Just International

Carter Opposes West’s Sanctions That Hurt Russian People

By Countercurrents

Former US president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday the West should not impose sanctions that would hurt the Russian people over their leaders’ actions in Ukraine . And, hours after the US vice-president Joe Biden’s Kiev visit, the Kiev authority has relaunched military assaults against the federationists in the east of Ukraine . The federationists are opposing the authority that has seized parliament and usurped power in Kiev .

Media reports on Ukraine said:
Carter told AFP on the sidelines of a discussion in Paris on climate crisis: “I don’t think we would go so far as to impose sanctions that would hurt the Russian people.”

Carter was taking part in a meeting with students as a member of The Elders group set up to promote human rights around the world.
Carter said Russia ‘s takeover of Crimea had been “inevitable”.
“I don’t think anything could have been done by the US or European countries or anyone else to prevent that eventuality.
” Russia has always considered Crimea to be part of Russia .”
He said: “my hope and my belief is that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not going to use military force” in eastern Ukraine .
“He is going to try to use other means to convince those people who live there that their best option is to cast their lot more towards Russia than towards the West. So I don’t think there is anything we can do that is going to deter Putin.”
Carter said Ukrainians must be allowed to decide their own fate.
He hoped they would be supported by Russia from the East and the US and Europe from the West so as to “not be torn between the two.”

Kiev relaunches military assault

The Kiev authority has relaunched military assaults against its pro-Kremlin separatists, hours after US Vice President Joe Biden ended a two-day visit to Kiev in which he warned Russia over its actions in the former Soviet republic.
Related Stories
Already the US has started sending 600 troops to Poland and to Baltic countries – Estonia , Lithuania and Latvia – for “exercises”.
The latest moves underscored the severity of the crisis that has brought East-West relations to their most perilous point since the end of the Cold War.
The acting president in Kiev , Oleksandr Turchynov, said on Tuesday he was ordering the military to restart operations against the rebels.
In a further slide back towards violence, which many fear could tip into civil war, a Ukrainian reconnaissance plane was hit by gunfire while flying above Slavyansk . However, the Antonov An-30 propellor-driven plane safely made an emergency landing and none of its crew members were hurt.
The federationists had taken over Kramatorsk ‘s police station late Monday, extending their grip from the already occupied town hall.
Russia is claiming Kiev ‘s new leaders are to blame for the collapse of the accord, which was reached recently in Geneva .
Russia says ultra-nationalists who were involved in months of protests that ousted Ukraine ‘s president Viktor Yanukovych in February killed rebels in an attack Sunday near the eastern town of Slavyansk .
“We in the United States stand with you and the Ukrainian people,” Biden said in a joint news conference with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister claimant in Kiev .

$5 billion regime change-investment

The US is to blame for the events in Ukraine as it invested $5 billion in regime change in the country, taking a more radical stance that its EU allies, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy to the UN.
“It seems it was the Americans, who tried to push through the most radical scenario,” Churkin said in an interview with Rossiya 24 channel. “They didn’t want any sort of compromise between Yanukovich and the opposition. And, I think, they came to the conclusion that it was time to cash in those $5 billion and handle the matter towards abrupt regime change, which, eventually, happened.”
This explains why the US , but not the European Union, took center stage when the coup resulted in legal vacuum in Kiev , he added.
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland told CNN on Monday that Washington has invested around $5 billion into supporting democracy in Ukraine since the fall of Soviet Union .
But Churkin has doubts about Nuland’s claims, saying that “any sane person would, at least, say that those investments didn’t pay off.”

“If those $5 billion were spent on support of democracy, but not overthrow of the existing government and regime change, then no democracy has triumphed there [in Ukraine],” he explained.
The Maidan standoff was “a head-on attack” by the US and its Western allies aimed at distancing Russia and Ukraine from each other, Russia ‘s envoy to the UN said.
However, it failed and “led to a completely unexpected result for them when Crimea was reunited with Russia ,” he stressed.
“One has to be naïve to suggest that it all happened fast,” Churkin said of the deal on the de-escalation of the Ukraine crisis, which Kiev agreed with Russia , the US and EU on April 17.
“Despite all their recurrent adventurism, they [the US ] realize that peace is rather fragile and too many crises, too much unrest has been created in different parts of the world. I don’t think they’re interested in the emergence of a new serious crisis, with non-obvious consequences for them,” the envoy said.
According to Churkin, one of those steps should be the confiscation of 3 million items of weapons, which are currently illegally held by the “radical nationalists” in Ukraine .
Kiev calls for the disarmament of federalization supporters in eastern Ukraine, but “how will the radicals [from Western Ukraine] lay down their arms as they are sometimes declared the National Guard and thus obtain official status?” he wondered.
The envoy has ruled out the possibility of a UN peacekeeping operation in Ukraine , calling it “unrealistic.”
“ Ukraine is a very big country and from political point of view there’s no frontline there. And, thank God, it can’t be drawn,” he said.
The presence of observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) “is just enough to monitor what’s happening there,” Churkin stressed.
The envoy also said the EU has begun realizing there’s “a considerable danger” in the rise of far-right forces in Ukraine .
“It’s not a secret that Europe has radicals of its own. Giving such a boost to the nationalist radicalism in Europe … I think that serious politicians understand this,” he said.
But those concerns are only shared during personal contacts, but “nobody talks openly about it,” he added.

Russia dismisses US threat

In Moscow , Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the US threat of new sanctions.
“I am sure we will be able to minimize their consequences,” he said in a televised speech to the Russian parliament.
However he acknowledged that Russia ‘s economy was facing an “unprecedented challenge”.

A divided EU

The European Union is divided on going further with its own sanctions on Moscow , with some member states worried that increased punishment could jeopardize supplies of Russian gas.
Sweden , which is not a NATO member, announced Tuesday it was increasing defense spending because of the “deeply unsettling development in and around Ukraine “. It plans to boost its fleets of fighter jets and submarines.

Lugansk plans referendum

In the eastern part of Ukraine , the federationists remain firmly entrenched in public buildings they have occupied for more than a week.
In the town of Lugansk , protesters pledged to hold their own local referendum on autonomy on May 11.

23 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

Kiev Regime Orders Crackdown As US Steps Up Threats Against Moscow

By Bill Van Auken

 

Vice President Joseph Biden’s two-day visit to Ukraine has ended with a resumption of the Kiev regime’s military crackdown against its political opponents in the southeast of the country and a dangerous escalation of US threats against Russia.

Oleksandr Turchynov, who is both acting president and chairman of the parliament following the US-backed, fascist-led coup of February 22, announced Tuesday that he had ordered the country’s security forces to “carry out effective counterterrorist activities aimed at defending Ukrainian citizens living in the country’s east from terrorists.”

Troops have reportedly been massed in the town of Izyum, on the border between Ukraine’s Kharkov region and Donetsk, the country’s most industrialized region. Donetsk has been the center of protests against the US-backed ultranationalists who seized power in Kiev.

Government buildings and police stations have been seized in over a dozen cities and towns. Local councils that have been elected are demanding autonomy for the region and a federalized form of government. In Lugansk, a local popular assembly has announced it will hold a two-stage referendum on May 11 and May 18, asking voters whether the region should be autonomous in the first round and, in the second, whether it should be independent or seek annexation by Russia. Other areas are preparing similar votes.

Izyum is about 50 kilometers northeast of Slavyansk, a center of the protests in Donetsk. The troops that have been deployed there reportedly include National Guard units that are heavily populated by fascist thugs from the Right Sector.

The Kiev regime initially launched its “antiterrorist” offensive early last week, seizing control of a military airfield in Kramatorsk and sending an armored column rolling toward Slovyansk. Halted by a crowd of local people, however, the Ukrainian soldiers refused to take action against them, instead turning over their armored vehicles and weapons to anti-Kiev militiamen.

It was in the aftermath of this humiliating fiasco that the Ukrainian regime’s foreign minister joined his counterparts from the US, Russia and the European Union in drafting an agreement in Geneva to halt all violence and de-escalate tensions by disarming illegal groups, ending occupations of public buildings and spaces, freeing political prisoners and initiating a dialogue between the regions.

Shortly afterwards, the regime in Kiev added that it was observing an “Easter truce.” It was during this supposed truce that a column of four cars carrying Right Sector gunmen attacked a roadblock on the outskirts of Slovyansk on Easter Sunday, killing three local men.

It is now apparent that the Kiev regime and its patrons in Washington were only playing for time with the negotiations in Geneva. It hardly seems a coincidence that the first abortive “counterterrorist” offensive was launched after a secret visit to Kiev by CIA Director John Brennan, while the second attempt was initiated immediately after Vice President Biden’s trip to the country.

Turchynov claimed the resumption of the crackdown was triggered by the discovery in Slovyansk of the body of a local politician and member of his own right-wing Batkivshchyna, or “Fatherland,” party, who had been abducted earlier. Another body found in the town has yet to be identified. Turchynov charged that “these crimes are being committed with the full support and connivance” of Russia.

This is all merely a pretext for an aggressive operation planned and directed from Washington. This was made clear in an interview published by the Washington Post Tuesday with the Kiev regime’s minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov. Asked by the Post whether the regime was going “to fight the terrorists,” Avakov replied, “Tomorrow the holidays will be finished and the announced Easter truce will be finished… We will act… We will start liberating people from the terrorists.”

The US-backed crackdown against the population of southeastern Ukraine threatens to plunge the country into a bloody civil war. At the same time, the launching of such an operation within miles of the Russian border poses the immediate threat of a catastrophic conflict between a nuclear-armed Russia and the Western powers.

In tandem with the turn toward armed repression in Ukraine, Washington is escalating its reckless and provocative military actions in the region directed against Russia. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that a first contingent of US paratroopers will arrive in Poland today to begin months of joint infantry exercises with Polish troops. Similar company-sized units will be dispatched to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the coming days in what the US military describes as “land force training activities in the Baltic region scheduled to take place this year and possibly into next year.”

“Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has renewed our resolve to strengthening NATO’s defense plans and capabilities, and to demonstrate our continued commitment to collective defense in reinforcing our NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

Also announced was the dispatch of another warship to the Black Sea in what is being described as a “reassurance mission.”

This supposed response only points to the real motivation behind the US-backed coup in Ukraine: to escalate the military encirclement of Russia, bringing NATO to its borders and eliminating Moscow as an impediment to US geostrategic hegemony over the Eurasian landmass.

Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary of state for Eurasian affairs and the designated “point person” on operations in Ukraine, made clear the scale of the US investment in the drive to impose a US puppet regime in Kiev in an interview Monday on CNN news.

Nuland is a former chief of staff to Dick Cheney and the wife of Robert Kagan, the founding chairman of the Project for a New American Century, the rightwing think tank that was the leading advocate for wars for regime change in Iraq and elsewhere. She boasted to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has “invested” $5 billion in promoting “democracy” in Ukraine. She followed this admission with the preposterous claim that no US aid had been funneled to the fascist-led violence in Kiev’s Maidan, which she described as “a spontaneous movement.”

Nuland concluded by issuing marching orders to the Kiev regime, insisting that it must “negotiate a deal with the IMF, where they would institute real reform,” i.e., austerity measures that will spell mass unemployment and a devastating decline in living standards for Ukrainian workers. She also affirmed Washington’s backing for elections being staged by the illegitimate regime in Kiev on May 25 and demanded that the regime “ensure that the country is peaceful enough for those elections to go forward.” This was a clear directive to launch bloody repression against those in southeastern Ukraine who have opposed the US-orchestrated coup.

Moscow responded to the latest US threats and provocations in a Tuesday telephone conversation between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry that had been initiated from Washington. Lavrov insisted that the US-backed Ukrainian regime had to take “urgent steps” to implement the April 17 agreement reached in Geneva. This meant reversing the order to send troops into southeastern Ukraine and freeing dissidents arrested there. He also demanded that the regime disarm neo-fascist groups such as the Right Sector.

