Human Rights

November 3, 2011December 11, 2020

Freedom Waves to Gaza : End the Blockade by Apartheid Israel

Freedom Wave to Gaza

With superb stealth in order to thwart sabotage by Israel which occurred on the last Freedom Flotilla earlier this year and with plans only alluded to in +972 Magazine last week, two Freedom Waves boats are en route to Gaza. They are attempting like 11 fleets before them to break the hideous illegal blockade of land, air and sea that Israel perpetrates as collective punishment on the people of Gaza.

“The Freedom Waves to Gaza emerged from the Freedom Flotilla initiatives,” says Irish Ship to Gaza organiser Fintan Lane from on board the MV Saoirse. “While the Freedom Waves to Gaza will be delivering some much-needed medicines, our primary goal is to help free Palestinians from their inhumane isolation in what is in effect an open air prison.”

Also on board in this civil society to civil society initiative are delegates from Canada, Australia, the US, Greece, Palestine, Poland and Egypt. “We have just entered international waters and hope to reach the shores of Gaza in a couple of days. The only obstacles in our way are Israel’s military, but international public opinion is behind this effort, and so is civil society in Gaza.”

“The Palestinians living in Gaza want solidarity – not charity. They have made it clear to the world that their primary demand is for freedom. While humanitarian aid is helpful, Palestinians are still prisoners with no freedom of movement,” adds Ehab Lotayef, the Canadian boat organizer. “Israel’s illegal blockade prevents not only imports into Gaza, but exports as well. And the blockade prevents Palestinians from moving freely between Gaza and the West Bank, in violation of fundamental human rights.”

From an October 2011 Report from the UN OCHA, some fast facts help explain why it is imperative to challenge and end Israel’s closure of Gaza:

. The population of Gaza is 1.6 million, with over 50% under 18.
. 38% of Gazans live in poverty.
. 26% of the Gazan workforce, including 38% of youths, is unemployed.
. The average wage declined by over 20% in the past six years.
. 54% of Gazans are food insecure and over 75% are aid recipients.
. 35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures.
. 50-80 million litres of partially treated sewage are dumped in the sea each day.
. Over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is undrinkable.
. 85% of schools in Gaza run on double shifts.
. About one-third of the items in the essential drug list are out of stock.
. Since the beginning of 2010, 64 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 621 injured by Israeli forces; over 60% of casualties occurred in the access-restricted areas. Another 60 civilians were killed and 137 were injured in tunnel-related accidents

The Gaza blockade (through the land, air and sea) is a denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law and amounts to collective punishment. It severely restricts imports and exports, as well as the movement of people in and out of Gaza, and access to agricultural land and fishing waters. Gazans are unable to provide for their families and the quality of infrastructure and vital services has deteriorated.

Israel has now beleaguered the civilian population of Gaza, flaunting international law, for 1604 days.

The MV Saoirse from Ireland, sailing under the US flag, and the Tahrir from Canada carry 27 passengers between them. The humanitarians on the Irish boat include Parliamentarians and famous footballer Trevor Hogan while the Tahrir has several Al Jazeera journalists aboard.

After setting sail under the protection of a Turkish Coast Guard vessel from Fethiye in South West Turkey, the boats are now in international waters and expect to arrive at Gaza on Friday. According to Michael Coleman, Australian representative on the Tahrir:

I went home from the last flotilla feeling quite frustrated, as the ministerial edict that stopped us sailing to Gaza had no basis in law, and almost felt cheated out of doing the most meaningful thing I had ever set my mind to. And I’m hopeful that that won’t happen again, but if it does, it doesn’t deter my determination.

The aims of the flotilla are twofold. While we do have a small amount of aid on board—and that’s one of the goals, is to take aid to the besieged Strip—but the other is public awareness. And we’re well aware that the small amount of aid we have is tokenistic. It’s not going to prevent the suffering of 1.5 million people. Only governments and international institutions can do that. But we, as private citizens, can pressure governments and international institutions to do what is right.

According to Haaretz, the IDF ‘plans to intercept vessels, offer them to dock at Ashdod or port in Egypt’.

Yesterday, Israel brandished its phallic military objects as Netanyahu bellowed for a strike on Iran and more illegal racist Jewish colonies in Occupied East Jerusalem. Deceitfully, Netanyahu claimed support from long dead Gandhi, whom zionists have been wont to attempt to coopt in the past.

‘Talking about Gandhi, he said, “Each of us who knew him knows how deeply engraved Jerusalem was in his soul. It was the center of his being, it towered above all else in his world view.”

Yet Gandhi was no friend of zionism.

“My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?”

