeks ago in which nine peace activists were killed.

Israel’s relations with the international community are likely to deteriorate further in late summer when a 10-month partial freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank expires. Last week, Mr Netanyahu refused to answer questions about the freeze, after a vote by his Likud party’s central committee to support renewed settlement building from late September.

Other looming diplomatic headaches for Israel are the return of the Goldstone Report, which suggested Israel committed war crimes in its attack on Gaza, to the United Nations General Assembly in late July, and Turkey’s adoption of the rotating presidency of the Security Council in September.

Mr Warschawski, a founder of the Alternative Information Centre, a joint Israeli-Palestinian advocacy group, said that, faced with these crises, Israel’s political elite had split into two camps.

Most, including Mr Lieberman, believed Israel should “push ahead” with its unilateral policies towards the Palestinians and refuse to engage in a peace process regardless of the likely international repercussions.

“Israel’s ruling elite knows that the only solution to the conflict acceptable to the international community is an end to the occupation along the lines of the Clinton parameters,” he said, referring to the two-state solution promoted by former US president Bill Clinton in late 2000.

“None of them, not even Ehud Barak [the defence minister and head of the centrist Labour Party], are ready to accept this as the basis for negotiations.”

On the other hand, Tzipi Livni, the head of the centre-right opposition Kadima party, Mr Warschawski said, wanted to damp down the international backlash by engaging in direct negotiations with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Lieberman’s commentary came a day after he told Ms Livni that she could join the government only if she accepted “the principle of trading territory and population as the solution to the Palestinian issue, and give up the principle of land for peace”.

Mr Lieberman is reportedly concerned that Mr Netanyahu might seek to bring Ms Livni into a national unity government to placate the US and prop up the legitimacy of his coalition.

The Labour Party has threatened to quit the government if Kadima does not join by the end of September, and Ms Livni is reported to want the foreign ministry.

Mr Lieberman’s position is further threatened by a series of corruption investigations.

However, he also appears keen to take the initiative from both Washington and Ms Livni with his own “peace plan”. An unnamed aide to Mr Lieberman told the Jerusalem Post that, with a vacuum in the diplomatic process, the foreign minister “thinks he can convince the government to adopt the plan”.

However, Mr Warschawski said there were few indications that Mr Netanyahu wanted to be involved in any peace process, even Mr Lieberman’s.

Last week Uzi Arad, the government’s shadowy national security adviser and a long-time confidant of Mr Netanyahu, made a rare public statement at a meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to attack Ms Livni for “political adventurism” and believing in the “magic” of a two-state solution.

Apparently reflecting Mr Netanyahu’s own thinking, he said: “The more you market Palestinian legitimacy, the more you bring about a detraction of Israel’s legitimacy in certain circles. [The Palestinians] are accumulating legitimacy, and we are being delegitimised.”

Mr Warschawski doubted that Mr Lieberman believed his blueprint for population exchanges could be implemented but was promoting it chiefly to further damage the standing of Israel’s Palestinian citizens and advance his own political ambitions.

In his commentary, Mr Lieberman said the international community’s peace plan would lead to “the one-and-a-half to half state solution”: “a homogeneous, pure Palestinian state”, from which Jewish settlers were expelled, and “a binational state in Israel”, which included many Palestinian citizens.

Palestinians, in both the territories and inside Israel, he said, could not “continue to incite against Israel, glorify murder, stigmatise Israel in international forums, boycott Israeli goods and mount legal offensives against Israeli officials”.

International law, he added, sanctioned the partition of territory in which ethnic communities were broken up into different states, including in the case of the former Yugoslavia. “In most cases there is no physical population transfer or the demolition of houses, but creating a border where none existed, according to demographics,” he wrote.

Surveys have shown that Palestinian citizens are overwhelming opposed to “population transfer” schemes like Mr Lieberman’s.

Critics note that Mr Lieberman has failed to show how the many Palestinian communities inside Israel that are located far from the Green Line could be incorporated into a Palestinian state without expulsions.

