A Paris university has withdrawn permission for a Palestine solidarity conference at the behest of the Zionist lobby.
In a statement issued today, the authorities at the University of Paris 8 said that the title of the conference – “Israel: an apartheid state?” – was “of a strongly polemical character.” Because there had been strong reactions to its theme, the university predicted there could be a “serious risk posed to public order” if the event scheduled for 27 and 28 February went ahead.
The complaint against the conference was made by the representative council for Jewish organizations in France, or CRIF as it’s better known. It had objected to the participation of Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Boycott Israel “shock”
Barghouti’s presence in Paris would be “shocking”, according to CRIF, because the ideas that he espouses have “been found on several occasions to constitute an offence of incitement to discrimination.”
CRIF’s claim is misleading. While a number of BDS activists have been accused (ridiculously) of flouting French laws on racism, there have also been important rulings that uphold the right to urge a boycott of Israel. In December last, a court in the eastern city of Mulhouse acquitted 12 campaigners who had urged customers of the supermarket Carrefour not to buy Israeli goods.
I was also one of the invited speakers for the conference, which was part of Israeli Apartheid Week, a series of debates and actions on university campuses throughout the world. The group behind the event, Collectif Palestine Paris 8, wasn’t consulted ahead of the university’s decision to ban it.
This isn’t the first time that CRIF has attempted to muzzle criticism of Israel on French campuses. Last year it strong-armed the authorities at the École normale supérieure (ENS), another Paris college, into forbidding a Palestine solidarity discussion. The big cheese at the ENS succumbed to the pressure.
The “miracle” of Israel
Earlier this month, CRIF underscored its political clout, when Nicolas Sarkozy addressed its annual dinner. The president used the platform to call Israel a “miracle,” marvelling at how “from the debris [of the Holocaust], a democracy has been born.”
On his best behavior now that he is seeking re-election, Sarkozy saluted the “courage” of Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who he has called a “liar” in private conversations with Barack Obama (that were overhead by journalists).
Anyone who has been following events in that “miracle” called Israel will know that Netanyahu and his foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are waging a war of attrition against civil liberties. Aspects of that war have been exported to France, where calling out Israel as an apartheid state is considered a threat to public order or, worse, a crime.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2012.
Showing posts with label boycott Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boycott Israel. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Belgium "bans" Free Palestine T-shirts, ignores torture of its citizen
I had a surreal experience on Sunday.
For the second consecutive week, a group of us entered a Brussels food exhibition to protest at a stand promoting SodaStream, the manufacturer of soft drink machines based in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli-controlled industrial zone in the occupied West Bank. As soon as we began distributing flyers alerting the public to the company’s crimes, the police arrived. They surrounded us for a while, before escorting us outdoors (throughout this time, we chanted “Boycott Israel” slogans).
A police officer then explained that we needed a permit from the local mayor’s office to wear T-shirts saying “Free Palestine”. (I swear that I’m not making this up). One young woman pointed to a slightly different T-shirt she was wearing that read “I ♥ Palestine.” According to the officer, that garment was permissible as it was considered apolitical. Yet if several people want to wear “Free Palestine” T-shirts at the one time, they need special authorization, the officer maintained.
After this bemusing encounter, the protest organizer Nadia led us to a nearby tram stop, where we handed out our remaining flyers. It was there that I had a conversation with an activist named Farida, who told me about the grotesque human rights abuses inflicted on her brother Ali.
Extradited to Morroco
Ali Aarrass, a Belgian-Moroccan national, was extradited from Spain to Morocco in December last year, after having been held in custody since 2008. He was arrested in Melilla, a Spanish-controlled enclave on Morocco’s north coast in April 2008.
The Spanish authorities refused to heed a call from the UN Human Rights Committee in November 2010 that the extradition not take place until that committee had completed its examination of the case. Amnesty International has complained that the extradition breached the European Convention on Human Rights, which forbids the return of anyone from a country to which he or she is at risk of torture.
I called Farida this morning and she told me that Ali was repeatedly tortured when he was sent to Morocco. The methods used against him included hanging him up by his hands and feet. “My brother was very deeply shocked,” Farida said, adding that when one lawyer went to see him he reflexively covered his face with his hands, fearing that his visitor would beat him. “It was really horrible.”
Aarrass is scheduled to appear in court this Thursday. He is accused of belonging to a network, directed by Abdelkader Belliraj, another Belgian-Moroccan national who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 after being convicted of planning terrorist acts. The case against Aaarass was considered by the Spanish national criminal court. But in March 2009, Baltazar Garzon, provisionally closed investigations because of a lack of evidence.
No help from Belgium
Even though Aarrass has spent most of his life in Belgium and served in its army, this country’s authorities have refused to help him. Farida contacted the Belgian foreign ministry when Ali was held in Spain. “Their excuses were ridiculous,” she said. “They said ‘we cannot interfere in Spanish justice’. I said, ‘I’m not asking you to interfere but to visit him and see if he is in good health.’” (Aarrass has undertaken a number of hunger strikes).
Aarrass has a six year old child, who he has not seen in four years. His mother, who also lives in Belgium, can only visit him rarely. Efforts by his family to have him receive medical attention from independent doctors have been thwarted by the Moroccan authorities.
I was impressed by Farida’s commitment to human rights. As well as raising awareness about her brother’s plight, she also takes part in actions supporting the Palestinians and other victims of human rights violations.
She is encouraging people of conscience to send Ali a note of solidarity. His address: Ali Aarrass, Prison de Salé II, Salé, Morocco.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 25 October 2011
For the second consecutive week, a group of us entered a Brussels food exhibition to protest at a stand promoting SodaStream, the manufacturer of soft drink machines based in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli-controlled industrial zone in the occupied West Bank. As soon as we began distributing flyers alerting the public to the company’s crimes, the police arrived. They surrounded us for a while, before escorting us outdoors (throughout this time, we chanted “Boycott Israel” slogans).
A police officer then explained that we needed a permit from the local mayor’s office to wear T-shirts saying “Free Palestine”. (I swear that I’m not making this up). One young woman pointed to a slightly different T-shirt she was wearing that read “I ♥ Palestine.” According to the officer, that garment was permissible as it was considered apolitical. Yet if several people want to wear “Free Palestine” T-shirts at the one time, they need special authorization, the officer maintained.
After this bemusing encounter, the protest organizer Nadia led us to a nearby tram stop, where we handed out our remaining flyers. It was there that I had a conversation with an activist named Farida, who told me about the grotesque human rights abuses inflicted on her brother Ali.
Extradited to Morroco
Ali Aarrass, a Belgian-Moroccan national, was extradited from Spain to Morocco in December last year, after having been held in custody since 2008. He was arrested in Melilla, a Spanish-controlled enclave on Morocco’s north coast in April 2008.
The Spanish authorities refused to heed a call from the UN Human Rights Committee in November 2010 that the extradition not take place until that committee had completed its examination of the case. Amnesty International has complained that the extradition breached the European Convention on Human Rights, which forbids the return of anyone from a country to which he or she is at risk of torture.
I called Farida this morning and she told me that Ali was repeatedly tortured when he was sent to Morocco. The methods used against him included hanging him up by his hands and feet. “My brother was very deeply shocked,” Farida said, adding that when one lawyer went to see him he reflexively covered his face with his hands, fearing that his visitor would beat him. “It was really horrible.”
