Tag: ICJ

Eyeless in Gaza – a curious moral blindness

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

When shameless Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu calls the UK government’s block on just 30 of 350 arms export licences to Israel a “shameful decision”, he is speaking as a man indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court and corruption, including including breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud, in Israel’s own courts. Watching him its hard to imagine that he has any self awareness at all.

He also seems incapable of grasping that his description of Hamas, as “a genocidal terrorist organization that savagely murdered 1200 people on October 7”, begs the question of how anyone objective would define his own armed forces; who have killed 40 times as many people since. A lot of weight is being put on the adverbs and adjectives in this description. Are those 40,000 deaths not murders? Are the killings not savage? Are the people of Gaza not being terrorised? Is this not genocidal? The International Criminal Court has made an interim ruling saying that it is.

The comment on this limited ban below by UK Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis (in italics) is similarly morally compromised; which is shown when you consider the situation in the round (not in italics).

“It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licences, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts. The “war for its very survival” takes the form of a massacre in Gaza courtesy of US arms supplies and diplomatic backing, escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and a nervous stand off in the North with Hezbollah. Any other “fronts”, like the Red Sea, Eastern Med or Persian Gulf are being covered by gigantic US aircraft carrier task forces; with a few Royal Navy frigates to show willing.

But clearly, for Sir Ephraim, the over 40,000 people killed by the IDF in the Gaza strip since October 7th and the further 502 in the West Bank are not enough. Many more have to die to ensure Israel’s survival as an apartheid state. For Mirvis, because Israel is a “strategic ally”, we should be prepared to turn a blind eye to what it is doing and keep passing it the ammunition so it can keep doing it. The UK complicity here is its usual auxiliary effort to the main supply from the United States, which is rushing just under two arms shipments a day; which it would not be doing if it didn’t think doing so was in its own interests.

And that means that all too often the game that is played in the media is to treat Israeli victims as rounded human beings deserving of sympathy and identification, while Palestinian victims are just statistics. Because large numbers tend to blur in the mind, it might bring the reality home more to condiers just the casualties of the Israeli assault in the last three days.

This is from the UN OCHA report.

  • On 1 September, 11 Palestinians were killed and tens of others injured when Safad school hosting Internally Displaced Persons was hit in Az Zaitoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza city.
  • On 29 August, nine Palestinians, including three children (of whom two were newborn), and two women (of whom one was pregnant), were killed when the upper floor of a residential tower was hit in western An Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in Deir al Balah.
  • On 29 August, five Palestinians were killed and at least 13 others injured in Deir al Balah.
  • On 29 August, five Palestinians were killed and others injured when internally displaced people’s (IDP) tents were hit in Wadi Saber area, east Khan Younis.
  • On 31 August, seven Palestinians from the same family were killed when a house was hit in As Sabra neighbourhood in Gaza city.
  • On 31 August, five Palestinians, including three females and a doctor, were killed when a house was hit in southern Khan Younis.
  • On 31 August, five Palestinians, including four females, were killed and 15 others injured when a house was hit in southern Khan Younis.

Mirvis goes on that such action has been forced upon it (Israel) on the 7th October, as if the genocidal scale of the reaction is not Israel’s responsibility and without reflecting that,

  • before Oct 7th, 20 Palestinians were being killed in the conflict for every Israeli
  • and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank was proceeding slowly but surely in the face of world indifference.

This is odd because he is very well aware of the latter, having taken part in National Day demonstrations in East Jerusalem in which settlers march through Palestinian Streets while chanting “death to Arabs” and “may your villages burn”.

He emphasises that this is “at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families” – without reflecting that had Netanyahu not sabotaged the recent ceasefire deal those hostages would probably still be alive. This has not gone unnoticed in Israel itself, leading to a General Strike and furious demonstrations last Monday.

He also does not mention the 184 Palestinians killed over the weekend by the IDF. Does he think those 184 people were not killed in cold blood? Or that their killers were kind? And consider the numbers. 184 to 6. Thirty one times as many people. Nearly three Grenfells. Half a primary school full.

That ratio of 31 deaths to 1 indicates how little these lives weigh in the balance. Their names will not be published. Nor will their pictures. Their relatives will not be interviewed. Their stories will barely be acknowledged. So, Sir Ephraim can look, and not see. Truly eyeless in Gaza.

