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Paul Merrell

Mahmoud Abbas accused of being traitor over rejection of Israel boycott | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...abbas-rejection-israel-boycott

war & peace Israel Palestine BSD Abbas

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been accused of being a traitor by activists after publicly rejecting calls for a boycott of Israel.His unambiguous statement, made in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela's death, has fuelled a bitter debate on the legitimacy and efficacy of sanctions over Israel's treatment of Palestinians.However, Abbas distinguished between Israel's borders and its settlements in Palestinian territories. "We do not support the boycott of Israel. But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements."His comments infuriated the boycott movement, which after Mandela's death has been boosted by comparisons with the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa and the decision last week of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.The boycott movement claims it is on a roll, citing a recent EU prohibition against giving grants or funds to bodies with links to settlements, a warning by the British government that firms risk damaging their reputations if they have dealings with Israeli enterprises across the Green Line, and the decision by a Dutch company to sever links with the Israeli water company, Mekorot.
  • The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, set up in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations, expects next year "to cross even higher thresholds in its drive to isolate Israel, just as South Africa was isolated under apartheid", said Omar Barghouti, one of its founding members.The ASA's decision was "fresh evidence that the BDS movement may be reaching a tipping point on college campuses and among academic associations", he added. Two other US academic bodies – the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association of American Asian Studies – have also backed the boycott movement.
  • Samia Botmeh, a lecturer at Birzeit university in the West Bank and a leading member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said restricting a boycott to settlements was to focus on the consequences, rather than the origins, of the occupation.
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  • Many observers expect the boycott movement to gain momentum should peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians fail to produce a deal. Andreas Reinicke, the outgoing EU envoy to the Middle East, warned last week that momentum in favour of a settlement boycott would grow without a peace agreement.Less than two years ago, only two EU countries – Britain and Denmark – backed the labelling of goods originating in settlements as such in order to allow consumers to make informed choices. Now 14 EU states support the move. "There is movement in this direction," he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13
     
    The Palestinian Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment ("BSD") campaign breaks into mainstream media. For several years, I have subscribed to a daily digest of news on Israel-Palestine issues. Modeled on the successful South African BSD movement that ended the South African apartheid state, the Palestinian movement has had a long string of victories, with only a few of the most recent discussed in this article. The BSD movement, in my studied opinion, represents the best hope of finally resolving the Palestinian Question, resulting in a single non-sectarian state spanning both Israel and Palestine. Until that day, Israel's war crimes against Palestinians, extending from the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians when Israel was first formed via terrorist paramilitary actions, will likely continue.  
Paul Merrell

Obama to Israel -- Time Is Running Out - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...-to-israel-time-is-running-out

war & peace Israel U.S. foreign policy Obama interview

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House tomorrow, President Barack Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future -- one of international isolation and demographic disaster -- if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. And the president will make the case that Netanyahu, alone among Israelis, has the strength and political credibility to lead his people away from the precipice. In an hourlong interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.”
  • Unlike Netanyahu, Obama will not address the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, this week -- the administration is upset with Aipac for, in its view, trying to subvert American-led nuclear negotiations with Iran. In our interview, the president, while broadly supportive of Israel and a close U.S.-Israel relationship, made statements that would be met at an Aipac convention with cold silence.Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I've ever heard him. His language was striking, but of a piece with observations made in recent months by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who until this interview, had taken the lead in pressuring both Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to a framework deal. Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s.
  • “There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    Lengthy interview with Obama published March 2, 2014. Obama talks a much harder stance with Israel, conveying the view that the U.S. may not be able to continue protecting Israel diplomatically if the current negotiation between Israel and Palestine being brokered by John Kerry fails.  Get ready to put your money where your mouth is, Mr. President. Netenyahu has no intention to enter into an agreement with Palestine. He's served up one deal-breaker after another. And Netanyahu is trapped by his prior pandering to the Israeli right wing settlers in Palestine. 
Paul Merrell

Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ins-gaza-2014855316321399.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza Israeli-withdrawal negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Humanitarian truce brokered by Egypt holds in Palestinian enclave as both sides agree to take part in indirect talks.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14
     
    Indirect negotiations to begin in Cairo today and this time, Israel has agreed to participate. The success of the negotiations depends, in my opinion, on how hard the U.S. is willing to push Israel. Obviously, Obama has pushed harder in the last few days because Israel is not boycotting the negotiations and is pulling its troops out of Gaza and Turkey's determination to deploy its Navy to end the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. Israel boycotted the last negotiations held a couple of days ago in Cairo and immediately broke the cease-fire that Egypt had arranged. Israel has run up a trial balloon for the U.N. to take over administration of Gaza but I think it unlikely that the Palestinians would agree to that without U.N. peacekeeping forces stationed there with authorization to respond militarily if Israel maintains or reinstates its blockade of Gaza or invades again. It bears notice that Israel pulled off a propaganda coup by convincing western mainstream media that the tunnels from Gaza to Israel were created for purposes of terrorist attacks in Israel. In fact, the tunnels were built to smuggle supplies into Gaza, which has been blockaded since 2007. That Israel has now destroyed 32 of those tunnels only cranks up the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which now has a drastically reduced ability to bring in critical foodstuffs and medical treatment supplies. Massive tunnel destruction has also been done by the Egyptian government on the southern Gaza border, so the Gaza situation is now desperate.  Hopefully, the Turkish military's announced plan to guard a convoy of ships to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza happens very soon.  But note that this truce is only for 72 hours. I think it very likely that Hamas will resume rocket attacks on Israel at the end of that period unless massive humanitarian aid reaches Gaza before the end of that period.
Paul Merrell

Two in five Americans back sanctions on Israel -- poll | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...ans-back-sanctions-israel-poll

polls Palestine-question U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 May 17 - No Cached
  • Two in five Americans back economic sanctions or more serious actions against Israel over its continued construction of settlements on occupied Palestinian land, a crime under international law, a new poll has found. Among Democrats, a clear majority – 56 percent – backs economic sanctions or tougher actions.
  • More than half – 54 percent – say the US should be even-handed, leaning neither towards the Israelis or Palestinians, a figure that shoots up to 72 percent among Democrats. Right now, 57 percent of respondents overall see the US leaning more towards Israel. Americans are also very open-minded towards a one-state solution encompassing all of present-day Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Overall, 37 percent of Americans favor a two-state solution, but 31 percent say they would prefer “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.” Only 9 percent prefer Israel annexing all of the occupied territories without giving Palestinians full rights, and another 15 percent say they favor the status quo of indefinite military occupation. When asked what they would prefer if their favored approach fails, almost two-thirds – 63 percent overall – said a one-state solution. This includes 70 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans. Just 10 percent overall would contemplate what appears to be the direction Israel is heading: annexation of the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal citizenship. According to Telhami, who summarized some of the poll’s findings in a Washington Post article, the survey results show strong polarization between Democrats and independents on the one hand, who tend to be more favorable to Palestinian rights, and supporters of President Donald Trump, on the other, who strongly back Israel.
  • rump recently pledged to continue the policy of his predecessor Barack Obama of maintaining military aid to Israel at record levels. But even among Republicans, the survey reveals little support for Israel entrenching its apartheid system in the long term. The poll also highlights how starkly out of step US political elites are with the public. Last week, all 100 members of the Senate signed a letter to the UN secretary-general demanding that Israel be given “equal treatment” – meaning in effect that it be exempted from scrutiny or accountability for its well-documented violations of Palestinian rights and international law. The poll is more bad news for Israel and leaders of its lobby groups, who recently acknowledged in a private report leaked to The Electronic Intifada that their efforts to thwart the “impressive growth” of the Palestine solidarity movement have failed despite vastly increasingly their spending. Similar polls in Canada and Australia in recent months have shown surging public support in those countries for actions to hold Israel accountable, including boycott, divestment and sanctions.
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: at ICC Palestine seeks 23 counts against Israel, 7 war crimes - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...exclusive-palestine-apartheid