Aarrass is scheduled to appear in court this Thursday. He is accused of belonging to a network, directed by Abdelkader Belliraj, another Belgian-Moroccan national who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 after being convicted of planning terrorist acts. The case against Aaarass was considered by the Spanish national criminal court. But in March 2009, Baltazar Garzon, provisionally closed investigations because of a lack of evidence.
No help from Belgium
Even though Aarrass has spent most of his life in Belgium and served in its army, this country’s authorities have refused to help him. Farida contacted the Belgian foreign ministry when Ali was held in Spain. “Their excuses were ridiculous,” she said. “They said ‘we cannot interfere in Spanish justice’. I said, ‘I’m not asking you to interfere but to visit him and see if he is in good health.’” (Aarrass has undertaken a number of hunger strikes).
Aarrass has a six year old child, who he has not seen in four years. His mother, who also lives in Belgium, can only visit him rarely. Efforts by his family to have him receive medical attention from independent doctors have been thwarted by the Moroccan authorities.
I was impressed by Farida’s commitment to human rights. As well as raising awareness about her brother’s plight, she also takes part in actions supporting the Palestinians and other victims of human rights violations.
She is encouraging people of conscience to send Ali a note of solidarity. His address: Ali Aarrass, Prison de Salé II, Salé, Morocco.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 25 October 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Police aggression at Brussels protest against Israeli firm
On Sunday, I was at the receiving end of aggressive police behavior during a protest against a company operating in an illegal Israeli settlement.
Along with about 15 activists, I picketed a food fair in Brussels to highlight how SodaStream produces soft drink carbonation machines at a factory in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli-controlled industrial zone in the West Bank.
Dressed in green and white “Free Palestine” T-shirts, we surrounded the SodaStream stand and distributed leaflets alerting the fair’s attendees to the firm’s criminal activities. We then walked through the exhibition hall – beside the Atomium, one of Brussels’ best-known landmarks -- chanting “boycott Israel” slogans.
It wasn’t long before the police arrived and moved us outside. We were immediately followed by a few men who started making rude and threatening gestures towards us.
A few moments later, a police officer grabbed the few leaflets I had not yet distributed and crumpled them in a ball. “You don’t have the right to do that,” I shouted at him. He smirked and swiped the cap I was wearing off my head. He was carrying a gun and a baton in his belt.
No name badge
Unlike most of his colleagues, the police officer did not have a visible name badge on his shirt. Because he refused to give his name, I tried to take his photograph with my mobile phone (unsuccessfully, it transpired). When he saw me doing so, he demanded to see my identity card but I refused to show it to him.
More police arrived. At one point, I counted 10 in total, all armed. Indeed, it felt to me that there was a far more visible police presence at this small protest than there was the previous day, when I was one of an estimated 7,000 people who marched through Brussels in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement and to register our outrage with the austerity agenda being imposed on Europe’s people.
A few of us complained about the officer’s aggressive conduct but his colleagues still refused to give us his name. Another activist approached the officer at one point and asked his name. “Je m’appelle David et je suis juif,” he said. (“My name is David and I am Jewish”). I can only assume that the officer mentioned his religion in an effort to suggest that our action was anti-Semitic, which it certainly was not.
Threatened with arrest
Later, four of us went to a nearby police station to complain about the officer’s behavior and the participation of SodaStream in the exhibition. At the station, another officer told me that I would have to show him my ID card. I replied that I would be happy to do so if I was given the name of the officer who had been aggressive towards me. The second officer then accused me of blackmail and warned that he would arrest and detain me for 12 hours unless I complied with his order. I told him he could arrest me if he wished. (The second officer gave me his name but warned of serious, though unspecified, consequences if I posted it on the internet).
After a minute, I asked to use the toilet. The second officer was no longer in the hallway when I returned. The three other activists accompanying me all advised me to show my card and then file a complaint with a committee that monitors the Belgian police. As they had organised the action, I felt that I should accept their advice.
I do not wish to exaggerate the significance of what happened to me. Having a few leaflets confiscated is nothing compared to having your home destroyed, as regularly happens to Palestinians.
Yet it seems important that all attempts to stifle actions in support of the Palestinians should be documented. There was no excuse for that officer to behave in the way he did, given he was not provoked in any way. And if he was genuinely interested in fighting crime, he would have studied the information on the literature he crumpled. If he did, he would have learned something about why were protesting against SodaStream. He and his fellow police officers could then investigate why an exhibition next to his station was hosting a firm that profits from violations of international law.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 16 October 2011.
Along with about 15 activists, I picketed a food fair in Brussels to highlight how SodaStream produces soft drink carbonation machines at a factory in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli-controlled industrial zone in the West Bank.
Dressed in green and white “Free Palestine” T-shirts, we surrounded the SodaStream stand and distributed leaflets alerting the fair’s attendees to the firm’s criminal activities. We then walked through the exhibition hall – beside the Atomium, one of Brussels’ best-known landmarks -- chanting “boycott Israel” slogans.
It wasn’t long before the police arrived and moved us outside. We were immediately followed by a few men who started making rude and threatening gestures towards us.
A few moments later, a police officer grabbed the few leaflets I had not yet distributed and crumpled them in a ball. “You don’t have the right to do that,” I shouted at him. He smirked and swiped the cap I was wearing off my head. He was carrying a gun and a baton in his belt.
No name badge
Unlike most of his colleagues, the police officer did not have a visible name badge on his shirt. Because he refused to give his name, I tried to take his photograph with my mobile phone (unsuccessfully, it transpired). When he saw me doing so, he demanded to see my identity card but I refused to show it to him.
More police arrived. At one point, I counted 10 in total, all armed. Indeed, it felt to me that there was a far more visible police presence at this small protest than there was the previous day, when I was one of an estimated 7,000 people who marched through Brussels in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement and to register our outrage with the austerity agenda being imposed on Europe’s people.
A few of us complained about the officer’s aggressive conduct but his colleagues still refused to give us his name. Another activist approached the officer at one point and asked his name. “Je m’appelle David et je suis juif,” he said. (“My name is David and I am Jewish”). I can only assume that the officer mentioned his religion in an effort to suggest that our action was anti-Semitic, which it certainly was not.
Threatened with arrest
Later, four of us went to a nearby police station to complain about the officer’s behavior and the participation of SodaStream in the exhibition. At the station, another officer told me that I would have to show him my ID card. I replied that I would be happy to do so if I was given the name of the officer who had been aggressive towards me. The second officer then accused me of blackmail and warned that he would arrest and detain me for 12 hours unless I complied with his order. I told him he could arrest me if he wished. (The second officer gave me his name but warned of serious, though unspecified, consequences if I posted it on the internet).
After a minute, I asked to use the toilet. The second officer was no longer in the hallway when I returned. The three other activists accompanying me all advised me to show my card and then file a complaint with a committee that monitors the Belgian police. As they had organised the action, I felt that I should accept their advice.
I do not wish to exaggerate the significance of what happened to me. Having a few leaflets confiscated is nothing compared to having your home destroyed, as regularly happens to Palestinians.
