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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.

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.

UCU's decision a blow to business-as-usual

JamieSW — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:21:24 +0000

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the British University and College Union (UCU) for its principled support for the cause of justice and peace in Palestine and for adopting, at its annual congress on 28 May 2008, significant steps in the direction of applying effective pressure on Israel and holding it accountable for its colonial and apartheid policies which violate international law and fundamental human rights.

The UCU’s condemnation of the “apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy,” its appeal to its members “to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions,” and its decision to “greylist” — a notch short of boycott — the “colonising” Israeli college in the illegal settlement of Ariel are the strongest indicators to date that the Union has resolutely moved forward in the direction of gradually ending business-as-usual with Israeli universities. The congress resolutions also attest to the Union’s courageous refusal to bow to legal and other forms of bullying and intimidation, waged recently by Israel and Zionist pressure groups in the UK and elsewhere in an attempt to suppress the boycott debate and muzzle views within the UCU that are critical of the Israeli occupation.

Besides the boycott-leaning motion cited above, the UCU censured the Israeli trade union federation, the Histadrut, urging it to take a position against the “siege of Gaza” and to call for “an end to the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory.” Recognizing the “humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel and the EU,” the UCU decided to send a fact-finding delegation to the occupied territory.

This sincere solidarity with Palestine shown by British academic trade unionists is particularly welcome and timely in light of Israel’s recent escalation of its colonial and racist policies against the Palestinian people. Israel has continued with unprecedented impunity its criminal siege of the occupied Gaza Strip, curtailing fuel, medicine and food supplies, thereby causing the death of dozens of innocent civilians, including premature babies, chronically ill senior citizens, among others, and the unspeakable devastation of the livelihood of 1.5 million Palestinians. It has also carried on with its policy of indiscriminate, often willful, killing of Palestinian civilians, at least a third of whom are children; confiscation of Palestinian land and water resources; construction of the apartheid Wall, condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004; and wanton destruction of Palestinian agricultural lands, infrastructure and entire civilian neighborhoods.

Furthermore, for the last six decades, Israel has treated its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized racism, while denying millions of Palestinian refugees, ethnically cleansed in 1948, their UN-sanctioned rights, including the right to return to their homes.

At this time of exceptional Israeli brutality, impunity and war crimes against the indigenous Palestinian people, especially in Gaza and the Naqab desert area, the UCU has risen to its moral responsibility by taking exceptional measures to hold Israel to account. It is also worth noting that the UCU, implementing a decision taken at its congress in 2007, recently hosted representatives from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees on a UK-wide speaking tour. But the UCU is not alone, certainly not in the UK. The largest two trade unions, Unison and TGWU, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP), the National Union of Journalists, the Church of England, among others, have all adopted diverse measures supporting boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel in recent years. Some of Britain’s most prominent cultural figures, including Ken Loach, John Berger and Nigel Kennedy, have expressed publicly their support for the Palestinian call for boycott*. The efforts of our colleagues in the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) also deserve mention. Since its inception, BRICUP has worked in a determined and principled way to defend and spread the message of the academic boycott. We are proud to be associated with such a distinguished group of academics.

The UCU has proven beyond doubt that effective solidarity with the oppressed is the most morally and politically sound contribution to the struggle to end oppression and to promote human rights as well as a just and peaceful future for all.

——————————————

The Palestinian call for boycott of Israeli academic institutions (http://www.pacbi.org/campaign_statement.htm) is endorsed by the major federations and associations of academics and professionals, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU). It is supported by dozens of civil society institutions in Palestine, like the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations’ Network (PNGO).

UCU in solidarity with the Palestinians

JamieSW — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:17:11 +0000

The University and College Union, which represents over 120,000 academics around the country, yesterday voted overwhelmingly to pass three resolutions in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of them resolves that “colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating”, and has thus been interpreted by many as a resuscitation of previous ‘boycott’ resolutions. The vote took place as Amnesty International accused Israel of “virtually imprisoning” Gaza’s “entire 1.5 million population, subjecting them to collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to date.”

Many Palestinian civil society organisations, including the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, the Palestinian NGO Network (West Bank) and the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, have called for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel “as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid”.

According to Philip Marfleet, a reader in Social Sciences at the University of East London and a member of the UCU,

“Israeli universities are very important to the fabric of Israeli society and to the occupation … Carefully researched material reveals the links of Israeli universities to the army. They house strategic research institutes which do a lot of the type of thinking behind military initiatives. Many high-profile Israeli academics are closely identified with the planning and execution of the occupation strategy.”

Here are the three resolutions in full:

SFC10 Composite: Palestine and the occupation University of Brighton – Eastbourne, University of Brighton – Grand Parade, University of East London Docklands, National Executive Committee

Congress notes the

1. continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education;
2. humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel and the EU;
3. apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy;
4. legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful
Congress affirms that
5. criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-semitic;
6. pursuit and dissemination of knowledge are not uniquely immune from their moral and political consequences;

Congress resolves that

7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating;
8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively;
9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions;
10. UCU facilitate and encourage twinning arrangements and other direct solidarity with Palestinian institutions;
11. Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.

SFC11 Gaza emergency University College London

Congress notes

1. The humanitarian catastrophe that developed in Gaza in March 2008, following a long siege and military bombardment, during which over 100 people died.
2. The call by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) to international trade unions to put pressure on their own governments to take action to stop the escalation of violence and relieve the humanitarian crisis.
3. Students and academics have been among those trapped in Gaza.

Congress resolves

To organise a fact-finding delegation to Gaza after the bombing stops and to send delegates on future TUC-sponsored visits.

SFC12 Palestine National Executive Committee

Congress notes the report of the Trade Union Delegation to Palestine in January 2008, facilitated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in which 4 representatives of UCU took part.

Congress notes that the delegation was generously hosted in Nablus by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

Congress deplores the failure of the Israeli Histadrut to pay the approximately 2.5 million Euros owed to the PGFTU since 1995, representing 50% of the official organisational dues of Palestinian workers working in Israel, under the terms of the Framework Agreement of March 1995 following the Oslo Accords of 1993.

Congress calls on the Histadrut to pay the dues owed to the PGFTU; to call for an end to the siege of Gaza; and to call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory.

ISSE addresses students during week of debates at the University of Sussex

tim — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:18:38 +0000

The International Students for Social Equality recently took part in a “One World Week” of debates on international topics, organised by students at the University of Sussex. The ISSE has been campaigning to set up a student society on the campus and has held three meetings this year—on the Russian Revolution, the Iraq War and the May-June 1968 uprising in France.

