Foreign Policy | ukwatch.net

Israel's Amber Light

Tim Holmes — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:34:31 +0000

ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN NOT IMMEDIATE: BUSH TRIES DIPLOMACY HALF-HEARTEDLY
JNV Anti-War Briefing 115 (17 July 2008)

BUSH SENDS DIPLOMAT TO MEET IRANIANS

On 16 July, US President George W. Bush stunned observers by agreeing to send a high-level US diplomat to Geneva to meet Iranian negotiators face-to-face as part of the EU-led talks to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. As the Independent pointed out, State Dept. spokesperson Sean McCormack had said just the month before that the US would boycott such meetings unless ‘Iran suddenly has a change of tune’. (17 July, p.23; http://tinyurl.com/633cn3)

In the event, it was the US that ‘changed its tune’. Analyst Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation said: ‘I think it’s clear that Bush has pushed Cheney back twice now’ (referring to the recent decision to remove North Korea from the US ‘terrorist’ list). (FT, 17 July, p.5; http://tinyurl.com/6jwgmj)

The Bush U-turn on Iraq had two features. First, he dropped the demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment before being allowed face-to-face meetings on the subject (US officials have met Iranian diplomats, but only to discuss security in Iraq). Secondly, he accepted the EU ‘freeze-for-freeze’ proposal, whereby the West holds off on further sanctions for a set period while Iran holds off on escalating uranium enrichment. ‘Previously, Washington had stated that if Iran continued enriching uranium, the international pressure would only increase.’ (Telegraph, 17 July, p.15; http://tinyurl.com/5emnvj)

The Bush diplomatic opening is very limited, however. William Burns, the third most senior State Department official, an undersecretary of state, is indeed being sent to Geneva to sit in the same room as Iranian negotiators, but his role is officially to do no more than reiterate the US line – on this one occasion.

THE OTHER PROPOSALS

The coverage of these recent developments has conformed to the Chomsky-Herman propaganda model of the mass media, demonstrating once again the key role of media self-censorship in maintaining what they call ‘brainwashing under freedom’.

In the current reporting, the starting point of discussion is invariably the EU-led proposals put to Iran on 14 June, and the question is whether Tehran will accept this framework for negotiations. What is almost totally absent is any awareness that Iran had made its own highly significant proposals on 13 May this year.

One rare recognition of this simple reality came in an important commentary by Sir John Thomson. Thomson, a former UK Permanent Representative at the UN, was told by Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in early July that EU negotiator Javier Solana ‘had assured him the Iranian package could be part of the agenda for substantive negotiations between Iran and the 5-plus-1’ (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany). (Independent on Sunday, 13 July, p.56; http://tinyurl.com/59jth3)

So the negotiations are proceeding because Iran’s negotiating proposals (which have been almost entirely erased from history by the Western media) have been admitted to the negotiating chamber.

RED LINES

Ali-Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who advises Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, on foreign affairs, made a critical point on 1 July. Apart from saying it was ‘expedient’ for Iran to resume nuclear negotiations on the 5-plus-1 offer, Velayati said: ‘They say Iran should not make an atomic bomb and we say Iran needs nuclear energy. These two principles are your and our red lines which should be the basis for negotiations and [can be] agreed on’. (FT, 2 July; http://tinyurl.com/5ejuqk)

But how can these two ‘red lines’ both be agreed as a basis for negotiation? By going back to Iran’s 13 May proposal for uranium enrichment to continue on Iranian soil—but under international control.

On the basis of his discussions with Foreign Minister Mottaki, Thomson believes that Iran is ‘ready to make some compromise agreements (as yet unspecified) on Middle Eastern issues that worry the west’. And on the nuclear issue ‘it is ready to compromise to the extent of putting its enrichment-related facilities under the control of an international consortium—including, for example, France, Germany and the UK—which would then operate a modern, commercially oriented business producing nuclear fuel in Iran for sale globally. This is not what the 5-plus-1 are asking for, but in my view it is the best that is obtainable, and so long as it remains in force it precludes Iran from making a nuclear weapon.’ (IOS, 13 July, as above. See also http://mit.edu/stgs/irancrisis.html.)

WHAT OF THE ISRAELI THREATS?

So while Ayatollah Khamanei gives the ‘green light’ for negotiations on the basis of rather vague 5-plus-1 proposals, President Bush is reported to have given the ‘amber light’ for an Israeli airstrike on Iran. Despite this, an Israeli strike looks unlikely, for the next few months at least.

The Sunday Times reported: ‘ “Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.’

This is not a formality: ‘Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets. “It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.” The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.’ (Sunday Times, 13 July; http://tinyurl.com/6gppuc)

Retired US Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, concluded from the Israeli aerial exercises in June that ‘Israel does not have the capability to effectively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.’ Interviewed by Robert Naiman of the Huffington Post website, Gardiner pointed to a 2006 MIT paper by Whitney Raas and Austin Long, assessing Israeli military planners’ think ing. Raas and Long believe Israel would want to attack the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan and the heavy water plant at Arak—with a combined total of 36 aircraft. (With supporting aircraft, this would match up with the reports of a 100-aircraft exercise in June.)

‘An Israeli strike would not be much of a strike,’ Gardiner says. The US would probably think in terms of about 10 times more aim points for a similar strike, he observes. (Robert Naiman, ‘Is Israel Really Preparing to Attack Iran? Col. Gardiner Says No’, 20 June; http://tinyurl.com/4r5y43)

On this analysis, an Israeli strike could not destroy even the three best-known Iranian nuclear facilities, never mind facilities which might be hidden. The strike could not meet the minimum required by the US, which would want the assault to ‘set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success’, according to the Pentagon source consulted by the Sunday Times. It appears, therefore, that there will never be a ‘solid’ Israeli plan to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, and so, if it acts rationally, the White House will never green light such an attack.

OBAMA MANIA

The danger, of course, is that the White House will not act rationally, particularly if it sees the Bush ‘legacy’ being lost to an incoming Obama administration. Hence, perhaps, the startling decision to mimic the Democratic presidential candidate in his popular decision to offer unconditional talks with official enemies. In Nov. 2007, before the publication of the NIE that Iran had no nuclear weapons programme, a poll found 73% of people in the US favouring nonviolent options in dealing with Iran; 45% opposed violence even if diplomacy and sanctions failed (only 46% favoured force in those circumstances). http://tinyurl.com/5no6ox

Making Arms, Wasting Skills

Ellie Keen — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Alternatives to militarism and arms production

Executive Summary

Arms production is now an international military-industrial network, dominated by US-based corporations including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the essential function of which is to support the United States in maintaining its military supremacy and its geo-strategic goal of continued access to energy supplies. The leading European arms companies, BAE Systems, EADS and Thales, have pursued aggressive acquisition programmes in the USA to gain access to the lucrative American market. BAE, which already had an effective monopoly position in UK arms manufacture, is now one of the largest suppliers to the Pentagon, generating more sales in the US than the UK.

Various trends are clear, including the increasing use of foreign subsidiaries and subcontractors by these corporations and the rationalisation of the traditional, domestic arms manufacturing bases in the USA and Europe, with significant job losses. For example, since the early 1980s, UK arms-related employment declined from 740,000 to 315,000 by 2006.

A hierarchy of production exists, with the United States maintaining clear supremacy in first-tier sophisticated military platforms based on its massive procurement and R&D programmes, including the most advanced fighter aircraft and weapons such as satellite-guided missiles. This ensures its domination of the global arms trade and provides a form of technological leverage with client states to gain support for its over-arching strategic goals. Second-tier suppliers include the UK, France, and Russia offer other large platforms and weapons but with lesser capabilities. However, there are emerging nations including South Africa, South Korea, Brazil and India that have used their role as subcontractors in the international structure to modernise their own manufacturing capacity and now seek to challenge existing second-tier suppliers in their export markets. Below this is a much larger group of countries supplying basic, mass-produced weapons including sub-machine guns and rifles.

The arms trade is characterised by an intense supply-side dynamic to sell high-technology weapons into areas of regional tension like the Middle East and there are widespread allegations of corruption and bribery around these contracts, such as the Al Yamamah deal between BAE and Saudi Arabia to supply Typhoon/Eurofighter. At the same time, the diffusion of arms production has made it increasingly difficult both to monitor and control the arms trade when regional arms races are an increasing threat and may trigger the outbreak of major conflicts.

The UK has accepted a subsidiary role to the US in the latter’s broader strategy of global military force projection not least because it seeks to retain access to leading edge military technologies, including nuclear weapons. But the cost of this subservience is continued multi-billion pound expenditure on a range of sophisticated equipment that offers no contribution to the country’s real security needs; a significant and shameful role in a corrupt and dangerous arms trade; and no real commitment to support efforts at international disarmament, including nuclear disarmament.

