The British government’s grovelling apology to Israel after an arrest warrant was issued against former foreign minister Tzipi Livni was compounded by its promise to change the law to allow war criminals to roam freely.
Livni was up to her neck in the mass slaughter perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and declares her pride in all her decisions taken with regard to Operation Cast Lead.
Ian Black, Middle East editor, The Guradian/UK, Dec 20, 2009
Israel has admitted that pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others without the consent of their families – a practice that it said ended in the 1990s, it emerged at the weekend.
The admission, by the former head of the country’s forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called “antisemitic”.
The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran’s state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army.
The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.
Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.
The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.”
Hiss said: “We started to harvest corneas … whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”
However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs. The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.
She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that while Palestinians were “by a long shot” not the only ones affected, she felt the interview must be made public, because “the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, [is] something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered.”
Israel demanded that Sweden condemn the Aftonbladet article, calling it an antisemitic “blood libel”. Stockholm refused, saying that to so would violate freedom of speech in the country. The foreign minister then cancelled a visit to Israel, just as Sweden was taking over the EU’s rotating presidency.
Hiss was removed from his post in 2004, when some details about organ harvesting were first reported, but he still works at the forensic institute.
Israel’s health ministry said all harvesting was now done with permission. “The guidelines at that time were not clear,” it said in a statement to Channel 2. “For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law.”
| By Daud Abdullah, Al Jazeera, Dec 18, 2009
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David Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, has apologised to his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman, after the humiliation and embarrassment caused by the issuing of a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister.The arrest warrant was issued over Livni’s suspected war crimes role during Israel’s war on Gaza, but was later withdrawn after she cancelled her visit to London. Miliband also promised to begin work immediately to change UK laws to ensure that no such warrants would be issued for Israeli officials in the future. As an added sweetener to the act of contrition, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, also personally called Livni to assure her she would always be welcomed to visit the UK. All of this is easier said than done. Already there is a huge outcry in Britain over the mere thought of changing UK laws or reneging on treaty obligations simply to protect Israeli officials involved in the serial breach of international law. In their deluded fantasy the Israelis claim that the judicial order in London will seriously impair bi-lateral relations between London and Tel Aviv, jeopardise the Middle East peace process and undermine Britain’s image in the region. Historic Middle East role
What a gross distortion. Britain’s historic relationship and role in the Middle East is unquestioned. Even though it has on many occasions acted against the national interests of the people of the region and the Palestinians in particular, it would be wishful thinking to suggest that it could be excluded from future negotiations.Instead of being eternally grateful to Britain for creating their state in Palestine, Israeli officials are today attempting to bite the very hand that fed them. To claim that Britain is in trouble or would be the loser because of the court order is disingenuous. Actually, the only losers are those who planned, commissioned and executed the war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. They are the ones in hot water, so to speak, and the greatest service Brown could make on behalf of universal jurisdiction is to leave them to stew in it. These sentiments were expressed by his former cabinet colleague Clare Short, a member of the Labour Party and an independent MP, while addressing a conference organised by the Palestinian Return Centre, in London. A former minister for international development, Short said the crimes committed in Gaza during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead last year marked a defining moment in the conflict. She criticised how Israel has undermined the international system by its cavalier breach of conventions and established norms in an apparent attempt to tell the world that there are special laws for certain states and that it is a state above the law. She derided the hypocrisy of those who seek to prosecute Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, while at the same time they refuse and obstruct efforts to investigated and prosecute Israeli criminals. Violations of international law The groveling apology to Israel, after the British ambassador was summoned for a reprimand by the Israeli foreign ministry, is the type of reaction expected from a banana republic, not from Great Britain. Should the foreign secretary entertain Lieberman, a Jewish settler himself and a resident of Nokdim, a West Bank settlement considered illegal under international law? What a contradiction. The official policy of the UK government is that all settlements in the lands occupied in 1967 are illegal and violate UN Security Council resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is poignant to point out that Livni’s father and mother were regarded as “terrorists” by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine in the 1940s and were both captured and locked up. Under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Britain still has an obligation to “to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts”. What is at stake in this imbroglio is the independence of the British judiciary, an institution that for hundreds of years has been a source of national pride and emulated by many nations. It is for this reason there is anger and outrage over the government’s declared intent to succumb to Israel. The implication, of course, is the fear that in future Britain would not be able to lay any claim to be a bastion and guardian of international law. The rhetoric of ‘rule of law’ will run hollow if there was any change of the law for no other reason except to protect war criminals who happen to be members of the club. Compelling evidence