On the same page, on the same day, as part of his pitch for the Conservative leadership, Tom Tugendhat called for the UK to be “willing to stand by our allies” (Israel) by continuing to supply it with arms as it, according to Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya, creates a “situation in Gaza that is beyond desperate… Civilians are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick. They are homeless. They have been pushed beyond the limits of endurance – beyond what any human being should bear,” including

  • Severe overcrowding, coupled with the lack of clean water, sanitation facilities and basic hygiene items like soap, which is taking a heavy toll on children, with skin infections continuing to increase among them. As of 30 June, WHO had already recorded 103,385 cases of scabies and lice, 65,368 cases of skin rashes and 11,214 cases of chickenpox in the Strip.
  • With MSF support, the Palestinian Agricultural Development Association (PARC) has been providing emergency latrines, solar water pumps and basic health care to some of the displaced people arriving in the Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis. “Every day, we see between 300 to 400 people at the medical clinic, of which 200 cases are related to skin conditions,” explained PARC pediatrician Dr. Youssef Salaf Al-Farra, underscoring that children are the most affected by highly contagious skin conditions.
  • MSF claims that, for three months, it has been trying to import 4,000 hygiene kits, comprising items such as soap, toothbrushes, shampoo and laundry power, to improve living conditions in Khan Younis, but the importation has not been allowed by Israeli authorities (my emphasis).

As Tugendhat puts it, if you can’t “stand by an ally” at times like this when it is busily reducing children to misery, “what is the point of an alliance?” So true. Because in an alliance, what “our” allies do gets brushed under the carpet, understated, justified, euphemised out of existence.

UK defence secretary, John Healey’s comment that that Britain remained “a staunch ally” of Israel and that the ban on just 30 liscences out of 350 would not “have a material impact on Israel’s security” shows that he hopes this level of gesture will be enough to defuse the pressure of the solidarity movement on the government, while it continues to “stand by an ally” no matter what it does. It won’t be. Israel reacts so aggresively to these gestures not because they undermine its practical capacity to keep killing on a mass scale, but because they undermine its perceived legitimacy in doing so. When even “unshakable” allies like the UK feel compelled to take even a symbolic distance, the ground is moving under its feet.

All the more reason to keep up the pressure. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign petition for a complete end to the arms trade with Israel is here.

The scale of desperation to keep the narrative under control in the UK is shown by the deeply repressive arrests of journalists like Richard Medhurst and Sarah Wilkinson under “terrorism” legislation. This follows the Israeli style of narrative control, in which they have put 52 Palestinian journalists in prison and have killed 116 in Gaza.

The arrest of Medhurst – who was held for 24 hours – was under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which makes expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation an offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. This means that it doesn’t matter what is true. In a conflict in which

  • our government defines one side as “terrorist” and the other side as a “democracy with a right to defend itself”
  • and a context in which it is increasingly normative to describe inconvenient facts as ideologically driven opinions

reporting on facts that put that ally in a bad light can be framed as being supportive of a proscribed organisation especially if they are true. I must admit a certain trepidation in writing this, in case 16 counter-terrorism officers in balaclavas descend my home at 7.30 in the morning, and sieze this laptop and my phone for “content posted online” like they did to Helen Wilkinson.

At the same time, the police look as though they are angling for a confrontation at Saturday’s first mass solidarity demonstration of the Autumn by putting such restrictions on its assembly point and timing that will give them many excuses to make arrests, no matter how peaceful the demonstrators are.

The statement condemning this has so far been signed by

  • Palestine Solidarity Campaign
  • Palestinian Forum in Britain
  • Friends of Al-Aqsa
  • Stop the War Coalition
  • Muslim Association of Britain
  • Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Signatories

  • Apsana Begum MP
  • Baroness Christine Blower
  • Richard Burgon MP
  • Ian Byrne MP
  • Jeremy Corbyn MP
  • Lord Bryn Davies
  • Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary TSSA
  • Alex Gordon, President RMT
  • Fran Heathcote, General Secretary, PCS
  • Lord John Hendy
  • Imran Hussain MP
  • Daniel Kebede, General Secretary NEU
  • Ayoub Khan MP
  • Ian Lavery MP
  • John Leach, Assistant General Secretary RMT
  • Clive Lewis MP
  • Mick Lynch, General Secretary RMT
  • Andy McDonald MP
  • John McDonnell MP
  • Iqbal Mohammed MP
  • Grahame Morris MP
  • Zarah Sultana MP
  • Jon Trickett MP
  • Mick Whelan, General Secretary ASLEF
  • Sarah Woolley, General Secretary BFAWU

“Red Lines” which mean anything and nothing.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” President Biden. May 8th

On the face of it, this is a very strange statement. Israeli troops had already entered Rafah two days before Biden said they hadn’t done it yet. But, although this statement was already out of date at the point that Biden made it, on the other hand, it is “clear”, or seems to be from this statement, that “if they go into Rafah” – no caveats about that – the US would cut off “supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, with the cities…”

What happened since is that the Israelis have continued sending troops into and occupying Rafah, while shelling and bombing the parts of it that they do not occupy.