Supporters of the military economy and the arms trade argue that, despite the massive job losses in the sector, they provide the UK with internationally successful, high technology niches in aerospace, engineering and electronics, as well as skilled work and spin-offs beneficial to the civil sector. But the real cost has been the diversion of resources from other forms of manufacturing activity that, if provided with similar long-term government investment, could actually have generated greater employment and direct benefits to the civil economy through improved technologies and industrial processes.

The dominance of BAE as a systems integrator for military aircraft, nuclear submarines and surface vessels is clear. However, the decline in arms employment has left only a handful of local economies with a residual dependency on military R&D and production, including Preston, Barrowin- Furness, Yeovil, Brough and Glasgow. These reflect the pattern of regional concentration in the North West, South West and South East, although the latter is not as significant as it was. Even at these sites, there have been considerable job losses since the 1980s and there is continued vulnerability to further rationalisation.

The military aircraft sector is particularly dependent on arms exports, with the BAE Brough site in East Yorkshire facing closure because of the lack of follow-on orders for the Hawk trainer aircraft. The Warton site in Lancashire is also heavily dependent on the Saudi Arabian contracts for Typhoon aircraft, and is vulnerable to regime change should the corrupt Al Saud absolute monarchy be overthrown.

Overall, because arms-related employment constitutes such a small proportion of national employment, the adjustment from a further restructuring based on deep cuts to military expenditure, is a minor one. Only in these small pockets of local dependency would further assistance be required to help diversify the local economies. This would be the sort of restructuring that many local areas have experienced after the loss of a staple industry and can be done successfully through support to regional and local economic development agencies in order to create a diversified and robust economic base.

More ambitiously, central government has a vital role to play in developing a radical, political economy of arms conversion and common security. By moving away from military force projection and arms sale promotion, the UK could carry out deep cuts in domestic procurement including the cancellation of Trident and other major offensive weapons platforms, as well as adopting comprehensive controls on arms exports, including the suspension of weapons exports to the Middle East. The substantial savings in military expenditure could help to fund a major arms conversion programme.

Here the emphasis would be on environmental challenges, including a multi-billion pound public investment in renewable energy, particularly offshore wind and wave power, that would substantially cut the UK’s carbon emissions and reduce dependency on imported oil, gas and uranium supplies. These new industries will also generate more jobs than those lost from the restructuring of the arms industry. In this way, the UK would be taking a leading role in establishing a new form of international security framework based on disarmament and sustainable economic development.

Download the whole report here

How Britain wages war

JamieSW — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:15:47 +0000

Five photographs together break a silence. The first is of a former Gurkha regimental sergeant major, Tul Bahadur Pun, aged 87. He sits in a wheelchair outside 10 Downing Street. He holds a board full of medals, including the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, which he won serving in the British army.

He has been refused entry to Britain and treatment for a serious heart ailment by the National Health Service: outrages rescinded only after a public campaign. On 25 June, he came to Down ing Street to hand his Victoria Cross back to the Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown refused to see him.

The second photograph is of a 12-year-old boy, one of three children. They are Kuchis, nomads of Afghanistan. They have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, Nato planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as “militants” or “suspected Taliban”. The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, says the invasion of Afghan istan is “the noble cause of the 21st century”.

The third photograph is of a computer-generated aircraft carrier not yet built, one of two of the biggest ships ever ordered for the Royal Navy. The £4bn contract is shared by BAE Systems, whose sale of 72 fighter jets to the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia has made Britain the biggest arms merchant on earth, selling mostly to oppressive regimes in poor countries. At a time of economic crisis, Browne describes the carriers as “an affordable expenditure”.

The fourth photograph is of a young British soldier, Gavin Williams, who was “beasted” to death by three non-commissioned officers. This “informal summary punishment”, which sent his body temperature to more than 41 degrees, was intended to “humiliate, push to the limit and hurt”. The torture was described in court as a fact of army life.

The final photograph is of an Iraqi man, Baha Mousa, who was tortured to death by British soldiers. Taken during his post-mortem, it shows some of the 93 horrific injuries he suffered at the hands of men of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment who beat and abused him for 36 hours, including double-hooding him with hessian sacks in stifling heat. He was a hotel receptionist. Although his murder took place almost five years ago, it was only in May this year that the Ministry of Defence responded to the courts and agreed to an independent inquiry. A judge has described this as a “wall of silence”.

A court martial convicted just one soldier of Mousa’s “inhumane treatment”, and he has since been quietly released. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, representing the families of Iraqis who have died in British custody, says the evidence is clear – abuse and torture by the British army is systemic.

Shiner and his colleagues have witness statements and corroborations of prima facie crimes of an especially atrocious kind usually associated with the Americans. “The more cases I am dealing with, the worse it gets,” he says. These include an “incident” near the town of Majar al-Kabir in 2004, when British soldiers executed as many as 20 Iraqi prisoners after mutilating them. The latest is that of a 14-year-old boy who was forced to simulate anal and oral sex over a prolonged period.

“At the heart of the US and UK project,” says Shiner, “is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability through jurisdiction.” British soldiers, he says, use the same torture techniques as the Americans and deny that the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on Torture apply to them. And British torture is “commonplace”: so much so, that “the routine nature of this ill-treatment helps to explain why, despite the abuse of the soldiers and cries of the detainees being clearly audible, nobody, particularly in authority, took any notice”.

Unbelievably, says Shiner, the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair decided that the 1972 Heath government’s ban on certain torture techniques applied only in the UK and Northern Ireland. Consequently, “many Iraqis were killed and tortured in UK detention facilities”. Shiner is working on 46 horrific cases.

A wall of silence has always surrounded the British military, its arcane rituals, rites and practices and, above all, its contempt for the law and natural justice in its various imperial pursuits. For 80 years, the Ministry of Defence and compliant ministers refused to countenance posthumous pardons for terrified boys shot at dawn during the slaughter of the First World War. British soldiers used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean were abandoned, as were many others who suffered the toxic effects of the 1991 Gulf War. The treatment of Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun is typical. Having been sent back to Nepal, many of these “soldiers of the Queen” have no pension, are deeply impoverished and are refused residence or medical help in the country for which they fought and for which 43,000 of them have died or been injured. The Gurkhas have won no fewer than 26 Victoria Crosses, yet Browne’s “affordable expenditure” excludes them.

An even more imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain’s modern colonial wars. In his landmark work Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis uses three main categories: direct responsibility, indirect responsibility and active inaction.

“The overall figure [since 1945] is between 8.6 and 13.5 million,” Curtis writes. “Of these, Britain bears direct responsibility for between four million and six million deaths. This figure is, if anything, likely to be an underestimate. Not all British interventions have been included, because of lack of data.” Since his study was published, the Iraq death toll has reached, by reliable measure, a million men, women and children.

The spiralling rise of militarism within Britain is rarely acknowledged, even by those alerting the public to legislation attacking basic civil liberties, such as the recently drafted Data Com muni cations Bill, which will give the government powers to keep records of all electronic communication. Like the plans for identity cards, this is in keeping what the Americans call “the national security state”, which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad. The £4bn aircraft carriers are to have a “global role”. For global read colonial. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office follow Washington’s line almost to the letter, as in Browne’s preposterous description of Afghanistan as a noble cause. In reality, the US-inspired Nato invasion has had two effects: the killing and dispossession of large numbers of Afghans, and the return of the opium trade, which the Taliban had banned. According to Hamid Karzai, the west’s puppet leader, Britain’s role in Helmand Province has led directly to the return of the Taliban.

The militarising of how the British state perceives and treats other societies is vividly demonstrated in Africa, where ten out of 14 of the most impoverished and conflict-ridden countries are seduced into buying British arms and military equipment with “soft loans”. Like the British royal family, the British Prime Minister simply follows the money. Having ritually condemned a despot in Zimbabwe for “human rights abuses” – in truth, for no longer serving as the west’s business agent – and having obeyed the latest US dictum on Iran and Iraq, Brown set off recently for Saudi Arabia, exporter of Wahhabi fundamentalism and wheeler of fabulous arms deals.

To complement this, the Brown government is spending £11bn of taxpayers’ money on a huge, pri vatised military academy in Wales, which will train foreign soldiers and mercenaries recruited to the bogus “war on terror”. With arms companies such as Raytheon profiting, this will become Britain’s “School of the Americas”, a centre for counter-insurgency (terrorist) training and the design of future colonial adventures.

It has had almost no publicity.

Of course, the image of militarist Britain clashes with a benign national regard formed, wrote Tolstoy, “from infancy, by every possible means – class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments [leading to] people stupefied in the one direction”. Much has changed since he wrote that. Or has it? The shabby, destructive colonial war in Afghanistan is now reported almost entirely through the British army, with squaddies always doing their Kipling best, and with the Afghan resistance routinely dismissed as “outsiders” and “invaders”. Pictures of nomadic boys with Nato-roasted skin almost never appear in the press or on television, nor the after-effects of British thermobaric weapons, or “vacuum bombs”, designed to suck the air out of human lungs. Instead, whole pages mourn a British military intelligence agent in Afghanis tan, because she happens to have been a 26-year-old woman, the first to die in active service since the 2001 invasion.