What has become clear is that while Russia’s regime, representing the interests of the country’s capitalist oligarchs, hoped that Geneva could prove a path to peaceful accommodation with US imperialism, Washington saw the agreement as a means to an entirely different end. It used it to gain time to reorganize a military crackdown in Ukraine, while at the same time claiming that Russia was in violation of the deal because of the refusal of the opponents of the Kiev regime in southeastern Ukraine to halt their protests. This provides the pretext for intensified sanctions and stepped-up military provocations against Moscow.

As for disarming the Right Sector, neither Washington nor its puppets in Kiev had the intention of doing any such thing. They recognize the need to use these fascist elements as a battering ram against not only the anti-Kiev protests, but also against resistance from the working class as a whole to the drastic IMF-dictated social and economic attacks that are to come.

23 April, 2014
WSWS.org

 

Obama’s killing fields in Yemen

By Nile Bowie
Washington’s drone program isn’t making Yemen safer – it is traumatizing and radicalizing communities, and swelling the ranks of Al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration has recently taken part in a joint operation with Yemeni forces that has produced the highest death toll of any confirmed drone strike in Yemen so far this year, according to sources from the Associated Press (AP).

Yemen’s state media claims that the victims of the attack were among the most dangerous elements of Al-Qaeda, and that the strike was based on confirmed intelligence that the targeted individuals were planning to target Yemen’s civil and military institutions. Yemeni officials claim that the target site, located in remote mountainous regions in the country’s troubled south, was one of the few examples of permanent infrastructure setup by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to train fighters and store armaments.

The strike allegedly took place with regional cooperation and assistance from Saudi Arabia, and due to official secrecy provisions, the United States does not have a legal obligation to acknowledge or comment on the strikes undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The exact death toll varies from source to source, but more than a dozen people have been killed at minimum, with at least three civilian causalities. Witnesses say that a car carrying the alleged militants was hit with a missile as it drove by a vehicle carrying civilians, who were also killed. A second strike on the area was launched shortly after.

Yemen’s government officially claims that 55 alleged militants have been killed so far, and the Supreme Security Committee – which includes the country’s intelligence chief, defense and interior ministers – and President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi approved the strike.

Hadi, who came to power in February 2012 after he stood unopposed in elections, is a staunch supporter of the US drone program, despite the high number of civilian casualties incurred by the strikes. AQAP, active in the south-central regions of the country, is a small but pervasive organization whose tactics include using sophisticated car bombs and suicide attacks that have been bold and deadly in their fight against the government in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

Criminalizing drones
Yemen, the only state on the Arabian Peninsula to have a purely republican form of government, is in the midst of an ongoing political and security crisis prompted by divisions between various movements and factions, who are themselves divided between Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam. The central government in Sanaa commands little authority outside the capital, and faces a widely popular secessionist movement in the south, an entrenched Shiite rebel movement in the north, and a scattered AQAP insurgency campaign that has succeeded in gathering adherents largely due to their resentment of the Obama administration’s drone warfare campaign throughout the country.

Yemen has the youngest population in the world, with an unemployment rate as high as 40 percent, while half the population still lives below the poverty line.

Longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh submitted his resignation in 2011, following nationwide protests calling for an end to corruption and greater representation. The collective vision for reform shared by nearly all sides of this highly polarized country failed to progress following Saleh’s removal, and like other Arab nations who experienced a change in power during the period known as the Arab Spring, militias and extremist elements took advantage of the precarious security situation to embolden themselves.

In an effort to reconstruct Yemeni society and assuage various movements and communities who feel unrepresented throughout the country, Hadi has channeled his administration’s efforts into UN-backed reconciliation talks known as the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which impressively brought together over 500 activists and representatives from a diverse array of backgrounds to reform the security apparatus and administrative structure of the country, and draft a new constitution that would be the basis for both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014.

In a rare show of consensus, participants at the conference voted to criminalize the use of drones for extrajudicial killing, which have enraged average Yemenis from all walks of life. Drone strikes were made technically illegal since 2013, but their continued prevalence in partnership with Yemeni security forces dangerously delegitimizes the government in Sanaa and puts Hadi in an exceedingly awkward position at a time when the government is distrusted for colluding with foreign powers.

The message sent by the delegates of the NDC, which is the most democratic and representative reflection of Yemeni society that currently exists, is that the use of drones are an affront to the sovereignty and dignity of the state, opening the possibility that President Hadi may be criminally persecuted if the current policy continues.
Killing with impunity
President Obama’s speech on his administration’s drone warfare program in 2013 was widely perceived as a convincing and compelling defense of an otherwise controversial policy.

In describing the elaborate precautions and high standards taken prior to launching a strike, Obama claimed, “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” The president acknowledged how any US military activity risks creating animosity and enemies in the target country, and spoke of the high threshold set for taking lethal action, in respect for the dignity of every human life.

According to the rules in place under the Obama administration, targeted strikes can only take place when capturing a suspect would not be feasible, when the authorities of the country in question could not or would not address the threat, and when no other reasonable alternatives were available.

In the six months since Obama delivered his speech on the rules for using armed drones, reports indicate that covert strikes in Yemen and Pakistan incurred more casualties when compared to the six months before the speech was given.

Behind the US president’s carefully-selected language and various moral assurances, is a covert assassination program that has operated under an accountability and transparency vacuum, where basic statistical data is withheld under the blanketing justification of protecting national security, and hundreds of innocent civilians have been targeted and killed with near-total impunity.

The facts that have been established about the Obama administration’s program are profoundly disturbing. The United States is bound to abide by international human rights law outside of a defined conflict zone, which would apply for its operations in Yemen and Pakistan, where war has not been declared. In such a legal environment, targeted killings can only take place when strictly unavoidable and necessary to protect life, and due to the official secrecy policies surrounding the Obama administration’s drone program, US officials are not legally obliged to acknowledge strikes or provide evidence needed to substantiate alleged threats to the degree that would satisfy the law enforcement standards that govern the intentional use of lethal force outside armed conflict.

The legal criterion to justify a strike is determined in secret by the White House with advice from the Justice Department, but with no oversight or accountability. Obama’s so-called ‘near-certainty’ standard and his administration’s definition of an ‘imminent threat’ are not open to independent review, and are taken unilaterally by the executive branch. As noted by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson, the United States violates international law by targeting of persons directly participating in hostilities who are located in non-belligerent states.

The known criteria for justifying lethal force has proven to be shockingly indiscriminate, to the point where the president’s ‘near-certainty’ standards can never logically be met. The Obama administration, according to investigations, targets individuals based on their exhibiting of ‘behavioral characteristics’ that are deemed typical of militants, rather than making strikes based on the confirmed identity of a target.

Such use of ‘signature strikes’ has resulted in the arbitrary targeting of any military-age male in a given strike vicinity on the presumption that he is a combatant, and directly targetable. The ‘double tap’ technique involves launching an initial drone strike, which is followed by a second strike that targets rescuers and first responders, a tactic that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits have made use of in the past.

The double tap relies on the assumption that the initial target is a militant, and all those who converge on the scene of the initial strike must be militants themselves. Such a strategy cannot possibly meet the stringent requirements needed to avoid the killing of civilians, and can only result in actions that can be described as war crimes or extrajudicial killings.
An undeclared war
Obama’s speech marked the first formal public acknowledgement of a US citizen’s death in a drone strike. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric of Yemeni descent and a US citizen, was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in May 2011. In describing his criteria for an extrajudicial targeted strike, Obama claims there is no difference between a foreign terrorist and a terrorist with US citizenship.

Al-Awlaki’s assassination and the subsequent killing of his 16-year-old son, also an American national, sets an alarming precedent. At one time, Anwar al-Awlaki was known to be a moderate cleric who denounced terrorism and violence. At some stage between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Anwar al-Awlaki underwent a profound change in his political orientation and began to preach jihad, in response to what he viewed as the United States engaging in a war against Islam and Muslim civilians.

Just as Anwar al-Awlaki’s views morphed toward the violent fringe as a reaction to US policy, the radicalization of communities and traumatized survivors of drone strikes throughout Yemen provides AQAP with a steady flow of militants seeking to avenge their families’ deaths by harming the United States. The Obama administration and the Yemeni political elite may view drone strikes as a short-term fix, but the radicalization of growing swathes of society will prove to be a major liability for any future government in power.

Washington has assured the public that the American role in Yemen is highly constrained, and held in accordance with a mandate to target members of Al-Qaeda approved by Congress after 9/11. The scope and breadth of covert operations undertaken by the CIA and secretive paramilitary unit Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are impossible to ascertain, but Washington’s role in Yemen’s civil wars are much deeper than what the public imagines.

The inhumanity of this war comes to the fore in incidents such as the US bombing of a wedding convoy in December 2013, killing 12 civilians. Consider the vile injustice meted out in 2009 to the people of al-Majalah, a Bedouin village that became the target of US cluster-bombing, killing 41 civilians, including nine women and 21 children. Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who exposed the American slaughter at al-Majala, was jailed by authorities and framed as an Al-Qaeda collaborator. His original release from prison was blocked by the personal intervention of President Obama, who phoned former Yemeni President Saleh and lobbied for Shaye to remain in custody.

Contrary to claims that drones only target those high-level figures who pose an imminent threat to the US homeland, reports indicate that low-level fighters, local commanders, and even figures in Yemen’s own military have been targeted by US drones – not because they present any risk to US national security, but because they are political opponents of the current US-backed regime in Sanaa.

The Obama administration’s dirty wars and covert operations in Yemen represent a glaring evasion of justice and accountability that will continue to sow wanton killing and perpetual conflict if left unchecked.
Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is also a Just member.
24 April, 2014
rt.com

Horrendous Pro-Zionist, Zionist And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse Exposed

 

By Dr Gideon Polya

Decent people reject racism apartheid and genocide. Zionism is genocidal racism in its awful theory and ghastly practice of subjugation, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of  another people. This evil is most starkly exposed when one considers the horrendous child abuse variously inflicted by racist Zionists, by Apartheid Israel and by pro-Zionist US Alliance allies of the Apartheid rogue state on exiled Palestinian children, Occupied Palestinian children, Palestinian Israeli children, Jewish Israeli children, Jewish children in general,  Muslim children, Third World children and indeed potentially all children of the world as systematically outlined below.

 

1. Apartheid Israel violates the Right to Life of Palestinian children.

The most fundamental  human Right is the Right to Life [1] but the racist Zionists  have denied this Right to the approximately  2 million Palestinians (half of them children) who have died from violence (0.1 million) or from imposed deprivation (1.9 million) since 1936. By comparison one notes that the German Nazis killed 1.5 million Jewish children in WW2 through violence or imposed deprivation. In contrast,  Israeli deaths at the hands of Palestinians since 1920 have totalled about 3,700 [2].

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has compiled the following details of violent Israeli and Palestinian child deaths in the period 1987-2012 in Israel, the West Bank and  Gaza:  (a) total fatalities in the First Intifada, minors under the age of 17 (Dec. 9, 1987-Sept. 28, 2000): Israelis – 18; Palestinians – 281 (by Israel security forces) and 23 (by Israeli civilians); (b) total Casualties: (Sept. 29, 2000-Sept. 30, 2012): Israelis – 129; Palestinians – 1,337; (c) fatalities since the outbreak of the second intifada and until operation “Cast Lead” (Sept. 29, 2000-Dec. 26, 2008): Israelis – 123; Palestinians – 954; (d) fatalities during operation “Cast Lead” (Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 18, 2009): Israelis – 0; Palestinians – 345; (e) fatalities after operation “Cast Lead”: (Jan. 19, 2009-Oct. 31, 2012): Israelis – 6; Palestinians – 38 i.e. a total of 2,978 or about 3,000 and about 120 on average per year [3].