war & peace Israel ICC charges Palestine war crimes apartheid

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Palestinian leaders seek to charge Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague with the crime of “Apartheid” and 22 other criminal counts, including seven war crimes. A thick set of documents containing evidence and arguments was ceremoniously handed over to the ICC today at its headquarters, according to Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq. Jabarin said he had seen the documents in Ramallah and that the case file covers three areas of Israeli violations under international law: the summer war in Gaza in 2014, settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and issues relating to Palestinian prisoners. Most of the pages are of “legal analysis and legal arguments” he said, in which Palestinians gave technical explanations to the court for how Israel broke specific regulations.
  • The dossier is organized into sections, one for each of the 23 counts against Israel. Aside from asserting that Israel has violated the United Nations definition of “Apartheid,” Jabarin said the report also names specific crimes such as the “targeting of civilians” in Gaza, and violations of rights to due process for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons who are then prosecuted under Israeli military code. Military courts boast a 99.9% conviction rate and trials last an average of five minutes. Palestinians rights groups say these courts violate their fundamental rights to a fair trial. Additionally, Israel transfers Palestinians from the occupied territory to a number of prisons inside Israel in what the Palestinian brief argues is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.   The evidence used to support each of the Palestinian claims is sourced from field investigations by the Palestinian government, and reports published by the human rights groups Al Haq, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Surprisingly Jabarin indicated the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) report published Sunday outlining “possible war crimes” committed by Israel and Hamas was not included, despite Palestinian leaders stating repeatedly over the past few months that they would courier a copy to the ICC. Even so, the court has the ability to solicit their own research materials including ordering the UN report.
  • Last winter after Palestine joined the ICC, its leaders sought to compel the ICC to look into war crimes committed by Israel. However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was barred at that time from calling for a criminal investigation. His hands were tied by a four-month waiting period for new members to the court. All the same, Palestinian officials exploited a loophole in the ICC rules to initiate a “preliminary inquiry” against Israel within their first months of joining the ICC. Now that freeze against filing charges against Israel has elapsed, Palestinian officials hope that their documents turned over to the court today will upgrade the inquiry into a full investigation, giving the court the power to summons Israeli officials for a trial. Yet there is no guarantee that the court will charge Israel, and Israel can still take actions that would immobilize The Hague. 
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  • The ICC can only move to charge Israel once its internal war crimes investigations closes. The ICC does not prosecute countries or leaders who are sanctioned by their own legal systems. Right now, Israel still has a handful of cases open that could lead to indictments. On the other hand, prosecution in the ICC could be nearing for Hamas for the alleged war crimes it committed during the war, including the targeting of civilians by rocket fire and the killings of so-called collaborators. The UN Human Rights Council report revealed the Islamic movement that rules Gaza does not have any system of internal review, which is the only mechanism that could outright block the ICC from opening charges. As a result, Hamas is currently more exposed to the long arm of the ICC than Israel.
Paul Merrell

What happens when you talk about Gaza (and heckle a senator) in Vermont - World Israel ... - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1.611857

war & peace Israel Gaza Sanders Auction 2016

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • A recent town hall meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders became heated when the conversation turned to Israel, Hamas and the recent fighting in Gaza.   
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 14
     
    Bernie Sanders took some serious heat from Vermont citizens in a town hall meeting when the subject turned to Israel and Gaza. It says something important for Auction 2016 that Israel's war crimes against Palestinians is becoming a divisive issue that U.S. politicians are being forced to discuss in public. From the points by hecklers that drew applause and the complete absence of applause on the points made by Sanders, it's clear that Israel had zero public support brave enough to demonstrate support for Sanders' position that cast blame on both sides of the Gaza conflict and offered no solution. while many of the hecklers' pro-Gaza and anti-Israel points drew enthusiastic applause. Significantly, Sanders' position is pretty much the standard response coming from most Democratic members of Congress. Look for American public opinion polling on Israel to become more granular and frequent as politicians seek new positions on Israel/Palestine/Gaza that play better with American voters. This is not good news for the Israel Lobby in its relationship with Capitol Hill. Note that this article is published in the most popular Israeli liberal/leaning newspaper, a strong message to Israeli leadership and the American Israel Lobby that they are going to have to give ground on the Palestine Question to salvage political support in the U.S.. 
Paul Merrell

Poll Finds 37% Of Americans Believe Israel Has Too Much Influence Over US Politics - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212419

Israel-lobby polls Israeli-influence U.S. Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Poll results released last month show that Americans are sharply divided over the influence of Israel on U.S. politics, and those divisions often fall along party lines. On Dec. 4, The Brookings Institution, a highly influential Washington-based think tank, released the results of a study of American attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East. The report comes after a year in which Israel’s influence on America’s governance and foreign policy received heightened scrutiny, especially following a controversial speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobbying group, also faced increased criticism. The bulk of the poll was based on the opinions of 875 randomly selected Americans, but the study’s author, Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings’ Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, also polled an additional 863 additional Americans who self-identify as Evangelical or Born-again Christians to determine how their attitudes differed from the average.
  • When asked “How Much Influence Does the Israeli Government Have in American Politics?” 37 percent, or just over 1 in 3 Americans, feel Israel has too much influence. Eighteen percent say Israel should have even more influence over our government, while the largest group, at 44 percent, feels Israel wields an appropriate level of influence. Almost half of Democrats, 49 percent, feel Israel has too much influence over U.S. politics, while a slight majority of Republicans, 52 percent, are comfortable with Israel’s current level of influence. Among Evangelical Christians, meanwhile, 39 percent believe Israel has too little influence and 38 percent are satisfied with the country’s level of influence. Telhami also asked respondents about their views on the conflict between apartheid Israel and occupied Palestine. Twenty-nine percent of Americans reported that they are “very concerned” about recent events in Israel and Palestine, while 38 percent are “somewhat concerned.” When asked who is to blame for strife in the region, the most popular answer, 31 percent, was the lack of a peace process, “while 26% equally blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement, expansion in the West Bank, and Palestinian extremists.” These results also showed strong partisan differences:
  • “[A] plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first, followed by 27% who blame absence of serious diplomacy, and 16% blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion.” The report noted a slight increase in support for a one-state solution to problems in Israel compared to findings in 2014. Under a one-state solution, Israel and Palestine would become a single, multicultural, multireligious nation, as opposed to two-state solutions which would divide Israel and Palestine into two separate, independent countries. “Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%,” Telhami wrote, adding that Republicans saw the largest increase in support for a single-state solution. “The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each).” More people are also willing to accept a single-state solution if a two-state solution proves impossible, he added: “Among those who advocate a two-state solution as their preferred solution, 73% say they would support a one-state solution if the first option were no longer possible (in comparison to only 66% in 2014).” The poll also found that Netanyahu’s popularity has fallen sharply over the last year, at least among Democrats. Thirty-four percent now view him unfavorably, up from 22 percent in 2014, while Republicans’ opinions of him remain largely unchanged.
Paul Merrell

