Human Rights Watch report claims Israel committed war crimes in its use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells
Israel’s military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. In a 71-page report, the rights group said the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells in populated areas of Gaza was not incidental or accidental, but revealed “a pattern or policy of conduct”.
It said the Israeli military used white phosphorus in a “deliberate or reckless” way. The report says:
• Israel was aware of the dangers of white phosphorus.
• It chose not to use alternative and less dangerous smoke shells.
• In one case, Israel even ignored repeated warnings from UN staff before hitting the main UN compound in Gaza with white phosphorus shells on 15 January.
“In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher. “It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safe smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.” He said senior commanders should be held to account.
Human Rights Watch called on the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to launch an international commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of violations of international law in the Gaza war by the Israeli military and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls Gaza.
By joining Netanyahu’s coalition, Ehud Barak and his party colleagues are shown to be unprincipled mercenaries and hacks
Jonathan Freedland
It is surely time to perform the last rites on the Israeli Labour party as a force for peace in the Middle East. Labour’s decision to join Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, confirmed in a vote of the party’s central committee on Tuesday, marks the end of Labour’s – admittedly mixed and compromised – record as the Israeli political party associated with the pragmatic pursuit of peace. Ehud Barak will no longer be able to claim what had always been the previous right of every Labour leader, the mantle of de facto head of the peace camp. For he has now agreed to serve as figleaf to a government that is not committed even to the principle of a two-state solution – and whose public face to the world will be Avigdor Lieberman, a bigoted ultra-nationalist who has all but declared war on Israel’s Arab citizens.
It’s quite clear why Bibi wanted Barak, indeed why he was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to entice him into his coalition – handing Labour five cabinet posts in return for its paltry 13 Knesset seats. Without Barak, Netanyahu would have been the head of the most rightwing government in Israel’s history, embodied by Lieberman as foreign minister and a ragtag collection of religious and settlers’ parties making up the numbers. Netanyahu knows that would have been an embarrassment, especially in Barack Obama’s Washington, with its new desire to see movement towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. With Labour at his side, Bibi has bought himself respectability; he can parade on the world stage with Barak to cover his modesty.
That Freedland needed this latest episode to show him who Brak is, tells us more about Freedland and less about Barak… Freedland politics has been very similar to that of Barak for years. Below is another bit of Zionist expalining away of brutalities, from a seasoned in Zionist apologist used to writing homilies. That way, what is evodence of Israel’s slide into Fascism and Nazism, is presented as some youthful pranks by humorous troops… Also tells us more about the writer and his universe of denial.
Black humour and tasteless digs at the enemy are not unique to Israel’s soldiers – to focus on puerile T-shirts is to miss the point
When walking around Jenin and Nablus, one of the most striking – and saddening – features of the refugee camps is the macabre art adorning almost every wall in full view of the locals. Children swagger round in bomber jackets in chilling imitation of the posters of gun-toting fighters plastered prominently in the narrow streets.
The militants’ “daring acts of heroism” have turned them into instant idols for the youth, who stare wide-eyed at their chiselled features in the photos in the same way that their peers overseas gaze dreamily at boybands and footballers.
T-shirts bearing the images of Nasrallah, Habash and other militant leaders are on sale in the crowded casbahs; residents tell tales of great escapes and assassination survivals by local fighters, as though narrating folklore legends of yore.
On the other side of the security wall, a similar situation has developed regarding the near-deification of IDF fighters. Tourists swoon at olive-clad squads of soldiers strutting through city centres; high-school children look up to those donning the uniform, desperate to emulate their older siblings and friends when their own call-up papers arrive.
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Continue to Impose a Total Siege on the Gaza Strip
Ten Palestinian civilians, including one child and two journalists, were injured by IOF gunfire in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
IOF warplanes bombarded targets in the Gaza Strip.
IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
IOF arrested 26 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and nine fishermen in the Gaza Strip.
IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
IOF troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested one Palestinian civilian.
IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank.
IOF continued to raze area of Palestinian land to the south of Qalqilya.
