Government ignored ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Israel was breaching international human rights laws in Palestine

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-ignored-overwhelming-evidence-that-israel-was-breaching-international-human-rights-laws-in-palestine

Protesters during a National March for Palestine in central London, January 13, 2024

THE government ignored “overwhelming evidence” that Israel was breaching international human rights laws in Palestine and continued to supply the murderous regime with weapons, including those being used in Gaza, legal documents have revealed.

A Foreign Office assessment unit reviewing UK arms sales to Israel in November raised “serious concerns” with Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

But the former PM recommended that arms sales continue, accepting Israel’s reasoning that it has a different interpretation of its international humanitarian law obligations.

The revelations are contained in a document in a case brought by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Palestinian human rights group Al Haq over UK arms sales to Israel.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-ignored-overwhelming-evidence-that-israel-was-breaching-international-human-rights-laws-in-palestine

Continue ReadingGovernment ignored ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Israel was breaching international human rights laws in Palestine

Morning Star: As the general election looms, the left has choices to make

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-left-and-election

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Stammer, December 27, 2023

2024 is almost certainly a general election year. Westminster rumours of a May poll are rife, but the autumn remains the more likely option for beleaguered premier Rishi Sunak.

An essential function of a democratic election is to offer the possibility of a change of government. The forthcoming contest, however, seems to offer little more than a shift in administrators of the same anti-popular policy.

The problem facing voters wanting significant change — the majority of the electorate one can assume — is the state of the Labour Party. On the most pressing international issues — Palestine and Ukraine — its policy is identical with the Tories: war and more war, as Washington directs.

Domestically its priority is sticking within the narrow parameters of Treasury orthodoxy. Anything involving spending public money is, even after 13 years of austerity, ruled out. So too tax rises on the rich.

The Green New Deal is diluted further by the day, and privatisation looks like extending its tentacles into the NHS.

Even more positive Labour policies, like extending trade union rights, are clouded by a scepticism as to Keir Starmer’s sincerity, given his well-earned reputation for dissimulation and double-dealing.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-left-and-election

Continue ReadingMorning Star: As the general election looms, the left has choices to make

Campaigners file formal complaint to EHRC over Labour’s mistreatment of Jewish members

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Image features the Labour Party's Keith Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Rupert Murdoch. Thanks to the Skwawkbox for the image.
Image features the Labour Party’s Tories Keith Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting and Red and Blue Tories owner Rupert Murdoch. Thanks to the Skwawkbox for the image.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/campaigners-file-formal-complaint-to-ehrc-over-labour-mistreatment-of-jewish-members

THE Labour Party has “lost its way,” Jewish Labour campaigners said today as the party faces a formal complaint over its mistreatment of Jews.

A legal letter on behalf of the Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), sent to the party and copied to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, sets out evidence that Jews who disagree with the current leadership about Israel, Palestine, zionism and anti-semitism “suffer disproportionately from the party’s harsh disciplinary regime.”

Jewish members are six times more likely to be investigated and more than nine times more likely to be expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism than non-Jewish members, according to recent research by JVL.

The letter, sent on August 22, says the party has failed to understand the diversity of opinion among British Jews and misconstrued criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, illegitimately restricting the free expression of Jewish views on Israel and zionism.

It highlights that restrictions are contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and to the party’s own rules.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/campaigners-file-formal-complaint-to-ehrc-over-labour-mistreatment-of-jewish-members

Continue ReadingCampaigners file formal complaint to EHRC over Labour’s mistreatment of Jewish members

Vilifying Corbyn

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Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

A small part of an impressive article by Jonathan Cook at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-labour-starmer-dark-politics-triumph-paving-way

Corbyn was judged to have interfered in antisemitism cases, with the implication that his office tried to stop antisemites from being expelled. The truth was the opposite, as the EHRC quietly conceded. His team “interfered” only in the sense that they tried to speed up the handling of disciplinary cases his right-wing opponents in the party bureaucracy stalled in a bid to fuel the antisemitism smears.

Starmer is interfering in disciplinary cases too – and doing so openly and proudly, including overturning a decision in late 2020 by his National Executive Committee to reinstate Corbyn as an MP. But this time the EHRC seems unconcerned.