Even as Clinton opposes sanctions over Israeli settlements, new poll shows her Democrat... - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...nctions-settlements-democratic

war & peace Auction 2016 Israel Palestine BDS polls Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Last weekend Hillary Clinton joined the Republican candidates in coming down hard against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Speaking to her financial sponsor Haim Saban as well as a D.C. audience, she described the campaign as anti-semitic and wrong, and meantime offered vague opposition to Israeli settlements. Well there’s a good reason Clinton doesn’t want the issue politicized. If the matter were actually debated openly between Republicans and Democrats, her own base would be against her. A new poll of American attitudes on the conflict from Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution says that Democrats favor sanctions to counter Israeli settlement construction. Telhami reports: It is notable that among Democrats, more people (49%) recommend either imposing economic sanctions or taking more serious action [re settlements], than those recommending doing nothing or limiting U.S. opposition towards (46%)
  • The poll also shows broad support for a one-state outcome among Americans. The poll at Telhami’s academic site defines one state as “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%. The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each). This shows that Democrats support a two-state-solution over one state by 45 to 33. Still: a third of Dem voters are for a single democratic state with equal citizenship. Dems don’t like the Israel lobby either. The poll shows that by more than a three-to-one ratio, Democrats feel that Israel has too much influence in American politics. And Americans generally also are turned off:
  • Overall, twice as many Americans say the Israeli government has too much influence (37%) than say too little influence (18%), while a plurality (44 %) say it’s the right level. The story once again is more pronounced in the partisan views: Among Democrats, about half (49%) say Israel has too much influence, compared with 14% who say Israel has too little influence, and 36 % who say it’s the right level. Netanyahu’s popularity has crashed among Dems, though he’s a heroic figure to Republicans. Notice that Democratic attitudes on blame for the recent “escalation in violence” actually track attitudes on our site. Democrats understand the Palestinian violence as a response to lack of freedom: A plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first…
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  • And again, Americans are for a secular democracy there. Where did we ever get that idea? Strong American majorities continue to favor Israel’s democracy over its Jewishness in the absence of a two-state solution (72% in 2015, compared with 71% in 2014). Hillary Clinton has very different attitudes. She calls Israel “a thriving raucous democracy” and a “light unto the nations,” and is fundamentally opposed to the idea of any pressure on Israel. She said: Some proponents of BDS may hope that pressuring Israel may lead to peace. Well that’s wrong too. No outside force is going to resolve the conflict between Israeli’s and Palestinian’s.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 15
     
    "Negotiations" for a two-state solution has never been anything more than an excuse for prolonging an apartheid government across all of Palestine. The fact that public support is building in the U.S. for a single-state, secular government for all of Palestine including Israel has to be keeping Israel's right-wing leadership up at night. Israel is losing the BDS battle for U.S. hearts and minds. Hillary risks eroding her support by continuing to push for the increasingly unpopular two-state solution.
Paul Merrell

Zionism's Last Card and Hope For Palestine - Alan Hart - 0 views

www.alanhart.net/st-card-and-hope-for-palestine

U.S. foreign policy Israel Palestine Israel-lobby Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Following the interim agreement with Iran the next six months will tell us whether or not the American-led Zionist lobby and Zionism itself has played its last card and lost. If it does lose President Obama will be free to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept (and which would not pose any threat to the wellbeing and security of those Jews now living in Palestine that became Israel and who wanted to stay). The stakes could not be higher. As I write I am recalling what former President Carter said to my wife and I when we met with him and Rosalyn, words I quote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews and which bear repeating. “Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to take on the Zionist lobby – in the first nine months of his first term and the last year of his second term if he has one.”
  • I am happy to go public with this positive speculation in part because of an article by Philip Weiss. In it he noted that Netanyahu has been playing the Iran threat card “to keep the world’s eyes off the West Bank and Jerusalem.” Then, commenting on Netanyahu’s statement that Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability, he wrote this. “The ardent supporters of the Jewish state in the U.S. have never been in a worse position. They are largely supportive of this deal (as are a majority of all Americans, I add). They will have to throw Netanyahu under the bus.” Not long ago the proclaimed view of some American supporters of Israel right or wrong was that Obama was throwing Israel under a bus. The idea that American Jews should now throw Netanyahu under it appeals to me, as I am sure it does to Obama. If Congress does back away from doing Zionism’s bidding to wreck the prospects for a new-start American and European accommodation with Iran, what options if any will Netanyahu’s Israel have to distract the world’s media and political attention from Zionism’s on-going colonization – ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth – of the occupied West Bank? Only one that I can see. War.
  • Though events may prove me wrong, my overall speculation is that Zionism’s last card is not a winner and that Obama will succeed in getting, six months or so from now, what he wants – a new-start and mutually beneficial relationship with Iran. And defeat for the Zionist lobby will, as I indicated in my opening paragraph, free him to use the presidential leverage to try to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians could accept.
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  • In the context above what I am suggesting is that if and when he is free to put real pressure on Israel to be serious about peace with the Palestinians, Obama should make best use of the Kennedy quote – “What we want from Israel arises because our relationship is a two-way street”. And he could and should put flesh on that bone by saying, among other things, that it is not in America’s own best interests to allow Israel to go on denying the Palestinians an acceptable measure of justice. But his crunch point could and should be something like this. “What America wants and needs, in order to best protect its own interests in the Arab and wider Muslim world, is an end to Israel’s denial of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Unless we get that, I as president will have no choice but to use the leverage at my disposal to press you.” Israelis would know, even if Obama didn’t spell it out, that the pressure would include an end to American vetoes of Security Council resolutions condemning Israel and sanctions. If Obama was to go public with such a position in the wake of defeat for the Zionist lobby over the Iran nuclear issue, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a big majority of Jewish Americans would signal, if only by their silence and/or refusal to condemn Obama, that their first loyalty was to America not Israel.
  • There is no certainty about how the Jews of Israel would respond, but there’s a good case for believing that because what most of them care most about is the relationship with America, a significant majority of them would say to Netanyahu and his coalition government something like: “Enough is enough. We insist that you make peace with the Palestinians on terms they can accept, even if that means a short, sharp civil war with those settlers who refuse to withdraw from the West Bank and be relocated and compensated.”
  • For those who might believe there is little or no prospect of a Jewish civil war in the event of President Obama insisting with leverage as necessary on Israel making peace with the Palestinians on terms they could accept, I recommend Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book. This chapter is titled The Blood Oath. It reveals that Sharon convened a secret meeting of many senior military officers to sign a blood oath committing them to make common cause with those settlers who would resist “to the death” the implementation of any government decision to withdraw from the West Bank. My named and quoted source for that dramatic story was none other than Ezer Weizman, Israel’s defense minister of the time. When Ezer told me of the secret meeting minutes after he learned about it, he asked me a question. Did I think Sharon would act in accordance with the blood oath he and others had signed? I said: “What I think is of no consequence. I’m a visiting goy. You’re Israel’s defense minister, what do you think?” He replied: “Of course, he would. He’s mad enough to nuke the entire fucking Arab world!“ The coming months will tell us how mad Netanyahu is. And also whether or not the optimism expressed in this post was justified.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13
     
    'Twould be nice if it worked out this way. But Obama is spineless so I won't hold my breath. 
Paul Merrell