UNICEF reveals that 3,000 Occupied Palestinian  under-5 year old infants die each year as compared to 1,000 for Apartheid Israel .  The under-5 year old infant mortality in deaths per 1,000 live births is 22.4 (for Occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Concentration Camp), and  14.9 (for Occupied Palestinians in the West Bank) [4]  as compared to 6 for Apartheid Israel [5].

Palestinian children are not just killed by Israeli shells, bombs, bullets and beatings but mostly die avoidably from racist Zionist-imposed deprivation. It is estimated that about 300,000 Occupied Palestinians in total and about 200,000 Palestinian under-5 year old infants died avoidably from deprivation under Israeli guns since 1967 in an ongoing Palestinian Genocide [2, 6, 7].

Avoidable mortality (avoidable death, excess mortality, excess death) is the diffeence between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. For impoverished Third World countries avoidable deaths are about 1.4 times under-5 infant deaths [8]. Accordingly, annual avoidable Occupied Palestinian deaths total about 3,000 x 1 .4 = 4,200  of which about half (2,100) are of children. Thus the racist Zionists violently kill about 120 Occupied Palestinian children each year and passively murder another 2,100 Occupied Palestinian children annually through imposed deprivation. This means that on average the Apartheid Israeli authorities violently kill a Palestinian child every three days but on average also deliberately passively murder about 6 Palestinian children each day through imposed deprivation as surely as if they beat, bombed, shot or gassed them as did their genocidally racist Nazi German role models.

Genocidally racist Apartheid Israel grossly violates Article 6 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which states:: “ 1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life. 2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child” [1].

 

2. Apartheid Israel deprives Occupied Palestinians (half of them children) of all human rights set out in the 30 Articles of the Universal Charter of Human Rights.

 

A recent detailed analysis shows that nearly 47 years after the 1967 Israeli conquest of all of Palestine, the Western-backed, invasion-, occupation- , theft- , genocide-, lying- and race-based Apartheid State of Israel still comprehensively violates all the basic human rights of the Indigenous Occupied Palestinian People as set out in the 30 Articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights [9, 10]. Apartheid Israel also comprehensively violates the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” in denying not just the Right to Life on a massive, genocidal, mass paedocidal and mass infanticidal scale but in denial of essentially all other rights of the child to Occupied Palestinian children [1].

 

3. Highly abusive, traumatizing and deadly  mass confinement and deprivation  of Occupied Palestinian children.

 

Of the 1.8 million Occupied Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp over half (52.5%, 0.9 million) are children who are highly abusively confined without human rights and without charge or trial and for the asserted crime of being  Indigenous Palestinians living in a tiny part of the country inhabited continuously by their forebears for thousands of years  to the very dawn of agrarian civilization. Of the 2.5 million Occupied Palestinians in the West Bank about half (47.3%, 1.2 million) are highly abusively confined without human rights to ever-dwindling Bantustans under violent Israeli military rule and forbidden access by Israeli Apartheid to “Jewish” roads and “Jewish” land [11]. While the West Bank Bantustans are policed by war criminal Israeli military with guns, the Gaza Concentration Camp is policed by Israeli naval shelling, Israeli military shelling and gunfire and Israeli air force rockets, phosphorus bombs and high explosive bombs.

UNICEF provides a dire summary of the conditions of Occupied Palestinians [4]: Rank in Human Development Index (2007):  106/177; GNI per capita (US$, 2008): 1,230; Percentage of people living below the national poverty line (2007): 55.7 % (Gaza), 23.6 % (West Bank); Unemployment (2008):  19.8% (West Bank), [about 80% (Gaza)]; Number of Palestinian children killed as a result of conflict (September 2000 – January 2009):  1,475; Percentage of stunting:  10%;  Percentage of anaemia:  50%;  Percentage of households not connected to water networks (2008): 10%; Percentage of Primary School net enrolment (2008, SOWC 2010):  73%.

Jewish British Labor MP David Miliband (the son of anti-racist, pro-human rights Jewish British parents) visited Gaza and commented (2011): “The statistics say that 80% of the population are on UN food aid. The youth unemployment rate is 65%. The website of the United Nations office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs has a comprehensive database where you can see how many trucks, containing different kinds of supplies, have been allowed in by the Israeli authorities. … But although life is real, it is traumatic and limited. We saw buildings – not just the former Hamas headquarters – still reduced to rubble. There are houses riddled with bullet holes. The electricity supply cuts out for up to eight hours a day. There are not enough schools or teachers, so there are classes of 50 or 60 and the school day is restricted to a few hours to allow for two or even three shifts. … The consequences of war are everywhere, nowhere more so than for those caught in the crossfire…Save the Children, obviously, is most concerned about the 53% of the Gaza population under 18. The statistics say 10% of children are “stunted” – so undernourished before the age of two that they never grow to their full potential” [12].

Apartheid Israel thus grossly violates Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which states: “ 1. States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status. 2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members” [1].

 

4. Highly abusive and traumatizing imprisonment and torture of West Bank Palestinian children.

 

The Committee on the Rights of Children (a body of independent legal experts charged by the UN with the task of monitoring the protection of children’s rights in signatory states)  has condemned Israeli torture and other maltreatment of Palestinian children (2014) : “The Committee expresses its deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police, and about the State party’s failure to end these practices in spite of repeated concerns expressed by treaty bodies… [Palestinian children are] systematically subject to physical and verbal violence, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water. These crimes are perpetrated from the time of arrest, during transfer and interrogation, to obtain a confession but also on an arbitrary basis as testified by several Israeli soldiers as well as during pretrial detention” [13].

The Australian ABC TV Four Corners program recently broadcast profoundly disturbing revelations of how the Israeli military arrest, imprison  and torture Palestinian children to obtain information about Occupied Palestinian family members and community members (2014): “ The Israeli army is both respected and feared as a fighting force. But now the country’s military is facing a backlash at home and abroad for its treatment of children in the West Bank , occupied territory. Coming up, a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Australian newspaper reveals evidence that shows the army is targeting Palestinian boys for arrest and detention. Reporter John Lyons travels to the West Bank to hear the story of children who claim they have been taken into custody, ruthlessly questioned and then allegedly forced to sign confessions before being taken to court for sentencing…” [14].

Apartheid Israel thus also grossly violates Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which states: “ States Parties shall ensure that: (a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age; (b) No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time; (c) Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so and shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances; (d) Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority, and to a prompt decision on any such action” [1].

 

5. Horrendous physical, emotional and sexual abuse of Jewish Israeli and Arab Israeli children.

 

Yarden Skop writing in the progressive Jewish Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2013): “ A study on child abuse of more than 10,000 children — the first of its kind to be conducted in Israel — found that close to half of them reported that they had been physically, emotionally or sexually abused. The study, which was conducted from September 2011 to September 2013 by the Center for the Study of Society at the University of Haifa , was headed by Prof. Zvi Eisikovits and Prof. Rachel Lev-Wiesel. Until now statistics on child abuse in Israel have been based solely on cases reported to the authorities and on information received from the authorities themselves. The University of Haifa study collected first-hand accounts from Jewish and Arab children aged 12 (sixth grade), 14 (eighth grade) and 16 (tenth grade). The total size of the sample was 8,239 Jewish children and 2,274 Arab children.  The study found that almost half of the children (48.5 percent) reported that they had suffered one or more kinds of abuse. Twenty-eight percent reported emotional abuse, 18 percent reported sexual abuse, 15 percent reported emotional neglect, 14 percent reported physical neglect, 14 percent reported physical harm and nine percent reported that they had been exposed to violence within the family. More than two-thirds of the Arab children (67.7 percent) reported that they had suffered one or more kinds of abuse. This means that two of every three Arab children suffer some sort of violence” [15].

Danielle Ziri writing about this new report on Israeli child abuse in the conservative Jewish Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post (2013): “ In the Jewish sector, almost half of the children surveyed – 48.5 percent – reported that they had experienced one or more types of abuse. In addition, the report showed that there is a very significant gap between the number of child victims of abuse known to the authorities and the number of children who indicated directly that they had been abused. In 2012, social workers reported 48,992 children and youth on suspicion of child abuse and neglect, which constituted 1.9% of all children in Israel , compared to the 48.5% of children who reported being affected by abuse in this study… It was also found that the rate of abuse is higher with the age of the child: among 12-year-olds, 42.9% reported that they had endured some kind of violence, while 48.9% of 14-year-olds and 58% of 16-year-olds reported so. In terms of physical abuse, 14.1% of children in the Jewish sector and 27.6% in the Arab sector reported that they had been kicked, hit or physically hurt…According to the results, 17.6% of children in the Jewish sector and 22.3% of children in the Arab sector had been victims of sexual abuse. About 8.3% of Jewish children and 11.8% of Arab children had suffered serious sexual harm. Of the children who had been sexually abused, 46.5% in the Jewish sector and 49% in the Arab sector indicated that the abuse occurred more than once, and most of them also mentioned that it had continued over the past year. Moreover, the vast majority indicated that their abuser was a man and over one third of the children abused said it had happened within their family” [16] .

 

6. Horrendous intellectual child abuse applied to Israeli children.

 

The state of Israel is a nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal, genocidally racist, racism- and genocide-based, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid state. Racist Zionist (RZ)-run Apartheid Israel is a democracy-by-genocide – of about 12 million Palestinians only 7%, the adults of 1.7 million Palestinian  Israelis  (21% of the Israeli population) can vote for the government ruling all of Palestine plus part of Lebanon and a largely ethnically cleansed part of Syria, albeit as third class citizens; 1.8 million Occupied Palestinians are highly abusively confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp with minimal human rights;  2.5 million Occupied Palestinians live with minimal human rights under highly abusive military rule in West Bank Bantustans;  about 6 million Palestinians are forbidden  to even live in Palestine;  there are  5.9 million Jewish Israelis and 0.3 million non-Jewish and non-Arab Israelis [2, 11]. About 50% of Occupied Palestinians are children (49.3% overall, 52.5% in the Gaza Concentration Camp, 47.3% in the West Bank ) [11] and about 36% of Israelis are children.

Outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Jared Diamond in his best-selling book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) [17] enunciated the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” – an injunction grossly violated by racist Zionist (RZ)-run Apartheid Israel and its racist, genocide-committing and genocide-ignoring US Alliance backers. However Israeli children are taught otherwise and are subject to horrendous intellectual child abuse in being raised to accept the rightness of invading and colonizing the country of another people and in the process subjecting the Indigenous inhabitants (50% children)  to war, occupation, robbing, deprivation,  imprisoning, torture, killing, exiling, trauma, and ethnic cleansing (genocide). Yet anti-racist Jewish humanitarians argue otherwise – for example, Moshe Menuhin (1893-1983, a prominent anti-Zionist, father of famous violinist,  universalist and anti-Zionist Yehudi Menuhin and the author of “The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time”, “Jewish Critics of Zionism”, and of the family history “The Menuhin Saga”) put it succinctly thus: “Jews should be Jews – not Nazis.” [18].

The impact of this horrendous Israeli intellectual child abuse is revealed by American physician and evolutionary anthropologist Dr John Hartung as reported by Professor Richard Dawkins in his book “The God Delusion” (pp 253-257) [19] who reported the findings of Israeli psychologist George Tamarin: “Tamarin  presented to more than a thousand Israeli school children, aged between eight and fourteen , the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua [which states] Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword … Tamarin then asked the children a simple moral question: “Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not? They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 per cent gave total approval, and 26 per cent total disapproval, with rather fewer (8 per cent) in the middle with total approval … Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua, but with Joshua’s name replaced by “General Lin” and “ Israel ” replaced by “a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago”. Now the experiment gave opposite results. nly 7 per cent approved of General Lin’s behaviour, and 75 per cent disapproved… It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it” [19].

