One of the first things any journalist covering the Middle East should learn is that rumors of tension between Israel and the West are very much exaggerated. The latest “row” over the expansion of settlements is no exception.
According to the news agency AFP, Britain, France and Germany have led condemnation of Israel’s newly-announced plans to build more houses in the Jewish-only settlements of East Jerusalem and the wider West Bank. Predictably, the Israeli foreign ministry appears disgruntled by this stance. Avigdor Lieberman’s officials are telling the European Union to focus on Iran and Syria, rather than on “inappropriate bickering with one country,” namely Israel.
With a little bit of background research, AFP could have learned that far from being appalled by Israeli settlements, the EU’s governments are accommodating their construction.
A statement made to Britain’s members of Parliament (MPs) on 5 December illustrates that point. Alistair Burt, a Foreign Office minister in the London government, was asked about the statistics provided by Israel to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Israel joined that club of industrialised countries last year, in a diplomatic triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues.
Compromise of convenience
Burt told his fellow MPs of a compromise reached whereby the OECD has agreed to consider the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights as property of Israel for certain purposes. Following a visit by OECD officials to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in the summer this year, it was agreed that Israel would not need to provide “disaggregated data” on macroeconomic issues that distinguish between “pre-1967 Israel and the post-1967 areas.”
Although Burt tried to present the issue as a technical one, his choice of language is revealing. Instead of spelling out that Israel occupies the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza and the Golan Heights in violation of international law, he simply referred to those territories as “post-1967 areas.” He went on to hint that the compromise was made on practical grounds because the “post-1967 areas” only account for 4 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product.
So there you have it: the West is happy to accommodate the Israeli occupation for the sake of convenience.
If I was to inclined to buy Burt a Christmas present, it would have to be a copy of Shir Hever’s book The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. It shows how claims that the occupation is of negligible importance to Israel’s economy are made habitually by mainstream analysts. Hever demolishes those claims by highlighting how the territories that Israel occupies comprise its second largest export market and how Israel has built a lucrative military and “homeland security” industry around the occupation. You can be sure that the 4% estimate cited by Burt does not take such critically important factors into account.
“Remarkable success story”
Exactly one week after Burt made those comments, he attended the annual lunch of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a lobby group within the main party of the UK’s ruling coalition.
The keynote address to that gathering of 120 parliamentarians and 400 businesspeople was given by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (in a country less wedded to imperial bombast, he would simply be called the finance minister). Osborne told his audience that “Israel’s a remarkable success story when it comes to the development of hi-tech industry and it’s really a beacon to the world of how you can foster these small companies that grow into world-beating businesses.”
The review of this sumptuous banquet on the CFI’s website doesn’t give the impression that Osborne was intent on “inappropriate bickering” with Israel. Rather, he seemed more interested in nurturing closer commercial ties with this “remarkable success story.”
Nobody with any knowledge of history would be surprised that the elites in Europe’s one-time colonial powers feel an affinity with Israel. Journalists should bear that in mind the next time they hear rumors of tension.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2011.
Showing posts with label Israeli settlements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli settlements. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Settler "professor" top attraction at EU-Israel science show
A weapons inventor representing an illegal Israeli settlement will participate in an EU-sponsored conference on scientific research later this week.
Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a retired major-general, is among the speakers listed on the programme for Thursday’s event on “technology terrorism” in Brussels. He is a member of the board of trustees in Ariel University, which is located on occupied land in the West Bank. His resumé also states that he has headed the research divisions of both the Israeli military and its Ministry of Defense.
Although Israel is an active participant in the EU’s science programme, the Union says that firms and universities based in the settlements are not eligible for the programme’s research grants. So I asked the European Commission if it had any difficulties with Ben-Israel’s role in this week’s event, considering his links to Ariel. “To the best of our knowledge, Mr Ben-Israel does not have any direct role in the [‘technology terrorism’] project, apart from being a speaker at the workshop,” Carlo Corazza, a Commission spokesman, replied.
That lame response cannot be allowed conceal how the EU is ingratiating itself with Israel’s military and political elite. Ben-Israel is regarded as an important strategist on “defense” issues and has received several awards for his work. He has been credited with developing a “C4 system” (to help commanders manage a range of operations) for the Israeli military, as well as Nautilus, a laser system designed to counteract the crude rockets that Hamas and other resistance groups have fired from Gaza and that Hezbollah have fired from Lebanon. Furthermore, he has served on the board of directors for Israel Aerospace Industries, a maker of warplanes used to slaughter Gaza civilians during Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009. And I almost forgot to add that he has been a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for Kadima, the party set up by that mass murderer Ariel Sharon.
Selective focus on violence
Thursday’s event marks the culmination of a €1 million ($1.3 million) project called FESTOS (Foresight of Evolving Security Threats Posed by Emerging Technologies). While most of the money for FESTOS comes from the EU taxpayer, the project is being coordinated by Yair Sharan from Tel Aviv University.
In a newsletter published in February, Sharan said the aim of the project is to assess how “terrorists” are availing of technology and to recommend what policy measures should be taken in response. “New technological horizons are opened to individuals and groups who are ready to abuse technology to accomplish their evil purposes,” he wrote.
It is probably superfluous to add that the project is highly selective. It only examines violence perpetrated in response to oppression and not the routine violence of oppressor states like Israel.
Corazza tried to justify the project by saying that “FESTOS is not about developing weapons.” He added that developing weapons is not allowed by the EU’s scientific research activities as they belong to a “civilian programme.”
Don’t be fooled by that assurance. No matter what EU officials say, the Union is helping to nurture a “security” industry in Israel that is inseparable from that country’s military and its crimes against humanity.
Last week The Financial Times published a feature about Israel’s technology prowess. It was a piece of thinly-veiled propaganda by the paper’s correspondent Tobias Buck, yet it nonetheless underscored how many of the big shots in Israel’s technology sector were trained in Unit 8200, an electronic espionage division of the Israeli military.
Israel is taking part in 800 EU research projects at the moment, with a total value of €4.3 billion. As a European taxpayer, I don’t recall ever being asked for permission to fund a war machine that is an affront to everything I believe in.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 6 December 2011.
Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a retired major-general, is among the speakers listed on the programme for Thursday’s event on “technology terrorism” in Brussels. He is a member of the board of trustees in Ariel University, which is located on occupied land in the West Bank. His resumé also states that he has headed the research divisions of both the Israeli military and its Ministry of Defense.
Although Israel is an active participant in the EU’s science programme, the Union says that firms and universities based in the settlements are not eligible for the programme’s research grants. So I asked the European Commission if it had any difficulties with Ben-Israel’s role in this week’s event, considering his links to Ariel. “To the best of our knowledge, Mr Ben-Israel does not have any direct role in the [‘technology terrorism’] project, apart from being a speaker at the workshop,” Carlo Corazza, a Commission spokesman, replied.
That lame response cannot be allowed conceal how the EU is ingratiating itself with Israel’s military and political elite. Ben-Israel is regarded as an important strategist on “defense” issues and has received several awards for his work. He has been credited with developing a “C4 system” (to help commanders manage a range of operations) for the Israeli military, as well as Nautilus, a laser system designed to counteract the crude rockets that Hamas and other resistance groups have fired from Gaza and that Hezbollah have fired from Lebanon. Furthermore, he has served on the board of directors for Israel Aerospace Industries, a maker of warplanes used to slaughter Gaza civilians during Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009. And I almost forgot to add that he has been a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for Kadima, the party set up by that mass murderer Ariel Sharon.
Selective focus on violence
Thursday’s event marks the culmination of a €1 million ($1.3 million) project called FESTOS (Foresight of Evolving Security Threats Posed by Emerging Technologies). While most of the money for FESTOS comes from the EU taxpayer, the project is being coordinated by Yair Sharan from Tel Aviv University.
In a newsletter published in February, Sharan said the aim of the project is to assess how “terrorists” are availing of technology and to recommend what policy measures should be taken in response. “New technological horizons are opened to individuals and groups who are ready to abuse technology to accomplish their evil purposes,” he wrote.
It is probably superfluous to add that the project is highly selective. It only examines violence perpetrated in response to oppression and not the routine violence of oppressor states like Israel.
Corazza tried to justify the project by saying that “FESTOS is not about developing weapons.” He added that developing weapons is not allowed by the EU’s scientific research activities as they belong to a “civilian programme.”
Don’t be fooled by that assurance. No matter what EU officials say, the Union is helping to nurture a “security” industry in Israel that is inseparable from that country’s military and its crimes against humanity.
Last week The Financial Times published a feature about Israel’s technology prowess. It was a piece of thinly-veiled propaganda by the paper’s correspondent Tobias Buck, yet it nonetheless underscored how many of the big shots in Israel’s technology sector were trained in Unit 8200, an electronic espionage division of the Israeli military.
Israel is taking part in 800 EU research projects at the moment, with a total value of €4.3 billion. As a European taxpayer, I don’t recall ever being asked for permission to fund a war machine that is an affront to everything I believe in.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 6 December 2011.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
EU in denial about aid for Motorola Israel
“I know nothing” is a catchphrase associated with the TV sitcom Fawlty Towers. Less amusingly, it also sums up the line of defence from European Union officials when quizzed about how they are facilitating Israel’s crimes against humanity.
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s scientific commissioner, this week attempted to give an assurance that the technology firm Motorola Israel’s participation in research activities financed by the Union did not pose any legal or ethical problems. She stated that her aides do not have “any information about any radar systems Motorola Israel might or might not have installed in the West Bank.”
Her statement -- made in response to a query from a British member of the European Parliament (MEP) -- smacks of either dishonesty or incompetence. If the officials who drafted her reply had done a little searching beforehand, they would have learned that the European Commission has been recently appraised of Motorola’s work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In May, the Palestinian organization Stop the Wall sent a detailed paper to Geoghegan-Quinn outlining how a number of Israeli beneficiaries of EU science grants are abetting human rights abuses. Point (d) on that paper was devoted entirely to Motorola Israel. It said: “Motorola has created at least four surveillance systems used in at least 20 illegal Jewish-only settlements and military camps throughout the occupied West Bank.”
Treating Palestinians as “intruders”
Motorola Israel is taking part in two EU-funded research projects, with a combined value of over €9 million, at the moment. One of them, named iDetect 4All, relates to the development of equipment designed to raise the alarm when an “intruder” approaches a building or resource considered economically important.
The technology involved in this project appears to bear many similarities to the “virtual fence” that Motorola has installed around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. A 2006 report in The Jerusalem Post noted that this radar system uses thermal cameras to identify “intruders” to the settlements. Reading between the lines, that means Motorola is helping to keep Palestinians away from illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
According to Geoghegan-Quinn, “checks” have taken place to ascertain that Motorola Israel is based within the state of Israel. These found that it was eligible to benefit from EU science grants.
Yet the checks cannot have been too profound. The “association agreement” covering EU-Israel relations explicitly says that both sides must respect human rights. If Motorola Israel is – as can be proven – enabling human rights abuses, then it should be kicked out of the research programme immediately.
Call for action
Motorola Israel is one of numerous Israeli firms taking part in the EU’s research programme, which has a total budget of €53 billion for the 2007 to 2013 period. Last week, several groups representing Palestinian academics and students protested at how many of the activities under this programme connect European universities with Israeli arms manufacturers and others who profit from the occupation of Palestine. A call for action signed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urged third-level students and teachers in Europe to devise a strategy for ending cooperation between their colleges and Israel.
Palestine solidarity activists based in King’s College London have already begun a campaign against an EU nanotechnology project linking their university with Ahava, a firm producing cosmetics in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. The campaign has drawn support from the renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky and the poet Remi Kanazi.
Details of EU-funded science projects can be found on a database called Cordis. If you work or study in a university, enter the name of your college into its search engine, along with the word “Israel.” There is every likelihood that the resulting information can be used to challenge your university’s authorities about their links with Israel. Don’t be shy in kicking up a fuss on campus. Institutions that cooperate with Israeli apartheid must be confronted.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 27 October 2011.
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s scientific commissioner, this week attempted to give an assurance that the technology firm Motorola Israel’s participation in research activities financed by the Union did not pose any legal or ethical problems. She stated that her aides do not have “any information about any radar systems Motorola Israel might or might not have installed in the West Bank.”
Her statement -- made in response to a query from a British member of the European Parliament (MEP) -- smacks of either dishonesty or incompetence. If the officials who drafted her reply had done a little searching beforehand, they would have learned that the European Commission has been recently appraised of Motorola’s work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In May, the Palestinian organization Stop the Wall sent a detailed paper to Geoghegan-Quinn outlining how a number of Israeli beneficiaries of EU science grants are abetting human rights abuses. Point (d) on that paper was devoted entirely to Motorola Israel. It said: “Motorola has created at least four surveillance systems used in at least 20 illegal Jewish-only settlements and military camps throughout the occupied West Bank.”
Treating Palestinians as “intruders”
Motorola Israel is taking part in two EU-funded research projects, with a combined value of over €9 million, at the moment. One of them, named iDetect 4All, relates to the development of equipment designed to raise the alarm when an “intruder” approaches a building or resource considered economically important.
The technology involved in this project appears to bear many similarities to the “virtual fence” that Motorola has installed around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. A 2006 report in The Jerusalem Post noted that this radar system uses thermal cameras to identify “intruders” to the settlements. Reading between the lines, that means Motorola is helping to keep Palestinians away from illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
According to Geoghegan-Quinn, “checks” have taken place to ascertain that Motorola Israel is based within the state of Israel. These found that it was eligible to benefit from EU science grants.
Yet the checks cannot have been too profound. The “association agreement” covering EU-Israel relations explicitly says that both sides must respect human rights. If Motorola Israel is – as can be proven – enabling human rights abuses, then it should be kicked out of the research programme immediately.
Call for action
Motorola Israel is one of numerous Israeli firms taking part in the EU’s research programme, which has a total budget of €53 billion for the 2007 to 2013 period. Last week, several groups representing Palestinian academics and students protested at how many of the activities under this programme connect European universities with Israeli arms manufacturers and others who profit from the occupation of Palestine. A call for action signed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urged third-level students and teachers in Europe to devise a strategy for ending cooperation between their colleges and Israel.
Palestine solidarity activists based in King’s College London have already begun a campaign against an EU nanotechnology project linking their university with Ahava, a firm producing cosmetics in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. The campaign has drawn support from the renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky and the poet Remi Kanazi.
Details of EU-funded science projects can be found on a database called Cordis. If you work or study in a university, enter the name of your college into its search engine, along with the word “Israel.” There is every likelihood that the resulting information can be used to challenge your university’s authorities about their links with Israel. Don’t be shy in kicking up a fuss on campus. Institutions that cooperate with Israeli apartheid must be confronted.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 27 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.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Why should Israeli settlers influence an Irish election?