Legal experts also point out that, even if Israel managed to trade territory as part of a peace agreement, stripping Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship as a result of such a deal would violate international law.

  • Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
  • A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

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Blockade ‘eased’ as Gaza starves more slowly

Gaza Children (Tales to Tell - 2009)

Jonathan Cook, 25 June 2010

As Israel this week declared the ‘easing’ of the four-year blockade of Gaza, an official explained the new guiding principle: ‘Civilian goods for civilian people.’ The severe and apparently arbitrary restrictions on foodstuffs entering the enclave – coriander bad, cinnamon good – will finally end, we are told. Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants will have all the coriander they want.

This “adjustment”, as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed it, is aimed solely at damage limitation. With Israel responsible for killing nine civilians aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla three weeks ago, the world has finally begun to wonder what purpose the siege serves. Did those nine really need to die to stop coriander, chocolate and children’s toys from reaching Gaza? And, as Israel awaits other flotillas, will more need to be executed to enforce the policy?

Faced with this unwelcome scrutiny, Israel – as well as the United States and the European states that have been complicit in the siege – desperately wants to deflect attention away from demands for the blockade to be lifted entirely. Instead it prefers to argue that the more liberal blockade for Gaza will distinguish effectively between a necessary “security” measures and an unfair “civilian” blockade. Israel has cast itself as the surgeon who, faced with Siamese twins, is mastering the miraculous operation needed to decouple them.

The result, Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet, would be a “tightening of the security blockade because we have taken away Hamas’ ability to blame Israel for harming the civilian population”. Listen to Israeli officials and it sounds as if thousands of “civilian” items are ready to pour into Gaza. No Qassam rockets for Hamas but soon, if we are to believe them, Gaza’s shops will be as well-stocked as your average Wal-Mart.

Be sure, it won’t happen.

Even if many items are no longer banned, they still have to find their way into the enclave. Israel controls the crossing points and determines how many trucks are allowed in daily. Currently, only a quarter of the number once permitted are able to deliver their cargo, and that is unlikely to change to any significant degree. Moreover, as part of the “security” blockade, the ban is expected to remain on items such as cement and steel desperately needed to build and repair the thousands of homes devastated by Israel’s attack 18 months ago.

In any case, until Gaza’s borders, port and airspace are its own, its factories are rebuilt, and exports are again possible, the hobbled economy has no hope of recovering. For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza, mired in poverty, the new list of permissible items – including coriander – will remain nothing more than an aspiration.

But more importantly for Israel, by concentrating our attention on the supposed ending of the “civilian” blockade, Israel hopes we will forget to ask a more pertinent question: what is the purpose of this refashioned “security” blockade?

Over the years Israelis have variously been told that the blockade was imposed to isolate Gaza’s “terrorist” rulers, Hamas; to serve as leverage to stop rocket attacks on nearby Israeli communities; to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza; and to force the return of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit.

None of the reasons stands up to minimal scrutiny. Hamas is more powerful than ever; the rocket attacks all but ceased long ago; arms smugglers use the plentiful tunnels under the Egyptian border, not Erez or Karni crossings; and Sgt Shalit would already be home had Israel seriously wanted to trade him for an end to the siege.

The real goal of the blockade was set out in blunt fashion at its inception, in early 2006, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Dov Weisglass, the government’s chief adviser at the time, said it would put Palestinians in Gaza “on a diet, but not make them die of hunger”. Aid agencies can testify to the rampant malnutrition that followed. The ultimate aim, Mr Weisglass admitted, was to punish ordinary Gazans in the hope that they would overthrow Hamas.

Is Mr Weisglass a relic of the pre-Netanyahu era, his blockade-as-diet long ago superseded? Not a bit. Only last month, during a court case against the siege, Mr Netanyahu’s government justified the policy not as a security measure but as “economic warfare” against Gaza. One document even set out the minimum calories – or “red lines”, as they were also referred to – needed by Gazans according to their age and sex.

