Yearly Archives: 2024

Von der Leyen’s second term: more money for armament and border control

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

Source: European Parliament

Ursula Von der Leyen announces increased funding for EU armament and border control as she is confirmed for a second term as President of the European Commission

On July 17, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) published a ruling holding the European Commission (EC), led by President Ursula von der Leyen, responsible for concealing segments of COVID-19 vaccine procurement contracts from the European Parliament. Less than 24 hours later, von der Leyen was confirmed for a second term during a parliamentary session in Strasbourg.

During her re-election campaign, von der Leyen worked diligently to secure support beyond her home European People’s Party (EPP) group. To ensure the required majority, she needed at least 173 additional votes, on top of the 188 guaranteed by the EPP. By July 18, members of the Socialists & Democrats, the liberal Renew group, and the Greens—who had initially filed the complaint to the ECJ—announced their support, describing von der Leyen as a stabilizing figure in uncertain times for Europe.

Read more: Far-right surge or status quo? Understanding the 2024 European elections

In her initial address to the parliamentarians, von der Leyen promised “prosperity and competitiveness” for the European Union over the next five years. She emphasized the European Green Deal, pledging further efforts towards renewable energy and environmental protection. However, several members of parliament called her out for what they described as greenwashing and failure to take concrete steps in this area. The Left parliamentarian Rudi Kennes criticized the vague character of von der Leyen’s commitment to just green policies, citing her inaction on preserving jobs in sectors that could prove crucial for the EU’s green transition. He pointed to the potential closure of an Audi factory in Brussels as an example.

Von der Leyen also prioritized security, defense, and border control in her speech, announcing the creation of a European Defense Union, new commissioner posts for defense and the Mediterranean, approximately tripling the number of Frontex guards, and just about doubling Europol staff. The aim of these measures, according to the EC President, is to “rebuild, replenish, and transform national armed forces” rather than breaking away from NATO. One of the first steps towards this better-armed EU will be incentivizing private defense investment with support from the European Investment Bank.

What the defense and international policy agenda will certainly not mean, judging from the guidelines presented on Thursday, is taking a strong stance on the genocide Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip. A side note in von der Leyen’s speech, the brutal attacks on Palestinians were reduced to an unfortunate bloodspill, with no guarantees given that the EC would act to stop it. Instead, von der Leyen stated she would work towards a two-state solution.

Read more: Europe’s shift to the right must be countered with mass mobilization and politicization

In her speech, Von der Leyen merely brushed upon the social and economic issues affecting millions in the EU. Her approach remained market-oriented, with only minor concessions on housing and living costs. Among others, Marc Botenga of the Workers’ Party of Belgium criticized her for inaction on tax justice and strengthening public services.

“Millions of Europeans are living in poverty or are at risk of falling into poverty. Did Ursula von der Leyen seek funds from multimillionaires [to address this]? No. Did she impose taxes on the excess profits of European multinationals? No. On the contrary, she provided support to these multinationals,” Botenga said.

There is little indication that von der Leyen’s policies will change in her new term. With expected austerity measures and increased defense spending, more Europeans will be deprived of basic social rights. Some parliamentarians have already pledged to oppose this direction actively.

“Your Europe is not our Europe, Mrs. von der Leyen. Against your Europe of austerity and the market, you can count on us defending the Europe of humanity and solidarity,” said Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left, announcing the bloc’s vote against von der Leyen’s presidency

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

Continue ReadingVon der Leyen’s second term: more money for armament and border control

Greenpeace urges govt to restore right to protest

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Commenting on the lengthy jail sentences imposed on climate activists for planning a peaceful protest, following a trial where the defendants were prevented from fully explaining the reasons for their actions, Greenpeace UK’s programme director Amy Cameron said:

“This is a dark day for the right to protest, a pillar of our democracy. Without it, we would have no votes for women, basic workers’ rights or an end to coal and commercial whaling. What sort of country locks people away for years for planning a peaceful demonstration, let alone for talking about it on a Zoom call? We’re giving a free hand to the polluting elite robbing us of a habitable planet while jailing those who’re trying to stop them – it makes no sense. 

Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

“These sentences are not a one-off anomaly, but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. This judicial crackdown on climate activists has gotten out of hand and is now a major international embarrassment. It’s part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that’s been slowly being taken away from them. 

“Starmer’s ministers should repeal the gagging laws brought in by the Conservatives and instruct the Attorney General to meet with campaigners and the UN rapporteur on environmental defenders to discuss a way forward.”

