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By Dr Ramzy Baroud

As the frail body of 12-year-old Nassir Al-Mosabeh fell to the ground on Friday, September 28, history was repeating itself in a most tragic way.

Little Nassir was not just another number, a ‘martyr’ to be exalted by equally poor refugees in Gaza, or vilified by Israel and its tireless hasbara machine. He was much more than that.

The stream of blood that poured out from his head wound on that terrible afternoon drew a line in time that travelled back 18 years.

Almost 18-years to the day separates Nassir’s recent murder and the Israeli army killing of Mohammed Al-Durrah, also 12, on September 30, 2000. Between these dates, hundreds of Palestinian children have perished in similar ways.

Reports by the rights’ group, B’tselem, are rife with statistics: 954 Palestinian children were killed between the Second Intifada in 2000 and Israel’s war on Gaza, the so-called Operation Cast Lead in 2008. In the latter war alone, 345 child were reportedly killed, in addition to another 367 child fatalities reported in Israel’s latest war, ‘Protective Edge’ of 2014.

But Mohammed and Nassir – and thousands like them – are not mere numbers; they have more in common than simply being the ill-fated victims of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.

In that single line of blood that links Nassir al-Mosabeh and Mohammed al-Durrah, there is a narrative so compelling, yet often neglected. The two 12-year-old boys looked so much alike – small, handsome, dark skinned refugees, whose families were driven from villages that were destroyed in 1948 to make room for today’s Israel.

Young as they were, both were victims of that reality. Mohammed, died while crouching by the side of his father, Jamal, as he beseeched the Israelis to stop shooting. 18 years later, Nassir walked with thousands of his peers to the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel, stared at the face of the snipers and chanted for a free Palestine.

Between the two boys, the entire history of Palestine can be written, not only that of victimization and violence, but also of steadfastness and honor, passed from one generation to the next.

“Who will carry on with the dream,” were the words Nassir’s mother repeated, as she held a photograph of her son and wept. In the photo, Nassir is seen carrying his school bag, and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol near the fence separating Gaza and Israel.

“The dream” is a reference to the fact that Nassir wanted to be a doctor, thus his enthusiasm to help his two sisters, Dua’a and Islam, two medical volunteers at the fence.

His job was to carry the alcohol bottle and, sometimes, oxygen masks, as his sisters would rush to help the wounded, many of them Nassir’s age or even younger.

In a recent video message, the young boy – who had just celebrated the achievement of memorizing the entire Holy Quran – demonstrated in impeccable classical Arabic why a smile can be considered an act of charity.

Protesting the Israeli siege and the injustice of life in Gaza was a family affair, and Nassir played his role. His innovation of taping raw onions to his own face to counter the tears induced by the Israeli army tear gas garnered him much recognition among the protesters, who have been rallying against the siege since March 30.

So far, nearly 200 unarmed protesters have been killed while demanding an end to the 11-year long blockade and also to call for the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees.

Nassir was the 34th child to be killed in cold-blood since the protests commenced, and will unlikely be the last to die.

When Mohammed al-Durrah was killed 18 years ago, the images of his father trying to shield his son’s body from Israeli bullets with his bare hands, left millions around the world speechless. The video, which was aired by France 2, left many with a sense of helplessness but, perhaps, the hope that the publicity that Mohammed’s televised murder had received could possibly shame Israel into ending its policy of targeting children.

Alas, that was never the case. After initially taking responsibility for killing Mohammed, a bogus Israeli army investigation concluded that the killing of Mohammed was a hoax, that Palestinians were to blame, that the France 2 journalist who shot the video was part of a conspiracy to ‘delegitimize Israel’.

Many were shocked by the degree of Israeli hubris, and the brazenness of their mouth- pieces around the western world who repeated such falsehood without any regard for morality or, even, common sense. But the Israeli discourse itself has been part of an ongoing war on Palestinian children.

Israeli and Zionist propagandists have long claimed that Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews.

The likes of Elliott Abrahms raged against Palestinian textbooks for “teaching children to value terrorism.” “That is not the way to prepare children for peace,” he wrote last year.

In July the Israeli army claimed that Palestinian children deliberately “lure IDF troops”, by staging fake riots, thus forcing them into violent confrontations.

The US-Israeli propaganda has not just targeted Palestinian fighters or factions, but has done its utmost to dehumanize, thus justify, the murder of Palestinian children as well.

“Children as young as 8 turned into bombers, shooters, stabbers,” reported one Adam Kredo in the Washington Free Beacon, citing a “new report on child terrorists and their enablers.”

This is not simply bad journalism, but part of a calculated Israeli campaign aimed at preemptively justifying the killing of children such as Nassir and Mohammed, and thousands like them.

It is that same ominous discourse that resulted in the call for genocide made by none other than Israel’s Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, where she also called on the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”

The killing of Nassir and Mohammed should not then be viewed in the context of military operations gone awry, but in the inhuman official and media discourses that do not differentiate between a resistance fighter carrying a gun or a child carrying an onion and an oxygen mask.

Nor should we forget that Nassir al-Mosabeh and Mohammed al-Durrah are chapters in the same book, with an overlapping narrative that makes their story, although 18 years apart, one and the same.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

11 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/11/that-single-line-of-blood-nassir-al-mosabeh-and-mohammed-al-durrah/

By Dr James M Dorsey

Pakistan, following in the footsteps of Malaysia and Myanmar, is the latest country to balk at the China and infrastructure focus of Beijing’s Belt and Road-related investments.

Preparing for his first visit to China as Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan is insisting that the focus of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$60 billion plus crown jewel of the Belt and Road, shift from infrastructure to agriculture, job creation and foreign investment.

“Earlier, the CPEC was only aimed at construction of motorways and highways, but now the prime minister decided that it will be used to support the agriculture sector, create more jobs and attract other foreign countries like Saudi Arabia to invest in the country,” said information minister Fawad Chaudhry.

Mr. Khan’s determination to ensure that more benefits accrue to Pakistan from Chinese investment comes at a time that various Asian and African countries worry that Belt and Road-related investments in infrastructure risk trapping them in debt and forcing them to surrender control of critical national infrastructure, and in some cases media assets.

Preceding Mr. Khan’s move, protests against the forced resettlement of eight Nepali villages persuaded CWE Investment Corporation, a subsidiary of China Three Gorges, to consider pulling out of a 750MW hydropower project.

Malaysia has suspended or cancelled US$26 billion in Chinese-funded projects while Myanmar is negotiating a significant scaling back of a Chinese-funded port project on the Bay of Bengal from one that would cost US$ 7.3 billion to a more modest development that would cost US$1.3 billion in a bid to avoid shouldering an unsustainable debt.

Fears of a debt trap started late last year when unsustainable debt forced Sri Lanka to hand China an 80% stake in Hambantota port.

