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Tag: arms supplies

  • Left and civil society groups demand India end its complicity in Israel’s genocide

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

    Brinda Karat, CPI (M) polit bureau member speaking in the press conference in New Delhi on Thursday, August 1

    Left parties will observe a day of solidarity with Palestine on August 3 to pressure the Indian government to stop sending weapons to Israel and to end the genocide

    Five left parties in India issued a joint call, asking the Indian government to stop supplying weapons to Israel, and demanding immediate comprehensive international sanctions over its continued violations of international law and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Similar calls were made by civil society groups as well.  

    The parties include the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Forward Bloc, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, issued a joint call for a nationwide protest mobilization on August 3, in solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

    Apart from calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and creation of a Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders, the left parties demanded Israel be declared an apartheid state, and denounced Israel’s continued defiance of UN resolutions, existing international laws and the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).  

    “In the light of brazen violations of UN resolutions, the ICJ rulings against the genocide by Israel in Gaza and the escalation of such genocide against the people of Palestine,” the left parties call upon “Indian people to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the genocide and atrocities being carried out by Israel backed by the United State of America” the text of the joint call reads.  

    The left parties also demanded that the government of India “cancel all export licenses and permissions to various Indian companies for the supply of military arms and ammunition to Israel, and halt all arms imports from Israel” and “end all forms of complicity with Israel’s illegal military occupation and genocide [which is] based on the principles of colonial apartheid.”

    Speaking in a press conference organized by civil society groups on Thursday in New Delhi, Brinda Karat, a CPI (M) polit bureau member said that, “our deep and abiding solidarity for Palestinian freedom requires us to hold our own government accountable for actions which help the perpetrators of the continuing barbaric horrors against the children, the people of Palestine.”

    Speaking in the press conference, economist and right to food activist Jean Dreze accused the Indian government of complicity in genocide and starvation of Palestinians, by refusing to stop cooperation with the Zionist state and by refusing to press Israel to stop its war in Gaza.

    Almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 90,000 injured so far in the Israeli genocide on Gazam which began on October 7 of last year.   

    Stop aiding Israeli genocide in Gaza!

    Several prominent figures, including former judges of the Supreme Court of India, scholars and activists wrote a joint letter to India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday, asking the country to immediately halt all supplies of weapons to Israel, claiming it violates India’s obligations to international laws and its own constitutional provisions.  

    Quoting media reports about Spain not allowing the docking of at least two ships allegedly carrying military equipment from India to Israel in recent months, as well as labels of “made in India” found on some of the missiles dropped by Israel in Gaza, the civil society members claimed in a press conference on Thursday that the Narendra Modi-led government of India has forgotten its own commitments to the Genocide Convention and other international laws, and even failed to implement its historical positions on the Palestinian issue. 

    The joint letter to India’s defense minister provides evidence of how at least three Indian companies are manufacturing missile parts and Hermes drones, which are used by Israel to launch attacks inside civilian areas in Gaza. 

    “Any supply of military material to Israel would amount to a violation of India’s obligations under international humanitarian law and the mandate of Article 21 read with Article 51 (c) of the Indian constitution. We urge you, therefore, to cancel the concerned export licenses and halt the granting of any new licenses to companies supplying military equipment to Israel,” the joint letter reads.   

    India’s billions of dollars of arms trade with Israel contradicts its own stated positions of “peaceful resolution in Palestine” and its voting patterns on successive UN resolutions most of which support an immediate ceasefire and the creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories, various speakers said in the press conference on Thursday. 

    Speakers, including Karat, demanded that the Indian government should stop trying to be a beneficiary of the Israeli occupation and stop indulging in opportunistic practices, such as sending its workforce to replace Palestinians in Israel.  

    Last year, the Indian government agreed to send workers to replace thousands of Palestinians whose work permits were canceled by Israel after the beginning of the war on October 7.

    Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of the Wire, said that India’s policy on supporting Israel during the war goes against the Modi government’s stated position of preserving Indian interests, as Israeli acts such as the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran earlier this week could result in the eruption of regional warm which can force around 5 million Indians working in the Gulf countries to return home.

    Lawyer Prashant Bhusan, and prominent writer Arundhati Roy, also underlined that any clandestine deal between India and Israel violates India’s democratic principles and its historic commitments to anti-colonial struggles around the world. 