After receiving an invitation from event organiser Oniicosi Luqman, the ISSE provided speakers for a number of sessions that were attended by up to 20 students.

Several students signed up to the ISSE. Student union communications officer Koos Couvée said that “it was great you guys talked about things from a broader, international viewpoint. We have never heard such ideas before here and they really had an impact.”

The first session of “One World Week” posed the question “Kenya: Can the new government guarantee fair elections, stop tribal tensions and end corruption?”

World Socialist Web Site correspondent Ann Talbot explained that the crisis that afflicted Kenya after the elections earlier this year “was not a conjunctural episode that can be addressed by reform of the constitution, by better oversight of public institutions, or by widening the political elite to include previously excluded groups.” Kenya was undergoing a systemic breakdown of its political system, which was one expression of a far more generalised crisis in Africa, she said.

Talbot agreed with first speaker, Kenyan freelance journalist Julius MbaLuto, that “the outbreak of what has been described as inter-tribal violence in Kenya has nothing to do with any peculiar propensity of African people for such conflict.” At independence in 1963, the British handed power over to the Kikuyu elite, which then enriched itself at the expense of the majority of the population, including the Kikuyu poor.

For almost half a century, this elite has failed to carry out an effective programme of land reform, one of the most basic elements in the programme of bourgeois democracy, or bring about economic improvement for the vast majority of poor. Although Kenya was held up as an African “success story,” its high economic growth has not benefited the majority of the population, more than half of whom live on an income of less than US$2 a day and at least half on less than US$1 a day.

This situation resulted from the subordination of the ruling elite—of whichever faction—to the interests of the major capitalist powers, the international financial institutions and the giant corporations that dominate the world economy. For a short time after independence, as long as the Cold War lasted, Kenya’s new rulers had a certain room for manoeuvre. But no more, Talbot explained. Subjected to IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes that demanded previously protected markets be opened up to global finance capital, the result has been rapid deregulation, privatisations and public spending cuts accompanied by increased looting of the economy.

Talbot explained how Mwai Kibaki and his Rainbow Coalition had won victory in 2002 by promising reforms and an end to the corruption associated with the previous Moi regime. The Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga, a former member of Kibaki’s government, became the focus of those who were excluded from this “feeding frenzy,” she said. Their inclusion in the new power-sharing government is part of a vast wealth grab. Almost half of MPs have become cabinet ministers or assistant ministers and are entitled to huge salaries and other benefits. Odinga, who is now prime minister, has a fleet of cars and a 45-strong personal bodyguard.

Talbot said that the post-election violence was prepared in advance. It was state repression aimed at the poorest strata of the population, which had a class, rather than tribal character. Politicians on both sides were prepared to sacrifice the lives of almost 2,000 of their fellow countrymen in pursuit of wealth and power. These politicians now sit in the same cabinet and talk about returning the displaced people to their farms and homes. “A cabinet composed of people of this stamp are not about to resolve any of the political and economic problems that confront Kenya. They are part of the problem,” she added.

She concluded by calling for a new political perspective to address the problems that confront the mass of the Kenyan population. Genuine economic development can only take place in Kenya on the basis of the socialist reorganisation of the world economy to meet the needs of the majority of its people.

The Obama campaign

ISSE organiser Marcus Morgan spoke at the session, “The US people want change. Can Obama bring it?”

Morgan explained how the growing economic crisis and resulting social tensions have thrown the Democratic Party into crisis and seen it fracturing along racial, ethnic, gender and other demographic lines.

The bitter conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, despite there being no public expression of major policy differences between them, signifies a deep divide in the US ruling elite. Although Obama had tapped into broad and deep discontent, particularly among young people, over the war, economic insecurity, and the corruption and criminality of the Bush years, he has been carefully groomed as the candidate of “change” by a faction of the Democratic Party that sees a shift in foreign policy as the only way to defend US interests around the world.

Morgan reviewed the historical evolution of the Democratic Party and the collapse of American liberalism. The “New Deal” reforms advocated by the Democratic Party under Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression had proved to be the high point of US liberal reforms, he said.

Following World War II, however, the Democratic Party no longer presented itself as the party of the “working man,” but as the defender of the “middle class.” Workers, it was said, would improve their lot by benefiting as consumers from the economic growth and general prosperity of the country.

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the post-war boom beginning to unravel against the background of civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, urban riots and a wave of strikes. “As the promise of rising living standards through the expansion of the consumer society faltered, the Democratic Party sought to refashion itself under the banner of identity politics,” he explained, becoming an unstable alliance of competing interest groups, which included the civil rights establishment and more privileged layers of blacks and other minorities, feminist organisations, gay rights groups, trade unions and environmentalists.

Working class support for the Democrats was further eroded as the party supported demands for the restructuring of the US economy in the face of its global competition. It was Democratic President Jimmy Carter, Morgan recalled, who initiated the first major attack on the reforms of the New Deal and began an offensive against the wages and living standards of the working class.

If there was one telling indication of Obama’s real political agenda, Morgan added, it was when, in an unguarded moment, he spoke of the “bitterness” of working class voters in Pennsylvania over wage-cutting, layoffs and deepening economic insecurity, and the indifference of both Republican and Democratic administrations to their problems. Following a media campaign, Obama apologised for his “blunder” and remained on the defensive for the remainder of the Pennsylvania campaign. This episode demonstrates how completely American liberalism and the Democratic Party are dedicated to suppressing discussion on the fundamental class tensions and interests that dominate American society and opposing the development of an independent socialist perspective in the working class.

Morgan’s appraisal drew a sharp response from the Stop The War Coalition speaker on the platform who was opposed to a socialist critique of Obama and the Democrats. She insisted that Obama was the best of a bad bunch, and that it was a question of uniting the discontent that will emerge, largely of a local and ethnic character, into a “national forum” pledged to “mass radical action.”

Israel and Palestine

Jean Shaoul, who writes on Israel and Palestine for the World Socialist Web Site, spoke at a session considering the questions, “Palestine—How can the Palestinians be liberated? What does the division between Hamas and Fatah mean? Can a majority of Israelis be won to supporting Palestinian rights? Who is precluding the two-state solution?”

Shaoul made it clear that it is only possible to understand the failure of the struggle to liberate Palestine from the standpoint of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.

She explained how shortly after Israel defeated the Arab nations in the 1967 Six-Day War, Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction came to dominate the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Although it was a popular and radical mass movement, its perspective was one of a democratic, secular, capitalist state where the Palestinian bourgeoisie would be free to exploit its own working class.

