Why are weapons-makers excited by TTIP?

Could the world's largest weapons company soon be managing part of our medical systems?

That absurd and nasty idea is being actively discussed. The National Health Service in England recently held a meeting for firms interested in providing support services to doctors. Among those firms were Lockheed Martin, the same company that has supplied interrogators to the US torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay, fighter jets to Israel and cluster bombs dropped by US forces in Afghanistan.

Not content with arming a superpower, Lockheed has been trying to muscle into civilian markets. For a number of years, it has been involved in running parts of the postal services in the US and Sweden.

The arms industry is hoping that the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will provide it with greater opportunities.

The Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) - an umbrella group for weapons-dealers - has calculated that more than half of the 24 topics raised in the initial stages of the EU-US trade talks affect the companies it represents. Top of the list is "government procurement" - a fancy term for providing goods to public authorities and, in some cases, letting corporations run vital services.

Nothing to worry about?

Cecilia Malmström, the EU's trade commissioner, tells us there is nothing to worry about. "No EU trade deal has ever restricted EU member states' freedom to organise their public services the way that they chose," she said earlier this month.

A British health minister, Frederick Curzon, has nonetheless insisted that healthcare be covered by the eventual agreement. Contrary to the impression that Malmström is trying to give, the European Union has not excluded public services from the remit of the talks.

EU trade officials have proven very amenable to the requests of the arms industry. Procurement of military equipment was one of the topics included in a June 2013 paper guiding the EU's approach to the talks. That followed secretive confabs which the trade officials held with Europe's top weapons firms.

Since then, both the EU and US have apparently decided that "defence" is too sensitive a matter for a trade accord. But that doesn't mean that the merchants of death have lost interest.

An analysis by the European Union Institute for Security Studies - a pro-war "think tank" funded by taxpayers - notes that the demarcation lines between what is "military" and "civilian" are becoming increasingly blurred. Taxes levied on the imports and exports of electronic goods with military applications might be reduced as a result of TTIP, the paper suggests.

"While it is unlikely that attack helicopters will fall directly under the provisions of the TTIP, on-board technologies sourced from the civilian sector - such as sensor equipment and landing gear - may well be included," the institute's Daniel Fiott has written.

Predatory

Saab - maker of radars deployed by British troops occupying Iraq and Afghanistan - has identified the EU-US trade talks as a priority for its team of lobbyists in Brussels.

Saab also belongs to the Trans-Atlantic Business Council (TABC), a corporate club that has prepared much of the groundwork for the EU-US talks.

The TABC wants "all public institutions" on both sides of the market to be opened up to private firms when they are issuing contracts. This indicates that the business lobby is behaving in a predatory manner towards health and other vital services.

Is Cecilia Malmström willing to protect Europe's welfare states from the business lobby? I doubt it.

•First published by EUobserver, 18 December 2014.

How the West connives in the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem

News coverage of the Middle East is frequently predictable. Each time a plan to expand settlements in occupied Jerusalem is announced, the media reports about heightened "tensions" between Israel and the West. It would all be quite tedious, if it were not for the occasional twist - like when an unnamed official calls Benjamin Netanyahu a "chickenshit".

Recent history indicates that the "tensions" tend to be superficial. In 2010, Hillary Clinton - then secretary of state - described Israel's latest plans for Jewish-only colonies as an "insult to the United States".

The Obama administration recovered from the insult with remarkable speed. Soon, it was showering unprecedented levels of aid on Israel. In 2009 - the year Barack Obama took office - Israel received $2.5 billion in US "foreign military assistance ". This year, it has been allocated $3.1 billion.

Such aid has contributed directly to the dispossession of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Between 2000 and 2009, the Washington authorities approved the delivery of "riot control" weapons worth $20.5 million to the Israeli military. Residents of Silwan, a neighborhood nudging Jerusalem's old city, have amassed a collection of tear gas canisters marked "made in the USA". Israeli forces routinely fire that vile gas when Palestinians protest at how their homes are being stolen by settlers.

Some American firms and individuals have invested in those Israeli settlements that left Hillary Clinton so discomfited. The Israeli subsidiary of RE/MAX, a US real estate giant, sells and rents out property in at least five East Jerusalem settlements. As the buildings are exclusively reserved for Jews, RE/MAX can be considered a profiteer of apartheid.

Irving Moskowitz, a casino and bingo tycoon in California, has owned the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem since 1985. Dating from the 1930s, it was the residence of Haj Amin Husseini, Jerusalem's grand mufti. Over the past few years, Moskowitz has allowed Israel demolish part of the complex to make way for Jewish-only apartments. By doing so, he has enabled the erasure of Palestinian heritage.

Moskowitz is also a generous donor to Ateret Cohanim, a group that buys up Palestinian property so that it 

can be handed over to settlers.

The settlements which Moskowitz supports are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into the territory it occupies. If Moskowitz was openly bankrolling the mafia or other criminal organisations, he would more than likely be prosecuted.

Yet he and his wife Cherna are contributors to the Israel Allies Foundation, a lobbying outfit with branches within both the US Congress and the European Parliament. Israel Allies was founded by the right-wing politician Benny Elon; then a government minister, Elon joined a 2003 mob attack against Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Federica Mogherini, the EU's new foreign policy chief, seems to be weighing her words carefully; her response to the latest expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem was timid. She went no further than to describe the announcement as "yet another highly detrimental step which undermines the prospects for a two-state solution."

If EU representatives were really dismayed about ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem, they would cease cooperating with Israeli institutions that are active there.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem took part in more than ten projects financed as part of the EU's science programme between 2007 and 2013.

Active, too, in the Erasmus student exchange scheme, the Hebrew University has been known to host promotional events at which EU diplomats express their desire to deepen the Union's relationship with Israel. 

To express its gratitude for that friendship, the university gave an honorary doctorate to José Manuel Barroso in the final months of his stint as European Commission president.