The EHRC has given Starmer its official stamp of anti-racism approval even as his officials drive out Jewish members in unprecedented numbers. These are Jews whose mistreatment no one in public life seemingly cares about – because they back Corbyn.

Last week, hot on the heels of that stamp of approval, and mocking the idea that Starmer’s party is interested in tackling racism, Labour barred its local constituency parties from affiliating with a range of progressive groups.

Those included Jewish Voice for Labour, which represents Jews highly critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main UK organisation representing Palestinian interests, as well as Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour and the All African Women’s Group.

The Equalities watchdog’s “special measures” on Labour are also apparently not needed even though prominent Black party members, such as former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also a Corbyn ally, complain that Starmer’s Labour has done nothing to address anti-Black racism exposed in the recent Forde Report.

The truth is that Starmer and the establishment media will not be satisfied until they have driven a stake through the heart of Corbynism, and its genuine commitment to anti-racism and a more egalitarian approach to the economy. That is why they have never sounded more desperate to vilify him and his supporters. 

A small part of an impressive article by Jonathan Cook at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-labour-starmer-dark-politics-triumph-paving-way

Continue ReadingVilifying Corbyn

Labour forces Holocaust survivor out of party with expulsion threat email

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Original article republished from The Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use

Stephen Kapos says he has a duty to teach others about his experience whether Starmer and co like it or not

As Skwawkbox predicted last week, Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos has been driven out of the Labour party in yet another demonstration of the antisemitism and arrogance of the Labour right.

Kapos, who survived the slaughter of Jewish people as a boy, received an email last week from the party threatening him with expulsion if he spoke about his experience at a Socialist Labour Network event last Friday, which was Holocaust Memorial Day:

Date: 24 January 2023 at 20:09:05 GMT

Subject:FAO: Stephen Kapos

Dear Stephen, 

It has been brought to the attention of the Labour Party that you have been advertised as a speaker for an event entitled ‘Zionism During the Holocaust – Reclaiming the Memory of All Those Who Died’,  hosted by Socialist Labour Network on Friday 27th January 2023.

In line with Labour Party rules, Socialist Labour Network is a group which the NEC of the party has determined is incompatible with Labour Party values. Any support for the organisation would likely be deemed in breach of Party rules and may lead to expulsion. 

Yours sincerely,

London Labour 

But rather than back down to the cowardly threat, to which the party drone who sent it didn’t even dare put his or her name, Kapos – a constituent of party leader Keir Starmer – resigned his membership, saying that his duty to teach people about the terrible slaughter at every opportunity – and to stand up against Israeli apartheid against Palestinians – was too important to bow to petty tyrants and their so-called ‘Labour values’:

Dear London General, 

Thank you for your emailed letter of the 24th of January giving me advance warning that I am likely to be expelled from the Party if I were to speak from the panel as a Holocaust survivor at the SLN (Socialist Labour Network) Webinar on the 27th January — on Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Holocaust is the most important single example of genocide, which at its worst descended into an industrial process of mass murder of millions.

As a child survivor and one of the fewer and fewer still living direct witnesses to the Holocaust I feel a compelling duty to bear witness and speak out about it at any platform that would invite me and to any audience ready to listen.

I am an activist for Palestinian human rights and an active member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in its Camden Branch. The defence of Palestinians living under a brutal occupation is very important to me, particularly as a Holocaust survivor. Palestinians live under a system of apartheid as recognised by Amnesty International and other major human-rights organisations. Those are my political beliefs which I claim are protected characteristics under the Equalities Act 2010.

I am not a member of SLN nor have I been following its activities, but via the book to be discussed on the 27th I have a general understanding of SLN’s views on present-day Zionism (as a political movement ) and on some of the actions of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust and WWII.  I am in sympathy with some of those views on the grounds of my political beliefs mentioned above. I have personal experience of the Kastner project in Hungary which was driven by Zionist ideology.