 

7. Horrendous impact of Apartheid Israel on the world’s children.

 

Apartheid Israel has been a major recipient of US aid that would otherwise have gone to alleviate poverty and prevent avoidable mortality – and especially avoidable mortality of children – around the world. The horrendous long term, committed accrual financial cost of Apartheid Israel to Americans has now reached a gigantic $40 trillion in today’s dollars. However the human cost involves the preventable deaths of millions of Americans – passive mass murder of Americans  in an American Holocaust inflicted by the fiscal perversion of traitorous Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) One Percenters committing $8-10 trillion to ethnic cleansing and active and passive mass murder of Muslims abroad in support of Apartheid Israel instead of keeping Americans  alive at home.    The long term, committed accrual cost of Zionist-subverted American Government support for Apartheid Israel in circa 2008 dollars totals about $40 trillion, the breakdown being  (1) $3 trillion (1948-2003), (2) $4-6 trillion (Zionist-promoted Iraq and Afghan Wars), (3) $0.7 trillion (Value of a Statistical Life- or VSL-based cost of  88,000 US veteran suicides since September 2001) and (4) about $30 trillion (one quarter of the VSL-based cost of 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September 2001). This is an under-estimate because it does not consider the millions of preventable American deaths before 9-11 and linked to Zionist subversion and perversion of America [20, 21].

This racist Zionist perversion of the USA (now aka USrael or the United States of Israel)  has come at a huge cost to the world’s children. Thus it is estimated that the 1950-2005 avoidable deaths globally totaled 1.3 billion of which 1.2 billion were in the Developing World and 0.6 billion in the Muslim World, with about half being children [8]. These estimates are consonant with estimates of 1950-2005 under-5 year old infant deaths totaling 0.88 billion for the world, 0.85 billion for the Developing World and 0.4 billion for the Muslim World [8] , this representing a Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed) and the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which pro-Zionist Churchill with Australian complicity deliberately  starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons [8, 22-25].  In 2003 global  avoidable deaths from deprivation totaled about 16 million and under-5 year old infant deaths totaled about 10 million [8]. However currently annual avoidable deaths from deprivation total about 18 million (half of them children) and annual under-5 year old infant deaths total about 7 million, with this Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust carnage occurring on Spaceship Earth with the racist Zionist perverted and subverted US in charge of the flight deck.

However Apartheid Israel has a more direct involvement in this global carnage through its role as a dirty tricks US surrogate, keeping the Muslim world suppressed and through dirty involvements in atrocities like the Guatemalan Indian Genocide and the Sri Lankan Tamil Genocide [8].  While non-nuclear weapons and anti-nuclear weapons Iran has not invaded any other country for centuries, it is subject to Zionist-promoted sanctions that are connected to 100,000 avoidable Iranian deaths from deprivation each year (half being children). In contrast, Apartheid Israel has militarily attacked 12 other countries (the list, including  attacks on national ships and aircraft, is as follows: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Uganda, USA, and Turkey), noting that such attacks result in diversion of national resources from keeping children alive to national defence).

Thus the 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries actually occupied by Apartheid Israel total 24 million (half being children), the breakdown being  as follows (with the data expressed as 1950-2005 avoidable deaths/2005 population, both in millions, m) : Apartheid Israel [0.095m/6.685m =1.4%] – Egypt [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Jordan [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Lebanon [0.535m/3.761m = 14.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Syria [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], total = 23.858m/106.854 = 22.3% [8]. This carnage is similar in magnitude to that achieved by Nazi Germany in its WW2 invasion of the Soviet Union . These 24 million avoidable deaths in countries variously  occupied by Apartheid Israel are indicative of 17 million under-5 year old infants in these racist Zionist (RZ)-violated countries in the period 1950-2005 [8].

Numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US was responsible for the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 killed) with some concluding  that Apartheid Israel must have been involved [26]. The resulting Zionist-promoted US War on Terror has, so far, been associated with 10 million Muslim deaths from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation. The post-1990, Zionist-promoted War on Muslims has been associated with 12 million such deaths, a Muslim Genocide and a Muslim Holocaust 2 times greater in deaths than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million deaths)  [2, 27-29].

 

8. Horrendous impact of Apartheid Israel on children of its pro-Zionist friends, the   US and Australia .

 

US is the richest country on earth but an estimated 1.3 million Americans die preventable deaths each year due to gross fiscal perversion whereby trillions of dollars are spent on the military, wars and killing people abroad rather than on keeping Americans alive at home [20, 21]. The traitorous Neocon American  and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) Establishment One Percenters responsible for this passive mass murder of 1.3 million Americans each year should be  exposed and sidelined  by the long-suffering 99% of ordinary Americans. For those who love ordinary Americans and have been inspired by great American humanitarians, there are  some truly shocking statistics. Thus, for example,  about 90,000 US veterans of Zionist-promoted wars (in which they mostly  participated barely out of their  teenage years) have suicided since 9-11 and an estimated 280,000 under-5 year old American infants have died since 9-11 linked  to the Neocon American  and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) Establishment’s fiscal perversion of spending trillions of dollars on killing Muslim children abroad rather than keeping American children alive at home. The horrendous long term, committed, accrual financial cost of Apartheid Israel to Americans has now reached a gigantic $40 trillion in today’s dollars, this being directly linked to 21,000 under-5 year old American infant deaths each year [20, 21] .

PC racist White Australia is Apartheid Israel ‘s best friend after the US and makes a major financial and diplomatic contributions in support of the Apartheid rogue state. A succession of Australian political leaders have had their names attached to forests in Apartheid Israel on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. However the long term, committed, accrual cost of the Zionist-promoted War on Terror to Australia has been $125 billion  with this fiscal perversion being linked to 66,000 preventable Australian deaths annually or 0.9 million preventable deaths since 9-11 out of a population of 23 million [30, 31]. Some 2,000 Indigenous Australians die preventably each year in a continuing Aboriginal Genocide and the Indigenous under-1 year old infant mortality is 2 times that for White Australia.  Zionist narcissism, bullying and mendacity has contributed to an appalling “look the other way” Australian culture which means that the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide is ignored [32], as is horrendous child abuse in Australia [33, 34].

The former pro-Zionist Gillard Labor Government instituted a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse that is unfortunately confined to investigating horrendous institutional child sexual abuse (up to 40,000 cases over the last 40 years by Catholic Church personnel). However both the Coalition and Labor continue to ignore the awful reality that 34% of Australian women and 16% of Australian men – 4.4 million Australians in all – have been subject to child sexual abuse i.e. the Coalition and Labor major parties have ignored huge non-institutional child sexual abuse [33, 34] . In contrast to its declared inability to quantitate the extent of child abuse in Indigenous communities, the “Little Children are Sacred” Report (pp234-236) [35 ] refers to studies in America indicating that 25% of females and 10% of males experience childhood sexual abuse in the US [36] and in Australia  indicating that 34% of females and 16% of males today experienced child sexual abuse [37].

It is not surprising that pro-war, pro-Zionist, human rights abusing  countries like the US and Australia that turn a bind eye to horrendous child sexual abuse within their societies  would likewise ignore the horrendous Israeli child abuse outlined above.

 

9. Horrendous impact of Apartheid Israel on rational public discussion, children and the looming Climate Genocide.

 

The Zionist Lobbies have had an appalling impact on democracy and rational public discussion in the Western democracies. Both anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Apartheid Israeli human rights abuses are routinely falsely defamed as “anti-Semites” by the racist Zionists and their fellow travellers. Thus, for example, PC racist (politically correct racist) Apartheid Australia has reached a new low in its world-leading support for Apartheid Israel and by permitting, without public challenge, the egregiously false defamation of  anti-racist Jews critical of human rights abuses by the racist, democracy-by-genocide, Zionist rogue state [38]. Australia and other Western countries ignore the huge threat to their  institutions  posed by the free hand given to the traitorous  Zionist Lobby [39].

Mainstream politicians, whether Democrat or Republican in the US , Conservative,  Liberal Democrat or Labour in the UK , or Coalition or Labor in Australia , are overwhelmingly silent over Apartheid Israeli crimes whether through racist conviction or fear of the Zionist Lobby. The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western democracies have become Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies,  public perception of reality and political power.  Thus, for example,  the Australian PM Kevin Rudd was removed in a US-approved, Mining Corporation-backed and pro-Zionist-led Coup on 24 June 2010 having incurred the hatred of the Zionist Lobby by mildly protesting Israeli forging of Australian passports and violently kidnapping Australians in international waters [40].

The Orwellian  irrationality introduced into Western public life by the theft, bullying and mendacity of the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) Establishment One Percenters has devastating impact on preventable deaths in these societies e.g. 1.3 million avoidable deaths from deprivation  annually in the US [20, 21, 30] and 66,000 such deaths annually in Australia [30, 31]. This mendacious Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy culture subverts urgently required rational societal responses to the 3 apocalyptic threats facing humanity, namely nuclear weapons, poverty and man-made climate change. Notwithstanding pious political rhetoric, terracidal climate change inaction is the reality in the Western democracies [41].  The consequences of climate change inaction are dire [41-44] – top climate scientists  have warned that as few as 0.5 billion will survive.   Noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 (UN Population Division), these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including roughly twice the present population of particular mainly non-European groups, and specifically 6 billion under-5 year old infants [42] – mass paedocide, mass infanticide and near-terminal homicidal child abuse thanks to the egregious theft, bullying and mendacity of the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) Establishment One Percenters .

 

Summary.

 

The false carnard of Jews drinking the blood of Christian children was one of the appalling racist lies culminating in the expulsion of the Jews from England by King Edward I in 1290. 7 centuries later racist Zionists  have turned  a racist lie of paedocide (child killing) into an horrendous reality of massive and deadly child abuse inflicted by racist Zionists, Apartheid Israel and by pro-Zionist US Alliance allies of the Apartheid rogue state on exiled Palestinian children, Occupied Palestinian children, Palestinian Israeli children, Jewish Israeli children, Jewish children in general,  Muslim children, Third World children and indeed potentially all children of the world as systematically outlined above. Those who ignore, deny, excuse, encourage, support, advocate, or are otherwise complicit in lethal and non-lethal human rights abuse of children have crossed the thin red line separating decent human beings from Nazi-style barbarity.

What can decent people do about horrendous and traumatizing Zionist and Israeli child abuse? Decent people are obliged to (a) inform everyone they can; (b) urge and apply  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters; and (c) urge and effect the sidelining of racist Zionists and their supporters from public life as has already happened to like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and the KKK.  Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Speak out!

References.

 

[1]. “ Convention on the Rights of the Child”: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx

[2]. “Palestinian Genocide” :   http://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[3]. “Children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict .

[4]. UNICEF, “State of Palestine”: http://www.unicef.org/oPt/overview.html  .

[5]. UNICEF, “ Israel ”: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/israel.html .

[6]. William Cook (editor) “The Plight of the Palestinians. A long history of destruction”; for review see Gideon Polya, “Review “The Plight of the Palestinians. A long history of destruction”, Countercurrents, 17 June 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in William Cook (editor) “The Plight of the Palestinians. A long history of destruction”.

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/  .

[9]. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html  .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “ Apartheid Israel excludes Occupied Palestinians from all provisions of  the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ”, Countercurrents, 20 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm .

[11]. “Demographics of the Palestinian Territories ”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories .

[12]. David Miliband. “ Gaza represents the ultimate failure of politics”, Guardian, 11 October 2011: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/11/david-miliband-gaza-politics-save-the-children .

[13]. Phoebe Greenwood, “ Israel furious at UN report detailing torture of Palestinian children”, The Telegraph, 21 June 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10135157/Israel-furious-at-UN-report-detailing-torture-of-Palestinian-children.html?fb .