Mr. Khan’s move takes on added significance given that Pakistan appears to have decided to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it avert a financial crisis with a loan of up to US$12 billion and discussions with Saudi Arabia that could produce up to US$10 billion in investments that would be separate but associated with CPEC.

Pakistani finance minister Asad Umar is expected later this week to initiate discussions with the IMF during the fund’s annual meeting in Bali. The decision was taken after Saudi Arabia refused to delay Pakistani payments for oil imports, opting instead to build a refinery and strategic oil reserve in the CPEC port of Gwadar.

Pakistani officials see investment by Saudi Arabia as one possible way of facilitating a Pakistani request to the IMF for help. They hope that even an informal association with CPEC of Saudi Arabia, one of the United States’ closest allies in the greater Middle East, may alleviate Washington’s concern that IMF money could be used to repay Chinese debt.

Yet, even that is unlikely to prevent the IMF, backed by the United States, from demanding that the veil of secrecy be lifted that shrouds the commercial and financial terms of many CPEC-related, Chinese-funded projects, as a pre-condition for assistance from the fund.

Apparently concerned about Pakistan’s intentions, China’s deputy chief of mission in Islamabad, Lijian Zhao, insisted in an interview as well as a series of tweets that China welcomed Saudi investment and “always supported& stood behind @ Pakistan, helping #develop it’s #infrastructure& raise #living standards while creating #job.”

Mr. Lijian’s comments followed a statement last month by Chinese foreign minister Wang Ji after talks with Mr. Khan in Islamabad that appeared to indicate that China, while acknowledging Pakistani demands, would not address them immediately. Mr. Wang suggested that CPEC would only “gradually shift to industrial cooperation.”

Indications suggest further that China may be looking to Pakistan’s military to shave off the rough ends of the government’s determination to effectively renegotiate CPEC.

Pakistan’s army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa visited Beijing in August days after commerce minister Abdul Razak Dawood suggested that the government may suspend CPEC projects for a year.

Making his comments shortly after Mr. Wang’s departure from Islamabad, Mr. Dawood also asserted that the previous government had negotiated terms that were favourable to China rather than Pakistan.

China this week, in a move likely designed as much to strengthen Pakistani counter-terrorism capabilities as a gesture towards the country’s politically influential armed forces, made Pakistan the second country after Saudi Arabia to receive killer drones and the associated technology.

The US has refused to sell its more advanced killer drones to either Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

The Khan government’s desire to refocus CPEC tackles key issues raised by critics of the project that potentially could impact China’s plan to pacify its troubled north-western province of Xinjiang through a combination of economic development and brutal repression and re-education of its Turkic Muslim population.

The initial plan for CPEC appeared to position Pakistan as a raw materials supplier for China, an export market for Chinese products and labour, and an experimental ground for the export of the surveillance state China is rolling out in Xinjiang.

The plan envisioned Chinese state-owned companies leasing thousands of hectares of agricultural land to set up “demonstration projects” in areas ranging from seed varieties to irrigation technology. Chinese agricultural companies would be offered “free capital and loans” from various Chinese ministries as well as the China Development Bank.

The plan envisaged the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps introducing mechanization as well as new technologies in Pakistani livestock breeding, development of hybrid varieties, and precision irrigation. Pakistan effectively would become a raw materials supplier rather than an added-value producer, a prerequisite for a sustainable textiles industry.

The plan saw the Pakistani textile sector as a supplier of materials such as yarn and coarse cloth to textile manufacturers in Xinjiang. “China can make the most of the Pakistani market in cheap raw materials to develop the textiles & garments industry and help soak up surplus labour forces in (Xinjiang’s) Kashgar,” the plan said. Chinese companies would be offered preferential treatment with regard to “land, tax, logistics and services” as well as “enterprise income tax, tariff reduction and exemption and sales tax rate” incentives.

For Mr. Khan to ensure that Pakistani agriculture benefits, the very concept of Chinese investment in Pakistani agriculture would have to renegotiated.

Similarly, Mr. Khan has yet to express an opinion on the plan’s incorporation of a full system of monitoring and surveillance that would be built in Pakistani cities to ensure law and order. The system would involve deployment of explosive detectors and scanners to “cover major roads, case-prone areas and crowded places…in urban areas to conduct real-time monitoring and 24-hour video recording.”

The surveillance aspect of the plan that identifies Pakistani politics, such as competing parties, religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western intervention” as well as security as the greatest risk to CPEC could, if unaddressed, transform Pakistani society in ways that go far beyond economic and infrastructure development.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.

10 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/10/remodelling-the-belt-and-road-pakistan-picks-up-the-torch/

By Ishaan Tharoor

We still do not know what has happened to Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi journalist, who has contributed numerous articles to The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday afternoon to finalize papers regarding a divorce. Khashoggi is a prominent commentator, familiar to a generation of Middle East correspondents seeking insight into the intrigues of Riyadh. In recent years, he had turned into a critic of the kingdom’s leadership and relocated to Washington in a kind of self-imposed exile.

Turkish authorities insist that Khashoggi, 59, is being held in the consulate, as do his friends. “We have talked with some Turkish authorities and the police,” Turan Kislakci, an associate of Khashoggi, told my colleagues. “I think 100 percent that he is inside.”

But Saudi officials deny they have detained the journalist, claiming in an emailed statement to my colleagues that Khashoggi is not in the building.

“We were going to marry this week,” said Khashoggi’s fiancee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, to my colleagues in Istanbul on Wednesday. She added that her spouse-to-be had been concerned about going to the consulate. “Of course he was worried. How comfortable can one be if he is not liked by his country?”

“We have been unable to reach Jamal today and are very concerned about where he may be,” said The Post’s international opinions editor, Eli Lopez, in a statement Thursday. “We are monitoring the situation closely, trying to gather more information. It would be unfair and outrageous if he has been detained for his work as a journalist and commentator.”

In Washington, analysts and former diplomats who are generally supportive of Saudi Arabia expressed their disquiet. “The only logical explanations are that the Saudi government is either keeping him in the consulate building or has kidnapped him and taken him to Saudi Arabia,” wrote Elliott Abrams, a former official in the George W. Bush administration. He warned that “the reputation of the current Saudi government will be harmed irreparably.”

Such detentions have become more conspicuous under the kingdom’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Since taking de facto power in a shake-up last year, Mohammed has detained feminist activists and billionaire magnates alike. Saudi authorities even briefly held the sitting Lebanese prime minister in a Riyadh hotel last year. All of this came as Mohammed promised to open up Saudi Arabia’s conservative society and wean itself off of oil dependence.

Post columnist Jason Rezaian, a journalist who spent many months in unjust Iranian detention, puzzled over the nature of Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms. “Troubling developments from the community of activists inside the country, however, tell a vastly different story. Those pushing for change — whether they are women’s rights activists, journalists or ethnic minorities — report being systematically harassed by the authorities,” Rezaian wrote. “With every supposed reform comes a wave of fresh arrests, prison sentences and increasingly repressive behavior.”

