Palestine Action activists occupying the site of Elbit Ferranti in Oldham, Greater Manchester in 2021
COUNTER-TERRORISM police have arrested 10 more Palestine Action activists in connection to a protest at a “research hub” belonging to Israel’s largest weapons firm Elbit Systems.
Another 10 had already been detained when the action took place on August 6.
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Despite being arrested under the Terrorism Act, which allows police to detain suspects up to 14 days without charge, the activists were all charged with non-terror offences, such as criminal damage and aggravated burglary.
Police confirmed that 10 more were arrested under the Terrorism Act on Tuesday in connection with the incident.
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A spokesperson for the group accused the British state of “acting to protect the interests of a foreign genocidal regime, over the rights and freedoms of its own citizens.”
They added that the real terrorists were “those assisting and arming Israel’s genocide.”
It comes a month after counterterrorism police raided the home of Asa Winstanley, a journalist covering the occupation of Palestine.
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Cage International head of campaigns Naila Ahmed said: “The British government continues to build an infrastructure of authoritarian laws.
“This is beyond a question of complicity; the UK police are now acting as an extension of a genocidal entity, abusing and exploiting any and every power at their disposal to intimidate and crush resistance to the mass killing of humans in Gaza.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer giving a speech during the Interpol General Assembly, at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, November 4, 2024
ILLEGAL migration is a security threat equivalent to terrorism, the Prime Minister said today as he aped Tory rhetoric.
Pouring cash and hardline language at the problem, Sir Keir Starmer announced an extra £75 million to police Britain’s borders.
Speaking at the global policing organisation Interpol’s conference in Glasgow, Sir Keir said that “people smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism.”
The new Border Security Command Labour is establishing would “treat people smugglers like terrorists,” he pledged.
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Government presentation of the question appeared inflammatory, as the Downing Street press release for the Prime Minister’s speech headlined “national security threat.”
Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “While we welcome the government’s commitment to tackle people smugglers, the best way to deal with deaths in the Channel is to adopt our Safe Passage policy that would create a safe and legal route for refugees to come to the UK and here begin their asylum claim.”
Small boat crossings are presently on the rise, with more than 27,500 people having made the dangerous passage across the Channel so far this year, more than in the same period in 2023.
Cuba is in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis, and October’s widespread power outages are only adding to the Cuban people’s troubles. For the last six decades, Cuba has been on the receiving end of myriad sanctions by the United States government. This blockade has proved devastating to human life.
Reporting on Cuba’s blackouts have either omitted or paid brief lip-service to the effects of US sanctions on the Cuban economy, and how those sanctions have created the conditions for the crisis. Instead, media have focused on the inefficient and authoritarian Communist government as the cause of the island’s troubles.
Pulping the economy
Michael Galant (The Hill, 1/5/24): “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves for association with ‘a sponsor of terror.’”
One of President Donald Trump’s final acts in office was to re-designate Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, after President Barack Obama had removed them from the list in 2015 as a part of his Cuban thaw. Inclusion on the list subjects a country to restrictions on US foreign aid and financing, but, more importantly, the SSoT list encourages third-party over-compliance with sanctions. “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves,” The Hill (1/5/24) reported.
Trump reportedly added Cuba to the list for harboring members of FARC and ELN, two left-wing Colombian armed movements. However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro later “noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks,” the Intercept (12/14/23) wrote. Indeed, if Cuba deported the dissidents, they would have been in violation of the protocols of the peace talks, which they were bound to by international law (The Nation, 2/24/23).
President Joe Biden has not begun the process of reviewing Cuba’s inclusion on the list, despite his campaign promises to the contrary.
The terror designation, plus the many other sanctions imposed by Trump and continued by Biden, are no small potatoes. Ed Augustin wrote at Drop Site (10/1/24) that
the terror designation, together with more than 200 sanctions enacted against the island since Obama left office, has pulped the Cuban economy by cutting revenue to the struggling Cuban state…. The combined annual cost of the Trump/Biden sanctions, [economists] say, amounts to billions of dollars a year.