Arafat and the PLO sought to work through the various Arab regimes, which were entirely dependent on a world market dominated by the imperialist powers and who were ultimately fearful of the threat to their rule posed by the working class. As such, they had demonstrated their inability to either achieve genuine independence from imperialism or secure the democratic rights and social needs of the workers and peasant masses they exploited.

“One after another, all of these regimes betrayed the Palestinians with tragic consequences,” Shaoul added.

Along with oil revenues, backing from the Soviet Union had allowed the Arab regimes a certain room for manoeuvre in their dealings with the major powers. But the first Gulf War in 1991, which unfolded during the final days of the USSR and amidst the drive to restore capitalism, saw the majority of the Arab regimes line up unambiguously with Washington. This left Arafat completely isolated. In 1993, he was forced to sign the Oslo Agreement, officially renouncing his original perspective of freeing the whole of 1948 Palestine and accepting a two-state solution.

The Palestinian Authority set up under the Oslo agreement, Shaoul continued, was to be the vehicle for the Palestinian bourgeoisie to exploit the working class and become fabulously wealthy. Fatah became associated with corruption, waste and inefficiency that even Arafat’s prestige could not disguise. While Arafat himself ultimately baulked at Washington’s demands to accept Israel’s dictates, his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, pledged himself to peace on whatever terms Washington and Tel Aviv demanded.

Shaoul described how Hamas offered no alternative, but was a retrogressive development of the Palestinian national movement. Its explicit call for an Islamic state, she said, would involve the subjugation of non-Muslims and the mass expulsion of Israeli Jewry. In its ideology and methods, Hamas mirrors the Zionist extremists, who claim all of Palestine as a Jewish state with no room for other peoples.

Hamas, too, has all but accepted a two-state solution, Shaoul continued, making an offer recently to the Israeli government to accept a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders along with its promise of a ceasefire.

Such a state, even if realised, would be economically unviable other than as a heavily fortified investment platform for the transnational corporations from which to brutally exploit the working class and peasantry.

The liberation of Palestine is only possible as part of a perspective of ending the artificial patchwork of capitalist states in the Middle East and through the unity of Arab and Israeli workers, youth and intellectuals in a combined struggle to establish the United Socialist States of the Middle East.

Shaoul rejected the conception that the Israeli people are collectively responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians. Israel is beset by class and social conflicts and has a strong and militant working class that opposes its government’s social and economic policies.

The fate of the Middle East, Shaoul said, “will, in the final analysis, be decided in the US and Europe, either by the political representatives of big business implementing their plans for the region’s military and economic subjugation, or by the major battalions of the international working class doing what is politically necessary to prevent this.”

Zionism and the Palestinians

tim — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:28:12 +0000

Israel’s 60th birthday is being celebrated lavishly in Britain. The programme includes a gala fund-raising dinner at Windsor Castle in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh, a variety show at Wembley Stadium and street parades in London and Manchester.

Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters will be recalling the same event in entirely different tones, without the benefit of state support or vast sums of money. In meetings, conferences and exhibitions they are seeking to remind the world of the Nakba – catastrophe in Arabic – that accompanied Israel’s birth in 1948.

In 1947 there were 1,293,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews in Palestine. Though Jews made up 32 per cent of the population, the UN partition plan (agreed in November 1947) assigned them 55 per cent of the country, including the economically developed citrus-growing plains. Israel’s Declaration of Independence on 15 May 1948 was preceded by several months of civil war between Jewish and Palestinian forces, and followed by more months of war between the new state and its Arab neighbours.

In April and May, before the expiry of the British mandate, the cities of Haifa and Jaffa fell to Jewish forces, and more than 100,000 Palestinians fled. To the north, in Galilee, the Haganah – the mainstream Zionist defence force – systematically conquered clusters of villages, emptying them of inhabitants and often levelling them. In June, the Israelis advanced further into territory designated for the Arab state, capturing the towns of Lydda and Ramle where they killed 250 Palestinians and expelled almost all the rest – 40,000 – at gunpoint.

In the course of 1948, 531 Palestinian towns and villages were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed. In the Jaffa area, 96 per cent of the villages were totally erased. As Jewish forces proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of territories both within and outside the UN-allotted borders of the Jewish state, a British army of 70,000 refused to intervene, despite being charged under the mandate with the protection of the civilian population.

When the fighting finished in early 1949, the Jewish state had acquired 78 per cent of Palestine. 180,000 Palestinians found themselves a minority within the expanded borders of the Jewish state. 750,000 had been made refugees.

The homes and lands they left behind were quickly occupied by Jewish settlers and the new Israeli parliament passed laws confiscating their property. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property. In 1954 more than one third of Israel’s Jewish population lived on absentee property. Conquest and expulsion provided the material base for the building of the Jewish state.

For many years Zionists claimed that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, at the behest of Arab leaders. That myth has been repeatedly disproved: there’s no evidence of so much as a single broadcast or leaflet telling people to abandon their homes. There is, on the other hand, a great deal of evidence that the Zionists used the war to alter the demographic facts on the ground. On April 6, for example, David Ben-Gurion told a Zionist meeting: “We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way … I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.”

The facts of the Nakba are now well documented and beyond serious dispute. Yet Nakba denial remains widespread, and shamefully acceptable in polite circles. That is partly because its victims have been so demonised and dehumanised. Acknowledgement of the Nakba is also resisted because it undermines Israeli and Jewish self-definitions; for many, it is a truth that simply cannot be assimilated.

The Nakba is far more than a historical controversy. It’s an unresolved and pressing global issue. The Palestinian refugee population – descendants of those driven out in 1948 – now numbers more than five million, one half of whom live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. One million remain stateless, with no form of identification other than a card issued by UNWRA, the United Nations refugee agency. This is the world’s largest and oldest continuing refugee crisis. Each year since December 1948, the UN General Assembly has reconfirmed Resolution 194, which enshrines the refugees’ right to return and compensation. The right of refugees to return to their homes is a necessary protection for all civilian populations in times of war. Without it, ethnic cleansing would be encouraged. Yet those who press for the implementation of that right are denounced as extremists who refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

There is today a huge Jewish population in Palestine whose rights as human beings must be recognised, but why should anyone anywhere be compelled to recognise the “right to exist” of a particular state formation? What’s being demanded here is ideological conformity: support for the right of the Jewish state to exist, in perpetuity, in Palestine, regardless of what that fact entails for others (or indeed for the welfare of Jews). For Palestinians, recognising Israel’s right to exist – as opposed to the fact of its existence – is tantamount to an historical seal of approval on the Nakba. Those who refuse to certify as legitimate a national project built on dispossession and ethnic supremacy are condemned as “anti-Semites” or, if they are Jews, as “self-haters”. The allegations rest on a false conflation of Israel and “the Jews”, one propagated by Zionists, who use it to exempt the Jewish state from the requirements of international standards of human decency.