Although the EU made a general commitment in 2013 to stop subsidising colleges or firms based in East Jerusalem or the wider West Bank, it has decided to make an exception for the Hebrew University. The Union's reasoning for doing so was spurious.

The Hebrew University has a campus on Mount Scopus. Although geography tells us that is part of East Jerusalem, the EU has decided that it belongs to Israel because of an armistice agreement from 1949.

That distinction is morally dubious. Zionists began a process of destruction and displacement against Palestinians in the 1940s. The Nakba (catastrophe), as that process is known, continues today with the uprooting of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the suffocation of the wider West Bank and the periodic bombardment of Gaza.

The rationale for continuing to allocate grants to the Hebrew University ignores, too, how its campus has been encroaching into the neighbouring Palestinian village of Issawiyeh.

Israel's national police headquarters, meanwhile, are located in occupied East Jerusalem. That hasn't stopped Europol, the EU's police agency, from liasing with Israel in operations against drugs. During September, Israel took part in Europol's annual gathering for senior police officers in The Hague.

Young Palestinians have lately destroyed part of the light rail system serving Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. That tramway is a symbol of Western duplicity. No amount of rhetoric from Brussels can conceal the fact that European firms have built this tramway. One of these companies, Veolia has rightly been the target of an international campaign that has caused it to lose numerous municipal contracts around the world.

Yet EU officials have conferred an unmerited respectability on Veolia by attending business conferences that it has sponsored in Tel Aviv. The Paris government has celebrated how Veolia has been France's number one investor in Israel.

If the West is really insulted by Israel's colonisation of East Jerusalem, then it has ample scope for action. The US could halt arms exports to Israel. And the EU could revoke the trade privileges it has accorded to Israel - after all, those privileges were always supposed to be conditional on respect for human rights.

For strategic and political reasons, neither Europe nor America wants to punish Israel. So long as they refuse to do so, their professions of concern about East Jerusalem will ring hollow.

•First published by Middle East Eye, 7 November 2014.

Tony Blair enables Israeli raids in West Bank

Words can lose their meaning when Tony Blair speaks.

Collecting his "philanthropist of the year" award from GQ magazine, Blair recently said he could feel the "pulse of progress beating a little harder."

Judging by the pronouncements he has made as a Middle East "peace envoy," Blair's definition of "progress" appears different from the standard one.

In 2010, Blair hailed a tiny easing of Israel's siege on Gaza as a "significant change."
The following year he praised Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator who facilitated that siege, as a "force for good."

And earlier this month, Blair claimed that John Kerry was "absolutely tireless" in his efforts to promote peace, conveniently forgetting that the US secretary of state had publicly endorsed Israel's attack on Gaza during the summer.

Lobbying Israel?

Those attempts to pervert language are more brazen than one I found on the website run by Blair's office in Jerusalem.

A "rule of law program" involving the Blair team aims to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) "expand the scope of its legal and security footprint" in the occupied West Bank. In order to achieve that goal, the team is "lobbying" Israel to "reduce military incursions" into the towns and cities where most Palestinians in the West Bank live.

Collectively known as Area A, these towns and cities are theoretically controlled by PA from a "security" perspective.

Blair and his team are also pressing Israel to "allow for the expansion of PA legal and security infrastructure" into Area B, which is under Israeli military control. And they want Israel to let the PA use roads -- "transportation networks" as they call them -- reserved for the exclusive use of Jews in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that includes Israel's settlements.

Despite the jargon, there is something instructive about the choice of words here. By pushing for Israel to "reduce military incursions" Blair's team appears to be implying that Israel has a legitimate right to undertake some military activities on Palestinian land.

I contacted Blair's office, seeking clarification. A spokesperson replied that Blair's team operates "under a technical mandate" stemming from the Oslo accords. Part of the "mandate" covers security coordination, yet "beyond that, we do not comment on the legitimacy of certain actions," the spokesperson added.

That refusal to comment amounts to acquiescence. Tony Blair and his team accept that Israel may attack the main Palestinian towns and cities. They would just prefer it if Israel did not do so too often.

Bias

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Blair is asking Israel to throw a few crumbs of charity to the Palestinians. If Israel allows a few Palestinian police stations to open and a few Palestinian squad cars to drive on its apartheid roads, then Blair can rest assured that the pulse of progress is beating a little faster.

Blair's bias can also be detected in the latest annual report from his office. In his preface, Blair notes that "the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and an extensive Israeli army operation in the West Bank" this summer.

The bureaucrats for whom Blair's summary was intended would have to consult other sources to be reminded of what the "extensive" operation entailed. Blair made no reference to how Israel killed 45 Palestinians -- among them nine children -- in the West Bank between January and mid-September.

Furthermore, Blair didn't seem to think it noteworthy that Benjamin Netanyahu's government used the murder of the Israeli teenagers as a pretext for a wave of collective punishment against Palestinians. More than 2,350 Palestinians were arrested in the West Bank between June and September; hundreds of them were held without charge or trial -- administrative detention in Israel's parlance.

Blair was similarly blasé about the massacres Israel carried out in Gaza in July and August. His report merely referred to a "conflict" that "resulted in widespread fear, destruction and loss of life."

Make him pay

I find it hard to believe that Blair is "lobbying" Israel in any real sense. That is because Blair has long been part of a lobby that supports Israel, rather than pressing for an end to its criminal behavior.

As a newly-elected member of Parliament in 1983, Blair joined Labour Friends of Israel, a Zionist group within his political party.

He has professed his love for Israel ever since then. Last year, he called Shimon Peres -- a fellow war criminal who approved an infamous attack on a UN shelter in Lebanon --- one of Israel's "great thinkers."

Tony Blair's office is funded by three main donors. Between 2007 and 2013, the US provided it with $13.5 million. The European Commission was in second place with almost $10 million; Norway third with $3.7 million.