Yet it seems important that all attempts to stifle actions in support of the Palestinians should be documented. There was no excuse for that officer to behave in the way he did, given he was not provoked in any way. And if he was genuinely interested in fighting crime, he would have studied the information on the literature he crumpled. If he did, he would have learned something about why were protesting against SodaStream. He and his fellow police officers could then investigate why an exhibition next to his station was hosting a firm that profits from violations of international law.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 16 October 2011.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Israeli universities: agents of apartheid
One of the most enjoyable things that has happened since I wrote a book on Israel’s relations with Europe is that I have been asked to speak at various universities. So when an invitation appeared in my email inbox to visit King’s College London (KCL), I immediately accepted. Big mistake.
The request came from the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), a partnership between King’s College and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. I only became aware of the partnership one day before I was scheduled to address an ICSR seminar in January. Following a hasty consultation with some friends in the Palestine solidarity movement, I withdrew from the event, informing the organisers that I fully supported the campaign to boycott Israeli goods and institutions.
In hindsight, I am relieved to have taken that decision. Set up in 2008, the ICSR boasts on its website that it is “the first initiative of this kind in which Arab and Israeli academic institutions can work together”. This appears to be a reference to how the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy is also involved in its research on political violence. However, the participation of an academic body from an Arab state does not exonerate the ICSR for embracing the Herzliya centre, which has long tried to cloak Israeli apartheid with intellectual gravitas.
Each year the IDC hosts the Herzliya security conference, attracting Israel’s political, military and business elite, as well as illustrious foreign guests. Speakers at this conference can spout racist invective without fear of being challenged; in 2003, Yitzhak Ravid, a senior researcher with Israel’s weapons development authority Rafael called for coercive measures to curb the birth-rate among Palestinians. “The delivery rooms in Soroka Hospital in Be’ersheba have turned into a factory for the production of a backward population,” he said, alluding to an area with a considerable number of Bedouin inhabitants.
Furthermore, the IDC expresses pride in its links with the Israeli army, despite that army’s role in enforcing the occupation of Palestine. Representatives of Israel’s most profitable arms manufacturers frequently sit on the IDC’s management committee, while 10% of its student places are reserved for veterans of elite combat units in the Israeli army.
John Bew, director of the ICSR, told me there is no “financial relationship between ourselves and Herzilya”. He added: “You will see that we also have contacts with universities across the world, including Jordan. This is not an expression of support for any political position on any state - Israel, Pakistan, India, wherever. It is part of our belief that academic institutions should be a source of dialogue and discussion and the first port of call for discussion between divided peoples. Having grown up in Belfast, I am personally committed to that sort of dialogue. I don't think demonising or boycotting one side or another has any constructive impact.”
Bew’s comments are disingenuous. Although he is opposed to a boycott of Israel, he is happy to put his name to pamphlets defending the boycott of Hamas by western governments. In a 2008 paper he wrote with fellow scholar Martyn Frampton, Bew urged the West to be wary of negotiating with Hamas, lest that doing so would “strengthen its position against more moderate alternatives”. In his writing, he habitually labels Hamas as “terrorist”, without applying that term to the state of Israel, a far more prolific killer of civilians than Hamas. Moreover, he appears reluctant to learn from the situation in his native Belfast, where a peace settlement could only be achieved after the British government agreed to hold talks with Irish Republicans.
Bew’s flawed analysis chimes with the stance from chief administrators in King’s College. In November 2008, KCL awarded an honorary doctorate to the Israeli president Shimon Peres, an inveterate warmonger (his status as a Nobel Peace laureate notwithstanding). The award sparked protests from student activists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Along with his post with the ICSR, Bew is listed as a vice-president of the Henry Jackson Society, a “think-tank” that defends America’s imperial machinations. The society’s founding principles commit it to advocating that the US and Britain maintain “a strong military with global expeditionary outreach”.
A Palestine solidarity campaigner studying in KCL, who asked not to be named, said: “The idea that the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation is there to combat radicalisation is quite absurd. If it wanted to follow the Northern Ireland model [to conflict resolution], it wouldn't be covertly pressing to exclude Hamas from the so-called peace process.”
The case for an academic boycott of Israel was bolstered by a 2009 paper from the Alternative Information Center (AIC), a group combining Israeli and Palestinian researchers and activists. “All major Israeli academic institutions, certainly the ones with the strongest international connections, were found to provide unquestionable support to Israel’s occupation,” that paper stated. Such support ranged from how the Technion in Haifa developed a remote-controlled bulldozer for the demolition of Palestinian homes to how Tel Aviv University has welcomed arms manufacturers to symposia on robotics and electro-optics.
Uri Yacobi Keller, an author of the AIC paper, said the Palestine solidarity movement is not seeking that European academics to cease talking to their Israeli counterparts. Rather, the movement is urging a boycott of Israeli universities as institutions and that the flow of finance to them be cut off until they sever their links with the occupation. “This would make Israeli universities understand that these [international] contacts are in danger if they continue to cooperate with the Israeli security establishment and the settlement project [in the occupied Palestinian territories],” he said.
Academic cooperation between Europe and Israel has been encouraged by governments on both sides. In July 2008, the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX) was launched by the two prime ministers then in office, Gordon Brown and Ehud Olmert. This £1 million ($1.6 million) scheme, which involves the allocation of grants to science researchers, is mainly funded by the Pears Foundation, which presents itself as a philanthropic body. All of the Israeli universities taking part have links to the Israeli military, according to the aforementioned AIC paper.
Mike Cushman from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), which has called for an academic boycott of Israel, noted that some of the activities sponsored by BIRAX exclude Palestinian institutes. “BIRAX funds research on the Dead Sea ecology without the involvement of Palestinian universities but the Dead Sea is a vital resource for Palestinians,” he said.
“Israeli universities develop the arms and control technologies that directly support the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza,” Cushman added. “Their alumni magazines proudly boast of their links with the Israeli military and security services. Israelis who have done military service get privileged entry into universities: one of a number of ways the universities directly and indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
The European Commission, meanwhile, is a major provider of grants to Israeli universities and to private Israeli firms, including weapons manufacturers. Israel is the main foreign participant in the European Union’s multi-annual “framework programme” for scientific research, which has an overall budget of €53 billion ($73.5 billion) between 2007 and 2013. Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, worth a total of €4.3 billion. Israeli officials have told me that they hope they will have directly drawn down more than €500 million worth of science grants by the time the EU’s programme concludes in 2013.
Cordis, a searchable database on the EU programme (www.cordis.lu), is a useful resource for activists wishing to find concrete cases of European universities linked to Israeli institutions and the private sector. When I gave a talk in Ireland’s University of Limerick towards the end of last year, a member of staff told me she was shocked to discover the extent of its cooperation with Israel. By checking Cordis, I found five examples linking Limerick to Israel; several of the beneficiaries are profiting directly from the occupation of Palestine. Among these projects was one with the unwieldy title Innovative and Novel First Responders Applications (INFRA), which aims to develop communications services in tunnels and other locations where mobile phones prove unreliable. Athena GS3, a company founded by Shabtai Shavit, a former head of the Israeli secret service Mossad, is involved in this project; the firm belongs to the Mer Group, which provides surveillance equipment to illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and to military bases and checkpoints in the wider West Bank. Another Israeli beneficiary of this project is Opgal, a maker of infrared cameras. Opgal is partly owned by Elbit, a leading supplier of warplanes to the Israeli air force.