Israel is “Jewish” in a sense that no existing state is Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. Though these religions are privileged in various states, none of those states claims to be the sole global representative of the faith; none grants citizenship to people solely because of their religion (without regard to place of birth or residence). Maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine means maintaining a sizeable Jewish majority population which enjoys privileged access to land, work and civic rights.

The founders of Israel were secularists; they saw Jewishness as a national rather than religious identity. Many were atheists and contemptuous of rabbinical culture. Like MA Jinnah, the secular Muslim founder of Pakistan, they would be shocked and dismayed if they could see the influence obscurantist religious sects now wield in the polities they established.

From the beginning, the notion that the State of Israel could be both “Jewish” and “democratic” was unsustainable, and was seen as such by significant numbers of diaspora Jews. Indeed, it’s important to remember that anti-Zionism was a Jewish ideology long before it was anything else. But in the wake of the Holocaust, and with the evolution of big power politics in the Middle East, Zionism came to dominate the diaspora. And the truth of the Nakba was shrouded beneath the myth of Israel’s “David versus Goliath” struggle for survival against irrationally hostile Arabs.

But what of the plight of the Jewish refugees in postwar Europe? Without Israel, what would have become of them? The answer is that they would have shared the same variety of fates as the general refugee population of Europe, of which they were part. The roots of that crisis lay in the refusal of the US, Britain and other countries to admit large numbers of displaced persons. It could not be resolved by allocating each group a “state of their own”, inevitably at the expense of another people. The right of refuge is a universal right (and need) but instead of shouldering that collective responsibility, the Western powers, with the support of the Soviet Union, dumped it on Palestine, demanding that a people who bore no responsibility for the Holocaust make way for its victims.

Many Zionists who do acknowledge the Nakba characterise it as tragic but “irreversible”. The Nakba was not, however, an isolated episode; it was a paroxysm in a process that continues to this day. The Jewish state remains incompatible with Palestinian rights and increasingly the very existence of Palestinians, as illustrated by the current siege of Gaza and the continuing assault on Palestinian society on the West Bank through the construction of the apartheid wall and the extension of Jewish settlements.

It has become ever more apparent that Zionism will not tolerate any meaningful form of Palestinian independence. The exigencies of maintaining a Jewish state will not allow it. Within Israel, expansionist claims – in which the Jews are declared the rightful owners of the whole of the West Bank and even beyond – are commonplace, as are calls for the permanent transfer of the remaining Palestinian population. Some respectable voices speak openly of the need to finish the work left undone in 1948 – in order to ensure the survival of “the Jewish state”.

As ever, much of this is cloaked in Biblical sources. The paradox of Zionism was always that it was a secular ideology whose foundation lay in a religious discourse. At its heart is an obscurantist claim to historic territory. There is indeed much in the Hebrew Bible that gives succour to the wilder Zionist ambitions. But there is also another strand, one that warns against the menace of marrying religion to the state. In particular the Prophet Amos, a champion of the universality of ethical standards, explicitly denies the exclusivism of the Zionist claim to Palestine:

To Me, O Israelites, you are
Just like the Ethiopians – declares the Lord.
True I brought Israel up
From the land of Egypt,
But also the Philistines from Caphtor
And the Arameans from Kir.

This smearing of Israel's critics must stop

JamieSW — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:12:34 +0000

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is now nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, and now even Holocaust survivors.

My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.

Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage is being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements onto Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile ‘pro-Israel’ writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and CAMERA – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

Any attempt to accurately describe the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, ‘Honest Reporting’ claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained – in labour – by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, ‘Honest Reporting’ will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on.

The former editor of Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz, David Landau, calls the behaviour of these groups “nascent McCarthyism”. Those responsible hold extreme positions of their own that place them way to the right of most Israelis. Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who disagrees with the Israeli right. Dershowitz is a lawyer, Harvard professor and author of ‘The Case For Israel.’ He sees ethnic cleansing as a trifling matter, writing: “Political solutions often require the movement of people, and such movement is not always voluntary… It is a fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban renewal.” If a prominent American figure takes a position on Israel to the left of this, Dershowitz often takes to the airwaves to call them anti-Semites and bigots.

The journalist Melanie Phillips performs a similar role in Britain. Last year a group called Independent Jewish Voices was established with this mission statement: “Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peace and security.” Jews including Mike Leigh, Stephen Fry and Rabbi David Goldberg joined. Phillips swiftly dubbed them “Jews For Genocide”, and said they “encourage” the “killers” of Jews. Where does this come from? She says the Palestinians are an “artificial” people who can be collectively punished because they are “a terrorist population.” She believes that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project.” Honest Reporting quotes Phillips frequently as their model of reliable reporting.

These individuals spray accusations of anti-Semitism so liberally that by their standards, a majority of Jewish Israelis have anti-Semitic tendencies. Dershowitz said Jimmy Carter’s decision to speak to the elected Hamas government “border[ed] on anti-Semitism.” A Ha’aretz poll last month found that 64 percent of Israelis want their government to do just that.

As US President, Jimmy Carter showed his commitment to Israel by giving it more aid than anywhere else and brokering the only peace deal with an Arab regime the country has ever enjoyed. He also wants to see a safe and secure Palestine alongside it – so last year he wrote a book called ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’. It is a bland and factual canter through the major human rights reports. There is nothing there you can’t read in the mainstream Israeli press every day. Carter’s comparison of life on the West Bank (not within Israel) to Apartheid South Africa is not new. The West Bank is ruled in the interests of a small Jewish minority; it is bisected by roads for the Jewish settlers from which Palestinians are banned. The Israeli human rights group B’tselem says this “bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime”. Yet for repeating these facts in the US, Carter has widely called “a racist”. Several leading Universities have even refused to let the ex-President speak to their students.

These campus-battles often succeed. Norman Finkelstein is a political scientist in the US whose parents were both Jewish survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. They lost every blood relative. He made his reputation exposing a hoax called ‘From Time Immemorial’ by Joan Peters which claimed that Palestine was virtually empty when Zionist settlers arrived, and the people claiming to be Palestinians were mostly impostors who had come from local areas to cash in. Finkelstein showed it to be scarred by falsified figures and gross misreading of sources. From that moment on, he was smeared as an anti-Semite by those who had lauded the book. But it was when Finkelstein revealed two years ago that Alan Dershowitz had, without acknowledgement, drawn wholesale from Peters’ hoax for his book ‘The Case For Israel’, that the worst began. Dershowitz campaigned to make sure Finkelstein was denied tenure at his university. He even claimed that Finkelstein’s mother – who made it through Maidenek and two slave-labour camps – had collaborated with the Nazis.