Blair isn't paid for his job as "peace envoy" -- his formal title is "quartet representative" as he belongs to a club comprising of the US, European Union, the UN and Russia. Yet he does have his meals and accommodation covered.

For much of that period, Blair stayed in the American Colony, a luxurious hotel in occupied East Jerusalem.

Like many others, I find it obscene that a man who helped launch the invasion of Iraq masquerades as a peace envoy. Even if Blair isn't drawing a salary for that work, it is unacceptable that he can still dine at the taxpayer's expense.

I agree fully with the campaign to have Blair sacked as "peace envoy" -- indeed, I have gone further and tried to arrest him for war crimes. Once he is sacked, he should be required to reimburse us for every cent that was spent on his food and lodging.

If that happens, then the pulse of progress will genuinely beat a little faster.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2014. 

How EU science chief promised to be "flexible" towards Israel's war crimes

Israel's war crimes sometimes have to be overlooked, according to a senior European Union representative.

During 2013, Israel reacted angrily when Brussels officials issued a policy paper stating that the EU would not award funding to firms and institutions based in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Rather than standing up to Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, the EU's top figures tried to downplay the significance of the "guidelines" contained in that paper.

One letter -- not published before now -- shows that some of this downplaying was tantamount to grovelling.

Signed by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU's commissioner for scientific research, in November last year, that letter states that both the Union and Israel "are conscious of the need to find flexible ways of implementing the guidelines."

Such flexibility was required, she argued, to "ensure full respect of the Union's policy in relation to the territories occupied by Israel, while not deterring Israel's association to EU programs."

Don't be fooled

Her attempt to sound balanced and nuanced should not fool anybody. The only possible interpretation of her letter is that although the EU considers Israel's colonization of the West Bank to be illegal, it is willing to compromise on that position for reasons of political expediency.

The construction of Israeli settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. They involve the tightening of Israeli control on land it acquired by force.

In other words, they are war crimes.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn was advocating a flexible approach to war crimes.

Her letter was written in reply to a complaint about the guidelines from Jim Nicholson, a pro-Israel member of the European Parliament and a stalwart of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Nicholson had claimed that excluding Israeli institutions in the West Bank from EU research would be "unhelpful" to the "sensitive talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority then being chaired by John Kerry, the US secretary of state.

I acquired these letters under freedom of information rules, while writing a report on how the Zionist lobby interacts with the European Union (my report will be published by the organization Spinwatch in the near future).

Eager to please

Torpedoing the EU's guidelines has been something of an obsession for Israel and its staunchest allies. The Brussels bureaucracy proved quite eager to please Israel.

Geoghegan-Quinn herself displayed flexibility to Israeli settlements just two weeks before the "guidelines" were published in the summer of 2013. The Irish politician approved an €800,000 ($1 million) research grant for Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics-maker which had its main factory in the West Bank.

Briefing notes prepared for her by EU officials acknowledged that Ahava was located in an illegal settlement but recommended that she go ahead and rubber-stamp the grant.

A separate internal paper from the EU's executive, the European Commission, suggests that such officials were somewhat in awe of Israel's technological prowess.

Israel and Switzerland, both of which were involved in the EU's multi-annual science program, were "among the most research-intensive and innovative countries in the world," the paper states. "European researchers and innovators have much to gain from cooperating (and competing) with the best teams in these countries."

The EU is one of Israel's main sources of research subsidies.

Between 2007 and the end of last year, Israeli firms and institutions signed nearly 1,500 grant agreements with the European Union. The total value of all EU research projects involving Israel in that period was €8.7 billion ($11 billion).

Dishonest

Many recipients of these grants can be linked to activities in the West Bank and Gaza. Whenever she has been challenged about the surrounding issues, Geoghegan-Quinn has tried to defend the allocation of EU grants to the weapons manufacturers Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries.

Dishonestly, she has insisted that the research being funded is "civilian in nature at all times."
Yet those companies have supplied surveillance equipment to the apartheid wall in the West Bank, and equipped the Israeli military with the warplanes used to bomb Gaza's children.

Far from being "civilian in nature at all times," some of the EU-funded schemes involving Israeli partners relate to the development of drones -- inherently military aircraft.

Fraud

Earlier this month, the EU's foreign policy service issued a statement criticizing Israel's latest settlement activities in apparently robust terms. Any further deepening of the EU's relations with Israel will depend on Israel's "engagement towards a lasting peace," according to that statement.

The statement was partly a reaction to how the settler group Elad had stolen 26 houses from Palestinians in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Elad's larceny was carried out with the assistance of Israeli soldiers.

If Brussels officials are really furious about this crime, then they should advocate that sanctions be swiftly imposed on Israel.

Not only has the Union refused to contemplate punishing Israel, it has given important support to those responsible for ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has been working in tandem with Elad to uproot Palestinians from Silwan under the pretext that they wish to build an archaeological park known as the City of David.

The IAA has its headquarters in East Jerusalem. Although the EU never recognized Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, it has subsidized the IAA.

That authority took part in an EU-funded research project aimed at protecting heritage from earthquakes. The project had a total budget worth €3.5 million ($4.4 million) between January 2010 and December 2012.

Another internal EU paper says that the IAA gave a post-office box address inside present-day Israel when applying to take part in that project.

This is a very serious matter: it implies that an organ of the Israeli state resorted to deception in order to obtain EU funding.

That fraud provides the EU with all the reasons it needs to stop subsidizing Israel. But instead of taking action, the EU has signed an agreement enabling Israel to take part in Horizon 2020, the Union's latest research program.

Geoghegan-Quinn will soon be stepping down as an EU commissioner. As a farewell gift, she has been awarded the Légion d'Honneur.

That is France's highest accolade, The Irish Times informed its readers. Geoghegan-Quinn bagged the medal for her efforts to maintain a high level of research funding in challenging economic times.

No doubt, a few Irish people felt a sense of pride when they heard about this honor. I wasn't one of them.