In truth, Israel’s “security” blockade is, in both its old and new incarnations, every bit a “civilian” blockade. It was designed and continues to be “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza for electing the wrong rulers. Helpfully, international law defines the status of Israel’s policy: it is a crime against humanity.

Easing the siege so that Gaza starves more slowly may be better than nothing. But breaking 1.5 million Palestinians out of the prison Israel has built for them is the real duty of the international community.

  • Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

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Swedish Dockworkers Union blockade of Israeli goods begins – ten containers held

surrare http://www.hamn4an.se/

By midnight on the 23rd June the Swedish Dock-workers union week-long blockade of goods to and from Israel started. The ongoing nation-wide blockade in Swedish harbors, that is based on the request of the united Palestinian union-movement, is The Swedish Dockworkers Union’s attempt to contribute to pressure Israel into:

  • Lifting the blockade on Gaza
  • Allowing an independent, international investigation of what happened at the Israeli boarding of the so called Freedom Flottilla when nine people were shot to death.

In the harbor of Gothenburg the blockade were initiated without any complications. About ten containers, both Israeli imports and exports were immediately identified in the container terminal. All of which have been separated and will stand untouched in the harbor of Gothenburg until the end of the blockade at 24:00 the 29th of June.

- Everything has passed very calmly and I believe it will continue to do so until next Wednesday, says Peter Annerback, chairperson of the Swedish Dockworkers Union section 4 (Hamn4an) and member of the unions executive committee in a late comment.

- Since we are not in a conflict with our employers a “conflict-contained” container that carries any medical equipment will be allowed exemption, continues Annerback.

- We have identified more goods on its way to or from Israel than we had expected. We thought the flow of goods would be much lower considering the blockade has been announced for twenty days, says Hamn4ans trustee Erik Helgeson.

- Our ambition is of course that our action can be one of many grassroots initiatives that will keep the eyes of the world focused on the 800.000 children that lives isolated in Gaza. The Palestinian civilian population must be allowed to rebuild their economy, their infrastructure and freely integrate with the rest of the world. The war on Gaza and Israel’s brutal blockade have made all this impossible for over three years now, Helgeson ends.

The Swedish Dockworkers Union have explained the motives behind the unions blockade of Israeli goods in two articles:

Newsmill:

http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2010/06/18/internationell-hamnblockad-til…

Dagens ETC:

http://etc.se/30568/vi-kommer-inte-att-sta-ensamma/

Press release from The Swedish Dockworkers Union, section 4, Gothenburg.

info@hamn4an.se

www.hamn.nu

www.hamn4an.se

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From a Prisoner of Conscience in an Israeli Prison

Ameer Makhoul

Jewish Peace News, 20 June 2010
The letter below, from human rights defender, Ameer Makhoul, was released and distributed today by Makhoul’s family and friends. It was written on May 30th, after Makhoul had spent 3 weeks in prison without access to even pen and paper, not to speak of lawyers, family visits, due process, humane and legal conditions. It made it’s way to his home by snailmail and then the original Arabic was translated into English.

Like many other citizens of Israel—both Jewish and Palestinian—who have held repeated protests against Makhoul’s imprisonment as well as that of Omar Said, I believe that that “Makhoul is being detained and severely harassed for exercising his right, under Israel’s Basic Laws, to free speech and political expression,” as pseudonymous publicist “Moshe Yaroni” put it (see previous JPN posting on the topic at: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-israeli-democracy-losing-ground.html). Amnesty International has called on Israeli authorities to stop Makhoul’s mistreatment (see: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/israel-must-stop-harassment-human-rights-defender-2010-05-12).

As a long time activist, here in Israel, I am both dismayed and determined these days; Dismayed at how the state I share in proceeds, with great speed, to discard remaining vestiges of democratic governance. Determined to continue resisting this process with all the means at the disposal of activists and civil society.

