Arrest Warrants from The Hague

The ICC, Netanyahu and Gallant

by Binoy Kampmark / November 26th, 2024

The slow, often grinding machinery of international law has just received a push along with the issuing of three arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court. They are for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and, rather incongruously, Hamas figure Mohammed Deif.  The last issue is somewhat odd given claims by Israel that he was killed in an airstrike in July, though Hamas has never confirmed nor denied the fate of the man also known as Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.

The issue of the warrants was the culmination of a request on May 20 by the ICC prosecutor to a Pre-Trial Chamber of the court to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and three senior Hamas officials.  Two have been withdrawn, given the confirmed killings of both Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.

On November 21, the three-judge panel of Pre-Trial Chamber I unanimously rejected Israel’s assertion that the ICC lacked jurisdiction over the Situation in the State of Palestine in general and over Israeli nationals more specifically, “as the Court can exercise its jurisdiction on the basis of the territorial jurisdiction of Palestine.”  The Chamber also rejected Israel’s request that the Prosecution provide a new notification of an initiation of investigation into its authorities under the ICC Statute, given that the parameters of the investigation had not essentially changed.  Nor had Israel pursued a request for deferral of the investigation when given the chance in 2021.

The arrest warrants, issued in accordance with the law of international armed conflict, remain the most telling aspect of the determinations.  Despite being classified as “secret”, the Chamber deemed it important to release some degree of detail on what they entail.  Accordingly, it found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant bore criminal responsibility as “co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. There were also reasonable grounds to believe that both figures bore “criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”

The ghoulish picture of alleged conduct is sketched with chilling detail.  The alleged crimes against humanity against the civilian population in Gaza were deemed to be widespread and systematic.  It was reasonable to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant had, with intent and knowledge, deprived the population of Gaza of such necessities to survival as food, water, medicine, medical supplies, fuel and electricity “from at least” October 8, 2023 to May 20, 2024.  This finding was easy to reach, largely because humanitarian aid had been impeded and restricted without evident military necessity or justification under international humanitarian law.  When decisions to allow or increase humanitarian aid into Gaza were made, these were conditional.

The warrant for Deif, as chief commander of the military wing of Hamas (the al-Qassam Brigades) was issued because the chamber found “reasonable grounds” to believe he had allegedly been responsible for various crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence) and traditional war crimes. It remains to be seen whether that can be executed appropriately, given the likelihood that Deif is no longer alive.

International law remains a curious creature, one of mixed shape and uneven maturity. Being based on the mutual, grudging acknowledgment of conventions between countries, its success, or failure, depends on mutual observance.  ICC warrants to arrest international figures have been issued with varying results, with signatory states of the Rome Statute making their own decisions whether to execute them.  Political interests can rear a nasty head, blowing off legally minded types keen to see judicial proceedings pursued by member states.

When an ICC warrant was issued against Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023 over the alleged directing of attacks on civilians in Ukraine and the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation, the spectacle of such a figure being hauled off to The Hague was simply too much for countries keen to engage with the Kremlin.  Putin, for instance, was assured by Mongolia on a state visit this year that he would not be arrested, despite the country being a party to the ICC.

More caution was exercised by Putin regarding the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in 2023, probably due to such experiences as those of former Sudanese president, Omar Al-Bashir.  Despite being the subject of ICC arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010, the defiant leader, wanted for a string of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians in Darfur, tested the waters by visiting South Africa in 2015 for an African Union summit.  His presence, however, interested the judicial authorities, who ordered him to stay in South Africa while consideration was given to his potential arrest.

Bashir’s exit was prompt, leading to a ruling the following year by the South African Court of Appeal that the failure by the authorities to arrest him was unlawful.  A Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC also found that the warrant should have been executed as part of South Africa’s obligations, and the Sudanese leader could not rightly have claimed immunity from arrest during his visit.

The warrants against the Israeli figures will have some practical effects.  Gallant and Netanyahu will think twice before travelling to member states of the Rome Statute, though such states will naturally reach their own decisions on the issue.  But while it is hard to see these men being carted off to proceedings in The Hague bar exceptional circumstances, the warrants have provided a fillip for civil society groups in Israel.