IOF confiscated 30 donumms[1] of Palestinian land in Sho’fat refugee camp near Jerusalem to turn a military checkpoint into a crossing.
IOF imposed additional restrictions on the movement of Palestinian farmers on both sides of the Wall.
IOF have continued measures aimed at creating a demographic Jewish majority in east Jerusalem.
IOF took a series of arbitrary measures to prevent celebration of Jerusalem as a capital of Arab culture for 2009.
IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.
The Israeli government approved the construction of a new settlement in Hebron.
The Israeli Defense Minister refused to issue an order to demolish nine settlement homes in “Oufa” settlement that had been built “without licenses.” Summary
Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (19 – 25 March2009):
Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF wounded 10 Palestinian civilians, including one child and two journalists, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, on 24 March 2009, IOF troops positioned at Hawara checkpoint, south of Nablus, wounded a Palestinian civilian, claiming that he had attacked soldiers with an iron bar. During the reporting period, eight Palestinian civilians, including two journalists, were wounded when IOF used force against peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall.
In the Gaza Strip, on 22 March 2009, a Palestinian fisherman was wounded when IOF naval troops opened fire at a number of fishermen in near Gaza Harbor.
Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 36 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and one into the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 26 Palestinian civilians. On Thursday, 19 March 2009, IOF arrested four members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) affiliated to Hamas and a number of the movement’s political leaders in the West Bank. These arrests are forms of reprisal and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians, which are prohibited under Article 33 of the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. PCHR calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Convention to ensure Israel’s compliance with the Convention. As an occupying power, Israel has a responsibility to uphold the Convention, which prohibits acts of reprisals against protected persons and their property.
In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted a limited incursion to the east of Khan Yunis, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian land.
During the reporting period, IOF naval troops arrested nine Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip.
Restrictions on Movement: IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
As reconstruction efforts begin in Gaza, we hear from six concerned Jews who are openly critical of Israel and its policies in the region. Their views are controversial, ranging from disquiet over perceived injustices perpetrated in their name, to forthright criticisms of Zionism itself.
An excellent radio programme from Australia! I wish this was possible on the BBC! 50 minutes of some rare Jewish clarity… and below, even more exciting news from Australia! If the Ozies can do, so can we all!
Responding to the CALL of Palestinian civil society to join the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, we are an Australian campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel):
In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and
In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions:
We scholars, inspired by the wishes of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian and Arab lands and dismantling the Wall which separates Palestinians from their arable lands;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
The principles guiding our campaign and the three goals outlined above are also points of unity for the British, Canadian, and US Campaigns for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI, this statement is a modified version of theirs). There can be no academic freedom in Israel/Palestine unless all academics are free and all students are free to pursue their academic desires.
If you are committed to these principles of unity, and wish to work on a campaign of boycotting academic and cultural institutions guided by this approach, please join our campaign.
A review of Zeev Maoz’s Defending The Holy Land: A Critical Analysis Of Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy (University of Michigan Press: 2006)
In 1997 Hamas offered Israel a 30-year truce. Jordan’s King Hussein delivered the offer: Israel’s response was to send Mossad agents to Jordan where they tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshal by dropping poison in his ear. The incident (described by former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy in his book, Man in the Shadows), not only deeply embarrassed the King, it also failed to kill Meshal. (Other peace bids were made; all were rejected, though none, perhaps, as dramatically as this.)
Hamas has also honored both short and long ceasefires, not the least of which took place during the six months preceding Israel’s recent devastation of Gaza. A January 2009 Huffington Post article by Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer, & Anat Biletzki shows that in any “conflict pause” between 2000 and 2008 (“conflict pause” means a cessation of hostile actions on both sides) Israel most often killed first, shattering the peace. The longer the “conflict-pause,” the greater Israel’s propensity to break it with violence.