For comprehensive information on the interrogation and almost definite torture of Makhoul and Said as well as contact information for taking action, see: http://freeameermakhoul.blogspot.com/. I hope that each of you will spread the information further and take action in other ways.

Rela Mazali
——————————

May 30, 2010

Letter from Gilboa Prison, Ameer Makhoul

After being allowed to get a pen and a piece of paper, which has been banned for the last three weeks, and after being allowed to get out of my total isolation, it’s a moment to write a short letter from my jail (Gilboa).

It’s a great opportunity for me to express my sincere thanks, greetings & appreciation to all the colleagues, friends and solidarity groups, organizations & persons, internationals, Arabs in the region, Israelis & Palestinians in the homeland & in the Diaspora. A very special salute to all those who visited my family and supported them after the trauma they passed in May 6 & since that late night.

It’s a moment to express my great appreciation to all the international & local human rights organizations which raised their voices loudly.

Also to Ittijah partner organizations all around the world which supported my/our struggle for justice and for a fair trial in order to get to prove my innocence.

Physically I am still suffering very much but morally it’s a great feeling to know what solidarity means.

My story is that the Israeli intelligence, “the shabak”, assumed something without knowing & without any evidence. I was requested and forced to explain to them in a very detailed way how exactly I did what I didn’t do, ever. In case of any logical problem for them to complete the puzzle, they have the legal tools to fill it in by so-called secret evidence, which my lawyers and I have no legal right to know about.

According to the media in Israel, I’m already guilty, a terrorist & a supporter terror. The rule of the game here is that I’m guilty whether or not I prove that I’m not. This collective assumption is prior to court & trial procedures.

The abuse of evidence & fair legal procedures are crucial. The Shabak can tell lies to the court by so called “secret evidence”, “banning meetings  with lawyers”, “banning the publication of information,”    “imposing total isolation” & other very sophisticated ways of torture, which leave no direct evidence although it is very harsh. (See Adalah: www.adalah.org). I believe that my case is an opportunity to examine these tools as tools for the criminalization of human rights defenders.

I would like to highlight again your support & solidarity. I look to it as a very essential & crucial message of support the victim and to stop the oppressor.  Thank you. Let us continue with the way for justice, human dignity, human rights and ensuring an opportunity for a fair trial.

Sincerely,

Ameer Makhoul

——–
Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
————
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com

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Flotilla assault serves to isolate Israel

MV Mavi Marmara leaving Antalya for Gaza on May 22, 2010

Kourosh Ziabari, 20 June 2010

Israel’s brutal nature is comprehensibly evident to everyone. The independent nations of the world in Asia, Africa and Latin America know well that Israel’s existence is blended with inhumanity and violence.

Even the ordinary people in the Northern America and Europe are well aware of the fact that Israel is an insane and vicious regime; it’s only their respective governments who refuse to submit to the reality of Israel and believe that this rogue state does not benefit the international community in any way.

Israel’s suicidal incursion into the flotilla of humanitarian aids which was heading from Turkey to the besieged Gaza strip once again discredited the flimsy legitimacy of Tel Aviv. As Trudy Rubin, the pro-Israel columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Thursday, this “botched” attack neared Israel to an irreparable loss: its diplomatic ties with Turkey.

The pro-Zionist writer, who repeatedly called Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan an emotional man in her article, fears that Israel’s thoughtless and hysterical treatment of the peace activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla might lead to Tel Aviv’s growing isolation and its separation from its sole Muslim partner in the Middle East.

Rubbin refers to her 2008 interview with Mr. Erdogan in which the Turkish premier had angrily complained that Israel did not allow the humanitarian aids to be transferred to the besieged Gaza strip. She suggests that Israel should make an official apology to Turkey and take some tactical steps to repair its already strained ties with the Muslim nation and make up for the serious trouble it has been entangled in. She also noted that Israel should temporarily allow the humanitarian aids in the Gaza strip so as to pacify the growing international agitation against Tel Aviv.