[14].   John Lyons, Janine Cohen and Sylvie Le Clezio , “Stone cold justice”, ABC TV Four Corners, 24 February 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/02/10/3939266.htm .

[15]. Yarden Skop, “Nearly half of Israel ‘s children suffer physical, sexual or emotional abuse, study finds”, Haaretz, 13 November 2013: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.557668 .

[16]. Danielle Ziri, “Child abuse more prevalent than ever, report shows”, The Jerusalem Post, 11 December 2013: http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Child-abuse-more-prevalent-than-ever-report-shows-331434 .

[17]. Jared Diamond, “Collapse”.

[18]. Moshe Menuhin quoted by Grace Halsell in “Like father, like son: a tribute to Moshe and Yehudi Menuhin”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), July 1996: http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0796/9607018.htm .

[19]. Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion”.

[20]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, millions of untimely American deaths and $40 trillion cost of Israel to Americans”,  Countercurrents , 27 August, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “ One million Americans die preventably annually in USA ”, Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .

[22]. Madhusree Mukerjee, “Churchill’s Secret War. The British Empire and the ravaging of India during World War II”.

[23]. “Bengal Famine”, BBC, 10 January 2009: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/   .

[25].  Gideon Polya, “ Bengal Famine. How Australia & UK killed 6-7 million Indians in WW2”, MWC News, 27 September 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/13742-bengal-famine.html .

[26]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[27]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[28]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[29]. “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “Endless War on Terror. Huge cost for Australia & America ”, MWC News, 14 October 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/22149-endless-war-on-terror.html .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “Why PM Julia Gillard Must Go: 66,000 Preventable Australian Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210212.htm  .

[32]. “Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

[33]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous child abuse by  pro-war, pro-Zionist, climate criminal Australian Coalition Governments”, Countercurrents,  4 December 2013 : http://www.countercurrents.org/polya041213. h t m .

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Australian child sexual abuse”, MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/22859-gideonpolya-sexual-abuse.html  .

[35]. “Little Children are Sacred” Report: http://web.archive.org/web/20070703014641/http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf  .

[36]. Finkelhor, D. (1994), Current information on the scope and nature of child sexual abuse”, Future of Children, 4(2), pp31-53).

[37]. Dunne, M.P., Purdie, D.M., Cook, M.D., Boyle, F.M. & Najman, J.M.(2003), Is child sexual abuse declining? Evidence from a population-based survey of men and women in Australia , Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 27 (2), pp141-152).

[38]. Gideon Polya, “Open Letter To Australian Human Rights Commission Condemns Pro-Zionist Anti-Jewish Anti-Semitism In Apartheid Australia ”,  Countercurrents, 4 March, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya040314.htm .

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

[40]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/3488-pro-zionist-led-coup.html .

[41]. Gideon Polya, “Terracidal Climate Change Inaction”, Countercurrents, 6 April 2014 : http://www.countercurrents.org/polya060414.ht m .

[42]. “Climate genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[43]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[44]. “Climate justice & intergenerational equity”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-justice .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007, including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and now available  for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”(now also available  for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

 

21 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

 

Western Powers, Ukrainian Regime Call For Military Buildup Against Russia

By Alex Lantier

Amid the crackdown on pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine being carried out by his Western-backed regime, Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called for a military buildup against Russia in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program Sunday. He advocated measures, including US military aid to his government, that pose the risk of a direct clash between nuclear-armed powers.

This aggressive and provocative policy, centered on the standoff in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian protesters and the military and fascist paramilitary forces of the unelected regime in Kiev, is inflaming tensions throughout Europe. Late Saturday and early Sunday, pro-regime forces attacked armed pro-Russian protesters who had set up roadblocks outside Slavyansk, killing at least one protester. A number of pro-regime fascists were also killed or wounded.

One of the pro-regime fighters killed in Slavyansk carried a badge of the fascist Right Sector militia, which led the February putsch that installed the current regime in Kiev.

“The personal belongings of a militant killed in the skirmish included a Right Sector badge number 20,” said Vyachaslav Ponomarev, the leader of Slavyansk’s pro-Russian forces. “Badge number one is held by [Right Sector leader Dmytro] Yarosh.”

A week ago, Yarosh called for the “total mobilization” of the Right Sector fascists to crush opposition to the Kiev regime.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “enraged” by the attack in Slavyansk. “It is surprising,” it wrote, “that the tragedy occurred after the signing on April 17 in Geneva of the final statement of the four-sided meeting of representatives of Russia, the USA, EU and Ukraine, which calls for refraining from any violent actions, intimidation, or provocations. The Russian side insists on the strict fulfillment by the Ukrainian side of its commitments concerning the de-escalation of the situation in southeast Ukraine.”

In fact—as the blank check given by the US-puppet regime in Kiev to the Right Sector makes clear—Kiev and its Western backers are ignoring the Geneva statement. Instead, they are pressing ahead with a reckless policy of militarily encircling Russia.

On “Meet the Press,” Yatsenyuk called for a military escalation against Russia. “It’s crystal clear that Russia is the threat, the threat to the globe, and the threat to the European Union and the real threat to Ukraine,” he said. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has a dream to restore the Soviet Union,” Yatsenyuk continued, “and every day he goes further and further. And God knows where the final destination is.”

Pressed by NBC’s David Gregory to ask the Western powers to send weapons to bolster his regime’s armed forces, Yatsenyuk asked for help rebuilding Ukraine’s economy and military.

Yatsenyuk’s comments were a political travesty. The threat to world peace comes not from Russia, but from the aggressive policy pursued by Washington and Berlin and their European allies.

The program of the capitalist oligarchy around Putin is not to restore the forms of state ownership that existed under the USSR, or to reunify the 15 former Soviet republics under its control. Rather, the Kremlin is desperately seeking to find a viable defense posture as NATO and the United States deploy their armed forces ever further to the east and closer to Russia’s post-Soviet borders.

The US has already sent millions of dollars in equipment to the Ukrainian army, as part of a broader military buildup by the NATO powers throughout Eastern Europe aimed at Russia. US and NATO officials have sent forces to the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and the Black Sea, despite warnings—including from within Western governments—that further escalation could provoke war with Russia.

Over the weekend, British media reported that the head of the MI6 intelligence agency briefed British Prime Minister David Cameron to the effect that Western military action in Ukraine could spiral into “all-out war with Russia.” He told Cameron that Putin would not “stand idly by” if the West intervened to back the Kiev regime.

“The basic message is that it’s not worth starting World War Three over Ukraine,” a senior British government source told the Mirror regarding the briefing.

British MI6 agents and Defense Intelligence Staff are apparently traveling throughout Ukraine, spying, in particular, on pro-Russian cities in eastern Ukraine. These agents on the ground, the Mirror reported, “warn that the crisis could turn into a violent civil war, with much of eastern Ukraine declaring independence and effectively joining Russia.”

The misgivings of British agents combing Ukraine notwithstanding, NATO is stoking up the conflict, adopting aggressive policies against Russia in ways previously reserved for defenseless ex-colonial countries targeted for US attack and regime change.

Surveying US policy towards Russia, the New York Times wrote on Sunday: “Just as the United States resolved in the aftermath of World War II to counter the Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state.”

Sections of the US State Department are pressing for an even harsher policy, the newspaper noted, and say they are “privately worrying that Mr. Obama has come across as weak.”

These remarks point to the explosive conflicts unleashed by the decision of the leading NATO powers to back the Kiev putsch and provoke a conflict with Russia. As rival armies face off in Eastern Europe in ways unseen since the Nazi Wehrmacht fought the Soviet Red Army during World War II, Washington is serving notice that it considers the Kremlin, like the Iraqi and Libyan regimes before it, a “pariah,” and will treat it accordingly.

The fate of the heads of state of previous “pariah” regimes gives some indication of the concerns now facing Putin and top officials in Russia. Saddam Hussein was hanged after a show trial in US-occupied Iraq; Libyan ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was tortured and extrajudicially murdered in the bombed-out ruins of his hometown, Sirte.

The most obvious difference, however, is that Russia is a more substantial power, which can threaten military retaliation with conventional forces and a nuclear arsenal capable of annihilating the planet. This underscores the depths of the crisis of world imperialism and the immensely reckless character of US-European policy.

While Putin stressed in his television appearance Saturday that he saw “nothing to prevent us from normalizing relations” with the NATO powers, top Russian officials have made clear that Russia is preparing a more forceful response should NATO continue to escalate the crisis.

On Friday, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the imposition of crippling economic sanctions on Russia planned by Washington and the European powers was “absolutely unacceptable.” He warned, “We can mobilize our whole society if someone starts driving Russia into a corner.”

Appearing on Russian television Saturday, Peskov said that any further enlargement of NATO to include countries further to the east would pose a serious threat to Russia. “One more step towards the Russian border,” he said, would cause “the entire European security architecture to be overhauled.”

“NATO cannot stop being a military organization,” Peskov noted, adding, “Russia will have to take measures to ensure its own security.”

 

21 April, 2014

WSWS.org

 

 

 

Advanced U.S. Weapons Flow to Syrian Rebels

Supplies of Antitank Missiles Will Test Whether Fighters Can Keep Arms Out of Extremist Hands

 

By

Ellen Knickmeyer,

Maria Abi-Habib and

Adam Entous

 

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel groups with a small number of advanced American antitank missiles for the first time in a pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry, people briefed on the effort said.

The new willingness to arm these rebels comes after the failure of U.S.-backed peace talks in January and recent regime gains on the battlefield. It also follows a reorganization of Western-backed fighters aimed at creating a more effective military force and increasing protection for Christian and other religious minorities—something of particular importance to Washington.

This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the hands of extremists, Saudi and Syrian opposition figures said. The U.S. has long feared that if it does supply advanced arms, the weapons will wind up with radical groups—some tied to al Qaeda—which have set up bases in opposition-held territory.

The White House would neither confirm nor deny it had provided the TOW armor-piercing antitank systems, the first significant supply of sophisticated U.S. weapons systems to rebels. But U.S. officials did say they are working to bolster the rebels’ ability to fight the regime.

Rebels and their Saudi backers hope the Obama administration will be persuaded to ease its long-standing resistance to supplying advanced weaponry that could tip the balance in the grinding civil war—especially shoulder-fired missiles capable of bringing down planes.

Some of the TOWs provided to rebels since March are equipped with a complex, fingerprint-keyed security device that controls who can fire it, said Mustafa Alani, a senior security analyst at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center who is regularly briefed by Saudi officials on security matters.

“The U.S. is committed to building the capacity of the moderate opposition, including through the provision of assistance to vetted members of the moderate armed opposition,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said. “As we have consistently said, we are not going to detail every single type of our assistance.”

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states lobbied aggressively for the Obama administration to step up its support for the moderate opposition, especially since the collapse of the peace talks.

U.S. refusal to better arm the rebels has created strains with Saudi allies that President Barack Obama tried to mend on his recent visit to the kingdom. After the visit, senior administration officials said the two countries were collaborating more closely on material support for the rebels and the Central Intelligence Agency was looking at ways to expand its limited arming and training program based in Jordan.

A newly created moderate rebel group called Harakat Hazm said it had received about a dozen BGM-71 TOWs and was being trained on them by an unspecified allied country. It is the only group known to have received the weapons so far, though there may be others.

“To make it clear, our allies are only delivering these missiles to trusted groups that are moderate,” said one senior leader of Harakat Hazm. “The first step is showing that we can effectively use the TOWs, and hopefully the second one will be using antiaircraft missiles.”

Another Syrian opposition figure in the region confirmed the U.S., with Saudi assistance, supplied the TOW missiles.