By displaying flexibility towards Israel's crimes, Geoghegan-Quinn has disgraced her nation.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 15 October 2014. 

Karel de Gucht: enemy of the people

Serving lobster, foie gras and roast pigeon behind a gilded façade, La Maison du Cygne is reputed to be one of Brussels' finest restaurants. Karl Marx visited it when he was writing The Communist Manifesto, a tract focused on class struggle. Ironically, it has more recently hosted deliberations about how the power of the ultra-wealthy can be increased.

On 24 March 2011, Karel de Gucht, the EU's trade commissioner, dined there with around 40 representatives of a corporate club called the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue.

An internal European Commission report of the encounter indicates that de Gucht committed himself to pursuing objectives that harmed ordinary people and the world's poor.

Among the topics discussed at this secret nosh-up were ensuring that global health and environmental initiatives did not endanger the monopolies enjoyed by big business. Such monopolies have become known as "intellectual property rights" (IPR) - an anti-democratic concept whereby ideas and knowledge can be privately "owned".

After the electronics firm Siemens commended the EU's trade officials for their work "in a difficult area", De Gucht acknowledged that their policies on "intellectual property" were "not supported by public opinion".

Positive outcome?

De Gucht expanded on this theme in a letter he sent to the TABD, also during 2011. In it, de Gucht referred to an "impression that IPRs may hinder innovation, as well as access to essential goods such as medicines or 'green' technologies." He added: "the public debate around IPR risks putting rightholders on the defensive and it is necessary to reflect on how to change the terms of the public debate".

The same letter illustrates - perhaps inadvertently - why the public is correct.

De Gucht claimed that EU officials "prevented the inclusion" of IPR issues on the agenda for a major UN climate change conference in Durban that year, arguing that was "a very positive outcome".

He bragged, too, of putting pressure on the World Health Organisation not to bother itself with intellectual property.

Telling climate change negotiators they may not address intellectual property may be a "positive outcome" for big business. Not so for the rest of humanity.

African, Asian and Latin American governments had sought an arrangement whereby they would be able to override patents on solar panels, wind turbines and other technology for generating renewable electricity. This was an entirely reasonable request, aimed at making energy clean and affordable.

Yet de Gucht was more eager to help energy firms reap in profits than to avert ecological catastrophes.

Despicable

His attitude to pharmaceutical patents is equally despicable. De Gucht wanted to ensure that discussions on intellectual property are confined to pro-corporate bodies like the World Trade Organisation, rather than being extended to UN agencies with a mandate to protect public health or fight poverty.

De Gucht and officials working under him have been saying different things in public than in private.

In January this year, de Gucht expressed some understanding over why there is disquiet about the planned EU-US trade and investment agreement and especially the proposal that it allow corporations to challenge laws and policies they do not like. He identified as problematic the tobacco industry's record of invoking similar clauses in previous trade accords to litigate against anti-smoking initiatives.

Yet tobacco firms have been active in seeking that such provisions - known to policy wonks as investor-state dispute settlement - be inserted in the EU-US deal. British American Tobacco and Philip Morris are members of the Trans-Atlantic Business Council (as the TABD is now called). It has been formally tasked by the American and European authorities with advising on how trans-Atlantic economic links can be bolstered and has prepared the groundwork for the current trade talks.

Last year, I asked Leopoldo Rubinacci, a leading EU trade negotiator, about why cigarette-makers were shaping the agenda. "I'm not aware of any specific participation or influence of the tobacco industry in this debate," he replied.

Contrary to what he implied, De Gucht's team has been in contact with individual tobacco companies, as well as umbrella groups to which they belong. In June 2012, his adviser Damien Levie met a representative of British American Tobacco.

Australia's moves to require that all cigarettes be sold in plain packaging - something that the tobacco industry is challenging under another free trade agreement - was discussed. Levie has more recently been working alongside Rubinacci as a negotiator with the US.

Unless she performs badly at her "confirmation hearing" in the European Parliament next week, Cecilia Malmström will soon replace de Gucht as the Union's trade chief.

Pandering to villains

The handover is unlikely to make much difference. Both of these politicians adhere to liberalism, an ideology dedicated to widening inequality.

In her previous role as the EU's home affairs commissioner, Malmström has approved efforts to train warplanes on asylum-seekers. Having sniffed out new opportunities for the weapons industry, she should have no difficulty pandering to Big Tobacco and other villains.

The wealthy will continue to be favoured.

•First published by EUobserver, 25 September 2014.

Revealed: Europe's "discreet" cooperation with Israel's nuclear industry

The European Union has been cooperating furtively with Israel's nuclear industry for at least six years.

An internal document that I recently obtained states that an accord on "joint and cooperative initiatives relevant for the peaceful use of nuclear energy" was signed between the EU and Israel in 2008. "This is a discreet agreement that has not been given publicity," the paper adds.

The document was drawn up ahead of an October 2013 visit to Israel by Antonio Tajani, then Italy's member of the European Commission.

It is not hard to understand why the Union wishes to keep this cooperation "discreet." The agreement was reached with Israel's Atomic Energy Commission -- the body that runs the Dimona reactor, where Israel's nuclear weapons were developed.

Israel introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has refused to permit international inspection of all its nuclear activities.

In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Israel's prime minister, acknowledged that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. The US Defence Intelligence Agency estimated in 1999 that Israel had between 60 and 80 nuclear warheads.

Hypocrisy

These facts put Israel in a very different category to Iran, supposedly a major threat to world peace.

Unlike Israel, Iran has no nuclear weapons. The National Intelligence Council -- a group advising the US president -- expressed "high confidence" in 2007 that Iran had halted its weapons development program a few years earlier.

Despite that explicit statement, both the EU and the US have slapped punitive sanctions on Iran (after some sanctions had been relaxed, America imposed new restrictions on business with Iran last week). The official narrative behind these sanctions is that everything must be done to stop Iran acquiring the bomb.