Augustin argued that the economic warfare regime is a root cause of the rolling blackouts, water shortages and mass emigration that have plagued Cuba in recent years. Even imports that are ostensibly exempt from sanctions, like medication, are caught in the dragnet as multinational companies scramble to cut ties with the island. Banks are so reluctant to run afoul of US sanctions, Augustin wrote, “that often, even when the state can find the money to buy, and a provider willing to sell, there’s simply no way of making the payment.”
Cuba’s pariah status as a SSoT has put a stranglehold on its economy, and its government’s ability to administer public services. However, US restrictions on Cuba are almost never mentioned in US coverage, and reporting on the recent blackouts is no exception.
Cash-strapped Communists
Reuters (10/10/19): “Tougher US sanctions against Cuba have led international banks to avoid transactions involving the island, while prospective overseas investors put plans on hold.”
Coverage has emphasized the inability of Cuba’s government to pay for necessary fuel imports. The New York Times (10/19/24) reported “the strapped Communist government could barely afford” to pay for fuel. Elsewhere, the Times (10/18/24) claimed “a severe economic crisis and the cash crunch it produced made it harder for Cuba to pay for those fuel imports.”
The Washington Post (10/18/24) made broadly similar arguments, chalking the blackouts up to “a shortage of imported oil and the cash-strapped government’s insufficient maintenance of the creaky grid.”
The “cash crunch” referenced by the Times is not just the result of an abstract economic crisis, as is implied. Instead, it is a direct effect of US sanctions on financial institutions. During the Obama administration, European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, were fined to the tune of over $10 billion for transacting with Cuba (Jacobin, 3/27/22). Even before Cuba was choked further as a result of their SSoT designation, reporting by Reuters (10/10/19) showed the extent to which banks were terminating operations with Cuba and Cuban entities:
Many Western banks have long refused Cuba-related business for fear of running afoul of US sanctions and facing hefty fines.… Panama’s Multibank shut down numerous Cuba-related accounts this year and European banks are restricting clients associated with Cuba to their own nationals, if that.…
Businessmen and diplomats said large French banks, including Societe Generale, no longer want anything to do with Cuba, and some are stopping payments to pensioners living on the Caribbean island.… For the first time in years, the island has had problems financing the upcoming sugar harvest. Various joint venture projects, from golf resorts to alternative energy, are finding it nearly impossible to obtain private credit.
This de-risking by financial institutions manufactures a cash-scarce economy. Cuba’s inability to procure cash for imports is not a function of financial mismanagement, or a lack of credit-worthiness. Instead, it is a deliberate effect of American foreign policy. By omitting the actions of the most powerful government on earth, mainstream coverage allows only that only Cuban failures could be the cause of a shortage of cash.
‘Terrorism’ cuts off tourism
Britain’s ambassador to Cuba told the Telegraph (11/6/23), “Those who come are profoundly shocked at what the SSOT designation is doing to the people here.”
Cuba has historically used tourism as a way of bringing money into the economy, but lately the Cuban tourism industry has been severely depressed. The explanation employed by corporate media for the decline of this industry is to blame the extended effects of the pandemic recession (New York Times, 10/19/24; Washington Post, 10/18/24).
This explanation, however, is incomplete. Cuba has indeed had a lackluster rebound in their tourism industry, but the Times and the Post fail to explain why Cuba has faltered while other Caribbean islands have more than re-achieved their pre-pandemic tourist numbers.
Travelers from Britain, Australia, Japan and 37 other countries do not need to procure a visa for travel to the United States. Instead, they can use ESTA, an electronic visa waiver. This greatly reduces the cost and the annoyance of obtaining permission to visit the US. However, since Cuba’s 2021 listing as a SSoT, any visit to the country by an ESTA passport-holder revokes the visa waiver, for life (Telegraph, 11/6/23). In other words, any Brit (or Kiwi, or Korean, and so on) who visits Cuba must, for the rest of their lives, visit a US embassy and pay $180 before being able to enter the United States. US policy, not a Covid hangover, is hamstringing any possibility of a resurgence in tourism to Cuba.