Recognizing Palestine, BDS and the survival of Israel | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...14123

war & peace Israel Palestine BDS EU-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • What is happening in European parliaments? In the last month and a half, the UK House of Commons, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Irish parliaments have all recognized Israel’s eternal “right” to be a racist state via a much-touted recognition of an alleged Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas of Palestine Israel occupied in 1967. These moves followed the lead of Sweden’s new center-left government which decided shortly after taking office to “recognize the State of Palestine” as part of the “two-state solution.” As there is no Palestinian state to recognize within the 1967, or any other, borders, these political moves are engineered to undo the death of the two-state solution, the illusion of which had guaranteed Israel’s survival as a Jewish racist state for decades. These parliamentary resolutions in fact aim to impose a de facto arrangement that prevents Israel’s collapse and replacement with a state that grants equal rights to all its citizens and is not based on colonial and racial privileges.
  • Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes he can force the world to recognize a greater racist Israel that annexes the territories Israel occupied in 1967 de jure, the European parliaments are insisting that they will only guarantee Israel’s survival as a racist state within Israel’s 1948 borders and on whatever extra lands within the 1967 territories the Palestinian Authority (PA) — collaborating with Israel — agrees to concede in the form of “land swaps.” Denmark’s parliament and the European Parliament itself are the latest bodies set to consider votes guaranteeing Israel’s survival in its present form within the 1948 boundaries only. Even neutral Switzerland agreed, upon a request from the PA, to host a meeting of signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention to discuss the 1967 Israeli occupation only. Expectedly, in addition to the Jewish settler-colony, the world’s major settler colonies — the United States, Canada, and Australia — are opposed to the meeting and will not attend.
  • The context of these steps has to do with the recent conduct of the Netanyahu government whose impatience is exposing Israel’s liberal racist politicians — those who prefer a more patient approach to achieving the very same racist political goals — to embarrassment. The situation has become so untenable that ardent American liberal Zionists led by none other than Michael Walzer, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, have felt compelled to act. Walzer, notorious for justifying all of Israel’s conquests as “just wars,” and a group of like-minded figures calling themselves “Scholars for Israel and Palestine,” recently called on the US government to impose a travel ban on right-wing Israeli politicians who support annexation of what remains of the West Bank. Whereas successive Israeli governments have shown an unyielding determination to strengthen Israel’s right to be a racist state over all of historic Palestine, they have done so through the ruse of the “peace process,” which they were committed to maintaining for decades to come without any resolution.
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  • This strategy has worked very well for the last two decades with hardly a peep from the Palestinian Authority, which owes its very existence to this unending “process.” More recently, Hamas’ political leadership, especially the branch in Qatar, where the group’s leader Khaled Meshal is based, has also been looking for the best way to join this project. But as the ongoing Netanyahu policies of visiting horrors on the Palestinian people across all of the territories Israel controls — policies that have exposed the “peace process” for the sham it always was as well as Israel’s claim to being “democratic” as a most fraudulent one — the international consensus that Israeli liberals have built over the decades to shield Israel’s ugly reality from the world has been weakened, if not threatened with collapse altogether. Israeli liberals realize that what Netanyahu is doing is threatening their entire project and the very survival of Israel as a racist Jewish state. It is in this context that European parliaments are rushing to rescue Israel’s liberals by guaranteeing for them Israel’s survival in its racist form through recognizing a nonexistent Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders.” It is also in this context that European governments in the last year or so have begun to speak of BDS as a possible weapon they could use to threaten the Netanyahu government if it continues in its refusal to “negotiate” with the Palestinians (the Europeans use of the threat of BDS is limited to a threat of boycotting only the products of Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied territories), that is, to maintain the illusion of an ongoing “peace process.” Herein lies the dilemma for those who support BDS.
Paul Merrell

At the Boiling Point With Israel - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-the-2-state-option-alive.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Israel Palestine 2-state-solution NYTimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • If the aim of the Israeli government is to prevent a peace deal with the Palestinians, now or in the future, it’s close to realizing that goal. Last week, it approved the construction of a new Jewish settlement in the West Bank, another step in the steady march under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build on land needed to create a Palestinian state.The Obama administration, with every justification, strongly condemned the action as a betrayal of the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East. But Mr. Netanyahu obviously doesn’t care what Washington thinks, so it will be up to President Obama to find another way to preserve that option before he leaves office.The best idea under discussion now would be to have the United Nations Security Council, in an official resolution, lay down guidelines for a peace agreement covering such issues as Israel’s security, the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and borders for both states.
  • In a statement, the State Department denounced the new construction plan, saying it would create a “significant new settlement” so deep into the West Bank that it would be “far closer to Jordan than Israel.” It said the project would “effectively divide the West Bank and make the possibility of a viable Palestinian state more remote” and contradicts earlier Israeli government assurances that it would block more settlements.
  • A failure to freeze settlements has long been at the center of tensions between successive American administrations and Israel. This latest decision was especially insulting, coming just a few weeks after the United States and Israel concluded a defense agreement guaranteeing Israel $38 billion in military aid over 10 years. If the new settlement was known earlier, it might have affected those negotiations. Theoretically, the aid gives the United States leverage over Israel, but various administrations have been loath to exercise it; the first President George Bush withheld $400 million in loan guarantees from Israel in 1990 over the settlement issue. The move was later assumed to have been one factor in his re-election defeat.
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  • The most plausible pressure would come from Mr. Obama’s leading the Security Council to put its authority behind a resolution to support a two-state solution and offer the outlines of what that could be. That may seem like a bureaucratic response unlikely to change anything, but it is the kind of political pressure Mr. Netanyahu abhors and has been working assiduously to prevent.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16
     
    An act of desperation by the NYT editorial board. They wouldn't be taking this position if they had not learned that the U.S. is preparing a U.N. Security Council Resolution to deal with Israel's intransigience. Of course that would only be a "bureaucratic response," as the NYT puts it, if it is not a resolution under the U.N. Charter's Chapter 7, which authorizes military force to enforce the resolution. By rooting for a resolution that only makes a recommendation, the editorial board is retaining the ability to gripe about a Chapter 7 resolution. But this is also a heads-up from the editorial board directed to the Netanyahu government of Israel that staunch Israel backer NYT has also had it with Israeli colonization of Palestine's West Bank. It's a signal that the era of NYT being Israel's mouthpiece with the loudest voice may come to an end over the colonization issue. The problem for all of the above is that the 2-state solution is dead as a doornail, outpaced by Israeli created facts on the ground. The nation of Israel as we know it is expiring as we watch. A single democratic nation for all of Palestine with equal rights for all citizens, Arab and Jewish, Israel is the only practicable outcome.
Paul Merrell