Despite the fact that these ephemeral solutions might ease the tensions between the two states to some extent, the pro-Zionist writer has neglected that Israel is in any event moving towards losing its feeble credibility whatsoever and this is what the Tel Aviv leaders already know. The Israeli ambassadors have been summoned to the foreign ministries of some 10 European countries over the past three days and this is a remarkable change in EU’s stance towards Israel.

Should you remember the 2009 Aftonbladet – Israel controversy which was followed by an August 17, 2009 article by the Swedish freelance photojournalist Donald Bostr?m in which he accused the Israeli troops of harvesting the organs of Palestinian detainees which they kept, it were the Swedish officials, including the Swedish Ambassador to Israel, who implicitly apologized to Israel and strongly condemned the article.

Now, the equations have changed dramatically and the European countries are coming to the conclusion that Israel did not worth their political, diplomatic and ideological investment over the past 60 years. How can a regime which detains, tortures, kills and massacres as easy as apple pie be trusted as the representative of democratic values? How can Israel, which has been introduced as the sole democracy of the Middle East by the Freedom House, boast of being a democratic establishment while it violates the most essential rights of human beings?

Paveen Yaqub, one of the peace activists who were on board the Mavi Marmara sailboat to the Gaza strip, revealed some details of the ways she was treated by the Israeli troops, upon her deportation to Istanbul: “They were kicking my legs to make me fall and mocking me in Hebrew. They were trying to take trophy pictures with me and they liked laughing in my face. They also searched me but I won’t go into that. They took pleasure in humiliating us.”

Henning Mankell, one of the world’s best-selling authors and dramatists whose books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and were translated into 40 languages was one of the renowned figures aboard the Freedom Flotilla. After his deportation to Berlin by the Israeli militants, he described his own account of the disaster: “It was an act of piracy. We were actually kidnapped. Our idea was not to make any resistance. The soldiers were masked, they had machine guns; there were women among them. They were very aggressive. There were people who were on the boat who were quite old, and a little slow. One was attacked with a stinger weapon, and he fell down as it was extremely painful.”

Mankell said that he was taken by an Israeli soldier to a holding center on the shore and then was told that he entered Israel illegally and should be deported immediately. Mankell called for the imposition of financial sanctions on Israel to force the Zionist regime retreat from its violence and aggression: “I think we should use the experience of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great impact. It took time, but they had an impact.”

Anyway, Israel is already en route to growing isolation and this is something which the Israeli journalist, Joel Schalit has unequivocally testified to: “Following the Israeli government’s humiliation over the Dubai passport affair earlier this year, in which nearly twenty of its agents were found to have used forged foreign passports to enter Dubai and kill a Hamas operative, this was not a good sign. If anything, the assault on the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ only served to underline Israel’s growing isolation.”

  • Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. He has interviewed political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke, Australian politician Ian Cohen, member of German Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council advisor Peter D. Feaver, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in biology Robin Warren, famous German political prisoner Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff, American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist Eric Margolis, former assistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud and the former President of the American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis

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Popular resistance continues at home and abroad

Mazin Qumsiyeh

Mazin Qumsiyeh, 19 June 2010

Today we managed to attend two demonstrations organized by residents of Wad Rahhal and Al-Ma’sara.  In the former, the military ‘intelligence” officer named ‘Fadi’ came to check things out.  This is the same guy who told me before my trip to the US last March that I should not leave.  The morning after I left, Israeli army came in the middle of the night and surrounded my house ostensibly looking to arrest me.   In today’s demonstration he first tried to discredit me by claiming ‘friendship’ and ‘closeness’ (those in attendance knew this tactic).  Then he tried verbal threats and intimidation.  While his soldiers prevented us from getting to where my car was parked, he made a point of driving to it within view of us and “checking it out” (we have video).  When the demonstration was finished, we saw that what he scribbled was the world ‘Hamas’ on the car (I guess he did not realize I am not Muslim).  As we drove to the other demonstration he followed.