Baha Mousa, tortured to death by British soldiers, was also 26 years old. But he was different. His father, Daoud, says that the way the Ministry of Defence has behaved over his son’s death convinces him that the British government regards the lives of others as “cheap”. And he is right.

Victory for the Raytheon 9

Tim Holmes — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:26:05 +0000

On 11 June 2008, 6 people, who had occupied the offices of Raytheon in Derry and destroyed computers, were acquitted of criminal damage by a Belfast jury. Raytheon is a huge US arms manufacturer, with sales of $20 billion in 2006 and over 70,000 employees worldwide. It makes Patriot, Tomahawk, Cruise and Sidewinder missiles, and much more besides.

The action which gave rise to the criminal charges took place on 9 August 2006 during Israel’s war on Lebanon, in which well over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli bombing and shelling. On 30 July 2006, an Israeli aircraft targeted a residential building in Qana in southern Lebanon with a Raytheon-supplied “bunker buster” bomb. As a result, 28 civilians, from two extended families, the Hashems and the Shaloubs, were killed. The dead included 14 children.

This event led to 9 members of the Derry Anti War Coalition occupying Raytheon’s offices in Derry ten days later. They remained there until forcibly removed by police in riot gear about 8 hours later.

Substantial damage was done to Raytheon property:

“Documents found on the premises were thrown from the windows to supporters outside. After our supporters were moved away by the police, computers, already damaged, were hurled out. Our main target was the mainframe: we knew that putting this out of action would disrupt Raytheon’s ordering system and thus hamper production, including production of missiles. The mainframe was decommissioned with a fire-extinguisher.”

This account is taken from The Raytheon 9: Resisting war crimes is not a crime, an excellent pamphlet about the affair by Eamonn McCann, who took part in the occupation.

The action eventually led to 6 of the participants appearing before a judge and jury in Belfast in May 2008, charged with criminal damage and affray. On 4 June 2008, after the prosecution had put its case, the judge expressed the opinion that there was no case to answer on either charge. However, the prosecution appealed to a higher court and won with respect to the criminal damage charge, which then had to be put the jury. A few days later, the jury found all the accused not guilty on the criminal damage charge. The charge of affray was dismissed by the judge without it being put to the jury.

The trial went largely unreported in the local Northern Ireland media, and in the Dublin and London media. The same is true of the verdict, even though it has sensational implications. The defence argued that the accused had undertaken their action in order to prevent war crimes being perpetrated in Lebanon by Israel using Raytheon-supplied weapons. In the words of Eamonn McCann in a statement afterwards, by finding the accused not guilty:

“The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.” [1]

In other words, in the opinion of the jury, having heard the evidence, it was reasonable of the defendants to believe that Raytheon was engaged in criminal activity by supplying Israel with armaments and that they were justified in perpetrating criminal damage on Raytheon property in order to hamper this criminal activity. In his statement, Eamonn McCann called

“on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.”

Gagging order

The Raytheon trial would normally have taken place in Derry, where the offences alleged were committed. However, on 14 September 2007, the prosecution requested a change of venue, on the grounds that protests outside the court might intimidate jurors, and coverage in the local media might prejudice them.

At this time, the presiding judge, the Derry recorder, Corinne Philpott, banned publicity about the case, but in such general terms that journalists present didn’t know what they were allowed to report and what was banned. There was no reporting of the application for a change of venue. On 10 December 2007, Judge Philpott imposed a blanket ban on reporting in Northern Ireland of any matter relating to the trial, including anything at all relating to Raytheon. The objective seems to have been to prevent publicity in Northern Ireland about Raytheon’s arms business, which might make a jury incline to the view that damaging its computers was a good idea.

There was no attempt by mainstream media organisations in Northern Ireland or elsewhere to have this extraordinary gagging order lifted or modified, despite the fact that their work was being hampered by the ban. For example, the Village magazine reported on 29 February 2008:

“Suzanne Breen (formerly of Village, now writing for the Sunday Tribune) has been referred to the Attorney General for possible contempt in an article published on 18 November in the Sunday Tribune. She had mentioned possible witnesses from the USA and Lebanon, and that, if convicted, defendants could face lengthy jail sentences.

“Also RTE has ordered Belfast independent production company Below the Radar to delete sections on Raytheon from a film about Ireland and the arms trade transmitted on 14 January. The effect of the ban is that all discussion of Raytheon’s presence in Derry has been shut down.” [2]

However, a legal challenge to the order was launched by Shane O’Curry of the Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign. As a result, the Belfast recorder, Judge Burgess, modified the order in late February 2008 to limit the ban to the usual one on pre-trial reporting of material directly relevant to the trial. It could then be reported for the first time that the Derry recorder had acceded to the prosecution’s request to move the trial from Derry to Belfast.

Notes

[1] www.ukwatch.net/article/raytheon9_acquitted
[2] www.village.ie/Ireland/Northern_Ireland/Media_gag_over_Derry_arms_factory_occupation/

Zimbabwe election: US and UK move to impose sanctions

tim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:52:22 +0000

Robert Mugabe was inaugurated for a sixth term as President of Zimbabwe on Sunday, following an election campaign characterised by government backed violence and intimidation.

Mugabe, standing for the ruling ZANU-PF, claimed to have received more than 85 percent of the vote. But his only opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had withdrawn from the campaign because of the level of violence and intimidation. International observers condemned the elections. “The current atmosphere prevailing in the country did not give rise to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections,” said Marwick Khumalo head of the Pan-African Parliament monitoring team.

Observers from Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) concurred. “The elections,” the SADC observers concluded, “did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

The elections were “worse than those we witnessed in Angola in 1992, after decades of war, and are not credible,” one SADC observer said.

Zimbabwean observers called off their plans to monitor the polls because it was too dangerous.

A government-sponsored campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders has left 104 people dead and 3,500 injured. Doctors who have been treating the wounded say that this is just the tip of the iceberg. “What we are seeing is probably 10 percent of what has actually happened,” a doctor who wished to remain anonymous told reporters. He said that the violence was the “worst the country has witnessed.”

The injuries he had treated were more serious than those experienced during the liberation war of the 1970s. “This is much, much more severe,” the doctor said, “We are not seeing simple fractures, we are seeing bones smashed into 20 pieces. People being forced to walk on burning coals, having scalding water poured over them and their wounds poisoned.”

Marwick Kumhalo said that monitors had evidence of violence and intimidation all over the country in the run up to the election. The turnout, he said, was low.

In Mashonaland the number of votes announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) exceeds the number of registered voters. The ZEC claimed that the turn out was comparable to that in the first round of the elections in March. But some polling stations in Bulawayo reported that they did not receive a single voter.

In Harare, the capital, few voters were seen. Many registered voters said that they did not intend to vote. There were a large number of spoilt ballot papers. Some had obscene language directed at Mugabe.

Turnout was very low in major urban areas. Voters in those areas can expect retribution. Reprisals have already been reported in the working class suburb of Chitungwiza outside Harare.

In the wake of the election the repression is continuing. Anyone who does not have the red ink stained finger that shows they voted is immediately at risk.

The ZEC has handed the details of polling patterns in each electoral ward to the government. Security forces and government-backed militias will be able to target voters in wards that did not endorse Mugabe.

Leaked minutes from the Joint Operations Command (JOC), which has been coordinating the coercion, indicate that the regime has decided to wipe out the opposition MDC.

The UK based Independent has seen sworn affidavits from reserve bank officials who transported money to regional organisers to finance the campaign of violence against the opposition.

There are reports that re-education camps at which opposition voters have been tortured are being re-supplied for a second phase of the campaign. An opposition activist told reporters that local businesses in Chinhoyi in Mashonaland West are being forced to make contributions to fund the repression.

“These camps are now regrouping. They’re going to unleash another terror campaign,” he said.

Mugabe went almost directly from his inauguration to the African Union (AU) summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The response of other African leaders to his presence was muted. They are reluctant to criticise a fellow African leader in public. Many of them have records of repression as bad, or worse than Mugabe’s.

Other African leaders, such as the summit’s host Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, are notoriously corrupt. Mubarak is accused of rigging the 2005 election. These were the first multi-party elections to take place since he came to power in 1981. He has maintained a state of emergency rule for the last 25 years.

Mubarak and his fellow African leaders have no more desire to allow democratic rights to their people than Mugabe. All the African rulers at the Sharm el Sheikh summit have for the most part enriched a tiny elite at the expense of the majority of the population.

But these regimes value their relationship with the United States and are coming under intense pressure to isolate and condemn Mugabe.

Egyptian prisons, for example, have proved invaluable in providing a secret base for the torture of US detainees in the so-called war on terror. The Italian authorities are currently investigating the “extraordinary rendition” of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric living as a refugee in Italy. He was seized by the CIA from the street in Milan in 2003. He was then taken to the US airbase at Brescia and flown to Ramstein in Germany from where he was taken to an Egyptian prison and tortured.