The Ireland I grew up in was a repressive place. Some of the best friends of my adolescence were gay but they could not tell anyone. It wasn’t until they were in their 20s or 30s that they finally had the confidence to come out.
The country’s ban on homosexual relations was overturned primarily because of one man: David Norris. Throughout the 1980s, he fought a long battle in the Irish courts. He didn’t win, so he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where he did. Eventually, gay relations were decriminalized. That was in 1993, a mere 18 years ago.
Today, David Norris is a candidate for the post of Ireland’s president. As an emigrant, I don’t have a vote in the election scheduled for next month. If I did, I would cast it for him.
Norris has tirelessly championed human rights at home and abroad. Together with a retired bus driver Tom Hyland, he made the situation in East Timor a priority issue for Irish foreign policy in the 1990s. And while the Dublin government accommodated the invasion of Iraq by allowing Shannon Airport become a de facto US military base, Norris called for George W Bush and Dick Cheney to be tried for war crimes.
Palestine solidarity lands him in trouble
Yet it is his support for the Palestinians that has landed Norris in the most trouble.
As I wrote last month, Norris withdrew from the presidential race because of a smear campaign undertaken by Zionist blogger John Connolly. (Happily, Norris has now returned to the contest and has been formally nominated as a candidate).
Connolly drew attention to how Norris had written to an Israeli court in 1997 urging it to be lenient towards his former partner Ezra Nawi, who was convicted of having sex with a minor. By Norris’s own admission, it was an error of judgment for him to make the appeal. But there is a huge difference between requesting leniency for an offender and approving of an offense. In this case, all Norris did was say that his friend was an otherwise decent man, who would be unlikely to ever commit such an offense again.
Well-respected
Although I have met Norris a few times, I don’t know Nawi. But I understand that he is well-respected among Palestine solidarity activists. A plumber by profession, Nawi has spent many years rebuilding Palestinian houses that have been destroyed by the Israeli military. In October 2009, he was sentenced to a month in a jail for obstructing an Israeli bulldozer that was being used to demolish Bedouin homes in the South Hebron area. Norris has been hugely supportive of his ex-partner’s political work by, among other things, raising funds for it.
John Connolly has written that his knowledge of Nawi is mostly based on conversations he had with “the Jewish community of Judah and Shomron, who have fought with Nawi for many years.” Judah and Shomron – or Judea and Samaria – is a name Zionists give to the West Bank. The “community” referred to here is comprised of illegal settlers.
Nawi has been punished for his past misdemeanor. Yet the settlers who keep Connolly “informed” enjoy the full support of the Israeli state, even though their activities contravene international law.
I don’t see why Israeli settlers should have any say in who becomes president of Ireland. And I don’t see why David Norris should be pilloried for doing nothing worse than saying his friend was someone of good character.
Our president is supposed to represent all the Irish people, wherever they live. I would be proud to have David Norris representing me.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 29 September 2011.
The country’s ban on homosexual relations was overturned primarily because of one man: David Norris. Throughout the 1980s, he fought a long battle in the Irish courts. He didn’t win, so he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where he did. Eventually, gay relations were decriminalized. That was in 1993, a mere 18 years ago.
Today, David Norris is a candidate for the post of Ireland’s president. As an emigrant, I don’t have a vote in the election scheduled for next month. If I did, I would cast it for him.
Norris has tirelessly championed human rights at home and abroad. Together with a retired bus driver Tom Hyland, he made the situation in East Timor a priority issue for Irish foreign policy in the 1990s. And while the Dublin government accommodated the invasion of Iraq by allowing Shannon Airport become a de facto US military base, Norris called for George W Bush and Dick Cheney to be tried for war crimes.
Palestine solidarity lands him in trouble
Yet it is his support for the Palestinians that has landed Norris in the most trouble.
As I wrote last month, Norris withdrew from the presidential race because of a smear campaign undertaken by Zionist blogger John Connolly. (Happily, Norris has now returned to the contest and has been formally nominated as a candidate).
Connolly drew attention to how Norris had written to an Israeli court in 1997 urging it to be lenient towards his former partner Ezra Nawi, who was convicted of having sex with a minor. By Norris’s own admission, it was an error of judgment for him to make the appeal. But there is a huge difference between requesting leniency for an offender and approving of an offense. In this case, all Norris did was say that his friend was an otherwise decent man, who would be unlikely to ever commit such an offense again.
Well-respected
Although I have met Norris a few times, I don’t know Nawi. But I understand that he is well-respected among Palestine solidarity activists. A plumber by profession, Nawi has spent many years rebuilding Palestinian houses that have been destroyed by the Israeli military. In October 2009, he was sentenced to a month in a jail for obstructing an Israeli bulldozer that was being used to demolish Bedouin homes in the South Hebron area. Norris has been hugely supportive of his ex-partner’s political work by, among other things, raising funds for it.
John Connolly has written that his knowledge of Nawi is mostly based on conversations he had with “the Jewish community of Judah and Shomron, who have fought with Nawi for many years.” Judah and Shomron – or Judea and Samaria – is a name Zionists give to the West Bank. The “community” referred to here is comprised of illegal settlers.
Nawi has been punished for his past misdemeanor. Yet the settlers who keep Connolly “informed” enjoy the full support of the Israeli state, even though their activities contravene international law.
I don’t see why Israeli settlers should have any say in who becomes president of Ireland. And I don’t see why David Norris should be pilloried for doing nothing worse than saying his friend was someone of good character.
Our president is supposed to represent all the Irish people, wherever they live. I would be proud to have David Norris representing me.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 29 September 2011.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
EU helps Israeli colonel pose as Florence Nightingale
A propaganda event aimed at showing the Israeli military in a positive light is being supported by the European Union this week.
The Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (SMIT) conference in Tel Aviv features Gil Hirschhorn, surgeon-general with the Israeli air force, as a keynote speaker. Running from yesterday until Friday, it is sponsored by the EU’s multi-billion euro scientific research programme.
Why is the EU helping Hirschhorn to masquerade as a Florence Nightingale-type figure when he is a colonel in an army that abuses human rights as a matter of routine? His resumé notes that he was medical officer with the military’s Galilee division from 2004 until the end of Israel’s war against Lebanon in 2006. After that, he was put in charge of trauma issues for the military.
Not surprisingly, there is no mention of how the army in which he serves has caused widespread trauma for the Palestinian and Lebanese people. There is a strong likelihood he and other speakers are bragging about the state-of-the-art equipment that can be found in Israel’s hospitals. Yet Israel has caused major damage to health facilities on which the civilian populations it has bombed in recent years depend. While Hirschhorn was attending to the military’s medical needs in August 2006, his comrades attacked the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, Lebanon, partly destroying it.
Horrific injuries, immoral thinking
As a surgeon, Hirschhorn should be particularly horrified by the injuries received by victims of cluster bombs used by Israel in that war. An article published by the Inter Press Service news agency on Monday reminds us of something that has faded from our memory: how Israel dropped more cluster bombs in Lebanon than any other country had since the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Cluster bombs can literally slice the limbs off those who happen upon them. Because these bombs remain lethal for years, they are continuing to kill and maim. There have been more than 400 cluster bomb casualties in Lebanon -- 115 of them children or teenagers -- since the war stopped in 2006.
When I was researching my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, several Brussels officials told me they believed the EU was right to allocate research grants to Israel because that country was developing innovative treatments for cancer and other diseases. The inference was that the Union should have no qualms about including in its scientific research activities a state that has prevented seriously ill patients in Gaza from travelling to Egypt to receive specialist care.
The SMIT conference is another example of this immoral thinking, which holds that Israel, a high-tech human rights abuser, should be mollycoddled on the basis that it might come up with a cure for cancer.
“Aware” of Ahava’s illegal acts
Last month, I wrote about how Ahava, the firm manufacturing cosmetics in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, is one of the beneficiaries of the EU’s multi-annual research programme.
Keith Taylor, a British member of the European Parliament (MEP), has just received a response to a formal query he made on this subject. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s research commissioner, told him that she was “aware” there was an issue here. The Union’s civil servants are “scrutinizing options” in order to be “evaluate and potentially address” this situation when future grant applications are being assessed, she said.
The acknowledgement of the problem can be considered a small victory for those Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners who have complained to the EU bureaucracy about Ahava. But the choice of words used in the reply shows that Geoghegan-Quinn and her aides don’t regard this dossier as an urgent one. Keeping them under pressure is vital.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 14 September 2011.
The Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (SMIT) conference in Tel Aviv features Gil Hirschhorn, surgeon-general with the Israeli air force, as a keynote speaker. Running from yesterday until Friday, it is sponsored by the EU’s multi-billion euro scientific research programme.
Why is the EU helping Hirschhorn to masquerade as a Florence Nightingale-type figure when he is a colonel in an army that abuses human rights as a matter of routine? His resumé notes that he was medical officer with the military’s Galilee division from 2004 until the end of Israel’s war against Lebanon in 2006. After that, he was put in charge of trauma issues for the military.
Not surprisingly, there is no mention of how the army in which he serves has caused widespread trauma for the Palestinian and Lebanese people. There is a strong likelihood he and other speakers are bragging about the state-of-the-art equipment that can be found in Israel’s hospitals. Yet Israel has caused major damage to health facilities on which the civilian populations it has bombed in recent years depend. While Hirschhorn was attending to the military’s medical needs in August 2006, his comrades attacked the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, Lebanon, partly destroying it.
Horrific injuries, immoral thinking
As a surgeon, Hirschhorn should be particularly horrified by the injuries received by victims of cluster bombs used by Israel in that war. An article published by the Inter Press Service news agency on Monday reminds us of something that has faded from our memory: how Israel dropped more cluster bombs in Lebanon than any other country had since the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Cluster bombs can literally slice the limbs off those who happen upon them. Because these bombs remain lethal for years, they are continuing to kill and maim. There have been more than 400 cluster bomb casualties in Lebanon -- 115 of them children or teenagers -- since the war stopped in 2006.
When I was researching my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, several Brussels officials told me they believed the EU was right to allocate research grants to Israel because that country was developing innovative treatments for cancer and other diseases. The inference was that the Union should have no qualms about including in its scientific research activities a state that has prevented seriously ill patients in Gaza from travelling to Egypt to receive specialist care.
The SMIT conference is another example of this immoral thinking, which holds that Israel, a high-tech human rights abuser, should be mollycoddled on the basis that it might come up with a cure for cancer.
“Aware” of Ahava’s illegal acts
Last month, I wrote about how Ahava, the firm manufacturing cosmetics in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, is one of the beneficiaries of the EU’s multi-annual research programme.
Keith Taylor, a British member of the European Parliament (MEP), has just received a response to a formal query he made on this subject. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s research commissioner, told him that she was “aware” there was an issue here. The Union’s civil servants are “scrutinizing options” in order to be “evaluate and potentially address” this situation when future grant applications are being assessed, she said.
The acknowledgement of the problem can be considered a small victory for those Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners who have complained to the EU bureaucracy about Ahava. But the choice of words used in the reply shows that Geoghegan-Quinn and her aides don’t regard this dossier as an urgent one. Keeping them under pressure is vital.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 14 September 2011.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Sweden, Israel and the banalization of evil
Sweden is perceived as being one of the European countries most willing to defend Palestinians. Two years ago, some Israelis became so incensed with this alleged bias that they initiated a campaign to boycott Ikea furniture and Absolut vodka.
The reality, as I realized on a trip to Scandinavia earlier this summer, is that the Swedish government has sponsored projects that seek to confer respectability on entrepreneurs who facilitate and profit from Israel’s crimes.
Headquartered in Stockholm, the Palestine International Business Forum (PIBF) is ostensibly focused on stimulating the private sector in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a wider strategy of bringing peace to the Middle East. That “vision” sits uncomfortably with the actual track record of many of the companies taking part in the forum’s activities.
The PIBF’s founders include Yacov Gebhard, chief executive with Partner Communications, a firm that provides telecommunications services to illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli military. The list of the forum’s corporate members, meanwhile, features such individuals as Rami Guzman, a director of Africa Israel, a company involved in the construction of Israeli settlements, and Shalom Goldstein, a coordinator for the Jerusalem section of Israel’s wall in the West Bank. (Lest we forget, that wall was found to be unlawful by the International Court of Justice in 2004).
Among the other distinguished participants in the PIBF are Moshe Goan, a part-owner of Ahava, the company that produces “Dead Sea mud” cosmetics from an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot, the bank that has provided financial support for the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem.
Jacob Perry, chairman of Mizrahi Tefahot, was previously the chief of Israel’s secret police, the
Caring image
The ghastly deeds of these men are at odds with the caring image that the PIBF projects. Its latest newsletter has a touching story about how it organized the first ever exhibition of Gazan flowers in Israel during April.
Eager to find out how the forum can justify this incongruity, I emailed and phoned Margit Vaarala, its secretary-general. Vaarala told me she was too busy to talk this week and couldn’t tell me when she would be available to comment. “I have just returned from vacation and have a lot of things to do,” she said.
So I called the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), an official government body that gave 19.5 million krona ($3 million) to the PIBF between January 2008 and December 2010. A SIDA spokeswoman explained to me that it has requested a new “conflict analysis and strategy” from the International Council of Swedish Industry, which oversees the PIBF’s activities.
Although the spokeswoman said that the agency wishes to see that analysis before deciding if it will release further funds, she contended that the PIBF had shown “good results” in helping to strengthen the private sector in Palestine.
This explanation chimes with the free market propaganda of the United States, the European Union and institutions they control such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. According to the narrative of these aid donors and their “technical experts”, everything will be fine if enough Israelis can be encouraged to do business with Palestinians.
Their collective worldview is so warped that they have no difficulty embracing arms dealers, torturers and other captains of industry hell-bent on dispossessing Palestinians. The truth is that these donors are not helping Palestine to prosper; they are enabling the banalization of evil.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 12 August 2011.
The reality, as I realized on a trip to Scandinavia earlier this summer, is that the Swedish government has sponsored projects that seek to confer respectability on entrepreneurs who facilitate and profit from Israel’s crimes.
Headquartered in Stockholm, the Palestine International Business Forum (PIBF) is ostensibly focused on stimulating the private sector in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a wider strategy of bringing peace to the Middle East. That “vision” sits uncomfortably with the actual track record of many of the companies taking part in the forum’s activities.