The indomitable efforts of the non-profit B’Tselem organisation called the ICC efforts “a chance for us, Israelis, to realize what we should have understood long ago: that upholding a regime of supremacy, violence and oppression necessarily involves crimes and severe violation of human rights.”  Unfortunately for the starving and dying in Gaza, the pity of war will not, at least at this time, halt before any stern judicial eye, especially one cast from an international court.

 

Bringing Reality to the Palestinian Struggle

by Dan Lieberman / November 27th, 2024

The world ponders at the destruction that Israel has inflicted upon the Middle East and North Africa and questions why the United States serves as a surrogate force that assists Israel in accomplishing its purposes. How did a relatively few Zionists deceive an unknowing world to trust its cause and actions were legitimate, convince the United States government to aid and abet in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and achieve decisive power? If there were an obvious answer, and the answer predicted the future, then alerted governments would take remedial action. This has not happened. Approaches to ascertain the cause of the genocide of the Palestinian people and finding the solution to prevent it warrant scrutiny.

Zionism succeeded as a concept and failed as a mission. Starting with spurious premises, Zionism fulfilled promises to its followers, enabled some Jews to obtain a better life, and added little to what the established Jewish community had already achieved and was continuing to achieve. It traded destruction, oppression, and decades of suffering of the Palestinian community for a contrived state, an ideal nation where Jews could easily integrate and be safe from persecution and physical danger. The latter has not happened. The narrative consisted of unproven and fantastic propositions that scattered Jewish communities throughout the world, who spoke different languages, had different histories, ate different foods, and practiced different customs, constituted a nation. Although a limited number of Jews lived, visited, or had any interest in the area for 2000 years, this nation had a national home in Palestine. The latter concept succeeded from another preposterous supposition ─ 19th century Jews, separated by 100 generations, were descendants of Hebrew tribes that wandered the area, and their wanderings, which left no significant footprints on the soil, were mesmerizing connections, beckoning Jews to return. The preposterous narrative remains relatively unchallenged in a preposterous world.

Palestinians watched helplessly as Zionists seized their lands and kept them in submission. Caught between “heads I lose,” and ”tails you win” choices, the Palestinians had no choice but to participate in meetings of  “peace proposals” that offered establishment of two states, while knowing  that the Israeli government never intended to fulfill a “two state agreement.” If the PLO refused to continue with the farce, it faced accusations of sabotaging peace; going along with the farce meant diverting from countering Israel’s aggressions that prevented peace. This had become obvious during the 1980s, when Palestinians in the West Bank were hopeful, willing to cooperate with Israeli authorities, and eager to pave a path to self-governance. During that decade, Jewish terrorists planted bombs in the cars of elected Mayors Karim Khalaf of Ramallah and Bassam Shakaa of Nablus. Khalaf lost a foot and Shakaalost both of his legs. A third bomb planted in the car of Ibrahim Tawil, elected Mayor of El Bireh, was discovered before detonation. Between 1980 and 1984, Jewish terrorists killed 23 and injured 191 Palestinians in 354 attacks. The terrorist attacks on Palestinians motivated Hamas, a charity organization, to rebrand itself into an organization fighting for Palestinian rights. As usual, the Zionists used the charges against them for their benefit; the terrorist Israelis who murdered Palestinians provoked Hamas to retaliate and Hamas became known as a terrorist organization murdering innocent Israelis.

Not until recent years, after several Israeli invasions brought death and destruction to the Gazans, not until illegal settlers stole land, proliferated throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, and casually murdered Palestinians, and not until the 2023 invasion of Gaza has the world’s populace realized the extent of Israel’s murderous rampages and intent to commit genocide of the Palestinian people. Not until contemporary times has the extent of a worldwide propaganda machine that obscured the truth of the Zionist endeavor been completely recognized. There is no Israeli state, no Israeli people, no Israeli government with which to deliberate and arbitrate. They refuse all entreaties and, by doing that, deny their existence. Three salient characteristics describe the Zionism that led to the establishment of Israel:

(1)   The Zionist adventure is best characterized as an enterprise, which became criminal in its manifestation. An enterprising band of discontented and idealistic Jewish outliers organized themselves as a business enterprise. Their Histadrut, the General Organization of Workers in Israel, became one of the most powerful institutions in the British mandate and turned into a state sponsored enterprise. As an enterprise, the marauding Zionists resembled the Puritans; their sponsors, Jewish entrepreneurs throughout the world, duplicated the Massachusetts Bay Company, financiers of the Puritan voyage.