Losing public opinion on BDS, activists turn to 'lawfare' - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...lawfare-against-divestment

war & peace Palestine BDS Ilinois legislation 1st Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 May 15 - No Cached
  •      Champions of proposed Senate Bill SB1761, which passed both houses of the Illinois General Assembly May 18th, say it’s designed to fight anti-Semitic activism and protects Israel from the existential threat posed by the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement (BDS). Opponents of the bill say it places the economic welfare of Israel before U.S. interests, tacitly endorses the full annexation of the West Bank into Israel, and violates our country’s First Amendment rights. The bill’s opponents are right. But a potential threat of this legislation, edging closer to the criminalization of advocating for Palestinian rights and against occupation, threatens our core First Amendment rights and has been relatively absent from the discourse surrounding this bill.
  • And that’s not just here in the United States. Israeli lawmakers sought to criminalize public support of boycotts against Israel back in 2010 through their “Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott.” When I spoke with a staffer for Illinois State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, inquiring if SB1761 was modeled after the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (regarding the Arab League boycott of Israel), I was informed “These ‘antiboycott’ laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). I hope this helps.…SB1761 falls in line with these federal laws”
  • Referencing EAA is another indication of the move toward weakening our First Amendment rights, as that amendment was meant to criminalize people who adhered to the Arab League’s boycott of Israel. Melissa Redmiles writes of the 70’s legislation in International Boycott Reports, 2003 and 2004 (pdf), from the IRS.gov website: “Those U.S persons who agree to participate in such boycotts are subject to criminal and civil penalties.” SB1761 seems to be the latest manifestation of a trend toward enacting a kind of trickle-down suppression. From the Center For Constitutional Rights website for Palestine Solidarity Legal Support: “These bills must be opposed in order to protect the right to engage in boycotts that reflect collective action to address a human rights issue, which the US Supreme Court has declared is protected speech… These bills would make it state policy to discourage support of human rights boycotts against Israel… and have the potential to stifle expressions of political beliefs…”
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  • SB1761 requires all five public retirement benefits systems of the Illinois Pension Code to divest “all direct holdings” from any company which engages in boycotting Israel. This is designed to financially punish companies which participate in BDS; presumably European companies. But it will also burden an already severely crippled,“worst in nation”, Illinois pension system. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner was quoted by Jewish United Fund News (JUF) earlier this month as saying, “I made a pledge that Illinois would become the first state in America to divest its public pension funds from any company in the world that boycotts Israel.” Rauner includes U.S. companies in his threat of divestment when he says “any company in the world.”
  • Relatedly from SB1761 itself: “It is not the intent [of this bill]… to cause divestiture from any company based in the United States of America.” Not intended? This soft language clearly leaves the door open to require Illinois public retirement systems’ divestiture from U.S. companies that participate in BDS. So, while politicians endorsing this bill can point to this statement of “intent” as some kind of safeguard for American companies, this same sentence simultaneously functions as a veiled threat to those companies.
  • SB1761 characterizes the motivations of the BDS movement as “intending to penalize… Israel.” Similarly, JUF News this month quoted JUF President Steven B. Nasatir saying, “At the core of the BDS movement is a quest to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.” That’s like stating that the intent of the Civil Rights Montgomery bus boycott was to “penalize white people.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 May 15
     
    As though ACLU didn't already have enough lawsuits going. But this takes the cake. Although anti-BDS legislation has been introduced several times in Congress but never got off the ground because of the First Amendment barrier. Similar measures pending in Europe too.  The good news here is that Israel's right-wing government is getting desperate. The BDS movement is mushrooming globally and routinely is achieving success in convincing companies (and recording artists, etc.) to pull out of Israel. More so in Europe, but BDS is off to a great start in the U.S. Kerry warned Netanyahu before the latter blew up the last round of negotations with the Palestinians that BDS would soon make it politically impossible for the U.S. to continue providing cover for Israel on the U.N. Security Council. There's a big shift of public opinion in the U.S. about Israel's abuse of Palestinians well under way. It won't be long before introducing Israel Lobby measures in Congress will stop happening. 
Paul Merrell

Analysis: PA 'balking' at war crimes probe - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...israel-201491273525819720.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes Abbas

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • After a document obtained by Al Jazeera revealed the Palestinian Authority (PA) has stalled the launch of a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Palestinian legal and human rights experts remain dubious that the PA ever truly intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a confidential letter obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the ICC's top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she "did not receive a positive confirmation" from PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki that the request submitted for an international investigation had the Palestinian government's approval. Palestinian officials have, on numerous occasions, threatened to head to the ICC to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. But their efforts so far, have proved fruitless. In July, a French lawyer filed a complaint with the court on behalf of the Palestinian minister of justice, accusing Israel of carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This came after a 2009 call for an ICC investigation into Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza that was later dropped when the prosecutor said Palestine was not a court member. In August, Malki met with ICC officials to discuss the implications of ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the criminal court. "Everything that has happened...is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel, amounting to crimes against humanity," he told reporters in The Hague, referring to the recent 51-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. Six Israeli civilians were killed, along with 66 Israeli soldiers.
  • Two years ago, Palestine became recognised as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly. This made it eligible to join the ICC; however, to date, Palestinian officials have not signed the Rome Statute, even though almost 80 percent of Palestinians support going to the court. Senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh didn't say when the Palestinians would apply to the ICC, but said it would probably happen in another few months. "The indictment against Israel at the ICC and all the accompanying documents are ready," Shtayyeh told Al Jazeera. One of the remaining hurdles, Shtayyeh said, is getting one remaining Palestinian faction - Islamic Jihad - to sign an accession document before the Palestinians can present it. Hamas signed onto the proposal at the behest of the PA in August. "We're not in a situation of setting a deadline or making an ultimatum," he said. "We're following developments in the region and the world, and therefore, we'll wait for answers from the international community. But I believe that by November-December, the picture should be clearer."
  • In response to Al Jazeera's claims, the Palestinian Justice Minister Salim al-Saqqa said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was serious about going to the ICC and was "awaiting national dialogue" to pursue it. "This issue is our number-one priority," he said. "It is still on the table awaiting a few legal and technical procedures. We have not missed our opportunity to head to the court." So far, the Palestinians have struggled to use the court to pursue their claims, with some attributing this to the PA's use of an ICC investigation as a political bargaining chip. "The PA can go to the ICC in one day," said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Ramallah-based human rights group al-Haq. "Abbas, who has been turned this into a political issue, is balking." Many factors are working against setting off a war crimes investigation at the ICC, not least the international community's apparent opposition to the move. "It is the PA's trump card because the Israelis and the Americans have said it is a red line," said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
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  • "When this red line is crossed, then the US said it won't give money to the PA. That's what we call blackmail. But at what point will Abu Mazen [Abbas] say this is a trump card but we will use it?"
  • During US-mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Washington ensured that the PA would freeze all moves to turn to international organisations until April 2014. "The Palestinian Authority has been consistently pressured by the USA, Israel, Canada, the UK and other EU Member States not to take steps to grant the ICC jurisdiction," Amnesty International said. "Such pressure has included threats to withdraw financial assistance on which the Palestinian Authority depends."
  • But when Israel reneged on its pledge to free a total of 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners in four tranches, the PA responded by joining 15 international treaties and conventions. Israel said this spelled the end of their negotiations with the Palestinians, while the US said that the PA's moves negatively affected attempts to engage both parties in talks. "The PA's hesitancy can be attributed to several factors: The need to preserve it as a trump card, and also a fear of the US and some European countries' reaction," Jabarin said. "The problem is the method being used by Abbas; he has subjected the issue to political bargaining and to the whims of negotiations." Another reason the PA may be hesitant to set a war crimes investigation in motion is the ramifications it may have on some Palestinian factions. The ICC would likely look into Hamas and Islamic Jihad's rocket-firing o
  • In the past week, Israel said it would open a criminal investigation into several instances of what it is calling "military misconduct" in the Gaza war. Israel's swift call for a probe appears to be an attempt to pre-empt any independent investigations into allegations that its military committed war crimes in Gaza. "The PA gave the Israelis enough time to come up with a trick to prevent the court from opening any investigation," said Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer. Generally, the ICC launches probes in instances where the country involved is unable or unwilling to launch an investigation itself, Djebbar told Al Jazeera. "If the court tries to open an inquiry, the Israelis can claim they have jurisdiction [to do it themselves] because the ICC's jurisdiction is complementary," he explained. "The ICC is legally bound to allow an Israeli [probe] to continue."
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Which helps explain why, in a recent poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Hamas leader outpolled Abbas by something on the order of 70-30 on the question of who Palestinians would vote for as President if elections were held at that time. 
Paul Merrell