The PIBF’s founders include Yacov Gebhard, chief executive with Partner Communications, a firm that provides telecommunications services to illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli military. The list of the forum’s corporate members, meanwhile, features such individuals as Rami Guzman, a director of Africa Israel, a company involved in the construction of Israeli settlements, and Shalom Goldstein, a coordinator for the Jerusalem section of Israel’s wall in the West Bank. (Lest we forget, that wall was found to be unlawful by the International Court of Justice in 2004).
Among the other distinguished participants in the PIBF are Moshe Goan, a part-owner of Ahava, the company that produces “Dead Sea mud” cosmetics from an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot, the bank that has provided financial support for the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem.
Jacob Perry, chairman of Mizrahi Tefahot, was previously the chief of Israel’s secret police, the
Caring image
The ghastly deeds of these men are at odds with the caring image that the PIBF projects. Its latest newsletter has a touching story about how it organized the first ever exhibition of Gazan flowers in Israel during April.
Eager to find out how the forum can justify this incongruity, I emailed and phoned Margit Vaarala, its secretary-general. Vaarala told me she was too busy to talk this week and couldn’t tell me when she would be available to comment. “I have just returned from vacation and have a lot of things to do,” she said.
So I called the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), an official government body that gave 19.5 million krona ($3 million) to the PIBF between January 2008 and December 2010. A SIDA spokeswoman explained to me that it has requested a new “conflict analysis and strategy” from the International Council of Swedish Industry, which oversees the PIBF’s activities.
Although the spokeswoman said that the agency wishes to see that analysis before deciding if it will release further funds, she contended that the PIBF had shown “good results” in helping to strengthen the private sector in Palestine.
This explanation chimes with the free market propaganda of the United States, the European Union and institutions they control such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. According to the narrative of these aid donors and their “technical experts”, everything will be fine if enough Israelis can be encouraged to do business with Palestinians.
Their collective worldview is so warped that they have no difficulty embracing arms dealers, torturers and other captains of industry hell-bent on dispossessing Palestinians. The truth is that these donors are not helping Palestine to prosper; they are enabling the banalization of evil.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 12 August 2011.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Occupation profiteer Ahava soaks up EU science grants
Not for the first time, the European Union is in denial about how it is subsidizing Israel’s crimes.
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s commissioner for scientific research, recently acknowledged that the cosmetics-maker Ahava was allocated more than €1 million worth of innovation grants from the Union over a period stretching from 1998 to 2013. Giving even one cent to Ahava involves facilitating breaches of international law because of the firm’s unlawful activities in the West Bank.
As Geoghegan-Quinn doesn’t appear to recognize this problem, she would be well-advised to read a report, issued in May, by the human rights organization B’Tselem. It highlights how Ahava is partly owned by two Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land: Mitzpe Shalem and Qalya. Both of those settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to the territory it occupies.
Responding to a parliamentary question, Geoghegan-Quinn effectively conceded that some of Ahava’s EU-funded research may have been undertaken in the West Bank. While Ahava is “formally established within the borders of the internationally recognized state of Israel”, she said, beneficiaries of EU grants are not required to carry out the related research in the place of establishment.
I would alert Geoghegan-Quinn to two salient facts:
1. The rules covering EU science grants stipulate that projects which violate “fundamental ethical principles” are ineligible for funding. Carrying out research in one or more illegal settlements must surely violate such principles.
2. Ahava may be able to give its offices in Holon or Airport City, industrial zones near Tel Aviv, as an address for its headquarters when applying for Euro-lolly. Yet its core manufacturing activities are conducted in Mitzpe Shalem. If Geoghegan-Quinn doesn’t believe me on this, I urge her to take a trip to the settlement, where she will no doubt be given a warm welcome to Ahava’s official visitors’ centre.
There are other questions about why any of my tax euros should be going to a private cosmetics firm. A glance at Cordis, the EU’s database on its science grants, shows that in one of the projects concerned, Ahava has teamed up with the US Department of the Interior. The objective of this scheme is to assess what impact tiny toxins (nanoparticles, as boffins call them) can have on the environment.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I never had the impression that the Department of the Interior spent too much time worrying about trees and dolphins. So what is the real agenda here?
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 5 August 2011.
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s commissioner for scientific research, recently acknowledged that the cosmetics-maker Ahava was allocated more than €1 million worth of innovation grants from the Union over a period stretching from 1998 to 2013. Giving even one cent to Ahava involves facilitating breaches of international law because of the firm’s unlawful activities in the West Bank.
As Geoghegan-Quinn doesn’t appear to recognize this problem, she would be well-advised to read a report, issued in May, by the human rights organization B’Tselem. It highlights how Ahava is partly owned by two Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land: Mitzpe Shalem and Qalya. Both of those settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to the territory it occupies.
Responding to a parliamentary question, Geoghegan-Quinn effectively conceded that some of Ahava’s EU-funded research may have been undertaken in the West Bank. While Ahava is “formally established within the borders of the internationally recognized state of Israel”, she said, beneficiaries of EU grants are not required to carry out the related research in the place of establishment.
I would alert Geoghegan-Quinn to two salient facts:
1. The rules covering EU science grants stipulate that projects which violate “fundamental ethical principles” are ineligible for funding. Carrying out research in one or more illegal settlements must surely violate such principles.
2. Ahava may be able to give its offices in Holon or Airport City, industrial zones near Tel Aviv, as an address for its headquarters when applying for Euro-lolly. Yet its core manufacturing activities are conducted in Mitzpe Shalem. If Geoghegan-Quinn doesn’t believe me on this, I urge her to take a trip to the settlement, where she will no doubt be given a warm welcome to Ahava’s official visitors’ centre.
There are other questions about why any of my tax euros should be going to a private cosmetics firm. A glance at Cordis, the EU’s database on its science grants, shows that in one of the projects concerned, Ahava has teamed up with the US Department of the Interior. The objective of this scheme is to assess what impact tiny toxins (nanoparticles, as boffins call them) can have on the environment.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I never had the impression that the Department of the Interior spent too much time worrying about trees and dolphins. So what is the real agenda here?
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 5 August 2011.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Palestine dominates Dexia AGM
The arcane world of finance is not something I normally turn to for hope or inspiration. Yet to my surprise, I was filled with both at the annual general meeting of Dexia, a Belgian-French bank.
No fewer than 45 shareholders took the floor at the Brussels event on Wednesday to denounce how its subsidiary Dexia Israel loans to illegal settlements in the West Bank. The speakers included politicians, doctors, academics and trade unionists, all of whom pressurised the bank’s board – chaired by former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene - to address a topic they would prefer to evade. Searching through the mind-numbing 263 pages of Dexia’s latest annual report, I could only find one paragraph specifically related to Dexia Israel.
In a brief statement, Dehaene confirmed that Dexia is in negotiations aimed at selling its Israeli division and that he expects a deal to be concluded in the next few months. He also reiterated an assurance he first gave in 2009 that Dexia is no longer making fresh investments in the settlements.
That assurance proved false. The Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), a Tel Aviv-based group, has documented how seventeen new loans worth a total of $6.5 million were given by Dexia Israel to councils in the settlements in the second half of 2008 and during 2009.
“Selling Dexia Israel is not the end of the story,” the CWP’s Inna Michaeli told me. “By selling it, Dexia will be making an additional profit. The question is how Dexia takes responsibility for what it has already done and what it continues to do.”
Dexia Israel was formed in 2001 after Dexia bought the bank Otzar Hashilton Hamekomi, as part of a strategy to become a global leader in lending to public authorities. Ten years later, Dexia claims that its Israeli subsidiary no longer belongs to its “core business” and that its planned sale is part of a wider restructuring process necessitated by the crisis in the international economy.
Undoubtedly, Dexia Israel’s future status will be determined by hard-headed business decisions. But there is also no doubt that Palestine solidarity activists have caused severe embarrassment for Dexia over the past few years, particularly by convincing members of Belgian regional and provincial authorities, which hold many of the bank’s shares, to ask awkward questions.
Besides, it was heartening to observe Dehaene’s unease at the AGM. One of the few moments of levity came when one shareholder suggested that as a former boy scout he was obliged to support the dispossessed. “Scouts must do one good deed every day,” the speaker added, to which Dehaene replied: “I am doing my good deed.”
·First published by Mondoweiss (www.mondoweiss.net), 12 May 2011
No fewer than 45 shareholders took the floor at the Brussels event on Wednesday to denounce how its subsidiary Dexia Israel loans to illegal settlements in the West Bank. The speakers included politicians, doctors, academics and trade unionists, all of whom pressurised the bank’s board – chaired by former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene - to address a topic they would prefer to evade. Searching through the mind-numbing 263 pages of Dexia’s latest annual report, I could only find one paragraph specifically related to Dexia Israel.
In a brief statement, Dehaene confirmed that Dexia is in negotiations aimed at selling its Israeli division and that he expects a deal to be concluded in the next few months. He also reiterated an assurance he first gave in 2009 that Dexia is no longer making fresh investments in the settlements.
That assurance proved false. The Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), a Tel Aviv-based group, has documented how seventeen new loans worth a total of $6.5 million were given by Dexia Israel to councils in the settlements in the second half of 2008 and during 2009.
“Selling Dexia Israel is not the end of the story,” the CWP’s Inna Michaeli told me. “By selling it, Dexia will be making an additional profit. The question is how Dexia takes responsibility for what it has already done and what it continues to do.”
Dexia Israel was formed in 2001 after Dexia bought the bank Otzar Hashilton Hamekomi, as part of a strategy to become a global leader in lending to public authorities. Ten years later, Dexia claims that its Israeli subsidiary no longer belongs to its “core business” and that its planned sale is part of a wider restructuring process necessitated by the crisis in the international economy.
Undoubtedly, Dexia Israel’s future status will be determined by hard-headed business decisions. But there is also no doubt that Palestine solidarity activists have caused severe embarrassment for Dexia over the past few years, particularly by convincing members of Belgian regional and provincial authorities, which hold many of the bank’s shares, to ask awkward questions.
Besides, it was heartening to observe Dehaene’s unease at the AGM. One of the few moments of levity came when one shareholder suggested that as a former boy scout he was obliged to support the dispossessed. “Scouts must do one good deed every day,” the speaker added, to which Dehaene replied: “I am doing my good deed.”
·First published by Mondoweiss (www.mondoweiss.net), 12 May 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Rumours that Israel has fallen out of favour in Europe exaggerated
Is Binyamin Netanyahu really as tough as he would like us to believe? The prime minister’s European tour this week was restricted to Germany and the Czech Republic, two countries where he is guaranteed softball treatment from the political elite and the media.
Yet it would be wrong to think that everyone in those two countries has made a “Welcome Bibi” placard. On Tuesday evening, I shared a platform in Prague with Eva Nováková from the International Solidarity Movement. Nováková hit the headlines in January 2010, after she was taken from an apartment where she lived in Ramallah by Israeli soldiers. The following day she was deported, allegedly because she had overstayed her visa. (Her lawyers have mounted a challenge against the deportation in the Israeli Supreme Court. Israeli forces, the lawyers argue, had no legal power to apprehend a woman in a West Bank city nominally under full Palestinian control).
Since arriving back in Prague, Nováková has turned her attention to business links with the occupation of Palestine. She can regularly be seen protesting outside a shop that sells products made by Ahava, the cosmetics firm based in Mitzpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Even though the Czech government likes to champion political dissidents abroad, it prefers to ignore courageous home-grown troublemakers like Nováková. Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister, has been kicked out of Cuba for embracing opponents to Fidel Castro, yet is uncharacteristically reticent when it comes to Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to the Palestinians.
According to Schwarzenberg, the Czech Republic and The Netherlands are Israel’s most steadfast allies in the European Union. In January this year, he told The Jerusalem Post: “Whereas 10 or 20 years ago, there was a vast majority of EU countries who were definitely for Israel, now we can really rely on two countries.”
As it happens, he was misrepresenting the EU’s position. All of the Union’s 27 governments have embraced Israel in recent years. Britain, for example, is in the process of rewriting its universal jurisdiction law, which theoretically allowed for foreign war criminals to be tried in the UK’s courts. The weakening of this law is a direct response to pressure from Israel. In late 2009, Tzipi Livni chickened out of visiting London, when she discovered a warrant had been issued for her arrest at the request of Palestine solidarity campaigners.
Netanyahu is reportedly using his stopovers in Berlin and Prague to voice concern about Freedom Flotilla II, which will sail towards Gaza next month.
To their disgrace, some EU governments are helping Israel thwart this new initiative to break the medieval siege on Gaza. Demetris Christofias, the Cypriot president, stated during March that a 2010 order banning ships from travelling to Gaza via Cyprus remained in place.
So while Netanyahu mightn’t deign to set foot in most of the EU’s countries, he can still twist their leaders’ arms. Rumours that he has fallen out of their favour seem to be exaggerated.
·First published by Mondoweiss (www.mondoweiss.net), 8 April 2011
Yet it would be wrong to think that everyone in those two countries has made a “Welcome Bibi” placard. On Tuesday evening, I shared a platform in Prague with Eva Nováková from the International Solidarity Movement. Nováková hit the headlines in January 2010, after she was taken from an apartment where she lived in Ramallah by Israeli soldiers. The following day she was deported, allegedly because she had overstayed her visa. (Her lawyers have mounted a challenge against the deportation in the Israeli Supreme Court. Israeli forces, the lawyers argue, had no legal power to apprehend a woman in a West Bank city nominally under full Palestinian control).
Since arriving back in Prague, Nováková has turned her attention to business links with the occupation of Palestine. She can regularly be seen protesting outside a shop that sells products made by Ahava, the cosmetics firm based in Mitzpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Even though the Czech government likes to champion political dissidents abroad, it prefers to ignore courageous home-grown troublemakers like Nováková. Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister, has been kicked out of Cuba for embracing opponents to Fidel Castro, yet is uncharacteristically reticent when it comes to Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to the Palestinians.
According to Schwarzenberg, the Czech Republic and The Netherlands are Israel’s most steadfast allies in the European Union. In January this year, he told The Jerusalem Post: “Whereas 10 or 20 years ago, there was a vast majority of EU countries who were definitely for Israel, now we can really rely on two countries.”
As it happens, he was misrepresenting the EU’s position. All of the Union’s 27 governments have embraced Israel in recent years. Britain, for example, is in the process of rewriting its universal jurisdiction law, which theoretically allowed for foreign war criminals to be tried in the UK’s courts. The weakening of this law is a direct response to pressure from Israel. In late 2009, Tzipi Livni chickened out of visiting London, when she discovered a warrant had been issued for her arrest at the request of Palestine solidarity campaigners.
Netanyahu is reportedly using his stopovers in Berlin and Prague to voice concern about Freedom Flotilla II, which will sail towards Gaza next month.
