I am off to Baghdad on Sunday for an Arab League conference on Palestinian detainees held in Israel. This is part of my determination to devote more of my time to helping the Palestinian cause. It seems to me we are at a crucial point where the Palestinians are in genuine danger of an accelerated genocide, as Israeli intentions to annex Est Jerusalem and the West Bank become ever plainer.
In retrospect, my life has mostly been based on the idea that I may not be able to do much to help in a particular situation, but it is incumbent on me to try. So I am trying.
A “two state” solution has, from the start, been advanced in bad faith by promoters such as Blair and Bush, with the intention always that it would be a Bantustan solution. For those too young to recall, the grand plan of apartheid South Africa was that the black population would be corraled into a number of small regions which would become “independent states”.
I have said before that I am often pleasantly surprised by Sky News security correspondent Sam Kiley, who seems to get away with talking great sense by hiding behind a Ross Kemp style persona. A couple of days ago he reported from the West Bank that Israel was “moving towards an apartheid state”. There is no doubt that is true – even in Israel proper, there are over three hundred ethnically based Israeli laws prescribing different treatment for Jews and others, across almost every activity of the state. I fear Sam Kiley will not be on mainstream TV long – a tendency to tell the truth being career fatal.
Bibi’s desire to kill off the two state solution is a terrible, genocidal threat but strangely also an opportunity. Botha and De Klerk did not succeed, and Bibi may not either. I personally would have deplored a Bantustan based solution, with crammed and split Palestinian lands deprived of resources, water, communications and any hope of economic viability.
The ultimate solution must involve a proper single state in Israel/Palestine which is blind and fair in its laws to race and religion. That solution can ultimately bring security to the people of Israel, not based on their ability to kill or evict their neighbours and steal their land. The essentials of the agreement will have to be most people staying where they are – including most West Bank settlers – and very serious compensation to dispossessed Palestinians, with the settlements enlarged to become mixed communities.
On the Palestinian detainee question, for me it shows up yet again Israel’s extraordinary capacity for shameless sophistry in matters of international law. Israel justifies its naval blockade on the San Remo Convention, which is only applicable in times of armed conflict. Israel states that it is in a de facto permanent armed conflict. However it denies being in an armed conflict when it comes to its treatment of Palestinain detainees, captured outside Israel, who are not treated as prisoners of war. Both positions cannot be held simultaneously, but secure in the collusion of the West’s bought politicians, Israel does so.
It’s no accident that people like Oniel Samuel, who claim to care about about the I/P conflict but are so apparently unaware of the basics issues involved, that they cannot help themselves in spreading misinformation;
http://mepc.org/articles-commentary/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
I’ve said it before loads, They are just a bunch of genocidal Nazis pretending to be racists that believe in apatite, but what they really want is to exterminate all lesser races in Palestine, and other races the world over for profitability.
Wherever you see a genocidal war, you see the hand of Israel
Glenn Greenwald describes the current Empire, how it constructs the persecution complex at home to pursue its enemies and why many of us are oblivious to it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/08/psy-lyrics-anti-us-anger
Brilliant deconstruction of “liberal” media’s service to Empire
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1355062718.html
Thanks, Jon
“Perhaps this apparent disagreement on a side-topic is mainly semantic? The elite “allowed” a particular benefit to ordinary people because they were pushed into it by popular protest, not because they were feeling generous.”
No. It really was in their interest. The US Civil War and Slavery is a fight between the new order and the old – the Capitalist and the Feudal. It’s not about ordinary people’s rights. It’s about differing systems. The Capitalists quite simply didn’t want competition from people who had access to cheaper slave labour.
You see, it’s never about popular protest winning out, it’s only ever that popular desire sometimes chimes with elite interests.
Popular protest in and of itself achieves nothing unless it is allied to the material interests of the elite, or a new elite, an alternative elite – a material elite. That’s the point. Idealism and desire doesn’t change things.
It’s the same with what some consider progressive policies.
Consumer Feminism and indeed identity politics more generally have been encouraged because they’re quite simply an instrument of divide and rule, and we can see this in the Assange case and many others. Instead of debating what Assange is saying we’re divided on his merits as an enemy of women. This benefits only the elite. Earth mother feminism would, for example, be frowned upon as a dominant theme.