Mr. Alani said the two countries oversaw the delivery through neighboring Jordan and Turkey to vetted rebels inside Syria. Rebels already had some types of recoilless rifles in their stocks, which can also be used against tanks and other targets. But U.S.-made TOWs are more reliable and accurate, opposition officials and experts say.

A senior Syrian opposition official in Washington who works closely with the Americans said the TOWs were part of a small, tailored program coordinated by U.S. and Saudi intelligence services to “test the waters” for a potentially larger arming effort down the road.

The official said the introduction of a small number of TOWs will have limited impact on the battlefield.

The main objective is to develop a relationship between vetted fighters and U.S. trainers that will give the Obama administration the confidence to increase supplies of sophisticated weaponry.

The U.S. has blocked Saudi Arabia from giving rebels Chinese-made man-portable air defense systems, known as Manpads.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia offered to give the opposition Manpads for the first time. But the weapons are still stored in warehouses in Jordan and Turkey because of U.S. opposition, according to Saudis and Syrian opposition figures.

“Basically, this is supposed to be the next step” in the eyes of rebels and their Saudi backers, Mr. Alani said of the hoped-for antiaircraft artillery.

Senior administration officials said the White House remains opposed to providing rebels with Manpads. Antiaircraft and antitank weapons could help the rebels chip away at the regime’s two big advantages on the battlefield—air power and heavy armor. The regime has used its air force to devastating effect in the civil war—frequently dropping crude barrel-bombs packed with explosives on opposition neighborhoods and cities.

In hopes of reinvigorating Western support, more moderate rebels began this year openly battling increasingly powerful extremist groups in their midst and reorganized their ranks in hopes of forming more effective fighting forces.

Harakat Hazm was created in January out of the merger of smaller secular-leaning rebel groups in the north, the main opposition stronghold. It was set up to assuage U.S. concerns that the Western-backed and secular-leaning Free Syrian Army was too fractured to be effective and that rebels weren’t doing enough to protect religious minorities.

The group is working closely with the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, another large formation of several rebel brigades that turned their guns on the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in January. The Front was created in January to address U.S. criticism that rebels were too fragmented and that they were turning a blind eye to extremist groups. “The agreement is that the Syrian Revolutionaries and Hazm work together to get support from the international community but not step on each other,” said a member of the political opposition based in Turkey.

The official added that Hazm started to receive lethal and nonlethal aid from Saudi and the U.S. in March “because [rebels] are organizing like a proper army.”

The Western- and Gulf-backed Free Syrian Army has shaken up its ranks and strategy to try to reverse the regime’s consistent battlefield gains since last year.

“The U.S. wants pragmatic groups within the Free Syrian Army that can deal with a post-Assad Syria and secure Alawites and Christians,” said a member of the political opposition with ties to Harakat Hazm.

Syria’s conflict has strong sectarian undertones. President Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and his regime is dominated by the minority group while the opposition is made up largely of Syria’s Sunni majority. Many Christians have remained loyal to the regime, hoping it will protect them.

The fate of religious minorities has been a major concern of the U.S. Several extremist rebel groups were involved in massacres of Alawite villagers last year, and desecration of Christian and Alawite religious sites, according to human rights groups.

The opposition made a point of trying to secure the Christian village of Kassab in northern Syria this month after it was overrun by extremist groups, prompting a mass exodus of its population.

Opposition leader Ahmad Jarba visited the village earlier this month and vowed that the FSA wasn’t fighting a sectarian war.

—Rudayna El-Baalbaky and Mohammed Nour Alakraa contributed to this article.

 

April 18, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET

 

“Human Rights” As An Instrument Of Coercion

By Kourosh Ziabari

15 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Only a few weeks after the UN Human Rights Council endorsed a resolution in condemning the alleged violations of human rights in Iran on March 28, the European Parliament also took action to do its share of attacking the Islamic Republic for its “human rights violations” in what was introduced as the “European Parliament resolution on the EU strategy towards Iran.”

The two U.S.-allied bodies, in line with their customary and conventional policies of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and sowing the seeds of discord and strife across the globe, expressed serious concern over the “alarming level” of rights violation in Iran and called on the Iranian government to respect the rights of its citizens!

It’s a very praiseworthy and significant idea to protect the essential and fundamental rights of all people around the world, regardless of their nationality, age, gender, religion, race, color or place of residence, and raise voices to protest any infringement upon these rights. However, what is disturbing is that those who usually raise their voice in protest and accuse others of violating the human rights are those who violate these rights the most and blatantly disrespect the internationally-recognized conventions and agreements that ensure the protection of the rights, life and dignity of the humankind.

At the first glance, for those who are not familiar with the West-engineered hostility toward Iran, it sounds like the accusations of rights violation and condemnatory resolutions are purely aimed at improving the status of human rights in Iran and intended by those who really care about the welfare and interests of the Iranian people. But a deeper look at the course of developments in the Iran-West relations prove that it’s not the case and that the idea of human rights is being used as a leverage and an instrument of coercion to overdue an independent nation that has resisted unrelenting international economic and political pressures for more than 3 decades.

So, what are these human rights that have turned to be so controversial and problematic? Different entities give different definitions for human rights. But there are some elements and concepts which can be unanimously found in all of these definitions. For example, according to Amnesty International, “Human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life, liberty and freedom of expression; and social, cultural and economic rights including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, and the right to work and receive an education. Human rights are protected and upheld by international and national laws and treaties.”

Just consider the first example the AI gives, that is the “civil and political rights, such as the right to life,” and rest assured that the United States, which habitually and more often than not accuses Iran and other nations of violating the human rights, is the biggest machinery of stripping the people in different countries of this basic, rudimentary and essential right to life. People in Asia, Africa and Latin America have experienced the taste of the American-style human rights. The U.S. government decides to invade a distant country overnight, and as a result of its invasion, thousands of lives perish away and millions of hopes evaporate. The United States gives its own justifications for its endless military expeditions and increases its enormous military budget every year, but for the innocent children in Iraq and Afghanistan who should inhale the Sarin gas and other nerve agents when the U.S. Army bombards their cities, or successive generations of fathers and mothers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who should give birth to defected babies as a result of exposure to the nuclear materials dropped on the heads of their parents some 50 years ago, these justifications are irrelevant and senseless.

It’s good to be attentive to the status of human rights in the world, but not when you are simply unable to meet the demands of your own people, the racial and religious minorities living under your rule and those vulnerable people needing your support.
A clear example is discrimination against the Muslims and the colored people in the United States and Europe. Islamophobia is a growing phenomenon in the West as the Muslims face greater restrictions in practicing their religious rituals, observing their special dressing code and having equal job and education opportunities with the other citizens. When a lunatic pastor decides to burn a holy book which some 1.5 billion people hold to be sacred, the U.S. government shows no reaction in protest, unless asking the pastor to abandon his plan simply because it may endanger the lives of the Americans in uniform, not because the burning of holy books is a devilish and loathsome act. Of course you remember what I’m referring to; the 2011 plan by the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center Terry Jones who set several copies of the Holy Quran ablaze on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The blacks are also under different kinds of pressure because of the color of their skin, and although the Jim Crow laws that stipulated segregation in public places in the United States based on race and color were abolished around 5 decades ago in 1965, there are still traces of racial discrimination, racial profiling and anti-black prejudice in the American and other Western societies. The black athletes are usually booed and scoffed at in the sport stadiums, and this kind of bigotry is really a disgrace for the societies that boast of being highly civilized and developed. The African-Americans are still facing difficulties finding jobs in the United States, are deprived of certain voting rights in such states as Iowa, and should pay more expenses for healthcare services. These are realities which the U.S. mainstream media don’t talk about too much, but they exist.

The same goes for the freedom of speech and expression. The United States and its European allies frequently accuse Iran and other non-aligned nations of restricting the freedom of speech, while knowing that following the 9/11 attacks, a bunch of laws, acts and legislations which restrict the freedom of speech, press and the civil liberties of the ordinary citizens were introduced by the Congress and signed into law by the U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama after him.

Simple examples are the Patriot Act of 2001 and other regulations foreseen in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, 2013 and 2014 including the extrajudicial and indefinite detention of any American or foreign citizen traveling in the States who is seen to pose a threat to the U.S. national security. By virtue of the Patriot Act, the U.S. government is allowed to monitor and overhear the phone calls and email correspondences of any citizen whom it considers dangerous and threatening.

We may not also forget the barbaric and horrendous mental, sexual and corporal abuse and torture of the prisoners held in the Guantanamo bay detention facility and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; prisoners who are kept there for more than 10 years without any trial or specific charge.

The conscious minds haven’t also forgotten the unjustified imprisonment of the critics of the Israeli regime in the West who were jailed because of criticizing Israel and questioning the veracity of the official accounts of Holocaust: David Irving, Fredrick Toben, Ernst Zundel, Gremar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson and many others.

If detaining people without a court warrant is a human rights violation, then the United States and its Western partners are human rights violators and should be held accountable.

If persecuting the religious minorities and depriving them of their basic rights is a human rights violation, then the West has perpetrated serious violations and should justify its crimes.

If killing innocent civilians en masse is a human rights violation, then the United States military-industrial complex is the biggest culprit and should be tried.

If restricting the freedom of speech of the citizens and mass media is a crime, then the U.S. government should be equally responsible for restricting the alternative, progressive media and silencing the critics.

These are only simple instances of rights violation by those who claim to be the harbingers of freedom and human rights. It’s only a fair and balanced investigation of their crimes which will ensure the comprehensive and inclusive protection of human rights around the world, not directing baseless accusations against the political rivals and those whom they want to use the pretext of human rights as an instrument of coercion to put pressure on.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist and media correspondent

The Death Of Yarmouk Palestinian Camp

By Franklin Lamb

Yarmouk Palestinian camp, Damascus: This observer does not write these words casually.

And he is no huge fan of some of the intellectually lazy quick spun internet conspiracy theories, too many of which appear given to flights from reality when facts get complicated and dispositive information is obscure.

However, after months of studying the political, social, military, and economic situation in Yarmouk camp, and based on insightful meetings with former camp residents and PLO stalwarts who have been active in the Palestinian cause going back to the 1980’s, or earlier, Yarmouk’s survival prospects appear fatally bleak. If one allows oneself some basic deductions about the last three years and the ongoing upheaval, it is difficult to escape the conclusion, increasingly heard from Palestinians themselves, that Yarmouk, as with four other Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, is deeply wounded by the war being waged, that it is unlikely to survive the crisis, whether the latter ends in months or continues for decades, as many regional and western intelligence analysts are concluding.

In part, Yarmouk’s curse and current fate is due to its location. This is a triangular-sliced area of land pointing straight into central downtown Damascus, a strategic last piece in the mosaic necessary for a strong rebel advance on the capital. Its relative isolation from the conflict was shattered in mid-December 2012, when armed groups first entered the camp. The government surrounded the area; clashes ensued. UNRWA’s 28 schools and three clinics ceased operation, and the armed gangs also occupied homes and looted hospitals and stores. Camp residents who did not manage to flee, or did not want to, got caught in a tight stranglehold that continues today.

UNRWA’s HQ in Damascus estimates that more than 70 percent of the Palestinian refugees in Syria are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance immediately, while more than 50 percent are internally displaced. In Yarmouk alone, 142 people have died from hunger and lack of medical care just since June of 2013. Yet attempting to flee does not afford one copious or abundant opportunities either. As of last week, more than 11,000 Palestinians refugees fleeing Syria had sought support from UNRWA in Jordan. Yet even if they can somehow gain entry to the country, the Kingdom’s policy is to deport them back to Syria, in essence robbing them of their right to survival.

UNRWA expects the numbers of Palestinians seeking safety in Jordan to exceed 20,000 by the end of 2014. Slamming the gates or deporting them all would be unconscionable. Even the White House reminded Jordan’s King Hussein that such a policy violates the international law principle of non-refoulement, a UN protocol protecting refugees from being sent back to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened.