To their disgrace, some EU governments are helping Israel thwart this new initiative to break the medieval siege on Gaza. Demetris Christofias, the Cypriot president, stated during March that a 2010 order banning ships from travelling to Gaza via Cyprus remained in place.
So while Netanyahu mightn’t deign to set foot in most of the EU’s countries, he can still twist their leaders’ arms. Rumours that he has fallen out of their favour seem to be exaggerated.
·First published by Mondoweiss (www.mondoweiss.net), 8 April 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Cuddling up to apartheid Israel
Every time I hear the phrase “honest broker” I am reminded of a joke about my native Ireland in the 1980s. It was said at the time that no country could be more honest. And no country could be broker.
For many years senior representatives of the European Union have been presenting themselves as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict. But in fact they have been extremely dishonest.
They have been dishonest because they have tried to give an impression of impartiality, while displaying favouritism towards the principal aggressor in the Middle East: the state of Israel.
It is no exaggeration to say that Israel has been mollycoddled by the European Union like no other state outside the EU’s borders. This is not just my observation. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief for most of the past decade, stated last year that Israel is a member of the European Union, without being a member of its institutions.
Nor is it an exaggeration to say that the EU has been aiding the occupation of Palestine.
Evidence of this aid can be seen every time you step into a supermarket.
Under a recent agreement on agricultural trade, almost all of Israel’s food exports – both fresh and processed – can enter the EU without paying customs duties. In theory, these trade preferences only apply to food grown inside Israel’s internationally recognised borders and not on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In practice, we know that Israel’s main food exporter Agrexco mixes up goods from the settlements with goods grown in Israel “proper” and labels the whole lot as “made in Israel”.
Business publications in Israel have helpfully given advice to agri-business firms based in the settlements about how they can masquerade as bona fide Israeli firms. The EU’s officials are perfectly aware that these abuses occur and that a significant proportion of the groceries on our supermarket shelves was grown on Israeli settlements. And yet these officials have willingly extended the scope of the trade preferences to Israel.
It should never be forgotten that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949 expressly forbids an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population into the territory that it occupies. By opening the door to higher quantities of exports from these settlements, the European Union is – regardless of its official rhetoric – conniving in the expansion of Israeli settlements and the suffocation of Palestine.
Most of my book was completed nearly a year ago. And anyone who writes a book on current affairs knows that you run the risk of being overtaken by events.
It gives me no pleasure to see that my basic thesis has been reinforced throughout 2010.
In January, Mossad, the Israeli secret service used counterfeit passports so that its agents could pose as European citizens when assassinating a leading Hamas figure in Dubai. In response, we saw some tokenistic protests from Britain and Ireland, yet no EU country was prepared to actually sanction Israel. Instead, all of them gave their blessing to Israel’s membership of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in May, a step that was seen as a diplomatic and political victory by the Israeli government.
Later that month, Israel attacked a ship run by a humanitarian organisation from Turkey, a country hoping to join the EU. Nine peace activists were brutally murdered in international waters. Millions of decent people were outraged by this act of piracy. Yet the best Catherine Ashton, the EU’s relatively new foreign policy chief, could do was to say she regretted the incident.
Ashton has made some strong statements about Israel’s ongoing theft of East Jerusalem and over the imprisonment of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, one of the courageous leaders of the weekly protests against Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank. Though welcome in themselves, these statements do not negate the fact that Ashton is beavering away to bring Israel even closer to the Union than it already is. During the autumn, she recommended that Israel should be designated a “strategic partner” for the Union. That would place Israel on a similar ranking to major global economies like the US and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom.
During November, the European Commission announced it was giving 7 million euros to a new Holocaust research project, with which Israel will be intimately involved. Now in principle, I have no problem with the concept of Holocaust research. My book makes it clear that I consider the Holocaust to have left an indelible stain on Europe’s history. Educating present and future generations about the evils of the Holocaust is essential to ensure that nothing comparable ever happens again.
I do have a problem, though, with how Israel and its most zealous supporters deliberately misuse the Holocaust in their propaganda war. During the attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, some pro-Israel lobbyists argued that Israel’s military prowess showed how it had learned lessons from the Holocaust.
I ask those lobbyists tonight: when did two wrongs start making a right? When did the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis give Israel permission to drop bombs on schools and ambulances in Gaza?
What I also object to is that precisely the same funds that are being used to finance Holocaust research are being drawn down by Israeli arms companies that have manufactured the pilotless drones and other cutting-edge killing machines that inflicted terror on the people of Gaza in 2008 and 2009. The EU is now the second largest provider of scientific research grants to Israel and we know that Israeli weapons manufacturers are among the beneficiaries of this funding. As a taxpayer, I object to how my hard-earned euros are subsidising the Israeli war industry.
The very first political demonstration I attended as an idealistic adolescent was against apartheid in South Africa. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians may not be identical to the treatment of the black majority in South Africa during the apartheid era but it bears many similarities. Indeed, some ANC activists have argued that what Palestinians have to endure is worse than what blacks had to endure in South Africa. Nelson Mandela himself has described Palestine as the moral issue of our age.
Israel’s apartheid system is becoming more draconian all the time. In recent months, a whole series of laws have been placed before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, aimed at depriving Palestinians living within Israel of their rights. Racist discourse is commonplace among Israeli politicians.
The European Union is nominally a strong supporter of the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was established. That statute lists apartheid as one of several crimes against humanity. Signatories of the Rome Statute, therefore, have an obligation to take action against this crime. Yet the European Union will not take any decisive action against Israeli apartheid.
For many years a bizarre debate has been taking place about whether or not Israel has the right to exist. Israel clearly does exist and nobody can deny that.
But Israel does not have the right to exist as an apartheid state. And Israel does not have the right to exist as a state which is occupying the land of another people. If Israel wants to assert its right to exist, then it is about time it started taking some responsibilities. It is about time that it ceased treating the Palestinians as subhuman.
If our politicians and civil servants will not take action against Israel, then it falls to ordinary people to do so. We must treat Israel as a pariah state until it starts respecting the elementary rights of the Palestinian people. This should be done by using the tactics that proved effective during the long struggle against apartheid in South Africa, namely boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The occupation of Palestine is brutal and inhuman. But there is no reason why it has to continue like that indefinitely. If enough people of conscience speak out, a fair solution will eventually be found.
I want this evening to be relaxed and informal. But I also hope that you will leave this room angry. Angry because no people on earth should have to go through what the Palestinians have been experiencing for more than 60 years.
My appeal is that you channel this anger constructively, that you get involved in the Palestine solidarity movement and that you keep taking action until justice triumphs over apartheid.
·This is the text of a presentation given during a tour of Belgium, Britain and Ireland in November and December 2010. The tour, to promote my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, was hosted by the Quaker Council for European Affairs (Brussels), War on Want (London) and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Limerick, Cork and Dublin).
For many years senior representatives of the European Union have been presenting themselves as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict. But in fact they have been extremely dishonest.
They have been dishonest because they have tried to give an impression of impartiality, while displaying favouritism towards the principal aggressor in the Middle East: the state of Israel.
It is no exaggeration to say that Israel has been mollycoddled by the European Union like no other state outside the EU’s borders. This is not just my observation. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief for most of the past decade, stated last year that Israel is a member of the European Union, without being a member of its institutions.
Nor is it an exaggeration to say that the EU has been aiding the occupation of Palestine.
Evidence of this aid can be seen every time you step into a supermarket.
Under a recent agreement on agricultural trade, almost all of Israel’s food exports – both fresh and processed – can enter the EU without paying customs duties. In theory, these trade preferences only apply to food grown inside Israel’s internationally recognised borders and not on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In practice, we know that Israel’s main food exporter Agrexco mixes up goods from the settlements with goods grown in Israel “proper” and labels the whole lot as “made in Israel”.
Business publications in Israel have helpfully given advice to agri-business firms based in the settlements about how they can masquerade as bona fide Israeli firms. The EU’s officials are perfectly aware that these abuses occur and that a significant proportion of the groceries on our supermarket shelves was grown on Israeli settlements. And yet these officials have willingly extended the scope of the trade preferences to Israel.
It should never be forgotten that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949 expressly forbids an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population into the territory that it occupies. By opening the door to higher quantities of exports from these settlements, the European Union is – regardless of its official rhetoric – conniving in the expansion of Israeli settlements and the suffocation of Palestine.
Most of my book was completed nearly a year ago. And anyone who writes a book on current affairs knows that you run the risk of being overtaken by events.
It gives me no pleasure to see that my basic thesis has been reinforced throughout 2010.
In January, Mossad, the Israeli secret service used counterfeit passports so that its agents could pose as European citizens when assassinating a leading Hamas figure in Dubai. In response, we saw some tokenistic protests from Britain and Ireland, yet no EU country was prepared to actually sanction Israel. Instead, all of them gave their blessing to Israel’s membership of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in May, a step that was seen as a diplomatic and political victory by the Israeli government.
Later that month, Israel attacked a ship run by a humanitarian organisation from Turkey, a country hoping to join the EU. Nine peace activists were brutally murdered in international waters. Millions of decent people were outraged by this act of piracy. Yet the best Catherine Ashton, the EU’s relatively new foreign policy chief, could do was to say she regretted the incident.
Ashton has made some strong statements about Israel’s ongoing theft of East Jerusalem and over the imprisonment of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, one of the courageous leaders of the weekly protests against Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank. Though welcome in themselves, these statements do not negate the fact that Ashton is beavering away to bring Israel even closer to the Union than it already is. During the autumn, she recommended that Israel should be designated a “strategic partner” for the Union. That would place Israel on a similar ranking to major global economies like the US and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom.
During November, the European Commission announced it was giving 7 million euros to a new Holocaust research project, with which Israel will be intimately involved. Now in principle, I have no problem with the concept of Holocaust research. My book makes it clear that I consider the Holocaust to have left an indelible stain on Europe’s history. Educating present and future generations about the evils of the Holocaust is essential to ensure that nothing comparable ever happens again.
I do have a problem, though, with how Israel and its most zealous supporters deliberately misuse the Holocaust in their propaganda war. During the attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, some pro-Israel lobbyists argued that Israel’s military prowess showed how it had learned lessons from the Holocaust.
I ask those lobbyists tonight: when did two wrongs start making a right? When did the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis give Israel permission to drop bombs on schools and ambulances in Gaza?
What I also object to is that precisely the same funds that are being used to finance Holocaust research are being drawn down by Israeli arms companies that have manufactured the pilotless drones and other cutting-edge killing machines that inflicted terror on the people of Gaza in 2008 and 2009. The EU is now the second largest provider of scientific research grants to Israel and we know that Israeli weapons manufacturers are among the beneficiaries of this funding. As a taxpayer, I object to how my hard-earned euros are subsidising the Israeli war industry.
The very first political demonstration I attended as an idealistic adolescent was against apartheid in South Africa. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians may not be identical to the treatment of the black majority in South Africa during the apartheid era but it bears many similarities. Indeed, some ANC activists have argued that what Palestinians have to endure is worse than what blacks had to endure in South Africa. Nelson Mandela himself has described Palestine as the moral issue of our age.
Israel’s apartheid system is becoming more draconian all the time. In recent months, a whole series of laws have been placed before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, aimed at depriving Palestinians living within Israel of their rights. Racist discourse is commonplace among Israeli politicians.
The European Union is nominally a strong supporter of the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was established. That statute lists apartheid as one of several crimes against humanity. Signatories of the Rome Statute, therefore, have an obligation to take action against this crime. Yet the European Union will not take any decisive action against Israeli apartheid.
For many years a bizarre debate has been taking place about whether or not Israel has the right to exist. Israel clearly does exist and nobody can deny that.
But Israel does not have the right to exist as an apartheid state. And Israel does not have the right to exist as a state which is occupying the land of another people. If Israel wants to assert its right to exist, then it is about time it started taking some responsibilities. It is about time that it ceased treating the Palestinians as subhuman.
If our politicians and civil servants will not take action against Israel, then it falls to ordinary people to do so. We must treat Israel as a pariah state until it starts respecting the elementary rights of the Palestinian people. This should be done by using the tactics that proved effective during the long struggle against apartheid in South Africa, namely boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The occupation of Palestine is brutal and inhuman. But there is no reason why it has to continue like that indefinitely. If enough people of conscience speak out, a fair solution will eventually be found.
I want this evening to be relaxed and informal. But I also hope that you will leave this room angry. Angry because no people on earth should have to go through what the Palestinians have been experiencing for more than 60 years.
My appeal is that you channel this anger constructively, that you get involved in the Palestine solidarity movement and that you keep taking action until justice triumphs over apartheid.
·This is the text of a presentation given during a tour of Belgium, Britain and Ireland in November and December 2010. The tour, to promote my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, was hosted by the Quaker Council for European Affairs (Brussels), War on Want (London) and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Limerick, Cork and Dublin).
Friday, November 26, 2010
Volvo enables torture of Palestinians
Volvo prides itself on being a byword for sturdiness, safety and reliability. After a careful examination of the vehicle-maker's investment in Israel, perhaps it should also become synonymous with enabling torture.
The Swedish company has a direct shareholding of 26.5 percent in the Israeli company Merkavim, manufacturer of the Mars Prisoner Bus. This bus has been specifically designed for use by the Israeli Prison Authority to transport Palestinians apprehended in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to facilities within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The remainder of Merkavim is owned by Mayer's Cars and Trucks, which doubles up as the exclusive representative of Volvo in Israel.
Evidence amassed by human rights monitors indicates that torture is widespread within Israeli detention centers. Although the country's high court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods should be outlawed, Israel continues to approve torture in cases where it is deemed "necessary," Amnesty International has found. An important loophole in the court's ruling indicated that torture is permissible in cases where Israeli security forces face an imminent threat. Israel's attorney general has been all-too-willing to invoke that loophole in order to approve the use of torture, despite how Israel has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children, often for offenses no more serious than throwing stones. The organization Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI-PS) says that ill-treatment is common while detainees are being transported to prison. "All are subjected to verbal threats and insults," Rifat Kassis, director of DCI-PS's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said. "Some are beaten up, kicked, made to sit in an uncomfortable way. We have children who are handcuffed and blindfolded as well. All of these are methods of restraining children in a painful way."
During September, three children were reportedly given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the Jewish-only settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. One of the children was only 14 years of age. A recent investigation by DCI-PS and other anti-torture groups found that out of a sample of 100 children arrested by Israeli forces last year, 69 percent were beaten and kicked and 12 percent threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault.