UN officials accused of bowing to Israeli pressure over children's rights list | World ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...pressure-childrens-rights-list

war & peace U.N. Israel IDF child-rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Senior UN officials in Jerusalem have been accused of caving in to Israeli pressure to abandon moves to include the state’s armed forces on a UN list of serious violators of children’s rights. UN officials backed away from recommending that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) be included on the list following telephone calls from senior Israeli officials. The Israelis allegedly warned of serious consequences if a meeting of UN agencies and NGOs based in Jerusalem to ratify the recommendation went ahead. Within hours, the meeting was cancelled. “Top officials have buckled under political pressure,” said a UN source. “As a result, a clear message has been given that Israel will not be listed.”
  • Organisations pressing for the IDF’s inclusion on the list since the war in Gaza last summer – which left more than 500 children dead and more than 3,300 injured – include Save the Children and War Child as well as at least a dozen Palestinian human rights organisations, the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem and UN bodies such as the children’s agency Unicef. “These organisations are in uproar over what has happened,” said the UN source
  • The IDF’s inclusion on the UN’s list of grave violators of children’s rights would place it alongside non-state armed forces such as Islamic State, Boko Haram and the Taliban. There are no other state armies on the list. It would propel Israel further towards pariah status within international bodies and could lead to UN sanctions.
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  • Although Jerusalem-based officials cancelled the meeting – and subsequently decided not to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list – the UN complained to Israel over the intimidation of its staff. Susana Malcorra – a high-ranking official in the New York office of the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon – raised the issue in a private letter to Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor. The UN in New York said it could not comment on leaked documents. The telephone calls were made to June Kunugi, Unicef’s special representative to Palestine and Israel, on 12 February, the night before a meeting to decide whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. One call was from a senior figure in Cogat, the Israeli government body that coordinates between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority and the international community; the other was made by an official in Israel’s foreign ministry.
  • ccording to UN and NGO sources, Kunugi was advised to cancel the meeting or face serious consequences. However, Israeli sources described the telephone conversations as friendly and courteous attempts to persuade Kunugi to delay the working group’s decision on its recommendation regarding the IDF until Israel had been allowed to present its case on the issue. At 8.54am the next morning, an email was sent on behalf of James Rawley, a senior official with UNSCO (the office of the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process) who had called the meeting, to participants. It said: “Please be informed that today’s meeting scheduled at 13:00hrs has been postponed. Sincere apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused.” A joint statement to the Guardian from Kunugi and Rawley said the “strictly confidential process” of determining inclusion on the list was still ongoing and was the “prerogative of the UN secretary general, and it rests with him alone”. The UN in Jerusalem was unable to comment on the process, it added, but the submission from Jerusalem to New York was “based on verified facts, not influenced by any member state or other entity”.
  • Unicef has called a fresh meeting to update UN and NGO officials in Jerusalem on Thursday. The decision on which state and non-state armed forces are to be included on the list will be taken by UN chiefs in New York next month. However, according to the UN source, “a political decision has already been taken not to include Israel”.
  • A separate source told the Guardian: “The UN caved to Israel’s political pressure and took a highly contentious step to shelter Israel from accountability.” The list of violators of children’s rights is contained in the annex of the annual report of the secretary general on children and armed conflict. A “monitoring and reporting mechanism”, established by a UN security council resolution, supplies information on grave violations of children’s rights, such as killing and maiming, recruitment of minors into armed forces, attacks on schools, rape, abduction, and denial of humanitarian access to children. The secretary general is required to list armed forces or armed groups responsible for such actions. Following last summer’s seven-week war in Gaza, a number of UN agencies and NGOs met to consider whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. According to insiders, participants “agreed there is a strong and credible case to recommend listing”.
  • A 13-page internal Unicef paper seen by the Guardian examined the case for the IDF to be listed on the basis of its actions in last summer’s war in Gaza, including the killing and injuring of children, and “targeted and indiscriminate” attacks on schools and hospitals. Several of the working group’s participants wrote to the UN secretary general to urge the inclusion of the IDF on the list. A letter sent in December by Defence for Children International (Palestine) said: “There is ample evidence to demonstrate that Israel’s armed forces have committed acts that amount to the grave violations against children during armed conflict, as defined by UN security council resolutions, including killing or maiming children and attacks against schools and hospitals.” The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and Cogat declined to answer specific questions about the phone calls to Kunugi, but said in a joint statement: “Israel has a good working relationship with Unicef and the United Nations in general. Israel has no desire to get into a slanging match with anti-Israel elements nor to submit to their intimidations.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15
     
    More information, including that Palestine Civil Society has requested that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to discharge two U.N. officials involved becuase of this issue and because of signifificant delays that work to Israel's advantage in reconstruction of Gaza following Israel's assault last summer. http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/un-providing-israel-cover-killing-gazas-children
Paul Merrell

US Commander: 'US Troops Prepared to Die for Israel' in War Against Syria, Hezbollah | ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5631949

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Israel Lebanon Syria Gaza

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Last Sunday, the largest joint military exercise between the United States and Israel began with little fanfare. The war game, dubbed “Operation Juniper Cobra,” has been a regular occurrence for years, though it has consistently grown in size and scope. Now, however, this year’s 12-day exercise brings a portent of conflict unlike those of its predecessors.
  • Israel has also been preparing for a conflict on the embattled Gaza strip, which – owing to the effects of Israel’s illegal blockade and the devastation wrought by past wars – is set to be entirely uninhabitable by 2020. Reports have quoted officials of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, as saying that they place the chances of a new war with Israel in 2018 “at 95 percent” and that war games, like Operation Juniper Cobra, were likely to be used to plan or even initiate such a conflict. This concern was echoed by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who stated that another Israeli invasion of Gaza, home to 1.8 million people, was “likely” to occur this year. Eizenkot ironically framed the imminent invasion as a way to “prevent a humanitarian collapse” in Gaza.
  • However, this year’s “Juniper Cobra” is unique for several reasons. The Post reported on Thursday that the drill, set to end on March 15, was not only the largest joint U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise to ever happen but it was also simulating a battle “on three fronts.” In other words, Israel and the U.S. are jointly simulating a war with Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine – namely, the Gaza strip – simultaneously. What makes this last part so concerning are Israel’s recent statements and other preparations for war with all three nations, making “Juniper Cobra” anything but a “routine” drill. It is instead yet another preparation for a massive regional conflict, suggesting that such a conflict could be only a matter of months away.
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  • Beyond the fact that Israel is preparing to go to war with several countries simultaneously is the fact that U.S. ground troops are now “prepared to die for the Jewish state,” according to U.S. Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Clark. “We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that, as in every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility,” Clark told the Post. However, more troubling than the fact that U.S. troops stand ready to die at Israel’s behest was Clark’s assertion that Haimovitch would “probably” have the last word as to whether U.S. forces would join the IDF during war time. In other words, the IDF will decide whether or not U.S. troops become embroiled in the regional war for which Israel is preparing, not the United States. Indeed, Haimovitch buoyed Clark’s words, stating that: “I am sure once the order comes we will find here U.S. troops on the ground to be part of our deployment and team to defend the state of Israel.” Operation Juniper Cobra is not a routine exercise; it is a portent of a potentially devastating war for which Israel is actively preparing, a war likely to erupt within the coming months. In addition to overtly targeting civilians, these preparations for war — as Juniper Cobra shows — directly involve the United States military and give the war-bent Israeli government the power to decide whether or not American troops will be involved and to what extent.
Paul Merrell

Case for war crimes against Israel more likely with Palestine willing to join Internati... - 0 views

www.dnaindia.com/...ational-criminal-court-2009005

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes prosecution

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The possibility of a war crimes investigation into the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza, until recently unthinkable, has grown after the Palestinians said this week they wanted to become a party to the International Criminal Court.
  • The legal groundwork for such a move was laid in November 2012 when the 193-member United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine by upgrading the Palestinian Authority's observer status to "non-member state" from "entity". If the Palestinians were to sign the ICC's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, the court would have jurisdiction over crimes committed in the Palestinian territories. With Palestinian authorisation, an ICC investigation could then examine events as far back as July 1, 2002, when the court opened with a mandate to try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. "If Palestine applies it will be admitted to the ICC," John Dugard, international law professor and a former UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, told Reuters. "The UN has spoken and it has recognised the state of Palestine and it is now for the ICC to admit Palestine. I cannot see how that can be resisted."
  • Dugard said the Palestinians could then ask prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes in July and August in Gaza, but also the legality of Israeli West Bank settlements. "The settlements are an ongoing crime and it is quite clear that the settlements constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute and that is what Israel is desperately worried about," Dugan said. Israel says the settlements are legal, as it captured the West Bank from Jordan, rather than a sovereign Palestine, in the 1967 Middle East war.
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  • One Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legal strategy is confidential, said the Israeli government is planning a defense of the Gaza operation and that counter-claims, including against the administration of President Mahmoud Abbas, could follow if the ICC launches a case. "We are talking about terrorism involving officials, security personnel and others, from his administration, and emanating from areas under his control," the official said.
  • ICC membership has been described by diplomats and officials as the Palestinian "nuclear option" because it is the key leverage the Palestinians hold in negotiations. It would also expose the Palestinians themselves to possible prosecution. Nearly a month of fighting in Gaza "left us no choice" but to seek a case against Israel at the ICC, Palestinian Foreign Minister Raid al-Malki said on Tuesday after meeting with prosecutors to discuss joining the court. "An investigation by the ICC is becoming crucial in the absence of a real system of accountability, due to the existence of a pervasive culture of impunity given to Israel and resulting from the lack of action by the international community," he said. Malki said "there is no difficulty for us to show or build the case. Israel is in clear violation of international law."
Paul Merrell

France Warns Israel They Will Soon Recognize Palestine State - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...213238

war & peace Israel Palestine France peace-talks

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • France warned the Israeli government Friday that if Paris fails to break an impasse in the following weeks in the peace talks between Palestine and Israel, its government will recognize the state of Palestine, the Foreign Ministry announced. “If this attempt to achieve a negotiated solution reaches a dead end, we will take responsibility and recognize the Palestinian state,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. ​The diplomat explained that as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, France has the responsibility to maintain efforts to find a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Fabius said he had high hopes that Israel and Palestine will participate in the international peace summit. The peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been at an impasse since 2014, when they decided to end their meetings, as did the other key international players, including the U.S., the European Union member states and Arab nations. “Unfortunately, (Israeli) settlement construction continues. We must not let the two-state solution unravel,” he said.
  • If a statement by an unidentified Israeli official to Haaretz newspaper is confirmed, France will in fact end up recognizing the Palestine state in the coming weeks, because the source said Israel will reject the French peace initiative. ​Earlier this month, the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki discussed with French officials in Paris the possibility of proposing a U.N. Security Council resolution declaring that the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank are an obstacle to a peaceful solution between the two states.
Paul Merrell

Israel's "Qualitative Military Edge": Blank Checks, No Balance? « LobeLog.com - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/y-edge-blank-checks-no-balance

war & peace Israel U.S.-foreign-policy military-aid Gaza Palestine

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Two years ago, Congress passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act (P.L. 112-150), which reiterated, as a matter of policy, the US commitment “to help the Government of Israel preserve its qualitative military edge amid rapid and uncertain regional political transformation.” It expressed the non-binding “sense of Congress” favoring various possible avenues of cooperation: providing Excess Defense Articles to Israel; enhanced operational, intelligence, and political-military coordination; expediting the sale of specific weaponry including F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft, refueling tankers, and “bunker buster” bombs; as well as an US-Israel cooperative missile defense program and additional aid for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system.
  • Iron Dome, a dual mission system built by Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which doubles as a very short range air defense system and an interceptor of incoming rockets, mortars and artillery, has received $720 million in American funding since the program’s inception in 2011. Israel currently has nine batteries, each costing about $100 million. The price tag for every Tamir missile fired by the Iron Dome system costs an estimated minimum of $50,000, with two missiles responding to every incoming rocket that is considered a threat to Israeli lives and property. US support for Iron Dome will soon surpass $1 billion. In March, the Pentagon asked for $176 million for the program for Fiscal Year 2015, which begins Oct. 1, but the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee raised the Iron Dome appropriation to $351 million on July 15—more than half the $621.6 million it had appropriated for Israeli missile defense for the upcoming year. A week later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a letter to Senate leaders and key committee chairpersons relaying the Israeli government’s request for an immediate $285 million of emergency allocation for Iron Dome. On Aug. 1—a Friday afternoon—the House (398-8) and Senate both approved adding an additional $285 million to Iron Dome’s funding, which was followed by President Obama’s signature the following Monday morning.
  • After Israel’s bombing of the UN school in Gaza, and more than 2,000 civilian Palestinian deaths since the war began on July 8, the Obama administration apparently became aware that it was uninformed about, and had very little control over US military assistance to Israel. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 14 that President Obama had just discovered that the US military was authorizing and providing weapons shipments to Israel without his knowledge. Unknown to many policy makers, Israel was moving on a separate track to replenish supplies of lethal munitions being used in Gaza and to expedite the approval of the Iron Dome funds on Capitol Hill. On July 20, Israel’s defense ministry asked the US military for a range of munitions, including 120-mm mortar shells and 40-mm illuminating rounds, which were already stored at a pre-positioned weapons stockpile in Israel.
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  • The request was approved through military channels three days later but not made public. Under the terms of the deal, the Israelis used US financing to pay for $3 million in tank rounds. No presidential approval or signoff by the secretary of state was required or sought, according to officials.
  • One senior US official said the decision to tighten oversight and require the pre-approval of higher-ranking officials for shipments was intended to make clear to Israel that there is no “blank check” from Washington in regards to the US-made weapons that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uses in Gaza.
Paul Merrell