A small congregation of Puritans refused to reconcile their independent organization with the established Church of England. Desiring to preserve their identity and feeling constantly persecuted, they sought new places to live their unique social and communal life. In the year 1621, they concluded Europe would never accept them and sought an opportunity in America. The Massachusetts Bay Company sponsored the Puritan settlements and constructed the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose fatal encounter with the local native population set the stage for the settlement of the entire coast-to-coast American territory and the decimation of the native peoples.

The Zionist experience is not being detoured and, because the result may be the same ─ decimation of the native population ─ it is important that the crisis be accurately characterized. Israel is a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, ethnically cleanses them, buries their villages under rubble, and destroys their history and heritage.

One word summarizes the taking of another person’s property, livelihood, and dignity – theft! In this case, there is a specific type of theft, Raubwirtschaft, German for “plunder economy.” In Raubwirtschaft, the state economy is partially based on robbery, looting and plundering conquered territories. States that engage in Raubwirtschaft are in continuous warfare with their neighbors and usurp the resources of their conquered subjects, while claiming security objectives and defensive actions against defenseless people.

(2) Israel is a mirror image of the Nazi state.
Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany result from its constant wars and policies that insinuate Israel as a repressive and militaristic nation.

• Virulent nationalism ─ Israel, similar to Nazi Germany, combines a virulent nationalism with militarism.
• Irredentism ─ Annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, drove the Third Reich. Israel’s irredentism regains mythical lands and joins a single folk in these lands.
• Military adventures ─ The Third Reich fought continuous wars for about eight years. Israel has been fighting continuously for 75 years. The former explained their military thrusts as revenging a “stab in the back” loss in World War I. Israel explains its battles by warranted reprisals, defensive, and security measures.
• Using overwhelming military force to subdue powerless antagonists ─ The Nazis and its Panzer troops went full attack against all opponents, regardless of their strengths. Israel uses a strategy that minimizes its casualties, and despite its claim of being a humane army, has always attacked with pulverizing force, with kill ratios of tens to one and having civilians constitute a large proportion of casualties
• Racist laws ─ The Nazis had their Nuremberg laws. In Israel, a Jew cannot marry a non-Jew within the boundaries of Israel, similar to a Nuremberg Law that prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans. The Nakba Law, states that “groups or institutions that mourn Israel’s Independence or deny the state’s Jewish and democratic nature” can be denied state funds. The Citizenship Law allows the state to revoke citizenship and imprison anyone convicted of acting against “the sovereignty of the state.” Few Palestinian Israelis can rent housing or buy property in West Jerusalem. Immigrant Jews are able to acquire property and not allowed to sell the property to Arab citizens. Few, if any Arabs, have been able to purchase government sponsored housing and obtain mortgages. A separation of ethnicities results in the separation of their activities, recreation centers, schools, and education.
• Severe repression in occupied territories ─ Israel duplicates Nazi repression of conquered people, and construction of ghettoes to house them. Repression of Palestinians under occupation includes confiscation of Palestinian lands for military use, destruction of wells, olive trees and agriculture, raids on villages, obtrusive checkpoints, mass arrests of opposition, and denial of highway use. Walls separate Palestinian communities and families and farmers from livestock and fields, choke the Palestinian economy, and obstruct daily exchanges between people.
• Killing of opposition and punitive measures after an attack ─ The Nazis used punitive measures and collective punishment to terrorize its captive peoples and crushed resistance. Israel has done the same. The Nazis had Lidice, a village destroyed after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi leader in Bohemia and Moravia. In 1953, in retaliation for a Palestinian guerrilla incursion into Israel that killed several Israeli civilians, the Israeli military raided the West Bank village of Qibya, killed 67 Palestinians and destroyed 56 houses. Palestine has been victim to tens of Lidicies ─ destruction of areas and houses due to accusations of being the homes of suicide bombers.
• Ethnic cleansing ─ The Nazis planned to move populations in Eastern European nations and repopulate the areas with Germans. After the 1948 and 1967 wars, Israel destroyed 412 Palestinian villages and eventually created 1.2 million refugees who were not permitted to return to their homes. Palestinian bank accounts, land, homes, and industries were confiscated. Incursions have destroyed patrimony, archives, and cultural identity of the Palestinians. Israel military seized the Palestinian archives in Beirut during the war in Lebanon and, under international pressure, eventually returned them.
• Propaganda ─ Due to its international reach, the Israel propaganda machine exceeds that of the Nazis, churning out each day books, films, plays, music, and articles that extend memories of the Holocaust, references to anti-Semitism, and the greatness of little Israel who needs support as it fights against the world’s evils. An army of several hundreds of thousands of Israeli supporters include planted “emigrants” to the United States and Germany, who invade civic life and institutions throughout the western word, lobby support for Israel, criticize opponents, spread false charges of anti-Semitism, and convince the world of Israel’s cause.
• Genocide ─ The Nazis are identified with a genocide of European Jews. Israel’s policies are paving a route to destruction of the Palestinian people. Hopelessness, despair, immobility, lack of redress for the loss of their lands, economic insecurity, and constant attacks against their persona and livelihood drive the Palestinians to a difficult existence. Israel’s occupying force shows no care for the rights of the occupied people and no desire to address the fatal issues concerning them; even reinforcing the misery.