Kassis also said that by bringing detainees from the occupied West Bank into Israel, the Merkavim buses are facilitating violations of international humanitarian law. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, persons convicted for offenses in an occupied territory may only be jailed within that territory.
A representative of Merkavim told me that the company does "not wish to speak to journalists." According to its website, the Mars Prisoner Bus is "the perfect solution for conveying prisoners under guard." Containing six separate compartments, the bus allows for "full surveillance during the sensitive, high-risk drive from one secured facility to another." Among its features are wide windows "fitted with armored glass to prevent breakouts" and "an advanced intercom system and closed-circuit TV."
Per-Martin Johansson, a spokesman for Volvo Buses, said that the Swedish corporation "can't control" what affiliated companies do. "Vehicles to transport prisoners can be found in every country all over the world," he added. "These buses are not special for Israel. They need them in every country to make sure prisoners are not escaping."
Johansson's statement contrasts with the high ethical standards to which Volvo is nominally committed. In 2003 Volvo's board of directors rubber-stamped a "code of conduct" for the company. It says that the company supports "internationally proclaimed human rights and ensures that it is not complicit in human rights abuses."
Despite that code, Volvo has faced numerous accusations that its products are being used as tools of Israeli oppression. In April this year Israeli forces were photographed operating Volvo bulldozers in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja. The forces were carrying out work related to the massive wall that Israel has continued to build on occupied land in the West Bank, despite a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice declaring the project illegal. The use of Volvo bulldozers in the destruction of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and in the wider West Bank has similarly been documented, with the work of Adri Nieuwhof, a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, proving valuable in highlighting how Volvo profits from the occupation.
Along with its prisoner bus, Merkavim also produces the Mars Defender Bus. The Israeli public transport company Egged runs a fleet of the latter vehicles in the services it provides to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like the prisoner bus, the Mars Defender contains a Volvo-made chassis.
Mauricio Lazala, a researcher with the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in London, said that major companies like Volvo should study the impact of their corporate activities. "This is especially important in conflict areas," he added. "In conflict areas, abuses can have very ugly manifestations. Therefore, companies should be doubly careful."
At a session held in London this month, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine -- an investigative body inspired by the late British intellectual and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell -- concluded that a number of private corporations "play a very decisive role" in enabling Israel to commit crimes against humanity.
Although Volvo was not one of the companies identified by the tribunal, it is facilitating some of the offenses deemed "reprehensible" by this body. These included the provision of services to Israeli settlements and assistance to the construction of the "apartheid wall" in the West Bank. A statement issued by the tribunal noted that corporations complicit in Israeli violations of human rights have placed themselves "on the wrong side of international opinion, morality and law." As a result, they are "undermining the very integrity and credibility of international law and the institutions that underpin it," added the statement, which was endorsed by former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, veteran French diplomat Stephane Hassel, Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and ex-US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Frank Barat, the tribunal's coordinator, said that while it can be legally difficult to prosecute such companies, public campaigns can pressure them into changing their behavior. "What people can do is push their governments to divest from those companies," he said. "If a company is helping to build the wall [in the West Bank] it is helping an illegal act, so it should be sanctioned."
Volvo's attempts to justify its investments in Israel are disingenuous. The corporation cannot claim that the activities of a subsidiary have nothing to do with its headquarters in Gothenburg or that Merkavim's buses are no different from other prison buses found around the world. It is abundantly clear that these vehicles are tailored especially to meet the sadistic "needs" of the Israeli occupation; indeed, that is their selling point.
Supplying Israel’s prison services is not analogous to aiding the prison services of any other country. Israel deliberately uses mass imprisonment and torture to deny Palestinians the right to resist their occupation. Addameer, a prisoner’s support group, has documented how 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population living in the occupied territories – have been incarcerated since 1967.
Whatever Volvo may say, the truth is that it has become a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Drivers in Europe and America might feel secure as they slide into the well-upholstered seat of a car made by Volvo. In Palestine, the same company is facilitating the torture of children.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 24 November 2010
The Swedish company has a direct shareholding of 26.5 percent in the Israeli company Merkavim, manufacturer of the Mars Prisoner Bus. This bus has been specifically designed for use by the Israeli Prison Authority to transport Palestinians apprehended in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to facilities within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The remainder of Merkavim is owned by Mayer's Cars and Trucks, which doubles up as the exclusive representative of Volvo in Israel.
Evidence amassed by human rights monitors indicates that torture is widespread within Israeli detention centers. Although the country's high court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods should be outlawed, Israel continues to approve torture in cases where it is deemed "necessary," Amnesty International has found. An important loophole in the court's ruling indicated that torture is permissible in cases where Israeli security forces face an imminent threat. Israel's attorney general has been all-too-willing to invoke that loophole in order to approve the use of torture, despite how Israel has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children, often for offenses no more serious than throwing stones. The organization Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI-PS) says that ill-treatment is common while detainees are being transported to prison. "All are subjected to verbal threats and insults," Rifat Kassis, director of DCI-PS's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said. "Some are beaten up, kicked, made to sit in an uncomfortable way. We have children who are handcuffed and blindfolded as well. All of these are methods of restraining children in a painful way."
During September, three children were reportedly given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the Jewish-only settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. One of the children was only 14 years of age. A recent investigation by DCI-PS and other anti-torture groups found that out of a sample of 100 children arrested by Israeli forces last year, 69 percent were beaten and kicked and 12 percent threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault.
Kassis also said that by bringing detainees from the occupied West Bank into Israel, the Merkavim buses are facilitating violations of international humanitarian law. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, persons convicted for offenses in an occupied territory may only be jailed within that territory.
A representative of Merkavim told me that the company does "not wish to speak to journalists." According to its website, the Mars Prisoner Bus is "the perfect solution for conveying prisoners under guard." Containing six separate compartments, the bus allows for "full surveillance during the sensitive, high-risk drive from one secured facility to another." Among its features are wide windows "fitted with armored glass to prevent breakouts" and "an advanced intercom system and closed-circuit TV."
Per-Martin Johansson, a spokesman for Volvo Buses, said that the Swedish corporation "can't control" what affiliated companies do. "Vehicles to transport prisoners can be found in every country all over the world," he added. "These buses are not special for Israel. They need them in every country to make sure prisoners are not escaping."
Johansson's statement contrasts with the high ethical standards to which Volvo is nominally committed. In 2003 Volvo's board of directors rubber-stamped a "code of conduct" for the company. It says that the company supports "internationally proclaimed human rights and ensures that it is not complicit in human rights abuses."
Despite that code, Volvo has faced numerous accusations that its products are being used as tools of Israeli oppression. In April this year Israeli forces were photographed operating Volvo bulldozers in the Palestinian village of al-Walaja. The forces were carrying out work related to the massive wall that Israel has continued to build on occupied land in the West Bank, despite a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice declaring the project illegal. The use of Volvo bulldozers in the destruction of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and in the wider West Bank has similarly been documented, with the work of Adri Nieuwhof, a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, proving valuable in highlighting how Volvo profits from the occupation.
Along with its prisoner bus, Merkavim also produces the Mars Defender Bus. The Israeli public transport company Egged runs a fleet of the latter vehicles in the services it provides to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like the prisoner bus, the Mars Defender contains a Volvo-made chassis.
Mauricio Lazala, a researcher with the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in London, said that major companies like Volvo should study the impact of their corporate activities. "This is especially important in conflict areas," he added. "In conflict areas, abuses can have very ugly manifestations. Therefore, companies should be doubly careful."
At a session held in London this month, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine -- an investigative body inspired by the late British intellectual and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell -- concluded that a number of private corporations "play a very decisive role" in enabling Israel to commit crimes against humanity.
Although Volvo was not one of the companies identified by the tribunal, it is facilitating some of the offenses deemed "reprehensible" by this body. These included the provision of services to Israeli settlements and assistance to the construction of the "apartheid wall" in the West Bank. A statement issued by the tribunal noted that corporations complicit in Israeli violations of human rights have placed themselves "on the wrong side of international opinion, morality and law." As a result, they are "undermining the very integrity and credibility of international law and the institutions that underpin it," added the statement, which was endorsed by former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, veteran French diplomat Stephane Hassel, Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and ex-US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Frank Barat, the tribunal's coordinator, said that while it can be legally difficult to prosecute such companies, public campaigns can pressure them into changing their behavior. "What people can do is push their governments to divest from those companies," he said. "If a company is helping to build the wall [in the West Bank] it is helping an illegal act, so it should be sanctioned."
Volvo's attempts to justify its investments in Israel are disingenuous. The corporation cannot claim that the activities of a subsidiary have nothing to do with its headquarters in Gothenburg or that Merkavim's buses are no different from other prison buses found around the world. It is abundantly clear that these vehicles are tailored especially to meet the sadistic "needs" of the Israeli occupation; indeed, that is their selling point.
Supplying Israel’s prison services is not analogous to aiding the prison services of any other country. Israel deliberately uses mass imprisonment and torture to deny Palestinians the right to resist their occupation. Addameer, a prisoner’s support group, has documented how 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population living in the occupied territories – have been incarcerated since 1967.
Whatever Volvo may say, the truth is that it has become a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Drivers in Europe and America might feel secure as they slide into the well-upholstered seat of a car made by Volvo. In Palestine, the same company is facilitating the torture of children.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 24 November 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Israeli insults rewarded by EU embrace
Israel has directed a stream of insults towards its Western allies and protectors in the past 12 months, and has been rewarded with short-lived rebukes followed by an even closer embrace.
A group of foreign ministers representing the EU’s five largest states – including William Hague - was told to stay away by Israel in September because they were going to urge Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to extend the 10 month moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank.
Within a few days of this snub, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, recommended that Israel should be designated a new “strategic” partner for the Union. The fact that Israel had once again bombed Gaza that same week, killing three civilians, did not appear to trouble her.
Ashton’s proposal is designed to put Israel on a similar ranking with far bigger economies like the US, Japan and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom. Her move follows last year’s acknowledgement by Javier Solana, her predecessor as head of EU diplomacy, that no country outside the European continent had closer relations with the Union than Israel. According to Solana, Israel’s participation in various EU-run programmes has made it a de facto member state of the Union.
The insult to the foreign ministers follows the murder of the leading Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was shot dead in a Dubai hotel in January by assassins presenting themselves as British, Irish, German and French citizens. After a British investigation concluded that there were “compelling reasons” to believe that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, had used fraudulent versions of ID cards belonging to Britons living in Israel, an Israeli diplomat was expelled from the UK.
The expulsion has turned out to be tokenistic. The European countries whose passport systems were abused had an opportunity to censure Israel in a more meaningful fashion when a vote on its bid to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development took place in May. None of them were prepared to exercise their veto so Israel was admitted into this elite club for industrialised countries, receiving a “very significant seal of approval,” as Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, observed.
Then there was the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla when Israeli commandos shot dead nine peace activists on board a ship belonging to Turkey, a country engaged in formal, if protracted, talks aimed at its accession to the EU. Although some EU states condemned the attack, none of them took any concrete measures against Israel.
This pattern echoes the response of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who accused the Israeli government of delivering an “insult to the United States” when it announced the planned construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem while vice president Joe Biden was visiting the Middle East in March.
While her comments might have upset some of the wealthy Zionists who had previously bankrolled her election campaigns, Clinton soon resumed her usual practice of fawning to neocons. Later the same month she told the annual conference of AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, that her devotion to Israel was “rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever.”
Why is Israel being treated with kid gloves by our governments? Privately, Brussels officials say that the EU needs to be on good terms with Israel because it is the kind of hi-tech economy that they wish Europe to emulate. The same officials are less willing to recognise that many of the Israeli innovations they profess to admire were developed through cruel experiments, in which the Palestinian people were treated as lab rats.
Israel is the leading foreign participant in the EU’s multi-annual “framework programme” for scientific research, which has been allocated €53 billion (£44.2 billion) between 2007 and 2013. Among the Israeli firms pocketing EU grants are Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the manufacturers of pilotless drones – also known as unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) – that were used to inflict terror on civilians during Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians meets the definition of genocide enshrined in a 1948 UN convention: a crime designed to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group by causing serious physical or psychological harm on members of that group or by imposing intolerable conditions of life on them.
Under the terms of an “association agreement” with Israel that came into effect in 2000, the EU is legally obliged to sanction Israel for systematic abuses of human rights. Not only has the Union refused to honour that commitment, it is actively supporting the arms companies that profit from the murder of innocents. It is no exaggeration to conclude that the EU has become an accomplice to genocide.
·First published by Palestine News, magazine of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Autumn 2010
A group of foreign ministers representing the EU’s five largest states – including William Hague - was told to stay away by Israel in September because they were going to urge Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to extend the 10 month moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank.
Within a few days of this snub, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, recommended that Israel should be designated a new “strategic” partner for the Union. The fact that Israel had once again bombed Gaza that same week, killing three civilians, did not appear to trouble her.
Ashton’s proposal is designed to put Israel on a similar ranking with far bigger economies like the US, Japan and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom. Her move follows last year’s acknowledgement by Javier Solana, her predecessor as head of EU diplomacy, that no country outside the European continent had closer relations with the Union than Israel. According to Solana, Israel’s participation in various EU-run programmes has made it a de facto member state of the Union.
The insult to the foreign ministers follows the murder of the leading Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was shot dead in a Dubai hotel in January by assassins presenting themselves as British, Irish, German and French citizens. After a British investigation concluded that there were “compelling reasons” to believe that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, had used fraudulent versions of ID cards belonging to Britons living in Israel, an Israeli diplomat was expelled from the UK.
The expulsion has turned out to be tokenistic. The European countries whose passport systems were abused had an opportunity to censure Israel in a more meaningful fashion when a vote on its bid to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development took place in May. None of them were prepared to exercise their veto so Israel was admitted into this elite club for industrialised countries, receiving a “very significant seal of approval,” as Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, observed.
Then there was the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla when Israeli commandos shot dead nine peace activists on board a ship belonging to Turkey, a country engaged in formal, if protracted, talks aimed at its accession to the EU. Although some EU states condemned the attack, none of them took any concrete measures against Israel.
This pattern echoes the response of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who accused the Israeli government of delivering an “insult to the United States” when it announced the planned construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem while vice president Joe Biden was visiting the Middle East in March.
While her comments might have upset some of the wealthy Zionists who had previously bankrolled her election campaigns, Clinton soon resumed her usual practice of fawning to neocons. Later the same month she told the annual conference of AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, that her devotion to Israel was “rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever.”
Why is Israel being treated with kid gloves by our governments? Privately, Brussels officials say that the EU needs to be on good terms with Israel because it is the kind of hi-tech economy that they wish Europe to emulate. The same officials are less willing to recognise that many of the Israeli innovations they profess to admire were developed through cruel experiments, in which the Palestinian people were treated as lab rats.
