Category: In the Media

Amnesty: Evidence of misuse of US-weapons reinforces need for arms embargo

Amnesty International

Amnesty International
Amnesty International

Both Israel and Hamas used weapons supplied from abroad to carry out attacks on civilians, Amnesty International said today as it released fresh evidence on the munitions used during the three-week conflict in Gaza and southern Israel and called on the UN to impose a comprehensive arms embargo.

[Download report: Fueling Conflict: Foreign arms supplies to Israel/Gaza]

“Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes. Their attacks resulted in the death of hundreds of children and other civilians and massive destruction of homes and infrastructure,” said Donatella Rovera who headed Amnesty International’s fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza. “At the same time, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets that had been smuggled in or made of components from abroad at civilian areas in Israel. Though far less lethal than the weaponry used by Israel, such rocket firing also constitutes a war crime and caused several civilian deaths.”

Even before the three-week conflict, those who armed the two sides will have been aware of the pattern of repeated misuse of weapons by the parties. They must take some responsibility for the violations perpetrated with the weapons they have supplied and should immediately cease further transfers.

“As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights. The Obama Administration should immediately suspend US military aid to Israel,” said Malcolm Smart, Director for the Middle East.

For many years the USA has been the major supplier of conventional arms to Israel. Under a 10-year agreement to 2017, the USA is due to provide $30 billion in military aid to Israel, a 25 percent increase compared to the period preceding the Bush administration.

“To a large extent, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with US taxpayers’ money,” said Malcolm Smart.

In Gaza, as the fighting ended Amnesty International researchers found fragments and components from munitions used by the Israeli Army – including many that are US-made – littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people’s homes. They included artillery and tank shells, mortar fins and remnants from Hellfire and other airborne missiles and large F-16 delivered bombs, as well as still smouldering highly incendiary white phosphorus remains.

They also found remnants of a new type of missile, seemingly launched from unmanned drones, which explodes large numbers of tiny sharp-edged metal cubes, each between 2mm and 4mm square in size. These lethal purpose-made shrapnel had penetrated thick metal doors and were embedded deep in concrete walls, and are clearly designed to maximize injury.

In southern Israel, Amnesty International also saw the remains of “Qassam”, Grad, and other indiscriminate rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against civilian areas. These unsophisticated weapons are either smuggled into Gaza clandestinely or constructed there from components secretly brought in from abroad. They cannot be aimed accurately and stand no comparison with the weaponry deployed by Israel but they have caused several deaths of Israeli civilians, injured others and damage to civilian property.

“We urge the UN Security Council to impose an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until effective mechanisms are found to ensure that munitions and other military equipment are not used to commit serious violations of international law,” said Malcolm Smart. “In addition all states should suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk of human rights violations. There must be no return to business as usual, with the predictably devastating consequences for civilians in Gaza and Israel.”

Students are revolting: The spirit of ’68 is reawakening

Emily Dugan | The Independent

8 February 2009

They are the iPod generation of students: politically apathetic, absorbed by selfish consumerism, dedicated to a few years of hedonism before they land a lucrative job in the City. Not any more. A seismic change is taking place in British universities.

Around the UK, thousands of students have occupied lecture theatres, offices and other buildings at more than 20 universities in sit-down protests. It seems that the spirit of 1968 has returned to the campus.

While it was the situation in Gaza that triggered this mass protest, the beginnings of political enthusiasm have already spread to other issues.

John Rose, one of the original London School of Economics (LSE) students to mount the barricades alongside Tariq Ali in 1968, spent last week giving lectures on the situation in Gaza at 12 of the occupations.

“This is something different to anything we’ve seen for a long time,” he said. “There is genuine fury at what Israel did.

“I think it’s highly likely that this year will see more student action. What’s interesting is the nervousness of vice chancellors and their willingness to concede demands; it indicates this is something that could well turn into [another] ’68.”

Beginning with a 24-hour occupation at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January, the sit-ins spread across the country. Now occupations have been held at the LSE, Essex, King’s College London, Birmingham, Sussex, Warwick, Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Nottingham, Queen Mary, Manchester, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Kingston, Goldsmiths and Glasgow.

Among the demands of students are disinvestment in the arms trade; the promise to provide scholarships for Palestinian students; a pledge to send books and unused computers to Palestine; and to condemn Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Technology has set these actions apart from those of previous generations, allowing a national momentum to grow with incredible speed. Through the linking up of internet blogs, news of successes spread quickly and protests grew nationwide.

Just three weeks after the first sit-in at SOAS, students gathered yesterday at Birkbeck College to draw up a national strategy. The meeting featured speeches from leaders in the Stop the War movement, such as Tony Benn, George Galloway MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP. There has also been an Early Day Motion tabled in Parliament in support of campus activism.

At the end of the month students from across the country will gather for a national demonstration calling for the abolition of tuition fees, an event that organisers say has rocketed in size following the success of the occupations over Gaza.

Vice chancellors and principals have been brought to the negotiating table and – in the majority of universities – bowed to at least one of the demands. The students’ success means that now there is a new round of protests. On Wednesday two new occupations began at Strathclyde and Manchester universities, and on Friday night students at the University of Glasgow also launched a sit-in.

Emily Dreyfus, a 21-year-old political activist in her third year of reading classics at Oxford, was one of around 80 students to occupy the historic Bodleian library building in the city and demand that the university issue a statement condemning the Gaza attacks and disinvest from the arms trade. She said: “I found Oxford politically very dead when I arrived, but it’s completely different now. There seem to be more and more people talking about politics, which is so exciting. It’s really been aided by the communication tools we’ve got, things like Facebook.”

Wes Streeting, the president of the National Union of Students, said: “What we’ve seen over the Gaza issue is a resurgence of a particular type of protest: the occupation. It’s a long time since we’ve seen student occupations on such a scale. It’s about time we got the student movement going again and had an impact.”

Establishments that have not previously been known for their activism have also become involved. Fran Legg was one of several students to set up the first Stop the War Coalition at Queen Mary, a research-focused university in London, a month ago. Now they are inundated with interest.

“Action on this scale among students hasn’t been seen since the Sixties and Seventies,” she said.

“This is going to go down in history as a new round of student mobilisation and it will set a precedent. Gaza is the main issue at the moment, but we’re looking beyond the occupation; we’re viewing it as a springboard for other protests and to set up a committee to make sure the university only invests ethically.”

As the first generation of students to pay substantial direct fees to universities, their negotiating power has also been strengthened. Their concern over their college’s investments have been given new legitimacy because it is partly their money.

Ms Legg said: “For the first time, you’ve got students getting principals to the negotiation table, saying they don’t want their tuition fees funding war. Everybody wants to know where their money is going.”

The activist: ‘Students will see they can take action’

Katan Alder, 22, student leader speaking from the occupation at Manchester University

“We’ve been occupying the university since Wednesday. More than 500 people came to an emergency Students’ Union meeting and we took the vice chancellor’s administration block that afternoon. Israel’s assault on Gaza made people angry, and we heard about the occupations at other universities through blogs. This is the biggest student campaign we’ve had and it’s also the most wide-reaching. We’ll stay until the university lets us meet with the vice chancellor. I think students will see they can take action on more issues, such as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the education system; the Government’s refusal to stop the marketisation of education has provoked a lot of anger.”

The ’68 veteran: ‘It changed our lives’

John Rose, 63, former student organiser at the London School of Economics in 1968; now a lecturer and author on the Middle East

“I arrived at the LSE in ’66 as an extremely naive liberal student and I left in ’69 as a revolutionary socialist. It changed our lives. I was one of the student organisers with Tariq Ali and attended all the demonstrations and occupations. We did think a revolution was coming; we thought mass action of students might overthrow capitalism and bring genuine equality. It took us some time to realise that wasn’t going to happen.

“It wasn’t just about rioting and having fun, it was political argument that probed all the assumptions about the world. It was a highly intense period and the memory stays powerfully with anyone involved; it’s the memory of those times that has kept me going.

“It was a feeling of fantastic elation: we began to realise that mass action could change things. Once it started, we developed a taste for it and began to consider mass activity as a way of doing politics, which is what’s happening now. People are fed up with bankers, politicians and elite institutions. Hundreds of us thought the revolution was coming in ’69, but maybe the revolution is coming now.”

Passengers of freighter seized by Israel return home with tales of abuse

Soldiers kicked and beat activists, journalists before setting them free

Andrew Wander | The Daily Star

BEIRUT: A group of activists arrested after the Israeli navy seized an aid ship bound for the devastated Gaza Strip were expelled from Israel on Friday, a day after being detained by the military. Fifteen of the Togolese-flagged Tali’s crew members were deported back to Lebanon and Syria early on Friday, and three others were preparing to fly to London.

Nine Lebanese and a Palestinian were handed over at the border with Israel to the UN peacekeeping force responsible for monitoring stability in southern Lebanon.

The freed crew told how they were beaten and handcuffed after Israeli gunboats fired on the ship and sailors stormed the vessel, arresting everyone on board. The boat was then towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod where it was searched.

Salam Khodr, an Al-Jazeera journalist who was on board the vessel, said the Israelis had taken the crew’s possessions when they were arrested. “The Israeli army confiscated all our videotapes; we were separated from each other, we were blindfolded and handcuffed. They beat some of us; I was beaten,” she said.

“The soldiers kicked Dr Hani Suleiman, in the chest and back; we asked for a physician to check Dr Suleiman who suffered short breath; one Israeli female soldier answered: ‘You should have thought about his health condition before you attempted to come and break the siege of Gaza’,” Khodr said.

An Israeli military spokes-man admitted that no arms had been found on the ship, which turned out to be laden with medicine, food, and humanitarian supplies for the population of the war ravaged enclave.

Israel is enforcing a tight blockade of Gaza, but said that blood donations that were on board had been immediately transferred to territory. More than 1000 units of donated blood were part of the ship’s humanitarian cargo.

The Arab League described the seizure of the vessel and the detention of those on board as “an act of piracy,” and said it would complain to the United Nations about the incident.

But Israeli officials defended their actions, saying that the boat had raised suspicions because “it could threaten security concerns, or furthermore, the boat could be used for smuggling banned equipment [weaponry etc.] into or out of the Gaza Strip.”

The ship set sail from Tripoli on Tuesday, docking in Cyprus where its cargo was checked before beginning its onward journey towards Gaza. But it was intercepted by Israeli helicopters and gunboats as it tried to enter Gazan territorial waters.

Israel denies that their sailors fired at the ship, but passengers insist that they came under attack. “They opened fire on us,” Khodr said.

The Tali remains in port at Ashdod and there has been no indication of when it will be allowed to sail.

In the months before Israel’s recent military offensive in Gaza, several boats breached the naval blockade to deliver aid and free Palestinian students trapped in the coastal strip.

But since fighting in Gaza began at the end of last year, Israel has clamped down on aid shipments entering the enclave. Last month an Iranian ship was prevented from delivering humanitarian supplies, and in December a vessel belonging to the Free Gaza Movement was rammed and badly damaged by an Israeli gunboat.

The interception of the Tali marks the first time Israel has captured an aid ship and its crew, and will be seen as a clear signal that it will not tolerate further attempts to circumvent the blockade of Gaza.

Hamas has said that lifting the crippling restrictions on the territory’s borders is a precondition for any sustainable ceasefire with Israel, but the Jewish state has so far refused to consider relinquishing control of the borders. – With agencies

An open letter to Sir Roger Moore

PACBI | Unless we do something about it, we’ll never ever be able to hold our heads up!! An Open Letter to Sir Roger Moore

8 February 2009

The Palestinian arts community has received the news of your plans to make a special guest appearance at the Red Sea International Music Festival in Eilat this February in a state of disbelief. At a time of unprecedented Israeli war crimes and grave violations of human rights, condemned by leading UN officials and international human rights organizations, with Israel just ending its atrocious assault on the occupied Gaza Strip, after more than 18 months of a criminal siege, described as a “prelude to genocide” by the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, your participation in this festival can only be understood as condoning this injustice and celebrating it.

We feel exceptionally disappointed because of your otherwise significant record in advocating human rights, particularly in your capacity as the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Israel’s bloody war on occupied Gaza caused the immediate death of over 1,300 people, of whom 410 were children, in addition to injuring another 5,300 people [1]. As UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman noted in her statement regarding the Israeli aggression on Gaza:

“Each day more children are being hurt, their small bodies wounded, their young lives shattered. These are not just cold figures. They talk of children’s lives interrupted. No human being can watch this without being moved. No parent can witness this and not see their own child.” [2]

In response to this systematic brutality, and to Israel having bombed clearly marked UN schools and storage compounds with white phosphorus munitions and other banned weapons killing dozens of civilians taking shelter under the UN flag, the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International and many leading international jurists have all called for a war crimes investigation. Given this context, your participation in this festival would constitute a gesture of “goodwill” towards a state which is widely viewed by people of conscience the world over as a rogue state above the law of nations, a state that commits severe and persistent human rights violations which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, with utter impunity.

Palestinian civil society also responded by fully uniting behind the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it fulfills its obligations under international law and fully recognizes Palestinian rights [3]. Hundreds of progressive Israeli academics, intellectuals and activists have also come out in support of punitive measures by the international community against Israel to make it accountable for perpetrating war crimes [4].

Beyond the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, Israel is recognized by the United Nations and the absolute majority of nations as a repressive occupying power that maintains illegal colonies in the occupied Palestinian territory, violates international law, UN resolutions, and the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. These are not abstract notions, at least not to Palestinians. Israel denies millions of Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their homes of origin, as stipulated by international law; it is building settlements and a monstrous Wall, both of which were declared illegal by the International Court of Justice; it is regularly demolishing thousands of Palestinian homes as a form of collective punishment; it is killing Palestinian children with impunity; it is uprooting hundreds of thousands of Palestinian trees; and its ubiquitous roadblocks are imprisoning Palestinian civilians, denying them access to health care, schools and jobs. Moreover, Israel maintains a system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens reminiscent of South African apartheid. These injustices, among others, have been well documented by leading human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Human Rights.

Furthermore, as you may know, virtually all Palestinian filmmakers, artists and cultural figures have called on their colleagues worldwide to boycott Israeli cultural and arts institutions due to their complicity in perpetuating Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression against the Palestinian people [5]. Ken Loach, John Berger, John Williams and many other prominent international cultural figures have endorsed this call for boycott. Many artists have heeded our appeals and turned down invitations to participate in Israeli gigs and festivals. These include Bono, Snoop Dogg, Bjork and Jean-Luc Godard.

Moreover, UNICEF last year decided to cut all ties with an Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev due to his companies’ construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. We hope it is not too much to expect conscientious international artists to uphold the values of freedom, equality and justice for all?

In your website you emphasise that you have been drawn into work for human rights, particularly those of children, through your colleague Audrey Hepburn, and you note:

“… I listened to Audrey speak-she was so eloquent and so passionate. She said that there are millions of children out there, and they are dying. Unless we do something about it, we’ll never ever be able to hold our heads up. Also, she said, that has to be pointed out to governments.” [6]

In the spirit of such a noble and brave commitment we appeal to your moral conscience and your record of standing up for principles of human dignity and equality. We sincerely hope that you will withdraw from this event and inform the Israeli organizers and government that you will not attend their festivals as long as Israel continues to deny the Palestinian people its inalienable rights to emancipation and human rights.

Yours truly,

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)