(3) Psychologically disturbed ─ Widely known and not widely discussed, are the disturbing comments and activities of Jewish Israelis and Zionist Jews around the world. Rarely censored by the Israeli government and their native countries, they give an impression that Zionist Jews are morally corrupt, psychologically disturbed, and gain pleasure in lying, deceiving, and harming others, even murdering innocents. Zionist Jews elevate themselves to a superior and unique place in the firmament, the chosen people to whom all others must give homage. Claiming to be eternal victims of anti-Semitism, they daily demand restitution and forgiveness for mostly fabricated crimes committed against them.

Nowhere and never in the civilized world have a preponderance of a nation’s leaders and its citizens expressed hatred and violence against others equivalent to the expressions from Israel’s leaders and citizens. Without shame, without control, and without concern of their malevolent appearance to others, their detestable utterances have become commonplace and are well known.

• Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities” in the current conflict.
• Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals.”
• Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “The Palestinian village of Huwwara should be wiped out. The state needs to do it and not private citizens.”
• David Ben-Gurion said, “it doesn’t matter what the gentiles say, only what the Jews do.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins.”
• Former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave orders “to break the bones of Palestinian inciters.”
• Ariel Kallner, a member of Israel’s parliament, said, “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join! Their Nakba, because like then in 1948, the alternative is clear.”

Israel’s citizens reflect an indoctrination of hate and violence that complement their government’s expressions. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans arriving at Ben Gurion airport from Amsterdam sang: “Ole ole, ole ole ole, Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” An X user commented, “These people are deranged. They have lost all humanity. A culture of murder and theft doesn’t come without cost.”

A rocket hit the northern Israel home of Safa Awad, a Palestinian Israeli schoolteacher, and killed her. The Middle East Eye reports that a volunteer at Magen David Adom, an Israeli rescue service organization, wrote, in a post that has received more than a thousand likes, that, “There is nothing to feel sorry for. She is a terrorist in every respect. She is not in our favour in any way. May her getting fucked be blessed.”

Go to Quora, and observe a string of comments by Israeli propagandists who plant  question and then answer it: “Gaza has a fertility rate of 3.38 in 2023. In 2005 its fertility rate was 6.2. Islam at its finest. They breed like cockroaches.”

Contending  those defending Israel’s genocidal tactics as geopolitical power politics (USA), guilt for the Holocaust (Germany), and as a settler colonial state (Western nations) have legs, but are counterproductive and have not moved nations to contend Israel. Accusing nations of duplicity only makes them defend themselves and reinforce their duplicity. Showing that Israel cannot be defended and is an immoral, social, economic, and military threat to humanity ─ well, who wants to defend a nation of that description?

Unless others share in the proceeds, a criminal nation has no defenders. What benefit is it for the Western nations to support criminal activities that negatively affects them?

Western nations and the Soviet Union fought a World War to defeat Nazism and bring order to the world.

• How can nations allow the transfer of the racist and genocidal doctrines of the German Nazis to a similar regime? Why did we fight the war?
• How can Germany claim to makes amends for its past Nazi experience and support the transfer of that experience to another nation?
• How can nations allow Israel serve as a model and catalyst for ultra-reactionary regimes?