The UN puts the impact of that like this.

Ground incursions and heavy fighting also continue to be reported, particularly in Rafah. Intensified hostilities following the issuance of evacuation orders and the Israeli military operation in Rafah have so far forced the displacement of about one million people, amid a decline in the entry of humanitarian aid. Between the afternoons of 29 and 31 May, according to MoH in Gaza, 113 Palestinians were killed and 637 were injured, including 60 killed and 280 injured in the past 24 hours.

In Rafah, only three field hospitals are still operating, one of them partially. The World Food Programme (WFP) calls for the immediate opening of all access points, emphasizing that its ability to support people in need is deteriorating. Health and environmental risks are on the rise due to fuel shortages, limited access to clean water, sewage overflow, accumulation of solid waste, and infrastructural damage, UNRWA and partners warn.  

The US, in response, made a tokenistic gesture of blocking one weapons shipment. This had the same performative media feed quality as their aid air drops and the pier they built to deliver aid that has now began to sink.

The International Court of Justice ruled on May 24th that Israel “must halt” its military offensive “immediately”. That was a week ago. The Israelis have ignored the ruling. They are in breach of international law and therefore, as the saying goes, “the rules based international order”.

The film below of National Security Council spokesman and former Rear Admiral John Kirby, a man who definitely has “something of the night about him”, slipping and sliding under pressure from reporters on this question is a study in squirming self righteous evasiveness that becomes embarassingly revealing.

His line can be summarised as …“the Israelis say that they didn’t do the bombing, it “might have been” a Hamas ammo dump spontanously combusting, and anyway they used their smallest bombs, a teeny, tiny bomb, and if they did it was somewhere else, and an accident, and they are investigating it; so I really can’t comment until their investigation is complete. And of course we will not rush to judgement until they have had time to judge their own actions, and there will be nothing self serving about this because they are a “democracy”. We haven’t been able to verify any of the evidence we have seen. We will ask the Israelis about this and accept what they say. Any critical view about this is conjecture that does not fit the facts, even though I’ve just said that we won’t know what the facts are until the Israelis decide what they are. As far as red lines are concerned, there is no mathematical formula, so, trust me, trying to pin me down on this will be like trying to nail blamange to the wall. A great deal of aid has gone into Gaza but I am not going to specify how much because I know damn well how far short it falls. We have a red line against a major incursion, but no matter how major the incursions have been so far, they won’t be major enough for us to actually do anything; and we are in constant talks with the Israelis so we are on the same page on whatever this is going to be. Trust me. Anyway, all this could be avoided if Hamas came out of their tunnels and lined up with big targets on their heads so the IDF could shoot them without having to, sadly, drop 2,000 lb bombs on thousands of people trying to shelter in tents; because its very worrying that the Israelis are having to send troops back into areas that they had already flattened and thought they had “cleared”; so there needs to be a plan for the day after, though for goodness sake don’t ask me what that might be.”

Watch it for yourself. Its an education.

“You cannot make judgements in the midst of a conflict” John Kirby. Exept that the US judgement to cut funding from UNWRA after Israeli accused 7 UNWRA personel of taking part in Oct 7th was immediate, and in the midst of the conflict, even though the Israelis presented no evidence at the time; and the funding remains suspended even though the Israelis have presented no evidence since. This is complicity in using famine as a weapon.

Strange elisions and imbalances in Labour ceasefire amendment.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The wording of the Labour curates egg amendment to the SNP ceasefire now motion has all the signs of being written in haste in an attempt to build loopholes into it that would allow wiggle room for the “catastrophic humanitairian consequences” of Israel’s ongoing assault to go ahead. My additional wording to tease out its imbalances are in bold.

That this House believes that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences and therefore must not take place;

notes the intolerable loss of Palestinian life as a result of the Israeli offensive so far and the prospect of famine if it continues, the majority being women and children;

condemns the terrorism of Hamas who continue to hold hostages and the actions of Israel in holding many more prisoners without charge;

supports Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s calls for Hamas to release and return all hostages and adds that Israel should release Palestinian prisoners and not rearrest them and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which means an immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides, noting that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence nor that Palestinians can be expected to cease resisting if Israel continues its attacks and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7th October cannot happen again and that Palestinians have the right to the assurance that there will be no more IDF assaults on Gaza, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank will end;

therefore supports an immediate ceasfire followed by diplomatic mediation efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire;

demands that rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza an the UK immediately restores and increases its funding for UNWRA;

demands an end to settlement expansion and violence;

urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures and for the UK to withdraw all diplomatic, military or other aid until it does;

calls for the UN Security Council to be meet (?) urgently and pledges that the UK will vote for a ceasefire when it does with no equivocation;

and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution on the lines of China’s proposed international peace conference, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state, including working with international partners to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to rather than outcome of that process, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour and further recognising that leadership of that state must be the choice of the Palestinian people themselves not imposed on them.