It must be recalled that these laws came into being because of the Nazi war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only last month there was great satisfaction and hubris when John Demjanjuk was brought before a German court more than 60 years after allegedly committing his crimes.The message was clear: that war crimes and crimes against humanity are so repugnant that they must not go unpunished. The case against the Israeli minister and her accomplices was made not by Richard Goldstone only. A number of independent reports including the report of Independent Fact-Finding Committee on Gaza to the Arab League, the Martin Commission report to the UN secretary-general on attacks on UN premises, and reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights and the National Lawyers Guild, all support the conclusion that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Israeli military in its Operation Cast Lead. It was because of this compelling evidence that a British judge issued the warrant for Livni’s arrest. To present the matter as if it were a malicious witch hunt is simply beside the point. Surely it would be a travesty of justice if what occurred in Gaza was not investigated and prosecuted. Peace in the region has remained elusive precisely because of this failure to be even-handed in the application of international law, always at the expense of Palestinian rights. If Palestinians do not have recourse to the law, one wonders what other options are left to them when their legitimate grievances are ignored. Daud Abdullah is the director of the Middle East Monitor, an independent media research institution founded in the United Kingdom to foster a fair and accurate coverage in the Western media of Middle Eastern issues and in particular the Palestine Question. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy. |
by Steven Salaita, Dissident Voice, December 14th, 2009
The following piece is an excerpt from a talk Salaita gave at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, on December 7, 2009.
I’m starting on the assumption that we’re all aware of Israel’s brutality in the Gaza Strip and that we all find it unconscionable, as does the vast majority of the world. I assume as well that we’re aware of the brutality preceding and following Israel’s military assault nearly a year ago. I’d like to examine how corporate media in the United States presented coverage of Israel’s invasion, and how discourses of justification for Israel are built into the foundation of that coverage.
By William A. Cook, uruknet.info, November 19, 2009
“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.” (Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionist Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News).
This week the British people listened to the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”
Middle East Online, Nov. 18, 2009
Illegal Jewish settlers; armed, dangerous and radical
UN, US, UK, France slam Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian territories.
TEL AVIV – Israel on Wednesday sought to fend off criticism of its approval of hundreds of new illegal units in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“Freezing construction in Gilo is just like freezing construction… in any other neighbourhood in Jerusalem and Israel,” extremist Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose ministry issued the approval on Tuesday, said.
He was referring to the illegal settlement in which the previous day Israel approved the addition of 900 new housing units, a move that drove another stake into already hobbled US-led efforts to restart negotiations that were suspended during the Israeli war on Gaza at the turn of the year.
“Construction in Jerusalem cannot be halted and Gilo is in Jerusalem,” Yishai said.
Gilo is one of a dozen Jewish settlements in the eastern part of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Holy City.
France added its voice to the chorus of Western condemnation of the move.
“It is a decision that we regret,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in Jerusalem hours before he was to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials in Jerusalem.
“We have to restart with the political discussions,” he said.
The move to approve the new units flew in the face of Palestinian calls for a complete freeze on new building ahead of fresh peace talks.
Washington was quick to say that it was “dismayed” at the decision.
“At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
Israeli news reports said that Netanyahu had rejected a request from his US ally to halt construction in Gilo, but it was not clear whether the request concerned the project approved on Tuesday.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon also slammed the move, saying it “undermined efforts for peace and cast doubt on the viability of the two-state solution.”
“The secretary-general deplores the government of Israel’s decision today to expand Gilo settlement, built on Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war,” Ban’s spokesman said.
Noting that the settlements illegal, Ban appealed to Israel to respect its commitments to cease all settlement activity under the Road Map, a blue print for peace between Israel and the Palestinians under a so-called two-state solution.
The approval is likely to further hamper Washington’s so-far futile efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, amid deep disagreements over the thorny issue of settlements.
Britain condemned Tuesday Israel’s green light for hundreds of new housing units, saying it made a peace deal more difficult.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband “has been very clear that a credible deal involves Jerusalem as a shared capital,” said a spokeswoman.
“Expanding settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem makes that deal much harder. So this decision is wrong and we oppose it,” added the Foreign Office spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, Israeli President Shimon Peres called on Tuesday for Palestinians to “show that they control their own people” before seeking UN recognition of an independent state.
Abbas meanwhile said in Cairo on Tuesday that the plans to seek recognition of a Palestinian state have the backing of Arab countries and is not a “unilateral decision.”