Contrary to Israel’s claims that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, its university authorities are actively seeking to quell dissent. After Israel attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine activists, in May 2010, Haifa University banned its students from protesting. Ben Gurion University of the Negev has also begun disciplinary proceedings against students who demonstrated against the flotilla massacre and for improved conditions for workers hired to clean the campus.
With deep cuts imposed on education spending in many countries, it is understandable that student unions and academics are preoccupied with domestic economic issues at the moment. But those cuts are being taken as part of a greater ideological effort to make universities more subservient to the private sector and restrict third-level education to people from wealthy families. Cooperation with Israeli universities needs to be viewed in that context.
Indeed, Israel’s experience should be a wake-up call for everyone concerned about social justice. Whereas most industrialised countries spend around $8,000 on each student attending school or university per year, Israel spends $6,000. By contrast, Israel devotes 8% of its gross domestic product to military expenditure, almost six times the average for industrialised countries.
Israel’s political elite is clearly more concerned with prime-pumping its arms industry and tightening its grip on Palestinian land than in ensuring that education helps people realise their potential. That is one of many reasons why an academic boycott of Israel is so vital.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 10 March 2011
”
The request came from the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), a partnership between King’s College and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. I only became aware of the partnership one day before I was scheduled to address an ICSR seminar in January. Following a hasty consultation with some friends in the Palestine solidarity movement, I withdrew from the event, informing the organisers that I fully supported the campaign to boycott Israeli goods and institutions.
In hindsight, I am relieved to have taken that decision. Set up in 2008, the ICSR boasts on its website that it is “the first initiative of this kind in which Arab and Israeli academic institutions can work together”. This appears to be a reference to how the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy is also involved in its research on political violence. However, the participation of an academic body from an Arab state does not exonerate the ICSR for embracing the Herzliya centre, which has long tried to cloak Israeli apartheid with intellectual gravitas.
Each year the IDC hosts the Herzliya security conference, attracting Israel’s political, military and business elite, as well as illustrious foreign guests. Speakers at this conference can spout racist invective without fear of being challenged; in 2003, Yitzhak Ravid, a senior researcher with Israel’s weapons development authority Rafael called for coercive measures to curb the birth-rate among Palestinians. “The delivery rooms in Soroka Hospital in Be’ersheba have turned into a factory for the production of a backward population,” he said, alluding to an area with a considerable number of Bedouin inhabitants.
Furthermore, the IDC expresses pride in its links with the Israeli army, despite that army’s role in enforcing the occupation of Palestine. Representatives of Israel’s most profitable arms manufacturers frequently sit on the IDC’s management committee, while 10% of its student places are reserved for veterans of elite combat units in the Israeli army.
John Bew, director of the ICSR, told me there is no “financial relationship between ourselves and Herzilya”. He added: “You will see that we also have contacts with universities across the world, including Jordan. This is not an expression of support for any political position on any state - Israel, Pakistan, India, wherever. It is part of our belief that academic institutions should be a source of dialogue and discussion and the first port of call for discussion between divided peoples. Having grown up in Belfast, I am personally committed to that sort of dialogue. I don't think demonising or boycotting one side or another has any constructive impact.”
Bew’s comments are disingenuous. Although he is opposed to a boycott of Israel, he is happy to put his name to pamphlets defending the boycott of Hamas by western governments. In a 2008 paper he wrote with fellow scholar Martyn Frampton, Bew urged the West to be wary of negotiating with Hamas, lest that doing so would “strengthen its position against more moderate alternatives”. In his writing, he habitually labels Hamas as “terrorist”, without applying that term to the state of Israel, a far more prolific killer of civilians than Hamas. Moreover, he appears reluctant to learn from the situation in his native Belfast, where a peace settlement could only be achieved after the British government agreed to hold talks with Irish Republicans.
Bew’s flawed analysis chimes with the stance from chief administrators in King’s College. In November 2008, KCL awarded an honorary doctorate to the Israeli president Shimon Peres, an inveterate warmonger (his status as a Nobel Peace laureate notwithstanding). The award sparked protests from student activists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Along with his post with the ICSR, Bew is listed as a vice-president of the Henry Jackson Society, a “think-tank” that defends America’s imperial machinations. The society’s founding principles commit it to advocating that the US and Britain maintain “a strong military with global expeditionary outreach”.
A Palestine solidarity campaigner studying in KCL, who asked not to be named, said: “The idea that the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation is there to combat radicalisation is quite absurd. If it wanted to follow the Northern Ireland model [to conflict resolution], it wouldn't be covertly pressing to exclude Hamas from the so-called peace process.”
The case for an academic boycott of Israel was bolstered by a 2009 paper from the Alternative Information Center (AIC), a group combining Israeli and Palestinian researchers and activists. “All major Israeli academic institutions, certainly the ones with the strongest international connections, were found to provide unquestionable support to Israel’s occupation,” that paper stated. Such support ranged from how the Technion in Haifa developed a remote-controlled bulldozer for the demolition of Palestinian homes to how Tel Aviv University has welcomed arms manufacturers to symposia on robotics and electro-optics.
Uri Yacobi Keller, an author of the AIC paper, said the Palestine solidarity movement is not seeking that European academics to cease talking to their Israeli counterparts. Rather, the movement is urging a boycott of Israeli universities as institutions and that the flow of finance to them be cut off until they sever their links with the occupation. “This would make Israeli universities understand that these [international] contacts are in danger if they continue to cooperate with the Israeli security establishment and the settlement project [in the occupied Palestinian territories],” he said.
Academic cooperation between Europe and Israel has been encouraged by governments on both sides. In July 2008, the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX) was launched by the two prime ministers then in office, Gordon Brown and Ehud Olmert. This £1 million ($1.6 million) scheme, which involves the allocation of grants to science researchers, is mainly funded by the Pears Foundation, which presents itself as a philanthropic body. All of the Israeli universities taking part have links to the Israeli military, according to the aforementioned AIC paper.
Mike Cushman from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), which has called for an academic boycott of Israel, noted that some of the activities sponsored by BIRAX exclude Palestinian institutes. “BIRAX funds research on the Dead Sea ecology without the involvement of Palestinian universities but the Dead Sea is a vital resource for Palestinians,” he said.
“Israeli universities develop the arms and control technologies that directly support the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza,” Cushman added. “Their alumni magazines proudly boast of their links with the Israeli military and security services. Israelis who have done military service get privileged entry into universities: one of a number of ways the universities directly and indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
The European Commission, meanwhile, is a major provider of grants to Israeli universities and to private Israeli firms, including weapons manufacturers. Israel is the main foreign participant in the European Union’s multi-annual “framework programme” for scientific research, which has an overall budget of €53 billion ($73.5 billion) between 2007 and 2013. Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, worth a total of €4.3 billion. Israeli officials have told me that they hope they will have directly drawn down more than €500 million worth of science grants by the time the EU’s programme concludes in 2013.