Israel is the leading foreign participant in the EU’s multi-annual “framework programme” for scientific research, which has been allocated €53 billion (£44.2 billion) between 2007 and 2013. Among the Israeli firms pocketing EU grants are Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the manufacturers of pilotless drones – also known as unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) – that were used to inflict terror on civilians during Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians meets the definition of genocide enshrined in a 1948 UN convention: a crime designed to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group by causing serious physical or psychological harm on members of that group or by imposing intolerable conditions of life on them.
Under the terms of an “association agreement” with Israel that came into effect in 2000, the EU is legally obliged to sanction Israel for systematic abuses of human rights. Not only has the Union refused to honour that commitment, it is actively supporting the arms companies that profit from the murder of innocents. It is no exaggeration to conclude that the EU has become an accomplice to genocide.
·First published by Palestine News, magazine of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Autumn 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
CSI Palestine: Europe complicit in West Bank rights abuses
A bizarre public relations exercise is now underway in the West Bank. Doubtlessly inspired by the enduring popularity of TV drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the European Union has been trying to glamorise a forensic science course it has been running for Palestinian police since mid-September. As well as being tutored on fingerprinting techniques and the use of chemicals following a murder or armed robbery, officers completing the six-week programme will be given CSI vans of their own, “updates” promoting the course tell us.
It is not difficult to see why EU officials are eager to obtain favorable publicity for their police support “mission”, headquartered in Ramallah. For all of its five-year life, the mission has been something of a poor relation to the other major international policing initiative in the occupied Palestinian territories: that run by US security coordinator Keith Dayton (replaced by Michael Moeller earlier this month). At a time when the EU’s 27 governments are nominally striving to make a greater collective impact on the world stage, it is logical that they should be highlighting foreign policy work that at first glance appears laudable.
The reality is far from glamorous. Rather than helping to nurture institutions that could prove essential in a future Palestinian state, both the EU and US are acting as proxies for the Israeli occupation. Moreover, they are acquiescent in human rights abuses perpetrated by the Palestinian security forces against their own people.
Contrary to the impression frequently created by news stories, the Palestinian Authority does not have a police force that can justifiably be viewed as independent of Israel. Under the Oslo accords from the 1990s, the PA was given full responsibility for security in a region dubbed “Area A”. This comprises six West Bank cities - Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Bethlehem – and part of Hebron. In Area B – other towns and villages, where 68 percent of Palestinian inhabitants in the West Bank lived – the authority was tasked with maintaining public order but Israel was allowed “overriding” responsibility for security. Then in Area C – 62 percent of the West Bank, including Jewish-only settlements and other areas deemed of “strategic importance” to Israel – total control over security remained in Israeli hands.
For the Palestinians, it has proven impossible to operate a police service that could comply with international norms. Regular incursions by Israeli troops throughout the West Bank has meant that patrols by Palestinian officers cannot be undertaken in any city, apart from Ramallah, between midnight and six o’clock in the morning.
The response from the EU mission (its proper name is the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support or COPPS) to Israel’s everyday acts of aggression and intimidation has been timid, to say the least. The strongest words that Hendrik Malmquist, the Swedish officer heading the mission, has used on the record to criticise the Israeli incursions is to call them a “public embarrassment” for the Palestinians.
Maybe his nonchalance is best explained by how COPPS is part of what the tireless Israeli human rights campaigner Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” imposed by Israel on the occupied territories. Visiting Brussels in May, Malmquist said that Israel is “happy we are there in order to contribute to better security in the [occupied] territories.” Probably the main reason for Israeli satisfaction with his work is that his 80-strong staff, has been assisting the forces of occupation to strengthen their grip over most aspects of Palestinian life.
When I contacted EU officials in Ramallah recently, they sought to downplay the significance of their role in fostering cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces. The officials pointed, for example, to how they have organised joint Israeli-Palestinian training seminars on apparently uncontroversial issues such as traffic management. “We are not in the political game,” one official insisted.
A document published by the Israeli foreign ministry in April indicates that the cooperation goes deeper. Titled “Measures Taken by Israel in Support of Developing the Palestinian Economy”, it says that COPPS has played a “central role” in encouraging and implementing “capacity-building” in the West Bank. The purpose of this “capacity-building”, the paper makes clear to anyone who reads between its lines, is to stress that the Palestinian forces are subservient to Israel. Last year, the ministry gloats, was a record one for “coordinated actions” between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, with almost 1,300 taking place, a 72 percent rise over 2008.
In its monthly newsletters, COPPS promotes the training offered by its human rights specialist Diane Halley to Palestinian police. This propaganda cannot be allowed to mask how the EU has enabled a situation develop where gross abuses occur within a culture of impunity. Whereas COPPS’s original mandate allowed it to support police in both the West Bank and Gaza, the Union’s refusal to engage with the de facto Hamas administration in Gaza has meant that it has been encouraging disunity among Palestinians.
Worse again, the EU has connived in the creation of what an alliance of Palestinian human rights groups recently called “a police state” within the occupied territories. While these groups – including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Haq and the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling – stress that most violations committed by the Palestinian authorities are a “direct result” of tensions between Fatah and Hamas, the EU has been largely silent about the abuses.
During a press briefing in May, Malmquist stated that COPPS wishes to “export core European Union values” such as respect for fundamental rights. A few minutes later, a Palestinian police spokesman Yossef Ozreil insisted that there is “no more torture” by his colleagues against political rivals.
Malmquist did not contradict this assurance, yet evidence amassed by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights suggests that Ozreil was dishonest. Mohammed Jamil, a spokesman for the organisation, said that there is an average of seven arrests in the West Bank each day, with between 700 and 800 rounded up in the Hebron area last month after Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli settlers. Torture of detainees is widespread, he added. Methods found to have been used include tying people to the ceiling and suspending them, aping crucifixions by tying people to doors with their arms and legs outstretched and beatings by sticks. One of the victims had a boiled egg placed on his backside, Jamil told me. “They [the security forces] made jokes about him – that he was like a chicken giving birth to eggs.”
On paper, the main distinction between COPPS and the US security coordinator in the West Bank is that the former interacts with the Palestinian civil police and the latter with the more militarised National Security Force. In practice, there is extensive overlap between the two international operations; Dayton has said that one of his objectives was to eliminate any duplication of efforts between aid donors to the Palestinian Authority. As well as employing several British members of staff in his team, Dayton enjoyed close contacts with the two Britons who headed COPPS before Malmquist took up his post in January this year: Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan.
The extent to which Dayton may have advised forces loyal to Fatah to resort to brutal means in attacking Hamas supporters has not yet been revealed. One thing that is clear, however, is Dayton’s understanding that his job was to underscore the Palestinian Authority’s subordination to Israel. “We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it,” he has said.
Daud Abdullah, director of Middle East Monitor, a research institute in London, says it is inconceivable that Dayton was unaware of the abuses conducted by Palestinian security forces. “There has been no let-up in abuses as far as we know,” Abdullah added. “The fact that money is still flowing and [international] officials are still on the ground makes them culpable for what is happening.”
COPPS has a budget of nearly 7 million euros (9.7 million dollars) for this year. This sum appears small on its own. Yet it cannot be separated from the wider support that the EU gives to the Palestinian Authority, which amounts to 947 million euros since 2008.
Europe’s representatives rarely miss an opportunity to trumpet their generosity to the Palestinians. Although donors are undoubtedly financing the provision of many essential services in the occupied territories, tough questions need to be asked about much of this aid and how it is being tailored to serve Israel’s interests. Few taxpayers would be pleased to know that their hard-earned euros are subsidising an illegal occupation.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 12 October 2010
It is not difficult to see why EU officials are eager to obtain favorable publicity for their police support “mission”, headquartered in Ramallah. For all of its five-year life, the mission has been something of a poor relation to the other major international policing initiative in the occupied Palestinian territories: that run by US security coordinator Keith Dayton (replaced by Michael Moeller earlier this month). At a time when the EU’s 27 governments are nominally striving to make a greater collective impact on the world stage, it is logical that they should be highlighting foreign policy work that at first glance appears laudable.
The reality is far from glamorous. Rather than helping to nurture institutions that could prove essential in a future Palestinian state, both the EU and US are acting as proxies for the Israeli occupation. Moreover, they are acquiescent in human rights abuses perpetrated by the Palestinian security forces against their own people.
Contrary to the impression frequently created by news stories, the Palestinian Authority does not have a police force that can justifiably be viewed as independent of Israel. Under the Oslo accords from the 1990s, the PA was given full responsibility for security in a region dubbed “Area A”. This comprises six West Bank cities - Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Bethlehem – and part of Hebron. In Area B – other towns and villages, where 68 percent of Palestinian inhabitants in the West Bank lived – the authority was tasked with maintaining public order but Israel was allowed “overriding” responsibility for security. Then in Area C – 62 percent of the West Bank, including Jewish-only settlements and other areas deemed of “strategic importance” to Israel – total control over security remained in Israeli hands.
For the Palestinians, it has proven impossible to operate a police service that could comply with international norms. Regular incursions by Israeli troops throughout the West Bank has meant that patrols by Palestinian officers cannot be undertaken in any city, apart from Ramallah, between midnight and six o’clock in the morning.
The response from the EU mission (its proper name is the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support or COPPS) to Israel’s everyday acts of aggression and intimidation has been timid, to say the least. The strongest words that Hendrik Malmquist, the Swedish officer heading the mission, has used on the record to criticise the Israeli incursions is to call them a “public embarrassment” for the Palestinians.
Maybe his nonchalance is best explained by how COPPS is part of what the tireless Israeli human rights campaigner Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” imposed by Israel on the occupied territories. Visiting Brussels in May, Malmquist said that Israel is “happy we are there in order to contribute to better security in the [occupied] territories.” Probably the main reason for Israeli satisfaction with his work is that his 80-strong staff, has been assisting the forces of occupation to strengthen their grip over most aspects of Palestinian life.
When I contacted EU officials in Ramallah recently, they sought to downplay the significance of their role in fostering cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces. The officials pointed, for example, to how they have organised joint Israeli-Palestinian training seminars on apparently uncontroversial issues such as traffic management. “We are not in the political game,” one official insisted.
A document published by the Israeli foreign ministry in April indicates that the cooperation goes deeper. Titled “Measures Taken by Israel in Support of Developing the Palestinian Economy”, it says that COPPS has played a “central role” in encouraging and implementing “capacity-building” in the West Bank. The purpose of this “capacity-building”, the paper makes clear to anyone who reads between its lines, is to stress that the Palestinian forces are subservient to Israel. Last year, the ministry gloats, was a record one for “coordinated actions” between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, with almost 1,300 taking place, a 72 percent rise over 2008.
In its monthly newsletters, COPPS promotes the training offered by its human rights specialist Diane Halley to Palestinian police. This propaganda cannot be allowed to mask how the EU has enabled a situation develop where gross abuses occur within a culture of impunity. Whereas COPPS’s original mandate allowed it to support police in both the West Bank and Gaza, the Union’s refusal to engage with the de facto Hamas administration in Gaza has meant that it has been encouraging disunity among Palestinians.
Worse again, the EU has connived in the creation of what an alliance of Palestinian human rights groups recently called “a police state” within the occupied territories. While these groups – including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Haq and the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling – stress that most violations committed by the Palestinian authorities are a “direct result” of tensions between Fatah and Hamas, the EU has been largely silent about the abuses.
During a press briefing in May, Malmquist stated that COPPS wishes to “export core European Union values” such as respect for fundamental rights. A few minutes later, a Palestinian police spokesman Yossef Ozreil insisted that there is “no more torture” by his colleagues against political rivals.
Malmquist did not contradict this assurance, yet evidence amassed by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights suggests that Ozreil was dishonest. Mohammed Jamil, a spokesman for the organisation, said that there is an average of seven arrests in the West Bank each day, with between 700 and 800 rounded up in the Hebron area last month after Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli settlers. Torture of detainees is widespread, he added. Methods found to have been used include tying people to the ceiling and suspending them, aping crucifixions by tying people to doors with their arms and legs outstretched and beatings by sticks. One of the victims had a boiled egg placed on his backside, Jamil told me. “They [the security forces] made jokes about him – that he was like a chicken giving birth to eggs.”
On paper, the main distinction between COPPS and the US security coordinator in the West Bank is that the former interacts with the Palestinian civil police and the latter with the more militarised National Security Force. In practice, there is extensive overlap between the two international operations; Dayton has said that one of his objectives was to eliminate any duplication of efforts between aid donors to the Palestinian Authority. As well as employing several British members of staff in his team, Dayton enjoyed close contacts with the two Britons who headed COPPS before Malmquist took up his post in January this year: Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan.
The extent to which Dayton may have advised forces loyal to Fatah to resort to brutal means in attacking Hamas supporters has not yet been revealed. One thing that is clear, however, is Dayton’s understanding that his job was to underscore the Palestinian Authority’s subordination to Israel. “We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it,” he has said.
Daud Abdullah, director of Middle East Monitor, a research institute in London, says it is inconceivable that Dayton was unaware of the abuses conducted by Palestinian security forces. “There has been no let-up in abuses as far as we know,” Abdullah added. “The fact that money is still flowing and [international] officials are still on the ground makes them culpable for what is happening.”
COPPS has a budget of nearly 7 million euros (9.7 million dollars) for this year. This sum appears small on its own. Yet it cannot be separated from the wider support that the EU gives to the Palestinian Authority, which amounts to 947 million euros since 2008.
Europe’s representatives rarely miss an opportunity to trumpet their generosity to the Palestinians. Although donors are undoubtedly financing the provision of many essential services in the occupied territories, tough questions need to be asked about much of this aid and how it is being tailored to serve Israel’s interests. Few taxpayers would be pleased to know that their hard-earned euros are subsidising an illegal occupation.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 12 October 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Israeli army donations enjoy tax perks
Organisations raising funds to benefit the Israeli army and illegal settlements in the West Bank enjoy tax-exempt status in Europe, an investigation has shown.
The Sar-El Foundation is one of several groups working in the Netherlands dedicated to supporting the Israel Defence Forces. It organises regular visits to Israel, where Dutch volunteers spend three week periods training with the IDF.
Max Arpels Lezer, the foundation’s Amsterdam-based chairman, said that he tries to encourage volunteers to work in Israeli hospitals but if “that is not possible they can do civilian work on military bases.” He has previously stated that while the volunteers do not become soldiers, “they help in the battle against the Palestinians”. But he would not comment when asked why he wishes to assist the Israeli army, given that a United Nations inquiry led by retired South African judge Richard Goldstone found that its troops committed war crimes during a three-week offensive against Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
“I don’t wish to answer the question,” he said. “We don’t talk about politics. Our organisation is a non-political organisation.”