Unlike in Wad Rahhal, the people of Al-Ma’sara were allowed to march to their lands on this day.  ‘Fadi’ kept a close watch on us.  He pulled his jeep in front of my car as soon as we got in and were ready to leave at the end of this second demonstration.  I backed up and got on the road and he then followed us in an intimidating fashion for two miles.  Never-the-less, we were thrilled with the success of both demonstrations and that no one was arrested.  They are still holding our friend Hassan Breijiya and likely to charge him with serious charges from last week.  There is no ‘justice’ system here.  There are Israeli military courts with Israeli military judges  who always choose the Israeli soldier’s version and apply random ‘sentences’ on us (for being Palestinians in Palestine).  Even Israeli activists like our friend Yotam face tough ‘sentencing’ for merely engaging in nonviolent protest of Israeli colonial land theft and land destruction.

In this land of apartheid, there are still some surreal moments.  Today, I witnessed no less than 6 acts of kindness and generosity.  I also stopped by Talitha Kumi school to visit with a  friend (who donated a box of books to us) and we saw their groups of Israelis  and Palestinians engaged in singing for peace and eating together.  The normalization activity was happening less than a kilometer away from Al-Walaja, the village which is slated to join hundreds of other villages ethnically cleansed since 1947. The remaining 2000 residents watch (and occasionally demonstrate and get arrested and jailed) as the apartheid wall is being built around their houses and separating them from their lands. Just two days earlier, I was with eth lawyer for the village as we say that the destruction of agricultural lands even extended beyond the areas mapped by the Israeli authorities for ‘closed military zones’ around the projected wall.  The contractor took the lawyer (and I tagged along) to the ‘operations room’ to show him the map.  The room was an amazing record of planned destruction in the Bethlehem district.  On all four sides of the walls, there were maps showing the projected stages of the apartheid wall completion.   I was not allowed to bring my camera but it was a horrific scene.  Some 20 minutes into this, the contractor talks to the Israeli military command who tell him to get us out of their and not show us any maps (too late though!).

If all goes according to Israeli plans, Al-Walaja will be a small version of Gaza: an open-air prison with one gate out controlled by Israel.  The wall comes very close to Palestinian homes to separate them from their front or back yard and all their agricultural lands.  In 1948 Alwalaja lost 63,000 of its 70,000 dunums of land.  The remaining 7000 while now shrink to about 1000 and eventually to nothing.  Palestinians were once 95% of the population and in control of 95% of the land and now mostly refugees and displaced people while the five million who remain in Palestine have access to 2.9% of the land.

Israeli army destroys children’s playground in Beit Jala and drag children away

Jewish challenges to Zionism on the rise in the US; Gabriel Ash, Emily Katz Kashawi, Mich Levy, Sara Kershnar, The Electronic Intifada, 14 June 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11337.shtml

Shooting and sobbing, by Gilad Atzmon
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/shooting-and-sobbing-by-gilad-atzmon.html

Volvo Equipment: Effective tools of the Israeli occupation
http://corporateoccupation.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/volvo-equipment-effective-tool-in-the-israeli-occupation-of-palestine/

Standing Up to the Bulldozers in Palestine
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mazin-qumsiyeh/standing-up-to-the-bulldo_b_590987.html

And here is a brave Australian member of Parliament speaking out for human rights (if only more parliamentarians would speak the truth) http://tinyurl.com/2eo228w

I wrote to her with this brief thanks

I am a professor at Bethlehem and Birzeit universities and have just finished my fourth book (this one on the 130 year- history of popular nonviolent resistance in Palestine).  Every week here, we have new atrocities on the ground.  Today we had demonstrations in Bilin, Nilin, Al-Masara, Al-Walaja, Wad Rahhal and other places.  It is thus very good to read your speech in the Australian parliament.  We in Palestine thank you for your solidarity.. for reminding us of who we are as fellow human beings.  What Margaret Mead once wrote comes to mind “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

The Committee to Resist the Wall in Beit Jala invites you to the weekly demonstration this Sunday 20 June 2010 at 11:30 AM and this one in honor of our friend and popular committee leader the martyr Abu Alwaleed AlAzza. Please spread the word and come join us to protest the destruction of Palestinian lands.  Your presence supports the struggle for peace and justice.