The post war boom in the western world towards rights, services, due process and democracy was itself an example of when elite interests and a temporary boom in rights for the vast majority of people coincided. The elite’s fear of an alternative Communist model, its attraction for the mass of people, their fear of it physically, and the need to rapidly industrialize were the main reasons for that. You’ll have noticed that the elite are taking it all back now and have been doing so since the 1980s. We’re regressing now rather than progressing. The post war period was, I’m afraid, but a temporary respite from the ravages of the elite.
Anyway, this is the kind of insight that Marx was trying to teach.
I think the ultimate solution to all the world’s problems would be a world without boundaries which is blind and fair in its laws to race and religion – take away all the problems created by nationalism and religion then we could all have a quiet and decent life. Unfortunately when it comes to Israel/Palestine we have to start where we are – there are plenty of Palestinians who have been dispossessed of what they had and continue to live in awful conditions – just as there are plenty of Jews in Israel who came to Israel because they were dispossessed (and not a few by Arab/Moslem states) and both sides now have a history of atrocities against each other, and have some leaders who continually fail to recognise that the other side have any validity in their claims. It is just not realistic to think that this can all be put aside with a move to a secular single state without a rather lengthy period before hand where the two sides can develop mutual respect and tolerance of each other in neighbouring states – unless of course you are daft enough to think that one side could actually beat the other!
Arsalan
Please try and get some perspective – their are plenty of countries in this world where one sect or religion treats others unfairly and even brutally, including not a few Islamic states – such behaviour in itself is not sufficient to label such states as Nazi or apartheid. Perhaps you should remember that all unhappy countries are unhappy in different ways to paraphrase Tolstoy.
And yet Resident Dissident, it is benign positive nationalism, nation states that enable large groups of people to say, we’ve had enough, all any reasonable people could take and now draw a line and say no more abusing us and our people. As examples the South and Central American countries who’ve defied the US rogue empire, Norway who’ve invested in the nations people’s future, Argentina, who’ve defied the vampire banks, Syrian and Iranian nationhood serves to unite their people against empire and enslavement. Scotland has had government from Westminster which they most certainly did not vote for, rather have rejected utterly time and again and their nationalism is about restoration of self-determination, nationalism as a means to end ruinous domination, to implement functioning democracy.
I agree with you about religion however, which can have people with no discernible racial, physical, genetic or other difference, at one another’s throats. No-one can choose the colour of their skin, sexuality, physical attributes, and also we have inbuilt attachment to places we do or once called home, we don’t choose our nationality either. Religion is something sensible people see through around the same time the Santa Claus myth gets busted.
Arab states offer Palestinians $100-million monthly ‘safety net’
DOHA — Reuters
Published Sunday, Dec. 09 2012, 2:50 PM EST
Arab states agreed to provide the Palestinian Authority with a $100-million (U.S.) monthly “financial safety net” to help president Mahmoud Abbas’s government cope with an economic crisis after the United Nations granted de facto statehood to Palestine.
/..
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/arab-states-offer-palestinians-100-million-monthly-safety-net/article6138728/
Calls to Boycott Palestinian Prisoners Conference in Baghdad Monday, 03 December 2012 13:57 Edited by PT Team
London, (Pal Telegraph) – An International Conference of “Solidarity with the Palestinian & Arab Prisoners and Detainees in Israeli Occupation Jails”, sponsored by the League of Arab States and hosted by the Republic of Iraq, will be held on 11 & 12 of December 2012 in Baghdad.
Many lawyers, intellectuals, artists and activists in the Arab countries have signed a petition condemning the attempt by the Government of Iraq to exploit the suffering of the Palestinians at the hand of the Israelis. After the US-led invasion in 2003, Palestinians in Iraq were subject to discrimination, sectarian violence and ruthless killing by the Iraqi government and various militia groups.
Under these circumstances it would be hypocritical to organize a conference” in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails”. The Iraqi government should first come to terms with its criminal behaviour against its own Palestinian refugee population. That’s why I am seeking your support to boycott this conference and to discourage anyone from attending. You find more information about this conference on the website of the BRussells Tribunal.