The crown prince, Rezaian noted, is a frequent target of Khashoggi’s columns. “At each turning point . . . Jamal has offered readers of The Post insightful commentary and sharp criticism about the seemingly impenetrable country,” he wrote.

The geopolitical backdrop to Khashoggi’s disappearance is worth considering. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has presided over a sweeping purge of the country’s civil society and government ever since a botched coup attempt in 2016. Yet Turkey has also become something of a sanctuary for Arab dissidents of various stripes.

In 2013, after a military coup unseated Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and brutally crushed his Muslim Brotherhood, a host of Egyptian dissidents and Islamist politicians took up residence in Istanbul. Erdogan remains a staunch critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the former army officer who ousted Morsi.

Sissi has counted on the support of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two Gulf monarchies that have actively worked against Islamist political parties across the Arab world. In a column for The Post, Khashoggi rebuked the “intolerant hatred” shown by the Saudis and Emiratis “for any form of political Islam.” He argued “there can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.”

That’s a position welcomed by Erdogan, who once hoped his brand of religiously tinged democratic politics would be embraced by the Arab world. Instead, his rule has grown more autocratic, and the Middle East has been consumed by a series of wars and bitter geopolitical disputes. That includes the standoff between the Saudis, Emiratis and their allies on one side and Qatar on the other.

Turkey flew troops and food supplies into Qatar last year and still maintains a military base in Doha. Meanwhile, the Qataris pledged to inject some $15 billion worth of investment in Turkey’s flagging economy in August. Some analysts read Ankara’s moves — coupled with Erdogan’s overtures to Iran over the past year — as a riposte to the emergence of a U.S.-backed Middle East bloc including the Saudis, Emiratis and even Israel.

Amid the chaos of the region’s politics, Khashoggi urged the kingdom conduct itself with “ethics” and “dignity” — and therefore called on Saudi Arabia to draw down its war in Yemen.

Khashoggi also wrote about the pain of seeing friends arrested or otherwise forced into silence. “I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” he wrote in his first column for The Post, where he openly worried about facing arrest if he returned. “To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.

5 October 2018

Source: https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=a2hhbG1hcnhAeWFob28uY29t&s=5bb6efd6fe1ff67504b79d17

By Alex Lantier

Rebuking US moves to scrap the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague unanimously ruled yesterday that Washington must let Iran use international financial payments systems to buy humanitarian supplies.

When the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Iran in 2012-2015, it tried to strangle Iran’s economy by freezing it out of all financial transactions denominated in US dollars. At its request, the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Inter-bank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network expelled Iranian banks, ending Iran’s ability to use US dollars for international purchases. Since unilaterally repudiating the 2015 accord this May, the Trump administration has made clear it plans to re-impose sanctions as part of its preparations for war with Iran.

The ICJ ruling demands that Washington not block trade in critical goods, and makes clear that the US war drive against Iran—including calls by US officials such as White House national security adviser John Bolton to re-impose SWIFT sanctions on Iran—violate international law.

Pending final adjudication of US claims against Iran, the ICJ has ordered Washington to “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments … to the free exportation to the territory of Iran of goods required for humanitarian needs, such as (i) medicines and medical devices; and (ii) foodstuffs and agricultural commodities; as well as goods and services required for the safety of civil aviation, such as (iii) spare parts, equipment and associated services … necessary for civil aircraft.”

The ICJ adds: “To this end, the United States must ensure that licences and necessary authorizations are granted, and that payments and other transfers of funds are not subject to any restriction insofar as they relate to the goods and services referred to above.”

The Iranian foreign ministry applauded the ICJ decision, stating that it “vindicates the Islamic Republic of Iran and confirms the illegitimacy and oppressiveness” of US sanctions.

The ICJ has no mechanism or power to enforce its decision, however, and US officials immediately made clear they will defy the ICJ ruling. Calling Iranian requests “baseless,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the termination of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the United States and Iran, on which the ICJ ruling relied. “That is a decision that is, frankly, 39 years overdue,” Pompeo said, referring to the 39 years since the 1979 Revolution toppled the bloodstained CIA-backed regime of the Shah of Iran.

Pompeo then cynically tried to imply that the ICJ ruling is irrelevant, as Washington already makes exceptions for humanitarian goods in its sanctions. He said, “With regard to the aspects of the court’s order focusing on potential humanitarian issues, we have been clear. … Existing exceptions, authorisations and licensing policies for humanitarian-related transactions and safety of flight will remain in effect. The United States has been actively engaged on these issues without regard to any proceeding before the ICJ.”

US sanctions on Iran have had devastating humanitarian consequences, and Pompeo’s argument is a repugnant political lie. Over a span of decades, economic sanctions have been a key foreign policy tool allowing US imperialism to inflict untold suffering on innocent people in an attempt to bully and bludgeon various countries it targeted for regime change into line.

US officials have applauded sanctions against Iraq, Cuba and the former Yugoslavia even as they caused horrific losses. The UN embargo Washington imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War cut off Iraq’s access to health supplies, leading to an estimated 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children. Asked about this number on television in 1996, then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously defended the sanctions: “A hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”

The relentless campaign by Washington to isolate Iran since the 1979 Revolution, and in particular the 2012-2015 sanctions, have taken a terrible toll.

Between 2012 and 2016, Iran’s critical oil and gas exports fell from over $9 billion to under $3 billion, shattering its economy and its access to critical food, pharmaceutical and industrial supplies.

A 2014 article on the US National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Biotechnology Information website, titled “Sanctions against Iran: The Impact on Health Services,” explains: “Although medicine is not included in the list of the sanctions, the difficulties in holding license for export of medicine, financial transaction, and shipment as well as fear of possible US sanction by pharmaceutical companies and international banks, led to the shortage of specific drugs and medical facilities in last months. A sudden fifty percent rise in the price of drugs is another contributing factor … The impact is being felt by more than six million patients suffering from complex diseases such as hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, thalassemia, epilepsy, and various immunological disorders, as well as transplant and kidney dialysis patients and those being treated for cancer.”

And after Aseman flight 3705 crashed in Iran in February, killing all 65 aboard, the Guardian noted that at least 1,985 people have died in Iranian plane crashes since 1979: “There have been scores of plane crashes in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, mainly because western sanctions for decades limited its ability to purchase spare parts or buy new planes.”

Washington’s new sanctions have already resulted in a cut-off of vital medicines to Iran. According to Mohammad-Naeem Aminifard, a member of the Iranian parliament’s health commission, 80 important drugs are no longer available under the Iranian state’s drug insurance scheme.