With respect to Yarmouk, there is a very real possibility that this largest of Syria’s refugee camps will succumb to a fate similar to those of the Tel al-Zaatar, Nabatieh, and Nahr al-Bared (now partially rebuilt after seven years) camps in Lebanon, but the loss of Yarmouk will be doubly compounded because in Syria, Palestinians found secure, sympathetic refuge in 1948. At that time, Palestinians fleeing their homeland were welcomed in solidarity—as Yarmouk became a symbol of resistance—but in 2014, there simply is no more welcome. For over six decades the Palestinian residents here nurtured families and communities, integrated economically, and formed a subset of the cultural and intellectual fabric of a vibrant and proud Syrian society, but a civil war and a Western-backed insurgency have changed the landscape, perhaps for good.

Yet even besides resistance, Yarmouk is also a symbol of Palestinian insistence—insistence that the right of return be addressed, insistence that their narrative be recognized, that their need for safety be respected, that their rights be upheld, that they live in dignity. One aspect which always stood out for foreign visitors to Yarmouk were the youth clubs, which provided teenagers with a safe creative space where they developed skills while choosing colleges over Kalashnikovs.

UN negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi’s recent warning about the “Somalization” of Syria is not merely a disturbing metaphor, for as he told this observer in a meeting last year at the Dama Rose Hotel in Damascus, “Somalization” has already become a daily reality for Yarmouk camp.

The trio of Palestinian factions now fighting inside Yarmouk consist of Ahmed Jibril’s, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (currently the PFLP-GC has approximately 800 fighters inside Yarmouk); the Nidal Front ( a few hundred fighters at most); and Fatah Intifada (close to 600 Palestinian fighters). The FI, since the death last year of its founder “Abu Musa”, is now headed by Abu Hazim, in whose company this observer spent an evening two weeks ago in Damascus along with FI’s articulate spokesman, Yaser al-Masri.

The Nidal Front (NF) is led by Khaled Abdul Majeed. Since 1992 it has been a breakaway faction of the PLO-affiliated Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, a split that came about in protest over Yasser Arafat’s compromises with Israel leading to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The NF, as of 4/11/14, has a few hundred fighters in Yarmouk, but is recruiting more as funds permit. It does not recognize the so-called Palestinian National Authority chaired by Mahmoud Abass. Majeed insisted to this observer that only armed resistance will liberate Palestine, and that the NF works with the PFLP-GC and FI on most Palestine strategy issues, evincing cooperation and coordination among the three PLO splinter groups inside Yarmouk.

Despite occasional bravado at news conferences, some of the leaders of these three factions will intimate privately that they see few prospects for Yarmouk, and that the camp’s fate is likely sealed, at least when compared to what it has been since its founding in 1957. And though they claim to be fighting “terrorists,” current refugee views with respect to Yarmouk’s “resistance” factions span the political spectrum, with some former camp residents, along with Palestinian analysts, viewing members of the above-noted groups as traitors.

Some of those who have fled Yarmouk, and even others still trapped inside or who have made it to surrounding countries, blame the three PLO splinter groups for making the Yarmouk situation even worse. Charges of treason may even be heard, or of playing the Palestinian card for political and economic gain, this while entering with Jabhat al-Nusra and other takfiri groups into fake negotiations—including the last seven negotiated “breakthroughs,” supposed to have lifted the siege while allowing those trapped to flee to safety, but which alas, as events have shown, were doomed to failure before they were even announced.

“Just by ID card and ancestry maybe,” the observer went on to add. “They are owned by a foreign government and have many times targeted Yarmouk camp residents, claiming to ‘protect’ the camp. These guys, and the rebels, claim to be protecting Yarmouk, but the truth is sometimes they work with each other to exploit the crisis in various ways—for politics and money. Take your motorcycle and visit refugees from Yarmouk staying in Shatila, Burj Barajneh, Mar Elias– or Yarmouk residents sheltering in any of the camps here in Lebanon. (Ask them) what they think about these traitors and what they are doing to destroy Yarmouk!”

 

Few Palestinians in Syria have much hope that the so-called ‘cease-fires’—nine announced over the past year—will hold or allow more than a trickle of aid into Yarmouk. The most promising ‘reconciliation’ between rebels and government supporters inside Yarmouk began in early February. Al-Nusra and some of its allies did withdraw from the south side of the camp for nearly 30 days, but then re-entered, while the three Palestinian factions proclaimed they had been double-crossed. There are, not surprisingly, other views of what happened to the ‘reconciliation,’ and this observer heard one view in detail during a meeting with the al-Nusra spokesman and one of his commanders in south Damascus late last month. Briefly put, the rebels claim that they kept the agreement for 30 days, but that PFLP-GC and Shabiha forces inside Yarmouk failed to allow in more than token aid for the refugees under siege, and failed to neutralize the camp. Al-Nusra claims the Palestinian factions instead brought in more arms and fighters, while continuing to use snipers to kill Yarmouk refugees trying to leave or get food. Reentering Yarmouk last month, (3/12/14), the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) admitted to this observer that they executed 21 Palestinians upon arrival in Yarmouk. At about the same time, Al-Nusra kidnapped 30 other Palestinians who had mediated a ceasefire between the warring sides after they also returned. Both groups told this observer that their victims were ‘fair game’ because they were supporters of the government.

Again, the exact truth of events inside Yarmouk is illusive, but many opinions are offered by Yarmouk residents who did manage to escape in January-February 2014, and from former residents who still hope that something is left of their homes.

Another sign of the approaching demise of Yarmouk is the pressure for its residents to join the long lines at Western embassies and seek a new, more secure and prosperous life for themselves and their children—far, far away from the refugee camp or their home country, Palestine. It is a development which many, including this observer, consider likely in the next couple of years. Among the forces fueling it are John Kerry’s recent pronouncements of rewards for Palestinians who give up their birthright—the Right to Return to their ethnically cleansed homeland and their homes there. Also voiced are reports in Israeli media of a secret EU deal with Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah for substantial material rewards if the Right of Return is surrendered. The Zionist colonial enterprise has been working for 65 years to deal this inalienable right a death blow, and mediation on the matter comes just as we are witnessing growing international support for sanctions against the apartheid state, Israel, which last week pledged to the US and the EU its assistance with this au courant idea.

Those hoping to asphyxiate the Right of Return by purchasing the birthright from its rightful heirs are using AIPAC-furnished ‘talking points,’ as seen in a mailing to Congressional offices last week. These include reports of a survey supposedly conducted in several Palestinian camps, including Beddawi camp near Tripoli Lebanon, and Ain al-Hilweh camp in Sidon, as well as among former Yarmouk residents, that Palestinian refugees want to emigrate—emigrate to anywhere they can get a visa to, from Asia to Zambia, but preferably to Europe.

Rumors this week about the German Embassy in Beirut being overwhelmed with applications from Palestinians have been echoed by other EU embassies in Lebanon. On 4/10/14, the German Embassy in Beirut went to the trouble to deny reports that their system had been hacked so that visa slots would be booked up minutes after they were released. The embassy said the problem was due to over-demand and had since been rectified, but a report had emerged last week in the German national newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the Sunday edition of Die Welt, alleging that hackers had infiltrated the embassy’s visa appointment system in Beirut, and that they were snapping up all available slots to sell on the black market outside Yarmouk camp, as well as in Lebanon, for up to $5,000. The Beirut Daily Star reported that as of yesterday (4/10/14) there was one slot available for Palestinians wishing to apply for a family reunion national visa appointment, and none for those seeking a Schengen visa.

The “international community” has been unable to significantly help Palestinian refugees trapped in Yarmouk (or other Palestinian camps in Syria), and the camp may well die. The unfolding tragedy is devastating to the psyche of every Palestinian refugee in more ways than the sheer suffering of those directly affected by it. We see a ripple effect of anxiety and fear emanating from Yarmouk; walk by and you can experience it. For six decades Yarmouk defined Palestinian solidarity and hope, but now it defines loss, uncertainty, not only for its residents, but for Palestinians all over Syria and in the wider diaspora.

Those still trapped in Yarmouk and elsewhere continue their descent into the abyss. Perhaps not until the guns finally fall silent, in months or maybe decades, will we fully realize the price paid by Palestinian refugees, and Syrians, and the extent of their shared loss.

But what has already become perfectly clear is the magnitude of our own shared shame for allowing the carnage, starvation, and crimes against Palestinian refugees to continue.

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program .

15 September, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

 

Vilifying Putin’s Russia

By Radha Surya

 

The good times are rolling. By now every analyst worth his or her salt has made a point of waxing indignant in the mainstream Anglo-American media over the “criminality” of the Russian intervention in Crimea. The media is not in the least deterred by the fact that the Russian operation took place with next to no loss of life. It’s been a season for name calling and for exhibiting moral superiority, for crying foul and denouncing President Vladimir Putin as a bully and a thug. The more inventive the writer, the more over-the-top the epithet of abuse has been. Along with all the invective, the public has been treated to sage speculations regarding the inner workings of President Putin’ s mind (e.g. “A View inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin,” NPR, March 4 2014, “3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin,” New York Times, 24 March 23, 2014, “Ukraine and Crimea: what is Putin thinking?” Guardian, March 23, 2014 and so on) sttag0.

The re-integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation has been an unexpected bonanza for reporters and analysts in the mainstream Anglo-American news media. It has been a field day for the commentariat in particular who are enviably free from the constraints of neutrality and objectivity. The Russian action in Crimea has gifted them with a pretext for seizing the moral high ground and proclaiming the superiority of Western political values and institutions. The post-Soviet world order is one in which the US-EU axis has repeatedly flouted international law with impuni ty. But this privilege is reserved for the US led bloc–and for countries that have a special relationship with the US. Steps that could constitute even a minor transgression are out of bounds for every other nation. The commentariat, servants to the masters of the world, have done a great job of upholding the prevailing double standards. They have vied with each other in proposing measures s22—preferably hawkish ones—for isolating Russia internationally and punishing President Putin for offering resistance to the US led world order.

Why have prominent commentators lately displayed so much enthusiasm for international law? To understand the reason, let us play for a moment the empathy game and regard international events from the mainstream Anglo-American media perspective. Consider from this vantage point the phenomenon of President Obama’s kill Tuesdays. These are the weekly authorization of extra judicial murder of individuals who ar e under unproven suspicion of harboring hostile intentions toward the United States. In essence the US President signs off on a weekly hit list that targets victims across the world. Consider how the murder of thousands of innocent civilians by drone attacks and the terrorizing of defenceless human beings by killer drones has become the norm in places like Waziristan. The drones that are ceaselessly buzzing overhead envelope in a pervasive mantle of dread the daily activities of every man, woman or child whether it be working in the fields, going to school, sttag0 or gathering for a group celebration. Consider how the CIA embrace of unmanned aircraft has inaugurated an era of video game like warfare in which drone operators in a Nevada base have adopted the use of the term bug splat to describe the victim of the missile fired by a drone. Consider in particular the moral abomination of the signature strike in which a killer drone returns to attack those who have rushed to the aid of the victims of a missile strike. Just how much angst have the pundits expended on the moral bankruptcy displayed by the acts described above? They were perfectly cool with the use of drones to massacre helpless civilians in Pakistan. They gave two hoots for the sovereignty of Pakistan. These are the people who are now throwing a hissy fit over Russia’s purported violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. To restate the initial question–Why are we seeing this selective outrage?