Blame game
During Cuba’s most recent energy crisis, the New York Times published three stories describing the blackouts. Two of these stories mention the US blockade only as something that the Cuban government blames for the crisis.
The New York Times (10/21/24) presented the idea that the US is punishing Cuba’s economy as a Communist allegation: “The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration.”
The headline on the Times website (10/21/24) read: “A Nationwide Blackout, Now a Hurricane. How Much Can Cuba Endure?” The paper was right to report on the humanitarian crisis ongoing in Cuba, but it chose to downplay the most important root cause: the decades-long US blockade on Cuba’s economy and its people.
That same story described Cuba as “a Communist country long accustomed to shortages of all kinds and spotty electrical service.” Why is the country so used to shortages? Eleven paragraphs later, the Times gave an explanation, or at least, Cuba’s explanation:
The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration, which severely restricts the Cuban government’s cash flow. The US Department of the Treasury blocks tankers that have delivered oil to Cuba, which drives up the island’s fuel costs, because Cuba has a limited pool of suppliers available to it.
Earlier coverage by the Times (10/18/24) similarly couched the effects of the blockade as merely a claim by Cuba. The Washington Post (10/22/24) also situated the blockade as something that “the Cuban government and its allies blame” for the ongoing crisis.
To report that Cuban officials blame the US sanctions for the energy crisis is a bit like reporting that fishermen blame the moon for the rising tide. It is of course factual that US trade restrictions–which affect not just US businesses, but also multinational businesses based in other countries–are a blunt weapon, with impact against not just a government, but an entire people.
At the very least, it is incumbent upon journalists to do at least minimal investigation and explanation of the facts concerning the subject of their reporting. None of the coverage in either major paper bothered to investigate whether this was a fair explanation, or even to report generally the effects a 60-year blockade might have on an economy.
Brief—and buried
“Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors,” the New York Times (10/19/24) reported; 18 paragraphs later, the story gets around to mentioning US sanctions.
On October 19, the Times gave its most complete explanation of the relationship between the US sanctions regime and the Cuban blackouts:
Cuba’s economy enjoyed a brief honeymoon with the United States during the Obama administration, which sought to normalize relations after decades of hostility, while keeping a longstanding economic embargo in place. President Donald J. Trump reversed course, leading to renewed restrictions on tourism, visas, remittances, investments and commerce.
This explanation can be found in the 31st paragraph of the 37-paragraph story. Only once the Times has painted a picture of all the ways the Communist government has gone wrong can there be a brief mention of the role of US sanctions. And how brief it is; the Times chose not to detail the extent of blockade against Cuba, nor how Cuba was wrongfully placed on the SSoT list, nor the failure of Biden to reevaluate Cuba’s status as he promised on the campaign trail.
Describing the US starvation of Cuba’s economy in abstract terms like “economic crisis” provides cover for deliberate policy decisions by the US government. By reporting on the embargo only as something that the Cuban government claims, it is easy for readers to dismiss that explanation as simply a Communist excuse. Instead of asking why the United States is choosing to enforce a crippling sanctions regime on another country, outlets like the New York Times find it easier to repeat the line that Cuba’s government has only itself to blame for its problems.
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… [C]ounterterrorism forces raided Winstanley’s home in London, seizing electronic devices used in his work. Although Winstanley was not arrested, the equipment was confiscated by the police. …
Asa Winstanley. Photo: R Witts Photography: Electronic Intifada
British authorities targeted journalist Asa Winstanley in a counterterrorism raid, marking the latest crackdown on journalists opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its ongoing genocide in Gaza
Journalist with the Electronic Intifada Asa Winstanley is one of the latest targets of British authorities cracking down on activists and journalists opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On Thursday, October 17, counterterrorism forces raided Winstanley’s home in London, seizing electronic devices used in his work. Although Winstanley was not arrested, the equipment was confiscated by the police.