Under Dutch law, foundations such as Sar-El are exempt from tax and individuals giving money to them can deduct the donations from their income tax.
A similar group Collectieve Israël Action (Collective Action Israel) collects about 8 million euros (11 million dollars) per year, according to its website. Among the projects it assists are training for Israeli soldiers, particularly on the applications of advanced technology. The CIA’s board of advisers includes Doron Livnat, director of Riwal, a supplier of cranes used in the construction of the massive wall that Israel has built in the West Bank. That wall was found to be illegal in a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The Nachamoe Foundation, meanwhile, raises money for the upkeep of Israeli families. The foundation has admitted that some of the families live on Israeli settlements between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These settlements violate international law; the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from transferring part of its own civilian population into the land it is occupying.
Some groups in the Netherlands have categorised support for the IDF as “humanitarian aid”. Visie voor Israël (Vision for Israel) encourages its sympathisers to give donations that will be used to buy gifts such as backpacks for Israeli soldiers. A newsletter from the organisation says that the quantity of gifts provided has increased substantially since the Israeli army’s offensive against Gaza over the past two years.
Shuva is one of several Christian Zionist organisations working in the Netherlands viewing the foundation of Israel and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the fulfilment of a Biblical prophecy. According to one of its 2009 newsletters, it has financed a school in Nofei Nechemia, an extension (frequently termed an “illegal outpost” by Israeli newspapers) of the Israeli settlement of Ariel the West Bank. Shuva has stated too that it helps hundreds of settlers to establish themselves in four Israeli communities in the West Bank every year.
A spokesman for the Dutch inland revenue service said that the country’s tax rules do not contain any clauses relating to breaches of international law. He said that Dutch legislation allows non-profit organisations to apply for tax exemptions based on their stated goals. “At any given moment, the Dutch tax authorities may decide to revoke this favoured status” after examining the activities of those benefiting from it, he added. But the spokesman said he was unable to speak about the status enjoyed by any particular organisation.
Ghada Zeidan from United Civilians for Peace, a Palestinian solidarity group in the Netherlands, said it is “very difficult” to convince the authorities that they should take action against fundraising by pro-Israel organisations. “The problem is that there is a kind of culture of acceptance of it,” she added.
Earlier this year a campaign was launched in Britain to have the Jewish National Fund (JNF) stripped of its status as a charity. While the JNF presents itself as an ecologically-minded body that plants trees in Israel, it has actively supported violence against Palestinians for many decades. One of its leading figures Yosef Weitz explicitly advocated in 1940 – eight years before the state of Israel was founded - that Palestinians should be forced out of Palestine. More recently, the JNF has concentrated much of its energies on settling Jews in the Negev, a process that has involved the uprooting of indigenous Bedouins, often by the destruction of their homes.
The latest accounts made public by the JNF in London say that its total income for 2008 amounted to 7.7 million pounds (12.2 million dollars). Another priority for the fund has been to help the Benji Hillman Foundation; set up in memory of a soldier killed when Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006, it offers accommodation to young people who travel from abroad to join the Israeli army.
A spokesman for the British revenue authority would not say if any investigations have been undertaken into the JNF’s activities.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – one of the organisations monitoring the JNF’s work – is seeking a probe into whether fund-raisers for foreign armies can be considered charities under British law. Matthew Richardson, an ISM activist, noted that the JNF has powerful allies – David Cameron, the current British prime minister, has agreed to be one of its patrons; so too did his predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Richardson added: “The JNF is very embedded within the (pro-Israel) lobby and the political elite as a whole.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 28 September 2010
The Sar-El Foundation is one of several groups working in the Netherlands dedicated to supporting the Israel Defence Forces. It organises regular visits to Israel, where Dutch volunteers spend three week periods training with the IDF.
Max Arpels Lezer, the foundation’s Amsterdam-based chairman, said that he tries to encourage volunteers to work in Israeli hospitals but if “that is not possible they can do civilian work on military bases.” He has previously stated that while the volunteers do not become soldiers, “they help in the battle against the Palestinians”. But he would not comment when asked why he wishes to assist the Israeli army, given that a United Nations inquiry led by retired South African judge Richard Goldstone found that its troops committed war crimes during a three-week offensive against Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
“I don’t wish to answer the question,” he said. “We don’t talk about politics. Our organisation is a non-political organisation.”
Under Dutch law, foundations such as Sar-El are exempt from tax and individuals giving money to them can deduct the donations from their income tax.
A similar group Collectieve Israël Action (Collective Action Israel) collects about 8 million euros (11 million dollars) per year, according to its website. Among the projects it assists are training for Israeli soldiers, particularly on the applications of advanced technology. The CIA’s board of advisers includes Doron Livnat, director of Riwal, a supplier of cranes used in the construction of the massive wall that Israel has built in the West Bank. That wall was found to be illegal in a 2004 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The Nachamoe Foundation, meanwhile, raises money for the upkeep of Israeli families. The foundation has admitted that some of the families live on Israeli settlements between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These settlements violate international law; the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from transferring part of its own civilian population into the land it is occupying.
Some groups in the Netherlands have categorised support for the IDF as “humanitarian aid”. Visie voor Israël (Vision for Israel) encourages its sympathisers to give donations that will be used to buy gifts such as backpacks for Israeli soldiers. A newsletter from the organisation says that the quantity of gifts provided has increased substantially since the Israeli army’s offensive against Gaza over the past two years.
Shuva is one of several Christian Zionist organisations working in the Netherlands viewing the foundation of Israel and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the fulfilment of a Biblical prophecy. According to one of its 2009 newsletters, it has financed a school in Nofei Nechemia, an extension (frequently termed an “illegal outpost” by Israeli newspapers) of the Israeli settlement of Ariel the West Bank. Shuva has stated too that it helps hundreds of settlers to establish themselves in four Israeli communities in the West Bank every year.
A spokesman for the Dutch inland revenue service said that the country’s tax rules do not contain any clauses relating to breaches of international law. He said that Dutch legislation allows non-profit organisations to apply for tax exemptions based on their stated goals. “At any given moment, the Dutch tax authorities may decide to revoke this favoured status” after examining the activities of those benefiting from it, he added. But the spokesman said he was unable to speak about the status enjoyed by any particular organisation.
Ghada Zeidan from United Civilians for Peace, a Palestinian solidarity group in the Netherlands, said it is “very difficult” to convince the authorities that they should take action against fundraising by pro-Israel organisations. “The problem is that there is a kind of culture of acceptance of it,” she added.
Earlier this year a campaign was launched in Britain to have the Jewish National Fund (JNF) stripped of its status as a charity. While the JNF presents itself as an ecologically-minded body that plants trees in Israel, it has actively supported violence against Palestinians for many decades. One of its leading figures Yosef Weitz explicitly advocated in 1940 – eight years before the state of Israel was founded - that Palestinians should be forced out of Palestine. More recently, the JNF has concentrated much of its energies on settling Jews in the Negev, a process that has involved the uprooting of indigenous Bedouins, often by the destruction of their homes.
The latest accounts made public by the JNF in London say that its total income for 2008 amounted to 7.7 million pounds (12.2 million dollars). Another priority for the fund has been to help the Benji Hillman Foundation; set up in memory of a soldier killed when Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006, it offers accommodation to young people who travel from abroad to join the Israeli army.
A spokesman for the British revenue authority would not say if any investigations have been undertaken into the JNF’s activities.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – one of the organisations monitoring the JNF’s work – is seeking a probe into whether fund-raisers for foreign armies can be considered charities under British law. Matthew Richardson, an ISM activist, noted that the JNF has powerful allies – David Cameron, the current British prime minister, has agreed to be one of its patrons; so too did his predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Richardson added: “The JNF is very embedded within the (pro-Israel) lobby and the political elite as a whole.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 28 September 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Europe's Alliance With Israel
Nine years after it was delivered, Tony Blair’s speech to the 2001 Labour Party conference remains a chilling piece of hubris and hypocrisy. Britain’s government, he claimed, was not only concerned with the well-being of its own people but with the entire planet. “The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountains of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.”
Blair’s protégé Catherine Ashton has evidently learned a few tricks from the war criminal who masquerades as a peace envoy. As the EU’s foreign policy chief (“high representative” in Brussels parlance), Ashton has been diligently spreading the myth that she and other senior European politicians are even-handed in dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ashton – appointed a life peer and a minister under Blair - recently denounced the criminal conviction that an Israeli military court handed down to Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, an organiser of weekly demonstrations against the massive wall that penetrates deep into the West Bank. Read on its own, Ashton’s two-paragraph response to the conviction appears laudable, giving the impression that the EU is determined to defend the Palestinians’ right to protest against the theft of their homeland.
Yet this is the same Ashton who has generally displayed a shameful disregard for Palestinian prisoners until now. When she met Israel’s overtly racist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in July, the only detainee on Ashton’s mind was the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured (not “kidnapped”, as many newspaper stories would have us believe) by Hamas in 2006. Certainly, Shalit should be treated humanely and there are compelling reasons for arguing he should be released on compassionate grounds. But it was entirely wrong of Ashton to focus on a soldier who was enforcing a brutal occupation, while not uttering one word – in public, at least – about the plight of Palestinian prisoners. Had her advisers consulted the organisation Defence for Children International, she could have learnt that at the very moment she was posing for photographs with Lieberman, Israel was holding more than 280 Palestinians aged between 12 and 17. Each year Israel detains an average of 700 Palestinian children – usually for an offence no more serious than throwing stones at one of the world’s most powerful armies. Most of these children are held within Israel, in violation of international law; under the Fourth Geneva Convention, people convicted in an occupied territory may only be jailed inside that territory.
Or a glance at the website run by Addameer, a prisoners support group, could have equipped Ashton with the alarming statistic that 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population in the occupied territories – have been locked up by Israel since 1967. Indeed, the Israeli government is responsible for the incarceration of an entire people – Gaza is routinely and accurately described as the world’s largest open-air prison; the West Bank has become a patchwork of checkpoints and roadblocks, where the ill and injured often die because Israeli troops stop them from travelling to see a doctor.
Ashton’s chumminess with Lieberman – a man who does not live in the state that he represents but in an illegal settlement – is at odds with how she shuns Hamas, the winners of a 2006 election. Even though the EU’s own observers deemed that election to be free and fair, the unelected Ashton has refused to meet local political leaders on the two occasions she has visited Gaza. Such a snub would be virtually unthinkable if she was travelling anywhere else.
And what can be said of her reaction to the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at the end of May? Nine peace activists were murdered by the state of Israel in its unprovoked raid on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but all we got from Ashton was an inspid statement describing the incident as a “tragedy” (this implied that she did not feel that the deaths had been caused deliberately). She has subsequently been reticent about the sham investigation that Israel has called into the attack. The proverbial dogs on the street know that David Trimble, a leading foreign observer to the inquiry, cannot be considered impartial; earlier this year the former Ulster Unionist leader set up a new “friends of Israel” group. Trimble is clearly a propagandist for Israel but Ashton cannot bring herself to say so.
On the subject of propaganda, Ashton appears to have gobbled up and digested many of the lies that flow interminably from the Israeli government. In July, she welcomed the minor modifications that Israel had made to its economic blockade of Gaza as a “significant step forward”. It is instructive that her message was almost identical to that which Tony Blair had been sending over the preceding month. Despite maintaining the pretence that he is an international “peace” envoy for the Middle East, Blair had been selling the planned “easing” of the blockade as a diplomatic triumph (he has sought credit for brokering it), long before he had been appraised of just how much easing would occur. The truth, of course, is far less cheery: the imports of tomato ketchup and mayonnaise now allowed to Gazans have not halted the wider strangulation of their economy, nor the denial of their elementary rights.
Ashton’s obsequious attitude towards Israel follows many years in which the EU has become increasingly acquiescent towards Israel’s crimes against humanity. Under the terms of an EU-Israel association agreement that came into effect in 2000, Israel is required to respect fundamental human rights in order to qualify for privileged commercial access to the Union’s markets. Heaps of documentation illustrating that Israel has not complied with this provision have been accumulated over the past decade, yet not only has the EU refused to rescind Israel’s existing trade privileges, it has granted further perks. An agreement on agricultural trade concluded in November 2009, for example, lets Israel export 80 percent of its fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods to the EU free of customs duties. Theoretically, this only applies to goods from within Israel’s internationally recognised borders. In practice, the Israeli exporter Agrexco mixes up crops grown in Israel and those grown in Israeli settlements in the West Bank in its warehouses, then labels the whole lot as “made in Israel”.
Meanwhile, Israel has been integrated into the EU’s economic and political programmes to such a degree that it has become a member state of the Union in all but name. That is not just my observation. Speaking in Jerusalem last year, Javier Solana – Ashton’s predecessor as foreign policy chief – said that Israel is “a member of the European Union, without being a member of the institutions.”
The EU-funded programmes involving Israel range from archaeology to enterprise promotion. While their activities vary, their effect is the same: they help confer a kind of respectability on Israel that this rogue state does not merit. One especially malevolent example of this cooperation is that Israeli weapons companies – the makers of weapons used to kill and maim civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza over the past two years – are busily drawing funds from the EU’s scientific research programme. Israeli firms and universities are on course to receive more than 500 million euros from this programme under its current duration (2007-13).
Diplomats say that EU-Israel relations tend to follow a simple logic. When the “peace process” is seen to be going well, the relationship improves; when it encounters difficulty, the relationship sours. Although efforts to formally “upgrade” the relationship so that Israel can be brought further into the EU’s structures have dragged somewhat lately because of widespread public revulsion at Israel’s attacks on Gaza, there is now a possibility that the momentum will be regained. The likelihood that “direct negotiations” soon to get underway between Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli premier, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian “president” (his term actually expired in early 2010) will lead to a meaningful peace is almost nil, at least if we understand peace as not being the absence of war but the presence of justice. However, the talks could conceivably give the EU’s 27 governments a pretext to clasp Israel closer to their bosom.
Israel’s serial defiance of international law and the way it treats Palestinians as sub-humans should be deplored by decent people everywhere. The willingness of our governments to accommodate Israel’s transgressions is similarly despicable and worthy of similar outrage.