Even the Sudanese government, which is regularly condemned in the US press, has proved useful in intelligence matters to the US government. Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was recruited to the US “war on terror” in 2004.

The African states may well acquiesce to US demands on Mugabe, if they want to maintain their favoured status as allies in the war on terror.

Zimbabwe has become something of test case for US power in Africa, which has suffered a serious setback following the military debacle in Iraq and the emergence of China as a major player on the continent.

“I would suggest that one not take from the soft words in an open plenary as a reflection of the deep concern of leaders here of the situation in Zimbabwe,” said US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Fraser. “I would expect them to have very, very strong words for him.”

Her remarks were as much an instruction to the African leaders as a comment for journalists. The US, Britain and the European Union have made it clear that they will not recognise Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe.

Visiting Beijing, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for China to support an arms embargo against Zimbabwe. But Chinese Foreign Secretary Yang Jiechi insisted that the only way forward was for the government of Zimbabwe to enter into talks with the opposition.

It seems that a call for a negotiated settlement and a power-sharing government like that established in Kenya following the disputed election earlier this year may emerge from the AU summit. On the second day of the summit the South African paper Business Day reported that President Thabo Mbeki was close to brokering a deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

Even if Thabo Mbeki succeeds in establishing a government of national unity, that is unlikely to be the end of the matter. The US and UK seem to have already rejected this option.

An article in the Financial Times on 25 June posed a somewhat different scenario. The article’s authors reflected on the recent pronouncements by a series of African leaders and former leaders denouncing Mugabe.

Rising commodity prices and economic liberalisation has ensured that growth rates across much of Africa remain at 5 percent, the article said. But food prices and transport costs are rising fast, it warned. Under these circumstances, Mugabe’s intransigence may have unforeseen effects.

“Not only has Robert Mugabe put southern Africa in jeopardy. Like ripples on a pond, which can drown a man already up to his nose in water, his actions can strain an uneasy peace in Kenya, affect food shipments to refugees in east Africa and add to the trials of Britain’s beleaguered government.”

The article was written by former Africa editor of the Financial Times Michael Holman and Dr Gregg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a think tank founded by the Oppenheimer family to further the economic development of Africa. These two old Africa hands proceeded to imagine a scenario in which attacks on whites might lead the UK to attempt an evacuation of its nationals and a convoy to the South African border might be attacked.

Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo, the article suggests, might become a centre of resistance and railway connections might be severed. Mbeki might offer Mugabe sanctuary in South Africa, but President of the ANC Jacob Zuma and the South African trade unions might respond by organising “countrywide protests.”

In the midst of all that, Holman and Mills imagine, “Somali-based terrorists bomb a tourist hotel” while in Kenya further ethnic riots disrupt the power-sharing government and hamper relief to refuges in central Africa.

This could be the plot of a political thriller rather than an article in a sober financial journal. But the fact that it appears in the Financial Times and is the work of two senior commentators on Africa gives it a certain weight.

Such is the fragility of the world situation following the credit crunch and the still expanding speculative bubble in commodity prices that Mugabe’s attempt to hang on to power threatens to destabilise not only southern Africa, but the entire continent. In recognising that threat, Holman and Mills evince a desire to seize the moment and precipitate a crisis that they envisage to be already on the horizon.

How far the US and UK intelligence agencies would be behind the disastrous scenarios that Holman and Mills draft out, we may never know. But it is revealing that such influential commentators assume only a bloody outcome is possible in Zimbabwe.

The article is an indication of the extent to which the attitude of the US and UK towards Zimbabwe has shifted. At present it is accepted that the US and UK cannot intervene openly in Zimbabwe. As the Economist recently said, “other methods, with Africans to the fore, must be tried first.” But the scenario drafted out by Mills and Holman would provide a pretext for American and British intervention.

An editorial in the Financial Times expressed the western powers’ dissatisfaction with Mbeki’s attempts to establish a government of national unity in Zimbabwe.

“Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, who has sought to resolve the crisis with a Kenyan-style national unity government, should accept he has failed. There is no way any western nation will send international aid to a regime that has Mr. Mugabe or ZANU-PF at the helm. An MDC government that included a small ZANU-PF contingent would be an acceptable price for ending the violence, but is unlikely to happen.”

The Financial Times called for tighter sanctions and demanded that “Western financial institutions should be debarred from operating in Harare.”

US and UK policy is moving rapidly in this direction. President George Bush announced that he had instructed Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to “develop sanctions against this illegitimate Government of Zimbabwe and those who support it.”

The giant mining company Anglo-American has come under intense pressure to abandon its planned investment in a Zimbabwe platinum mine. Barclays bank is coming under pressure to cease business in Zimbabwe after more than a century. The UK-based supermarket chain Tesco has announced that it has stopped sourcing goods from Zimbabwe.

These economic measures and the proposed sanctions will inevitably have more impact on the population of Zimbabwe than on the ruling elite, who have long since established their own secret channels for funding. Tesco, Barclays and Anglo-American are major employers in what is left of the formal economy in Zimbabwe.

Sanctions will mean that it will become even more difficult for hospitals to source medicines and for ordinary people unconnected with the regime to buy fuel. As the West tightens the screws on the Zimbabwean economy, more people will flock across the country’s borders to escape poverty and malnutrition.

The experience of the recent election has demonstrated that Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition offers no alternative to Mugabe or to Western domination. From the outset, Tsvangirai’s party has been a pliant tool of the West and the international financial institutions.

Tsvangirai’s pusillanimous performance in the second round of the presidential elections seems to have convinced any potential backers in the West that he is useless for their purposes. He announced his withdrawal from the election last week with a letter to the Guardian in which he appealed for international military intervention. Within days he had denied that he ever sent that article to the paper. On its part the Guardian, while loath to discredit Tsvangirai, had to point out that they had received the article from the usual sources.

The “usual sources” turned out to be a “media consultant” who had provided 400 pieces under Tsvangirai’s byline for the Guardian, the Melbourne Age and the Washington Post. Inadvertently, Tsvangirai had admitted far more than he intended about the nature of his campaign and the extent to which it is run by big business interests and is far removed from the interests of the people who are being beaten and killed in Zimbabwe.

Letter to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso

JamieSW — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:27:38 +0000

Your Excellency Mr. Jose Manuel Barroso,

On the occasion of the meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council on 16 June 2008, the under-signed human rights and humanitarian organizations would like to bring to your attention a number of concerns regarding Israel’s non-compliance with international human rights standards, international humanitarian law and therefore also the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

In its external actions, the EU must not breach the fundamental principles of the European Union, including human rights, as set out in the Treaty on European Union. The EU has committed itself to the highest possible respect for human rights, and concrete commitments in this area have been in a period of steady expansion for the past decade. Following the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Treaty on European Union was amended to include a new Article 6, setting out that the principles on which the Union is based include: “liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States”. On 25 June 2001, the European Council, in its conclusions on the European Union’s role in promoting human rights and democratisation in third countries stressed its strong commitment to “the mainstreaming of human rights and democratisation into EU policies and actions”. It further stated that “human rights and democratisation should systematically and at different levels be included in all EU political dialogues and bilateral relations with third countries”. Emphasising its commitment to human rights, the EU established a Fundamental Rights Agency in 2007.

We further note that Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement establishes that: “Relations between the parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on a respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.” In the Barcelona Declaration of 1995, the Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs undertook to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and guarantee the effective legitimate exercise of such rights and freedoms … without any discrimination on grounds of race, nationality, language, religion or sex.” Finally, the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding Legal Consequences of Construction of a Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory establishes that all states and international actors are obliged not to recognise, aid or assist the illegal situation resulting from Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory and all parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention are bound to ensure Israel’s compliance with this Convention. These obligations relate both to EU member states as signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and to EU institutions charged to ensure that EU-Israel contractual relations are undertaken in respect of Community and international law.

We believe in the human rights of all. In matters both related to its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, Israel is currently not acting in conformity with international human rights law and, in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory, with international humanitarian law. Recent examples of such violations include:

The blockade on Gaza is leading to denial of economic, social and cultural rights for Gazans, in particular their human rights to food, water, sanitation and health, and which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has described as constituting collective punishment.
Palestinian citizens of Israel and the occupied territories continue to be denied equal access to services such as water, education, housing and land.
Israel continues to forcibly evict and displace Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including through the construction of the Separation Barrier, as well as in the Gaza ‘buffer zone’.

Israel continues to deny Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens, as well as spouses and family members from a number of other Arab states, from obtaining legal status in Israel.

The Annex to this letter lists reports on recent human rights violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by Israel.

Israel has failed to implement the observations of the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms, as well as human rights obligations established in the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and several United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions. Examples of these are contained in the Annex to this letter.