The mentality that perpetrates the genocide and regales in it is unacceptable. Turning protests against genocide into attacks on Jews, and using the anti-Semitism word are delusionary. We need protection against people who exhibit murderous, racist, venomous, and delusionary characteristics and not offerings of invitations for them to manipulate our society.

The analysis may seem overkill, but for understanding the critical situation, it is necessary to place in proper perspective the nature of the Israeli regime. Treating it as a despotic nation is incomplete. People make a country and the Israeli people and their worldwide supporters are not the empathetic and cordial populace that guarantees healthy living.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

 

FIFA is Whitewashing and Sportswashing Israeli Genocide and Sporticide

by Nizar Visram / November 29th, 2024

Israel ‘Defense’ Forces, with unconditional support of the United States, have been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, resulting in an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe. They dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs, exceeding the amount of explosives used in World War II.

More than 44,000 Palestinian have been killed, including over 16,000 children, 190 journalists, 1,000 health workers, 230 United Nations staff members and many others. Over 104,000 are wounded – most of them children and women – while at least 11,000 are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes.

As part of its genocide, Israel is also committing sporticide, killing more than 500 Palestinian athletes, including over 344 footballers. Two of them were on the Palestinian National Team, including Mohamed Barakat, the first Palestinian to score over 100 goals professionally. Israel also jailed footballers, referees, and club owners.

Israel’s air strikes in Gaza have resulted in extensive destruction of stadiums and, sports facilities in Gaza and the West Bank. They turned football stadiums into concentration camps where they detain and humiliate thousands of Palestinians who are paraded almost naked on television screens.

Thus, the Al Yarmouk stadium was turned into a makeshift concentration camp for Palestinian detainees. Men, women and children were rounded up, stripped down to their underwear, and blindfolded, while armed soldiers and tanks encircled the field. Blindfolded men and women were forced to kneel in front of a goal with the Israeli flag attached to the net.

Israel allows football clubs based in illegal settlements in West Bank to compete in official Israeli leagues in violation of international law. In the occupied Jerusalem they mounted a violent attack on the headquarters of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).

In Apartheid Israel, sports is rampant with racism and dehumanization of Palestinians. At an Israeli match, a banner is displayed saying the lives of Palestinian children are worth nothing. Israeli football fans’ favorite anthem is “Death to the Arabs!” Such practices were noticed when Israeli team was playing in Netherland

At the same time, Palestinian football teams, including the national team, are denied freedom of movement between the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza. They are prevented from joining the national team in regional and international matches.

Detentions and restrictions on movement force the Palestine Football Association (PFA) to suspend football leagues in Palestine, while it hinders setting up camps for the national team abroad to participate in FIFA World Cup qualifiers.

While FIFA allows Israeli football clubs based in illegal settlements in the West Bank to compete in official Israeli leagues, the sports body has failed to take action against Israel for its inclusion of these illegal teams in its official leagues, and for its attacks on Palestinian football. It is sportswashing Israel’s decades of forced displacement of Palestinians, its apartheid regime and its genocide against Palestinians. It is thus complicit in Israel’s breach of international law, while continuing to shield Israel’s decades-old regime of apartheid, and now genocide, from accountability.

Actually, FIFA is violating its own statute which states that discrimination of any kind against a country, a person or group on account of race, color, ethnicity, nationality, social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political opinion, or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.

FIFA member associations and their clubs are not allowed to play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval. Yet FIFA allows Israeli sports clubs based in illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land to play in its official leagues. This is despite the International Court of Justice ruling that the settlements are illegal and a war crime.

FIFA allows outright racism and dehumanization in Israeli sports. This happened when mobs of racist, genocide-inciting Israeli football fans went on a violent rampage in Amsterdam. They stole Palestinian flags from private buildings, burned them, while chanting racist slogans, and attacked people appearing to be Arab in the streets.

And so we see global calls on FIFA to ban Israel. Such calls came, for example, from the 47-member Asian Football Confederation, as well as a petition that gathered over one million signatures. Almost 60 rights groups accused FIFA of applying “a different yardstick to Israeli actions,” undermining its credibility and exposing it “to allegations of political bias and hypocrisy.”

The protestors included Human Rights Watch, UN Special Adviser on Sport, 66 members of European Parliament, 38 British MPs, 41 Danish MPs, and 30 Swiss MPs. They all called upon FIFA to exclude Israeli team from illegal settlements.