Yet the European Union is happy to cooperate, with Israel, a nation that actually has the bomb. Is it any wonder that Brussels officials don't want attention drawn to this hypocrisy?

Military links

I asked the EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC) - which is tasked with implementing the "discreet" agreement, why it is cooperating with Israel, a known threat to world peace. A JRC spokesperson tried to present the "scientific collaboration" involved here as benign.

The research with Israel concerns the "medical application of radionuclides, radiation protection, as well as nuclear security related to the detection and identification of nuclear and radioactive materials," according to the spokesperson. "It does not cover any activities related to reprocessing and enrichment."

I asked the spokesperson if any guarantees have been provided that Israel will not use the fruits of its research with the Union for military purposes. Not surprisingly, I didn't receive a reply to that question.

When I asked how much had been spent on nuclear cooperation with Israel, the JRC would only say that the research in question is "not jointly funded as each institution covers its related activities."

As well as overseeing the development of nuclear weapons, Israel's Atomic Energy Commission has strong links to the conventional arms industry.

Apart from Dimona, the commission also runs the Soreq research center. Soreq's own website says that it develops equipment with "homeland security" applications -- a euphemism for surveillance technology and weaponry. When journalists have been given guided tours of that center, its scientists have bragged of inventing lasers to assist snipers.

The JRC -- the European Commission's in-house science service -- has been cooperating more directly with Israel's weapons industry, too.

In December 2010, it teamed up with Elbit, the Israeli arms company, for what it called a "small boat detection campaign" in Haifa. The purpose of this exercise was to see how drones can be used for maritime surveillance, principally to stop asylum-seekers from entering Europe.

Elbit is one of the leading suppliers of warplanes to the Israeli military. This means that it is providing some of the key tools that Israel used to inflict death and destruction on Gaza this summer (and in previous attacks). By hosting the "boat detection" exercise, the EU indicated its eagerness to deploy Israel's tools of mass murder against refugees.

Greenwashing

Although the EU has tried to keep the nuclear research "discreet", it has openly celebrated more palatable forms of engagement with Israel.

José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing European Commission chief, posed for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu, when the two men approved an energy and water cooperation agreement in 2012. The JRC tried to sell that accord as ecologically sound by stressing that it concerned renewable energy and resource conversation.

Environmental campaigners have a name for tactics designed to rebrand a villain as a tree-hugger: "greenwashing."

Cooperation on "clean" energy provides scant comfort to Gaza's people, whose only power plant was bombed by Israel this summer. Nor should it be forgotten that Israel attacked a center for autistic children that had solar panels on its roof. So much for Israel's commitment to renewable energy.

Israel is a nuclear-armed rogue state. I'm sure that many decent people would be horrified to learn that the EU is liaising with the very agencies that developed Israel's nuclear weapons -- even if this cooperation is "discreet."

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 5 September 2014.

Why Europe won't impose an arms embargo on Israel

In Greek mythology, Hermes was both a thief of cattle and a protector of sheep. Israel's weapons industry is promoting the Hermes drone as similarly versatile to the god after which it is named.

A new version of this pilotless warplane - the Hermes-900 - made its combat debut when Israel attacked Gaza during the summer. It might take some time before we have an idea how many deaths can be attributed to this particular killing machine (or, more accurately, its operators).  Israel has forbidden Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from entering Gaza to investigate how the offensive was conducted.

We can nonetheless be certain that it helped to inflict immense suffering and destruction. Able to carry twice the bomb-load as the model of drone it will replace, the Hermes-900 was introduced during the first week of the attack, which began on 8 July. At the end of that month, the Israeli Air Force exulted in how it had been flown "non-stop".

Israel has been eager to emphasise its less lethal applications, too. Brazil bought a Hermes-900 drone for surveillance during the World Cup. The deal enabled Elbit, the plane's manufacturer, to boast of how it was contributing to "safety" at sporting events.

At least, the mass surveillance of football fans was widely reported. Discussions about the potential use of Israeli drones to track refugees destined for Europe's shores have, by contrast, gone largely unnoticed.

Last year, Elbit contacted Frontex, the EU's border management agency, seeking to show off its drones. Elbit suggested that the agency would have a "special interest" in the "search and rescue variant" of the Hermes-900.

In response, Frontex arranged an appointment in its Warsaw headquarters for a "senior director" with the weapons company. Elbit followed up by offering a "live demo" of its technology, according to internal Frontex documents that I obtained under EU freedom of information rules.

Another key supplier of warplanes used to flatten Gaza, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), gave such a demonstration to Frontex in October 2011. IAI was paid more than $260,000 for that privilege, although it could have charged more. In an exchange of email messages, IAI assured the agency that it had the "best suitable" drones for catching asylum-seekers. To underscore its altruistic side, the firm offered to exhibit its wares at a "greatly reduced price".

These low-key discussions provide some clues about why the EU has refused to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Three years ago, Frontex acquired the power to buy or lease its own equipment (until then, it had borrowed from EU governments).

It is acutely aware that Israel is a leading innovator of the drones that it covets. It is equally aware that Israel Aerospace Industries has taken part in EU-funded research projects on how drones can hunt down asylum-seekers. Nobody should be fooled by touchy-feely terms like "search and rescue" or "safety". Frontex is pursuing an essentially racist agenda of trying to prevent foreigners from entering Europe.

There is an obscene logic behind why the EU's border management officials would wish to cooperate with Israel. Both Frontex and Israel have violated the rights of Palestinian refugees.

As part of its activities, Frontex works with the Greek authorities to "screen" asylum-seekers. A report by several human rights organisations published in May documented how Frontex was recording that Palestinian refugees who had lived in Syria were "stateless", without recognising that they were fleeing a vicious civil war.

These refugees were ordered to leave Greek territory within 30 days. A principle enshrined in international law - that nobody should be expelled to a country where his or her life will be at risk - has been blithely ignored by an agency of the European Union.