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

  • US Healthcare Workers Back From Gaza Tell Harris and Biden: ‘End This Madness Now’

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

    Palestinians wounded by Israeli attacks are brought to Nasser Hospital for medical treatment in Khan Younis, Gaza on July 22, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.”

    As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, dozens of American healthcare workers who recently volunteered in the Gaza Strip urged the U.S. leaders to do everything in their power to end Israel’s assault on the enclave, citing the horrors they witnessed firsthand.

    In an open letter addressed to Biden, Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden, 45 physicians, surgeons, and nurses wrote that “we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them.”

    “We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget,” the letter reads. “We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen.”

    The healthcare workers called on the Biden administration to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the state of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo of both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups until a permanent cease-fire is established, and until good-faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict.”

    “We are not politicians. We do not claim to have all the answers,” they continued. “We are simply physicians and nurses who cannot remain silent about what we saw in Gaza. Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: End this madness now!”

    The letter was released as Netanyahu, fresh off his widely condemned address to the U.S. Congress, met separately on Thursday with Biden and Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

    In remarks following her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris said that “what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” pointing to “the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.”

    “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” the vice president added. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

    Harris said she told Netanyahu directly to “get this deal done”—referring to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas—but, as expected, she did not break with the administration on supplying arms to the Israeli military.

    While there has been no obvious policy change from the administration now that Harris has taken over for Biden at the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argued that the vice president “clearly broke with Biden on Israel in terms of rhetoric and tone.”

    Parsi also contended that there was “a substance shift.”

    “Biden has disingenuously claimed that Hamas blocked a cease-fire deal,” Parsi wrote on social media. “By saying that she urged Netanyahu ‘to clinch the deal,’ Kamala pointed to the real obstacle.”

    In their letter to Harris and Biden, the healthcare workers wrote that Israel “has directly targeted and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system” and “targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, disappearance, and torture.” According to figures from the United Nations Human Rights Office, Israeli forces have killed one in every 40 healthcare workers in the Palestinian territory since October as diseases spread and the number of Gazans killed or wounded continues to grow by the hour.

    The healthcare workers expressed the view that—based on available evidence and their experiences—”the death toll from this conflictis many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health,” which currently stands at over 39,100.

    “We also believe this is probative evidence of widespread violations of American laws governing the use of American weapons abroad, and of international humanitarian law,” they continued. “We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves.”

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

  • Amnesty warns the US government of its complicity in alleged Israeli war crimes

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/amnesty-warns-us-government-its-complicity-alleged-israeli-war-crimes

    Palestinians walk through dust by the rubble of houses, destroyed by Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, July 22, 2024

    AN INTERNATIONAL human rights group issued a fresh warning on Tuesday over the complicity of the United States in alleged Israeli war crimes.

    The warning from Amnesty International came as protests mounted over the visit of Israel’s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Amnesty demanded a “comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.”

    The rights group said the embargo should remain in place “until there is no longer a substantial risk that arms could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”

    Amnesty International US executive director Paul O’Brien said: “Enough is enough. The US government has been presented with ample evidence from experts around the world that US-origin arms have been used in war crimes and unlawful killings by the Israeli government.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/amnesty-warns-us-government-its-complicity-alleged-israeli-war-crimes

  • Biden Moves Forward With ‘Immoral’ $1 Billion Arms Shipment to Israel

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

    U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium at the White House on February 16, 2023 in Washington, DC.
     (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The new shipment was announced “right after the State Department admits Israel has ‘likely’ used U.S.-supplied weapons in violation of humanitarian law,” said one journalist.

    Less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said he was pausing a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel, citing concerns over the safety of civilians in Rafah and other “population centers” in Gaza, the White House informed Congress Tuesday that it will soon send over $1 billion more in arms and ammunition to the Israel Defense Forces.

    The package includes about $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles, and $60 million in mortar rounds, congressional aides told TheAssociated Press.

    Despite the Biden administration’s repeated claims that it believes U.S. bombs should not “be dropped in densely populated cities,” Intercept reporter Prem Thakker pointed out that the arms shipment was announced days after the State Department admitted in a report that it was “reasonable” to conclude Israel has used U.S. weapons to violate international humanitarian law in its relentless bombing of Gaza.