Gaza; “The West” takes its mask off.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

On Friday the International Court of Justice threw out Israel’s objection to proceeding with South Africa’s case that it is committing genocide in Gaza, on the grounds that it is plausible that it is, gave it specific instructions on what it had to do, and ordered it to report back to the court by February 26th on what it has done to comply.

Simply put, it has to cease attacking civilians and allow in aid. There was a brief moment of hope that this might provide some pressure towards a change of course. But, hope, above all else, must be crushed.

Over the weekend there was no let up in the Israeli assault. This is from the latest UN daily report:

  • “Intense Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea continued across much of the Gaza Strip on 27 and 28 January, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction.”
  • Between the afternoons of 26 and 28 January, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 339 Palestinians were reportedly killed (165 people on 28 January, 174 people on 27 January), and 600 Palestinians were injured (290 on 28 January and 310 on 27 January).

Incoming truckloads of aid, averaging 156 a day in the preceding week, are now being held up at Kerem Shalom by Israeli demonstrators.

On Saturday Israel’s leaders responded to the ICJ ruling by demanding that countries cease to fund UNWRA – the backbone of what aid structure there is in Gaza – on the grounds of “allegations” that 12 of its employess “participated” in some undefined way in the attacks on Oct 7th. These allegations have not been published. UNWRA has sacked the named individuals while an investigation takes place.

These Israeli allegations put even more of a target on the back of every aid worker in Gaza, 154 of whom have already been killed by the IDF.

The UN Reports that UNRWA is the main humanitarian agency in Gaza, with over two million people now dependent on its services and some 3,000 out of its 13,000 staff in Gaza continuing to report to work, despite the ongoing hostilities.

So, far from seeking to comply with the Court, and recognise what a deep hole they are digging themselves into with their armoured bulldozers, Israeli leaders have sought to bluster, calling the South African case “outrageous”, carried on as though no ruling had been issued, and to hit back by undermining what limited aid has been getting in.

This is in a situation in which the UN reports that

  • 2.2 million people are at imminent risk of famine.
  • 378,000 of these are at “catastrophic” level (extreme lack of food, starvation, exhaustion of coping capacities)
  • 939,000 are at emergency level.

The ICJ will take a long time to come up with a definitive judgement. Without a ceasefire, the scale of this famine could well have made the case de facto for them by the time they decide de jure.

The response of “the West” has been instructive. A rush further down the rabbit hole towards confrontation with the rest of the world.

Faced with “plausible” accusations of genocide from the ICJ – the World Court on these questions – they issued diplomatic versions of Itamar Ben Gvir’s dismissive tweet “The Hague schmague. The UK with characteristic patronising condecension snarked that the South African case was “not helpful”. Its “plausibility” in the eyes of the court was not acknowledged. Instead we had the worn out mantra that Israel is “entitled to defend itself”; while the Palestinians, presumably, must suffer what they must with no right to resist. The same mind set that led the Observer to write that Israeli violnece is “understandable” while Palestinian violence “defies comprehension” (Editorial Oct 15th).

Faced with unpublished allegations of a tiny number of UNWRA employees being involved in Oct 7th, the US and nine of its core subordinates have leapt to broadcast Israel’s case from their bully pulpits and to cut UNWRA’s funds.

The ICJ ordered Israel “to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. UNWRA is the body that organises that. In striking at UNWRA, Israel is signalling that, in doing the exact opposite of what it has been ordered to do, far from respecting international law, it is doubling down on defying it.

This was an opportunity for “the West” to de escalate, if that were their intention. Perfect legal cover. In backing Israel up, and actively imposing its own collective punishment on the people of Gaza, “the West” is tearing off its moral mask.

So, even after the ICJ ruling, the UK and US continue to supply Israel with weapons and argue that the condition for a viable ceasefire is for Israel to have achieved its military objectives before one happens. Given the way that Israel is doing that, that makes them overtly complicit in the ongoing slaughter.

They are, perhaps, hoping that by doubling down they can make what the ICJ says to Israel in a month’s time irrelevant, drowned in a brute display of unaccountable force.

This is what the West’s “rules based international order” looks like with the pretences stripped away. Not naked in the conference chamber, or courtroom, but strutting across the world with their big swinging dicks horribly on display.

Even if we avoid the wider war that is now looming, and which this stance has made more likely, this will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. Now we see you.