An Iranian doctor working with low-income Iranians recently told the British-based Guardian, “It’s no more only about shortages in drugs for cancer or special diseases such as haemophilia or thalassemia. [N]ormal drugs … like Warfarin, which stops blood clotting, (are) becoming difficult to find, which means patients’ lives are at risk.”

The ICJ ruling undoubtedly reflects growing opposition in ruling circles internationally to US policy—including its war drive against Iran, and threats of trade war and military attack against nuclear-armed Russia and China. It came a day after US ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison issued an unprecedented threat to bomb Russia in order to destroy cruise missiles Washington says violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Such an attack would set the stage for global nuclear war that could annihilate humanity.

Significantly, opposition to US policy increasingly comes from America’s imperialist “allies” in Europe and Asia. Germany, Britain and France have consistently defended the 2015 Iranian accord and, last month, signed an agreement with China, Russia and Iran to set up a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) funding scheme, to circumvent the use of the US dollar in the Iranian oil trade. Pompeo condemned the SPV scheme, saying he was “disturbed” and “deeply disappointed” by the “counterproductive” measure.

On Tuesday, moreover, reports emerged of high-level talks on Iran between Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and US State Department officials in Tokyo. The MOFA stated that “both sides actively discussed the US’ re-imposition of sanctions against Iran,” and that it had reiterated its “basic principle” that Japanese corporations should not be affected by the US sanctions.

Nonetheless, the only progressive opposition to the US-led war drive comes from the millions of working people around the globe who are opposed to war, not Washington’s imperialist rivals. After a quarter century of spreading imperialist war from Iraq to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, there can be no doubt that this growing inter-imperialist rivalry for access to oil and strategic advantage will only accelerate the drive toward all-out war across the Middle East.

Even those imperialist governments critical of US sanctions are, for their own reasons, stoking a confrontation with Iran. As France participates in the US-led proxy war for regime change in its former colony, Syria, it has already targeted Iran, a key military backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Paris has postponed sending a new ambassador to Tehran and has advised its diplomats to postpone visits to Iran.

Yesterday, the French government charged Iran’s ministry of intelligence for preparing a foiled bombing plot against a June meeting between the exiled Iranian Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) and top US officials including Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in Villepinte, near Paris. In a joint statement, the French interior, economic and foreign affairs ministries said: “A planned bomb attack was foiled at Villepinte on June 30. This extremely serious attack that was to take place on our territory cannot go without a response.”

It remains unclear what evidence Paris has connecting Iranian intelligence to those it is charging: Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who was arrested in July in Germany on terror charges, a Belgian couple of Iranian origin, and three others.

It came after French police launched a major “antiterrorist operation” to shut down the Shiite Islamic Zahra-France association, which works near the Grande Synthe refugee camp. Media reported that Paris wanted to “send a message” to Iran with the crackdown.

Tehran rejected accusations they were planning a terror bombing in Villepinte and demanded the Iranian diplomat’s release. An Iranian government spokesman warned of “the evil hands of ill-wishers who seek to ruin deep-rooted ties between Iran and France as well as other influential European countries.”

Alex Lantier has written extensively for www.wsws.org, a forum for socialist views & the website for the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

4 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/04/international-court-of-justice-strikes-down-us-sanctions-against-iran/

By Gili Cohen

“Welcome to the Myanmar Navy,” said the caption on the Myanmar Navy’s Facebook page, in honor of the arrival of an Israeli patrol boat to Myanmar’s shore. “The Super-Dvora MK III is moving forward at 45 knots on Myanmar waters,” the post continued. The post is from April, only half a year ago, when the Myanmar (Burmese) army was already being accused of war crimes.

Although the persecution of the Muslim minority in Myanmar, the Rohingya people, has become more intense in recent months, back in November 2016 the army was already being accused of brutality against them and of torching their villages. During that period tens of thousands of Rohingyans were expelled from their homes.

The representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees in the region said then that the ultimate purpose of Myanmar’s government is “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority.” Since last August more than half a million Rohingyan refugees have fled to Bangladesh, and some of them have testified to methodical rape and murder by the Myanmar military.

The pictures of the two boats on the Facebook page also reveal the weapons that have been installed on them, all blue-and-white products. There’s a remote weapon station, made by Elbit Systems, which allows the firing of a heavy machine gun or cannon of up to 30 millimeters. The new patrol boats are only part of a larger transaction signed between Israel and Myanmar. The Ramta division of Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures the Super Dvora, is meant to transfer at least two more boats to the local military. According to some reports on the deal, these boats will be built in Myanmar with the help of Israeli technology. IAI refused to comment.

The total value of the arms deal, according to sources in the Israeli weapons industry, is estimated at tens of millions of dollars. An officer involved in the matter told Haaretz that the Myanmar naval commander visited Israel in the past year, “was impressed and wanted to learn.” It was the second visit to Israel by the naval commander in the past five years.

Israeli weapons are being sold to Myanmar despite the restrictions on weapons sales to that country. Only last month Israel refused to announce that it would stop selling weapons to Myanmar despite the UN declaration about ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya minority is now considered the most persecuted people in the world.

Israel is careful not to officially confirm that it is granting permits to Israeli weapons firms to sell weapons to Myanmar. But the visit two years ago by Myanmar’s chief of the armed forces, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who met with Israel’s entire top military brass, was an indication of the cooperation between the two armies. During his visit, Hlaing announced that he had purchased the Super Dvora patrol boat, and he visited the Palmahim Air Force Base and the Gaza Division. A year-and-a-half ago, a reciprocal visit to Myanmar was made by Brig. Gen. Michel Ben-Baruch, head of the Defense Ministries International Defense Cooperation Directorate. In the past, Myanmar purchased Israeli air-to-air missiles and cannons, while an Israeli company, TAR Ideal Concepts, has noted on its website that it has trained Myanmar military forces. Now the site makes no specific reference to Myanmar, referring only to Asia.

The two countries in recent years have signed a memorandum of understanding clarifying the bilateral cooperation and transfer of relevant information and intelligence. According to official reports in Myanmar, the agreement includes military training and improving security cooperation between the two countries. There is, however, no known instance of Myanmar military personnel being trained in Israel, or of Israeli officers who were involved in training Myanmar military forces.

The efforts to fully expose the Israel-Myanmar connection by attorney Eitay Mack, who is active in increasing transparency of Israeli arms exports to countries that violate human rights, have so far been unsuccessful. Last month the High Court of Justice issued a ruling in response to a petition he filed with other human rights activists against the sales, but the ruling was kept classified at the state’s request.

The Defense Ministry said in response, “In general, the Defense Ministry doesn’t typically address security export issues.”

According to a source familiar with the issue, there is currently no relationship between the Israel Defense Forces and the Myanmar army, and no uniformed personnel are involved in any cooperative venture with the Myanmar security establishment.