The campaign worked. Finkelstein – a distinguished scholar, lauded by some of the leading figures in Holocaust historiography – was let go by De Paul University, simply for speaking the truth.

Are the likes of Dershowitz and Phillips and ‘Honest Reporting’ becoming more shrill because they can sense they are losing the argument? Liberal Jews – the majority – are now setting up rivals to the hard-right organisations they work with, because they believe this campaign of demonisation is damaging us all. It damages the Palestinians, because it prevents honest discussion of their plight. It damages the Israelis, because it pushes them further down an aggressive and futile path. And it damages diaspora Jews, because it makes real anti-Semitism – which is growing: my Jewish nephews go to a school with bomb-proof windows – harder to deal with.

To respond to this new McCarthyism, we need to look the witch-hunters in the eye and say, as Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy himself: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

POSTSCRIPT: In my column today, I talk about how an organisation called ‘Honest Reporting’ orchestrates barrages of complaints against writers who criticise the Israeli government. I thought it might be interesting to give readers a taster of what these e-mails are like. Don’t read them if you are offended by swearing and references to child molestation.

Hundreds have asked a variant of “why do you never criticise Muslims or Arabs?” I always e-mail back with links to dozens of articles in which I have vehemently criticised Islamic fundamentalists and the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and for which I have been widely (and stupidly) accused of “Islamophobia.” So far, one has written back to acknowledge they were wrong. The rest either go silent, or change the subject.

To be fair, a handful of the e-mails have been polite and rational, and I’ve had an interesting if heated exchange with those readers. But the vast majority are, I’m afraid, like the following three.

(To give some context, in the article they are responding to I described the raw sewage I’ve seen pumped out from Israeli settlements on the West Bank at the Palestinians and how it smells.)

Ivan Stux from ivanstux@hotmail.com writes: “When I pass male homosexuals on the street, I sometimes can smell a distinctive pungent scent of shit emanating from them. Might it be that the smell of shit you are sensing as you describe in your article comes from your own behind or mouth, or both, because you forgot to wash after you have been copulated by a man? Does that make you a dirty M.F. (as in male fucked)?”

Somebody who doesn’t give their name e-mails from southernwolf@gmail.com to say: “When I think of ‘Hari’ I smell shit. You aren’t good enough to write about Israel, Jew hater. Long after the so called “Palestinians” have faded into the shithole of history where they belong Israel will remain, proud and strong. By then Jew haters like you will have another “cause”.”

John Norman from jdnorman@btopenworld.com writes: “Surely, it’s your own smell that you smell when you write about Israel. After all, a fat faggot like yourself cant smell of anything else. It must have been your Swiss-nazi Dad that fucked you up the arse when you were a kid and fucked yr tiny brain box to bits. How you were awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism must remain an unexplained enigma for decades to come.”

I’ll spare you the hundreds more along the same lines.

Israel's royal welcome

JamieSW — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:43:53 +0000

On April 7, Prince Philip will be hosting a dinner at Windsor Castle organised by the Jewish National Fund. They will be marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Israeli state. However this is not a private dinner. Nor is the JNF an ordinary organisation.

The JNF was established in 1901 as the land settlement wing of the World Zionist Organisation. It became one of the primary instruments involved in planning for the dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians. Up until 1948 it purchased land for settlement, often from absentee landlords, and then evicted the peasants from that land. Unlike the normal practice under colonial rule, the Palestinians were not re-employed as wage labourers but excluded from the land altogether. This was the concept of Jewish land. But even by 1947 less than 7% of the land of Palestine had been bought up.

The JNF played a crucial role in planning for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. In the years leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel, the JNF was a key voice in establishing a consensus in the Zionist leadership for “transfer”. Although not discussed openly, among the Zionist leaders it was accepted that a Jewish state could only come into being if the Arabs were transferred out of the state. Palestine was a land where barely one-third of the inhabitants were Jewish, and even in the area allotted by the United Nations to a Jewish state, barely half of the inhabitants were Jewish. As the head of its Land Settlement Department, Joseff Weitz, wrote in his diary in 1940:

The only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off. [Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, page 62]

Weitz later formed, with the authority of David Ben Gurion, a Transfer Committee. And between 1947 and 1949 an opportunity arose to put these ideas into practice. As Tom Segev recalled in Ha’aretz, a meeting was held in Haifa on March 27, 1948, concerning the fate of the Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. “They must be removed from there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles,” Yosef Weitz, of the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary.

The JNF occupies a unique position in Israel. It is nominally an independent organisation but in reality it is a contracted-out section of the state, controlled by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, carrying out functions that the state itself cannot be seen to do openly. The JNF functions as an ideological outpost of the Greater Israel movement and when the Israeli army razed to the ground the Palestinian villages of the Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba villages in 1967 and expelled their inhabitants, the JNF took over the construction of the Canada National Park on the ruins.

The JNF’s position was formalised by the 1953 KKL Law whereby its memorandum of association had to be approved by the minister of justice. In November 1961 a covenant was signed between the state of Israel and the JNF which accorded the latter effective control of the land allocation policies of the state of Israel, which together with the Israeli Lands Administration, controlled 93% of Israeli land. According to Article 3a of its constitution, the JNF was established “for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties” as it could obtain.

The British royal family have a constitutional role greater than their private prejudices. They are seen as the representatives of British society and their invitation to the JNF will inevitably be seen as giving a royal seal of approval to the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. Britain’s role in arming the Zionist militias who fell like wolves on largely defenceless villagers, while suppressing the 1936 Palestinian national uprising, is infamous enough without the monarchy celebrating the consequences of Britain’s perfidy.

Not that the association between royalty and the most barbaric aspects of colonialism is anything new. Today’s royals may hold gala dinners in celebration of the abolition of the slave trade and Wilberforce, but when slavery was a going concern, its most ardent supporters were royalty. Elizabeth I went into business as a partner of slave trader John Hawkins, Charles II was a major shareholder in the Royal African Company and William IV, then Duke of Clarence, spoke out strongly against the abolition of the slave trade and emancipation in the House of Lords.

With the solitary exception of Princess Diana and her campaign against landmines, the royals have been associated with the most atavistic and bloody aspects of British imperial rule. From the Indian Mutiny and the Amritsar massacre to the Hola death camp in Kenya, the royals have always been associated with militarism and empire. Prince Harry’s role in Afghanistan is a continuation of this inglorious history.