Continue ReadingGreenpeace urges govt to restore right to protest

ICJ Says Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory Is Illegal and Must End

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles are pictured in the West Bank town of Beita on July 12, 2024. (Photo: Wahaj Bano Moufleh/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

The United Nations’ highest court issued an advisory opinion arguing that Israel’s large-scale expansion of settlements amounts to annexation, a crime under international law.

The International Court of Justice said Friday that Israel’s decadeslong occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

The court’s nonbinding advisory opinion was read aloud by ICJ President Nawaf Salam, a Lebanese judge and academic. Salam said the court determined based on “extensive evidence” that Israel is guilty of confiscating “large areas” of Palestinian land for use by Israeli settlers, exploiting natural resources, and undermining the local population’s right to self-determination under international law.

The court pointed to “Israel’s systematic failure to prevent or punish” settler violence and “demolition of Palestinian property” in the West Bank as part of its case that the Israeli government’s actions in the occupied territories are indicative of an attempt to permanently annex land and forcibly transfer Palestinians from their homes.

“Israel is not entitled to sovereignty in any part of the occupied Palestinian territory on account of its occupation, nor can security concerns override the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force,” said Salam.

The ICJ vote against Israel’s occupation was 11-4. The court also voted to call on Israel to evacuate all settlers from the West Bank.

In a 12-3 vote, the ICJ said that all nations “are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the state of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the state of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

The United States was among the countries that warned the ICJ against advising that Israel must swiftly end its occupation.

The ICJ handed down its opinion as the court is also considering a genocide case brought against Israel over its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip—a devastating war that the court did not weigh as part of its new advisory opinion.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, applauded the ICJ’s call for the dismantling of Israeli settlements and reparations for Palestinians harmed by Israel’s occupation.

“The ICJ ruling in essence confirmed what the majority of people (except the West) already knew and have recognized: that Israel’s occupation is illegal, that it is still occupying Gaza, it is annexing the West Bank, and Israel is an apartheid state,” Parsi wrote on social media. “If there is any respect for international law, Western media must now include this in all its Israel coverage. Most don’t even describe settlements as illegal!”

Nancy Okail, president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, said in a statement that “while the ICJ’s action is nonbinding, countries that seek to uphold international law should respect the court’s determination and take all appropriate steps to counter the injustices of the occupation and bring it to a peaceful end.”

“At a minimum, countries should not engage in actions which help to perpetuate the occupation and its discriminatory, annexationist goals,” said Okail. “In particular, the United States must end the unconditional supply of arms that Israel uses in connection with the dispossession and settlement of Palestinian land and other violations of Palestinian rights.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Rights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate US-Bound Netanyahu for Genocide

‘Ticking Time Bomb’: International Alarm as Poliovirus Found in Gaza Sewage

UK Urged to Cut Off Arms Sales to Israel After Restoring UNRWA Funds

Amnesty Condemns Israel’s ‘Mass Incommunicado Detention and Torture’ of Palestinians

Continue ReadingICJ Says Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory Is Illegal and Must End

Rights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate US-Bound Netanyahu for Genocide

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Nachalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv on June 18, 2024. (Photo: Shaul Golan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, D.C. next week, an American legal group on Friday pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into him and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459—according to Gaza officials—while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” says the Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) 23-page letter to Hope Olds, who leads the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

“Given the frequent travel of Israeli officials and citizens to the United States resulting in their presence within U.S. jurisdiction, and recalling that HRSP is part of a coordinated, interagency effort to deny safe haven in the United States to human rights violators,” the letter states, “the Department of Justice must urgently investigate and hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other serious crimes being committed on a wide-scale basis in the occupied Gaza Strip, including potentially U.S. and U.S.-dual citizens.”

The Israeli prime minister is expected to be in the United States from at least next Monday to Wednesday for a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden—who is currently isolating in his Delaware home due to a Covid-19 infection—and to address a joint session of Congress, despite objections from critics of Israel’s war including some lawmakers.

“Netanyahu has killed more than 14,000 precious Palestinian children with U.S. weapons and support and is starving all of Gaza—and now sycophants in the White House and Congress are rolling out the red carpet for him,” Maria LaHood, CCR’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “DOJ’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section must exercise its mandate to investigate Netanyahu and hold him to account for his heinous crimes, just as it would an international criminal from any other country.”

