Human rights lawyer says west is ‘jeopardising something precious’ by shielding Israel from legal consequences
“The situation is bleak, black and bloody,” he said. “There are people who want Gaza to be the graveyard of international law. In whose interest is that? Either you have the rule of law or you have the rule of the jungle. There is no in-between. At present it is the powerful and mighty that are winning.”
Sourani reserves some of his strongest criticism for the international criminal court (ICC), with which his centre has been formally engaging about the occupation since January 2015, long before the Israeli response to Hamas’s 7 October attack led the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, to accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of collective starvation and crimes against humanity.
Sourani said he was aghast when the first ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, told him he could not act against Israel without US permission. “He said ‘I am a polite man’ but I said to him you are meant to be the global guardian of international law, you are the legal conscience of victims across the globe, and you are telling me if the Americans do not give you the green light then you’re not going to move anywhere? I mean, I am shocked, and shame on you.”
As the Columbia University professor steps down, he addresses student protests and how ‘higher education has developed into a hedge fund’
Rashid Khalidi turns 76 this year; he is the same age as the state of Israel, and this incident was the latest example of what has been happening to Palestinians since the founding of Israel: in his words, “systematic, massive dispossession and theft”.
..The book [The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine] presents a persuasive framing that what has happened to Palestine is the consequence of a settler-colonial project, and the resistance that that has prompted.
..His next book will focus on Ireland, and how it was a laboratory for Palestine. It stems from a fellowship he had recently at Trinity College, Dublin. He says that to understand Palestine, you have to understand British colonialism more broadly. He is hoping to examine key figures in the British aristocracy whose Irish experience was central to everything they did afterwards – people such as Arthur James Balfour, Sir Charles Tegart and Gen Sir Frank Kitson. He is hoping to show how the Irish experience was exported to India, Egypt and Palestine, and then returned to Ireland again during the Troubles, having been magnified in the colonies. “It is astonishing how personnel and counter-insurgency techniques, like torture, assassination, find their roots with the British in Ireland,” Khalidi says.
...When he looks back at the 1990s, he is reminded of what the Palestinians were up against, and why they didn’t stand a chance. And why the peace efforts of the time were destined for failure. Not only did Israel have its own lawyers, combing over every detail, it had the backing of the US too. Khalidi understands that it was a fundamental error on the part of Yasser Arafat and his team to think that the US could be an honest broker.
“That is what drives me: Israel cannot do any of this – killing this number of Palestinians [more than 40,000 at the time of writing] without the US and western European countries. The US gives Israel the green light. It is a party to the war on Palestine. That is what drives me as an American. I am not just at this because I am a Palestinian. It is because I am an American. Because we are responsible.”
The plan, which Israeli officials have called “brilliant,” calls for re-educating Palestinians, destroying UNRWA, and razing refugee camps
"On Thursday, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly to thwart any effort to establish an independent Palestinian state and, in effect, doubled down on Israel’s longstanding project of confining Palestinians in increasingly isolated and uninhabitable ghettos. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he opposes any ceasefire with Hamas that does not allow for him to continue his military campaign in Gaza and has worked to sabotage a negotiated end to the war.
At the same time, the Israeli government has been entertaining dystopian and fundamentally unrealistic “post-war” plans for governing Gaza—either through occupation, or, as one influential paper suggests, installing a “moderate Muslim” puppet regime."......
... The proposal also calls for the elimination of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and shutting down the social and humanitarian programs run by Hamas and replacing them with an alternative Israeli-controlled structure.
A lot of this settler delusion is because of education. If you didn’t know, states like Texas are trying to ban Between The World And Me by Ta Nehisi Coates, a relatively moderate and liberal man, because white children are realizing they come from a deeply racist past. Many white parents and white fascist government bodies in the South feel as if that’s an infringement on their civil liberties—how dare you make their children care and have a conscience? Whiteness seems to obstruct you from social accountability. Sometimes it’s truly absurd to witness.
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Inevitably, I do think there is a moral arc to the universe, but where do you go when a vast majority of your country refuses to understand that its “strengths” are built on slave labor, exploitation, and the mass murder of an Indigenous population who lived on this land for thousands of years. That kind of denial… well that kind of denial breeds Israel.
."For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date.
..Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
..In protest of the raid, members of the Israeli Knesset announced that they would convene an urgent debate to discuss the arrest of the soldiers – not the abuse that is being meted out to Palestinians. That would be absurd in Israeli think. To highlight the actual absurdity of this position, lawmaker Ahmad Tibi asked, “Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?” Likud Knesset member HanochMilvetsky responded with what has been the position of the right (more than 50% of the Knesset, remember): “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas commando], everything is legitimate.”
This is what happens when you claim to be a “moral” army or an army that was “forced into” genocide – you can always justify everything. And this is precisely what Israel has done.