In 1995 an Arab couple, the Kadans, tried to buy an apartment in Katzir. For 10 years the JNF and the Israeli Lands Authority tried to prevent the leasing of “Jewish” land to non-Jews. Eventually the supreme court ruled that state land could not be sold to Jews only.

This caused huge embarrassment among Jews worldwide. How could Jews protest against anti-Semitism when condoning blatantly racist practices in Israel? America’s Reform movement, to which most Jews adhere, condemned the practice unequivocally.

The JNF itself, though, was anything but embarrassed. It began a campaign to reverse the court’s decision and last summer a JNF Bill was introduced into the Knesset, where it was passed on the first reading by 64-16 votes. Under the headline “KKL-JNF – Trustee for the Jewish People on its Land” it noted that:

A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.

The implications are quite clear. If Israel is a Jewish state then it cannot be a state of its own citizens, still less a democratic state.

This prompted Israel’s liberal newspaper, Ha’aretz, to publish an outspoken editorial, “A racist Jewish state”, in which it wrote:

“Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed.”

Even the staid old Jewish Chronicle ran a debate: “Is it racist to set aside Israeli land for Jews only?”

Yet this is part of a wider debate about the “demographic problem”, which is shorthand for there being too many Arabs. Academics such as Professor Arnon Sofer, of Haifa University, are quite blatant about this “problem”:

“You should remember that on the same day as the Israel Defense Forces is investing efforts and succeeding in eliminating one terrorist or another, on that very same day, as on every day of the year, within the territories of western Israel, about 400 children are being born, some of whom will become new suicide terrorists.”

The JNF sits on the opposite side of the fence from those who wish to see Israel as a state of all its citizens as opposed to just its Jewish ones. It is bad enough that our prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a patron of the JNF. But for the royal family to have as their guests those who are dedicated to maintaining Israel as a state of only a part of its citizens is a disgrace.

A letter from Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt Davies, private secretary to the Duke of Edinburgh, seeks to excuse the royal hosting of the JNF by stating that “the proceeds from the dinner are going to a number of charities, one of which will be the Israeli Youth Award for Young People, which is the Israeli branch of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. This charity plays a significant part in attempting to bridge the gap between young people of all faiths and backgrounds, in amongst other places, Israel and Jordan.”

So, according to this logic, the royal family will be hosting a dinner for an organisation which explicitly discriminates against Palestinians and non-Jews because the proceeds will be going to a charity which apparently does the complete opposite. You couldn’t make it up.

Israeli Deaths Matter More

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:21:04 +0000

The horrific shooting of eight young people at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem last Thursday was followed by saturation media coverage. International statesmen lined up with condemnations of the attack and condolences for the victims and their families.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced: “This is clearly an attempt to strike a blow at the very heart of the peace process.” (Jon Smith, Press Association, ‘Brown: massacre “strikes at heart of peace”’, March 7, 2008)

Foreign Secretary David Milliband described the slaughter as “an arrow aimed at the heart of the peace process so recently revived.” (Donald Macintyre and Eric Silver, ‘Massacre in the heart of Jerusalem’, The Independent, March 7, 2008)

The Guardian’s front page declared: “the descent into violence in the Middle East accelerated last night” in a “dramatic escalation”. (Rory McCarthy, ‘Eight dead as gunman hits Jerusalem religious school’, The Guardian, March 7, 2008). A Daily Mirror headline read: ‘Kids Murdered In The Library’ (Allison Martin, March 7, 2008). The Telegraph asserted that the attack “is likely to be remembered as the moment the Middle East peace process died.” (Tim Butcher, ‘Hopes of peace in the Middle East are blown away in a hail of bullets’, Daily Telegraph, March 7, 2008)

The contrast to reactions to the killing of over 120 Palestinians, including many women and children, in occupied Gaza the previous week could hardly be more striking. On one day alone, 60 people died in a hail of Israeli firepower using F-16 planes, Apache helicopter gunships, tanks, armoured bulldozers and ground troops.

No Western leader was heard condemning the Israeli assault on Gaza as “an attempt to strike a blow at the very heart of the peace process.” To our knowledge, no reporter suggested that “the peace process” had now “died”. No headlines screamed of Palestinian babies “murdered” in their beds. In short, news reports from the Gazan bloodbath typically lacked the anguished details and tone that suffused the reporting from Jerusalem less than a week later.

Nor was there the same heightened pitch and intensity of news coverage following Israel’s deadly ‘incursion’ into Gaza in mid-January. 17 Palestinians were killed in one day, and around 50 injured, while President Bush was visiting the region. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said:

“What happened today is a massacre, a slaughter against the Palestinian people.

“Our people cannot keep silent over these massacres. These massacres cannot bring peace.” (Al-Jazeera, ‘Abbas: Israeli raid “a massacre” ’, January 15, 2008; http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0787158A-D180-44F4-9327-7BE8DBBB1…)

But for the Western media the massacres that really matter, the ones which “strike a blow at the very heart of the peace process”, are those inflicted on Israelis.

he BBC’s Propaganda Role

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now at its worst since the occupation by Israel began in 1967. More Gazans are dependent on food aid than ever before: fully 1.1 million out of a population of 1.5 million. Hospitals are suffering the longest power cuts yet experienced, record levels of raw sewage are being pumped into the sea, and the economy is at its most dire with unemployment set to exceed 50 per cent. (‘The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion’, March 6, 2008; http://christianaid.org.uk/images/gazareport.pdf). Is it any wonder that the people of Gaza are in despair?

Our alert of March 3 highlighted the lack of attention given to the latest assessment by John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories. Palestinian terrorism, while abhorrent, is the “inevitable consequence” of Israeli occupation, noted Dugard. He warned: “the collective punishment of Gaza by Israel is expressly prohibited by international humanitarian law.” (Media Lens media alert, ‘Israel’s Illegal Assault On The Gaza “Prison”’, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080303_israels_illegal_assault.php)

The BBC’s official response to our challenge about its neglect of Dugard’s vital analysis was telling:

“We missed the original publication of John Dugard’s report, but are intending to write about its formal presentation to the UN later today.

