crimes against humanity

Three on trial for peaceful anti-genocide protest at weapons factory

Spread the love

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

‘Hastings three’ pursued criminally next week for General Dynamics protest

Three local men, one of them a pensioner, go on trial next Tuesday, 27 August, at Hastings Magistrates Court on charges of aggravated trespass for taking part in a peaceful demonstration at a local arms factory in February.

The ‘Hastings3’ took part in the cross-community demonstration outside the General Dynamics site on Sidley Little Road on 29 February, supported by representatives of Jewish groups, Quakers, trade union bodies, parent groups and political parties. Demonstrators held placards, sung songs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and handed out leaflets – but several were roughly arrested and dragged off to police vans.

Laurance Holden, 71, Clem McCullough, 31, and Thomas Delves, 24 will plead not guilty to the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of a fine of up to £2500 and a jail term of three months.

Hastings & District Palestine Solidarity Campaign chair Katy Colley said:

The pursuit of these men is clearly political and designed to deter peaceful protests. We have been demonstrating at General Dynamics consistently since the genocidal assault on Gaza began 10 months ago to draw attention to the merchants of death in our hometown complicit in these atrocities.

General Dynamics makes all the casings for the bombs being dropped on Gaza – their Hastings sites makes avionic and communication systems for fighter jets and combat vehicles used by the Israeli military.

Over 40,000 men women and children have been brutally slaughtered in what the world court has deemed a ‘plausible genocide’.

There is a clear legal imperative to stop arming Israel, as was underlined this week when British diplomat Mark Smith resigned on this point, saying it was clear to everyone that Israel was “flagrantly and regularly” perpetrating war crimes in plain sight.

And yet our government continues to issue export licenses to companies like General Dynamics, allowing Israel to continue its barbaric and murderous campaign against the trapped civilian population in Gaza.

The Hastings Three are brave, principled people who do not want our town to be complicit in war crimes. They are with the majority. Poll after poll show that most people want an end to arms sales to Israel immediately. We stand with them, the side of the people, the side of the law and the side of justice.

Dozens of supporters are expected to attend a protest rally at the Magistrates court from 9am in support of the three, and a benefit concert is being held in the evening to raise money for people in Gaza as well as money for court costs. 

[S?]imon Hester, Chair of the Hastings & District TUC, said:

Protesting against genocide is not a crime. The Hastings and District Trades Union Council supports the Hastings 3 and demands an immediate end to arms sales to Israel.

Kathy Shapiro of Hastings Jews for Justice added:

Hastings Jews for Justice is outraged that the Hastings 3 are facing trial.

It is General Dynamics that should be on trial, not concerned citizens. As Jews of conscience we will continue to exercise our right and moral obligation to speak out against this criminal complicity until there is an arms embargo of Israel, a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and justice and freedom for Palestinians.’

Leah Levane, Co-Chair of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), said:

The more than 10 months of carnage in Gaza demands a serious response.  The ICJ decision makes stopping arms trading with Israel and obligation and these three people have been arrested for protesting in favor of International Law. 

I am disappointed, to put it mildly, that the Court’s precious and expensive time is being used to try three men whose acts show their commitment to International Law as well as to justice for Palestinians and, of course, peace.’

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Continue ReadingThree on trial for peaceful anti-genocide protest at weapons factory

Democrats propose no change on unflinching support for Israel in national convention

Spread the love

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

Protesters rally outside of the Democratic National Convention (Photo: Mohamed El-Dirany/PYM)

The Democratic Party’s National Convention convenes to formally nominate candidate for President, with Kamala Harris the likely choice

Following the first day of the Democratic National Convention, which runs from August 19 to 22 in Chicago, delegates voted to approved the 2024 Democratic Party platform. Notably, the platform still reads: “President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are running to finish the job.”

While there are still no concrete policies outlined in the Harris-Walz official campaign website, the 2024 Democratic Party platform can be seen as the first glimpse into what this administration promises to offer to the people of the US. 