Cordis, a searchable database on the EU programme (www.cordis.lu), is a useful resource for activists wishing to find concrete cases of European universities linked to Israeli institutions and the private sector. When I gave a talk in Ireland’s University of Limerick towards the end of last year, a member of staff told me she was shocked to discover the extent of its cooperation with Israel. By checking Cordis, I found five examples linking Limerick to Israel; several of the beneficiaries are profiting directly from the occupation of Palestine. Among these projects was one with the unwieldy title Innovative and Novel First Responders Applications (INFRA), which aims to develop communications services in tunnels and other locations where mobile phones prove unreliable. Athena GS3, a company founded by Shabtai Shavit, a former head of the Israeli secret service Mossad, is involved in this project; the firm belongs to the Mer Group, which provides surveillance equipment to illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and to military bases and checkpoints in the wider West Bank. Another Israeli beneficiary of this project is Opgal, a maker of infrared cameras. Opgal is partly owned by Elbit, a leading supplier of warplanes to the Israeli air force.
Contrary to Israel’s claims that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, its university authorities are actively seeking to quell dissent. After Israel attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine activists, in May 2010, Haifa University banned its students from protesting. Ben Gurion University of the Negev has also begun disciplinary proceedings against students who demonstrated against the flotilla massacre and for improved conditions for workers hired to clean the campus.
With deep cuts imposed on education spending in many countries, it is understandable that student unions and academics are preoccupied with domestic economic issues at the moment. But those cuts are being taken as part of a greater ideological effort to make universities more subservient to the private sector and restrict third-level education to people from wealthy families. Cooperation with Israeli universities needs to be viewed in that context.
Indeed, Israel’s experience should be a wake-up call for everyone concerned about social justice. Whereas most industrialised countries spend around $8,000 on each student attending school or university per year, Israel spends $6,000. By contrast, Israel devotes 8% of its gross domestic product to military expenditure, almost six times the average for industrialised countries.
Israel’s political elite is clearly more concerned with prime-pumping its arms industry and tightening its grip on Palestinian land than in ensuring that education helps people realise their potential. That is one of many reasons why an academic boycott of Israel is so vital.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 10 March 2011
”
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Why I tried to arrest Israeli minister
If apartheid is a crime, there is only one way to treat its practitioners: arrest them. That is precisely what I tried to do when I confronted Avigdor Lieberman, the architect of a series of laws designed to make Israeli apartheid even more draconian than it already is.
As the Israeli foreign minister was about to give a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday (22 February), I stood in front of him and shouted: “Mr Lieberman, this is a citizen’s arrest. You are charged with the crime of apartheid. Please come with me to the nearest police station.” I was about to explain the charge further but two security guards had already whisked me away from Lieberman and his inscrutable glare. So I shouted “Free Palestine” and “Israel is an apartheid state” to underscore my point.
My action will probably lead to the confiscation of the badge that had given me access to the headquarters of the EU’s main institutions. Most journalists to whom I have spoken in the past few hours appear to view this as a major issue. For me, it is a trivial one. Palestinians are deprived of liberty every day because of the policies pursued by Lieberman and his government colleagues. Compared to the restrictions on movement caused by military checkpoints in the West Bank or by that medieval blockade of Gaza, the loss of my press card is of no consequence.
The decision to confront Lieberman was taken following a recent visit to the occupied Palestinian territories. Spending a Friday afternoon in the Silwan area of East Jerusalem felt like being transported back to Derry or Belfast in the early 1970s. I was shocked by how Israeli soldiers and police in full riot gear were firing tear gas at young boys who were doing nothing more sinister than throwing stones at the forces of occupation.
It was my first time in Silwan in almost two years and there had been a marked proliferation of Israeli flags there since my previous visit. That was a sure sign that Palestinians who have lived in East Jerusalem for many generations are being forced from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers. The dispossession is taking place so that an extremist group called E’lad can realise its plans for the City of David archaeological park. With the official blessing of the Israeli state, E’lad believes that Israeli settlers have more rights to live in the area than its actual residents, based on how the remnants of a three-millennia-old royal palace may have been discovered in Silwan.
Apartheid is the best word I can think of to describe the machinations of these settlers and their friends in government. Although apartheid is synonymous with South Africa, it has been recognised as a crime by the United Nations since 1973. The relevant UN convention refers to the dominance of one racial group over another. Israel was always intended to be a state based on a toxic notion of racial supremacy; Theodor Herzl, the ‘founding father’ of political Zionism wrote back in 1896 that he wished to set up “an outpost of civilisation against barbarism”.
More than a century later, Avigdor Lieberman is giving practical effect to Herzl’s blueprint. In the two years that Lieberman and his party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) have been in government, about 20 new laws and bills have been brought before the Knesset (Israeli parliament) with the specific aim of copper-fastening Israeli apartheid. The party is seeking to make Arab citizens of Israel – who comprise about one-fifth of the country’s population – swear an oath of allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic state”, crack down on commemorations of the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing which led to Israel’s formation in the 1940s) and limit the rights of Palestinian prisoners to meet lawyers. Just last week, the Knesset held a debate about a proposal to outlaw activities promoting a boycott of Israeli goods or institutions.
If you get a sense of déjà-vu reading about the measures favoured by Lieberman, it is because they bear many similarities to those introduced by the white minority government in South Africa during its apartheid era.
As well as being recognised as a crime by the UN since the 1970s, apartheid has more recently been one of the offences covered by the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was founded. The EU is nominally a strong supporter of the ICC, yet the Union’s representatives have mostly kept their mouths shut about Israeli apartheid and its consolidation.
Apartheid is not the only crime on my mind right now. Bertrand Russell, the great British intellectual, once referred to the crime of silence. This is a crime that the EU commits when it embraces Lieberman, as it did this week. If our politicians are silent, then it falls to ordinary people to shout as loud as they possibly can.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 22 February 2011
As the Israeli foreign minister was about to give a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday (22 February), I stood in front of him and shouted: “Mr Lieberman, this is a citizen’s arrest. You are charged with the crime of apartheid. Please come with me to the nearest police station.” I was about to explain the charge further but two security guards had already whisked me away from Lieberman and his inscrutable glare. So I shouted “Free Palestine” and “Israel is an apartheid state” to underscore my point.
My action will probably lead to the confiscation of the badge that had given me access to the headquarters of the EU’s main institutions. Most journalists to whom I have spoken in the past few hours appear to view this as a major issue. For me, it is a trivial one. Palestinians are deprived of liberty every day because of the policies pursued by Lieberman and his government colleagues. Compared to the restrictions on movement caused by military checkpoints in the West Bank or by that medieval blockade of Gaza, the loss of my press card is of no consequence.
The decision to confront Lieberman was taken following a recent visit to the occupied Palestinian territories. Spending a Friday afternoon in the Silwan area of East Jerusalem felt like being transported back to Derry or Belfast in the early 1970s. I was shocked by how Israeli soldiers and police in full riot gear were firing tear gas at young boys who were doing nothing more sinister than throwing stones at the forces of occupation.
It was my first time in Silwan in almost two years and there had been a marked proliferation of Israeli flags there since my previous visit. That was a sure sign that Palestinians who have lived in East Jerusalem for many generations are being forced from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers. The dispossession is taking place so that an extremist group called E’lad can realise its plans for the City of David archaeological park. With the official blessing of the Israeli state, E’lad believes that Israeli settlers have more rights to live in the area than its actual residents, based on how the remnants of a three-millennia-old royal palace may have been discovered in Silwan.
Apartheid is the best word I can think of to describe the machinations of these settlers and their friends in government. Although apartheid is synonymous with South Africa, it has been recognised as a crime by the United Nations since 1973. The relevant UN convention refers to the dominance of one racial group over another. Israel was always intended to be a state based on a toxic notion of racial supremacy; Theodor Herzl, the ‘founding father’ of political Zionism wrote back in 1896 that he wished to set up “an outpost of civilisation against barbarism”.