“Mr Dugard has, of course, repeatedly made very critical comments about Israel, some of which we have reported: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7044148.stm

“It is fair to point out however that Mr Dugard’s views are not those of the UN. Under international law, an occupied community is not allowed to adopt terrorist methods against the civilian population of its occupier. Occupied people remain under an obligation to conduct themselves according to the laws of war. So, while terrorism may be an ‘inevitable consequence’ of the occupation, that does not mean it is somehow legitimate. The UN, including the secretary general and the security council, have repeatedly condemned suicide bombings and rocket fire from Gaza: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7273444.stm “ (Email from “The BBC News website” [no name provided], March 6, 2008)

This response is noteworthy, even for the BBC’s usual shameful record. There was no mention of Israel’s responsibilities as the occupying power, or its repeated and brutal transgressions of international and humanitarian law over forty years. Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem in Israel, have documented many grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, constituting war crimes. Little of this fundamental context ever makes it into BBC news reports.

Instead, the BBC focused exclusively in its reply on the obligations of “an occupied community” which has been continually attacked and impoverished by an Israeli state that is massively supported – financially, militarily, diplomatically – by Washington. The anonymous BBC official who wrote that “while terrorism may be an ‘inevitable consequence’ of the occupation, that does not mean it is somehow legitimate” was answering a strawman argument of his or her own invention. Neither Media Lens nor the UN Special Rapporteur claimed that Palestinian terrorism was “legitimate.” Indeed, had the BBC employee read the report, he/she would have seen that Dugard had condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel’s civilians as “war crimes”.

As promised, the BBC news website did indeed write about the Dugard report; it devoted all of 168 words at the bottom of a short news item. The item noted blandly that unspecified “scheduling problems” meant that the report would now be presented to the UN in June rather than this month. (BBC Online, ‘UN alarm at Gaza-Israel violence’, March 6, 2008; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7281711.stm). For the Special Rapporteur’s assessment to be shunted to one side by the ‘international community’, even as the slaughter in the Middle East continued, was horribly ironic. The possibility that power politics might have been at play in the alleged “scheduling problems” appears to have eluded the media’s scrutiny.

The Eternal BBC Claim: “We Will Not Be Cheerleaders For Anybody”

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East news editor, received numerous emails that were copied to us. Many were in direct response to our alert, but others were sent spontaneously by people appalled at the coverage they were seeing and hearing from the publicly-funded broadcaster. After the killings at the Jewish seminary, Bowen defended the corporation’s recent unbalanced news coverage from the region:

“In the last week, we have reported very fully from inside Gaza as well as from Sderot and Ashkelon. We will continue to report on the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But we will also report fully from the Israeli side. The BBC’s reporting will be as impartial as we can make it. We will not be cheerleaders for anybody.” (Email, March 6, 2008)

Bowen’s assertion simply does not stand up to scrutiny. In our March 3 alert, we cited the testimony of former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn who pointed out that ‘balance’ is “the BBC’s crudely applied device for avoiding trouble”. This inevitably leads to a clear news bias towards the viewpoint of power residing in Israel, Washington and London.

The public can see for themselves the ‘neutral’ media language used to describe Israeli actions: ‘incursion’, ‘retaliation’, ‘military operations’. By contrast, Israel endures ‘terrorist attacks’, ‘slaughter’, ‘a bloodbath’. Careful analysis by Greg Philo and Mike Berry, of the Glasgow University Media Group, found a persistent, ugly pattern:

“In our samples of news content, words such as ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold-blooded killing’ and ‘lynching’ were used by journalists to describe Israeli deaths but not those of Palestinians/Arabs. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians, but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’.” (Philo and Berry, ‘Bad News From Israel’, Pluto Press, London, 2004, p. 259)

The reality is that by devoting disproportionate coverage to Israeli deaths over Palestinian deaths, the BBC’s claims to “impartial” reporting are simply demolished. With great consistency, lives in the ‘Third World’ are presented as being of far less importance than those who are ‘like us’. At its most brutal, we see a deeply racist attitude that also underpins the culture of killing in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Major General Bargewell’s report into the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha by U.S. marines gave a glimpse of the prevailing mindset:

“Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as US lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business…” (Josh White, ‘Report On Haditha Condemns Marines; Signs of Misconduct Were Ignored, U.S. General Says,’ Washington Post, April 21, 2007)

And while the BBC and other news media continue to pump out propaganda about the Middle East, the “cost of doing business” is only too obvious to the victims and anyone who cares about them.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to: Jeremy Bowen, BBC’s Middle East news editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, BBC news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

The Media Lens book ‘Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. John Pilger described it as: “The most important book about journalism I can remember.” For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:
http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php

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Gaza: Humanitarian situation worst since 1967

JamieSW — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:34:27 +0000

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is worse now than it’s been at any time since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, according to a new report published today (6 March) by a coalition of leading humanitarian and human rights organisations. The weekend’s upsurge in violence and human misery underlines the urgency of this report.

In their new joint report, the coalition – comprising Amnesty International, CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Médecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save The Children UK and Trócaire – warns that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a collective punishment of the entire Gazan civilian population of 1.5 million. The report concludes that the Israeli government’s policy of blockade is unacceptable, illegal and fails to deliver security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Geoffrey Dennis, Chief Executive of CARE International UK said:

‘The recent escalation in violence, both from rocket attacks and military strikes, will make life even more unbearable in Gaza. Unemployment has soared and 80% of people in Gaza are now dependent on food aid compared to 63% in 2006. Water and sewage infrastructure is on the point of total collapse. Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed.’

According to the report, the blockade of Gaza has dramatically worsened levels of poverty and unemployment and has led to deterioration in education and health services. Over 1.1 million people are now dependent on food aid and of 110,000 workers previously employed in the private sector, 75,000 workers have now lost their jobs.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

‘Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care. Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible. The current situation is man-made and must be reversed.’

The coalition’s 16 page report, ‘The Gaza Strip: A humanitarian implosion’, urges the UK government and EU to press for a new strategy for Gaza. In particular, the report calls on the UK government to:

Exert greater pressure on the Israeli government to open the crossings into Gaza and stop fuel and electricity cuts in order to stem the worsening humanitarian crisis.

Help facilitate a process of Palestinian reconciliation that can lead to a credible and effective peace process with Israel.

Abandon the failed policy of non-engagement and begin negotiations with all Palestinian parties, including Hamas.

The report calls on the Israeli Government and Palestinian armed groups to immediately cease all attacks against civilians. All unlawful attacks must stop: the Government of Israel should put an immediate end to disproportionate attacks in Gaza and Palestinian armed groups should immediately stop indiscriminate rocket attacks into southern Israel.

Christian Aid’s Director, Daleep Mukarji, said:

‘The UK government should acknowledge that a new strategy is needed for Gaza. The current policy does not secure vital security for Israeli citizens, and even if it did the blockade policy would still be unacceptable and illegal. Humanitarian aid can help stave off total collapse but it will not provide a long-term solution. Gaza cannot become a partner for peace unless Israel, Fatah and the Quartet engage with Hamas and give the people of Gaza a future.’