Many were waiting to see if the platform would indicate any changes to the Democratic Party’s unconditional support for Israel, given the mass movement for Palestine ongoing in the US since October 7. The document reveals that the Democratic Party policies will not shift in any major way, and it still outlines a plan for continued war on the people of the West Asia region. 

The US in recent weeks has intensified efforts to reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian resistance groups in the latest round of ceasefire negotiations in Qatar and Egypt. However, this current push has been widely criticized for continuing to undermine bare minimum red lines from Palestinians. A widening of the current genocidal war on Gaza has become a likely possibility following the assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas leader and key negotiator Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Iran. Both Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate.

In their platform, the Democrats show that they still stand outside of international laws and consensus in declaring that the party “opposes any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” and that “President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States.” 

Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah points out the irony that the platform begins with a so-called land acknowledgement which is meant to acknowledge the country’s Indigenous people and land, while the Democrats are “arming the genocide of another Indigenous people.”

According to Abunimah, the platform is “completely out of touch with the base of the Democratic Party.” He continues, “this is not a platform that represents Democratic voters,” most of whom support an end to US aid to Israel. 

The Democratic Party machine has shifted their nominee from “Genocide Joe” Biden to Kamala Harris, in an attempt to rebrand their candidate as not being as directly associated with the US arming and enabling of Israel’s genocide. However, the movement for Palestine has continued to put pressure on the party, pointing out that not only has Harris been a crucial figure in the Biden administration as vice president, but the party as a whole continues to play a role in sustaining unshakeable support for Israel.

Protesters march to the Democratic National Convention (Photo: Mohamed El-Dirany/PYM)

This year’s DNC counter-protests have unsurprisingly focused on calling out the party’s significant complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Since October, people across the US have called on their elected officials at all levels and of both mainstream parties to call for a ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel. And yet, Biden’s administration has done nothing but double down in its support for Israel. Last week on August 14, the Pentagon approved a USD 20 billion weapons sale to Israel. The US Congress not only invited Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in a special joint session on July 24, but also gave him a standing ovation. 

On Monday August 19, the first day of the DNC in Chicago, thousands of people participated in a mass march with grassroots organizations, including CODEPINK, the ANSWER Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace. The crowd of protesters even managed to breach the security fence outside of the convention. 

Protester holds up sign outside of DNC (Photo: Mohamed El-Dirany/PYM)

In addition to the mass mobilizations outside the convention, activists have also been disrupting events related to the convention itself to voice their protest to delegates directly. 

A Palestine solidarity activist disrupted a welcome party for Democratic Party delegates in Chicago, hopping onto the stage and shouting into the microphone, “you are funding a genocide! The Harris-Biden administration keeps pumping money to Israel!” before being dragged away by security. 

A protester also confronted former Speaker of the House and leading Democrat Nancy Pelosi at a DNC event on feminism, asking her, “what do you have to say about all of the women in Gaza who have been murdered?” Pelosi avoided the question. 

Harris’ running mate Tim Walz, current Governor of Minnesota, was disrupted by activists with anti-war group CODEPINK at the DNC women’s caucus on Tuesday. Activists shouted “stop killing women in Gaza!” and “arms embargo now!” while Walz’s supporters chanted in response “USA! USA!”

This year’s DNC is also marked by the dozens of delegates representing the around 700,000 people across various states who cast “uncommitted” or protest votes in their respective Democratic Party primaries when Biden was the presumptive nominee. The uncommitted delegates are keeping up the pressure on Harris to change the US’s policy on Israel, and requesting that Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who volunteered in Gaza, be permitted to address the convention. 

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

Continue ReadingDemocrats propose no change on unflinching support for Israel in national convention

‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention

Spread the love

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

An injured Palestinian baby is treated in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 7, 2024.
 (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.

As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s press conference. “We are here because we want to win a better world.”

Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.”

Such support, Alawieh added, is also “preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children… being killed using U.S. weapons.”