Gili Cohen is Haaretz newspaper’s military correspondent. Cohen, who was born in 1989, has been writing for Haaretz since 2010.

24 October 2017

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-sold-arms-to-myanmar-during-ethnic-cleansing-campaign-1.5459614

By Ishaan Tharoor

The once-unthinkable nearly became reality Sunday. Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right politician sometimes likened to President Trump, nearly won an outright majority of the vote in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election. Had he succeeded, he would have clinched the presidency. Instead, he is the clear favorite in the runoff scheduled for Oct. 28.

It wasn’t long ago that the bruising and divisive Bolsonaro, a 59-year-old ex-paratrooper, was a fringe figure with little hope of winning power in Brasilia. Even in the weeks running up to Sunday’s vote, experts suggested that the country’s political process would curb his ascent. A second round would see voters rally behind a more mainstream challenger; a national legislature stacked with opponents would force Bolsonaro to moderate his hard-line positions.

But a surge in support for Bolsonaro’s angry, anti-establishment politics also upended Brazil’s Congress, with his once-obscure Social Liberal Party running a close second to the leftist Workers’ Party of jailed former president Lula Inácio da Silva. A host of veteran politicians — two-thirds of incumbents — were swept out, while a new, upstart generation that includes celebrity YouTubers is poised to enter the country’s lower house.

Lula’s anointed successor, former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, will struggle to close the yawning gap between him and Bolsonaro ahead of the second round. Supporters of the front-runner envision him taking the reins with solid backing from a host of centrist and right-wing parties and plenty of legislative support. “What comes out from this election is a Congress more favorable to pass Bolsonaro’s reforms,” Juliano Griebeler, a political analyst at Barral M Jorge, a business consultancy, said to Bloomberg News.

Bolsonaro got to this moment on the back of years of incendiary politicking. As we’ve already detailed, he is notorious for his outbursts of bigotry, launching diatribes against minorities, immigrants, women and LGBT Brazilians. He cast himself as the law-and-order candidate, declaring that he would give police greater license to kill criminals with impunity and make it easier for ordinary Brazilians to acquire their own firearms. As an evangelical Christian, he courted religious voters and pandered to conservative culture warriors. And he benefited from widespread anger at the country’s political class, which is engulfed in a vast corruption scandal.

“I voted for Bolsonaro because I’m tired of politicians being the same,” Maria Aparecida de Oliveira, a 63-year-old housekeeper casting her ballot in an upper-middle-class district of Sao Paulo, said to my colleagues. “Even if he is a little crazy, someone needs to bring change.”

“Brazil 2018 is an epic tale of establishment that failed to listen, ignored the issues that engaged voters most (namely crime & corruption), and didn’t take the insurgent seriously,” tweeted Brian Winter, the editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. “It’s a global story, but especially pronounced here.”

The implications of Bolsonaro’s success are huge — and, to many observers, grim. Bolsonaro has talked nostalgically of the decades when Brazil was ruled by a murderous right-wing dictatorship and hailed former military officers implicated in the torture of leftist political prisoners. He once said that the dictatorship’s greatest failing was not killing more of them.

A leading Mexican cartoonist offered a stark reaction to the Brazilian election results on Monday:

That a critical mass of Brazilians backs Bolsonaro anyway is a sign of how polarized and venomous the country’s political climate has become — a phenomenon increasingly apparent in democracies throughout the world. “It is an event of global significance, the latest chapter in an unfolding story about the destruction of liberal norms and the rise of populism,” wrote Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman.

“If we are to take seriously the things that Bolsonaro has said in the campaign, in my opinion Brazil’s democracy is in grave peril,” Lilia Schwarcz, a prominent Brazilian historian, said to the New York Times. She added: “We used to think that rights that have been conquered were rights that had been consolidated. I’ve concluded that we were being foolish. We must continue fighting for them.”

To many Brazilians, Haddad, Bolsonaro’s opponent, seems unlikely to lead that fight. His left-wing Workers’ Party, particularly under Lula’s wildly popular administration, presided over a huge economic boom that lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. But key figures in its leadership were later implicated, alongside most of Brazil’s establishment, in the country’s endemic graft.

“I think Bolsonaro will carry on doing what he’s doing. I don’t think he has to change much,” Glauco Peres, a political scientist at the University of Sao Paolo, said to the Guardian. “He’ll keep hammering away at this idea of fear … that the [Workers’ Party] represents a step backwards into corruption scandals and having criminals in government.”

Unlike the larger-than-life Lula, who is still a left-wing icon, Haddad “is a shy, pragmatic economist,” wrote my colleagues Anthony Faiola and Marina Lopes. They noted that “he has tried to reassure investors that he would not pursue radical leftist policies, but many still worry he would not pass the tough reforms seen as necessary to avoid another economic crisis here.”

There is no such doubt about his opposite number. “Bolsonaro is a strange phenomenon,” Lucas de Aragao, director of Arko Advice, a political risk company in Brasilia, said to The Post. “It doesn’t have any precedent in Brazil. Even some Lula voters are turning to him. It’s happened because Brazil loves this idea of a savior, of a hero. And Bolsonaro now represents this image of a savior as much as Lula does.”

But his critics warn that such an image is only a mirage. “Brazilians can embrace the politics of division and the seductive appeal of simplistic solutions, following the path of populist authoritarians in Hungary, Poland and the Philippines,” wrote Robert Muggah, co-founder of a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank. “Alternatively, they can preserve and renew their young democracy.”

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.

9 October 2018

Source: https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=a2hhbG1hcnhAeWFob28uY29t&s=5bbc35d6fe1ff67504b86039

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: The moment long feared is fast approaching in Gaza, according to a new report by the World Bank. After a decade-long Israeli blockade and a series of large-scale military assaults, the economy of the tiny coastal enclave is in “freefall”.

At a meeting of international donors in New York on Thursday, coinciding with the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the World Bank painted an alarming picture of Gaza’s crisis. Unemployment now stands at close to 70 per cent and the economy is contracting at an ever faster rate.

While the West Bank’s plight is not yet as severe, it is not far behind, countries attending the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee were told. Gaza’s collapse could bring down the entire Palestinian banking sector.

In response, Europe hurriedly put together a €40 million aid package, but that will chiefly address Gaza’s separate humanitarian crisis – not the economic one – by improving supplies of electricity and potable water.

No one doubts the inevitable fallout from the economic and humanitarian crises gripping Gaza. The four parties to the Quartet charged with overseeing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN – issued a statement warning that it was vital to prevent what they termed “further escalation” in Gaza.

The Israeli military shares these concerns. It has reported growing unrest among the enclave’s two million inhabitants and believes Hamas will be forced into a confrontation to break out of the straightjacket imposed by the blockade.

In recent weeks, mass protests along Gaza’s perimeter fence have been revived and expanded after a summer lull. On Friday, seven Palestinian demonstrators, including two children, were killed by Israeli sniper fire. Hundreds more were wounded.