The 1997 assassination attempt illustrates what Zeev Maoz, in his landmark work, Defending the Holy Land, calls Israel’s “over my dead body” approach to peace. One form of Israeli ceasefire violation has been targeted assassinations, which Maoz says became policy — a specific “tactic intended to ignite escalation” — in the al-Aqsa Intifada. (He himself cites “four separate occasions” on which “Israel violated an implicit cease-fire that the Palestinians imposed upon themselves by assassinations that caused escalation” [287].)
Anyone seeking the background behind Israel’s demonizing of Hamas; its destruction of Gaza; its slide into today’s fascism (my word, not Maoz’s) should read this book. According to its author Israel has been a “Sparta state” from its inception, its national psyche veering between arrogance and paranoia. Shaped by the belief that all Arabs and their states would destroy Israel if they could, the Jewish state’s policies have been rooted from the start in Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” doctrine. Adopted by Jabotinsky’s arch-rival Ben Gurion, this doctrine has translated throughout Israel’s history as repeated military blows “to convince the Arabs of the futility and illogic of their dreams. Over time, the Arabs will come to accept the Jewish state and to make peace with it” (9).
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.
By Christopher Hitchens
March 25, 2009 “Slate” — Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.
I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army “chaplain” in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as “the enemies of Israel.” Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, “Germans.” There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi’s exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General’s Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich’s support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army’s behalf.
The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a “political” statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It’s not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:
Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord’s community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man.”
Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.
Now, it’s common to hear people say, when this infamous passage and others like it come up, that it’s not intended to be “taken literally.” One also often hears the excuse that some wicked things are done “in the name of” religion, as if the wicked things were somehow the result of a misinterpretation. But the nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for their mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally. (I hate to break it to you, but the people who think that God’s will is revealed in scripture are known as “religious.” Those who do not think so must try to find another name for themselves.)
It seems that the ‘most moral army in the world’ (Ehud Barak, March 2009) of the most democratic country, has managed to inflame even someone like Christopher Hitchens, nota natural candidate for such rage…
Tel Aviv hits back at a humanitarian report that suggests the Israeli army had ‘illegally’ shelled Gazans with white phosphorus shells.
The New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch said in a recent report that Israel’s indiscriminate and deliberate use of white phosphorus against Palestinian civilians amounts to war crimes.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures,” read the report.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Israeli officialdom had violated the international laws of warfare by using the controversial weapon — which burns flesh to the bone.
Israeli military officials responded by calling the report “baseless” and said the White phosphorus shells — which is prohibited “in all circumstances” under Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons — were used in accordance with international law.
“These shells were used for specific operational needs only and in accord with international humanitarian law. The claim that smoke shells were used indiscriminately, or to threaten the civilian population, is baseless,” the Washington Post quoted Israeli military officials as saying.
Tel Aviv attacked Gaza on December 27 with the declared goal of “self-defense” and toppling the Hamas government. More than 1,350 Palestinians, including a large number of women and children, were killed in the conflagration.
Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told lawmakers on Wednesday that Iran has “crossed the technological threshold” for making a nuclear bomb. He told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Islamic Republic has developed surface-to-surface missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. Yadlin said achieving a military nuclear capacity “was mainly dependent on a political decision by Iran.”
According to Yadlin, the bottleneck in Iran’s nuclear weapons program was in obtaining fissionable material.
He said the Islamic Republic’s strategy is not merely to produce one bomb, which could force them into a conflict with the world, but to enrich a large amount of fissionable material at a low level of 4.5 percent. But Iran claims that it needs to do this for civilian purposes only, Yadlin said.
The Iranians enrich between one and two kilos of low grade uranium, Yadlin said. However, once they decide to bring that to weapon’s grade enrichment levels (93%) they could produce the amount needed for a bomb within several months to a year.
Battered by fresh accusations of war crimes during the recent Gaza conflict, Israel’s standing in the world is plunging to fresh lows. Two months after the guns fell silent, international condemnation of its treatment of Palestinian civilians during the military offensive shows no sign of abating. Outside the country, the latest revelations — most strikingly, a claim that soldiers committed “cold-blooded murder” during the operation — have once again spurred calls for a UN war crimes tribunal.