The rival democratically elected Hamas movement said on Tuesday it was opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state before the end of the Israeli occupation.
Israel illegally occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967.
Under international law, neither East nor West Jerusalem is considered Israel’s capital. Tel Aviv is recognised as Israel’s capital, pending a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel, in contravention of several binding UN Security Council Resolutions.
In these resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has also called for no measures to be taken to change the status of Jerusalem until a final settlement is reached between the sides.
Declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these Security Council resolutions.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to almost-defenceless Palestinians.
By Gilad Atzmon, Information Clearing House, Nov. 12, 2009
Let’s once and for all stop getting excited about America mounting pressure on Israel to freeze West Bank settlements. The entire fascination with the topic is a product of Zionist spin. It is there to divert attention from the root cause of the conflict: The robbery of Palestine and Palestinians in the name of a ‘Jewish home coming’. The call to stop Israeli construction in the West Bank is there to leave us with the false impression that the robbery of Palestine started in 1967. The facts are known to many of us, but not to all. The vast majority of Palestinians were expelled from their towns, villages, fields and orchards in 1948.
What seems as an American peace initiative putting pressure on Israel to halt its expansion into the West Bank is in fact an agenda that is promoted by Zionists within the US Administration who realise like the late Sharon, that the only chance for the Jewish state to survive the next decade, is to shrink into a little Jewish shtetle (ghetto). The Two state solution is indeed the last effort to keep Zionism alive.
Netanyahu is far from being stupid. He understands it all. He knows that his Zionist Revisionist father’s dream of ‘greater Eretz Yisrael’ is unattainable.
Haaretz reported today that the Israeli PM admitted in Washington that he was committed to ‘two states living side by side’. However, he stressed that the “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes from which they were expelled, would not be on the table.” Seemingly, an Israeli hawkish PM is voluntarily confronting the Israeli original sin namely the expulsion of the vast majority of the Palestinians people. However, the fact that he insists that it won’t be ‘on the table’ can only mean that it is on the table already. “They”, continues Netanyahu, “must abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees, give up irredentist * claims to the Negev and Galilee, and declare unequivocally that the conflict is finally over”.
Clearly, Netanyahu expresses here a wish that is shared by most if not all Israelis. They all dream to open their eyes in the morning just to find out that all Goyim, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims just left the region.
I am here to advise Netanyahu and every Israeli who is willing to listen that this is not going to happen. As much as being flooded by ‘refugee’ Palestinians is a deep Israeli nightmare, it is far from being a Palestinian fantasy. It is actually a reality waiting to happen. Israel has lost its opportunity to reconcile with its neighbours. It failed to settle its conflict with the indigenous people of the land. The fate of Israel will be determined by ‘facts on the ground’ namely demography. In terms of reconciliation, Israel has past the no return Zone. Its fate is doomed. One Palestine from the river to the sea is not any more a matter of ‘if’ but rather a question of ‘when’.
Unlike most Israelis who dismiss the Palestinian cause, Netanyahu admitted today that Palestinians were indeed expelled. For the first time Palestinians’ “irredentist claims” are being addressed by an Israeli PM. And yet, Netanyahu should stop deluding himself and his people. It is not just the Negev and Galilee. It is actually every piece of land between the river and the sea: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Be’er Sheva and every village, orchard, field, river and tree in between. The only question that is left open is how long will it take for the Shekel to drop? How long will it take before Israelis grasp that they dwell on stolen land? How long will it take before the Israelis realise that the battle is lost? How long will it take for the Israelis to internalise the obvious fact that they have once again managed to get on the wrong side of their Neighbours?
*Irredentist: One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically.
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Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics
December 22, 2009By James Petras, Information Clearing House, Dec 21, 2009
“Obama want to see a stop to settlements: Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions”. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, May 2009
“What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements…..is unprecedented, there has never been a precondition, it’s always been an issue within negotiations.” Hillary Clinton, BBC, November 1, 2009 (my emphasis)
“The US administration understands what we have always said … that the real obstacle to negotiations is the Palestinians (calling for a freeze on settlements)”. Israeli Minister of Science and Technology Daniel Hershkowitz, November 1, 2009 (my addition).
“America, stop sucking up to Israel!” Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist, Haaretz, November 1, 2009.
“US Zionists are sticking it to America, 24/7”, Anonymous Staff Official, Washington D. C., October 31, 2009.
The discussion of Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US political system revolves around several essential issues, including:
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