The operation was based on the heavily criticized 2006 Terrorism Act, whose broad provisions can be easily misused to stifle discussion on controversial topics, the editors of The Electronic Intifada said in a statement. Media workers’ trade unions have already warned that applying the law to journalists will have a chilling effect on press freedom and free speech.
Winstanley was told he was being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism,” a charge human rights associations have previously criticized for being too vague and opening the door to the suppression of free speech. The police informed Winstanley that the raid was triggered by material he shared on social media.
Editors of the renowned pro-Palestine outlet described the action against Winstanley as the “latest use by British authorities of repressive ‘counterterrorism’ legislation to crack down on journalists and activists involved in reporting on or protesting Israel’s crimes.” Previously, journalists like Richard Medhurst and Palestine solidarity activists Mick Napier, Tony Greenstein, and Sarah Wilkinson, among others, were targeted by the authorities over speeches made at rallies and opinions expressed on social media.
Several activists from Palestine Action involved in direct action against companies complicit in Israel’s crimes, including Elbit Systems, have also been detained by British police on alleged terrorism charges over recent months. Like in Winstanley’s case, “counterterrorism powers are being used to raid, arrest, and imprison pro-Palestine activists and journalists,” according to Palestine Action.
Winstanley has been a vocal critic of Britain’s complicity in the occupation of Palestine, with his investigations covering the Labour Party’s links with the Israel lobby. As a result, he has faced legal threats from the party, which is currently in power in the UK and has promoted the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine since winning the election.
“The raid on Winstanley’s home is clearly intended to intimidate and silence him, as well as other journalists and activists,” concluded The Electronic Intifada.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Protestors take part in a National March for Gaza in London, England on September 07, 2024 [Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images]
Just as head chopping was central to Daesh as an expression of its military prowess and power, killing babies and children is central to Israel as an expression of its dominance in occupied Palestine. No one loves head chopping more than Daesh, and no one loves killing children more than Israel. That’s the message which comes through loud and clear on a near daily basis.
Such barbarism is cloaked in a religious garb but everything that Daesh does is contrary to the human rights and justice at the core of Islam, and everything that Israel does is contrary to the human rights and justice enshrined within Judaism. Israel and Daesh profess to be Jewish and Islamic State respectively, but the savagery of their conduct is more satanic than Godly.
The very notion of killing babies and children should be anathema to every human being, so what is it about the Zionist psychology that actualises baby killing? After the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported the words of Saar Ben Hamoo, a South African Zionist and ardent supporter of Israel: “We will drink the blood of your children in Gaza,” he declared. The Zionist Ben Hamoo is guilty of hate speech, but also gave expression to Zionist infanticide in advance of Israel launching its genocide in Gaza.
Prior to last October, no one could have imagined the mercilessness of Israeli Zionists and their supporters in their desire to commit infanticide. How did Ben Hamoo know that baby killing would feature prominently in the genocide being carried out in revenge for 7 October?
Was it a guess? Or wishful thinking?
It is natural for human beings to express love, kindness and gentleness towards a child, whether a relative or a stranger. Anyone who thinks about hurting a child or even tries to hurt a child is considered a degenerate. To deliberately break the limbs of a child or even think about killing a child is beyond comprehension for normal people. The killing of a child has to be the most repulsive act that a human being can commit, but this is exactly what Israeli Zionists have been doing and continue to do in occupied Palestine, without compassion, and with full impunity.
In October 2023, after the outbreak of the Gaza war, Al Jazeera reported that Israel kills a Palestinian child every fifteen minutes. A recent article for MEMO pointed out that, “Israel has killed, on average, two Palestinian children every day for the past 24 years.”
