Craven Tokenism: The UK Suspension of Arms Export Licenses to Israel
Month: September 2024
The ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has triggered tense, at times hostile, reckonings across American tech companies over their role in the killing. Since October 7, tech workers have agitated for greater transparency about their employers’ work for the Israeli military and at times vehemently protested those contracts.
Guidelines, endorsed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2011, stress that “Some operating environments, such as conflict-affected areas, may increase the risks of enterprises being complicit in gross human rights abuses committed by other actors (security forces, for example).” The document further notes that such conflict zone abuses may create corporate liability before the International Criminal Court, which in April charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with crimes against humanity stemming from the Gaza assault. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which also sell technology services to the Israeli military, similarly say they subscribe to the voluntarily, nonbinding U.N. guidelines.
IBM CEO: We Listen to What Israel and Saudi Arabia Consider “Correct Behavior”
History didn’t start on 7 October. True that. To get a deeper sense of why the shocking destruction in Gaza is happening, we have to revive the forgotten war that the US waged against North Korea in the 1950s. In many ways, it was the template for all that followed.
This article is about three topics: immediate measures to stop the genocides (particularly Israel’s “final solution” against Palestinian people, and also applicable to other current genocides in Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, DRC. Secondly, I describe the measures that have not been effectual, that have not prevented one murder, and Third – offer some interpretive comments.
Stop Genocide: Israel’s Final Solution to the Palestine Problem
For months, Israel has denied preventing the administration of human services. Netanyahu specifically admits that’s their aim is to prevent the administration of all Humanitarian Services in Gaza no matter what they are and not simply eliminate Hamas’s military capacity
Recently, Netanyahu admitted Israel’s aim was not to just defeat Hamas but to disable all civil services in Gaza. Zionism has always had a strict “no-aid” policy. During WW2 they tried preventing the Red Cross from delivering Aid to Jews trapped in Ghettos pre and during WW2. Zionists needed Jews in Palestine to make the numbers. Aid only supported the reluctant ones to stay in Europe. The German Jews and their wealth needed to be pushed out and a deal was struck with the Nazis. If and when they forced out, the Zionists simply confiscated their wealth to buy goods from Germany in a secret “trade agreement” made with the Nazis which prevented Hitler from going bankrupt.
Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Andrzej Szejna, has demanded a criminal inquiry. WCK has also called for an independent investigation, saying: “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza
“The State of Israel says the murder was an accident. So we were surprised not to have had any contact or condolence from Israel’s ambassador to the UK in London or from any Israeli official,” the statement said.
Family of British aid worker killed in Gaza call for independent inquiry
Who’s to blame for the failure to bring Israeli hostages home safe? Israeli officials have been telling us for months it’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Forgive us if we don’t give a shit if everybody there dies. It’s just the way we feel. It’s just the way Israelis feel,” said Two Nice Jewish Boys co-host Eytan Weinstein.
The twisted language hides a reality rarely noted
By contrast, Palestinian citizens’ “bring them home!” cry concerns the estimated 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, who are also hostages in Israeli jails, including as many as 200 juveniles.
Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners: the worthy and unworthy
By Stuart Rees
Sep 5, 2024
As the Israeli military’s largest assault on the West Bank in decades continued into its second week, U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said the “writing is on the wa
Warning of ‘Genocidal Violence’ on the West Bank
September 4, 2024
The Israeli army is destroying civilian infrastructure, blocking medical access, and conducting mass arrests in its largest West Bank operation in years.
Inside the brutal siege of Jenin
Israeli forces using ‘war-like’ tactics in occupied West Bank: UN
Meta’s independent oversight board has ruled that the phrase “from the river to the sea”, often used in solidarity with Palestinians, does not in and of itself violate the company’s current policies.
‘From the river to the sea’ doesn’t violate Meta rules: Oversight panel
For today Israel,
the U.N. position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the U.N. “wiped off from the face of the earth.”
UN Once Ratified Israel
Israel’s relationship with the U.N. is particularly odd because Israel was created by a U.N. decision, itself a direct outcome of U.N. political intrigues and Western pressure.
It assigned most of the land, 56 percent, to the Jewish population, then a minority, and the rest to the Palestinian Arab natives.
Shortly after, Jewish Zionist leadership began a military campaign that conquered most of Palestine and ethnically cleansed most of its original population.
Israel was admitted as a full U.N. member on May 11, 1949, while native Palestinians remain stateless.
The Brutal Wish of a Failed Israeli Diplomat
September 4, 2024
The continued violence in Gaza and the renewed violence on the West Bank points to a dark future for the Middle East, particularly for Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian community. Israel has become increasingly isolated in the international community, and the ultra nationalism of the right wing is increasingly dominating Israeli politics. For the past thirty years, the Israelis have hidden behind false gestures of support for a two-state solution and now the possibility of a cease fire in Gaza in order to maintain military and economic support from the United States. Sadly, it is working, and Israel shows no interest in pursuing any alternative to an endless war.
Israeli Treatment of Palestinians Remains Unchanged Over 75 Years
Neither 7 October nor the devastating retribution that has followed came out of the blue. Perhaps neither can be justified, but both should be contextualised. The violence of the oppressed and that of the oppressor cannot be equated. After all, not even the most ardent Zionist could fail to distinguish between the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 and the Nazi reprisals, or separate the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in occupied Prague the previous year from the annihilation of Lidice.