‘The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025’ ran a petition that gathered more than 112,000 signatures, calling for an immediate suspension of Israel from all international sports “until it fully complies with international law and sports regulations.” In Palestine itself 174 sports clubs wrote a letter calling on FIFA to suspend the Israel Football Federation (IFF).

A report presented to FIFA by FairSquare, a human rights organization, said there were numerous grounds to expel the IFA, such as “the holding of matches in occupied Palestinian territory, systematic racial discrimination, Israel’s killing of Palestinian players and the systematic destruction of PFA facilities.” Most of these have been taking place well before 7 October 2023, the report asserted.

In March 2024, PFA submitted a draft resolution, supported by six member associations, calling for FIFA to hold Israel accountable for sports rights and human rights violations against Palestinians. The resolution was to be tabled before the FIFA Congress scheduled to take place in Thailand in May.

At the time PFA president, Jibril Rajoub, told the Congress:

“For 15 years we have consistently raised the same concerns with FIFA, only to see them repeatedly deferred from one Congress to another, from one committee to the next. Now, as our football faces the same existential threat as our Palestinian people, FIFA must make a choice either to passively stand by, or uphold its core values and human rights obligations, and stand firmly on the right side of history.”

Rajoub made a passionate plea to the delegates from 211 member associations to vote for suspension of Israel from FIFA, adding: “The suffering of millions of Palestinians, including thousands of footballers, deserves as much. If not now, then when? The ball is in your court.”

In response to Rajoub’s submission, FIFA ordered an “urgent and independent” legal assessment, promising to table it for voting at an extraordinary meeting of its council in July. It didn’t happen. Instead, FIFA said the assessment would be presented to its next council meeting in August. The vote was again rescheduled to October.

But when FIFA met in Zurich on 3rd October it once again postponed the decision to ban Israel. This time it said its disciplinary committee will “review the allegations of discrimination” raised by the PFA. Thus FIFA has repeatedly delayed taking action, procrastinating the vote, and shielding Israel from accountability.

One wonders what “legal assessment” FIFA is seeking. Back in 2016 Wilfried Lemke, then UN special adviser on sport for development and peace, wrote to FIFA stating that the UN regards Israeli settlements, and by extension Israeli football teams that play in them, to be “illegal under international law”. He thus urged FIFA to suspend the IFA.

Actually, what was done clandestinely became evident when, on 5 May 2024, prior to the FIFA Congress in Bangkok, an Israeli news outlet YNet reported that, “the Israeli military is working around the clock with the aim of arriving as prepared as possible and torpedoing the initiative of the Palestinian Association, which has already succeeded twice – in 2015 and 2017 – in raising the Israeli issue for discussion.”

The report stated that legal advisors of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, and ministry of culture and sports plus the IFA Chairman, were among the members of a WhatsApp group formed, calling itself “remaining in FIFA”.

Under these circumstances, In May 2024, the Israeli Foreign Minister threatened to imprison Rajoub, and revoke his travel pass. The minister published a statement in social media, saying:

“Jibril Rajoub, a terrorist in a suit who openly supported Hamas’s crimes, is working around the clock to get Israel removed from the international soccer association. We will work to thwart his plans, and if he doesn’t stop—we will imprison him.”

And so, in June 2024, Australian authorities denied Rajoub a visa to enter the country, when Palestine was set to play Australia in a World Cup qualifier. And while returning home from Paris 2024 Olympic Games in August, Israeli forces detained Rajoub as he was entering Palestine at the Karama crossing with Jordan. They confiscated his passport, searched him, and handed him a summons for interrogation.

FIFA’s double standard becomes unambiguous when we consider that sanction was imposed on Russia immediately after its forces invaded Ukraine. FIFA took stern and strict measures against Russia without vacillating, suspending it from all competitions. On the other hand, FIFA turns a blind eye and refuses to hold Israel accountable for it decades long record of war crimes against Palestinians.

Thus, FIFA invents lame excuses, allowing Israel to participate freely in international competitions. Israel is not held accountable for it decades of military occupation, illegal settlements and grave crimes against Palestinians, including genocide. FIFA refrains from applying the same sanction on Israel that it has done in the case of Russia.

Rather than following its principles, FIFA kowtows to the West’s blatant hypocrisy and double standards.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Nizar Visram, a free-lance writer and retired lecturer of Development Studies, is Tanzanian citizen, born in Zanzibar and currently in Ottawa. He can be reached at: nizar1941@gmail.com. Read other articles by Nizar.