And while the Israeli government issued a press release in English that claims they will ‘ease’ the medieval siege on Gaza (the release in Hebrew made no such mention), the International civil society is not fooled: we demand an end to this siege not media gestures.  More boat flotillas are being planned and lawsuits are demanding Israel release the belongings (especially video cameras and tapes) stolen from the passengers and that a real independent investigation is allowed.  We will not let the Israeli criminals get away with murder.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org
Professor, Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities
Chairman of the Board, Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People, http://www.pcr.ps

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Turkey Shelves Israeli Cooperation, Considers breaking off Ties; Israel Lobbies in Congress denounce Ankara

Juan Cole

Juan Cole, 18 June 2010

Members of the US Congress attacked Turkey on Wednesday for voting against the UN Security Council resolution imposing further sanctions on Iran, and for its heavy criticism of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) said, “There will be a cost if Turkey stays on its present heading of growing closer to Iran and more antagonistic to the state of Israel.” Pence said he was reconsidering whether to vote for a resolution condemning Turkey for the WW I era Armenian genocide.

The Israel lobbies, after defending Turkey from Armenian complaints for decades, have all of a sudden discovered the Armenian holocaust now that Turkey is criticizing Israel. This change is important because passage of a congressional recognition of the genocide would open Turkey to lawsuits, whereby Armenian political groups could capture Turkish assets in the United States.

On Turkish steps against Israel, NowLebanon reports:

‘ Ankara has not taken any practical steps on the matter yet, however, potential punitive measures include freezing military agreements that exceed $7 billion in worth, said the source.

He also said that bilateral pilot training programs and intelligence exchanges would also be suspended, adding that Turkey will not send a new ambassador to Tel Aviv after it recalled the current one following last month’s raid.’

Turkey is angry that Israel refuses to apologize for its raid on the Turkish ships in Gaza aid convoy, which left 8 Turks and one American of Turkish origin dead. Turkey also wants an international inquiry, not an internal Israeli one. And, of course, Turkey insists on a lifting of the blockade of Gaza.

In pressuring Israel on these matters, the Turkish government is playing chicken and risking a thoroughgoing rift with its ally.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shelved 16 bilateral agreements and, as noted above, billions of dollars worth of joint weapons programs. If the government of PM Binyamin Netanyahu continues to refuse to cooperate with an interntional commission of inquiry, Turkey will not send a new ambassador to Tel Aviv.

Turkey also intends to embarrass Israel with the European Union and in other international forums until it gets an apology.

At the same time, Turkey insisted that a distinction should be made between inter-government relations and private commercial relations. It is leading no consumer boycott of Israeli goods in Turkey, and Turkish Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan warned Israel against boycotting Turkish companies.

Some Israeli supermarket chains are boycotting Turkish produce. And, the Israeli public has already largely boycotted tourism in Turkey this year and the Netanyahu government is actively urging them to vacation within Israel, in keeping with its bunker mentality.

Most of Turkey’s foreign trade is with the European Union, the United States, and Russia, and Turkey does more business with Iran than with Israel, which is not among its top ten trading partners. Some have called Turkey’s newfound interest in the Muslim Middle East “neo-ottomanism.”

Congress should be careful not to over-reach in this intervention against Turkey on behalf of the Israel lobbies. Some 70 percent of resupply of US troops in Iraq is carried out through Incirlik Base in Turkey, and Turkey is part of the NATO force in Afghanistan. In the absence of good relations with Turkey, the United States would face significant logistical problems in the region.

Erdogan’s shelving of the bilateral agreements, and the potential cancellation of billiions in joint military equipment ventures, raise the question of whether Turkey is still a military ally of Israel. Until the blockade of Gaza is lifted and Israel apologizes to Turkey for the flotilla raid and the loss of Turkish life, Israel will become more isolated than ever before. While that isolation may suit the cult-like Likud Party, since it thrives on xenophobism and insularity, as well as on naked aggression, it cannot be good for Israel as a whole.