The Gaza conflict: Nothing comes out of the blue
By Mahir Ali
Sep 4, 2024
Israeli strikes killed 47 Palestinians in Gaza in one 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday, receiving not a fraction of the attention Western officials have given six Israeli hostages, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Humanitarian aid in Gaza seeks to preserve human dignity, but dignity cannot be achieved without liberation.
“Mini-Gaza”
Calls by Israeli leaders to turn the West Bank into “mini-Gaza” are “translating into military operations,” the United Nations human rights office warned on Monday.
“Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole,” stated Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza.
“There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”
Albanese warned that “apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion.”
“The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinization of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”
Lethal Israeli assault destroys 70 percent of Jenin’s streets
Tamara Nassar 4 September 2024
With the massive weekend demonstrations in Israel, and Monday’s general strike called for by the Histadrut, the massive collective of trade unions in Israel; the pressure for PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to resign is dramatically escalating. By demanding that Bibi negotiate a deal to release the remaining hostages, they are implicitly demanding his resignation, because he’s made it clear he’ll settle for nothing less than the total destruction of Gaza. That would entail killing the hostages. Bibi has proven willing to sacrifice the lives of Israeli and American hostages to serve his political needs. The Histadrut demands need to be supported by President Joe Biden and all the force the US can muster as Israel’s primary benefactor. Bibi’s hubris and arrogance has him behaving as if Israel is the benefactor and the US is the client state. His address to Congress last month was an act of blasphemy orchestrated by Republicans and AIPAC, which effectively are the “American Likud.”
Why Biden must cut Netanyahu off: His Policies are Destroying Gaza, Killing Hostages, and Widening the War to the West Bank
However the hostages died—Hamas initially indicated they were killed by Israeli gunfire, the Israeli army says they were executed at close range just before an attempt was made to free them—the blame for their deaths has settled firmly on Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-right-wing clique that props up his government.
Biden, Harris, and the Brutal Truth of Dead Hostages in Gaza
Israelis and Palestinians are making a terrible mistake by looking to Washington to solve their problems, says former negotiator Daniel Levy.
America could perhaps be very cynical in part of its thinking. They look at Israel as militarily powerful, and as doing some of what America needs to prevent a hostile regional hegemon [Iran] — so in that respect, they think Israel’s great. And if the Israelis destroy themselves, then Washington will find another solution.
That’s the problem. Look at America with Ukraine: they’re happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. So maybe it’s not out of some kind of deep love, but that Israel is useful: you fight Hamas and Hezbollah, and if it ends up disastrous for you, we’ll find another way of dealing with them.
Why the U.S. isn’t stopping Israel’s Gaza onslaught
The Five Eyes intelligence services are plainly building up Venn diagrams of the democratic opposition to Zionism and the neoliberal project.
No major Western leader is ever again going to be able to speak about human rights or ethical values, without attracting howls of derision. They are turning on their own people in order to prevent protest at a genocide they actively support.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepped up the pressure on opponents of Zionist genocide last Thursday with the arrest of journalist Sarah Wilkinson and the charging of activist Richard Barnard, both under the draconian Section 12 of the Terrorism Act which carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
The U.K. MSM has of course ignored these, but is universally carrying outrage at the conviction of two Hong Kong journalists for sedition, which carries a maximum sentence of … two years.
But they tell us it is China and not the U.K. that is the authoritarian dictatorship.
Craig Murray: The End of Western Pluralist Democracy
September 3, 2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Basil Maghrebi at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that tens of thousands of Israelis participated on Sunday evening in […]Al Jazeera English Video: “Israelis hit the streets en masse to demand captive deal”
Massive Demonstrations, National Strike in Israel as Crowds blame PM Netanyahu for deaths of Hostages
For over a century, some American Jews have modelled the idea that unqualified support for Israel and Zionism was “not in our name.” They prioritized justice as a Jewish value and were motivated not by self-hatred or antisemitism but by abiding commitments to human rights and to Jewish safety and community.
Jewish critics of Zionism have clashed with American Jewish leaders for decades
Since the onset of the Gaza War, many Australians have urged the Albanese Government to speak up in condemning the Netanyahu regime’s constant breaches of international law and to act urgently to protect innocent civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Albanese Government has consistently ignored advice about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza
Israeli reinforcements enter the besieged part of the occupied West Bank as an assault on refugee camp enters the fifth day.
Lack of food and water, ambulances blocked as Israel lays siege to Jenin
Published On 1 Sep 20241 Sep 2024
Angry demonstrators stage mass protests demanding ceasefire deal as Israel’s largest trade union calls for a general strike on Monday.
Israelis protest, union calls strike after six more captives killed in Gaza
An estimated 500,000 Israelis have hit the streets in protest throughout the country after the military recovered the bodies of six Israeli captives from a tunnel in southern Gaza.
Palestinian health officials say a “real ceasefire” is needed in the Gaza Strip for a critical polio vaccination campaign to succeed as 72,611 children are vaccinated on the first day.
The United Nations condemns Israel for inflicting “enormous destruction” on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank as the army continues to lay siege, leaving Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity and the internet.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.