More than a century later, Avigdor Lieberman is giving practical effect to Herzl’s blueprint. In the two years that Lieberman and his party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) have been in government, about 20 new laws and bills have been brought before the Knesset (Israeli parliament) with the specific aim of copper-fastening Israeli apartheid. The party is seeking to make Arab citizens of Israel – who comprise about one-fifth of the country’s population – swear an oath of allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic state”, crack down on commemorations of the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing which led to Israel’s formation in the 1940s) and limit the rights of Palestinian prisoners to meet lawyers. Just last week, the Knesset held a debate about a proposal to outlaw activities promoting a boycott of Israeli goods or institutions.
If you get a sense of déjà-vu reading about the measures favoured by Lieberman, it is because they bear many similarities to those introduced by the white minority government in South Africa during its apartheid era.
As well as being recognised as a crime by the UN since the 1970s, apartheid has more recently been one of the offences covered by the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was founded. The EU is nominally a strong supporter of the ICC, yet the Union’s representatives have mostly kept their mouths shut about Israeli apartheid and its consolidation.
Apartheid is not the only crime on my mind right now. Bertrand Russell, the great British intellectual, once referred to the crime of silence. This is a crime that the EU commits when it embraces Lieberman, as it did this week. If our politicians are silent, then it falls to ordinary people to shout as loud as they possibly can.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 22 February 2011
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The rotten politics of John Lydon
Johnny Rotten has cheated on me.
OK, I don’t expect that statement to elicit much sympathy. But I can’t have been the only one to feel queasy reading the interviews John Lydon gave ahead of this week’s British tour by his band Public Image Ltd (PiL). The erstwhile Mr Rotten believes that now his ads have boosted sales of Country Life butter, he should be courted incessantly by marketing executives. “It amazes me that people don't get the opportunity of me,” he told The Guardian. “I sell."
As I was only five at the time of its release in 1976, I wasn’t conscious of hearing Anarchy in the UK until nine or ten years later. Fashion might have moved on in that time – not that I had any knowledge of fashion – yet it is no exaggeration to say that The Sex Pistols’ debut single was liberating and educational, not least because it prompted me to look up “anarchy” in the dictionary. Here was an exotic creature from London telling a young Irish boy that it was cool to defy authority.
Call me naive for clinging to teenage illusions but I never thought I would learn that Lydon has gone from bellowing “I am the antichrist” at the establishment to “I sell” at an unappreciative marketing industry. It might be daft to ascribe an ethos to a shambolic musical genre like punk rock, yet it seemed to represent values at odds with those espoused by the two political figures who defined the decade after Anarchy in the UK: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The punk lexicon had no shortage of slogans but“greed is good” wasn’t one of them.
There were plenty of others politicised by punk. Billy Bragg has told of how he set up the Jail Guitar Doors initiative – which provides musical instruments and tutorials to prisoners - after hooking up with admirers of Joe Strummer following his death in 2002. “Although we may have hung up our leather jackets, those of us who were touched by the fire of punk have held onto our anti-fascist ideals,” Bragg said. “We were amazed to find that many of us were involved in activism in one way or another - union organisers, environmental campaigners, documentary filmmakers.”
Whereas Strummer was more obviously left-wing than Lydon, both have proven inspirational to numerous musicians who reject the silly notion that pop and politics shouldn’t mix. The often fabulous Asian Dub Foundation are among those known to have blared PiL’s Metal Box album on their tour bus speakers.
A few months ago Lydon claimed he’s “well-known for being a pacifist” and named Mahatma Gandhi as his all-time hero. Surely, then, he would be open to supporting one of the most impressive examples of Gandhi’s principles being put into action in today’s world: the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bi’lin, where unarmed activists are regularly fired at by Israeli forces. Surely, too, he would be sympathetic to the call made by numerous Palestinian trade unions and other campaign groups for a cultural and economic boycott of Israel.
Not a chance, I’m afraid. Lydon has vowed to go ahead with a PiL concert in Tel Aviv, scheduled for late August. "If Elvis-fucking-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him,” Lydon told The Independent. “But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they’re treated.”
How can Lydon so callously disregard the suffering of a people under colonial occupation? The answer is easy. PiL will be performing in Tel Aviv as headliners at a festival sponsored by Heineken. Along with giving him all the free beer he can swallow, Lydon can be sure the brewers will help to swell his bank account. Finally, he has found a corporation that gets “the opportunity of me”.
•Originally published by The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk), 21 July 2010
OK, I don’t expect that statement to elicit much sympathy. But I can’t have been the only one to feel queasy reading the interviews John Lydon gave ahead of this week’s British tour by his band Public Image Ltd (PiL). The erstwhile Mr Rotten believes that now his ads have boosted sales of Country Life butter, he should be courted incessantly by marketing executives. “It amazes me that people don't get the opportunity of me,” he told The Guardian. “I sell."
As I was only five at the time of its release in 1976, I wasn’t conscious of hearing Anarchy in the UK until nine or ten years later. Fashion might have moved on in that time – not that I had any knowledge of fashion – yet it is no exaggeration to say that The Sex Pistols’ debut single was liberating and educational, not least because it prompted me to look up “anarchy” in the dictionary. Here was an exotic creature from London telling a young Irish boy that it was cool to defy authority.
Call me naive for clinging to teenage illusions but I never thought I would learn that Lydon has gone from bellowing “I am the antichrist” at the establishment to “I sell” at an unappreciative marketing industry. It might be daft to ascribe an ethos to a shambolic musical genre like punk rock, yet it seemed to represent values at odds with those espoused by the two political figures who defined the decade after Anarchy in the UK: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The punk lexicon had no shortage of slogans but“greed is good” wasn’t one of them.
There were plenty of others politicised by punk. Billy Bragg has told of how he set up the Jail Guitar Doors initiative – which provides musical instruments and tutorials to prisoners - after hooking up with admirers of Joe Strummer following his death in 2002. “Although we may have hung up our leather jackets, those of us who were touched by the fire of punk have held onto our anti-fascist ideals,” Bragg said. “We were amazed to find that many of us were involved in activism in one way or another - union organisers, environmental campaigners, documentary filmmakers.”
Whereas Strummer was more obviously left-wing than Lydon, both have proven inspirational to numerous musicians who reject the silly notion that pop and politics shouldn’t mix. The often fabulous Asian Dub Foundation are among those known to have blared PiL’s Metal Box album on their tour bus speakers.
A few months ago Lydon claimed he’s “well-known for being a pacifist” and named Mahatma Gandhi as his all-time hero. Surely, then, he would be open to supporting one of the most impressive examples of Gandhi’s principles being put into action in today’s world: the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bi’lin, where unarmed activists are regularly fired at by Israeli forces. Surely, too, he would be sympathetic to the call made by numerous Palestinian trade unions and other campaign groups for a cultural and economic boycott of Israel.
Not a chance, I’m afraid. Lydon has vowed to go ahead with a PiL concert in Tel Aviv, scheduled for late August. "If Elvis-fucking-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him,” Lydon told The Independent. “But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they’re treated.”