US and Israel try to rewrite history of UN resolution declaring Zionism racism - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...resolution-declared-zionism

war & peace Zionism SCR-3379 U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” reads UN General Assembly Resolution 3379. The measure was adopted 40 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, and the majority of the international community backed it. 72 countries voted for the resolution, with just 35 opposed (and 32 abstentions). Although little-known in the US today (it is remarkable how effectively the US and its allies have rewritten history in their favor), UN GA Res. 3379, titled “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” made an indelible imprint on history. The geographic distribution of the vote was telling. The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.
  • The resolution also cited two other little-known measures passed by international organizations in the same year: the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity’s resolution 77, which ruled “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure”; and the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism a “racist and imperialist ideology.” When the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog — who later became Israel’s sixth president, and the father of Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s opposition — famously tore up the text at the podium. Herzog claimed the measure was “based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance,” insisting it was “devoid of any moral or legal value.” Still today, supporters of Israel argue UN GA Res. 3379 was an anomalous product of anti-Semitism. In reality, however, the resolution was the result of international condemnation of the illegal military occupation to which Palestinians had been subjected since 1967 and the apartheid-like conditions the indigenous Arab population had lived under as second-class citizens of an ethnocratic state since 1948.
  • In 1991, resolution 3379 was repealed for two primary reasons: One, the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference. At the UN on Nov. 11, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized the late Herzog and forcefully condemned the resolution on its 40th anniversary. In his 2,500-word statement, Kerry mentioned Palestinians just once, and only then as an extension of Israelis. In her remarks, Power did not mention Palestinians at all.
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  • In his speech, Kerry smeared resolution 3379 as “anti-Semitic” and “absurd.” Kerry called it “a bitter irony that this resolution against Zionism was originally a resolution against racism and colonialism” and lamented that “reasonableness was detoured by a willful ignorance of history and truth.” Sec. Kerry insisted “we will do all in our power to prevent the hijacking of this great forum for malicious intent” — a fascinating claim, considering how incredibly often the US itself hijacks the UN against the will of the international community, in the interests of both itself and Israel. Kerry warned about “the global reality of anti-Semitism today” (he made no mention whatsoever of the global reality of rampant, rapidly accelerating, and viciously violent anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Black racism), and implied that the “terrorist bigots of Daesh [ISIS], Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and so many others” are part of this larger anti-Semitic trend. One could argue Sec. Kerry downplayed the severity of the present political situation by characterizing these fascistic groups’ violent extremism as rooted in anti-Semitic bigotry, rather than in radicalization under conditions of intense oppression, bitter poverty, and brutal tyranny.
  • UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined Kerry, Power, and Netanyahu in the echo chamber, albeit with a bit more subtlety. “The reputation of the United Nations was badly damaged by the adoption of resolution 3379, in and beyond Israel and the wider Jewish community,” he said. Unlike the others, Ban condemned not just anti-Semitism, but also “wide-ranging anti-Muslim bigotry and attacks [and] discrimination against migrants and refugees.” Although the Israeli government accuses the UN of bias, the evidence demonstrates the opposite. Secret cables released by whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks revealed that the US and Israel worked hand-in-hand with the UN and Sec.-Gen. Ban in order to undermine investigation into and punitive action on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
  • In her speech at the UN, Power, like Kerry, conflated the heinous Nazi attacks on Jewish civilians in the Kristallnacht with UN GA Res. 3379. Both speakers cited the abominable horrors of the Holocaust several times as reasons to support Zionism, glossing over the fact that Zionism was created in the late 19th century and that the Balfour Declaration dates back to 1917, decades before World War II. Amb. Power — a serial warmonger and veteran blame-dodger — did what she did best: rewrote history in the favor of US imperialism. She called the resolution “1975 smearing of Jews’ aspirations to have a homeland” and insisted multiple times that resolutions like 3379 “threaten the legitimacy of the UN.” Like Kerry, Power conveniently forgot to mention that, when it comes to the halls of the UN, there is no other rogue state as blunt as the US, which regularly spits in the face of the international community, defying UN resolutions, violating the UN Charter, and breaking international law when it sees fit. Power’s speech exposed the fault lines in the contentious (to put it mildly) relationship between the US and the UN — that is to say, between the US and the international community. Such tensions are not the fault of the UN; the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Washington, with its doctrinal “American exceptionalism” and the flagrant disregard for international law that so frequently accompanies such imperial hubris.
  • In their speeches, both Kerry and Power also thanked Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was described by an Israeli Labor Party lawmaker as “a right-wing extremist with the diplomatic sensitivity of a pit bull” and who proposed legislation that would, in his own words, have the Israeli government “annex the West Bank and repeal the Oslo Accords.” Amb. Danon insists that God gave the land of historic Palestine to the Jewish people as an “everlasting possession” (while forsaking the US). He also told the Times of Israel that the “international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want.” Netanyahu addressed the session with a video message. He claimed that Israel, which has for years led the world in violating UN Security Council resolutions, “continues to face systemic discrimination here at the UN.” In a January 2013 statement submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, the Russell Tribunal calculated Israel had defied a bare minimum of 87 Security Council resolutions. The Russel Tribunal also crucially noted “that Israel’s ongoing colonial settlement expansion, its racial separatist policies, as well as its violent militarism would not be possible without the US’s unequivocal support.” The tribunal pointed out that Israel “is the largest recipient of US foreign aid since 1976 and the largest cumulative recipient since World War II” and that, between 1972 and 2012, the US was the lone veto of UN resolutions critical of Israel 43 times.
  • The US secretary of state extolled “Zionism as the expression of a national liberation movement.” The national liberation movements of Vietnam, Korea, China, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Congo, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and so many more nations, however, did not get such approval from Washington; au contraire, they were mercilessly crushed under the iron fist of American empire. Traditionally, only right-wing and settler-colonial “national liberation movements” have garnered the US’s official approval. “Why do we Americans care so much about the rights of others being respected?” Kerry asked unprovoked. “Because, in an interconnected world, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He should tell that to the victims of US-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Brunei, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and, once again, so many more nations. “Times may change, but one thing we do know: America’s support for Israel’s dreaming and Israel’s security, that will never change,” Kerry proclaimed.
  • The real victim of the 40th anniversary event was the truth — and, of course, as it was four decades ago, the Palestinians. Yet, while UN GA Res. 3379 was repealed, the truth cannot be revoked. Zionism was and remains an unequivocally racist movement — just like any other hyper-nationalist and ethnocratic movement. None other than the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recognized this elementary fact. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes — a diamond magnate and white supremacist British colonialist with oceans of African blood on his hands — Herzl, writing of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” requested help colonizing historic Palestine. “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial,” Herzl wrote. “I want you to… put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan.”
Paul Merrell

UN votes overwhelmingly on five decisions on the Question of Palestine - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/...s-on-the-question-of-palestine

war & peace Palestine Israel U.N.

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted five draft resolutions on the Question of Palestine. This year's number of countries to vote in favour of draft resolutions on the Question of Palestine has increased compared to last year. The draft resolutions are:
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Nov 13
     
    The only "no" votes on any of the five resolutions were cast by Israel, the United States, Australia, Canada, The Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, the usual nay-sayers when it comes to straightening out the mess between Israel and Palestine. The rest either voted for them or abstained. Israel is truly a pariah nation. The only significant barrier to resolution is the U.S. veto power in the Security Council and its pretense of acting as the mediator of a two-state solution. The U.S. voted in favor of many Security Council resolutions against gross Israeli misconduct before the assassination of Jack Kennedy. Ever since, the U.S. has steadfastly protected Israel on the Security Council. 
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