Israel is a state founded as a result of large-scale dispossession. Around 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted in the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing at the time of Israel's establishment in 1948. A large number fled to Gaza. Over the past six years, these refugees have been subject to three all-out attacks.

Eyewitness accounts from doctors working in Gaza's hospitals indicate that Israel dropped experimental weapons during this summer's attack. The weapons are believed to include DIME (dense inert metal explosives), which causes horrific injuries by burning at high temperatures. Al-Haq, the Palestinian rights group, has stated that DIME was carried in Hellfire missiles that were dropped from Israeli drones.

The only proper and compassionate response to such horrors is to cease doing business with Israel's arms industry. That step would require ripping up a commitment to invest more in the development of drones made by the EU's presidents and prime ministers in December 2013. While Israel was not explicitly mentioned in that pledge, Europe's key drone projects have involved a significant level of input from Israel.

The British Army's planned Watchkeeper drones, for example, are based on Elbit's Hermes-450. Due to be replaced by the Hermes-900, it has been marketed as the "primary platform" for Israel's "counter-terror operations" and as "a mature and combat-proven" aircraft. The likely customers of these products understand exactly what those euphemisms mean: drone-makers are twisting their contribution to Israel's crimes against humanity into selling points.

Even before Gaza was bombed, Israel Aerospace Industries had a backlog of orders worth $9.7 billion. Elbit had a backlog worth $6.2 billion. Don't be surprised if their weapons will be in greater demand now.

Gaza was turned into a laboratory for the arms industry this summer. By forging close links with Israel's arms industry, Europe has accorded Palestinians the same status as animals used in cruel experiments. With their indomitable spirit, the people of Gaza have shown that they will never accept that status.

•First published by Middle East Eye, 4 September 2014.

Merkel stands by Israel even when it kills Germans

Earlier this year Angela Merkel was awarded Israel's "presidential medal of distinction." The German chancellor merited this honor, some journalists dutifully reported, because of her "unwavering commitment to Israel's security."

That "unwavering commitment" might help explain why Merkel does not appear perturbed by what happened to Ibrahim al-Kilani. He had spent twenty years in Germany, qualifying there as a civil engineer, before returning to Gaza in 2001, where he had married and started raising a family. On Monday, Ibrahim, his wife Taghreed and their five children were wiped out in an Israeli attack.

Ilias, the youngest of the children, was only four. His sister Yasmin was six. The other siblings -- Yassir, Sawsan, and Rim -- were aged between eight and twelve. It should not be necessary to spell out that they were entirely innocent of any crime.

One day after this family was wiped out, Germany and all European Union governments issued a statement on the events in Gaza. As the Union's foreign ministers were meeting that day, they had every opportunity to demand an explanation from Israel as to why it had just killed a family of EU citizens.

Yet the EU's statement did not even mention the al-Kilanis. Rather, the foreign ministers stressed that they recognized "Israel's legitimate right to defend itself against any attacks."

Israel was politely asked to make sure its military action was "proportionate and in line with international humanitarian law."

Cowardice

It is hard to remain calm when reading those carefully chosen words -- of abject cowardice. Not for the first time, the EU was blaming Palestinians for the atrocities visited upon them by a brutal occupation. The truth was turned upside down.

Many of us have long suspected that the European Union doesn't really care when Palestinians are killed by Israel. Now we can say for certain it doesn't care even when Israel bombs EU citizens.

Ahmad al-Kilani, Ibrahim's cousin, made this point in an interview with a Turkish news agency: “No German or American nationality stops Israel from murdering us. Israel is like a monster that destroys everything it encounters. This is genocide.”

Eventually, the German foreign ministry announced yesterday that it was seeking "clarification" from Israel about why it killed the al-Kilani family.

That is a hollow gesture, when you recall that Merkel explicitly stated last week that "we stand by the side of Israel, when it comes to self-defense." She has not withdrawn that remark, despite the abundant evidence that the al-Kilani family and the people of Gaza more generally have not been bombed for reasons of "self-defense" but in grotesque acts of aggression.

The al-Kilani family had already suffered enormously from Israel's latest attack on Gaza. They had fled their home in Beit Lahia, an area in northern Gaza that Israel has shelled continuously.

Stand by Palestine

They had sought shelter in Shujaiya, a neighborhood in Gaza City. On Sunday, they witnessed a horrific massacre in that neighborhood.

They tried to escape once more, finding an apartment in Rimal, supposedly a safer part of Gaza City. It has been reported that Taghreed al-Kilani was preparing an iftar, the meal that ends a day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, when Israel shelled them.

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the current Israeli offensive.

Insipid requests from the European Union for Israel to behave in a "proportionate" manner won't stop the slaughter. It, therefore, falls to ordinary people of conscience around the world to take action.

We know what we have to do: intensify our campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. If Angela Merkel and other Western leaders are so determined to side with Israel, the rest of us must stand by the Palestinians.

Thanks to Shahd Abusalama for help with research and translation.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 24 July 2014.

EU regurgitates Israeli propaganda

The daily press briefing at the European Commission seldom fails to illustrate the cozy relationship between journalists and the powerful. So harmonious is this rapport that many of its attendees "graduate" from being spoonfed stories by official EU spokespersons to eventually becoming spokespersons themselves.

Michael Mann offers a case in point. He used to be on the staff of The Financial Times. Today, he commands a higher salary as a mouthpiece for Catherine Ashton, the Union's foreign policy chief. Part of his job involves regurgitating Israeli propaganda.

This week he issued a statement which claimed that Israel's latest bombardment of Gaza constituted "retaliatory fire." Everything was in response to rockets launched by Palestinians, he suggested.

There was no acknowledgement that Israel has been subjecting Palestinian civilians to collective punishment -- in clear violation of international law. There was no mention of the seven-year siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza. There was no recognition that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has used the murder of three Israeli teenagers as a pretext to kill much higher numbers of Palestinian children in recent days (more than twenty children have been killed in Gaza over the past few days; a death toll that is likely to rise).