How can Lydon so callously disregard the suffering of a people under colonial occupation? The answer is easy. PiL will be performing in Tel Aviv as headliners at a festival sponsored by Heineken. Along with giving him all the free beer he can swallow, Lydon can be sure the brewers will help to swell his bank account. Finally, he has found a corporation that gets “the opportunity of me”.
•Originally published by The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk), 21 July 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
When law enforcers have an illegal headquarters
Talks aimed at reaching an intelligence-sharing agreement between the European Union and Israel have skirted around the location of Israel’s national police headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem.
In 2005, the EU decided that Europol, its law enforcement office, should negotiate a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. Although Europol stated last year that a draft accord had been completed, it has now acknowledged that the question of Israeli police basing their headquarters on Palestinian land has not been properly addressed. “The negotiations so far have not touched upon the issue of the location of the main office of the Israeli police in East Jerusalem,” a Europol spokesman said.
The issue is highly sensitive because the Union has never recognised Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem and has opposed Israel’s policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the neighbourhood where Israel’s police and public security ministry are headquartered. A report by EU diplomats from March last year complained about a marked acceleration in the pace with which Israeli settlements are being built in East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy to sever it from the remainder of the West Bank. “Israel is, by practical means, actively pursuing the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem,” the report said.
Israel is one of several countries – including Russia, the U.S. and Canada – to have entered into talks on sharing information with Europol. As part of an eventual agreement, Europol would expect to have representatives stationed in Israel’s police headquarters. Such a move would involve a reversal of a decades-old EU policy as it would mean a de facto recognition of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem.
An alliance of Palestinian trade unions and campaign groups urging a global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel argued that an EU-Israel police cooperation agreement would violate international law.
Michael Deas, European coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, said his group had recently received legal advice from a barrister. This opinion concluded that any state that acted to legitimise Israel’s control of Palestinian territories would be directly contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention, a 1949 law written in response to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.
Deas added that an EU-Israel police accord would follow a series of moves to involve Israel intimately in some of the Union’s key political and economic policies in recent years. Israeli arms companies that supplied some of the deadliest weapons used in the war against Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and makers of surveillance technology for illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank are among the beneficiaries of the Union’s multi-billion euro “framework programme” for scientific research, he noted. He also likened Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to Palestinians to the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa for much of the twentieth century.
“If the European Union signs an agreement to share intelligence with the Israeli police force, it would only further entrench its active complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid system,” he said.
Under the 1995 convention that covers Europol’s activities, the office is not permitted either to process information that has been obtained in a manner that violates human rights.
While Israel’s High Court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods used against detainees should be prohibited as they clearly consisted of torture and ill-treatment, allegations of widespread torture persist. A December 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) found that complaints of torture are frequently glossed over by the authorities. Out of more than 600 complaints submitted by torture victims since 2001, not one had led to a criminal investigation, according to the report.
Amnesty International’s latest annual report indicates, too, that torture of Palestinian detainees by Israel’s General Security Service is rife. Practises allegedly used include beatings, placing detainees in “stress” positions designed to cause them pain and discomfort, and forced sleep deprivation. Despite the 1999 court ruling, Israel still allows torture in cases where it is deemed “necessary”, Amnesty noted.
A further snag is that the EU’s own data protection officials regard Israel’s privacy laws as inadequate. In a 2009 paper, the officials said that linking Europol’s databases with those run by the Israeli police would breach the Europol convention. Israel was found not to respect data protection standards to which Europol is legally bound such as requirements that the collection of data should not be “excessive” and that it should not be stored indefinitely.
Jelle van Buuren from Eurowatch, a civil liberties organisation, said that Europol wishes to have strong links with Israel and other countries it deems as strategic partners so that it can curry favour with the Union’s governments.
“Getting formal cooperation agreements with other countries would strengthen Europol’s position vis-à-vis (EU) member states,” he added. “Europol wants to be a European intelligence hub.”
•First published by Inter Press Service, 30 June 2010 (www.ipsnews.net)
In 2005, the EU decided that Europol, its law enforcement office, should negotiate a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. Although Europol stated last year that a draft accord had been completed, it has now acknowledged that the question of Israeli police basing their headquarters on Palestinian land has not been properly addressed. “The negotiations so far have not touched upon the issue of the location of the main office of the Israeli police in East Jerusalem,” a Europol spokesman said.
The issue is highly sensitive because the Union has never recognised Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem and has opposed Israel’s policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the neighbourhood where Israel’s police and public security ministry are headquartered. A report by EU diplomats from March last year complained about a marked acceleration in the pace with which Israeli settlements are being built in East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy to sever it from the remainder of the West Bank. “Israel is, by practical means, actively pursuing the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem,” the report said.
Israel is one of several countries – including Russia, the U.S. and Canada – to have entered into talks on sharing information with Europol. As part of an eventual agreement, Europol would expect to have representatives stationed in Israel’s police headquarters. Such a move would involve a reversal of a decades-old EU policy as it would mean a de facto recognition of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem.
An alliance of Palestinian trade unions and campaign groups urging a global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel argued that an EU-Israel police cooperation agreement would violate international law.
Michael Deas, European coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, said his group had recently received legal advice from a barrister. This opinion concluded that any state that acted to legitimise Israel’s control of Palestinian territories would be directly contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention, a 1949 law written in response to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.
Deas added that an EU-Israel police accord would follow a series of moves to involve Israel intimately in some of the Union’s key political and economic policies in recent years. Israeli arms companies that supplied some of the deadliest weapons used in the war against Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and makers of surveillance technology for illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank are among the beneficiaries of the Union’s multi-billion euro “framework programme” for scientific research, he noted. He also likened Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to Palestinians to the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa for much of the twentieth century.
“If the European Union signs an agreement to share intelligence with the Israeli police force, it would only further entrench its active complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid system,” he said.
Under the 1995 convention that covers Europol’s activities, the office is not permitted either to process information that has been obtained in a manner that violates human rights.
While Israel’s High Court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods used against detainees should be prohibited as they clearly consisted of torture and ill-treatment, allegations of widespread torture persist. A December 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) found that complaints of torture are frequently glossed over by the authorities. Out of more than 600 complaints submitted by torture victims since 2001, not one had led to a criminal investigation, according to the report.
Amnesty International’s latest annual report indicates, too, that torture of Palestinian detainees by Israel’s General Security Service is rife. Practises allegedly used include beatings, placing detainees in “stress” positions designed to cause them pain and discomfort, and forced sleep deprivation. Despite the 1999 court ruling, Israel still allows torture in cases where it is deemed “necessary”, Amnesty noted.
A further snag is that the EU’s own data protection officials regard Israel’s privacy laws as inadequate. In a 2009 paper, the officials said that linking Europol’s databases with those run by the Israeli police would breach the Europol convention. Israel was found not to respect data protection standards to which Europol is legally bound such as requirements that the collection of data should not be “excessive” and that it should not be stored indefinitely.
Jelle van Buuren from Eurowatch, a civil liberties organisation, said that Europol wishes to have strong links with Israel and other countries it deems as strategic partners so that it can curry favour with the Union’s governments.
“Getting formal cooperation agreements with other countries would strengthen Europol’s position vis-à-vis (EU) member states,” he added. “Europol wants to be a European intelligence hub.”