/..
http://www.paltelegraph.com/world/middle-east/77-middle-east/10686-calls-to-boycott-palestinian-prisoners-conference-in-baghdad.html
Perhaps the Iraqi hypocrisy on this is actually a very good reason TO hold it there?
Doesn’t the great book say ‘Let he who is without sin, host big pow-wow’. [Beano annual, 1973, page 7, 3rd para]
One rarely gets the opportunity to read such stylised poop,but ever so often you get lucky,accelerated genocide,where do people find such expressions?
Are we finding 1000 dead palestinians today and 1500 tomorrow?
Does anybody in their right mind actually believe the Jews are going to settle for one state with the Palestinians,where do these ideas stem from other than a left wing anti this and anti that notion.
Nothing will change with the current status quo and neither Jew nor Arab will live blissfully peacefully side by side.
Historically the ONLY time that Jews and Arabs coexisted was when Jews where Dhmini or lesser people and that will never repeat itself in Israel or anywhere.
Jerusalem will stay the undivided capital of Israel and despite the bleating, the bleeding hearts, the breast beating nothing will change
Time for a reality check time for the writer of this nonsense peace to understand the Jewish people and they are not for turning they never were
Craig
Can we presume that as well as pointing out where Israel’s laws are not blind to race or faith you will also take this opportunity to point out similar deficiencies in the laws of Arab League members at their conference. You could also mention how their laws are also not blind to sex or sexuality or to those who wish to use their human right to freedom of speech. Perhaps start to understand that same faults exist on both sides then it may be possible to start to make some progress. As Golani123 has demonstrated the Jews in Isreal are not going to disappear. It was a different situation in South Africa but it should be noted that it was only by Mandela recognising the fears, rights and motivations of the white South African population that progress was possible.
Letters
UK, Palestinian child prisoners and Israel
The Guardian, Sunday 9 December 2012 21.00 GMT
Today, on UN Human Rights Day, we will hand in to Downing Street a petition signed by 4,883 people calling for action from our government on Palestinian child prisoners held by Israel. In June 2012 a group of senior UK lawyers published an FCO-funded independent report, Children in Military Custody, on the plight of Palestinian children detained by Israel. The report concluded that the treatment of these children was in breach of article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention and several articles of the UN convention on the rights of the child. The report made 40 recommendations. The FCO accepted the findings and promised to take them up with Israel. Six months later, not one of these recommendations has been implemented.
That is not good enough. Since the government of Israel refuses to uphold international law, we call on the British government to do so. Our government must show courage and take all appropriate action, including sanctions against Israel, rather than be complicit in the continuing impunity with which Israel acts against Palestinian human rights.
Geoffrey Bindman QC Action for Palestinian Children,
Haya Al Farra Palestinian Mission,
Betty Hunter and Sara Apps Palestine Solidarity Campaign,
Jenny Tonge
• When will William Hague admit publicly that Israel has no interest in the two-state solution, or any solution other than the continual persecution of the Palestinians (Report, 5 December)? He and the most important key players, the US government, need to act on the only just solution to the conflict – one single democratic state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean for all its inhabitants.
Karl Sabbagh
Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire
When will William Hague admit publicly that Israel has no interest in the two-state solution, or any solution other than the continual persecution of the Palestinians (Report, 5 December)?
Probably just after he answers the when did you stop beating your wife question is my guess.
Sophistry is clearly something Craig has intimate knowledge of himself.
It is common knowledge that the laws regarding prisoners of war apply only to uniformed combatants of an enemy state. Does he really think these laws apply to Palestinian terrorists who are neither in uniform, nor soldiers of an enemy state?
And is Craig really ignorant of the numerous Arab states who are in a de-facto state of war with Israel, having declared war many years ago, and never signed peace accords?
Finally, the use of the word “genocide” in connection with the Palestinians is laughable: what kind of “genocide” enabled the original 500,000 refugees to multiply into the 6,000,000 which they claim today?
[Jon/Mod: posted as “BS Detector” but looks like Ferret. Please stick to one name/avatar to avoid confusion]
Whenever someone starts the sentence “It is common knowledge” it’s fairly sure they’re bullshitting and this is no exception.
You obviously don’t know what the word genocide means, look it up.