Israel faces real security threats and attacks that violate the human rights of its civilians. Its reactions to such threats and attacks must be proportionate and must not violate Israel’s obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

The undersigned organisations call upon the EU to require that, within the framework of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, specific conditionalities are established to ensure that without delay, Israel:

1. Ends the blockade on the Gaza Strip which is undermining the economic, social and cultural rights of Gazans.
2. Complies with all UN resolutions, the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and concluding observations of international human rights treaty bodies relating to the human rights of Palestinians, including the rights of Palestinian refugees.
3. Refrains from violations of the human rights of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories which necessitates a swift end to the occupation, a recognition of the right of Palestinians to self determination and the removal of the Separation Barrier from Palestinian land.
4. Ends discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, including in relation to access to land, housing and public services and enact a legally binding prohibition against discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion.

We look forward to your response and an opportunity to meaningfully engage with you on these issues.

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), Switzerland
Cordaid, The Netherlands
Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (DCI/PS)
DIAKONIA, Sweden
Al-Haq, occupied Palestinian territory,
ICCO, interchurch organisation for development co-operation, Netherlands
Aljamaheer Association for development in the Arab & Jewish sectors, Israel
Medical Aid for Palestinians, United Kingdom
medico international e.V., Germany
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights-Gaza
Palestinian hydrology group for water and environmental resources development
Physicians for Human Rights- Israel (PHR-IL)
The Swedish Organization for Individual Relief (SOIR)
Trócaire, Ireland

UNISON passes boycott resolution

JamieSW — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:13:46 +0000

UNISON – 2008 National Delegate Conference – Composite : AgendaID D – Palestine:

Conference welcomes the fact that UNISON has adopted comprehensive policy on Palestine at successive national delegate conferences in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Conference notes that 2007 marked the fortieth anniversary of the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. 2008 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the “Nakba” which led to nearly 900,000 Palestinians refugees fleeing their homes. Many of them and their descendants still live in refugee camps and all are unable to return to their homes.

Conference condemns the current siege of Gaza which threatens a humanitarian catastrophe through the denial of food, water, power and medical supplies by the Israeli government in breach of international law which outlaws collective punishment of a civilian population

However, Conference is aware that there is a still a low-level of awareness about the fate of the Palestinian people amongst trade union members and the wider public. Conference is also aware that this is among factors that allow both the British government and the European Union to pursue a foreign policy that whilst formally supporting the creation of an independent, viable Palestinian state effectively tolerates the continuing Israeli occupation.

Conference notes that the Trades Union Congress in 2006 adopted a clear position in support of self-determination for the Palestinian people. Conference recognises the importance of the work in the trade unions to win support for the Palestinian people, to campaign for recognition of their rights and to bring pressure to bear on the British Government to end its complicity in denying the rights of the Palestinian people.

Conference notes that 18 national trade unions affiliate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) representing over 80% of the organised trade union movement and recognises the potential that this represents for building a mass campaign of solidarity.

Conference recognises the importance of developing the work in the trade union movement at national, regional and local level and encourages all members and branches to affiliate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and to seek to take initiatives that will strengthen this work in 2008.

Conference welcomes the work carried out by PSC’s Trade Union Advisory Committee and in particular the production of the Education Pack, which can be a valuable resource for work in regions and branches, Trades Union Council and with PSC.

Conference welcomes the organisation of the PSC led Trade Union Delegation of representatives of PCS, UNISON, UCU, UNITE (TGWU section) and TSSA, which visited the West Bank in January 2008. Branches and regions are encouraged to make the maximum use of this opportunity to organise meetings with delegates reporting back.

Conference supports the calling of a trade union conference in the coming year and urges the National Executive Council to work closely with PSC on this initiative and give it maximum publicity and support.

Conference therefore instructs the National Executive Council to:

1) continue to promote awareness about Palestine amongst UNISON’s members, branches and regions by:

a) acting in solidarity with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, including;
b) projects to support the Palestinian trade union movement in the Occupied Territories;
c) working with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other organisations and encourage regions and branches to affiliate to PSC and invite speakers to address branches;
d) examining the investments of their members’ pension funds with a view to calling for disinvestment from companies such as Caterpillar, involved in the occupation;
e) using UNISON publications and other campaign materials
f) Act on some of the recommendations from the PSC trade union delegation to Palestine such as:
i) actions focused on the occupation;
ii) organising fact-finding solidarity delegations to the occupied Palestinian Territories;
iii) conveying solidarity messages to those inside Israel organising against the occupation, the Wall, the
checkpoints and the blockade.

2) work with the TUC and its affiliated trade unions to effectively implement the 2006 Congress resolution, especially through the TUC/Foreign Office and the TUC/Department for International Development forums;

3) raise the issue of Palestine with UNISON’s sister unions abroad and especially the global and European trade union federations to which UNISON is affiliated;

4) work with anti-occupation forces in Israel, such as Gush Shalom and Machson Watch;

5) make links with and give support to PGFTU endorsed worker’s advice centres across the region;

6) continue to work with both PGFTU and the Israeli Histradut to promote civil society dialogue and the peace process;

7) campaign to bring about a concrete change in the policies of the British government and the European Union. A first goal should be:

a) an end to the arms trade between Israel and Britain and EU Member States leading to a mandatory United Nations Arms Embargo;
b) suspension of the European Union/Israel Association Agreement until Israel is in full compliance of its human rights clauses;
c) a ban on imports of all goods, and especially agricultural produce, from the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories;
d) recognition of the outcome of the last elections to the Palestinian Authority which were certified as free and fair by international observers;

8) Ensure that the union divests itself of any holdings in companies responsible for maintaining the illegal Wall condemned by the International Court of Justice.

Fortress Britain

William Benzies — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:32:21 +0000

“The public has to be more alert”, warned one “international terrorism expert” in the Daily Mail late last year, because Scotland “is set to become another Israel within five years”. “[A]nti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life”, he assured the audience, and called for “routine arming of police officers” and increasing children’s “awareness of the dangers of terrorism” and for them to be “encouraged” to report anything “out of the ordinary”.

The oracle of doom was one Amnon Maor, identified as the head instructor of counter-terrorism for the IDF and Israeli border police¹. Maor is working with security firm 360 Defence, based near Glasgow, which is “training Scottish police, military and civilians in security techniques”. This wouldn’t be the first time the British police benefits form Israeli anti-terror expertise. The police squad that carried out the extrajudicial execution of the young Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes in the London underground had received similar training.

In the post-September 11 world, writes Naomi Klein, Israel has pitched its “uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror²’.”. Britain has since been furnished with its own unpopular occupation of Arab land – and the lessons from Israel are not lost on its architects. In disaster lies opportunity – and the only thing more useful than a thing to fear is fear itself. The give away line in Maor’s prescription above is his offer to increase children’s awareness of the dangers of terrorism – absent the real thing, fear will suffice. The Prime Minister may not have many achievements to his name, but he can claim patents to ‘Fortress Britain’, whose battlements sit on a foundation of fear.

The Power of Nightmares

In October 2001 it was revealed that the Pentagon was consulting Hollywood writers and producers specialising in spy thrillers and disaster flicks to imagine future attacks in order to best prepare for them. Developments such as the colour-coded threat alerts that change hue at the Department of Homeland Security’s caprice have alarmed even cold war hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Lamenting the ‘culture of fear’ he writes:

“Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue… Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum³.”.

In Britain each of the New Labour government’s political missteps has been accompanied by similar fear-mongering. While a terrorist threat does exist, its magnitude is wildly exaggerated. The European Police Office (Europol) released its first report on terrorism last year which listed 498 terrorist attacks for Europe in 2006; only one was attributed to Muslims. The majority – 136 – were carried out by the Basque separatist group ETA; only one of them deadly. When it came to the arrests on terrorism related charges, however, a good half were Muslims⁴.

It began with the ‘Ricin plot’: the highly publicised arrests, national hysteria and front page headlines. There was no Ricin, or a plot. It wouldn’t be until 2005, well after Colin Powell had used it in his case to sell the Iraq war to the UN, that the ban on reporting on the case was finally lifted and the public apprised of the truth⁵. The February 2003 ‘terror alert’ had Blair scrambling tanks to Heathrow, timed conveniently to coincide with the large scale demonstrations against the coming war. Notable support in the media came from BBC propagandist Fred Gardner, long suspected of ties to the intelligence services⁶. which were themselves busy fanning the fire. Simon Jenkins, the conservative columnist noted, “In 2002-03, before the Iraq war, the security service supplied the Cabinet Office with a weekly catalogue of ‘terror fears’ – anthrax, smallpox, sarin, dirty nuclear devices and a Christmas bombing campaign – to soften public opinion for the war⁷.”.

In June 2006, 250 heavily armed police men acting on ‘specific intelligence’ raided a home in Forest Gate arresting two young Muslims, shooting one in the process. The chemical weapons that they were alleged to have possessed were never found. Both were acquitted without charge. The police apologised. On August 10th, 2006, a day after then Home Secretary John Reid had hinted that new anti-terror measures were in order, the Deputy Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Paul Stephenson, announced that the police had foiled a plot to commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. Officials were soon conceding that the immediacy and scale of the threat may have been “exaggerated”; however, the scare succeeded in deflecting attention from Blair’s widely-denounced manoeuvres preventing a ceasefire in Lebanon. From Beirut, an outraged Robert Fisk wrote:

“Stephenson’s job is to frighten the British people, not to stop the crimes that are the real reason for the British to be frightened …I’m all for arresting criminals…But I don’t think Paul Stephenson is. I think he huffs and he puffs but I do not think he stands for law and order. He works for the Ministry of Fear which, by its very nature, is not interested in motives or injustice⁸.”.