Nonetheless, the political will to remedy the situation looks as atrophied as ever. No one is prepared to take meaningful responsibility for the time-bomb that is Gaza.

In fact, the main parties that could make a difference appear intent on allowing the deterioration to continue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored repeated warnings of a threatened explosion in Gaza from his own military.

Instead, Israel is upholding the blockade as tightly as ever, preventing the flow of goods in and out of the enclave. Fishing is limited to three miles off the coast rather than the 20-mile zone agreed in the Oslo accords. Hundreds of companies are reported to have folded over the summer.

Intensifying the enclave’s troubles is the Trump administration’s recent decision to cut aid to the Palestinians, including to the United Nation’s refugee agency, UNRWA. It plays a critical role in Gaza, providing food, education and health services to nearly two-thirds of the population.

The food budget is due to run out in December, and the schools budget by the end of this month. Hundreds of thousands of hungry children with nowhere to spend their days can only fuel the protests – and the deaths.

The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, headquartered in the West Bank, has no incentive to help. Gaza’s slowly unfolding catastrophe is his leverage to make Hamas submit to his rule. That is why the Palestinian Authority has cut transfers to Gaza by $30 million a month.

But even if Abbas wished to help, he largely lacks the means. The US cuts were imposed primarily to punish him for refusing to play ball with US President Donald Trump’s supposed “deal of the century” peace plan.

Israel, the World Bank notes, has added to Abbas’s difficulties by refusing to transfer taxes and customs duties it collects on the PA’s behalf.

And the final implicated party, Egypt, is reticent to loosen its own chokehold on its short border with Gaza. President Abdel Fattah El Sisi opposes giving any succour either to his domestic Islamist opponents or to Hamas.

The impasse is possible only because none of the parties is prepared to make a priority of Gaza’s welfare.

That was starkly illustrated earlier in the summer when Cairo, supported by the UN, opened a back channel between Israel and Hamas in the hope of ending their mounting friction.

Hamas wanted the blockade lifted to reverse Gaza’s economic decline, while Israel wanted an end to the weekly protests and the damaging images of snipers killing unarmed demonstrators.

In addition, Netanyahu has an interest in keeping Hamas in power in Gaza, if barely, as a way to cement the geographic split with the West Bank and an ideological one with Abbas.

The talks, however, collapsed quietly in early September after Abbas objected to the Egyptians. He insisted that the Palestinian Authority be the only address for discussions of Gaza’s future. So, Cairo is yet again channelling its energies into a futile attempt at reconciling Abbas and Hamas.

At the UN General Assembly, Trump promised his peace plan would be unveiled in the next two to three months, and made explicit for the first time his support for a two-state solution, saying it would “work best”.

Netanyahu vaguely concurred, while pointing out: “Everyone defines the term ‘state’ differently.” His definition, he added, required that not one of the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank be removed and that any future Palestinian state be under complete Israeli security control.

Abbas is widely reported to have conceded over the summer that a Palestinian state – should it ever come into being – would be demilitarised. In other words, it would not be recognisable as a sovereign state.

Hamas has made notable compromises to its original doctrine of military resistance to secure all of historic Palestine. But it is hard to imagine it agreeing to peace on those terms. This makes a reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas currently inconceivable – and respite for the people of Gaza as far off as ever.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

2 October 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/02/everyone-washes-their-hands-as-gazas-economy-goes-into-freefall/

By Maureen Clare Murphy

Friday marked what Gaza’s health ministry described as the single bloodiest day of the Great March of Return protests since 14 May, when Israeli occupation forces fatally injured more than 60 Palestinians.

A photo shared on social media following news of his death shows Muhammad al-Hawm, 14, taking part in the football team sponsored by his local mosque. (via Facebook)

Seven Palestinians, including two children, were slain on Friday, two days shy of the six-month anniversary of the protest launch.

The two children were identified as Nasir Azmi Musbah, 11, shot in the head east of Khan Younis, and Muhammad Nayif Yusif al-Hawm, 14, shot in the chest east of Bureij.

An adult was also killed in Bureij, in central Gaza: Muhammad Ashraf al-Awawdeh, 25, shot with a live bullet to the chest. And in southern Khan Younis, Muhammad Ali Muhammad Inshasi, 18, was shot in the stomach.

Three were killed east of Gaza City: Iyad Khalil Ahmad al-Shaer, 18, shot in the chest; Muhammad Bassam Muhammad Shakhsa, 24, shot in the head; and Muhammad Walid Haniyeh, 32, shot in the face.

More than 250 Palestinians were injured during Friday’s protests, 163 of them by live fire, including 20 children, according to the Gaza-based human rights group Al Mezan.

One paramedic and four media workers were among those injured, including journalist Haneen Mahmoud Suleiman Baroud, 23, who was hit directly in the head with a tear gas canister, Al Mezan stated.

A graphic video published by Palestinian media outlets shows the moments after a man was shot in the back of his head during protests east of Gaza City on Friday:

The man was among a group including women and children waving flags near one of the fences along the Gaza-Israel boundary.

It was not immediately clear whether the injured man was among those who had died of their wounds.

Palestinian media also published a video said to show a paramedic mourning over the body of her brother, the slain child Nasir Azmi Misbah, in a hospital morgue:

150 killed during protests

Israel’s use of deadly force against unarmed protesters on Friday is characteristic of its actions throughout the Great March of Return, during which more than 150 Palestinians have been killed, including 28 children, three persons with disabilities, three paramedics and two journalists.

In addition to those killed during protests, 52 other Palestinians in Gaza have been slain by Israeli occupation forces since 30 March and Israel is withholding the bodies of 10 of them.

Lethal fire against mass protests in Gaza is the subject of an ongoing investigation appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which was told by human rights groups this week that there is no evidence that a single protester killed by Israel during the Great March of Return was armed.

Israel’s violence has also generated an unprecedented warning from the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who stated that Israeli leaders may face trial for the killings of unarmed demonstrators.

The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, met with Palestinian Authority foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki in New York during the UN General Assembly this week:

Gaza economy “in free fall”

The World Bank stated this week that Gaza’s economy is “in free fall” after more than a decade of blockade, successive Israeli military assaults and internal division between Palestinian factions.

The Gaza economy shrank by six percent in the first quarter of this year, “with indications of further deterioration since then.”

“The result is an alarming situation with every second person living in poverty and the unemployment rate for its overwhelmingly young population at over 70 percent,” the World Bank added.

“The economic and social situation in Gaza has been declining for over a decade but has deteriorated exponentially in recent months and has reached a critical point,” Marina Wes, director for the West Bank and Gaza, stated.

“Increased frustration is feeding into the increased tensions which have already started spilling over into unrest and setting back the human development of the region’s large youth population.”