Instead, there was an anodyne call for "restraint."

Bubble

Like most of the Brussels elite, Mann lives in something of a bubble. For the past few months, the main topic of conversation within this cocoon has been which dodgy politician will become the European Commission's new president. The harm inflicted by the EU's austerity policies and by its "strategic" partners (as Catherine Ashton has categorized Israel) has been largely ignored.

Diplomats based in Israel live in a bubble, too. The EU's embassy in Israel is located in a skyscraper in the business district of Ramat Gan, a city beside Tel Aviv. The convivial coffee shops and restaurants which the embassy's staff frequent provide no clues of the immense human suffering in Gaza, around seventy kilometers away.

Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU's ambassador to Israel, ventured a little bit outside the bubble on Monday. He didn't go to Gaza, however, but to Ashkelon in southern Israel. There, he expressed solidarity with Israelis facing the "unacceptable threat" of rockets from Gaza.

The ambassador elaborated on this gesture of solidarity in a softball interview with the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz. "I wanted to underline that shooting rockets indiscriminately at civilians cannot be a legitimate or an acceptable response to any kind of grievance that you have," he said.

Listeners to the video of the interview posted on the Haaretz website were spared any explanation of what kind of grievances Palestinians may have.

Awkward fact

The awkward fact that they have long been treated as laboratory rats for the Israeli arms industry was omitted. That's hardly surprising, if you delve a bit deeper.

In June, Israel signed an agreement that enables its weapons manufacturers -- the very people profiting from the current attack on Gaza -- take part in the EU's scientific research programme. Known as Horizon 2020, that programme has been allocated a colossal €80 billion ($109 billion) between now and the end of the decade.

Faaborg-Andersen was so keen to stress his empathy with Zionists that he effectively gave an "up yours" salute to the main Palestinian plea for justice: the 2005 call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. He was at pains to stress that Israel is welcome to continue exporting goods from its settlements in the occupied West Bank, even though some EU governments have recently advised firms against doing business with the settlements.

"The EU is not banning anyone," he said. "We are against boycotts. We are against BDS. We are against the isolation of Israel."

Embracing Israel

Far from isolating Israel, some of the EU's leading representatives appear intent on embracing it tighter. Last month, Daniel Calleja, head of the European Commission's enterprise department, lead the Union's second "mission for growth" to Israel in as many years.

Among the Israeli firms which have been involved in this "mission" to increase business with Europe are Elbit, a supplier of the drones now being used to bomb Gaza and of surveillance equipment installed in the apartheid wall declared illegal by the International Court of Justice almost exactly ten years ago.

Ahava, a firm making cosmetics in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, has been taking part, too.

There is, of course, an important caveat that should be added when the EU claims to oppose boycotts. It is only against boycotts of Israel.

Under US pressure, the Union decided to boycott the Palestinian government formed after the 2006 election. EU representatives, who constantly harp on about democracy, didn't like the result of that exercise in democracy because the wrong party -- Hamas -- won.

Those of us who try as best we can to live in the real world detect a heady stench of double standards from EU representatives. The representatives, however, seem oblivious to that stench. I guess that's what happens when you live in a bubble.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 10 July 2014.

Diplomat who used sex to sell Israel advises top EU lobby group

Two markedly different images of the Israeli military have emerged: the grainy and the glossy.

The grainy image is epitomized by the new video of soldiers murdering two teenage boys. This image is often captured by amateurs. It is authentic.

The glossy image is of a caring force that does everything to avoid civilian harm -- the most moral in the world, according to some politicians. This image is constructed professionally. It is fraudulent.

Spindoctors occasionally try to add a new layer of gloss, hoping that it will conceal the cruelty with which Israel has become synonymous. One such effort was a photo-shoot for Maxim, a magazine popular among certain types of men. It featured a number of scantily-clad women, all of whom had apparently served in the Israeli military.

Rebranding

The 2007 feature was reportedly the brainchild of David Saranga, a "rebranding" specialist then working for Israel's consulate in New York.

During an investigation for Spinwatch, an organization monitoring the "public relations" industry, I learned that Saranga has now brought his "makeapartheid sexy" campaign to Brussels (needless to say, the campaign is not actually called that).

Saranga can often be seen hanging out with the main figures in European Friends of Israel (EFI). That group was formed by members of Britain's Conservative Party, who felt that there should be a strong Zionist lobby within the European Parliament.

EFI has arranged for Saranga to train its staff and supporters about how to "sell" Israel on "social media" websites. The group appears to have paid close attention. Its Facebook page brims with hasbara as Israeli "public diplomacy" is called. A particular emphasis is placed on Israel's technology industry, which is busy inventing things that "could save your life," as one post claimed.

"Protecting lives"

EFI applies Israeli gloss liberally. Earlier this year, I heard Marek Siwiec, a Polish member of the European Parliament (MEP) who chairs the group's political board, praise Israel for the "humanitarian aid" it was providing to victims of Syria's civil war. "Israel is protecting hundreds of thousands of lives," he said. "I think this phenomenon should be more presented for the European public."

Siwiec airbrushed an inconvenient truth out of this "phenomenon." Many victims of the appalling situation in Syria had been previously dispossessed by Israel. I'm referring here to those Palestinians who sought refuge in Damascus after they were forcibly displaced in the Nakba -- the ethnic cleansing at the time of Israel's establishment.

Transparent?

When I later asked Siwiec a few basic questions about EFI, he boasted of how it was a "transparent organization." Yet he refused to divulge any details about its finances.

After some further digging, I found out that EFI has received backing from some very wealthy entrepreneurs. One of the them was Yaron (Ronny) Bruckner, who died last year. His Luxembourg-registered property and consumer goods firm Eastbridge has been stepping up its business activities in the US. In 2011, it bought the New York skyscraper that previously housed the insurance giant AIG.