*

The answer lies in the toll taken by the discursive constraints necessitated by the task of upholding American supremacy and American exceptionalism. There are many things that must go unsaid. Although for the most part the commentariat has turned a blind eye to various forms of lawlessness that are routinely perpetrated by the US across the world such self-enforced silence must have been very frustrating. Given a choice between delivering a lecture on the sacrosanct status of international law and holding one’s peace on the topic which analyst would not prefer the former? The moment of catharsis arrived when Russia acted in defence of its strategic interests in the region and took control of Crimea. In effect the Anglo-American commentariat were handed an opportunity that they proceeded to milk for all it was worth. Hence the hysteria and the o utrage that has been witnessed recently. They who consider not the beam that is in their eye behold with relish the mote in their brother’s eye. This cynicism and opportunism has not gone unnoticed in Russia where President Vladimir Putin has had some devastating things to say about the discovery of international law by his West European and North American critics. As he put it in his historic address of March 18: It is good they realize that international law still exists. Better late than never.

President Putin’s remarkable address to Parliament on integration with Crimea ( http://rt.com/politics/official-word/vladimir-putin-crimea-address-658/) is noteworthy for a number of reasons. The case for re-unification with Crimea is made with grace and eloquence. There is heartfelt appreciation of the importance of maintaining cordial ties with Ukraine. There are those who say that President Putin is fiercely nationalist. These observers are abundantly vindicated by the speech in Parliament. The language of the address is imbued with historical depth and feeling. An uncompromising stand is taken on the issue of Russian sovereignty and Russia’s status as an independent active participant in world affairs. Above all the address is hard-hitting. There is both scorn and sarcasm for the hypocrisy of the US led Western powers and their expertise in manipulating or disregarding or violating international law as suits their purpose. Pr esident Putin’s landmark address has not been well received in the Western world if media reaction is anything to go by. Anglo-American media outlets have done their utmost to run down the Russian President’s extraordinary speech. A concerted effort seems to have been made to detract from the truth telling and the denunciation of US led military assaults on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. “An aut ocrat like Putin plays his own game, and always finds his own excuses,” sniffed George Packer of the New Yorker magazine. Putin’s bile and bitterness poured out unchecked in the address to Parliament claimed Simon Tisdall of the Guardian newspaper. The New York Times alleged that the address was steeped in years of resentment and bitterness at perceived slights from the West. No doubt these examples could be multiplie d with ease.

A common thread runs through much of the media commentary on President Putin. Time and again analysts speak of the Russian President’s deep seated grievance toward the West. Usually it is implied that these grievances are somehow imaginary or insubstantial. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not talking here about some minor grouch that has been blown up out of all proportion by the nasty and evil Putin. We are talking about unconscionable acts of betrayal perpetrated by the victorious side in the cold war. Academic experts in Russian or East European Studies commonly recognize that the treatment of its fallen adversary by the United States has set the stage for future conflict. Many observers have used the Versailles analogy to convey the gravity of the h umiliations that Russia had to swallow when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Among other issues there is the actual fact of NATO’s eastward expansion in direct contravention of assurances given by top officials like US Secretary of State James Baker and (the future) Chancellor Helmut Kohl to then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when he reluctantly agreed to the unification of Germany. This is treachery pure and simple.

lang1033 No need for mincing words here or whitewashing black deeds. That sort of thing is best left to those who appear regularly in the Opinion pages of the Washington Post and other corporate run media. They are old hands at obfuscating or suppressing plain facts.

Why has the betrayal of President Gorbachev by US led policy makers somehow escaped the attention of the media analysts who are infuriated by Russian “aggression” in Crimea? By what subterfuge is it possible to condemn Russia for purportedly violating international law while exonerating the United States from blame for spearheading NATO expansion in flagrant disregard of objections made by the Ru ssian side? Having incorporated nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet republics into the alliance NATO announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be inducted as well. NATO was now set to expand all the way to Russia’s borders. With this prospect before them, the Russian leadership acted on behalf of Russia’s national interests. As Mr.Putin put it in his speech to Parliament: If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You mus t always remember this.

NATO is the elephant in the room. NATO’s eastward creep and in particular its impending expansion to Russia’s borders are key to understanding why the showdown in Crimea took place. Apart from s22 honourable exceptions (e.g. Seumas Milne “The Clash in Crimea is the Fruit of Western Expansion” Guardian, March 5, 2014) the mainstream analysts have disregarded the provocative implications of NATO expansion. At best they mention NATO expansion in passing and move on to other topics, preferred ones being President Putin’s aggressive inclinations and the sanctions that should be enforced by way of punishment. The continued existence of NATO more than two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union calls for more than pa ssing mention. The Warsaw Pact had a termination date but not NATO. It is essential to ask why a military alliance that was originally founded for the purpose of containing the Soviet Union flourishes in the post-Soviet world order. The Anglo-American media is deceiving the public by glossing over issues of crucial importance. To obtain ltr reliable information it is necessary to turn to the academic literature. Of particular interest in this context is a study by the historian J.L.Black (J.L.Black, Russia Faces NATO Expansion. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000

lang2057). The author shows that from the early 90’s onward NATO expansion has been a festering issue in Russian political discourse. The author’s findings are substantiated by the use of Russian language materials— g2057reports and analysis in the news media, opinion polls, books and journal articles. As far back as 1993 the Russian Foreign Minister Yevgenni Primakov predicted that NATO’s expansion of its membership eastward would cause Moscow to institute counter measures (Russia Faces NATO Expansion, p.16)

f0. In other words the concept of the red line is not the exclusive product of President Putin’s diseased, empire obsessed mind. The red line was being delineated in strategic thinking on the Russian side long before President Putin declared that it had been crossed by the Western powers in Ukraine.

The media coverage of Russian integration with Crimea has been shameful, irresponsible and misleading. It is vitiated by the myopic inability to see beyond US-EU interests. And it is incorrect on essentials. Despite what the New York Times says it’s not tr ue that Russia is facing international isolation. Although Russia has been expelled from the G-8 the countries of the BRICS economic alliance (Brazil, Russia, g2057India, China, South Africa) have not taken the US-EU side on the Crimea issue. India has explicitly recognised that Russia has legitimate interests in Crimea. Very little of this is noticed in the Anglo-American news media. Today the public is witnessing the vilification of Putin’s Russia brought to us by the very media who some ten years ago were all gung-ho over the invasion of Iraq. The news media has grown tired of awaiting the unearthing of r Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction and is now waiting with bated breath for Russian forces to overrun Ukraine. No doubt the commentariat has already composed anti-Russian diatribes befitting the occasion.

 

Radha Surya is a freelance writer. Her articles have appeared on Znet and Countercurrents.

 

15 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

Jerusalem- the city we love most and visit least

Rifat Odeh Kassis*

 

Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus said, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true.” Then Jesus had his disciples bring him a colt, and they threw their cloaks over it for him to ride. The news of his arrival rippled through the city, and crowds poured out onto the road to see him.

For me — as for most Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians — Jerusalem is the city we love most and visit least.

As a little boy, I remember traveling to Jerusalem with my late father along the old road — a trip that took many hours due to the “no-man’s zone” that forbade us from directly accessing the divided city.

Despite the obstacles that existed even then, I remember going to Jerusalem as a deeply happy event. It meant eating the sweets we couldn’t find in our village, and visiting the holy places we’d only heard about in school and church. Or else it meant going to the doctor, since most doctors were based in Jerusalem at that time. In any case, my sentimental relationship with the city is strong.

When the First Intifada broke out in 1987, Jerusalem was sealed off to those of us who lived in the so-called West Bank, and we had to obtain special permits in order to enter the city. Legally, visiting Jerusalem became impossible for me; because I was a past political prisoner, I was put on some kind of state blacklist, and so the Israeli authorities wouldn’t grant me a permit.

Since 2002, I have not returned to Jerusalem. My 29-year-old son, Dafer, has never visited it at all, although he has probably traveled around half the world. Being barred from Jerusalem is a great emotional and psychological loss to me and to my family.

For Palestinian Christians, Jerusalem is marked not only by symbolic richness, but also by symbolic tensions. First of all, although Jerusalem is considered to be sacred for Christians all over the world — the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the birthplace of Christianity itself, the site of the first churches and the historical destination of pilgrimages — it is in many ways a normal city for us, Palestinians. It is our political capital, and has traditionally been an economic hub, a center of tourism, health services and education.

In this sense, then, my relation to Jerusalem as a Palestinian Christian is twofold: it is, for me, both the universal sacred place where people go to pray and connect to the holy sites and the capital of my country, Palestine — even when the occupying state doesn’t acknowledge it as such.

Even more powerfully, however, Jerusalem is the universal sacred place I cannot go to practice my faith, and the capital city I cannot visit.

Jerusalem is also a focal point of the Palestinian struggle: the place where our struggle began and where it will end. Its significance is symbolic on both a religious and a political scale, both for Palestinians and for Israelis.

According to international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to the district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers from altering the ways of life of occupied citizens; they likewise prohibit members of the occupying state from settling in the occupied territory.

This means that Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem, throughout history as well as today, constitute gross violations of international law.

The violations themselves are copious and ongoing: historical expropriation (since 1967 and through the present day) of private Palestinian-owned land, paving the way for illegal Israeli settlements (referred to as “neighborhoods” in internal Israeli discourse) and demolition of Palestinian houses, leaving many people homeless along with discriminatory housing permit policies; Israel’s “quiet transfer” policy, revoking the residency of East Jerusalemites who moved away from municipal borders and countless others.

Israel is not simply trying to find its place in Jerusalem. Rather, it is trying to monopolize Jerusalem (again, on both quotidian levels and on universal, sacred ones) and exclude Palestinian Christians and Muslims from the city.

For us Palestinians, Jerusalem is a city for all three faiths: Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Its sacredness should not be stifled, and its holiest symbols — like the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians and the Wailing Wall for Jews — all deserve their space in this universal city. Any attempt to monopolize them is an attempt to monopolize that universality, and this is an effort we, all peoples, must resist.

In “A Moment of Truth,” the Kairos Palestine document, we address Jerusalem both from a specifically Palestinian Christian perspective and from a universal human one.

We state very clearly that Jerusalem is an occupied city; that the occupation of Jerusalem is a sin against God and humanity; and that it constitutes a defiance of His will as well as that of the international community. We also stress that Jerusalem should be the place of and model for reconciliation — not the locus of and reason for our conflict, which is the role it has today.

Thus, we believe that the issue of Jerusalem should be the beginning of our reconciliation, and should absolutely not be left to the so-called “final” items on the negotiation agenda. Resolving the conflict over Jerusalem first will establish a model for the two nations themselves, as well as for resolving other conflicts between them; it will also encourage the growth and development of a just peace in our region.

No matter what, Palestinians must have the right to exert their sovereignty in East Jerusalem. No matter what, I am certain that the future of Jerusalem will dictate the future of the conflict itself. And no matter what, I hope, as the Kairos Document urges, that the very nature of Jerusalem — universal, sacred, and embracing — will be honored as we proceed. It has much to teach us.

This Easter, Kairos Palestine chose to issue an alert to all churches and Christians all over the world. The focus of this alert is on Jerusalem and Jerusalemites: their reality, their plight, and their rights. In this alert, Kairos Palestine urged, all Christians all over the world to turn their eyes to Jerusalem and its inhabitants; to keep them in their prayers; and to work toward exercising pressure on Israel as the occupying power to life its occupation and to open Jerusalem for all faithful people.

Kairos Palestine asked its supporters to turn the tide by engaging in several activities like distributing the alert and the study materials within their church communities to inform and educate them about the situation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, and to the Alert with congregations and dioceses across their countries. And to send letters of solidarity and support for justice in Palestine/Israel to the Israeli embassies in their own countries.

Kairos Palestine urged them to answer its call to come and see to know the facts and the people of this land and to be in solidarity with them to finally live in peace with justice.

*Rifat Odeh Kassis is the general coordinator of the Palestinian-Christian activist group Kairos.

This reflection was first published in Ma’an News

 

Compiled by Ranjan Solomon, Communications Consultant, Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum