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Canada should bar or prosecute Bush: lawyer

March 13, 2009
Foreign Affairs stays silent on upcoming Calgary visit

Jeremy Klaszus | Fast Forward Weekly (Calgary, Alberta), March 13, 2009

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been ‘credibly accused’ of war crimes, Canada should deny him entry

As George W. Bush’s St. Patrick’s Day visit to Calgary draws near, the federal government is facing pressure from activists and human rights lawyers to bar the former U.S. president from the country or prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity once he steps on Canadian soil.

Bush is scheduled to speak at the Telus Convention Centre March 17, but Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been “credibly accused” of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are “inadmissible” to Canada.

”The test isn’t whether the person’s been convicted, but whether there’s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,” says Davidson, who’s with Lawyers Against the War (LAW). “…It’s now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty.”

In February, Davidson sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other cabinet ministers asking the Canadian government to either bar Bush from Canada, prosecute him once he arrives, or have the federal attorney general consent to a private prosecution by LAW against the Texan. She hasn’t received a response, and concedes she’s fighting “an uphill battle” with “terrific challenges.” Davidson laid torture charges against Bush during his visit to Vancouver in 2004, but a judge quashed them within days.

The federal government is keeping silent on the upcoming visit. “We have no comments to offer on the visit of Mr. George W. Bush to Calgary,” said Foreign Affairs spokesperson Alain Cacchione in an e-mail to Fast Forward. When told about Davidson’s letter, a spokesperson with the Canadian Border Services Agency said “we wouldn’t comment on something like that.”

Davidson is one of many voices around the world calling for Bush’s prosecution. Earlier this year, Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, said the U.S. has a “clear obligation” to prosecute Bush and former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing torture — a violation of the UN Convention on Torture. “Obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this,” Nowak told a German TV station in January.

Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director for Human Rights Watch, says that while there’s legally “all the reason in the world” to prosecute decision-makers in the Bush administration, “it’s a different story” politically. “The Obama administration certainly has not given much in the way of encouraging signals for such a prosecution,” says Mariner, who’s based in New York. “Obama has consistently said that he wants to look forward.” Mariner says that while a U.S. justice department investigation is unlikely, a congressional investigation is more probable — and “that could lead to recommendations for prosecution.”

Mariner’s not expecting a Canadian prosecution against Bush. “Obviously the Canadian government would have to be in favour of it, and that seems rather unlikely,” she says.

Calgary activists, meanwhile, are organizing a number of events for the week of Bush’s visit, culminating in a noontime rally outside the Telus Convention Centre during Bush’s speech. “We want to give him the welcome that he deserves — which is we want him to go back to the States, or we want him arrested,” says organizer Collette Lemieux. Activist Julie Hrdlicka, who visited Iraq twice during the American occupation, agrees. “We need to send a clear message to him that he’s not welcome,” she says.

Lemieux is hopeful that Bush will eventually be prosecuted. “Do I think that it’s going to happen very soon? No,” she says. “But I think that it’s very important that we keep the pressure up…. We have to make it clear that there’s accountability.”

The Plaza Theatre, meanwhile, is screening three Bush-themed documentaries for a “Bush Bash Film Fest” the night of the visit. Half the box office proceeds will go to the United Way.

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Binyam blames UK for mistreatment

March 13, 2009

BBC News,  March 13, 2009

Binyam Mohamed

A UK resident freed from Guantanamo Bay has said he would not have faced torture or extraordinary rendition but for British involvement in his case.

US interrogators told him, “This is the British file and this is the American file,” Binyam Mohamed, 30, told the BBC in his first broadcast interview.

He said he wanted to see ex-President George Bush put on trial and, if there was evidence, former UK PM Tony Blair.

The UK says it does not condone torture, but will investigate claims.

The US, which has dropped all charges against Mr Mohamed, says he has a history of making unsubstantiated claims.

BBC News reporter Jon Manel, who conducted the interview at a secret location, said that Mr Mohamed looked “very thin” and claimed to be suffering from health problems.

Mr Mohamed, who spoke to the media against the advice of his psychiatrist because he wanted people to know what happened to him, described his return to the UK last month.

Feelings of happiness and sadness, I still don’t have them. As far as I am concerned, nothing matters
Binyam Mohamed

“I didn’t feel like I was free. Even now I don’t feel that I’m free,” he said.

“It’s been seven years of literal darkness that I have been through. Coming back to life is taking me some time.”

He added: “I don’t have the regular person’s feelings that people have. The feelings of happiness and sadness, I still don’t have them.

“As far as I am concerned, nothing matters.”

The former terror suspect said that the six years and 10 months he spent in detention had left him feeling “dead”.

MI5 involvement

While detained in Pakistan, Mr Mohamed said he was interviewed for three hours by an MI5 officer calling himself John whose role, according to Mr Mohamed, was to support the American interrogators.

“If it wasn’t for the British involvement right at the beginning of the interrogations in Pakistan, and suggestions that were made by MI5 to the Americans of how to get me to respond, I don’t think I would have gone to Morocco,” he said.

“It was that initial help that MI5 gave to America that led me through the seven years of what I went through.”

The MI5 agent who questioned him has previously denied at the British High Court any suggestion that he threatened or put any pressure on Mr Mohamed.

In the ‘dark prison’ I was … dead. I didn’t exist. I wasn’t there. There was no day, there was no night
Binyam Mohamed

During the interview, Mr Mohamed’s lawyer prevented him from answering questions about travel documents he had used to get to Afghanistan and a training camp he attended.

This was because Mr Mohamed’s immigration status is currently under review.

Mr Mohamed said that in July 2002 he was flown to a secret site in Morocco where, he claimed, he was tortured by local officers asking him questions supplied by British intelligence operatives and showing him hundreds of photographs of Muslim men living in the UK.

“The interrogator who was showing me the file would say, ‘This is the British file and this is the American file.'”

Mr Mohamed said that 70% of questions put to him had to have come from sources in the UK.

In the UK, the attorney general is continuing a review into whether to ask police to investigate allegations of British collusion in mistreatment of Mr Mohamed.

His lawyers have previously placed on record claims that the torture included a razor being used to slash his genitals.

Special agent

Mr Mohamed said his mistreatment began soon after he was arrested in Pakistan in early 2002.

In the interview, extracts of which were broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he was questioned by a middle-aged man with a ponytail claiming to be “Jim from the FBI”.

Jim reportedly said he was a special agent sent from Washington to ask questions on behalf of the White House.

He asked about Mr Mohamed’s alleged role in a plot to detonate a dirty bomb in the US, which Mr Mohamed said was a “fantasy”.

The former detainee told the BBC he had never been involved in any plots and had not attended terrorist training camps before 9/11.

Asked if he had been an al-Qaeda operative, he replied: “I don’t even know what that means because how am I supposed to be an al-Qaeda operative?

“How do you become an al-Qaeda operative?”

Camp closure

In January 2004, Mr Mohamed said he was taken to a place he calls the “dark prison” in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he said he almost lost his mind.

He claimed he was put in a dark cell with just a blanket on the floor.

Speakers attached to the walls pumped out music by the American rapper Eminem 24 hours a day for a month.

“In the ‘dark prison’ I was literally dead. I didn’t exist. I wasn’t there. There was no day, there was no night.”

Following his experiences in Kabul, Mr Mohamed signed a confession which he said he agreed to only because he was told he would be flown back to the “dark prison” if he didn’t co-operate.

Shortly after this he was sent to Guantanamo Bay where, he said, guards attacked him for refusing to give his fingerprints.

He claimed abuses at the camp had increased since President Barack Obama announced his intention to close it within a year.

On Thursday, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The government unreservedly condemns the use of torture as a matter of fundamental principle and works hard with its international partners to eradicate this abhorrent practice worldwide.

“The security and intelligence agencies do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhumane or degrading treatment.”

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UN Condemns Britain’s Role in Torture Cases

March 11, 2009

Calls for investigation over Government’s involvement in US rendition programme

by Robert Verkaik | The Independent, UK, March 10, 2009

Britain was condemned last night for its complicity in the American programme of rendition and alleged torture of hundreds of terror suspects, in a highly critical United Nations report.

[Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, returned to the UK after being held captive in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for four years (PA)]Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, returned to the UK after being held captive in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for four years (PA)

The UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin said the US was only able to create its system for moving terror suspects around foreign jails because of the co-operation of allies, naming the UK alongside Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Canada and Georgia.The report led to a clamour of calls for a full and independent investigation into the Government’s involvement in the detention and movement of suspects since the start of the “war on terror” eight years ago.

Mr Scheinin’s findings follow accusations made by British resident Binyam Mohamed, who claims to have evidence of MI5 telegrams sent to the CIA, which he says were used to direct his alleged torture during his 18-month detention in Morocco, before he was sent to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Some individuals faced “prolonged and secret detention” and practices which breached bans on torture and other forms of ill treatment, the report says.

“Evidence proves that Australian, British and US intelligence personnel have themselves interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani secret intelligence service … where they were being tortured,” the report concludes. “UK intelligence personnel, for instance, conducted or witnessed just over 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.”

Mr Scheinin says countries are “responsible” if they help other states carry out human rights violations.

“Grave human rights violations by states such as torture, enforced disappearances or arbitrary detention should place serious constraints on policies of co-operation by states, including by their intelligence agencies, with states that are known to violate human rights,” he said. “The prohibition against torture is an absolute and peremptory norm of international law. States must not aid or assist in the commission of acts of torture … including by relying on intelligence information obtained through torture,”

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, called on the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, to make a decision now on whether to ask the police to investigate Mr Mohamed’s allegations. He added: “It is shameful that we now seem to be reliant on outside organisations to uphold the rule of law in our own country.”

The Conservative national security spokeswoman, Baroness Neville-Jones of Hutton Roof, said: “Constant allegations which are not answered are damaging the good name of this country and undermining the credibility of the Government’s position that it neither practises nor condones torture.”

Along with Romania, Poland, Germany and Italy, Britain is accused of using laws designed to protect national security to “conceal illegal acts from oversight bodies or judicial authorities, or to protect itself from criticism, embarrassment and – most importantly – liability”.

The Foreign Office said: “We unreservedly condemn any practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ to torture. We have always condemned torture. The UK Government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information. Nor would we instigate action by others to do so.”

Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited

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Solidarity convoy gets to Gaza Strip

March 10, 2009

Morning Star Online,

Monday 09 March 2009

DETERMINED: Respect MP George Galloway waiting at the Rafah crossing in Egypt for permission to enter Gaza.

THE Viva Palestina solidarity convoy finally crossed into Gaza on Monday.

After a tense day in which the planned crossing into Gaza was called off by organisers due to wrangling with Egyptian officials, the convoy began entering the besieged territory via the Rafah crossing at 9am local time.

The Viva Palestina volunteer crews brought the vehicles – which include a British fire engine, 12 ambulances and scores of lorries loaded with medical supplies, food, toys and clothes -from London to the occupied territory via a 9,000-mile route that passed through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

But, with just 30 miles standing between the solidarity activists and the Rafah crossing, the convoy was attacked on Sunday night in the Egyptian town of El Arish by unidentified youths hurling stones, bricks and bottles.

Three voluteers were injured, with two of them treated in hospital for their injuries, and several vehicles were daubed with anti-Hamas graffiti.

Respect MP George Galloway was adamant that the thuggery would not detract from the convoy’s message “of hope and friendship.”

Mr Galloway, who headed the convoy, said: “Our convoy, which set out from London on St Valentine’s Day with 100 vehicles, has grown to almost 250 and the mile-long caravan stretched for more than three miles as more vehicles joined us.

“We’ll leave behind more than £1 million in Gaza, but, more than that, the legacy will be a symbolic one of hope and friendship.”

Mr Galloway emphasised that the “message of the convoy is that the majority of British people abhor the Israeli attacks on the densest packed piece of earth on the planet and the blocking of essential supplies to the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, an Israeli human rights group charged in a court petition on Monday that Tel Aviv is violating international law by exploiting the West Bank’s mineral resources for its own benefit.

In the petition filed to Israel’s Supreme Court, the Yesh Din group charges that 75 per cent of the rock and gravel removed from 11 West Bank rock quarries is transferred to Israel.

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Amnesty International calls for transparency on Bagram detentions

March 10, 2009

Amnesty International USA, March 9, 2009

A US federal judge considering whether detainees held by the USA in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan may challenge their detention before courts in the USA has ordered the administration of President Barack Obama to provide him with updated information on the Bagram detainees, by 11 March.

Amnesty International has written to the US administration urging it to inject some much needed transparency into the Bagram detention regime, including by making fully available to the public the information requested by District Court Judge John Bates.

When the Bush administration was asked by Judge Bates in January 2009 to disclose the number of people being held in Bagram, how many of them were taken into custody outside of Afghanistan, and how many of them were Afghan nationals, it responded by classifying as secret the key details and redacted them from the unclassified version of the filing.

Judge Bates has now asked the Obama administration the same questions, noting that the details supplied to him by the government in January may be out of date. Amnesty International has urged the new administration not to repeat its predecessor’s use of secrecy to conceal from the public its response to the judge. Transparency, essential to accountability and detainee protection, must be central to US detention policy. As President Obama has himself instructed his administration, “transparency promotes accountability”.

Figures released in late February by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only organization with access to Bagram detainees, indicate that there were then about 550 detainees in the airbase. This was down from the figure of “about 615” provided by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Senate Armed Services Committee a month earlier.

New detentions by US and allied forces in Afghanistan continue. According to reports by the American Forces Press Service, at least 120 “militants” were taken into custody during January and February 2009. It is not known how many, if any, have been or will be transferred to Bagram. The US authorities should provide regular public information on the numbers and nationalities of those held in US custody in Bagram and elsewhere in Afghanistan, and where, when, and in what circumstances they were taken into detention.

The need for transparency was illustrated late last month when the UK government revealed that two individuals it handed over to the USA in Iraq in 2004 had subsequently been transferred to US custody in Afghanistan, where they remain five years later. Amnesty International has asked the US government to confirm whether the two are held in Bagram and to provide further information on their cases. The organization has raised the possibility that the USA’s transfer of these individuals to Afghanistan constituted a war crime.

Amnesty International continues to call for the Bagram detainees to be granted access to an independent court to challenge the lawfulness of their detentions, to effective remedies in relation to their treatment and conditions of detention, and to meaningful access to legal counsel for such purposes. At present, the detainees have no access to lawyers or courts.

On 7 March, President Obama said in an interview with the New York Times that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges”. However, presidential aides later said that he had not meant to suggest that everybody held in US custody would be able to challenge their detention in court.1

Two weeks earlier, on 20 February, responding to an invitation from Judge Bates to tell him whether it would take “a different approach” to its predecessor on the Bagram detainees, the Justice Department responded simply that “having considered the matter, the Government adheres to its previously articulated position”, that is, the position argued by the Bush administration. The latter had argued that the Bagram detainees could not challenge the lawfulness or conditions of their detention, that they had no rights under the US Constitution and no rights under international law enforceable in the US courts. Amnesty International regrets the new administration’s response to Judge Bates and hopes that it represents a very temporary stance taken as the government tackles the detention legacy it has inherited. The USA must swiftly bring all US detentions anywhere into compliance with international law.

The right to challenge the lawfulness of detention before a court is so fundamental that it cannot be diminished, even in situations of public emergency up to and including armed conflict. Judicial review is a basic safeguard against abuse of executive powers and a fundamental safeguard against arbitrary and secret detention, torture and other ill-treatment and unlawful transfers from one country or government to another. In the absence of judicial oversight, detainees in Bagram, as at Guantánamo, have been subjected to just such abuses.

Even children have not been spared. With this in mind, Amnesty International is calling on the US government to reveal, in addition to its responses to the questions posed by Judge Bates, how many of the detainees currently in Bagram were taken into custody when they were under 18 years old. A year ago, there were at least 10 children being held in the base.

In an executive order signed on 22 January 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the establishment of an interagency task force to review the “lawful options” available to the US government with respect to the “apprehension, detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts or counterterrorism operations”. In February, Amnesty International sent a briefing on the Bagram detentions to officials overseeing this review.2Last week it sent them an update to this report.3

1 Obama ponders outreach to elements of the Taliban, The New York Times, 8 March 2009.

2 See USA: Out of sight, out of mind, out of court? The right of Bagram detainees to judicial review, 18 February 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/021/2009/en.

3 See USA: Urgent need for transparency on Bagram detentions, 6 March 2009, at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/031/2009/en.

AI Index: AMR 51/033/2009 Amnesty International 09 March 2009

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Israeli Settlers Terrorise Palestinian Villagers

March 10, 2009

By Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

AT TUWANI, West Bank, Mar 9 (IPS) – “I couldn’t run. My pregnancy was too far advanced and there was nowhere to hide,” said Amna Salman Rabaye, 31, as she recalled the terrifying incident several months ago.

Rabaye from the Palestinian Bedouin village of At Tuwani in the southern West Bank was grazing her sheep when she was assaulted by a security guard from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’on.

“We saw a group of masked Israeli settlers armed with sticks and chains heading towards us. The younger shepherds ran and managed to escape, leaving me with the flock of sheep,” Rabaye told IPS.

“It was physically impossible for me to run and I also didn’t want the settlers to kill or steal my sheep. The security guard pushed me over but I was not injured,” recalled Rabaye who was then seven months pregnant.

At Tuwani was established over 300 years ago by nomadic tribes of Bedouin who first moved into the area seeking shelter in the nearby caves. However, Israeli settlers built the adjacent Ma’on settlement in 1982. The nearby illegal outpost of Havot Ma’on was built at a later date.

Outposts normally comprise small settlements ranging from a few caravans, which are sometimes connected to water and electricity, to slightly larger settlements. They are referred to as outposts by the media as they are generally not recognised by the Israeli government.

The settlements, however, which are legal under Israeli law can number from several hundred residents to small towns with thousands of inhabitants, and all the associated infrastructure.

There are nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and nearly 200,000 in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli information centre for human rights B’Tselem.

Under international law, including various UN Security Council resolutions, the settlements are built illegally on Palestinian land.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.

Nevertheless Israeli settlement building on the West Bank has accelerated at an unprecedented rate in the last few years.

This has included the enlargement of already existing settlements and the establishment of new ones, contrary to every understanding and peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli human rights group Peace Now released a report several weeks ago stating that the Israeli government is currently building an additional 73,300 illegal housing units in the West Bank. The report added that this would increase the total number of Israeli settlers in the area by 100 percent.

International human rights organisations have argued that the motive behind the accelerated settlement building is to establish facts on the ground and to make the establishment of a viable, contiguous and independent Palestinian state near impossible.

Currently the West Bank is effectively divided into three cantons by military checkpoints and the settlements. Palestinian towns and villages are surrounded by Israeli settlements while swathes of their land has been confiscated to build settlers-only bypass roads.

While Israeli officials are furthering the facts-on-the-ground scenario through official government policies, an unofficial war between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers over the continued land expropriation continues unabated.

“The settlers are carrying out a deliberate policy to try and drive us off our land and intimidate us into leaving so that they can take our land,” said Hafez Hreini, 37, one of the villagers. Hreini’s mother, 79-year-old Fatima, was left bleeding after a settler threw a rock at her head in another encounter with the settlers.

“It is very hard not to physically retaliate when you see people attack your elderly mother but I know if I had done anything back, the Israelis would have used this as an excuse to arrest me and a lot worse,” Hreini told IPS. “So we are deliberately applying a policy of non-violence and we are determined to stay here and keep our land.”

In 2006 the villagers lost over 100 sheep after the settlers sprayed pesticides on their grazing land. Several donkeys belonging to the village were stabbed to death. The village’s water wells have also been poisoned on numerous occasions while crops have been set ablaze. The children of the village and the surrounding villages have been regularly attacked by the settlers as they try to make their way to school.

A group of outraged Israeli intellectuals wrote to incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert several years ago requesting action be taken against the settlers. This led former Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz to order the demolition of Havot Ma’on settlement but the demolition never took place.

The Israeli Knesset, or parliament, also ordered the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to escort children to and from school to protect them from the settlers. But according to international members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who live in the village, the IDF patrols are irregular, unreliable and sometimes sources of hostility towards the children.

The CPT have created their own school escorts for the children, and have themselves been assaulted by the settlers. One member received head injuries severe enough to require hospitalisation.

The Israeli police seem disinterested. “It doesn’t help if we go to the police because they never do anything,” Sreini told IPS.

The Israeli rights group Yesh Din has stated repeatedly that only a very small number of settler attacks against Palestinians are investigated by the Israeli police. These result in even fewer arrests and practically no convictions.

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Massacre in slow motion

March 10, 2009

Socialist Worker, March 9, 2009

More than a month after Israel’s assault on Gaza ended, life for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians continues to be a daily struggle. Israel maintains a suffocating siege that blocks the flow of basic staples, plunging the vast majority of residents into abject poverty.

But a ray of hope has emerged in the form of a growing international struggle–from Canada and the U.S., to Europe and South Africa–to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and Palestinian human rights. On March 21, justice for Palestine will be a main slogan at an antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. organized to mark the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Haidar Eid, a professor of English, political commentator and longtime activist, is a resident of Gaza City and has provided an ongoing eyewitness account and analysis of Israel’s war for SocialistWorker.org. He spoke with Eric Ruder about Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian struggle for justice.

A young boy sits amid the rubble where buildings once stood in Jabalia, a town in the northern Gaza Strip (AFP)A young boy sits amid the rubble where buildings once stood in Jabalia, a town in the northern Gaza Strip (AFP)

THE SHOOTING part of Israel’s war is now over, according to the media. Yet Israel continues air strikes on targets in Gaza every few days. And in addition to the bombings, Israel’s siege remains firmly in place, stopping all manner of critical goods from getting into Gaza. Can you describe conditions now?

THE COURAGEOUS Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has talked about the hermetic siege of Gaza that has been in place for some three years now. Prior to the war, Pappe called this siege “slow-motion genocide,” and he was absolutely right.

Even before the war, more than 350 terminally ill people died because Israel refused to allow them to leave Gaza for essential medical treatment. Israel refused to issue them travel permits to be treated in Egyptian or Jordanian hospitals. I’m talking about people with kidney failure, heart problems, cancer.

The war transformed the slow-motion genocide into real genocide–I don’t know what else to call it. During the war, more 1,440 people were killed.

What else to read

Haidar Eid has written an article titled “Sharpeville 1960, Gaza 2009” that recounts his experiences during Israel’s war and adds his voice to call for an international movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, modeled on the anti-apartheid movement.

The One Democratic State Group has issued “A Call from Gaza” that asks activists and organizations to demand that their governments sever ties with Israel, and calls for Israel’s war criminals to be brought to justice.

Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S. “War on Terror,” by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad, documents the apartheid-like conditions that Palestinians live under today.

For background on Israel’s war and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, read The Struggle for Palestine, a collection of essays edited by Lance Selfa on the history of the occupation and Palestinian resistance.

We thought that the end of the war would also mean the end of the medieval siege imposed on Gaza. But unfortunately, that hasn’t happened since the end of the Gaza massacre–and I really don’t want to call it the end of the “war,” because the war has continued but in different forms.

Israel failed to achieve any of its three objectives that it declared at the beginning of the war–topping the government of Hamas, putting an end to the launching of rockets, and establishing a new security arrangement in Gaza.

Since they failed at this, they have been trying to achieve politically what they could not militarily–with the help of the U.S., even under the Obama administration, with the complicity of the European Union and with the help of some Arab regimes.

This is why all the proposals to reconstruct the Gaza Strip being discussed at the recent international donors conference at Sharm el Sheik all come with so many strings attached. In fact, these strings make reconstruction impossible.

So when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tel Aviv and Ramallah, she talked about conditions for reconstruction. Condition number one is for the Hamas government and the resistance groups in general to recognize the state of Israel. Number two is to recognize previously signed agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, which ultimately means recognizing the state of Israel also.

But there are some big questions that come along with this, which the U.S. and the mainstream media prefer to avoid. In particular, what Israel are the Palestinians supposed to recognize?

Israel is the only member of the UN that does not have recognized borders. Does the apartheid wall represent the border of the state of Israel? Or is it the 1967 border? Recognition of Israel under this situation allows for the ongoing expansion of Israel’s borders.

Number two, Israel is also the only country on the face of the earth that has no constitution. Israel instead has Basic Laws. The first basic law defines Israel as the state of Jews all over the world. You have a theocratic state instead of a state of all of its citizens. This raises the question of what happens to 1.2 million Palestinians who are considered citizens of the state of Israel, but they are not Jews.

Also, what happens to more than 6 million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora? Not a single agreement by the PLO and Israel, with America as a moderator, mentions the right of return, although UN Resolution 194 calls for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, to their villages, to the cities and towns from which they were expelled. And Resolution 194 calls for compensation for the injustices they have suffered.

But these are things that Israel wants the Palestinians to concede before talks even begin. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Now, we have seen the donors’ conference, and a visit from Hillary Clinton, during which she uttered not one word of sympathy for the plight of Palestinians. This is tragedy and farce.

Palestinians are paying a heavy price. This is the continuation of the genocidal war launched by Israel against Gaza and supported by the international community. And the talks that are supposed to reconstruct are merely further means to carry out Israel’s agenda.

THE U.S. and Israel also call on Hamas to “renounce violence,” but they never recognize the incredible hypocrisy of this demand. Israel consistently uses overwhelming violence against the Palestinians, and the U.S. supplies the weapons that allow Israel to do so.

ABSOLUTELY. WHAT kind of weapons does the resistance movement in Gaza have? Crude homemade rockets, and some Grad rockets smuggled through the tunnels connecting Egypt and Gaza. But now the tunnels can’t be used. Israel has repeatedly bombed them.

Because Israel has enforced its siege of Gaza, these tunnels have also been used to bring essential goods into the Strip. For example, I haven’t been able to drive my car since the war ended, because we can’t receive any gas from Egypt, which had to be smuggled through the tunnels.

We are talking about the fourth-strongest military in the world, with 250 nuclear warheads, F-16s and helicopters, against a largely defenseless population. We are not talking about two equal parties.

According to international law, Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is illegally prohibiting more than 6 million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and towns.

What we are calling for–myself as part of Palestinian civil society, as an academic, as an activist–is simply the implementation of UN and Security Council resolutions and international law. Under international law, we are guaranteed a state and the right of return for refugees.

By signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, the official Palestinian leadership made an agreement that violates our rights and international law [by bargaining away these essential national rights]. It has now become a habit for Israel and the U.S. to expect the weaker party, the Palestinians, to give more and more concessions.

One of the biggest mistakes that the Palestinian leadership made was to assume that the U.S. was acting as a fair broker. But in fact, the U.S. has been entirely biased–because of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and because I don’t think you can separate the interests of U.S. imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East.

The U.S. attacked and occupied Iraq and committed genocide against Iraq’s civilians. It killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis–because of oil, in pursuit of its interests in the region, and to protect the state of Israel.

The Americans have failed miserably in Iraq. Israel failed miserably in Lebanon in 2006. And then, they tried to target what they consider to be the weakest pocket of resistance in the Middle East, namely Gaza. Fortunately, that failed. Israel tried for 22 days to bring the resistance to its knees, but could not.

That is why they are trying to achieve politically what they failed to militarily.

Continued >>

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Ex-Gitmo detainee: memos show UK torture complicity

March 9, 2009

Jurist, March 8, 2009

Former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed claimed in March 8 media reports that documents sent from MI5 to the CIA show that the British intelligence agency was involved with his alleged torture in Morocco. Mohamed claimed the documents reveal that MI5 fed the CIA questions that ended up in the hands of his Moroccan interrogators. A telegraph to the CIA dated Nov. 5, 2002, reportedly has the heading, “Request for further Detainee questioning.”

Mohamed, a native of Ethiopa who claims to have been transferred to Morocco for torture under a US program of extraordinary rendition, said he obtained the documents through the US legal process while seeking his release from Guantánamo Bay. Conservative MP David Davis called for investigations into British collusion in torture.

Last week, the UK government’s independent reviewer of terror laws called for a judicial inquiry into British complicity in US rendition and torture. British media reported last week that UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak told British ministers that MI5 may have been complicit in torture committed while detainees including Mohamed were in US custody. Mohamed was returned to the UK last week following seven years of detention, including five at Guantanamo Bay, where he was held on charges of conspiring to commit terrorism. Those charges were dismissed in October, but Mohamed remained in custody while US authorities considered filing new charges.

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US: Criticize Israel and lose your job

March 9, 2009

US academic freedom in peril

Paul J. Balles | Redress, March 8, 2009


Paul J. Balles considers how Zionists in positions of authority at academic institutions in the United States are persecuting and defaming anyone who dares to criticize Israel or even mention Palestinian rights.

About the worst thing one can do in America or Europe is to criticize Israel. “Freedom” even in academia doesn’t allow critical comments about Israel or Zionism. Those who risk it can lose their jobs and be labelled anti-Semitic bigots.

Joel Kovel was terminated from Bard College after 20 years of service because of “differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism”. The president of Bard, Leon Botstein, didn’t consider Kovel’s critiques of Zionism to be protected academic freedom.

The worst of the critic bashers is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. He spearheaded a campaign against Norman Finkelstein’s tenure for writing Beyond Chutzpah, documenting in detail the falsifications in Dershowitz’s book The Case for Israel.

After being denied tenure, Finkelstein said: “I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

In his 2008 book, The Case Against Israel’s Enemies, Dershowitz defamed many who have been critical of Israel, calling them bigots or labelling them anti-Semitic. Dershowitz has led the pack attacking Israel’s critics.

On former President Jimmy Carter, Dershowitz wrote: “Whatever the reason or reasons for Jimmy Carter’s recent descent into the gutter of bigotry, history will not judge him kindly.”

Attacking University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer and Harvard University Professor Stephen M. Walt, who together authored The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2007), Dershowitz wrote: “They are hate-mongers who have given up on scholarly debate and the democratic process in order to become rock-star heroes of anti-Israel extremists.”

Writing about the British University and College Union (UCU) boycott of Israeli educators and academic institutions, Dershowitz explained how he and others “wrote an op-ed piece for the Times of London, in which we demonstrated parallels between this boycott and previous anti-Jewish boycotts that were undoubtedly motivated by anti-Semitism”.

On another front, Roosevelt University of Chicago at Illinois fired a philosophy and religion professor for allowing students in his class to ask questions about Judaism and Islam. The chair of the department, Susan Weininger, fired the professor, Douglas Giles, saying that students should not be allowed to ask whatever questions they want in class.

Weininger said that free discussion in world religions could “open up Judaism to criticism”. Any such material, she said, was not permissible to be mentioned in class discussion, textbooks or examinations. Further, she ordered Giles to forbid any and all discussion of the “Palestinian issue”, any mention of Palestinian rights, the Muslim belief in the holiness of Jerusalem, and Zionism. When Professor Giles refused to censor his students, Weininger fired him.

One of the worst types of Zionist harassment involves cases of Muslims generally and Palestinians in particular for speaking out on behalf of their favourite causes. The US government has often been complicit in these cases.

One such case involves Dr Sami Al-Aryan who taught computer engineering at the University of South Florida before his arrest in 2004. Al-Arian was charged with raising money and otherwise assisting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group the US government declared a terrorist organization in 1995. At trial in 2005, he was acquitted on eight of 17 counts, and the jury deadlocked on the other counts.

All counts were trumped up by Zionist prosecutors who wanted to silence Al-Aryan. If anything could vaguely approach justice in this case, the Israelis who have been slaughtering Palestinians for half a century would have been labelled terrorists and brought to trial for committing much worse deeds than Al-Aryan.

The gravest injustice allows Zionists to silence honest critics for violating the Zionist taboo.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

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Protesters clash with Indian forces in Kashmir

March 8, 2009

By Aijaz Hussain, Associated Press | The Independent, UK,

Saturday, 7 March 2009

Government forces fired tear gas canisters and used bamboo batons today to disperse hundreds of Muslims protesting against the killing of a teenager a day earlier in Indian Kashmir.

Clashes erupted as people marched to a memorial service for 17-year-old Shahid Ahmed Ahangar, who was shot dead by security forces yesterday in Srinagar, the disputed region’s main city.

At least 23 others, including six soldiers, were injured in the day’s clashes, according to police.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, where most people favour independence from mainly Hindu India or unification with predominantly Muslim Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but both countries claim the region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.

Chanting “We want freedom” and anti-India slogans, the protesters were stopped by troops who tried to prevent them from marching to Rainawari district in Srinagar.

No injuries were immediately reported from the clashes, said a police officer on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak with the media.

Thousands of police and paramilitary soldiers in riot gear with automatic weapons patrolled the streets of Srinagar.

“Soldiers didn’t even allow us to come out of our homes in the morning to buy milk and bread,” said resident Latief Bhat.

Indian Kashmir’s Law Minister Abdul Rahim Rather said in a statement there would be “a thorough probe into (yesterday’s) incident to fix the responsibility and punish the guilty.”

Last month, two civilians were killed northwest of Srinagar when the Indian army opened fire on them. That incident provoked widespread protests against Indian rule.

Militant separatist groups have been fighting since 1989 to end Indian rule. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the uprising and subsequent Indian crackdown.

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