The Vice Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Bragi Gudbransson, told reporters on 19 September, “The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history.” The CRC monitors governments’ compliance with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and released its findings about six governments, including the Israel regime.
The report states that the committee “is greatly concerned about the high number of children in Gaza killed, maimed, injured, missing, displaced, orphaned and subjected to famine, malnutrition and disease as a result of Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.”
UNRWA chief says 70% of Gaza victims are children, women – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]
A week ago, the Gaza health ministry published the names of 710 new-born Palestinian babies killed by Israeli forces during the ongoing war. Since 7 October, the confirmed number of Palestinian children killed by Israel is 16,700. Moreover, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported in June that more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military attack on the enclave. Most of these missing children are presumed dead under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by Israel. At the very least, therefore, it is fair to say that the Zionist state has slaughtered 36,700 children in Gaza since last October alone.
Although UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez has said that, “Gaza has become a graveyard for children,” his comment underplays the fact that Palestinian children in Gaza are not just dying, they are being killed. More than just a graveyard, therefore, Gaza has become a slaughterhouse for children.
According to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, children are “bearing the brunt” of Israel’s war. “This is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future.” Save the Children UK insisted that, “We simply cannot accept the violence that Palestinian children continue to face as normal.”
And yet the infanticide in Gaza has been normalised.
International medics who have no political affiliation to Palestine but have gone to work in Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, provide us with eyewitness accounts of Gaza post-7 October. Professor Nick Maynard is one such doctor. He worked in both Al-Aqsa Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. “We saw a lot of children with their arms or legs blown off,” he told the Irish Times. “There were no painkillers to give the children.”
More than four hundred Palestinians were slaughtered by the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa Hospital when the occupation state claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas. This claim was rejected unequivocally by Maynard. “I have never seen any evidence of Hamas there,” he insisted.
Firoze Sidhwa is a 42-year-old trauma and critical care surgeon at San Joaquin General Hospital in North California. He went with the World Health Organisation to work at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. What Sidwha told Bruno Macaes of the New Statesman about the killing of children in Gaza is chilling: “Most of them have been killed in explosions where a lot of them would have been trapped under the rubble. Some are going to die immediately with a concrete block hitting their head or something like that but a lot of them just had their leg pinned under the rubble and because there is no heavy moving equipment, there is no way to get to them, they slowly died of sepsis while buried in the dark tomb alone, freezing during the night, boiling during the day. It would take three, four, five days for them to die in this way. It’s horrific to think of the scale of their suffering.” Horrific indeed.
Israel has been deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children in Gaza. “We had kids shot in the chest and shot in the head, in other words clearly deliberate, clearly targeted,” explained Sidhwa. Another doctor from a different hospital in Gaza told him how often he encounters children being shot by Israelis: “All the time, every day, kids were coming in who had been shot in the head and chest.”
Sidhwa and other doctors who worked in Gaza’s hospitals penned a letter to the Biden administration to advocate an end to the infanticide in Gaza. The letter included the damning indictment that, “Every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.”
Despite such clear evidence of infanticide, the US continues to support Israel and provide it with more weapons to keep its baby-killing machine running. One wonders when the vampire-like thirst of Zionists like Ben Hamoo for the blood of Palestinian children will be satiated. “Israelis must ask themselves if they’re willing to live in a country that lives on blood,” wrote Gideon Levy in Haaretz on 15 September.
How many more babies in Gaza have to be killed before the US and Europe stops arming the baby killers in Tel Aviv and instead impose sanctions on the genocidal apartheid regime? How will we answer on that day when we all return and stand before our Creator, the Most Just, and are asked, “For what crime were the children of Gaza killed?” Whatever we think we might say then, we must act now to bring this infanticide inherent in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to an end.
dizzy: The equality drawn between Daesh and Israeli actions is fully understood. There are so many – possibly all – made for television fake manufactured terrorism events that can be similarly equivalenced or attributed.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