“The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy,” Alawieh continued. “Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians.”

“Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue,” Alawieh added. “Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire.”

There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of “massacre after massacre” and “suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale.”

“Tell the world what you saw,” she said they told her. “We cannot afford another day of this.”

On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza “cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”

“I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” she stated. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”

Haj-Hassan continued:

For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers…

Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths… This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.

Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed… another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.

“And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan added. “History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”

Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. However, like Biden, she’s also proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that “she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”

Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.

According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel’s 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.

Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel’s genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.

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

Continue Reading‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention

Prolonging the genocide is a smokescreen for Israel’s other war in the West Bank

Spread the love

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Israeli troops enter Nablus, West Bank on August 19, 2024. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]

Promises of “absolute victory” in Gaza are nothing but “gibberish”, according to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Gallant’s comments were not meant to be public, but somehow were leaked and published by Israeli media on 12 August.

The explanation of why Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing a losing war in Gaza has been largely confined to the prime minister’s personal interests, not least the avoidance of corruption trials, preserving his extremist government coalition and avoiding an early general election. Still, none of these rationales explain the absurdity of continuing with a war which, in the words of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, is “The worst failure in Israel’s history.”

What else could explain Netanyahu’s motive for the war? And why are his most crucial government allies, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, determined to prolong it? The answer may not lie in Gaza, but in the occupied West Bank.

While Israel is extending its failed military campaign in the Strip with no clear strategic objectives, its war on the West Bank is driven by very clear motives indeed: the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory and the ethnic cleansing of large sectors of the Palestinian population. This is not only obvious through Israel’s daily actions in the West Bank, but also because of the clear statements made by Israel’s extreme far right government officials, including a commitment by Netanyahu’s own Likud party to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria.” The latter, of course, is what Zionists call the West Bank.

READ: West Bank Bedouin communities affected by Israel’s policy of forced displacement

An audio recording obtained by the Israeli group Peace Now conveyed the following remarks by Smotrich at a June 9 conference: “My goal is to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent, for God’s sake, its division… and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

To do so, the far-right politician has assigned himself the job of “change(ing) the DNA of the system.” This “system” was put in place decades ago, following Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It began a slow but determined process of illegal annexation of Palestinian territories. The process included the establishment, in 1981, of the so-called Civil Administration.

This was and remains essentially a branch of the Israeli military.

However, it was described as “civil” as part of a government effort to convert a temporary military occupation into the permanent colonisation of Palestine. This entailed the practical annexation and continued expansion of the illegal Israeli Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land after the June 1967 Six-Day War.

The Oslo Accords in 1993-94 gave Palestinians nominal administrative control over small areas in the West Bank, designated as areas A and B. This necessitated the transfer of some of the Civil Administration’s responsibility to the newly-formed Palestinian Authority, based on the understanding that the PA will always prioritise Israel’s security. The arrangement allowed Israel to expand, unhindered, its illegal settlements in most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, tripling both the size and population of the settlements between 1993 and 2023.

As Israel’s colonial plan in the West Bank reached its zenith, Netanyahu sought in 2020 to reinforce Israeli gains with the annexation of more than 30 per cent of the West Bank. Due to international pressure and growing Palestinian resistance, however, Netanyahu postponed his plan, albeit with the understanding that “annexation remains on the table”.

OPINION: It’s true, Netanyahu has never been a partner for peace

Without much fanfare, though, Israel swapped its hope for a sweeping de jure annexation of the West Bank with de facto control, through rapid seizures of Palestinian land and the expansion of its settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

Although the Israeli military is faltering in Gaza, the genocide is being used as a smokescreen to finalise Israel’s settler-colonial plans in the West Bank.

This process was dubbed by Smotrich in 2017 as a “victory by settlement”. Now in a position of power and with access to a massive budget, he is making his life’s goal a reality.

For Smotrich’s dream to be realised, he needed to revitalise the once central role of the Civil Administration. In May, he invented a new position called “deputy head” of the administration, granting the position to his close associate Hillel Roth.