In November 2006, the MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller warned of a violent threat from 1,600 suspects in 200 groups that could last “more than a generation”. Although she identified government policy towards Iraq as the main factor contributing to the rising radicalism, Blair endorsed the statement. He continued his scapegoating of Muslims with the periodic reiterations of the ‘Islamic threat’ to rationalize the fear, repression, lies and resentment brought in on the heels of the Iraq war. When Blair announced that “the rule of the game have changed”, no one took it more seriously than the tabloid press; they demonstrated just how toxic things could get when gloves come off with government sanction. Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian confessed:

“I try to imagine how I would feel if this rainstorm of headlines substituted the word ‘Jew’ for ‘Muslim’ – I wouldn’t just feel frightened. I would be looking for my passport.”

One can’t miss the Islamophobic nature of much of the hysteria when one compares the difference in the treatment of the cases of Robert Cottage and David Bolus Jackson of the BNP with that of Mohammed Atif Siddique. The case of the former two, arrested for the possession of rocket launchers, a “record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs”, extremist literature, and bomb-making information, barely got covered in national media; the latter, a 20 year old, received front page attention and eight years in prison for merely downloading extremist literature, and his attorney, Aamer Anwer, got charged with ‘contempt of court’ for calling the trial a “tragedy for justice”.

The new MI5 chief, Jonathan Evan, raised the fear factor a year on with the warning that 15-year-olds were being “groomed” for terror and that there were up to 2,000 people involved in “terrorist-related activity”. Recalling Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknown’s”, the man appointed by John Reid with Tony Blair’s approval, bizarrely added “there are as many again that we don’t yet know of”. Described variously as “lurid”, “inflammatory”, “highly ideological”, “playing Halloween”, it came on the eve of the Queen’s address calling for yet another terror bill. The institutional imperative of self-preservation may also have been at play: MI5 has already expanded by 50 % with eight new regional offices, and will have doubled in size by 2011. Eyebrows have been raised at these very public interventions by the heads of a clandestine service. Simon Jenkins noted that chiefs of the secret service have long feared that the absence of a public profile may diminish funding appropriation. “The answer of both MI5’s Evans and MI6’s John Scarlett is to join the fear factory⁹.”.

Taking Liberties

The assault on constitutional rights that started in the US with Clinton’s ‘Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty’ law of 1996 was replicated in Britain with the ‘Terrorism Act 2000’. Section 41 of the Act granted police the right to detain terror suspects for up to one week without charge (criminal law on the other hand requires that suspects be charged within the first 24 hours of arrest, or be released). Section 44 granted police stop and search rights all across Britain – it has since been used against: Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinto for protesting outside Europe’s biggest arms fair in London; the 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang for heckling Jack Straw at the Labour Conference; Sally Cameron for walking on a cycle-path in Dundee; the 80-year-old John Catt for being caught on CCTV passing a demonstration in Brighton; the 11-year-old Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft for accompanying her parents to an anti-nuclear protest; and a cricketer on his way to a match over his possession of a bat.

In the United States, September 11 occasioned the most robust assault yet on civil liberties in the form of Bush’s ‘USA Patriot Act’ leading eminent constitutional law professor Sanford Levinson to describe Carl Schmitt, the leading authority on Nazi legal philosophy, as “the true eminence guise of the Bush administration” to the extent that the Administration (advised by Dick Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington) espoused a view of presidential authority “that is all too close to the power that Schmitt was willing to accord his own Führer¹⁰.”. The respected lawyer Gareth Pierce noted equally worrying tendencies in the UK:

“Blair bulldozed through Parliament a new brand of internment. This allowed for the indefinite detention without trial of foreign nationals, the ‘evidence’ to be heard in secret with the detainee’s lawyer not permitted to see the evidence against him and an auxiliary lawyer appointed by the attorney general who, having seen it, was not allowed to see the detainee. The most useful device of the executive is its ability to claim that secrecy is necessary for national security¹¹.”.

The ‘Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001’ succeeded in ramming through measures that had been rejected in the 2000 Act. The ‘Criminal Justice Act 2003’ doubled the period of detention without charge to 14 days. Although the government suffered a significant setback when the Law Lords swept aside the indefinite detention ruling since it broke European human rights legislation (described by the Law Lords as “draconian” and “anathema” to the rule of law, it was seen by Lord Hoffmann as a bigger threat to the nation than terrorism). Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, immediately made clear his intention to undermine it. The government obliged by subsequently passing the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005’ which gave the Home Secretary the right to use Control Orders and opt out of human rights laws¹².

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in London on July 7, the government upped the ante with the ‘Terrorism Act 2006’, which doubled – yet again – the detention period to 28 days, a period far longer than any other state in the western world. The bill marked the first parliamentary defeat for Tony Blair, whose original proposal was for 90 days detention without charge.

Blair’s determination to deflect attention from the failures of his scandal-ridden government by turning the war on terror into a permanent undeclared state of emergency appeared finally to have hit a wall. However, despite a noticeably prudent start, Brown’s multiplying political problems soon had him reaching for Blairite nostrums. He renewed the case for doubling the period of detention without charge (subsequently reduced to 42 days). This despite the fact that the newly appointed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had conceded that circumstances had not yet arisen where it had been necessary “to go beyond 28 days”. Seumas Milne reported in The Guardian that:

“it’s widely acknowledged in Westminster that a key motivation for this latest assault on long-established rights and freedoms is Brown’s determination to wrong-foot the Tories tactically and portray them as soft on terror”.

The deleterious effects of a creeping surveillance state cannot be discounted. While the public may have little enthusiasm for an ID card scheme after discs containing personal details of 25 million individuals were lost by the government, Brown remains adamant. Given the government’s record for handling personal data, proposals for a universal register of citizen’s DNA samples is very worrying. So are Tony Blair’s remarks about identifying problem children who may grow up to pose a menace to society by intervening before they were born¹³. A new plan under the government’s e-borders scheme would require each person entering or leaving UK to answer 53 questions including “credit card details, holiday contact numbers, travel plans, email addresses, car numbers and even any previous missed flights”. Taken when a ticket is bought, the information, it was reported, “will be shared among police, customs, immigration and the security services for at least 24 hours before a journey is due to take place.”

When popular shows bear names like ‘Big Brother’, the appurtenances of mass surveillance society, such as the 4.2 million CCTV cameras, become an acceptable, even desired, part of the scenery. Privacy International rates Britain as an “endemic surveillance society” and, according to Timothy Garton Ash, the British state collects more data on its citizens than did the Stasi in East Germany. The more than 3,000 new criminal offences introduced under the Labour government have also turned privatized prisons into a growth industry. Today Britain has a higher incarceration rate than China, Burma or Saudi Arabia.

While the terrorist threat today has nowhere near the intensity of the IRA campaign, police are using military aircraft such as the Britten-Norman Islander used previously only in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Reaper robot drones of the type being used in Afghanistan will also be in operation during the Olympics.

Reign of the Terrorologist

Riding the back of the raft of anti-terror legislations are the terrorologists and the ‘security’ entrepreneurs; and they have found green pastures in Fortress Britain. With governments unwilling to address political causes, the trend is increasingly one of framing the subject in cultural terms: ‘they hate our way of life’, ‘they hate our freedoms’ etc. This clears the way for the terrorologist to step in and sell a toxic brew of cultural stereotypes and pop psychology packaged in pseudo-academic jargon. In his study of the trade, James Petras detects the following “eerily predictable patterns”:

“They use a common language to describe their subjects and their environment; they are extremely ideological under a thin veneer of scientific jargon; they possess a keen sense of selective observation; they always pretend to possess a psychological understanding though few if any have dealt close up with their subjects in any clinical sense except perhaps under conditions of incarceration and interrogation.
Their style…slippery with euphemisms when it comes to dealing with the violence of their partisan states… Psychobabble provides a ‘legitimate’ sounding channel for… assuming a state of civilized superiority in the face of their dehumanized subjects. Indeed, the dehumanization process is central to the whole terrorist-political-academic enterprise¹⁴…”.