The Israeli PM appears oblivious to US signals to Turkey of its favoured diplomatic position – Turkey’s recent promotion to co-chair with the US on the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum and 3 deadly new USMC AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters with which to assault the PKK along with messages of support from the US attest to this. Further, Turkey insisted boat passenger numbers be reduced prior to departure (this report says only 11 on the Tahrir and 10 on the MV Saoirse).

For these reasons, it’s unlikely that Turkey will send its navy to escort the vessels. In early September, in yet another of its ubiquitous bumbling Turkish affairs reports, Haaretz claimed that Turkish naval vessels would accompany future aid ships, relaying that ‘According to the report, Turkish naval vessels will accompany civilian ships carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.’

However, Al Jazeera more reliably reported at the time:

Turkey’s naval forces would escort Turkish humanitarian aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister has said, following Israel’s refusal to apologise for its deadly raid on an aid flotilla heading to the besieged Palestinian territory in May 2010.

“We have humanitarian aid to be sent there. And our humanitarian aid will not be attacked anymore, as happened to the Mavi Marmara,” he told the Al Jazeera on Thursday.

“Turkish warships will be tasked with protecting the Turkish boats bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”

Please contact your Federal Parliamentarians and Media Representatives and forward them a copy of the Freedom Waves for Gaza Press Release, explaining why it is important that these boats succeed on their mission. Fair sailing and firm hearts, folks!

Support Freedom Waves

BE A WITNESS
Canadian and Irish ships set to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade with Freedom Waves to Gaza
CALL TO ACTION – We Need Waves of Support for Gaza

Palestine / Israel Links

Olympia Food Co-op fights back against Israel-backed anti-boycott lawsuit
The US abstains on the KP vote, effectively clearing Marange blood diamonds for sale to blood diamond producers like Israel. US sanctions prevent them being traded in the US, but as for US cronies – so the US wants to chair the KP process next year? that should smooth its way when it eases in its AFRICOM scam.
Goldstone walks alone on a bridge to nowhere

October 27, 2011December 11, 2020

DPAI In Solidarity With the Lebanese Boycott

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel Is In Solidarity With the Lebanese Boycott

The rock band Placebo played Israel then Lebanon in June 2010. In an interview in Israel, lead singer Brian Molko insulted Gaza flotilla participants who were assaulted and nine people murdered by Israel the previous week. The interviewer commented “It’s important to have Israel’s endorsement these days.” Molko responded with a casual laugh: “I think so… especially if you want to go sailing.”

Molko’s reprehensible comment came at a time when many Israelis were celebrating this massacre whilst berating and humiliating the survivors who were incarcerated in Israel. The Pixies had previously cancelled their Israel gig only weeks before in response to the Palestinian call to boycott, yet Molko joked, implying that one needs to be on the side of Israel and support its multiple breaches of international humanitarian law to remain safe. Until Placebo releases a statement in support of BDS and condemns Israel’s attack on the flotilla, DPAI feels strongly that Molko’s comments can only be considered as condoning Israel’s crimes.

While PACBI has not yet endorsed a boycott of any artist or group for breaching the boycott guidelines, in Lebanon, as indeed in all Arab countries, the considerations are entirely different than in the rest of the world.

Palestinians belong to the Arab world (regardless of many issues about what Arabism means and the categorical need for full equality of minorities and for a civic, not ethnic, state), and this makes Arab-Israeli relations subject to the normalization guidelines, not just the Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Arab countries, and especially Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, are an integral and internal part of the colonial conflict, not outsiders whom Palestinians ask for effective solidarity.

Now targeted by a legal suit against them, Lebanese activists have based their boycott of Placebo on their own legitimate criteria and DPAI supports their actions. The attempt to prosecute Lebanese groups who called for a boycott of Placebo is likely inspired by the anti-democratic anti-boycott law passed this year in Israel’s Knesset which is aimed at countering the BDS campaign and protecting Israeli apartheid from censure by Israelis and internationals who support BDS.

We reject any argument that the Lebanese boycott of Placebo is unlawful and stand in solidarity with the Lebanese boycott groups’ campaign. Please show your support also by signing up to their actions below.

DON’T PLAY APARTHEID ISRAEL
We are a group, of 780 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The following call comes from the Green Resistance blog. It is published on the website of the Lebanese Campaign for the Boycott of Zionism.

Samah Idriss, director of Dar al-Adab publishing house, received a court summons [recently] from Beirut’s commerce court. Idriss is implicated in a lawsuit for his involvement in a Lebanese boycott campaign against the British rock group Placebo last year. Jihad el-Murr, who heads the company that organized the event, filed the suit on 10 July 2011.