The group’s letter says that “in light of Netanyahu’s imminent visit, HRSP should prioritize investigating him… There is overwhelming evidence that under Netanyahu, Israeli forces and authorities are committing genocide, war crimes, and torture against Palestinians in Gaza, acts that are proscribed under federal criminal statutes and prosecutable by HRSP.”

“As the most powerful political figure in Israel, Netanyahu also leads the Security Cabinet, as well as the recently dissolved War Cabinet—the two bodies responsible for setting the strategy for and directing the military assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023,” the letter stresses. “He therefore bears criminal responsibility for the serious international crimes committed against the Palestinian population over the past nine months.”

Various developments this week have elevated concerns for the people of Gaza. The World Health Organization said Friday that poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples at six locations in the strip, and Amnesty International on Thursday published interviews with 27 former detainees who described being tortured by Israeli forces.

A Wednesday report from Oxfam detailed what the group called Israel’s “water war crimes” in Gaza. That same day, Israeli lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing “the establishment of a Palestinian state” west of the Jordan River—widely seen as an effort to send a message to Netanyahu ahead of his trip to D.C.

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, and Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—which on Friday issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

So far, legal efforts to hold the Biden administration accountable for enabling Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians have been unsuccessful. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against the president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

CCR attorney Katherine Gallagher, who represented plaintiffs in the case, said that “this stunning abdication of the court’s role to serve as a check on the executive even in the face of its support for genocide should set off alarm bells for all.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingRights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate US-Bound Netanyahu for Genocide

UK Urged to Cut Off Arms Sales to Israel After Restoring UNRWA Funds

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaks at the NATO Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 2024 (Photo: Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)

“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other,” said one advocate.

Days after independent United Nations experts said the blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza over the past nine months has led to famine throughout the enclave, rights groups on Friday applauded the British government’s announcement that it will restore funding to the U.N.’s relief agency in Palestine—but said the Labour Party will remain complicit in the suffering of Gazans as long as it continues arming Israel.

Tim Bierley, a campaigner at Global Justice Now, said the decision to restore U.K. funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) six months after it was suspended was “welcome and long overdue,” following mounting reports of dozens of Palestinian children and adults dying of starvation in the intervening months.

The U.K. was one of several wealthy countries that suspended funding for UNRWA, which operates mainly on international donations, after Israel in January claimed without evidence that 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff members in Gaza had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and other countries severely reduced UNRWA’s ability to provide food aid, healthcare, sanitation services, and employment to Palestinians, nearly all of whom have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment.

Following sustained advocacy by rights groups and Labour Party lawmakers who support Palestinian rights, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday announced that the new Labour government, which took control after this month’s elections, has committed to providing £21 million ($27 million) to UNRWA following former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to suspend funding.

Lammy noted in his speech to Parliament that restoring UNRWA funding is “absolutely central” to ensuring humanitarian aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza.

“No other agency can deliver aid at the scale needed,” he said.

The government’s decision leaves the U.S.—UNRWA’s largest funder—as the only country that has not restored its financial support for the agency. In March, the U.S. passed a military spending package that prohibits UNRWA funding through at least March 2025.

Bierley was among those who noted that while the U.K. is committing to provide more humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the Labour government is still providing Israel with military aid.

“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other. Labour has had more than enough time to review the evidence: The U.K. must ban all arms sales to Israel with immediate effect,” said Bierley.

Journalist Owen Jones added that considering all countries except the U.S. have already restored funding—with many citing the U.N.’s finding that Israel’s accusations were unsubstantiated—the Labour government’s decision is “the bare minimum.”

“Now end arms sales and stop trying to wreck the [International Criminal Court] arrest warrants,” said Jones, referring to the U.K.’s bid to intervene in the ICC’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Member of Parliament Andy McDonald of the Labour Party called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to “clarify that it supports the processes that will prosecute war crimes and that the U.K. accepts the ICC jurisdiction over Israel, and has no truck with the nonsense legal argument of Israel being exempt from international law.”

The humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians said the Labour Party’s decision will restore “an irreplaceable lifeline” to a population of 2.3 million Gaza residents who “face an existential threat from Israel’s military bombardment and siege.”

“We hope that David Lammy and the U.K. government will now commit to increasing multi-year support to the agency,” said the group, “to bolster its vital humanitarian work across the region and ensure the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees are upheld.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUK Urged to Cut Off Arms Sales to Israel After Restoring UNRWA Funds