One consequence of earning an elevated place in official demonology is that the bar for those passing judgement drops radically. When it comes to Islam, Muslims and their alleged links to terrorism, any shoddy indictment will pass muster. Doom-laden sensationalism makes for good copy; it makes no demands on rigour and scepticism, and a stable of ‘experts’ is readily at hand to amplify fear. The degree to which this has penetrated public discourse was demonstrated by the Big Issue – a publication generally about as provocative as a phonebook – with a front page story on ‘cyber terror’ and ‘online vigilantes’. Trotting out a stable of ‘terror experts’ the story served as a platform for several tendentious claims (“There are no longer clear boundaries between real-world cells and ‘amateurs’ assisting terror plots via their computers”; “al-Qaeda is equal in the media war”). Rather than question why a dubious source such as Evan Kohlmann – the man used as a ‘expert witness’ in the Atif Siddique trial, who “has no expertise beyond …an internship at a dubious think-tank¹⁵.” – should be consulted by Scotland Yard, the story served as a puff piece for three Israel lobby hacks. Rita Katz has served in the Israeli military; Aaron Weisburd runs Internet Haganah (Hebrew name for the paramilitary that later became the IDF) a project of the Society for Internet Research that works with the Mossad-linked Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center; and both Katz and Kohlmann are protégés of Steve Emerson whose own expertise includes having seen “the hallmarks of Middle Eastern terror” in the Oklahoma bombing (actually carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a decorated white Christian war-hero).

The trade of the terrorologist is not new: incubated in the Reagan administration’s earlier ‘war on terror’, its proponents had been exposed and elegantly debunked by Edward Hermann. September 11 ushered in a new breed – ubiquitous, ideological, and relentless. Some, such as Rohan Gunaratna of the St. Andrews-based Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), reinvented themselves over night as ‘experts on al-Qaeda’. Gunaratna’s book Inside Al Qaeda became an instant best-seller, even though before the date his expertise was limited to South Asian groups, such as the Tamil Tigers. In the book he claimed he was the “principal investigator of the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch”. However, after a Sunday Age investigation, he admitted that no such position existed. Intelligence services have been generally dismissive of his claims.

However, despite all this, he keeps making appearances as an ‘expert witness’ at various UK prosecutions and in media reports.

CSTPV itself bears some scrutiny. Established by an alumni of the RAND Corporation (a US think-tank which played a key role during the Cold War; satirized as the ‘Bland Corporation’ in Dr. Strangelove, it was an enthusiastic supporter of the arms race), the Centre has links to the government and intelligence agencies. Shaping discourse on terrorism through its two influential academic journals, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence, CSTPV emphasises terror directed against states, while mostly ignoring violence by states, excluding however those not allied to the West (‘Hell is other people’, Sartre might say). Reports by the Centre have been used by the government to rationalise permanent anti-terror legislation. The RAND-CSTPV nexus also has stakes in the Iraq conflict through its links to mercenary firms operating in the country. However, despite the conflicts of interest, the Centre’s embedded expertise remains much in demand¹⁶.

CSTPV’s output may be ideological; but it still retains a degree of sophistication. With the low demands on rigour, joining the fray now are some actors less restrained. In early 2006 it was revealed that authorities at several universities, including my own, were co-operating with Special Branch as a result of a recently published study by the right wing Social Affairs Unit. Conducted by Anthony Glees, the Director of Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, the study claimed to find evidence of Islamist, animal liberation and British National Party recruitment on UK campuses. The evidence comprised of the fact that people who have been arrested under anti-Terrorism legislation attended universities at some point. It castigated Universities for teaching students “theoretical tools for understanding the world”, such as Marxism, which could lead to further radicalization when students moved “from campus to Mosque”. Policy Exchange, another dubious neoconservative outfit, shouldered its way into the debate with an Islamophobic report on extremist literature being promoted through various Mosques which, to the BBC’s credit, was publicly debunked by a Newsnight investigation. This, however, did not deter Policy Exchange members from using the report to lobby the EU.

Hero and Horse

On November 18, 1822, the Observer reported that nearly “a million bushels of human and inhuman bones” had been imported in the previous year from Europe into the port of Hull. Battlefields swept alike of the “bones of the hero and the horse which he rode” delivered their haul to Yorkshire bone grinders who reduced them to granulary state. “In this condition they are sold to the farmers to manure their lands¹⁷.”. Two centuries on, the gap between the ‘support our troops’ rhetoric and reality has yet to be bridged.
An internal report into the state of the British Military obtained by The Independent on May 11 reveals that soldiers are living in such poverty that they can’t even afford food, with many living on emergency food voucher schemes set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). “Commanders are attempting to tackle the problem through ‘Hungry Soldier’ schemes, under which destitute soldiers are given loans to enable them to eat” the paper reported. With its proclivity for market solutions, the tradition of soldiers getting three square meals a day for free has been replaced with a controversial Pay as You Dine (PAYD) regime, which charges soldiers not on active duty for their meals, leading many into debt.
Likewise, slightly more than a year back on March 11, 2007, the Observer had revealed the shocking picture of neglect and poor treatment of wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. It reported, for example, that “the youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq, Jamie Cooper, was forced to spend a night lying in his own faeces after staff at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital allowed his colostomy bag to overflow. On another occasion his medical air mattress was allowed to deflate, leaving him in ‘considerable pain’ overnight despite an alarm going off.” Another complaint alleged that one soldier “suffered more than 14 hours in agony without pain relief because no relevant staff were on duty”. (This, of course, is as much a reflection of the chronic lack of surplus within the health system as it is of the wider militarised draw on public resources.) The MoD has already revealed a serious shortage of medical staff in the armed forces:

“There was a 50% shortfall in the number of surgeons required by the army, an 80% shortfall of radiologists and a 46% shortfall of anaesthetists¹⁸.”.

Soldiers in the field haven’t fared any better: for example, both Reg Keys and Rose Gentle lost sons in Iraq due to the lack of proper equipment. Iraq has taken its toll on an overstretched military. Due to “continuing high level of operational commitment” an MoD report has revealed, “more than 1 in 10 soldiers were not getting the rest between operations they needed.” The report also referred to a “continuing difficult environment for army recruitment and retention”. With a high number of officers and other ranks going over voluntarily with another 2,000 awaiting approval of their applications to quit, the armed forces as a whole are nearly 7,000 under strength, the report revealed¹⁹.

The crisis has caused the military to redouble its recruitment efforts with visits to Scottish schools up by more than 180% in the last three years, The Herald revealed. The news comes only weeks after the National Union of Teachers voted to block future military careers’ presentations “to pupils as young as 14” in England and Wales. “Despite the outlay of almost £500m, in 2006-07 the field army – the frontline operational part of UK ground forces – missed its ‘gains to strength’ (GTS) recruitment goal by 12%. In 2007-08, it achieved only 63% of its target²⁰.” (In the US, the military has been reduced to enlisting former convicts and the mentally ill.) The degree of desperation is also evident in the recent advertising campaign for military recruitment: the military experience is presented as a sanitized adventure, an adrenaline-soaked escape from ennui. High-minded calls of duty and honour have been replaced with ones such as “for the travel, for the action, for the adventure”; “for the fun, for the friendship, for the Friday nights”.

The MoD caused much consternation among the National Union of Teachers when it distributed materials on the Iraq war for use in schools. The ministry was accused of “misleading propaganda” which “unethically” targeted recruitment materials at schools in disadvantaged areas. One worksheet described the purpose of the UK mission in Iraq as “helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country after the conflict and years of neglect”. Touting “achievements” in “security and reconstruction” it failed to mention the US-led invasion, its legality, Iraqi civilian deaths or the absence of WMDs. This is not the MoD’s only advance on the classroom. Another example is the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) outreach programme, which sends DSTL scientists to talk to university and school students to encourage them to think about a career at the lab. According to Frances Saunders, the chief executive, DSTL sponsors “year-in-industry students, and are working with the MoD to develop school lesson texts to get people interested in the science behind defence.” Although DSTL already has strong links with universities including Southampton, Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge, Saunders plans to broaden this network.

Not since Suez has the military suffered a greater loss of prestige. RAF airmen in Cambridgeshire were recently advised against wearing uniforms in public in order to avoid being “verbally abused” for their participation in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the demoralizing effect of ill-conceived interventions abroad, the struggle for politicians is then of rehabilitating the myth of the military, rather that the military itself. What interests policy makers is not so much the military, but the cult of military. Plans are also underway to introduce US-style citizenship ceremonies for children and a new public holiday to celebrate ‘Britishness’ by 2012, as part of “wide-ranging proposals to strengthen British citizenship.”

In sharp contrast to the decrepit military stands the fortunes of the private military industry. The preference of recent governments for market solutions has facilitated the transfer of most military R&D to the private sector, with giants like QinetiQ and BAe Systems securing plum deals. When the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (Dera) was split in two in 2001, QinetiQ, a British company with links to the US-based Carlyle group, absorbed the majority of its activities. Along with a raft of other lucrative PFIs, the private military industry is set to benefit from the largest to date, involving at least £14 billion of taxpayers’ money, for a privatised Military ‘Academy’ at St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan to train all-service personnel and private ‘security services’. The corporate bonanza in Iraq has had Private Military Contractors – mercenaries – reaping windfalls profits for investors with stakes in the businesses, such as Frederick Forsyth and former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind (of Aegis and ArmorGroup respectively). The lure of salaries, at times reaching as high as £1,000 a day, may be one reason why the military is losing so many of its men to the mercenary business²¹.