McGill Admin Battles its Pro-Palestinian Students

Yves Engler

 November 29, 2024
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Image by Sohaib Al Kharsa.

The Harvard of the North has been the site of an increasingly intense battle linking Justin Trudeau, Roger Waters, a government handbook marginalizing Palestinians and a historic student strike for Palestine. The alma mater of the prime minister and a disproportionate share of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is aggressively repressing a movement to divest from apartheid and genocide.

At the start of the month, the McGill administration canceled the room booked for a talk by the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese. It’s remarkable that the prestigious university would suppress a representative of the United Nations but it’s consistent with McGill’s increasingly authoritarian response to those protesting genocide. Days before Albanese’s talk, the university sought to convince a judge to extend a 10 day ban on protests near its many buildings across downtown Montréal. The administration also had Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) banned by threatening the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) entire funding structure if it didn’t suspend the longstanding student club.

The administration’s response to an encampment calling for the university to cut ties with Israeli universities and companies assisting the slaughter in Gaza was to repeatedly ask the Montréal police to intervene. They even sought a court ruling to force the police to do so. After that was unsuccessful McGill hired a private security firm to demolish the encampment in July. They then largely shuttered campus for the next six weeks.

The encampment on McGill’s lower field, which is unused but exceptionally well-placed downtown, enraged genocide supporters. They pressed the police and politicians to act and instigated a court case to force the police to dismantle it. Over the past decade the Zionist lobby has become ever more aggressive in seeking to overturn student democracy and undercut opposition to apartheid.

Last November McGill students voted for the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine. In the largest referendum turnout in SSMU’s history, 78.7% of undergraduates called on the university administration to denounce Israel’s “genocidal bombing campaign” against Gaza. The resolution also called on McGill to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”

Before the election was completed the genocide lobby had already demanded the student’s vote be ignored. Simultaneously, they pressed McGill’s administration to condemn the resolution and demand SSMU jettison the results. If the student society ratified the results, the administration announced that it would terminate its Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU, which regulates fees, use of name and other matters between the university and student union.

The Israel lobby followed a similar playbook 18 months earlier when 71% of McGill undergraduates supported a Palestine Solidarity Policy, which called for boycotting. Between 2014 and 2016 there were three votes inspired by the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement at biannual SSMU general assemblies. Fearing students at the prestigious institution would support BDS, the Israel lobby went into overdrive. Among a slew of pressure tactics, they got then Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau to tweet that “the BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a McGill alum, I’m disappointed. Enough is Enough.” In February 2016 a motion mandating the student union support some BDS demands passed the union’s largest ever general assembly. But after the McGill administration, Montreal’s English media and pro-Israel Jewish groups blitzed students the online confirmation vote failed.

In response to growing sympathy among students for the plight of Palestinians, Zionist activists worked to ban these resolutions, claiming they were discriminatory. After being challenged for promoting this suppression campaign, anti-Palestinian activist Noah Lew cried “antisemitism” when he wasn’t elected to SSMU’s Board of Directors. At a October 2017 general assembly, Democratize SSMU sought to impeach the student union’s president Muna Tojiboeva for her role in suspending a SSMU vice president and adopting a Judicial Board decision that declared a BDS resolution unconstitutional. While they couldn’t muster the two thirds of votes required to oust the non-Jewish president of the student union, Democratize SSMU succeeded in blocking the re-election of two Board of Directors candidates who supported the effort to outlaw BDS resolutions.

After failing to be re-elected to the Board of Directors at the same meeting Lew claimed he was “blocked from participating in student government because of my Jewish identity and my affiliations with Jewish organizations.” Lew’s claim received international coverage and the affair was even mentioned in the House of Commons, prompting the (anti-Palestinian) administration to launch a major investigation. After interviewing 38 students, former student ombudsman Dr. Spencer Boudreau concluded that he could “not substantiate the notion that the vote was motivated by anti-Semitism.” Rather, Boudreau found that the vote was “motivated by politics, that is, based on his [Lew] support for Israel and Zionism and/or for his view of the BDS movement.” Considering the uproar and political climate, this was a devastating finding.