•First published by Inter Press Service, 30 June 2010 (www.ipsnews.net)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Gaza convoy attack: the West runs for cover
Two weeks ago NATO published a strategy document underscoring one of the alliance’s core tenets: an attack on any member of the alliance is an attack on all of them. Iran’s nuclear programme was identified as one of the biggest threats that the 28-nation club could face within the coming decade.
Two weeks later, a NATO country has indeed come under attack. A Turkish vessel laden with food and other essential supplies for the undernourished and traumatised people of Gaza was the target of a murderous assault by Israel. As the ship was sailing in international waters at the time, this was tantamount to a declaration of war against Ankara.
If Iran or North Korea had been behind a comparable act of piracy, Europe and America would either be retaliating with force or preparing stringent sanctions. Yet because Israel enjoys a privileged relationship with our governments, we have generally heard asinine statements of “regret” and “concern” (tellingly, the “r” word has been uttered both by Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama).
I’m certainly not advocating that Turkey should respond militarily. Rather, Israel should be ostracised diplomatically and economically until its political and military elite accepts that nobody has ever granted it a waiver from international law.
The likelihood that this will happen in the short term is not strong. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s racist foreign minister, and his bloodthirsty predecessor Tzipi Livni have made several visits to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels in recent years. Even though they represent a terrorist state, they have had considerable success in convincing NATO’s planners that Israel is an indispensable partner in the “war against terror”. The alliance’s efforts to colonise Afghanistan are being assisted in no small way by pilotless drones and other sophisticated weaponry made in Israel. And to feed its delusion that Iran is the number one threat to world peace, NATO is closely studying how missile interceptors based in Israel can be used to ratchet up the tensions with Tehran. NATO has been inviting Israel to participate in joint manoeuvres, too. Even Turkey – as well as Greece (a country that ought to have other priorities at the moment) – had been scheduled to undertake military exercises with Israel but these have now been called off.
The European Union is equally entangled in the occupation of Palestine. A few weeks ago the EU’s foreign ministers agreed to extend the mandate of the “border assistance mission” at Rafah – the crossing between Gaza and Egypt – for which they are nominally responsible. When the mission was first set up in 2005, it was hailed by EU officials as a major breakthrough for freedom of movement. Yet the reality is that Israel has always decided when the crossing can and cannot be opened (it has been closed permanently since 2007), with the result that the EU’s team has become a subcontractor for the siege of Gaza.
Europe’s commercial ties with Israel have continued to flourish – at the same time that Israel has gone out of its way to prevent Gaza and the West Bank from having functioning economies. Only last month, Israel was admitted into that officer’s mess of global capitalism: the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Mossad’s abuse of British and Irish passports to carry out an extrajudicial execution in Dubai did not deter our governments from welcoming Israel into the Paris-based body.
This week’s attacks appear to chime in a most chilling fashion with a warning given during the latest Herzliya conference - an annual talkfest for Israel’s “security” experts. A presentation by the Reut Institute – a “think-tank” – identified human rights and Palestinian solidarity activists as Israel’s biggest enemies as they are determined to “delegitimize” the state. In an odd way, the institute was right. When a state attacks a boat carrying nothing more dangerous than vegetables – or when it shows no signs of relaxing its occupation of another people’s land – that state’s legitimacy must be questioned.
Just over a year ago, I travelled around Israel and Palestine. One campaigner I met in Jerusalem told me there was an idea doing the rounds that the next intifada – Palestinian uprising (literally “shaking off”) – should be an international one modelled on the campaign that helped demolish apartheid in South Africa. Boycott, divestment and sanctions would be essential elements of this struggle.
It is possible that when Israel fired its bullets at a humanitarian convoy on Monday, it also fired the starting pistol for a new intifada. My hope is that this struggle will rely on the principles of non-violence, be supported by decent people everywhere and that our governments will be forced to stop rewarding Israel for its barbarism.
•Originally published by The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk)
Two weeks later, a NATO country has indeed come under attack. A Turkish vessel laden with food and other essential supplies for the undernourished and traumatised people of Gaza was the target of a murderous assault by Israel. As the ship was sailing in international waters at the time, this was tantamount to a declaration of war against Ankara.
If Iran or North Korea had been behind a comparable act of piracy, Europe and America would either be retaliating with force or preparing stringent sanctions. Yet because Israel enjoys a privileged relationship with our governments, we have generally heard asinine statements of “regret” and “concern” (tellingly, the “r” word has been uttered both by Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama).
I’m certainly not advocating that Turkey should respond militarily. Rather, Israel should be ostracised diplomatically and economically until its political and military elite accepts that nobody has ever granted it a waiver from international law.
The likelihood that this will happen in the short term is not strong. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s racist foreign minister, and his bloodthirsty predecessor Tzipi Livni have made several visits to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels in recent years. Even though they represent a terrorist state, they have had considerable success in convincing NATO’s planners that Israel is an indispensable partner in the “war against terror”. The alliance’s efforts to colonise Afghanistan are being assisted in no small way by pilotless drones and other sophisticated weaponry made in Israel. And to feed its delusion that Iran is the number one threat to world peace, NATO is closely studying how missile interceptors based in Israel can be used to ratchet up the tensions with Tehran. NATO has been inviting Israel to participate in joint manoeuvres, too. Even Turkey – as well as Greece (a country that ought to have other priorities at the moment) – had been scheduled to undertake military exercises with Israel but these have now been called off.
The European Union is equally entangled in the occupation of Palestine. A few weeks ago the EU’s foreign ministers agreed to extend the mandate of the “border assistance mission” at Rafah – the crossing between Gaza and Egypt – for which they are nominally responsible. When the mission was first set up in 2005, it was hailed by EU officials as a major breakthrough for freedom of movement. Yet the reality is that Israel has always decided when the crossing can and cannot be opened (it has been closed permanently since 2007), with the result that the EU’s team has become a subcontractor for the siege of Gaza.
Europe’s commercial ties with Israel have continued to flourish – at the same time that Israel has gone out of its way to prevent Gaza and the West Bank from having functioning economies. Only last month, Israel was admitted into that officer’s mess of global capitalism: the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Mossad’s abuse of British and Irish passports to carry out an extrajudicial execution in Dubai did not deter our governments from welcoming Israel into the Paris-based body.
This week’s attacks appear to chime in a most chilling fashion with a warning given during the latest Herzliya conference - an annual talkfest for Israel’s “security” experts. A presentation by the Reut Institute – a “think-tank” – identified human rights and Palestinian solidarity activists as Israel’s biggest enemies as they are determined to “delegitimize” the state. In an odd way, the institute was right. When a state attacks a boat carrying nothing more dangerous than vegetables – or when it shows no signs of relaxing its occupation of another people’s land – that state’s legitimacy must be questioned.
Just over a year ago, I travelled around Israel and Palestine. One campaigner I met in Jerusalem told me there was an idea doing the rounds that the next intifada – Palestinian uprising (literally “shaking off”) – should be an international one modelled on the campaign that helped demolish apartheid in South Africa. Boycott, divestment and sanctions would be essential elements of this struggle.
It is possible that when Israel fired its bullets at a humanitarian convoy on Monday, it also fired the starting pistol for a new intifada. My hope is that this struggle will rely on the principles of non-violence, be supported by decent people everywhere and that our governments will be forced to stop rewarding Israel for its barbarism.
•Originally published by The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk)
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