The UN’s Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov told the Security Council last week that “the power crisis in Gaza is coming to a head” as the last stocks of emergency fuel to operate critical health, water and sanitation facilities delivered to Gaza run out amid electricity shortages of around 20 hours per day.

He added that essential medicines “are at critically low levels, with almost half of essential medicines at less than one-month’s supply and 40 percent completely depleted.”

Meanwhile the commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said on Tuesday that the body has only enough funding to keep schools and clinics in operation through mid-October.

“We still need approximately $185 million to be able to ensure that all of our services, education system, health care, relief and social services and our emergency work in Syria and Gaza in particular can continue until the end of the year,” Pierre Krähenbühl added.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s population of two million are refugees from lands on the other side of the boundary with Israel. More than half of Gaza’s residents receive food aid packages from UNRWA, whose food aid budget will be exhausted by the end of the year.

Currently, the UN provides food aid packages to 1.3 million people in Gaza, up from just 130,000 in 2005.

The US announced last month that it would stop funding UNRWA after freezing $300 million in aid in January, throwing the agency into unprecedented financial crisis.

The US has also decided to cut $200 million more in bilateral aid to the West Bank and Gaza.

Meanwhile proceedings against the US were initiated at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Friday over the relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah says is a breach of the Vienna Convention.

Maureen Clare Murphy is the managing editor of The Electronic Intifada and lives in Chicago

29 September 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/09/29/bloody-friday-as-gaza-marks-six-months-of-protests/

                                                PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL

Founder: LELIO BASSO (ITALY)

President:
PHILIPPE TEXIER (FRANCE)

Vicepresidents:
LUIZA ERUNDINA DE SOUSA (BRASIL)
JAVIER GIRALDO MORENO (COLOMBIA)
HELEN JARVIS (AUSTRALIA)
NELLO ROSSI (ITALY)

Secretary General:
GIANNI TOGNONI (ITALY)

A Call for Justice and Action for Myanmar

One year after the PPT Judgment on the genocide

September 2017 – September 2018

General Secretariat:

VIA DELLA DOGANA VECCHIA 5 – 00186 ROME – TEL:0039 066877774
E-mail:ppt@permanentpeoplestribunal.org www.permanentpeoplestribunal.org

 

1. The judgment of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity

One year ago, on 22 September 2017, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar, after hearing persuasive witness and expert testimony at its session held in Kuala Lumpur, found that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are being committed in Myanmar1. In recognition that its findings have continuing and ever heightened applicability, the University of Malaya Faculty of Law is now publishing that judgment, soon to be followed in Burmese, Bengali and Rohingya languages, to ensure access by the most affected communities.
This was the first and until today the only quasi-judicial judgment that genocide is being carried out against the Rohingya and that other serious and hateful crimes are committed against the other groups currently suffering persecution from the Myanmar State.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar met at the height of the latest and most intense offensive against the Rohingya, launched on 25 August 2017 by the armed forces of Myanmar in conjunction with local militia, bringing decades-long assaults and repression to an unprecedented level. Its deliberations were suspended to listen to the speech of State Counsellor Aung San Syu Kyi to the Yangon diplomatic corps denying any persecution, a speech that was incorporated into the proceedings of the Tribunal as the defence statement and rationale, falsely attempting to justify the unfolding events as a response to the relatively low-level assaults launched by militants on military border posts.

The Tribunal viewed the situation of the Rohingya through a wider lens, responding also to requests from the Kachin community and from other Muslims in Myanmar to rule on their persecution. It found that war crimes had been and were still being committed against the Kachin; and that all three groups were being subjected to crimes against humanity and genocidal intent by the State of Myanmar. In the year since the PPT on Myanmar’s judgment, all these crimes have continued and indeed have escalated, as also against other groups, notably the Shan and Ta’ang.

2. Other voices of denunciation, protest and succour

The world’s press, researchers and humanitarian agencies have provided report after report amplifying the well-founded judgment of the Tribunal that genocidal intent against the Rohingya had already been signalled back in 1978 and was called out ever more strongly in a number of serious academic and legal reports examining the repeated pogroms of 2002, 2012 and 2016. All those warnings were disregarded by the majority of the international community, and the genocidal process continued to wreak its dreadful course.

However, in the face of the mass exodus of 2017, following calculated state-planned military escalation, the reality could no longer be denied, even though many still refuse to call it by its name, and powerful institutions refuse to take action.

The government of Bangladesh, itself a densely populated country, vulnerable to extreme climate events, has opened its doors and dug into its limited resources to help support nearly one million Rohingya refugees, but the conditions in the camps are known to all as impossible to endure for the long term. World leader after world leader have visited the camps expressing distress and sorrow, but failing to meet even the basic humanitarian needs of the refugees.
Most recently, on 27 August, the UN Independent Fact Finding Mission found “that crimes against humanity have been committed in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan States, principally by the Tatmadaw” and called for“the investigation and prosecution […] so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine State”

The Permanent People’s Tribunal expresses its full endorsement of the UN Fact Finding Mission’s work.

3. The Quest for Justice : Recent Steps (Backwards and Forwards)

These and other efforts to bring justice to the victims of the continuing Myanmar nightmare and to end impunity have been met by the government’s arrogant and naked denials and attempts to silence critics, to the point of convicting two journalists for daring to investigate just a single one of the massacres.

The Permanent People’s Tribunal calls upon the international community for action, now. The facts are known. We cannot accept that another genocide is being carried out under the eyes of the world in the internet age when no one can once more say: “I did not know, I did not see.”

A referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the minimum judicial response for ensuring appropriate accountability of the perpetrators and those responsible for the atrocities committed in Myanmar. In this context, important steps forward were taken in the decision by Pre Trial Chamber I on 6 September that the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh even though Myanmar is not a party of the ICC Rome Statute, and in the subsequent decision of the Prosecutor to open a Preliminary Investigation.

However, deportation is only one of the many crimes committed by the State of Myanmar on the Rohingya. In the absence of any hope for a Security Council referral for genocide and crimes against humanity, we support the proposal by Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s newly appointed High Commissioner for Human Rights, for action to be taken by the UN General Assembly at its 2018 session.

4. A call for action for Myanmar

As these belated decisions by the official bodies mandated by the UN begin to wend their slow course towards possible judicial rulings, it remains ever more important to continue to expand the mobilisation of consciences and to come up with feasible solutions to the crisis before it is too late. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Never again” cannot be an empty slogan behind which there is only the total subjection of international obligatory law to the weight of strictly political and unequal power.