El-Murr is suing Idriss, as well as three other groups involved in the campaign: the Aidoun Refugee Rights Center, the Campaign to Boycott the Supporters of Israel in Lebanon, and the Global BDS Campaign in Lebanon. El-Murr, a self-described famous businessman from a prominent family, is demanding US$180,000 compensation for his company’s financial losses allegedly caused by the boycott campaign.

Jihad el Murr is suing these four organizations/campaigns on the grounds that, because we called for the boycott of Placebo’s concert in Lebanon because they had just performed in Israel, we are thus financially responsible for the smaller turnout at this 2010 concert than the number that went to the 2004 Placebo concert in Lebanon. The lawsuit may have been inspired by the recent anti-boycott law passed by Knesset – which can hold individuals/organizations that call for boycott to be financially responsible for any losses endured by a company/other even without that company proving that the statements have resulted in the loss. The lawsuit may also have been inspired by potential future plans by Jihad el Murr. Either way, the intent is clear: to silence the boycott movement, and to muzzle free speech.

So:

Are you opposed to this anti-boycott lawsuit? –
Are you opposed to this attempt to stifle free expression?

If so, please read the statement below.

We, the undersigned, attest that we are members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We attest that, consequently, we are defendants in the lawsuit against us by To You To See, represented by its manager Mr. Jihad Al-Murr, on the basis of our support for the boycott of the Placebo concert in June 2010 due to Placebo’s insistence on performing in Israel on the eve of the massacre against the Freedom Flotilla.

We, the undersigned, further declare our full stance in solidarity in the defense against this lawsuit. We shall regard this lawsuit as another platform and a new opportunity to consecrate our campaign to boycott supporters of zionist oppression and racism, and to emphasize our right to express what we see as just in the pursuit of this human right. We also stand in solidarity with all the other defendants in this case, including Samah Idriss of the Al-Adab magazine, the Refugee Rights Center – Aidoun, and the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon.

Sometimes the justice system is used to oppress free voices and to strengthen certain power structures. In this lawsuit,the justice system shall be first and foremost a platform to empower the values of justice and freedom in resisting injustice and oppression.

Thank You.

October 23, 2011December 11, 2020

Who Really Owns the World

Toxic Corporate Pollen — The organisation of global capital (Image: PLoS One)

Next time someone blithers antisemitic, wild accusations about Jews running the world, here’s an article to which you can refer them.

‘The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

…

From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.’

It’s the banks and associated money launderers who do own the lion’s share of the world’s wealth, and these are owned by their shareholders, who are largely other banks and money launderers, an interconnectivity which has serious implications for global economic stability. Still,

One thing won’t chime with some of the protesters’ claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, “is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups”. Or as Braha puts it: “The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy.”

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

Occupying Hastings Street - sun, surf and sand as you occupy

#OccupyHastingsStreet notes that Noosa is so dense with rich people that it is known as the Monaco of Australia thus making it an ideal, strategic target for the Occupy movement.

Western hegemony relies on exploitation and oppression of indigenous people – time to challenge capitalism, end colonialism and dismantle the new feudalism. The colonisation of Australia is ongoing – before migaloos arrived there was no need to #OccupyHastingsStreet – time for a treaty and compensation to Australian Aboriginals. Give it back!

The social relationship constituted by value is only complete, its domination over labor is only really free, if the power of property is no longer a requirement fulfilled by previous accumulation, but a function of its future expansion. This reversal is the great motor of growth and the source of capitalism’s legendary dynamism.

Palestine / Israel Links

Please Don’t Play at the Apartheid Oud Festival in Israel
How Israel attempts to obliterate Palestinian history and distort reality – education as zioprop.
You say you want a constitution…

This is also what has happened with Israel’s own Basic Laws. The people with clout, who were represented in the Knesset by ostensibly independent research institutes, lobbyists and Knesset members on their behalf, are the ones who dictated the sanctification of property rights and the exclusion of welfare rights. It is not by chance that the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom was passed in the middle of the night by a minority of Knesset members and without public debate, even for the sake of appearances. A constitution of this sort is one of the main means for the preservation of control by the elite groups.

Brainwashing and prisoner deals – Israeli hegemony reveals its nature when it demonises

Australia

Today, the wealthiest 20% of Australians own 61% of the nation’s wealth; the poorest 20% own just 1%. Although the income disparities are less marked, they too have been growing. While we are collectively wealthier than we have ever been, that wealth is spread less evenly than in the ’60s and ’70s and we are now a good deal less equal than countries such as Japan, Sweden and Norway. We are one of the most unequal developed countries, keeping company with the US and Britain.