    It was unclear whether the $1 billion shipment was part of an existing arms sale or a new transaction with Israel. The weapons are not among those included in the $17 billion in military aid for the IDF included in a foreign aid package passed last month.

    At Al Jazeera, Shihab Rattansi reported that the weapons shipment is “being presented as the long-term U.S. commitment to supplying Israel with weaponry” and “has been under consideration since mid-spring,” with some of the weapons potentially not reaching the IDF for months or even up to three years.

    But foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal suggested that regardless of whether the weapons are used in Rafah, where Israel is currently expanding its assault, the shipment goes “against U.S. national security interest and global standing” and will aid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “on his lawless path of colonization.”

    The shipment was announced ahead of a statement released by Amnesty International and other humanitarian groups condemning international governments—including that of the U.S.—for standing by as Israel has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians in Gaza since October while also blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, pushing part of the enclave into famine that is expected to spread.

    The U.S. and other suppliers of weapons to Israel must respect last month’s United Nations Human Rights Council resolution demanding an end to weapons sales to the IDF, said the groups.

    “As the main weapon provider for Israel’s military effort, the United States bears a significant responsibility for Israel’s international humanitarian law violations. In addition to halting the transfer of high payload bombs, the U.S. should also use all its leverage to halt the ongoing military operation in Rafah,” said the organizations, including Relief International and Oxfam. “All states must act now to ensure an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”

    Amnesty released an analysis late last month showing that U.S. bombs were used in attacks on Gaza that likely fit the definition of war crimes.

    Al Jazeera‘s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported Wednesday from Deir el-Balah, Gaza that Israel has intensified its attacks on Rafah as well as in cities in northern Gaza.

    “Over the past couple of hours, we have recorded more victims in central areas of Gaza City,” reported Abu Azzoum. “Ten Palestinians have been killed in the city’s Sabra neighborhood after a U.N.-run clinic was targeted by Israeli jets.”

    The IDF said Tuesday that it had hit more than 100 targets across the Gaza Strip in a 24-hour period and was continuing to carry out attacks in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since October.

    Nearly 450,000 people have now been forced to flee the southern city once again, and Al Jazeerareported Tuesday that at least one family that escaped Israel’s Rafah incursion was killed days later in an attack on a refugee camp.

    Moving forward with another weapons shipment to Israel, said U.S. economic justice group Debt Collective, was “murderous” and “immoral.”

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

  • Sevim Dağdelen: the double standards of the West are on full display at the ICJ

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

    Public ICJ hearing on Nicaragua’s case against Germany. Photo: ICJ

    The German MP writes that the response of Germany to Nicaragua’s charges of aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza has been to downplay its role in supplying arms and question the premise that genocide is already taking place

    The German government’s appearance before the International Court of Justice in the proceedings for aiding and abetting genocide and violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza is a lesson in Western double standards. On April 8 and 9, Germany sat in the dock in The Hague after Nicaragua filed a case at the highest UN judicial body.

    The 43-page document accuses Germany of failing to fulfill its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide. Essentially, Germany is accused of aiding and abetting genocide and violating international humanitarian law with its political, financial, and military support for Israel as well as by ceasing to fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). In view of the urgency of the situation, Nicaragua requested five interim measures to prevent the facilitation of genocide. These include the demand that Germany stop supplying arms to Israel and resume payments to UNRWA to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid for the Palestinian population.

    Does arming a state committing genocide make you an accomplice?

    The arguments put forward by the German government in its defense were unconvincing. With a flood of PowerPoint slides, the German representation initially tried to play down the significance of Germany’s arms deliveries to Israel. It argued that the majority of the arms export licenses issued after October 7 were for so-called “other military equipment” (“sonstige Rüstungsgüter”) and only a relatively small proportion for so-called “weapons of war” (“Kriegswaffen”). This was an attempt to deceive the court and the public. For what the German defense failed to mention was the fact that this invented distinction between “other military equipment” and “weapons of war” is a specific feature of German arms export control. Contrary to what the terminology suggests, the category of “other military equipment” can also include weapons that can be used for warfare.