But it didn’t stop, and probably helped, Lew being hired as an antisemitism authority by Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler (a former McGill professor and student). Lew interned at Cotler’s Raoul Wallenberg Center for human rights and in 2022 was hired to assist the special envoy. Probably the only Canadian ever shown by an official university inquiry to have fabricated claims of antisemitism to smear Palestine solidarity activists, Lew was the “lead drafter” of the government’s just released “Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism”. Lew’s involvement tells you what you need to know about this latest effort to suppress opposition to apartheid and genocide.

In an example of how McGill weaponizes the charge of antisemitism against its students, university president Deep Saini recently smeared students at a town hall hosted by the most vocal advocate of Israeli violence in the House of Commons. In an event Liberal MP Anthony Housefather billed as a discussion about Jewish students and faculty’s “safe return to campus”, Saini declared, “It’s very hard to tell whether the antisemitism went up or it became more overt.” In a talk in which Saini asked Jewish Zionist students to spy on professors, the president added “Did we actually see a rise in antisemitism? Or did we see people using this moment, forum these circumstances, to give themselves a license to express antisemitism?”

Does Saini truly believe that students organizing an encampment, hunger strike, rallies and referendum in favour of divestment are engaged in antisemitism? The answer is yes if billionaire McGill donor Sylvan Adams, who promotes war with Iran and greater Israeli violence in Gaza, can be believed. In a Canadian Jewish News interview about McGill last month Adams said he and Saini “agree on everything” when it comes to the “problem” of anti-Semitism.

Even if Saini didn’t believe this nonsense, Adams and other mega donors would ensure he toed the line. In an interview in which he calls on McGill to expel students opposing genocide, Adams details how Zionist donors are coordinating to leverage their wealth to suppress students’ demands.

In 2022 Adams put up $29 million to establish the Sylvan Adams Sports Science Institute as part of a project that partners McGill with Tel Aviv University. Other Israel supporters such the Azrielis, Seymour Schulich, Aldo Bensadoun, Heather Reisman/Gerald Schwartz and Charles Bronfman have given tens of millions of dollars to the university. Also McGill’s chancellor, Pierre Boivin, is Vice-Chair of the Board of arch-Zionist Stephen Bronfman’s private investment firm Claridge Inc, which is heavily invested in Israel.

Alongside a series of racist bromides against Muslims and the former Black woman president of Harvard, Adams attacks rock legend Roger Waters as a “nutball” in an interview in which he describes his “fantasy” to reunite Pink Floyd to play Israel. Waters has been maybe the highest-profile supporter of the McGill students, signing a public letters criticizing the administration’s suppression of their 2022 vote and rallying with SPHR on the eve of his show in Montreal that year. A week after an event that draw significant attention to the administration’s undemocratic and anti-Palestinian actions, B’nai Brith announced a lawsuit against SPHR and SSMU for asking students to vote on Palestinian rights. Amidst his touring Waters wrote a powerful retort to B’nai Brith’s bullying.

In response to Adams’ recent call to repress students Waters penned an op-ed rebuttal and letter to the McGill president in support of students opposing genocide. In it Waters challenged the billionaire who paid Madonna and Argentina’s football club to play Israel, to debate whether wealthy donors should be allowed to dictate university policy and whether Israel is committing genocide.

On the eve of Waters participating in an online event on “Students over donor money: the suppression of Palestine solidarity at McGill University and beyond”, Adams responded publicly. In a column, video and interview the “self-appointed ambassador for Israel” repeated his absurd claim that Qatar, Iran and China have put “trillions of dollars” into supporting students opposing apartheid and genocide. He also responded to the letter Waters sent Deep Saini, which 3500 have emailed the McGill president. Adams told the Jerusalem Post that his people reached out to Piers Morgan about hosting a debate but Waters hasn’t received any indication of that.

As Waters was rallying with students online, many McGill participated in probably the largest international focused student strike in Quebec history. Over 40 student associations representing 85 000 students voted for a two-day strike in solidarity with Palestine. Quebec’s largest college was completely closed Thursday. The students want their institutions to cut all ties to Israel and are also criticizing the repression targeting students at McGill (and Concordia).

Amidst the McGill administration’s increasing repression and ongoing refusal to divest from genocide, the bigger picture is more hopeful. Students at the university have become increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and considering how many Canadian government ministers are McGill alumnus this must terrify the Israel lobby.

Yves Engler’s latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military.