@BS Detector:
It’s also common knowledge that the victor writes the history of any conflict. If the outcome is absolutely obvious, then you can “clarify” rules to your advantage in advance. (For example, a vastly weaker adversary is “the foe”, so when a mighty country overruns and occupies a small, effectively unarmed country, the “victor” can drop to his knees in thanks, look in awe up to the Gods, and say, “We have prevailed!”)
Therefore, “unlawful combatant” becomes any irregular still resisting for his country, which you happen to have invaded and are occupying.
The spirit of the law is entirely broken, and all legal wriggling aside, the moral victory is lost. A POW is someone who might fight against you while you are at war with his country. Man up – admit that’s the only proper definition. Anything else is legal cowardice employed by the more powerful.
It takes a most particularly craven stooge of the establishment to advance such apologia for war crimes. Hats off, “BS Detector” – you’ve earned just such a description. Using your skills to work for the powerful against the powerless should make your grandchildren very proud of you.
*
Just to clarify – you’d consider any resistance against the Nazis in occupies countries not “uniformed combatants”, and have them tortured? The IRA the same?
If Israel were to grant these people PoW status it would be entitled to hold them without trial until all hostilities had ended which would effectively be a life sentence.
Despite what they might’ve said at the time the IRA were not operating in an occupied country. Torture is universally banned. The proper solution is arrest, trial and (if found guilty) imprisonment.
Kempe
“….Despite what they might’ve said at the time the IRA were not operating in an occupied country….”
What is your definition of an “occupied country” ?
Ireland was a colony of Britain and subsequently annexed by Britain in 1800 by the Act of Union.
What was the Irish War of Independence 1919-21 against the British Government and it’s forces all about then ?
@Fred
In response to your claim:
Actually I do know what genocide means, and it’s this:
gen·o·cide
/ˈjenəˌsīd/Noun
The deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=genocide+definition
So I repeat, what kind of “genocide” is it that has enabled the original 500,000 Palestinian refugees to multiply into the 6,000,000 which they claim they are today?
Munsterman,
I was referring to the more recent “troubles”.
@Ferret
Look closer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions
@Fred
Quite. Mostly the definitions seem to agree with the simple and commonly understood definition that “genocide” means trying to kill a large group of people, which Israel is clearly not interested in (or if they have they have been dismally unsuccessful at it).
Genocide can be the killing of a racial group but that is not all it can be.
UN Resolution 96:
“Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, … and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. …”
What Craig said:
“Bibi’s desire to kill off the two state solution is a terrible, genocidal threat…”
Understand now?
@Fred
“Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups”
Yes I understand, but denying the Palestinians a state is not the same thing as denying them the right to EXIST, is it?
Habbabcuk – sorry, doing something else…”On second thoughts, let’s not bother; this discussion is sterile.”…
Probably, but your analogy equates the Palestinians with the invadees and near-invadees in WW2. Yes, resistance is entirely justified. But if you’ve been resisting for 40-60 years, and your options are closing down one by one, it’s a reasonable assumption that the resistance hasn’t worked. Judging by some of our hasbara friends/sock puppets and what I read elsewhere, it isn’t going to work in future either, and the Israeli state actually rather likes a handy, weak, common enemy to keep its masses and the diaspora on side. Therefore the Hamas and Fatah leaderships should preferably put their heads together (instead of being easily divided and ruled) and take a look at exploiting the weaknesses of the Israeli state – which do not include armed warfare, as everyone should have realised by now.
And that involves understanding the fucking Israelis. Which they obviously don’t right now.
And that’s where I’m coming from….
“denying the Palestinians a state is not the same thing as denying them the right to EXIST, is it?”
Yes it is, to EXIST as Palestinians in their own country; perhaps some pretty pictures will help;
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/mapstellstory.html
Ferret, please stick to one handle – I presume “BS Detector” was you? Fixing.
“Yes I understand, but denying the Palestinians a state is not the same thing as denying them the right to EXIST, is it?”
Yes, of course it is.
Kempe :
Your reply does not answer my question – nor does it help any of us to understand what you mean by “occupied territory”.
Why do you not give your opinion of what is “occupied territory” ?
In the event of a majority of Scots voting for independence in the forthcoming referendum, would the rest of the UK have the right to partition Scotland and keep the regions(s) which voted against independence within the UK – against the wishes of the majority of Scots ?
Yes or No.