Email and letter details courtesy of Tony Greenstein

Left-wing Jewish activist Tony Greenstein, one of the first to be expelled during Labour’s mass purge of Jews who stand up for Palestinian human rights, published the video of Kapos speaking at the event about what he saw and suffered:

The real and naked antisemitism of the Labour right has somehow failed to feature in the supposed ‘mainstream’ media discourse, despite being far more widespread and concrete than the grossly-exaggerated and often fictional ‘left antisemitism’ that even the Starmer-commissioned Forde Inquiry had to admit was weaponised against the left and Jeremy Corbyn, despite the revelations of the leaked Labour report and Al Jazeera’s ‘Labour Files’ documentary series.

The right’s racism and abuse has also been directed at blackMuslim and Roma Gypsy members with impunity from the party leadership – on the contrary, some culprits have been protected while others have been promoted, while Starmer himself has been accused of covering up for ‘criminal’ abusers of domestic violence victims and for alleged sex pests in his shadow cabinet.

Solidarity with Stephen Kapos and all those targeted by the Labour right’s regime.

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Original article republished from The Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use

Continue ReadingLabour forces Holocaust survivor out of party with expulsion threat email

Nine Palestinians killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/nine-palestinians-killed-israelis-occupied-west-bank

NINE Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and at least 20 others wounded today during a raid in the West Bank.

The latest surge of violence against Palestinians was the heaviest death toll in years in the occupied territory.

A gun battle broke out when the Israeli military conducted a daytime operation in the Jenin refugee camp that it said had been aimed at preventing an imminent attack on Israelis.

Israeli violence has intensified this month after the country’s new far-right government took office and pledged to take a hard line against the Palestinians.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/nine-palestinians-killed-israelis-occupied-west-bank

Continue ReadingNine Palestinians killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank

Israel kept over 600 Palestinians children under house arrest in 2022

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Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

The data published by the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs does not include all the children arrested by Israeli occupation forces this year, which, according to some sources, is above 750December 27, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

More than 600 Palestinian children were kept under house arrest by Israeli occupation forces in 2022, according to the Commission for Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, a prisoners’ rights body, which issued a statement on Monday, December 26. Minors were detained by the Israeli state for periods ranging between a few days and, in some cases, years, Wafa news agency reported

The detained children are not allowed to move freely, or even go to school without an escort. They are also forced to wear tracking devices throughout the detention period. 

The commission describes two kinds of detention of Palestinian children. One is in which the child stays with their family while an Israeli court decides on the case. This often takes months, and the family is often forced to pay a heavy amount as surety. To access such large sums of money, families often have to take loans or sell their property. In the second category, Israeli forces make Palestinian families take their children outside the city or town during the period of the trial, and arrange for their own stay there while the court decides the matter.  

The commission notes that such Israeli detention leaves prolonged physiological effects on both the children and their families. It deprives the children of their right to education and creates a constant feeling of fear, anxiety, and deprivation. 

Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children violates the provisions of international humanitarian law, which specifically addresses protecting the interests of children while setting the conditions of their detention. 

Until 2009, when Military Order 1644 was promulgated by Israel in the West Bank, Israeli courts would try Palestinian children as young as 12 in the same courts as adults, and with no specific protections in place. Military Order 1644, however, set up separate military courts for the trials of children, and determined the Palestinian age of maturity to be 16. Israel does not classify Palestinians over the age of 16 as children, despite the age of maturity for Israelis being 18 years.  

Deadly year for Palestinian children 

At least 54 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied territories in 2022. Out of these, 35 were killed in the occupied West Bank, and 19 in the occupied Gaza strip. At least 958 Palestinian children were wounded by Israeli forces or settlers across the occupied territories in the same period, and over 750 have been arrested or detained. 

At least 150 Palestinian children, below the age of 18, are in different Israeli prisons serving various sentences. 

Some sources quote a higher number of children killed by Israeli forces this year in the West Bank. According to Defense of Children-Palestine, one of several Palestinian human rights groups the Israeli government has branded as “terrorists” and banned, “Israeli forces repeatedly and systematically shoot to kill Palestinian children in violation of international law.” It claims that 13 Palestinian children were killed in Jenin alone this year.

The youngest Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces was 7-year-old Rayan Suleiman. He was being chased by Israeli forces, who were threatening to arrest him near Bethlehem, when he died of cardiac arrest. 

2022 was also the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005, when the UN started recording daily deaths. According to the UN, more than 166 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank this year.  

Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, has been particularly targeted by occupation forces this year under the so-called “break the wave” operations launched in March. In near daily raids, Israeli forces have killed 59 Palestinians in Jenin alone this year. 

Apart from Israeli armed forces, illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank have also killed at least four Palestinians this year, and carried out numerous attacks on Palestinian villages, their farm lands, and their businesses. 

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIsrael kept over 600 Palestinians children under house arrest in 2022

Jerusalem Pogrom: Extremist Jewish Mobs injure 100 Palestinians, chanting “Death to Arabs”

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( Middle East Monitor ) – The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a pogrom as “a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority”.That is exactly what is happening today against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem.

Middle EastEye: “Hundreds of far-right Israeli activists chant “death to Arabs” in East Jerusalem”

Palestinians are not a minority in Palestine – the country that lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But due to Israel’s apartheid regime that has ruled the country since 1948, the majority of Palestinians were expelled from the areas that today form so-called “Israel proper”, and which many Palestinians term “1948 Palestine”.

Due to a slow process of Israeli ethnic cleansing since then, Palestinians are no longer the majority in Jerusalem. But in recent weeks that process has sped up in that city, the historic capital of Palestine.

Some truly terrifying clips have been circulated online – including by credible journalists – showing rampaging mobs of mostly young Israeli men attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem and chanting “Death to the Arabs” (while being incited and led by mainstream Israeli political and religious leaders).

This is not a new phenomenon, but it has increased in recent weeks, partly due to a ruling by an Israeli court demanding new expulsions of Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The families have been until the start of May to leave their homes and hand them over to Israeli settlers.

These actions by the apartheid state of Israel have only encouraged the “Death to the Arabs” hate mobs. And therein lies the key to understating the essence of a pogrom.

https://twitter.com/TamaraINassar/status/1385321445006397446?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1385321445006397446%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.middleeastmonitor.com%2F20210423-israels-pogroms-in-jerusalem%2F

A pogrom is carried out by violent mobs, who are deemed in the discourse of the government and of the corporate media to be “extremists”. There is no doubt that these mobs are far-right Jewish-supremacist extremists by any objective definition.

France 24 English: “More than 100 Palestinians wounded in Jerusalem clashes

https://videopress.com/embed/EsIdDFSj?hd=1&loop=0&autoPlay=1&permalink=0

But they are not extremists in terms of the mainstream of Israeli political discourse and – crucially – of the actions of the racist state itself.

You can see this very clearly in a viral video clip that was circulated by the American anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace.

The clip was from a 2009 film about Sheikh Jarrah. But as JVP notes, it could easily have been filmed today. Expulsions of Palestinians by mobs of highly ideological religious Zionist fanatics are still frequently carried out, in the same way seen in the clip.

But the most telling part of the video is perhaps not so much the actions of the mob itself, but how they are endorsed and backed by the racist state.

You see the thugs of Israel’s highly-armed military “Border Police” force standing by and watching the takeover, making sure that the Palestinians are not able to defend themselves or their homes.

This is the very definition of a pogrom.

In the clip posted by JVP, Israeli settler leader Jonathan Yosef is shamelessly explicit about all this, saying: “We take house after house. All this area will be a Jewish neighbourhood … We are going to the next neighbourhood and after that we’ll go [to] more. Our dream [is] that all East Jerusalem will be like West Jerusalem. [A] Jewish capital of Israel.”

He then gives a far clearer, far more honest – and frankly more accurate – definition of Zionism than the lying dissimulators of liberal and “left-wing” Zionism ever could (with their nonsense about “Jewish self-determination” in a country which has never been exclusively Jewish):

“I see this as a continuation of the Zionist project. The return to Zion. Is it at the Arabs’ expense? Yes. But our government institutions were also built at the expense of Arabs who lived here. And so was the state itself,” he says.”

Everything Yosef said in this definition of Zionism is objectively true. The difference though, is that he thinks that such violent, racist extremism is good and praiseworthy, while I (and the vast majority of people around the world) reject it as a horrifying injustice.

Yosef is no marginal figure or merely some obscure wild-eyed extremist. As my colleague David Sheen reports, he sits on Jerusalem’s city council for Shas – a religious extremist party which also happens to have won the third highest number of seats in Israel’s parliament in the election last month.

But the Palestinians show no sign of backing down, lying down, giving up, or, – in the words of Zionism’s racist founder Theodor Herzl – allowing Israel to “spirit the penniless population across the border” of Palestine.

Middle East Monitor

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingJerusalem Pogrom: Extremist Jewish Mobs injure 100 Palestinians, chanting “Death to Arabs”

‘A Cascade of Human Rights Abuses:’ Why the world must Halt Israel’s Further Land Grab in Palestinian West Bank

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‘A Cascade of Human Rights Abuses:’ Why the world must Halt Israel’s Further Land Grab in Palestinian West Bank

Ramona Wadi 05/06/2020

( Middle East Monitor ) – UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk’s criticism of the forthcoming US-Israeli annexation of more Palestinian land offers a good start to collective political action against Israel, if only the international community would show that it is willing. “The plan would crystallise a 21st century apartheid, leaving in its wake the demise of the Palestinian’s right to self-determination. Legally, morally, politically, this is entirely unacceptable,” declared Lynk.

The UN official described the repercussions of annexation as creating “a cascade of bad human rights consequences” and insisted that the international community can no longer play its acquiescent role to Israeli violations. “The looming annexation is a political litmus test for the international community. This annexation will not be reversed through rebukes, nor will the 53-year-old occupation die of old age,” he warned.

This is not the first time that Lynk has offered a harsher criticism of Israel than the appeasing commentary which is typical of UN officials and institutions. In the past, he recommended international sanctions against Israel and supported the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigation of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Lynk’s words draw attention to the UN’s political flaws and the endorsement of human rights violations committed by its member states. As Israel moves towards annexation, the international community is unlikely to assess its own complicity. The US-Israeli annexation plans are built upon decades of international endorsement of Zionist colonisation. To oppose annexation – one of the last steps that Israel is embarking upon to complete its colonial project – is not enough. Diluting settler-colonisation to “53 years of occupation” is also inconsistent and a misrepresentation of the causes of Palestinian displacement.

The US may currently be playing a more prominent role, but the international community has magnified the US-Israeli relationship to deflect attention from the historical process leading to the current dynamic. The international community’s endorsement of the Israeli colonisation project is a major violation that remains overlooked. What the US and Israel have achieved under the Trump administration is a reflection of an ongoing cycle of intentional political oblivion at a global level.

Having shone the spotlight on the US-Israeli collusion, the international community has availed itself of a temporary lull in scrutiny of its action, particularly its inaction when it comes to the Palestinian people’s political rights. In truth, the international community’s action can be summed up in the 1947 Partition Plan, after which reliance on statements and condemnations became the diplomatically-accepted means of purportedly championing Palestinian rights. Lynk’s statements, albeit devoid of direct references to Israeli colonisation, point towards international culpability.

In recent years, the two-state compromise remains the most blatant evidence of international culpability in preventing Palestinian reclamation of their land and rights. Just as annexation has been declared in violation of international law, the two-state diplomacy must also be held accountable for paving the way to annexation. This necessitates a complete reversal of the politics that have sustained the UN so far. There cannot be a unified political front against Israel if two-state politics is not abandoned. Stopping annexation requires a reversal of Israeli colonisation; anything less is an affirmation of treason against the Palestinian people.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue Reading‘A Cascade of Human Rights Abuses:’ Why the world must Halt Israel’s Further Land Grab in Palestinian West Bank

Paleisteina

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The point is that it shouldn’t need me to say this – you should not allow it – you – should not allow it. It should not be acceptable personally to you. Why does it take me to tell you? Don’t you oppose Fascism? Don’t you oppose treating people as untermensch? Don’t you oppose military oppression and forced oppressive servitude? You know what it is. It’s Fascism.

Those that see the truth know that action is needed. Since we understand and totally appreciate the situation, then we are responsible individually and collectively through our inaction. Individually and collectively? Well, most certainly collectively – that it is permitted with our knowledge – please consider historical precedents. It is totally unacceptable and that should be stated unequivocally by all.

From the darkness comes the light.

Continue ReadingPaleisteina