In Israel itself, however, the response to allegations of war crimes has been both muted and defensive. While Israeli officials have promised to investigate the claims, ministers insist there was nothing wrong with the army’s conduct during the three-week offensive.
Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, led the way on Monday, claiming Israel Defence Forces was “the most humane army in the world”. According to analysts, his claim captures a broader sentiment. Tamir Sheafer, a professor of politics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, says accusations of large-scale abuses by Israeli soldiers appear not to “have much effect on the public”. He adds: “Already during the war, there were reports of a large number of civilian casualties among the Palestinians. Even then, there was no great public response. There was a feeling that ‘they deserved it’.”
Israeli enthusiasm and support for the war has almost certainly weakened since January, but this reflects the fact that the operation did not deliver its goals. Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, survived the assault largely unscathed, and rocket attacks from Gaza-based militants continue to haunt Israeli cities in the south.
Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a secret deal with Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman for highly contentious construction on West Bank land known as E1, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
A source close to the negotiations between the pair told Army Radio that the plan had been agreed upon even though it did not appear in the official document detailing the coalition deal between Yisrael Beiteinu and Netanyahu’s Likud.
The plan is for the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to build 3000 new housing units on the territory, which stretches between it and Jerusalem, the source was quoted as saying.
Notes on the psychological impact of military occupation in Palestine
by Martin Kemp and Eliana Pinto
Following complaints, this article was temporarily withdrawn from our website to enable us to reflect and consult more widely. The article does not represent the views of Therapy Today or BACP which has no position or policy with regard to Middle East politics. We understand that the authors have written about one side of a very complex situation. Therapy Today provides a forum for debate between therapists and thus welcomes and will give equal space to alternative perspectives which relate to mental health, with the aim of giving balance over time. A number of responses appear at the end of the article.
‘You are asleep with your family. At 4am your house is surrounded by soldiers and border guards who hammer on the door and break the windows while you emerge, to be told you have 15 minutes to leave. Using whatever violence is necessary – against you, your wife and children – the bulldozer moves in. Israel provides no alternative accommodation (the UN provides tents but never enough), no compensation, although no one contests the fact that you own the land – and you are sent the bill for the demolition.’
Salim Shawamreh Anata, Greater Jerusalem
What follows are observations from a 10-day tour of Palestine, made by a group of medical and mental health professionals. We visited hospital departments, psychiatric facilities, and met local and international NGOs involved in addressing Palestinians’ psychological needs. We talked to teachers, businessmen, village leaders and anyone else we could to tell us about life under the Occupation. While predominantly concerned to hear from Palestinians, we have emphasised the contribution made by Jewish Israelis. They are far from representative of Israeli opinion, but we believe they constitute one of the more hopeful elements in the search for peace, and are a voice that is routinely absent from British coverage of this beautiful but tragic land.We were there in November 2008. We were already banned from entering Gaza. The West Bank was tense – the Israeli attack on Gaza was widely anticipated – but quiet. Rather than the ‘hot’ news of out and out war, you could say that we were witnessing everyday life under an endless occupation.
Many thanks to Dr. Brian Robinson for making me aware of this piece.
In the face of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, the UK government must be held to its commitments under international law
Tessa Gregory and Phil Shiner
It is difficult to imagine how anyone watching Clancy Chassay’s three short films on Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead”) could deny that Israel has a clear case to answer on commission of war crimes.
The films tell the individual stories of those who are otherwise lost in the horrifying statistics. We learn of three teenage brothers used as human shields by the Israeli army, a Palestinian family killed by “precision weaponry” when drinking tea in a courtyard and a medic blown into pieces by the thousands of tiny metal darts, called flechettes, packed into each Israeli tank shell.
Recent estimates put the number of Palestinians killed in the bloody onslaught at more than 1,400 – including 430 children – and the number injured at more than 5,000. Israel’s actions have been roundly condemned and demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for Israel to be investigated for international war crimes over the “massive violation of human rights” are growing by the day.