Now both men have unparalleled and sweeping rights to expand the settlements. Since coming to power in December 2022, Netanyahu’s latest government has approved 12,000 new housing units for illegal settlements, while ordering the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and other civilian infrastructure.

In the first three months of 2024, Israel declared nearly 6,000 acres of the West Bank to be “state-owned land”, and therefore made it eligible for settlement construction. The decision was described by the Israeli watchdog Peace Now as the “largest West Bank land grab in 30 years.”

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is already under way. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, in the first half of 2024 alone, at least 1,000 Palestinians were forcefully displaced while nearly 160,000 were affected by home demolitions.

The Israeli war on the West Bank has come at a high price in Palestinian blood. As of 12 August, at least 632 Palestinians had been killed with 5,400 wounded in the West Bank alone, according to the Ministry of Health. When the war on Gaza is over, the war on the West Bank will grow more intense and bloodier, but with the clear strategic goal of annexing the whole territory, even though the International Court of Justice resolved on 19 July that Israel’s “annexation and… assertion of permanent control” in the West Bank is illegal.

To avoid an even greater war and genocide than that which is taking place before our eyes in Gaza, the international community must use all available means to enforce international law and bring to an end Israel’s brutal, genocidal occupation of Palestine.

OPINION: Partners in genocide: Israel is slaughtering Palestinians with western arms

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingProlonging the genocide is a smokescreen for Israel’s other war in the West Bank

Scottish government suspends all meetings with Israel

Spread the love

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Flag of Scotland [Getty]

The Scottish government announced Monday that it had suspended all meetings with Israeli ambassadors until “real progress” is made towards peace in the Gaza Strip and unimpeded access is granted to humanitarian assistance to the enclave, Anadolu Agency reports.

In a statement, External Affairs Secretary, Angus Robertson, said the Scottish government would not accept any invitation for a further meeting with Israel until there was real progress on the Gaza conflict.

“This will remain our position until such time as real progress has been made towards peace, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance is provided and Israel cooperates fully with its international obligations on the investigation of genocide and war crimes,” said Robertson.

This came after a recent meeting between Robertson and Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to the UK, Daniela Grudsky, about two weeks ago, sparking criticism within the Scottish National Party (SNP).

The External Affairs Secretary said his view was that, given Grudsky had requested the meeting this was “an opportunity to express the Scottish Government’s clear and unwavering position” on the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. And I did exactly that, “he added.

OPINION: The gloves come off as two-faced Israel and its lackeys search desperately for friends

“No one intended that this meeting be presented as legitimising the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza,” he noted, expressing that the Scottish Government has been consistent in its “unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities” in the Palestinian enclave.

Noting that many had seen the meeting as a sign of normalisation between the Israeli and Scottish governments, Robertson stressed that it was clear that it would have been better to ensure that its agenda was strictly limited to the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza .

“I apologise for the fact that this did not happen,” he said.

Robertson added that, “going forward, it is clear that, having now spoken directly to the Israeli Government and making them aware of our position on an immediate ceasefire, it would not be appropriate to accept any invitation for a further meeting.”

Highlighting that this would remain the Scottish government’s position until real progress on a ceasefire is made, he said: “The Scottish Government does not support any normaliation of its relations with the Israeli Government during this period.”

“The Scottish Government will never hold back in expressing support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, an end to UK arms being sent to Israel and the recognition of a sovereign Palestinian State within a two-state solution.”

Former Scottish First Minister, Humza Yousaf, welcomed the statement, saying Robertson has “clearly listened and reflected on the anger and upset” in relation to his meeting with the deputy Israeli ambassador.

“Crucially, he has made it clear there cannot be normal relations with the Govt of Israel,” Yousaf said on X.

READ: British Foreign Office official resigns over Israel arms sales, war crimes in Gaza

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Continue ReadingScottish government suspends all meetings with Israel