The rise of UAW President Shawn Fain has been met with alarm in powerful corridors
"The federally appointed monitor tasked with overseeing the United Auto Workers, Neil Barofsky, is ratcheting up his conflict with UAW President Shawn Fain, announcing another investigation into the union leader who rose to national prominence amid the successful “Stand Up Strike” against the Big Three automakers.
Yet newly unveiled documents suggest Barofsky’s pursuit of Fain has less to do with concerns over union self-dealing and more to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.
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Yet it’s what the UAW did amid Israel’s war on Gaza that drew the attention of its federal monitor, according to records obtained by Drop Site and confirmed by recent court filings.
On December 1, the UAW became the largest union in the U.S. to officially call for a ceasefire, explaining, as one union leader put it in a statement at the time, “From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the CONTRA war, the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe.” The UAW’s International Executive Board, or IEB, also voted to form a Divestment and Just Transition working group to “study the history of Israel and Palestine, the union’s economic ties to the conflict, and to explore how to achieve a just transition for US workers from war to peace.” Other major unions followed the UAW’s lead.
The move did not sit well with supporters of Israel’s war, among them Neil Barofsky, and he let Fain know about it directly. On December 14, two weeks after the UAW released its statement, Fain appeared on Capitol Hill for a press conference with members of Congress calling for a ceasefire. The evening before, according to a source familiar with the conversation, Barofsky called Fain and urged him to rethink the union position. Barofsky said that it had pained him to see the UAW’s wheel logo and anti-war protests where UAW members were present, and he told Fain there had been repeated instances of antisemitism at those protests. Barofsky told Fain he was not calling as the federal monitor, who has nearly unchecked power over the union, but merely in his personal capacity.
Fain told Barofsky, the source said, that the ceasefire resolution was in no way antisemitic or even pro-Palestinian, but simply an expression of the union’s desire for peace. Fain added that that it was impossible for the monitor to call the union president in a strictly personal capacity, given the power dynamic at play, but that the union intended to stand by its call for a ceasefire and he would be appearing at the press conference on Capitol Hill the next day. The event went off as planned.
Self-styled anti-hate group tracked Black organizer who opposed links between US police and Israeli military
"The ADL has come under fire in recent years as it has leveled charges of antisemitism against leftwing Jewish groups, Black Lives Matter, Palestinian rights groups and other organizations critical of Israel. It has increasingly lobbied for federal legislation on antisemitism, some of which critics say is intended to target leftwing Jewish and Palestinian rights groups.
It has become more aggressive since the Gaza war’s outset, but its credibility has also suffered – most recently, Wikipedia’s editors found the ADL could not be trusted to give reliable information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The memo is the latest evidence that the ADL has spied on, surveilled or tracked its opponents on the left and right. In 1993, the ADL faced multiple lawsuits and an FBI investigation over a nationwide intelligence network it developed over the span of several decades with an investigator on its payroll, Roy Bullock.
Bullock was alleged to have infiltrated or kept files on the United Auto Workers union, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, neo-Nazi groups, Mother Jones magazine, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and many more. He also allegedly sold personal information on US politicians and others to the apartheid South African government at the ADL’s behest. The ADL initially backed the apartheid regime, labeling Nelson Mandela’s party “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and anti-American”.
In the wake of the far-right’s deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally, the ADL, which also tracks white supremacy, claimed it did not “directly” track leftwing groups. However, it put up a post on its website around that time encouraging police to surveil and infiltrate anti-fascist groups.
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Delia states in the 2020 memo that he was asked to assess the activist during a recent “JVP meeting”, referencing the leftwing US Jewish group, a regular ADL target.
In a statement, JVP executive director Stefanie Fox said: “It’s appalling, though not surprising, that the ADL is spending enormous time and resources attacking one of the largest progressive Jewish organizations in the country and surveilling African American organizers.”
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Delia included a quote from Rebelle’s social media, in which they express they are “no longer in the business of helping white folks cope with their privilege, nor speaking out against the terrorism of white supremacy or state sanctioned murder of Black and brown folks by the police”.
“As always, remember Black Lives Matter, Free Palestine, gender and sexuality is a spectrum, Indigenous rights matter, climate change is real, defund the police, and there is no change without discomfort. Peace upon you all.”
Rebelle said they had been previously targeted by local white nationalists and pro-Israel groups that tried to get them fired from jobs or removed from speaking engagements, but the ADL memo came as a surprise because the group was not involved her work in Indianapolis.
Rebelle said the ADL was “targeting black queer folks”, and is evidence of a larger problem with the organization.
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Fox said the surveilling shows the ADL “is simply not credible as a civil rights organization”.
“They are willing to trample on civil rights, smear racial justice activists, and harm progressive movements in order to advance their primary work: ensuring Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide go unchecked and unchallenged,” she said.
