Category: In the Media

Hugo Chávez accuses Israel of genocide

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

9 September 2009

Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinians, saying the offensive in Gaza early this year was unprovoked.

“The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They’re doing it openly,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with the French newspaper, Le Figaro.

“What was it, if not genocide? … The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians.” His comments came after a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries.

Israel has maintained that the three-week Gaza assault was a response to rockets fired from Gaza by militant groups. However, several human rights groups have said that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups, notably Hamas, breached international law and should be investigated for possible war crimes.

A key UN report on the conflict, led by the respected South African judge Richard Goldstone, is due to be published within weeks.

New casualty figures for the Gaza offensive, compiled after months of research by an Israeli human rights group, show 1,387 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were not taking part in hostilities. The research from B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, challenges figures produced by the Israeli military, which argued that far fewer Palestinian civilians died.

B’Tselem said that its field researchers in Gaza interviewed witnesses and relatives of the dead, cross-checked information with Palestinian and international rights groups and with Israeli military statements. “B’Tselem did everything within its capability to verify the data,” the group said. It had asked to see an Israeli military list of fatalities but was refused. Israeli authorities also refused to allow Israeli and West Bank staff from B’Tselem to enter Gaza for the work.

The research found that 773 of those Palestinians killed were not taking part in hostilities; among them were 320 children under the age of 18. Field workers from the group visited the homes of the dead children, checking photographs, death certificates and other documents to establish the toll.

Another 330 of the dead were involved in the fighting and 248 were police officers killed at their police stations, most in a wave of air strikes on the first day of the conflict.

On the Israeli side, three civilians were killed by Palestinian militant rocket fire and 10 soldiers died, four of whom were killed accidentally by their own troops.

The Israeli military has released its own casualty figures for Palestinian deaths, saying 295 civilians were killed out of a total of 1,166 deaths, but has refused to publish its list of fatalities. The military said it believed that the B’Tselem report was “not based on facts or on accurate statistics”.

Although the military defended its conduct in the war, it has emerged that officers have started taking witness testimony from some Palestinians whose relatives were killed and injured. On Monday, Israeli military officers questioned Khaled Abed Rabbo, who saw two of his daughters shot dead by Israeli troops during the war. A third daughter was severely injured. The troops then demolished the family’s house, in Izbet Abed Rabbo, one of the worst damaged villages in Gaza.

Why stop with Elbit?

Amira Hass | Ha’aretz

9 September 2009

The question is not why Norway divested from the defense electronics giant Elbit Systems, but why only now, and why only from that company? The country that gave the name of its capital city to what the world thought of as a peace process is still invested in companies involved in construction and development in the West Bank settlements – the principal factor in destroying any chance for peace (at least any peace other than the belligerent demand that the Palestinians say “thank you” for what Israel is willing to give them).

From the outset, instead of rebuking the Norwegian ambassador, the Foreign Ministry and Defense Minister Ehud Barak should have actually praised the citizens of Norway. Through their government pension fund, which invests oil revenues in 8,000 companies around the world for the sake of Norway’s future generations, those citizens continue to be active partners in Israeli construction in the West Bank.

Africa Israel (if its shares have not already been sold for purely economic reasons), Israeli banks that give mortgages to settlers, a Mexican company that has plants in the settlements and is a partner in mining in occupied territory, Israeli firms whose plants are in the occupied West Bank – these are just some of the over 40 Israeli and international companies that are involved in solidifying Israel’s occupation, and in which Norway invests, according to data from the “Who Profits” project, run by the Coalition of Women for Peace.

The Norwegian Finance Ministry’s Council on Ethics, which recommended that the pension fund pull its investment from Elbit, also explained why it would divest from that company but not, say, from the U.S. company Caterpillar. Elbit, it said, developed equipment used specifically in the construction of the separation barrier, while the equipment sold by Caterpillar to the Israel Defense Forces has legitimate uses as well, and the company should not be held responsible for it being employed in another, possibly illegal, way (namely, the wholesale destruction of Palestinian homes).

The council extended this conclusion to other companies involved in building the separation barrier that also benefited from Norwegian investment. In this way it corresponds indirectly with left-wing Norwegian activists, and with Palestinian and Israeli anti-occupation activists, providing a basis for their suspicions that the fund’s ethics guidelines have been violated. Those guidelines forbid investment in companies that “contribute to serious or systematic human-rights violations,” and are in blatant contradiction to the will or pretense of moving Israel and the Palestinians toward a just agreement.

And still, it seems that the Foreign Ministry and Barak know full well why they were so quick to issue a rebuke, and are once again trying to sow fear, forcing Norway to lower the bar it has set for itself and other countries, and blocking in advance the logical path the recommendations have paved. This is the first time a nation has adopted – actively and not just with words – the opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Hague about the separation barrier, 87 percent of which is built on occupied land, in contravention of international law.

If building the barrier is in itself illegal, it follows that so are the settlements, roads and factories serving the occupation. The Norwegian foreign minister also noted that the ICJ had ruled that it is the obligation of countries signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention to prevent that charter’s violation.

It is said that members of the ethics council are not influenced by social or political pressure. But the very creation of the council in 2004 stemmed from public pressure and struggle. We can only hope that forces within the Norwegian public continue to tell their government (even if it is replaced this month by a right-wing administration) that it is obligated not to drag them into being an accomplice.

Israel authorizes building in another East Jerusalem neighborhood

Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz

9 September 2009

Three days after the U.S. administration criticized the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to authorize the construction of hundreds of new housing units in settlements, the Israel Lands Administration published tenders for the construction of 486 apartments in the neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev in East Jerusalem.

The new construction project is designated for the outer edge of the northeastern municipal boundary of Jerusalem, and will narrow the distance between the homes on the edge of the neighborhood and the nearby Palestinian communities. Bids have been solicited for construction on an overall area of 138 dunams (about 34 acres), which was subdivided into 25 smaller tenders.

The Obama administration has made it clear on a number of occasions that it is demanding that Israel freeze settlement construction in the territories, including in East Jerusalem. Two months ago, it was reported that Netanyahu had ordered a delay in the publication of the tenders.

In October 2008, the ILA canceled the tenders, arguing that the bids received from developers were too low compared to the value of the land. Then, last month, Haaretz-TheMarker reported that the tenders would be reissued after an appeal by contractors had led to the conclusion that the official assessment of the land value had been excessively high.

Officials at the Ministry of Housing and Construction said at the time that they would offer or development more land in the neighborhood so as to lower the price of apartments in the area.

Daniel Seidemann, the founder of Ir Amim, a non-profit organization that seeks to promote coexistence in Jerusalem, said last night that tenders of such magnitude would not be announced if they did not have the support of the prime minister. Seidemann describes the bid-taking as yet another example of a fraud that leads to creating facts on the ground even though there is talk of a freeze in settlement construction.

According to the ILA: “The tender was issued with the approval of minister of housing, and there was no additional approval needed at the political level. It is a tender that had been published last year in October and, for technical reasons, so far only two of the 25 plots had been sold.”

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the exchanges between Israel and the U.S. on the issue of a settlement freeze told Haaretz that the Obama administration is not interested in a crisis with the government of Netanyahu on settlements.

UN: Gaza in worst condition since 1967

Ali Waked | YNet News

8 September 2009

A UN report published Tuesday says poverty in the Gaza Strip has deteriorated to levels unseen since 1967.

The UN trade and development agency says 90% of Gaza’s residents are currently beneath the poverty line and rates the damages caused by the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead at $4 billion, a sum it claims is three times larger than the Strip’s annual market performance.

The agency claims the operation halted all trade in the Gaza Strip, creating a deficit of around $88 million. This, in addition to material damages and loss of finances due to the siege and trade limitations later imposed on the Strip, make up the final sum.

The agency’s report claims the Strip has not been in such dire straits since 1967, and that the government has become the residents’ main force of employment.

Gaza’s production capabilities are also on a permanent downslide, the UN agency says, and its economy has been recessing for nine years.

The agency offers no solution, and says it regrets that the $4.4 billion dollars pledged to the Strip during a Sharm El-Sheikh conference has not yet reached its destination.

The conference, held in the Egyptian city in March, hosted representatives from 45 different nations. The US pledged $900 million, a third of the sum pledged during the conference.