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The Israeli Commission into Flotilla Attack Is Incapable of Conducting Independent, Credible Investigation

PCHR

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Ref: 49/2010, 16 June 2010

On Monday, 14 June 2010, the Israeli Cabinet approved the establishment of a committee charged with investigating Israel’s 31 May attack on the ‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla’; the attack resulted in the killing of 9 international activists and the wounding of dozens more. On 1 June 2010, the UN Security Council issued a presidential statement condemning the attack and calling for “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) assert that the commission established by Israel fails to conform with these standards and that in preventing effective investigation Israel is internationally accountable.

The Israeli “Independent Public Commission” is not an official commission of inquiry. It is a government appointed, non-statutory body, which in practice will enjoy only nominal power. Significantly, the committee may only ‘request’ co-operation, while the Israeli government has already stated that no Israeli soldier will be called upon to testify.

The mandate of the commission is also overly vague and generic; the language of the resolution adopted by the Israeli cabinet – which speaks of “examination” of the aspects related to the actions taken by the State of Israel to prevent vessels from reaching the coast of the Gaza Strip – indicates that the purpose of the commission is not to conduct a thorough, independent inquiry into the military operation, but rather to divert attention and frustrate the pursuit of justice.

That the commission does not offer any guarantee of independence and effectiveness is further illustrated by reference to the appointed members of the commission, who (notwithstanding their venerable ages) have little experience in criminal investigation and inquiry commissions.

Jakob Turkel, a former Israeli Supreme Court judge expert in civil matters who also served as a military court judge, will chair the commission, composed also of a retired major-general in the Israeli army and a former diplomat.

Most importantly, the two foreign experts who were appointed as observers will not have the right to vote in relation to the proceedings and conclusions of the commission, and they will have only a limited right to participate in the hearings and deliberations. The commission in fact can hinder the observers’ access to certain documents and information on the ground that revealing such information could harm national security or Israel’s foreign relations.

International law establishes a binding obligation on all States to carry out exhaustive and impartial investigations – and if appropriate prosecutions – into all suspected violations of international law. Such investigations must be genuine and not designed to shield those responsible from justice. The European

Court of Human Rights has consistently stated that in order to be effective, or genuine, investigations must be “capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible”.

The newly-appointed Israeli committee fails to meet even this basic requirement. It is tasked with evaluating the situation from an overly broad contextual perspective and has neither the power nor the mandate to evaluate or attribute individual criminal responsibility. On the contrary, the resolution appointing the commission expressly provides that: “law enforcement agencies will not make use of testimonies given before the Commission or before those individuals tasked with collecting information for the Commission, as evidence in legal proceedings”.

PCHR’s and other human rights organisations’ experience[1] has revealed that Israel has consistently disregarded its obligation to conduct effective investigations, taking only fake measures which effectively shield suspected war criminals from justice. Now 18 months since the end of the 23 day-long military attack on the Gaza Strip, during which hundreds of alleged war crimes were committed, Israel has still failed to conduct any independent and genuine investigations, as it is internationally required.

PCHR believe that this committee’s real purpose is to divert international attention, waist time, and ultimately frustrate the pursuit of justice. It is essential that the international community take immediate action to uphold victims’ legitimate rights to the equal protection of the law and an effective judicial remedy.

Therefore, in accordance with the requirements of the UN Security Council, an international investigative committee must be promptly appointed. The committee must be empowered with the necessary tools in order to be capable of identifying and prosecuting those responsible for the operation that caused the deaths, injures and damages to the members of the humanitarian flotilla.

Concurrently, States should exercise the jurisdiction of their national criminal systems to investigate the facts of the events of 31 May 2010, and refer the situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in accordance with Article 13(a) of the Rome Statute.