The PPT reiterates its call for action for Myanmar, and propose an international initiative to chart a program to press for approve a minimum set of recommendations for immediate implementation, including: a realistic plan of voluntary, safe and dignified return for the Rohingya to their ancestral homeland, guaranteed through an international protection mechanism, based on the recognition and guarantee of their full rights to citizenship as nationals

of Myanmar; as well as appropriate accountability of the perpetrators and those responsible for the atrocities committed.
Such international initiative could be targeted to a meeting in Rome, where the ICC was approved 20 years ago, early in December 2018, in close coincidence with the70th anniversary of the UN Declaration and of the approval of the genocide Convention.

We see such an initiative as a way towards building an international, coordinated movement of the people based on an understanding of a fundamental diagnosis: the tragic situation in Myanmar illustrates starkly what is happening at this moment in history, not only in this place but in so many other corners of the world: the enormous difficulty, and often the failure, of international law to protect individuals from serious violation, by the State, of the peoples’ rights to life, livelihood and human dignity and the necessity of a vigilant and active international public opinion capable of undertaking the struggle for the respect of fundamental human rights.

Rome, 21 September 2018

Philippe Texier, President Helen Jarvis, Vice-president Nello Rossi, Vice-president
Gianni Tognoni, Secretary general

On the behalf of the panel of judges, session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (18-22 September 2017)
Daniel Feierstein, Chair of the panel of Judges Gill Boehringer, Judge

 

1. http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/PPT-on-Myanmar-Judgment-FINAL.pdf

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Like vultures, Israeli soldiers descended on Khan Al-Ahmar, on Sep. 14, recreating a menacing scene with which the residents of this small Palestinian village, located East of Jerusalem, are all-too familiar.

The strategic location of Khan Al-Ahmar makes the story behind the imminent Israeli demolition of the peaceful village unique amid the ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes and lives throughout besieged Gaza and Occupied West Bank.

Throughout the years, Khan Al-Ahmar, once part of an uninterrupted Palestinian physical landscape has grown increasingly isolated. Decades of Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank left Khan Al-Ahmar trapped between massive and vastly expanding Israeli colonial projects: Ma’aleAdumim, KfarAdumim among others.

The unfortunate village, its adjacent school and173 residents are the last obstacle facing the E1 Zone project, an Israeli plan that aims to link illegal Jewish colonies in Occupied East Jerusalem with West Jerusalem, thus cutting off East Jerusalem completely from its Palestinian environs in the West Bank.

Like the Neqab (Negev) village of Al-Araqib, whichhas been demolished by Israel and rebuilt by its residents 133 times, Khan Al-Ahmar residents are facing armed soldiers and military bulldozers with their bare chests and whatever local and international solidarity they are able to obtain.

Despite the particular circumstances and unique historical context of Khan Al-Ahmar, however, the story of this village is but a chapter in a protracted narrative of a tragedy that has extended over the course of seventy years.

It would be a mistake to discuss the destruction of Khan Al-Ahmar, or any other Palestinian village outside the larger context of demolition that has stood at the heart of Israel’s particular breed of settler colonialism.

It is true that other colonial powers used destruction of homes and properties, and the exile of whole communities as a tactic to subdue rebellious populations. The British Mandate government in Palestine used the demolition of homes as a ‘deterrence’ tactic against Palestinians who dared rebel against injustice throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, till Israel took over in 1948.

Yet the Israeli strategy is far more convoluted than a mere ‘deterrence’. It is now carved in the Israeli psyche that Palestine must be completely destroyed in order for Israel to exist. Therefore, Israel is engaging in a seemingly endless campaign of erasing everything Palestinian, because the latter, from an Israeli viewpoint represents an existential threat to the former.

This is precisely why Israel sees the natural demographic growth among Palestinians as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel’s ‘Jewish identity’.

This can only be justified with an irrational degree of hate and fear that has accumulated throughout generations to the point that it now forms a collective Israeli psychosis for which Palestinians continue to pay a heavy price.

The repeated destruction of Gaza is symptomatic of this Israeli psychosis.

Israel is a “country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing,” was theofficial explanation offered by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister in January 2009 to justify its country’s war on the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Israel ‘going wild’ strategy has led to the destruction of22,000 homes, schools and other facilities during one of Israel’s deadliest wars on the Strip.

A few years later, in the summer of 2014, Israel went ‘wild’ again, leading to an even greater destruction and loss of lives.

Israel’smass demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza, and everywhere else, preceded Hamas by decades. In fact, it has nothing to do with the method of resistance that Palestinians utilize in their struggle against Israel. Israel’s demolishing of Palestine – whether the actual physical structures or the idea, history, narrative, and even street names – is an Israeli decision through and through.

A quick scan of historical facts demonstrates that Israel demolished Palestinian homes and communities in diverse political and historical contexts, where Israel’s ‘security’ was not in the least a factor.

Nearly 600 Palestinian towns, villages and localitieswere destroyed between 1947 and 1948, and nearly 800,000 Palestinians were exiled to make room for the establishment of Israel.

According to theLand Research Center(LRC), Israel had destroyed 5,000 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem alone since it occupied the city in 1967, leading to the permanent exile of nearly 70,000 people. Coupled with the fact that nearly 200,000 Jerusalemites were driven out during the Nakba, the Catastrophe’ of 1948, and the ongoing slow ethnic cleansing, the Holy City has been in a constant state of destruction since the establishment of Israel.

In fact, between 2000 and 2017, over 1,700 Palestinian homes were demolished, displacing nearly 10,000 people. This is not a policy of ‘deterrence’ but of erasure – the eradication of the very Palestinian culture.

Gaza and Jerusalem are not unique examples either. According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD’s)report last December, since 1967 “nearly 50,000 Palestinian homes and structures have been demolished – displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and affecting the livelihoods of thousands of others.”

Combined with the destruction of Palestinian villages upon the establishment of Israel, and the demolition of Palestinian homes inside Israel itself, ICAHD puts the total number of homes destroyed since 1948 at more than 100,000.

In fact, as the group itself acknowledges, the figure above is quite conservative. Indeed, it is. In Gaza alone, and in the last 10 years which witnessed three major Israeli wars, nearly 50,000 homes and structures werereportedly destroyed.

So why does Israel destroy with consistency, impunity and no remorse?

It is for the same reason that it passed laws to change historic street names from Arabic to Hebrew. For the same reason it recently passed the racist Nation-state law, elevating everything Jewish and completely ignoring and downgrading the existence of the indigenous Palestinians, their language and their culture that goes back millennia.

Israel demolishes, destroys and pulverizes because in the racist mindset of Israeli rulers, there can be no room between the Sea and the River but for Jews; where the Palestinians – oppressed, colonized and dehumanized – don’t factor in the least in Israel’s ruthless calculations.

This is not just a question of Khan Al-Ahmar. It is a question of the very survival of the Palestinian people, threatened by a racist state that has been allowed to ‘go wild’ for 70 years, untamed and without repercussions.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

20 September 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/09/20/why-israel-demolishes-khan-al-ahmar-as-representation-of-greater-genocide/