seen from United Kingdom
seen from Canada
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from South Africa
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
***
Haaretz.com
No Iran war will erase Israel's crimes in Gaza. Don't get distracted | Opinion |
@sfardm
The Dilemma of Supporting Kamala Harris Amidst Gaza's Crisis
A Complex Dilemma: Voting for Kamala Harris I cast my vote for Kamala Harris, but I can’t shake the feeling that I may be on the wrong side of history. In light of her competition, I concluded that supporting her was the least damaging option available. However, this decision does not fill me with pride or reassurance. It troubles me to see Democrats and liberals touting their support for Ms.…
***
Yes, It’s Israeli Apartheid. Even Without Annexation By Michael Sfard
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-yes-it-s-israeli-apartheid-even-without-annexation-1.8984029
FULL Yesh Din REPORT HERE: https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/
#Palestine #Israel #annexation #Apartheid
JERUSALEM | Israel's use of live fire in Gaza protests faces legal test
New Post has been published on https://is.gd/g0uLz6
JERUSALEM | Israel's use of live fire in Gaza protests faces legal test
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday heard the first legal challenge of the military’s open-fire rules, after 39 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,700 wounded by Israeli fire during mass protests on the Gaza border over the past month.
The hearing came amid growing international criticism of Israel for its use of lethal force and a mounting casualty toll since the weekly protests, organized by Gaza’s ruling Hamas, began in late March.
Organizers say the mass demonstrations are to continue for at least two more weeks, with some threatening a mass border breach.
The court is not expected to rule before next week, in what human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said is the first broad review of the army’s rules of engagement in almost three decades.
On Monday, six human rights groups asked the Supreme Court to declare as unlawful any regulations that allow soldiers to open fire at unarmed civilians.
Lawyers for the groups said Israel’s response to the Gaza protests must follow the rules of engagement for law enforcement officers, who are barred from using lethal force unless they face imminent danger to “life and limb.”
The Israeli military argued that the protests are taking place in the context of a long-running armed conflict with the Islamic militant group Hamas, and that open-fire regulations are subject to the rules of armed conflict. Such rules provide greater leeway for the use of lethal force than those governing law enforcement practices.
Sfard said the army’s rules of engagement don’t meet international standards of law enforcement and that the laws of armed conflict don’t apply in this case. “Lethal force against unarmed civilians who do not pose danger is illegal,” he said. “This is the crux of the case.”
Michael Oren, a deputy Israeli Cabinet minister, said the protests “are designed to break down the border and any army is charged with defending a border.” He acknowledged that mistakes might have been made in some of the shootings and that “bullets can do unpredictable things.”
The weekly marches are aimed in part at trying to break a border blockade of Gaza, imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas overran the territory in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliament elections. Organizers say the marches also press for the “right of return” of refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel.
The protests, dubbed the “Great March of Return,” are to culminate in a mass gathering on the border on May 15, a day Palestinians mark as their “nakba,” or catastrophe, to commemorate their mass uprooting during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
Hamas leaders have issued warnings about a possible border breach, but stopped short of specific threats. “Our steadfast national decision is to continue the March of Return and of breaking the siege,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Monday. He said he hoped the idea would catch on in the West Bank and elsewhere.
In the weekly protests, thousands of Palestinians have been heading toward Gaza’s border area with Israel. A majority stay in or near five tent camps, each set up several hundred meters (yards) from the border fence. Typically, smaller groups move closer to the fence, throwing stones, burning tires and or hurling firebombs.
Soldiers, including snipers, are perched behind protective sand berms on the other side of the border.
Last Friday, hundreds of Palestinians converged on a stretch of fence, trying to burn and rip through it before drawing heavy Israeli fire. Three Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded in the incident, the most serious attempt so far by a large group to break down the barrier.
The rights groups that petitioned the high court said that even if protests turn into riots, lethal force against unarmed demonstrators can only be used a last resort — in the event of a life-threatening situation. The groups said that in several cases caught on video, protesters were targeted while standing dozens of meters from the fence, or while trying to take cover. Among those killed were four minors and two journalists.
The Israeli military said Hamas has used the protests as cover to damage the fence and carry out attacks. On Sunday night, Israeli troops fatally shot two Palestinians who infiltrated from Gaza and attacked soldiers with explosives, the military said. A third Palestinian was killed during an attempted border breach, it said.
In its court brief, the army said Gaza militants have planted some two dozen explosives along the fence.
By KARIN LAUB and MOSHE EDRI , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(R.A)
Book Review: The Wall and the Gate
Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights
by Michael Sfard
THE LAW AND THE COURT
( January 23, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)The legal struggle for human rights, like any legal dispute, takes place mostly (though not only) in the courtroom. The swords wielded in this battle are the legal norms—that is, the rules—of any given legal system; these determine what is…
View On WordPress
A Champion for the Displaced in Israel
By Jodi Rudoren, NY Times, July 27, 2012 TEL AVIV--UP two steaming, dingy flights in an aging Bauhaus building here, Michael Sfard imagines that his is one of the few law firms with no parking spaces. The young lawyers and interns who toil inside dressed in T-shirts and shorts always walk or bike to work, and visitors are rare.
"Our clients either aren't allowed to come or they're behind bars," Mr. Sfard explained.
Mr. Sfard's clients are mostly Palestinians who live in the West Bank and need permits to come into Israel. Suing the state generally does not ease the path to getting such a permit, which is often a big problem.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Sfard was dealing with just that reality: The mother and cousin of a protester killed by Israeli soldiers were denied a permit, although they were the key witnesses in a Supreme Court hearing scheduled the next day demanding an investigation. The government considers relatives of those killed by Israeli forces high security risks for seeking revenge.
"I have many cases where I'm alone there without my clients," he sighed.
At 40, Mr. Sfard, the son of Polish dissidents who came to Israel in the late 1960s, has emerged as the left's leading lawyer in Israel. He has brought scores of human rights and land-use cases challenging Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories it acquired in 1967, and represented hundreds of soldiers refusing to serve.
He sees his work as a mission to save the prospect of a two-state solution and preserve Israeli democracy. But he has at times unwittingly undermined his own agenda, when his microvictories in court prompt the right-leaning government to produce political macrovictories for his adversaries--leading to the legalization and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
This summer, for example, 30 homes in an outpost known as Ulpana were evacuated after a Sfard petition claimed they were on private Palestinian land; Israel pledged to build 800 settler homes in exchange.
This week, Mr. Sfard's chief adversary, the settler movement, bestowed on him honorary citizenship in "Judea and Samaria," the biblical names for the West Bank, with a mock certificate noting that he "may have come to curse and cause damage" but had ended up "raising the morale and gladdening the hearts of those who love the Land."
Most of his work is financed by Israel's premier left-wing nonprofit organizations, which in turn are financed in part by European governments.
"He sees the courts as the way to force the changes that he perceives as necessary for Israel," said Gerald Steinberg, who runs NGO Monitor, a right-leaning group that examines organizations like those that support Mr. Sfard. "But he doesn't convince the Israeli public."
Mr. Sfard makes no apologies for his dual role as legal advocate and political activist. His representation of conscientious objectors came after he served 21 days in a military jail in 1998 for refusing to do reserve duty in the disputed city of Hebron. His office shelves are lined with the works and likenesses of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His parents met during the student uprisings at the University of Warsaw in 1968.
Mr. Sfard's maternal grandfather, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, was kicked out of the university and labeled a traitor for supporting the students. His father, Leon, spent three months in a Polish prison, and avoided trial only by leaving the country.
THIS legacy is ever-present for the younger Mr. Sfard: in his firm's conference room hangs a large photograph he took of four Soviet-era Polish police cars that were on display in Warsaw when he went there on a trip to explore his roots two years ago. The police cars were much like the ones in which his father was taken from his home in the middle of the night.
"It reminds me time and again what am I doing, and what are the dangers of being a dissident," Mr. Sfard said. "For him, I should be a bit more thankful that this is a democracy and I have freedom of speech and I can do what I do. For me, this is the starting point, not something that I have to appreciate every day."
Once in Israel, his father became a high-tech consultant, his mother an education professor. They raised Michael and his younger sister in a Jerusalem neighborhood filled with journalists, who debated the issues of the day in their salon. In high school, he rallied for movie theaters to be open on the Sabbath, and for peace with the Palestinians.
He served in the army as a combat medic, mostly in Lebanon, and chose law because "I don't have what it takes to be a politician."
Mr. Sfard and his high school sweetheart have 7-year-old and 15-month-old sons, whom they adopted for social-consciousness reasons. He spent a year studying in London, a self-imposed exile from the land with which he has a love-hate relationship, but could not stay away.
"This is my place: this culture is my culture, this language is my language," he explained. "I don't see emigration as something that can be happy, only a tragedy. But if I stay here, I have to fight against things being done in my name."
HIS signature is on many of the major cases decided in recent years by the Supreme Court: successes include the rerouting of the separation barrier around the village of Bilin, the 2005 demolition of nine settler homes in Amona, the impending move of the outpost called Migron and the recent evacuations in Ulpana.
These and others have made him an enemy of the right: last year, a settler from Kiryat Arba was indicted in connection with an Internet posting that called for his assassination and included his address. But Mr. Sfard's court statements and legal wisdom are respected by judges and adversaries. And clients praise him for adopting their causes as his own.
"He didn't treat me as a customer," said Bassam Aramin, the father of a 10-year-old girl killed in a 2007 protest, whose petition forced an investigation, though not an indictment. "He treats this like his own daughter."
His office walls are at once a chronicle of the movement and his personal history. There is a framed 1958 map of Israel he found at the Jaffa flea market, "the only map you can find today where there are no settlements and the Palestinian villages are all marked," he said. There is also a framed search warrant for his files in a case concerning interviews with dissident soldiers.
In back, a small room is filled with a rainbow of three-ring binders, files of the roughly 500 cases the firm has fought over its eight years. They are, often, not legal genius, more a matter of spending the money and time to find, say, Palestinians with landownership claims. But even the victories are often bittersweet. In Bilin, the separation barrier took over half the village's land; a fight lasting years returned about a quarter of the land.
"The process is no less important than the result," he said. "I am addicted. It's not a question of whether it's depressing or not, but whether I can live without it."