October 22, 2011December 11, 2020

The Logic of BDS

In Salon, Ali Abunimah affirms why boycott, divestment and sanctions of apartheid Israel is logical and effective.

Does this mean that Hamas and Israel could potentially do a deal over the broader issues? The answer is no, but not because of the conventional wisdom that Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel, espouses violence, and refuses to accept signed agreements.

In fact, Hamas has said repeatedly — including in a New York Times interview with its leader Khaled Meshal — that the movement is willing to accept a Palestinian state in only the West Bank and Gaza Strip, provided all Israeli settlements are removed and the rights of Palestinian refugees are respected.

But while Hamas was strong in the specific context of negotiations over prisoners, the movement by itself or even in combination with other Palestinian factions is not strong enough to compel Israel to meet broader demands.

The power balance remains too lopsided against Palestinians for negotiations to be anything more than what they have been for two decades: a cover for Israel to continue colonization.

For this reason in 2005, Palestinian civil society, independently of all political factions, issued its unified call to supporters around the world for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel. It urges that these “punitive measures” be maintained until Israel recognizes the Palestinian people’s rights and respects international law in three ways: an end to the occupation and colonization of Arab lands conquered in 1967; recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees, including the right of return. These are goals that unify all Palestinians, whether they support the fast-fading two-state solution, or a single democratic state incorporating Israelis and Palestinians throughout historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip together).

Modeled on the successful campaign that helped isolate apartheid South Africa, the logic is straightforward: As long as Israel enjoys an overwhelming power advantage it will never respect Palestinian rights nor dismantle its racist, colonial and apartheid-like policies. Why should it when it pays no price for doing what it pleases?

The BDS campaign was prompted in part by the response — or rather the lack of it — to the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s West Bank wall is illegal. When no governments took any measures to enforce the decision, Palestinians realized that global civil society would have to act.

Similarly, Israel remains in violation of countless U.N. resolutions, and has faced no accountability whatsoever for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over many years, but most recently in Gaza in 2009 and detailed in the U.N.-commissioned Goldstone report.

Could the BDS shift the balance of power such that Israel would be forced to concede Palestinian rights? The international movement’s rapid growth has convinced some influential Israelis that it can. Last year, the Reut Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Israeli government, called for an all-out campaign of “sabotage” and “attack” on “delegitimization” of Israel. It especially focused on BDS, and warned that the movement’s “ momentum is gaining.”

In response to the Reut report, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to “combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.”

And in his May speech to the Israel lobby (AIPAC), President Obama vowed that the U.S. would help Israel fight “delegitimization.”
But he warned nonetheless that “the march to isolate Israel internationally — and the impulse of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations — will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative.”

Israel’s isolation is growing not only because of BDS, but because of regional developments including the uprising that toppled Egypt’s pro-Israel Mubarak regime, and Turkey’s break with Israel over the Gaza siege and the attack on the Mavi Marmara.

While this might dismay Obama, those who yearn for negotiations leading to peace and justice should do all they can to hasten the erosion of Israel’s power advantage over the Palestinians. After all, as this week’s events demonstrate, Israel only negotiates seriously with the strong.

Related Links

In search of a ‘solution’ in Palestine

The Israeli-public-opinion argument becomes much more problematic for me, however, when a Palestinian argues that Palestinians ought to calibrate their struggle to conform to “reality”. The argument is analogous to South Africans deliberating on the impossibility of their course because white public opinion was overwhelmingly in opposition.

No. The sensible thing for Palestinians to do is to doggedly pursue justice, irrespective of the opinion of the “average Israeli” – which is just what they are doing. Israeli opinion can be acted upon and aligned with global norms of proper conduct over time, but only through the pressure applied by Palestinian agency and struggle. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is one example of that agency today.

Palestine / Israel Links

Settler violence leaves six Palestinians injured and around 900 olive trees damaged

Fishman notes that the most important consequence

of the IDF secret report on the Eilat terror attack is the fundamental error that it made in anticipating that the attack would come from Gaza instead of from Sinai. He offers a shocking, but unsubstantiated claim that the Sinai terrorists were affiliated with Iran.

This confirms the judgment of independent analysts like myself and Israeli bloggers like Idan Landau, that the Israeli government lied when it claimed the Popular Resistance Committees were behind the attack and when it launched a targeted killing campaign against the PRC. Israel’s post-Eilat Gaza assault was a bluff, an attempt to mollify Israeli public opinion because Israel couldn’t or wouldn’t attack the real originators of the attack whether they were in Sinai or Teheran.

On Israel’s ethnic cleansing of and land theft from 30,000 Bedouins

Samah Sabawi on the prisoner swap on the Real News

October 17, 2011August 24, 2022