Peace and Justice Post

by Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, April 17, 2011

The U.S. Senate on April 14 passed a resolution “calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone report”, the popular name for the report of a U.N. fact-finding mission chaired by Richard Goldstone that was charged with investigating Israel’s full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, code-named “Operation Cast Lead”.

The report of the fact-finding mission concluded that there was evidence that both Israel and the Palestinian authority in Gaza, Hamas, committed war crimes during the course of the assault.

S.RES.138 states that “Justice Richard Goldstone publicly retracted the central claims of the report he authored in an op-ed in The Washington Post on April 2, 2011″ and “also conceded that the number of civilian casualties was far smaller than the report alleged”.

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In the capital Riyadh, the protesters gathered outside the interior ministry and urged Saudi authorities to release what they called “forgotten political prisoners” who have been detained for demanding reforms in their country, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Protesters say prisoners are being held unjustly and without trial, some for as long as 16 years.

In the eastern city of Qatif, protesters poured into the streets, condemning Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Bahrain.

Expressing solidarity with anti-government protesters in Bahrain, the Saudis urged the immediate withdrawal of the Kingdom’s troops from the neighboring country.

Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Bahrain comes despite the convention of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council, which bans any interference in the regional countries’ domestic affairs.

They also called for the release of political prisoners and an end to human rights violations in the country.

Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing east has been the scene of anti-government protests over the past weeks.

According to a Saudi-based human rights group, Saudi authorities have arrested one hundred protesters for taking part or organizing anti-government demonstrations.

Human Rights First Society (HRFS) also revealed that some of the detainees were subject to torture both physically and mentally.

In Saudi Arabia, protest rallies and any public displays of dissent are forbidden and are considered illegal. Senior Wahhabi clerics in the kingdom have also censured opposition demonstrations as “un-Islamic.”

HM/MMN

By Goldy M. Georg, Countercurrents.org, April 14, 2011

I have been following all the different sets of emails and other communications since Anna Hazare began his hunger strike. Much before he paid his kudos for Modi and Nitish and his recent statement supporting MNS, it was clear to at least a few of us that it’s a modern way of placing Brahmanism on a capitalistic plank. Let me put my point very blunt. One might agree or disagree it solely rests with one’s wisdom.

The new model of Project Brahmanism is to fight against corruption and population growth not against casteism, fascism, communalism, gender inequity, capitalism or anything else. Well corruption had been always a yardstick to freeze the core issues of any region. The issues I have mentioned above that I have mentioned about. The word corruption is a misnomer, for it implies that there is something called honest capitalism. Corruption is worked into the fabric of capitalism. Sir Francis Drake made a fortune as a “privateer,” the polite word for pirate. In addition to indulging in the very lucrative slave trade, he routinely captured and ripped off French ships. One nation’s piracy was another nation’s foreign policy.

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Last week, scores were killed in Gaza after renewed Israeli air strikes.  Initial rumours of plans to launch an ‘Operation Scorching Summer’ seem to have been dispelled, although it was another bloody week for the battered yet resilient people of Gaza.

It seems that the Israeli government momentarily took Richard Goldstone’s comments last month as a green-light for a renewed attack on the Gaza Strip.  Goldstone had said that he regretted some aspects of the report he made on Operation Cast Lead, during which around 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died.  Four of the Israelis were killed by other Israeli soldiers in ‘friendly fire’ incidents.

The Goldstone Report concluded that individual Israelis could be held criminally responsible for potential war crimes committed by the State of Israel. But now, Goldstone, a supporter of Israel – perhaps a strange choice for an ‘impartial’ report on a war launched by Israel – has said subsequent Israeli military reports show that Israel did not target civilians as a matter of policy.  Oh, Israeli military reports, that infamous source of unbiased and accurate information.

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Asian Human Rights Commission,  April 2011

Urgent Appeal Case : The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that four activists of a nationalist political group were abducted from a crowded part of Karachi city by the police and plain clothed persons in police and military jeeps when they were ending their six day hunger strike in protest against the second disappearance of their leader who has been missing since 25 February 2011 after his arrest by persons from Army, Rangers and police. The parents of the disappeared person, in an application to different authorities, accuse Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and military intelligence (MI) for the kidnap and disappearance.

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Photo by Reuters

There is a packet of pipe tobacco sitting in my Gaza City apartment.

It’s Victor’s. He left it behind the last time I saw him, about one month ago.

Anyone who knew Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni knew that he was usually puffing away on a pipe. Like a wise sea captain.

I had hoped to give his tobacco back to him this weekend, to catch up before he left Gaza and returned to Italy.

He was heading home to see his father, who has been very ill. Also to have a break from Gaza and return refreshed on a new flotilla aiming to set sail to Gaza at the end of May and break the siege.

I last heard from him on Wednesday. It was a short text message asking me if I’d just heard the loud booms. These were sonic booms from low flying Israeli war planes. No, I replied, I hadn’t.

The following day he was kidnapped and shortly afterwards killed. Members of a Salafi group say they are responsible.

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The abduction and murder of Italian Palestine solidarity activist Vittorio Arrigoni (pictured) in Gaza comes as a shock to the entire Palestine solidarity movement and its many supporters around the world. It will also come as a shock to the vast majority of Palestinians themselves, especially as the bonds of solidarity that have been forged between them and the countless thousands of volunteers, delegations and activists who’ve travelled to and struggled alongside them over many long years are strong and unbreakable.

At any given time hundreds of volunteers, solidarity activists, and aid workers from all over the world live and work in both the West Bank and Gaza alongside the Palestinian people and are regarded as brothers and sisters in struggle by the vast majority they come into contact with. From this country alone in recent years five aid convoys have been organised and travelled to Gaza under the auspices of the Viva Palestina pro-Palestinian charitable organisation. Each has successfully broken the siege and been met with open arms by the authorities and the people of Gaza alike. However, we should not kid ourselves. In the conditions of a six year long unremitting siege, which it is worth recalling is an act of collective punishment in violation of international law, of which there is still no end in sight, and with the international community still as yet refusing to intercede in any meaningful way to end the suffering of the 1.5 million men, women and children who are impacted daily, it is inevitable that extreme views and actions will result. Indeed, given the conditions described, it should come as a surprise that there have been remarkably few incidents of cruelty such as the one committed in the case of Vittorio Arrigoni.

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Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 303, April 15, 2011

For the last fifty years, United States policy in the Middle East has been built around its very close links with three countries: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. In 2011, it is at odds with all three, and in very fundamental ways. It is also in public discord with Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Brazil over its current policies in the region. It seems almost no one agrees with or follows the lead of the United States. One can hear the agonizing frustration of the president, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, all of whom see a situation careening out of control.

Why the United States has created such an incredibly close alliance with Israel is a matter of much debate. But it is clear that for many years the relationship has been getting ever tighter, and more and more on Israeli terms. Israel has been able to count on financial and military aid and the never-failing veto of the United States in the U.N. Security Council.

What has happened now is that both Israeli politicians and its U.S. base of support have moved steadily rightwards. Israel is holding on tight to two things: eternal delays on serious negotiations with Palestine and the hope that someone will bomb the Iranians. Obama has been moving in the other direction, at least as much as U.S. internal politics will let him. The tensions are high and Netanyahu is praying, if he does pray, for a Republican presidential victory in 2012. The crisis point may however come before that when the U.N. General Assembly votes to recognize Palestine as a member state. The United States will find itself in the losing position of fighting against this.

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By Franklin Lamb, opednews.com, April 13, 2011

Whatever becomes of the truly pathetic “Pastor” Terry Jones and his plans to appear later this month at the largest Mosque in Michigan to condemn Islam and to generate some media attention while provoking all decent Americans and people of good will everywhere with his hate speech will not be of much lasting import to Muslim and American relations.

Even as Jones prepares to act as grand inquisitor and  plans to prosecute the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) for various imagined crimes, it reminds us that when it comes to intolerance, nothing in new under the sun in our land that beckons with its Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island in New York harbor:

“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse from your teeming shore/Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me/ I lift my lamp before the Golden Door.”

Muslims and Arabs who began arriving in America in the middle of the 19th century have in many ways embodied the intended fulfillment of the American dream promised in the above words of Emma Lazarus. The reasons that Muslims are often described as being “As American as apple pie” includes exactly their qualities that every Westerner observes and often comments on if they are fortunate enough to live among Muslims abroad or have Muslims as neighbors in their communities in the USA.

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Asian Human Rights Commission, April 14, 2011

 The UN panel commissioned to advise the UN Secretary General on several issues relating to the period covering the end of the war with the LTTE has now submitted its report. The content of the report has not yet been published. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the UN Secretary General to publish the contents of this report.

The Sri Lankan government issued a statement in which it stated that it had received a copy of the panel’s report and that it rejected the content as being ‘flawed’ and ‘biased’. The Sri Lankan government did not mention the content of the report and on what specific issues it disagreed on.

This report was awaited globally since the appointment of the panel by the Secretary General. The appointment preceded several months of debate from all over the world on the responsibility of the UN relating to the event that occurred in Sri Lanka towards the end of the war with the LTTE. There were serious violations of human rights abuse which the government continuously denied.

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