Another man to sit on EFI's administrative board was Marc Grosman. He owns Celio, a clothing retailer with more than one thousand stores in sixty different countries.

Almost certainly, these two men have helped fund EFI. At the same time that Bruckner became one of the EFI's administrators in 2011, a new rule was added to the group's statutes. It set the maximum annual donation which EFI board members can make to the group at a cool €5 million ($6.8 million). Before then, the yearly limit had been a mere €1,000 ($1,400).

Trade triumph

Unfortunately, EFI has enjoyed some success during its eight year history. It was instrumental in ensuring that the European Parliament approved a trade deal between the EU and Israel in 2012.

Despite its technical name -- the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) -- that deal was of huge political importance. It has meant that Israeli pharmaceutical companies -- and potentially the manufacturers of other Israeli goods -- can ship their products to the European Union without having to undergo costly quality controls. In effect, this means that Israel is being accorded commercial preferences usually reserved for businesses inside the EU.

The EFI's success on that dossier can be at least partly attributed to how the current European Parliament veers more towards the right than the left. The group seems to be nervous, however, about the prospect of encountering greater difficulties in the assembly that will be formed as a result of this week's election.

It has asked budding MEPs to sign a pledge that they will work against boycotts of Israel. More than likely, it would not have done so if it did not feel under pressure. Some EFI stalwarts have admitted to me that they regard the Palestine solidarity movement as too strong for their liking.

This is a testament to people power. The Palestine solidarity movement is not backed by profit-hungry corporations. It does not hire "rebranding" specialists to place photo shoots in mass circulation magazines. And yet by patiently and diligently building public awareness, it is striking fear into the hearts of Israel's elite and its "friends."

Israel is losing its propaganda war. No amount of gloss can save it.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 21 May 2014.

Turkey's fickle support for Palestinian struggle

On a flight from Istanbul to Brussels last night, I learned something that I had not previously known. Armenians have used the term aghed -- catastrophe -- to describe the massacres inflicted on them by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Palestinians, of course, also refer to the vicious ethnic cleansing undertaken by Zionist forces in 1948 as a catastrophe -- or nakba in Arabic.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, this week offered his condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians killed 99 years ago. He also promised to respect those who voice "different opinions." Could this mean that a taboo is finally being broken?

Under the Turkish penal code, those who argue that the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians constituted a genocide are liable for prosecution. Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, was convicted of denigrating Turkishness for expressing such views in 2005; two years later he was murdered.

Political football

Victims of injustice -- and their descendants -- deserve acknowledgement that horrific crimes were perpetrated against them. They should never be used in a game of political or diplomatic football.

In the recent past, Israel's parliament, the Knesset, has toyed with the idea of formally recognizing that Armenians suffered a genocide. This same institution has approved a law designed to punish Palestinians who commemorate the establishment of Israel as a catastrophe.

More than likely, Israel will not recognise the Armenian genocide any time soon. Doing so would aggravate tensions with Turkey at a time when both sides want to boost their economic ties -- at the Palestinians' expense, needless to say.

Attending the Palestine International Forum for Media and Communication in Istanbul, I listened to a representative of Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) Party proclaim his country's support for the Palestinian struggle.

That support is fickle.

Trade rises

If Turkey really supports the Palestinians, it would be imposing tough economic sanctions on Israel. Instead, the value of annual trade between Turkey and Israel has increased: from $3.4 billion in 2008 to $4 billion in 2012.

Turkey introduced an arms embargo on Israel in 2011. Yet it has continued to take delivery of military products ordered before then. And despite the embargo, Israel's defense ministry is reportedly examining how to arrange fresh weapons sales to Turkey.

It's not hard to understand why Israel is eager to resume business. Turkey has long been a loyal customer for the Israeli arms industry. It is second only to the US in having the largest army in NATO. Turkey splurges around 1.8 percent of its gross domestic product on the military - higher than the average for European countries.

Erdogan had a public row with Shimon Peres when Israel was bombing Gaza in 2009. Though his stance was commendable, it does not erase the fact that Erdogan's government had been willing to buy Israeli weapons until then.

In 2005, Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Elbit won a contract to supply Turkey with drones. These two firms were the main manufacturers of the warplanes that Israel has used to attack Gaza. (IAI is now called Israel Aerospace Industries).

The aforementioned arms embargo, it should be recalled, was only imposed after Israel murdered nine Turkish human rights activists while they were sailing towards Gaza. In 2010 - the year that attack occurred - Turkey was the second largest importer of Israeli weapons.

Dash for gas

Another news story this week related to Turkey's potential investment in the Leviathan natural gas field off present-day Israel. Energy firm Turcas confirmed that it is in discussions with another Turkish company Enerjisa to buy gas from this field. It had previously been reported that Turkas was exploring the development of a pipeline to bring gas from Israel to Turkey.

This news offers a reminder as to how it was energy issues that made the imperial powers so interested in Palestine in the first place. In the early twentieth-century, Haifa hosted a pipeline transporting oil from the Persian Gulf.

The Turkish Petroleum Company had a virtual monopoly on this oil from 1925 to 1961. The firm's name (later changed to the Iraq Petroleum Company) was misleading. It was controlled by British and German banks and Royal Dutch Shell.

I suspect we will hear much more about Israel's reputedly abundant energy reserves. By some estimates, Israel's shale deposits could supply 250 billion barrels of oil.

Shale oil has become synonymous with an ecologically destructive extraction process known as fracking. But a firm called Israel Energy Initiatives claims that new technologies can allow this oil to be produced with "low environmental impact."

The claim lacks credibility. The only way that fossil fuels can have a low environmental impact is if they are left in the ground.

If there is a rush to exploit the energy resources under Israel's control, then we can be sure that those who stand to benefit won't care a fig about human rights.

Turkey's professions of solidarity with the Palestinians will ultimately remain hollow, then, so long as the Ankara authorities continue to eye business deals with Israel.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 25 April 2014.