•First published by New Left Project (www.newleftproject.org), 3 September 2010
Blair’s protégé Catherine Ashton has evidently learned a few tricks from the war criminal who masquerades as a peace envoy. As the EU’s foreign policy chief (“high representative” in Brussels parlance), Ashton has been diligently spreading the myth that she and other senior European politicians are even-handed in dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ashton – appointed a life peer and a minister under Blair - recently denounced the criminal conviction that an Israeli military court handed down to Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, an organiser of weekly demonstrations against the massive wall that penetrates deep into the West Bank. Read on its own, Ashton’s two-paragraph response to the conviction appears laudable, giving the impression that the EU is determined to defend the Palestinians’ right to protest against the theft of their homeland.
Yet this is the same Ashton who has generally displayed a shameful disregard for Palestinian prisoners until now. When she met Israel’s overtly racist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in July, the only detainee on Ashton’s mind was the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured (not “kidnapped”, as many newspaper stories would have us believe) by Hamas in 2006. Certainly, Shalit should be treated humanely and there are compelling reasons for arguing he should be released on compassionate grounds. But it was entirely wrong of Ashton to focus on a soldier who was enforcing a brutal occupation, while not uttering one word – in public, at least – about the plight of Palestinian prisoners. Had her advisers consulted the organisation Defence for Children International, she could have learnt that at the very moment she was posing for photographs with Lieberman, Israel was holding more than 280 Palestinians aged between 12 and 17. Each year Israel detains an average of 700 Palestinian children – usually for an offence no more serious than throwing stones at one of the world’s most powerful armies. Most of these children are held within Israel, in violation of international law; under the Fourth Geneva Convention, people convicted in an occupied territory may only be jailed inside that territory.
Or a glance at the website run by Addameer, a prisoners support group, could have equipped Ashton with the alarming statistic that 650,000 Palestinians – one-fifth of the population in the occupied territories – have been locked up by Israel since 1967. Indeed, the Israeli government is responsible for the incarceration of an entire people – Gaza is routinely and accurately described as the world’s largest open-air prison; the West Bank has become a patchwork of checkpoints and roadblocks, where the ill and injured often die because Israeli troops stop them from travelling to see a doctor.
Ashton’s chumminess with Lieberman – a man who does not live in the state that he represents but in an illegal settlement – is at odds with how she shuns Hamas, the winners of a 2006 election. Even though the EU’s own observers deemed that election to be free and fair, the unelected Ashton has refused to meet local political leaders on the two occasions she has visited Gaza. Such a snub would be virtually unthinkable if she was travelling anywhere else.
And what can be said of her reaction to the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at the end of May? Nine peace activists were murdered by the state of Israel in its unprovoked raid on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but all we got from Ashton was an inspid statement describing the incident as a “tragedy” (this implied that she did not feel that the deaths had been caused deliberately). She has subsequently been reticent about the sham investigation that Israel has called into the attack. The proverbial dogs on the street know that David Trimble, a leading foreign observer to the inquiry, cannot be considered impartial; earlier this year the former Ulster Unionist leader set up a new “friends of Israel” group. Trimble is clearly a propagandist for Israel but Ashton cannot bring herself to say so.
On the subject of propaganda, Ashton appears to have gobbled up and digested many of the lies that flow interminably from the Israeli government. In July, she welcomed the minor modifications that Israel had made to its economic blockade of Gaza as a “significant step forward”. It is instructive that her message was almost identical to that which Tony Blair had been sending over the preceding month. Despite maintaining the pretence that he is an international “peace” envoy for the Middle East, Blair had been selling the planned “easing” of the blockade as a diplomatic triumph (he has sought credit for brokering it), long before he had been appraised of just how much easing would occur. The truth, of course, is far less cheery: the imports of tomato ketchup and mayonnaise now allowed to Gazans have not halted the wider strangulation of their economy, nor the denial of their elementary rights.
Ashton’s obsequious attitude towards Israel follows many years in which the EU has become increasingly acquiescent towards Israel’s crimes against humanity. Under the terms of an EU-Israel association agreement that came into effect in 2000, Israel is required to respect fundamental human rights in order to qualify for privileged commercial access to the Union’s markets. Heaps of documentation illustrating that Israel has not complied with this provision have been accumulated over the past decade, yet not only has the EU refused to rescind Israel’s existing trade privileges, it has granted further perks. An agreement on agricultural trade concluded in November 2009, for example, lets Israel export 80 percent of its fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods to the EU free of customs duties. Theoretically, this only applies to goods from within Israel’s internationally recognised borders. In practice, the Israeli exporter Agrexco mixes up crops grown in Israel and those grown in Israeli settlements in the West Bank in its warehouses, then labels the whole lot as “made in Israel”.
Meanwhile, Israel has been integrated into the EU’s economic and political programmes to such a degree that it has become a member state of the Union in all but name. That is not just my observation. Speaking in Jerusalem last year, Javier Solana – Ashton’s predecessor as foreign policy chief – said that Israel is “a member of the European Union, without being a member of the institutions.”
The EU-funded programmes involving Israel range from archaeology to enterprise promotion. While their activities vary, their effect is the same: they help confer a kind of respectability on Israel that this rogue state does not merit. One especially malevolent example of this cooperation is that Israeli weapons companies – the makers of weapons used to kill and maim civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza over the past two years – are busily drawing funds from the EU’s scientific research programme. Israeli firms and universities are on course to receive more than 500 million euros from this programme under its current duration (2007-13).
Diplomats say that EU-Israel relations tend to follow a simple logic. When the “peace process” is seen to be going well, the relationship improves; when it encounters difficulty, the relationship sours. Although efforts to formally “upgrade” the relationship so that Israel can be brought further into the EU’s structures have dragged somewhat lately because of widespread public revulsion at Israel’s attacks on Gaza, there is now a possibility that the momentum will be regained. The likelihood that “direct negotiations” soon to get underway between Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli premier, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian “president” (his term actually expired in early 2010) will lead to a meaningful peace is almost nil, at least if we understand peace as not being the absence of war but the presence of justice. However, the talks could conceivably give the EU’s 27 governments a pretext to clasp Israel closer to their bosom.
Israel’s serial defiance of international law and the way it treats Palestinians as sub-humans should be deplored by decent people everywhere. The willingness of our governments to accommodate Israel’s transgressions is similarly despicable and worthy of similar outrage.
•First published by New Left Project (www.newleftproject.org), 3 September 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Dutch Christian groups finance theft of Palestine
Sandwiched between giant car and furniture stores on a motorway stop-off, a blue-and-white Star of David flag droops nonchalantly on a stifling summer’s day. The factory-like building beside it could easily missed by a traveller who blinks too soon, yet the work undertaken here in the Israel Centre is far from commonplace. Its staff and management are dedicated not to the manufacturing of goods or to devising sales strategies but to drumming up support for a contentious political project: expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The centre – located on the outskirts of Nijkerk, a sleepy Dutch town - is home to Christenen voor Israel (Christians for Israel), an organisation that views the creation of the state of Israel as the fulfilment of a Biblical prophecy. “It is very important that we in Holland work with the churches and let them know that Israel is one of the important players in the Bible and that they (Israelis) are God’s chosen people,” André Groenewegen, a spokesman for the group, said.
Further on up the corridor from his office, a shop does a brisk trade. The merchandise it sells is promoted as “made in Israel” yet closer inspection reveals that some of it is sold by firms headquartered in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The shop’s cosmetics section brims with Ahava products; though boasting minerals from the Dead Sea, these are manufactured in the settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. The shop’s website, meanwhile, offers spices from Amnon and Tamar Karmi, whose head office is located in the settlement of Alfei Menashe, near the Palestinian town of Qalqilyah.
Unlike almost every member country of the United Nations, Christians for Israel refuses to regard the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory. According to Groenewegen, “the Bible tells us” that it is part of Israel. (International law is at odds with that view; the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention makes it illegal for an occupying power to transfer part of its own civilian population into the land it is occupying).
Although a brochure on display at the centre’s entrance states that one of the group’s activities is to support Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the Biblical name for the West Bank), Groenewegen claims he is unaware of specific projects that it is aiding in the settlements. He concedes, though, that “our daughter organisation”, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) is involved in such work.
CFOIC was founded in 1995 after some Christian Zionists had expressed the view that Israel had granted too many concessions to the Palestinian Authority as part of the so-called Oslo accords. Literature published by CFOIC argues that the West Bank was granted to the Jewish people 4,000 years ago. The book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament implores Jews to settle this land and to make it “prosper more than before”, according to CFOIC.
“We don’t consider Judea and Samaria to be occupied,” said Henk Poot, a clergyman active in CFOIC and Christians for Israel. “There was never a Palestinian state or people. Apart from this we believe that the land of Israel has been promised by God Almighty to the Jewish people and in that way we feel very much connected to the religious Zionist movement.”
Poot did not respond to requests for information about how much financial assistance the CFOIC sends to Israeli settlements. Yet the organisation’s website solicits donations for the installation of “security cameras” for the gates of Zufim, a settlement beside Qalqilyah, as well as for the maintenance of students in Ariel, a university for settlers.
Even though they are supporting settlement activities that the Dutch government officially considers to be illegal, Christians for Israel and the CFOIC enjoy a cordial relationship with some of the most powerful politicians in the Netherlands. Maxime Verhagen, parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats party and the outgoing minister for foreign affairs, expressed his support for the work of pro-Israel lobby groups in an interview published in a Christians for Israel newsletter earlier this month. Verhagen has defended Israeli atrocities against Palestinians even more hawkishly than most of his peers in the European Union’s 27 governments. In January 2009, Verhagen visited the southern Israeli town of Sderot as a gesture of solidarity with its residents; three Israeli civilians were killed by rockets fired from Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. Verhagen refused to travel further into Gaza itself, where 1,400 Palestinians were killed over a three-week bombardment by Israeli forces.
Christians for Israel are part of a wider pro-Israel lobby with significant political clout in the Netherlands. The most influential organisation in the lobby network is the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) in The Hague. During the recent general election in the Netherlands, one of CIDI’s staff members Wim Kortenoeven won a parliamentary seat for the Party for Freedom, led by the far-right politician Geert Wilders. This party is in talks with the Christian Democrats about the possible formation of a coalition government. Another pro-Israel lobbyist Gidi Markuszower had been named as a candidate on Wilders’ electoral list but Markuszower’s candidacy was withdrawn at a late stage in the election, reportedly because he had previously been arrested for carrying a gun in public.
Max Wieselmann, a representative of European Jews for a Just Peace, an organisation campaigning for the rights of Palestinians to be respected, said that Christians for Israel is in close contact with Israeli diplomats. “You can always see the Israeli ambassador at their meetings or when they have parties and receptions,” Wieselmann added. “This is a little bit funny. We always say – and it is the same for Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. – that they are not interested in Jews as people but only as a vehicle for their own views.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 27 July 2010
The centre – located on the outskirts of Nijkerk, a sleepy Dutch town - is home to Christenen voor Israel (Christians for Israel), an organisation that views the creation of the state of Israel as the fulfilment of a Biblical prophecy. “It is very important that we in Holland work with the churches and let them know that Israel is one of the important players in the Bible and that they (Israelis) are God’s chosen people,” André Groenewegen, a spokesman for the group, said.
Further on up the corridor from his office, a shop does a brisk trade. The merchandise it sells is promoted as “made in Israel” yet closer inspection reveals that some of it is sold by firms headquartered in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The shop’s cosmetics section brims with Ahava products; though boasting minerals from the Dead Sea, these are manufactured in the settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. The shop’s website, meanwhile, offers spices from Amnon and Tamar Karmi, whose head office is located in the settlement of Alfei Menashe, near the Palestinian town of Qalqilyah.
Unlike almost every member country of the United Nations, Christians for Israel refuses to regard the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory. According to Groenewegen, “the Bible tells us” that it is part of Israel. (International law is at odds with that view; the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention makes it illegal for an occupying power to transfer part of its own civilian population into the land it is occupying).
Although a brochure on display at the centre’s entrance states that one of the group’s activities is to support Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the Biblical name for the West Bank), Groenewegen claims he is unaware of specific projects that it is aiding in the settlements. He concedes, though, that “our daughter organisation”, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) is involved in such work.
CFOIC was founded in 1995 after some Christian Zionists had expressed the view that Israel had granted too many concessions to the Palestinian Authority as part of the so-called Oslo accords. Literature published by CFOIC argues that the West Bank was granted to the Jewish people 4,000 years ago. The book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament implores Jews to settle this land and to make it “prosper more than before”, according to CFOIC.
“We don’t consider Judea and Samaria to be occupied,” said Henk Poot, a clergyman active in CFOIC and Christians for Israel. “There was never a Palestinian state or people. Apart from this we believe that the land of Israel has been promised by God Almighty to the Jewish people and in that way we feel very much connected to the religious Zionist movement.”
Poot did not respond to requests for information about how much financial assistance the CFOIC sends to Israeli settlements. Yet the organisation’s website solicits donations for the installation of “security cameras” for the gates of Zufim, a settlement beside Qalqilyah, as well as for the maintenance of students in Ariel, a university for settlers.
Even though they are supporting settlement activities that the Dutch government officially considers to be illegal, Christians for Israel and the CFOIC enjoy a cordial relationship with some of the most powerful politicians in the Netherlands. Maxime Verhagen, parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats party and the outgoing minister for foreign affairs, expressed his support for the work of pro-Israel lobby groups in an interview published in a Christians for Israel newsletter earlier this month. Verhagen has defended Israeli atrocities against Palestinians even more hawkishly than most of his peers in the European Union’s 27 governments. In January 2009, Verhagen visited the southern Israeli town of Sderot as a gesture of solidarity with its residents; three Israeli civilians were killed by rockets fired from Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. Verhagen refused to travel further into Gaza itself, where 1,400 Palestinians were killed over a three-week bombardment by Israeli forces.
Christians for Israel are part of a wider pro-Israel lobby with significant political clout in the Netherlands. The most influential organisation in the lobby network is the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) in The Hague. During the recent general election in the Netherlands, one of CIDI’s staff members Wim Kortenoeven won a parliamentary seat for the Party for Freedom, led by the far-right politician Geert Wilders. This party is in talks with the Christian Democrats about the possible formation of a coalition government. Another pro-Israel lobbyist Gidi Markuszower had been named as a candidate on Wilders’ electoral list but Markuszower’s candidacy was withdrawn at a late stage in the election, reportedly because he had previously been arrested for carrying a gun in public.
Max Wieselmann, a representative of European Jews for a Just Peace, an organisation campaigning for the rights of Palestinians to be respected, said that Christians for Israel is in close contact with Israeli diplomats. “You can always see the Israeli ambassador at their meetings or when they have parties and receptions,” Wieselmann added. “This is a little bit funny. We always say – and it is the same for Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. – that they are not interested in Jews as people but only as a vehicle for their own views.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 27 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)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)