In the face of such overwhelming evidence we might have expected a little more from our government than David Miliband’s meek calls to “both sides” for an end to the hostilities. We might have expected our government to unequivocally condemn Israel’s actions, cease all arms-related exports to Israel, cease giving financial assistance to Israel, cease trading with Israel on preferential terms, and we might have expected it to do everything within its power to halt the massacre and bring those responsible to account.
ALDI has been accused of selling Israeli fruit as “Produce of Cyprus”.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign accused the supermarket giant of switching labels on grapefruit to con shoppers who wanted to boycott Israeli goods. The label mix-up was reported in the Cyprus Mail where farmers are worried the confusion could damage their reputation after the invasion of Gaza. Aldi claimed the gaffe was down to a supplier’s packaging error. A spokesman said: “As soon as it became aware of the issue, Aldi corrected it.”
By By Mark LeVine
Al Jazeera
One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling.
The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks.
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled `Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report,` confirmed that the June 19 truce was only `sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by … `rogue terrorist organisations`.
Instead, `the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement` occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day. IN DEPTH
According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.
The Israeli army is at the centre of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days.
The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques.
The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One, printed for a platoon of Israeli snipers depicts an armed Palestinian pregnant women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption in English: “1 shot 2 kills”. Another depicts a child carrying a gun also in the centre of a target. “The smaller, the harder,” read the words on the t-shirt. According to a soldier interviewed by the newspaper, the message has a double meaning: “It’s a kid, so you’ve got a little more of a problem, morally and also the target is smaller.” Another shows an Israeli soldier blowing up a mosque and reads “Only God forgives”.
The Swedish national pension fund AP7 is the latest institution to follow the socially responsible investment example of Dutch ASN Bank by excluding the French transportation giant Alstom from its portfolio. Alstom was excluded because of the company’s involvement in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.
Activists and researchers claim that the French companies Alstom and Veolia are directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and are playing a key role in Israel’s attempt to make its annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem irreversible. For this reason Dutch ASN Bank decided in 2006 to exclude Veolia from its portfolios, also excluding companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation. Other banks have since followed ASN Bank’s example towards socially responsible investment.
Swedish activists informed the public about the role of companies in benefiting from the occupation through several actions. The Swedish non-governmental organization Diakonia’s research on Mul-T-Lock factory in the Barkan Industrial Park in a West Bank settlement led to the October 2008 decision of owner Assa Abloy to divest from the company. At that time Veolia was bidding for an eight-year, $4.5 billion contract to run the subway in Stockholm county. Swedish journalists questioned politicians about Veolia’s role in an Israeli tramway project that links Israeli settlements and normalizes the illegal situation of the settlements. At the Give Veolia the Red Card event on 15 November 2008, passengers on the Stockholm subway were asked to attach a red card to their clothes to protest Veolia’s involvement in the the Jerusalem tramway on occupied Palestinian territory.
The protests are thought to have contributed to the decision of Swedish national pension fund AP7, one of the most important investors in Sweden and well-known for its highly ethical profile, to blacklist Alstom. AP7, which manages pension savings worth around 90 billion kronor ($15 billion), listed in its annual report for 2008 the companies it has to exclude from investment for ethical reasons. Alstom is pointed out as a company AP7 would have liked to invest in. However, the report said Alstom’s involvement in reported human rights abuses regarding the company’s participation in a railway project in Jerusalem made it not suitable for AP7’s investments.
John Mearsheimer
Many people in Washington were surprised when the Obama administration tapped Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, the body that oversees the production of National Intelligence Estimates: Freeman had a distinguished 30-year career as a diplomat and Defense Department official, but he has publicly criticised Israeli policy and America’s special relationship with Israel, saying, for example, in a speech in 2005, that ‘as long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected.’ Words like these are rarely spoken in public in Washington, and anyone who does use them is almost certain not to get a high-level government position. But Admiral Dennis Blair, the new director of national intelligence, greatly admires Freeman: just the sort of person, he thought, to revitalise the intelligence community, which had been very politicised in the Bush years.
Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear campaign against Freeman, hoping that he would either quit or be fired by Obama. The opening salvo came in a blog posting by Steven Rosen, a former official of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, now under indictment for passing secrets to Israel. Freeman’s views of the Middle East, he said, ‘are what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship’. Prominent pro-Israel journalists such as Jonathan Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic, and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, quickly joined the fray and Freeman was hammered in publications that consistently defend Israel, such as the National Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard.
The real heat, however, came from Congress, where Aipac (which describes itself as ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby’) wields enormous power. All the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee came out against Freeman, as did key Senate Democrats such as Joseph Lieberman and Charles Schumer. ‘I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him,’ Schumer said, ‘and I am glad they did the right thing.’ It was the same story in the House, where the charge was led by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Steve Israel, who pushed Blair to initiate a formal investigation of Freeman’s finances. In the end, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared the Freeman appointment ‘beyond the pale’. Freeman might have survived this onslaught had the White House stood by him. But Barack Obama’s pandering to the Israel lobby during the campaign and his silence during the Gaza War show that this is one opponent he is not willing to challenge. True to form, he remained silent and Freeman had little choice but to withdraw.
London will not push through changes in legislation that permits the arrest of Israel Defense Forces officers visiting Britain on war crimes, as previously promised, Jerusalem has learned.
In an unofficial message to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Britain said that as a result of the decline in Israel’s public image following Operation Cast Lead the government believes it will be unable to pass the amendment to the legislation before next year’s scheduled elections.
British law permits private citizens to press charges against foreigners on war crimes charges. Once an indictment has been issued suspects can be arrested if they enter Britain.
Tristan Anderson, an American activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the forehead by the Israeli border police during a non-violent demonstration on March 13th in the West Bank Palestinian village of Ni’ilin. Tristan’s parents, Nancy and Michael Anderson, held a press conference today (March 23) at the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem to demand justice for their son.
“We are scared and really just in shock,” said Mrs. Anderson with tears in her eyes. “To shoot peaceful demonstrators is horrific to us. We ask that the Israeli government publically take full responsibility for shooting our son.” To date, the Anderson family has not been contacted by any representative of the Israeli government or military, a fact that attorney Michael Sfard, who also spoke at today’s press conference, described at “shameful.”
Opening the press conference was Jonathan Pollack, a well-known Israeli activist and long-time friend of Tristan. Pollack updated journalists that Tristan’s condition worsened this past weekend, and following emergency surgery, he is in a medically induced coma. Immediately following the shooting, Tristan underwent two brain surgeries in which part of his right frontal lobe and shattered bone fragments were removed. “We have been hanging between hope and despair, noted Pollack. “Tristan is fighting for his life, just as he has been fighting for justice his whole life.”
The Israeli border police shot Tristan using a new, high-velocity tear gas canister that can shoot over 400 meters. “Tristan was shot at 60 meters, so you can imagine what that did to him,” explained Pollack, quickly adding that “actually, we don’t have to imagine, we know.” Tristan’s father, Michael said in disbelief that “We are just appalled that he was shot in the head. It [the tear gas canister] is supposed to be shot in an arc, but they shot it at him.”
On behalf of the Anderson family, Attorney Sfard filed a formal complaint yesterday with the West Bank Israeli border police, demanding the immediate launch of a rigorous and independent investigation into the shooting of Tristan. “Israel is a culture of impunity,” stated Sfard, “We have to make sure this investigation is not a whitewash, so that the investigation takes place as an investigation should.”
According to Sfard, 90-92 percent of all investigations launched within the Israeli military system since 2000 have yielded no results. Since 2000, there have been only 110-120 court cases launched against Israeli soldiers for injuries and deaths, and only four of these have resulted in indictments. This is despite the fact that thousands of Palestinians have been killed and injured by the Israeli military during this time, and these victims and their families are still without closure or justice. Only one of these indictments was for manslaughter, and that was the case of Tom Hurndall, the British activist who was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in 2003.