    Germany is Israel’s second largest arms supplier after the USA. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), German weapons have accounted for 30% of Israeli arms imports in the last five years. Licenses for new arms exports also increased in 2023. In total, the German government approved the export of weapons to Israel worth EUR 326.5 million – a tenfold increase compared to the previous year. These licenses, most of which were issued after October 7, 2023, include war weapons worth 20 million euros. While the German government tried to justify the approval of 500,000 rounds of ammunition for machine guns with the difficult-to-verify claim that they had been supplied for training purposes, it could not deny the possible use of the approved 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons in war.

    Instead, the German government attempted to justify this by arguing that these and the majority of other export licenses had been issued in October 2023, before the war and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza had come to a head. This argument ignores the fact that it must have been clear to the world public – and therefore also to the German government – just a few days after October 7 that the partially far-right Israeli government under Prime Minister Netanyahu would use the horrific attack by Hamas as an opportunity to wage a ruthless war against the Palestinian civilian population, committing numerous war crimes that go far beyond any right to self-defense.

    It’s not genocide, yet

    It was striking that the German government did not even attempt to dispute Nicaragua’s presentation of facts about the extensive violations of international humanitarian law by Israel. Apparently, it also realized that the terrible humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s war, which has killed more than 33,000 people, including more than 13,000 children, can hardly be denied.

    The German defense therefore focused on the formalistic argument that the existence of genocide had not yet been established and that Germany could therefore not be found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide. In doing so, however, the German government fails to recognize the central obligation under international law that arises from the Genocide Convention – namely to prevent genocide. This is all the more significant as the ICJ issued protection orders in the case of South Africa against Israel in order to prevent the danger of genocide, which the court considered plausible. Even Israel’s blatant disregard of these orders to protect the Palestinian civilian population has not led to the German government abandoning its unconditional support for Israel.

    This shows the absurdity and hypocrisy of the actions of the German government as well as the governments of numerous other NATO states: On the one hand, they ignore all the findings of the most important bodies of the United Nations about Israel’s most serious war crimes and the danger of genocide and, regardless of this, continue to provide unconditional support for Israel’s war. On the other hand, the German government and other Western donor states decided to stop funding UNRWA solely on the basis of unverifiable insinuations by the Israeli government about the alleged involvement of individual UNRWA employees in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The requirements for subjecting 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, who depend on UNRWA aid for their daily survival, to collective punishment are apparently lower than for stopping the supply of weapons that could be used to commit genocide. This can hardly be surpassed in terms of cynicism.

    Against this backdrop, the German government’s attempt to defend itself before the ICJ by claiming that it had warned Israel of a military offensive on Rafah is hardly credible. In this sense, the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock boasted to the German Parliament just a few days ago that she had already traveled to the region seven times and called on the Israeli government to respect the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian civilian population.

    I asked the Federal Foreign Minister in the plenary session of the German Bundestag whether the Federal Government would consequently now declare a ceasefire on Israel, as the UN Human Rights Council recently called for in a resolution, due to Israel’s blatant disregard for these calls and in view of the announcement of a ground offensive in Rafah and the bloodbath to be expected as a result. The German government representative’s verbose answer can be summarized in one word: No.

    Like the Foreign Minister, the German legal representation in The Hague gave the impression that the German raison d’état of unconditionally defending Israel was above international law. Threats from Berlin against the most important judicial body of the United Nations that it would no longer be credible if it ruled against Germany fit into this picture. If the German government only accepts international law when it appears to be advantageous for its own government action, it has finally reached the level of the leading NATO member, the US, which has long understood international law only as an instrument of interest-driven politics.

    Regardless of how the court decides, Germany and the West must finally fulfill their obligation to prevent genocide and war crimes in order to lend weight to the demand for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The consequences of Western double standards, which seem to have reached a temporary climax in the Gaza war, are fatal. Not only does it lead to the West losing its last remnants of credibility in the eyes of the world. Above all, it promotes the erosion of international law, diplomacy and the United Nations as civilizational achievements for the protection of human life and the preservation of peace.

    Sevim Dağdelen is a member of the German Bundestag and foreign policy spokesperson for the group “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht”. She was the only parliamentary observer at the hearings in Nicaragua’s lawsuit against Germany before the ICJ.

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