While the defence establishment has long complained of funding shortages for the forces, the R&D budget remains secure. The MoD, it was reported, has promised not to raid the R&D budget to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this injunction doesn’t apply in the reverse, as it has been revealed that the Conflict Prevention Fund set aside for clearing landmines and removing arms from conflict zones was being raided to pay BAe Systems to subsidise the £5m-£10m servicing cost of six Tornado jets in Iraq. The measure was needed because the MoD has closed its own state-of-the-art facility for servicing Tornado jets presented as a way of saving £500m over 10 years²².

Sensing opportunity as the war on terror grinds on, its neoconservative architects have swooped in from across the Atlantic to establish a presence in Britain. With ties to the arms industry and the neoconservative wing of the Israel lobby, the Henry Jackson Society seems to be assuming the role that the Committee on Present Danger played in the United States. Its Israel-centric worldview, as exhibited by its roster of speakers, predisposes it towards perpetual conflict. The support for a militarized ethnocracy is not the natural inclination of a liberal-democratic Britain; it can only be sustained in a context where Israel can be seen aligned with Britain in an overarching conflict against a common enemy. So it is that the Israel lobby has contrived to pass its enemies off as those of the ‘West’. HJS appears well placed to sustain this state of conflict should the Tories get in as its supporters include two of David Cameron’s key advisers. It is a dangerous confluence of interests.

Fortress Britain in the end is as much a consequence of ill-conceived alliances as it is a response to the neoliberal order’s need for distraction from its inherent contradictions. While not nearly as unscrupulous as his predecessor, Gordon Brown’s growing travails may lead him to seek the politician’s time-honoured remedy: to scare the hell out of the population. One only hopes that Fortress Britain is the apogee of what Tony Blair had set in motion with his promise to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with George W. Bush in his so-called ‘war on terror’, because things could always be worse.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a member of Spinwatch.org. His commentaries on arts, politics and culture appear on Fanonite.org.

¹ Might he be the same Amnon Maor of the squad of six Israeli border policemen who back in 1994 were sentenced to six months in prison with one year suspended sentences and a fine of NIS 1,000 each, for brutally assaulting an Arab in a supermarket whose cart had accidentally knocked one? “The six also arrested a passerby who witnessed the beating, and had asked them to stop and to show identification”, the Jerusalem Post reported. The Judge castigated them for abuse of authority and violating “all norms of acceptable behaviour”. (Jerusalem Post, 8 December 1994)
2. Naomi Klein, ‘How war was turned into a brand’, The Guardian, 16 June 2007
3. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Terrorized by “War on Terror”’, Washington Post, March 25, 2007
4. European Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2007; David Miller, ‘The statistical invisibility of Islamist “terrorism” in Europe’, Spinwatch, 23 May 2007
5. Duncan Campbell, ‘The ricin ring that never was’, The Guardian, 14 April 2005
fn6. Gardner admits that the MI6 tried to recruit him while he was stationed in Cairo, however, he insists he turned them down. See David Rowan, ‘Interview: Frank Gardner’, Evening Standard, 15 June 2005
7. Simon Jenkins, ‘These fear factory speeches are utterly self-defeating’, The Guardian, 7 November 2007
8. Robert Fisk, ‘If You Want the Roots or Terror, Try Here’, The Independent, 12 August 2006
9. Seumas Milne, ‘A pointless attack on liberty that fuels the terror threat’, The Guardian, 8 November 2007
10. Sanford Levinson, ‘Torture in Iraq & the rule of law in America’, Daedalus, Summer 2004
11. Gareth Peirce, ‘Was it like this for the Irish?’, London Review of Books, 10 April 2008
12. See ibid. for a description of the true onerous nature of the control orders, especially for detainees with families.
13. Henry Porter, ‘The way the police treat us verges on the criminal’, The Observer, 29 October 2006
14. James Petras, ‘Anatomy of the “Terror Expert”’, Counterpunch.org, 7-8 August 2004
15. Jim Crace, ‘Just how expert are the expert witnesses?’, The Guardian, 13 May 2008
16. J. Burnett and Dave Whyte, ‘Embedded expertise and the “War on Terror”’, Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media, 2005, 1(4): 1-18.
17. Quoted in the incisive study of the social consequences of conflict, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by veteran correspondent Chris Hedges.
18. Jonathan Owen and Brian Brady, ‘Soldiers need loans to eat, report reveals’, The Independent, 11 May 2008; Ned Temko and Mark Townsend, ‘Scandal of treatment for wounded Iraq veterans’, The Observer, 11 March 2007
19. Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Under-strength and under strain as experienced soldiers queue to quit’, The Guardian, 23 November 2007
20. Ian Bruce, ‘Army visits to Scottish schools soar by 180% in three years’, The Herald, 12 May 2008
21. ‘Corporate Mercenaries’, War on Want, 30 October 2006
22. David Hencke, ‘MoD plans raid on landmine removal fund to keep Tornados flying in Iraq’, The Guardian, 10 March 2008

Israel has won the European cup: a special relationship

JamieSW — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:58:32 +0000

During her sixth visit to Israel since last November’s Annapolis summit, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained that the thousands of new housing units, built in Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land were damaging the peace talks with Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a joint press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Luxembourg, the same day, Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, announced that the EU had decided to upgrade its political and economic relations with Israel. Rupel, who chaired the EU-Israel Association Council meeting, the body overseeing the relationship, stated that the EU and Israel are “elevating” their relations to a new level of “more intense, more fruitful, more influential cooperation.” Israel has now been granted the highest level of relations available to a non-member state.

The cooperation is based on the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan, an initiative launched under the Dutch EU Presidency in 2004, aimed at bringing the neighboring countries closer to the EU. This European move might seem surprising since a progress report on the implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy stated clearly that “little concrete progress” has been made on issues raised between Israel and the EU, such as restrictions on movement, the construction of the West Bank wall (its route ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice), administrative detentions, the dismantling of settler “outposts,” and the expansion of Israeli settlements.

Over the weekend, before the Monday announcement, the EU governments were still split between countries that wanted to link the upgrade to improvements in the moribund peace process or no link at all. A number of non-governmental organizations tried to press for linkages to Israel’s atrocious human rights record and the end to the siege of Gaza but Israeli diplomatic efforts and various national interests of member states proved to be stronger. A compromise was found in a softened link to progress in the peace process and the by now utopian two-state solution.

For years, Israel has ignored EU concerns about settlement construction on occupied territories, Israeli human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, house demolitions and other breaches of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and international law. As recently as January, top EU officials, including foreign policy chief Javier Solana and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner called Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip “collective punishment,” defined as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Tzipi Livni said that the talks were a milestone in EU-Israel relations, even though the agreement did not completely satisfy the original wishes of Israel, which also sought the introduction of regular summits with the EU and meetings with EU ministers. Yet the upgrade includes enhanced cooperation in political, economic, scientific, legal, cultural, educational and counter-terrorism matters and, according to Rupel, is based on “a mutual commitment to important common values.”

Rupel added that “There are obvious reasons for which strengthened political cooperation between the EU and Israel should be understood as a cooperation which contributes to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He did not address why Israel should be rewarded with unconditional ties, despite its violations, while Palestinians under Israeli military occupation should be subjected to harsh EU sanctions and a boycott that has intensified the suffering of the civilian population. Livni stated that “it is clear that Israel and Europe share the same values and the same interests.”

Until now, under the EU’s Neighborhood Policy Israel was the only country without a subcommittee on human rights.

Israel’s diplomatic relations with most European states and EU institutions have improved significantly in recent years. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany have been the closest allies of Israel within the EU. Even before she became Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel told the Israeli daily Haaretz that “it is of the utmost importance that we preserve the vitality of relations and avoid turning them into something that is only formal and ceremonial.”

On 19 May, at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen told Israel supporters at a symposium that he pressed the EU to intensify its relations with Israel and made good by inviting several Israeli government officials to The Hague. Earlier this year he told participants of the Herzilya conference in Israel that Israel’s association with the European internal market could be deepened, as well as “its involvement in various European agencies, programs and working groups.”

At that time, he said that “part and parcel of this process would be strengthening the human rights dialogue between Israel and the EU” but those familiar with past human rights dialogues in the context of the EU-Israel Association Agreement know that these are empty words as the Luxembourg announcement clearly demonstrates.

He also said that “halting the expansion of settlements and dismantling outposts would make a great difference in this respect” but the ongoing expansion of construction activities in a hundred settler colonies at this moment suggests that it didn’t make any difference.

With East European newcomers, the EU has now a bigger share of friends of Israel. Notably the Czech Republic and Poland opposed any linking of the upgrade of relations with Israel to its behavior. With the return of right-wing governments in France and Italy, EU policy has tilted more towards the line of the Bush Administration. As France, led by President Nicolas Sarkozy, takes over the EU presidency on 1 July, it is expected that the tilt towards Israel will continue.