Read the full report here (.pdf).

Israel’s Illegal Assault On The Gaza ‘Prison’

JamieSW — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:02:19 +0000

Attacking The Prisoners

Israel has drawn international criticism for its latest series of onslaughts against the ‘prison’ of Gaza, the crowded home to 1.4 million Palestinians. Since last Wednesday (February 27), 112 Palestinians have died under Israeli air attacks and ‘incursions’ by Israeli troops. The dead include many women and children, such as four boys who had been out playing football and even babies killed in their homes. Last Saturday alone saw the deaths of 60 Palestinians under Israeli attacks. Three Israelis have died – one a civilian killed during a rocket attack by Hamas last Wednesday and, since then, two Israeli soldiers.

On February 29, Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, said on the BBC Today programme that:

“We’ve been restraining ourselves for a very, very long time. But we have a responsibility to defend our citizens. This is the context.” (BBC Radio 4 Today interview with Edward Stourton, Friday, February 29, 2008, 7.30 am;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ram/today3_israel_20080229.ram)

The same day, a senior Israeli source threatened a “holocaust” in Gaza. Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, warned:

“The more [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” (BBC news online, ‘Israel warns of Gaza “holocaust”,’ February 29, 2008; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7270650.stm)

The disconnect with the view of the Israeli public was stark: 64% support negotiations with Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, in an attempt to bring about peace.

Palestinian Terrorism: The “Inevitable Consequence” Of Israeli Occupation.

Just before this latest escalation in violence, the newswire service Associated Press briefly flagged up a report on the Occupied Territories, commissioned by the UN. (Bradley S. Klapper, ‘Report: Israeli occupation causes terror’, Associated Press, Feb 26, 6:11 PM ET, published on Yahoo news website, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_israel&printer=1). It has since been ignored by the corporate media.

The report, authored by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard, concludes that Palestinian terrorism is the “inevitable consequence” of Israeli occupation. While Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable, “they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation.” Dugard, a South African professor of law, accuses the Israeli state of acts and policies consistent with all three. (‘Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories’, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, John Dugard, United Nations Human Rights Council, A/HRC/7/17; http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/402/29/PDF/G0840229.pdf)

The report notes that Israel has attempted to justify its attacks and incursions as “defensive operations” aimed at preventing the launching of rockets into Israel. Dugard states clearly that “the firing of rockets into Israel by Palestinian militants without any military target, which has resulted in the killing and injury of Israelis, cannot be condoned and constitutes a war crime.”

But he also notes that “serious questions arise over the proportionality of Israel’s military response and its failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets. It is highly arguable that Israel has violated the most fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, which constitute war crimes.”

In particular:

“Above all, the Government of Israel has violated the prohibition on collective punishment of an occupied people contained in article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

In the days that followed, as killings and injuries rapidly rose under a massive Israeli assault, we could find not a single mention in any UK national newspaper of this important assessment by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories.

Exchange With BBC Radio 4 Presenter

On February 29, we wrote to Edward Stourton in response to his interview that morning with Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. First, we pointed out that Stourton had not challenged Prosor’s erroneous assertion that Gaza could now run its own affairs following the withdrawal of Israeli military forces in 2005. Prosor claimed: “Israel disengaged completely out of Gaza more than two years ago” so that “the Palestinians would take responsibility, would run Gaza.”

Indeed, the thrust of the BBC presenter’s own words, with multiple repetition of the loaded word “disengagement”, was that Israel was no longer the occupying power in Gaza.

We pointed out, by contrast, the assessment of John Dugard: “it is clear that Israel remains the occupying Power as technological developments have made it possible for Israel to assert control over the people of Gaza without a permanent military presence.”

We asked Stourton whether he was aware of this assessment. Moreover, as we saw above, Dugard had observed that Palestinian terrorism was the “inevitable consequence” of Israeli occupation. We asked why the Today programme had not addressed Dugard’s important new report. On the same day, Stourton responded, but only to the first point:

“This is such a difficult area to get right and I always welcome constructive comments – so thank you for your thoughts. I suppose the only point I would make is that if you challenge every statement in an interview like that it can get a bit arid.”

A similar email to Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East news editor, about the corporation’s serious omission, went unanswered.

Stourton’s response was standard for the BBC – friendly, well-meaning but ultimately vacuous. By contrast, in 2004, Tim Llewellyn, the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, blew a loud whistle on the deep bias in BBC reporting:

“Watching a peculiarly crass, inaccurate and condescending programme about the endangered historical sites of ‘Israel’ – that is to say, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories – on BBC2 in early June 2003, I determined to try to work out, as a former BBC Middle East correspondent, why the Corporation has in the past two and a half years been failing to report fairly the most central and lasting reason for the troubles of the region: the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom.”

He described some of his conclusions:

“In the news reporting of the domestic BBC TV bulletins, ‘balance‘, the BBC’s crudely applied device for avoiding trouble, means that Israel’s lethal modern army is one force, the Palestinians, with their rifles and home-made bombs, the other ‘force‘: two sides equally strong and culpable in a difficult dispute, it is implied, that could easily be sorted out if extremists on both sides would see reason and the leaders do as instructed by Washington…

“When suicide bombers attack inside Israel the shock is palpable. The BBC rarely reports the context, however. Many of these acts of killing and martyrdom are reprisals for assassinations by Israel’s death squads, soldiers and agents who risk nothing as they shoot from helicopters or send death down a telephone line. I rarely see or hear any analysis of how many times the Israelis have deliberately shattered a period of Palestinian calm with an egregious attack or murder. ‘Quiet’ periods mean no Israelis died… it is rarely shown that during these ‘quiet’ times Palestinians continued to be killed by the score.” (See our Media Alert: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040115_Ducking_Palestine_1.HTM)

This is the reality of a systematic BBC bias that works to suppress public awareness of the true gravity of Israel’s human rights abuses.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Write to the following editors and ask them why they have not covered the latest assessment by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories; in particular that Palestinian terrorism is the “inevitable consequence” of Israeli occupation and that “the collective punishment of Gaza by Israel is expressly prohibited by international humanitarian law.”

Write to: Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East news editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, the BBC’s news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Write to Ian Romsey, ITN’s head of output
Email: ian.romsey@itn.co.uk

Write to Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor
Email: ian.black@guardian.co.uk

Write to Katherine Butler, the Independent’s foreign editor
Email: k.butler@independent.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate

Please visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

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