Israel’s laws of persecution

Nimer Sultany | The Guardian

8 September 2009

Two cases brought before Israeli courts last week revealed the attitude of the establishment towards Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. One shows how Palestinian citizens are treated as victims of police brutality, and the second shows how they are regularly victimised because of their opposition to injustice.

In the first, a policeman who shot and killed an Arab citizen in 2006 was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment. The unbearable leniency of the sentence is more evidence of the total disregard for Arab life inside Israel, where ethnicity of the victim is a de facto mitigating circumstance in the case of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Indeed, this was the only case in which any policeman or soldier was indicted since the mass protests of October 2000, in spite of the fact that about 40 citizens were killed during this period.

The second case involved an indictment against Rawi Sultani, a 23-year-old law student, for “contact with a foreign agent” and “delivering information to the enemy”; two flawed articles in Israel’s laws comparable in their application to use of “national security” laws by authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world. The young student is a political activist of the National Democratic Assembly (NDA), a party that calls for the transformation of Israel from a Jewish state into a state for all its citizens. Rawi is also the son of a well-known leader of the party. He is accused of having contact with another youth, who allegedly turned out to be a Hezbollah member, during a national Arab youth conference in Morocco. Allegedly, Rawi disclosed information regarding the Israeli army’s chief of staff, given their membership in the same gym. Yet the case is based on a tendentious account of one statement of a publicly known fact regarding the chief’s membership in that gym made by the accused.

The identity of the accused, the identity of his father, the party to which they both belong, the timing of the case and the kind of charges chosen cannot be easily overlooked and give grounds to questioning the political incentives behind the indictment and the message behind it. One would be hard put to explain the extensive surveillance against leaders and activists of the NDA as revealed by this case.

Indeed, since the emergence of the NDA in the mid 1990s, it faced mounting legal and public attacks. These attacks took a stronger turn since October 2000 and culminated in the forced exile of Azmi Bishara, the leader of the NDA, who was accused with similar charges in 2007. What was supposed to be a fatal blow to the NDA and its legitimacy within the Arab minority has failed, with the party’s success in the Israeli parliamentary elections in February. However, this did not deter the establishment from mounting further attacks on the cadres of the party. Thus, we have witnessed in the last month show-arrests and interrogations of many young activists of the NDA that are reminiscent of crackdowns on pro-democracy activists in authoritarian regimes.

Its connections with the Arab world is a recurring theme of the persecution of the NDA as a party challenging the Jewishness of the state, and is the real incentive behind Rawi’s case. The NDA has, since its inception, challenged the iron cage surrounding Arab citizens following 1948. Israel has detached Arab citizens from their familial, historical, cultural and sociopolitical milieu. The legislation preventing family unification and the naturalisation of spouses of Arab citizens if they were residents of the occupied territories or other Arab countries surrounding Israel is only the most draconian example of this policy of segregation. Israeli law also defines a long list of Arab states as enemy states and prohibits Arab citizens from visiting them, and prohibits political parties from expressing support of Arab liberation struggles. In short, “national security” is broadly defined to fit the dominant ideology of the state rather than the security of citizens, regardless of their national affiliation.

Yet, as Rawi’s father correctly argues, the Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot be expected to treat the Arab world as an enemy and they cannot be held accountable for the political views or affiliations of other Arabs they meet in their travels outside Israel. Indictments such as Rawi’s aim at forcing Palestinian citizens to adopt the Zionist newspeak and refrain from connections with the Arab world and from identifying with its legitimate cause against Israel’s continuing occupation of Arab lands.

Criminalising dissent is not unique to Israel. Many oppressive states, such as apartheid South Africa, have used it to de-legitimise parties, ideas and activities disliked by ruling elites and security apparatuses. Furthermore, persecution on grounds of “security” creates an immediate divide between Arab and Jewish citizens. In 2007, the head of Shabak, the Israeli general security agency, stated that struggles against the Jewishness of the state, even if lawful and democratic, would be deemed subversive. The current right-wing government is seeking to condition citizenship on loyalty to Zionist ideology, a demand unparalleled in any democracy and contrary to the most basic of human rights. With this kind of attitude, it is no wonder that young Arab men and women inside Israel are victimised because of their noble aspirations to equality and freedom.