Friday, August 30, 2024

Searching for Monsters

“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy …
She might become the dictatress of the world,
But she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”
~ John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

In the middle of his term as Secretary of State, the future president John Quincy Adams addressed a joint session of Congress. What prompted this unusual event?

The United States had just fought Britain to a draw in the War of 1812. It was fought almost entirely in Canada. Some historians believe the British began this war to win back their former colonies. Some believe the U.S. began it to seize Canada from Britain. Adams was worried that the cancer of war was spreading yet again throughout the Washington establishment, and he wanted to squelch it.

He did so successfully, but only for about 20 years, with his argument that offensive foreign wars don’t spread liberty, they spread violence.

Fast forward to 1992, when the U.S. was waging another fruitless foreign war, this one using the CIA and the DEA – to avoid the statutes that required reporting military conflicts to Congress and the need of a congressional declaration of war. This was the drug war the U.S. was waging against the Mexican government and Mexican civilians.

In the midst of that war, the George H.W. Bush administration decided to kidnap foreigners who had violated American laws elsewhere and hold them accountable here. The theory behind this imperialistic hubris was that these folks had harmed American agents in Mexico by resisting America’s violent drug wars, and in the U.S. by exporting drugs to America.

Never mind that drugs are purchased and taken voluntarily, and never mind that the Supreme Court had already ruled that we each own our bodies and what we do to them in private is none of the federal government’s business.

All this came to a head at the Supreme Court in 1992 where a Mexican physician challenged his violent kidnapping from his medical office in Mexico, which had been orchestrated and financed by the Bush Department of Justice.

The Supreme Court ruled that the kidnapping was lawful because the courts do not concern themselves with how the defendant was brought to the courtroom; they only concern themselves with what happens afterward. Moreover, since the U.S./Mexico extradition treaty is silent on government kidnapping, it is therefore lawful.

This twisted understanding of first principles, among which is that government must comply with its own laws, has led to the use of FBI, CIA and DEA operatives to kidnap foreigners in foreign countries who allegedly harmed Americans by violating U.S. laws. This is violent kidnapping, often directing the victim to a Third World country for torture and then to the U.S. for trial.

As horrific as all this is, U.S. law has always required an American harm nexus, which mandated that government kidnapping could only be justified as an initial step toward redressing harm caused by the kidnapped person to an American victim.

Until, that is, Joe Biden joined hands with congressional Republicans to show how tough they are.

Recent congressional legislation extends the authority of federal courts to cover crimes committed by foreign persons in foreign countries against foreign victims or property. By removing the American harm nexus, Congress has permitted the feds to charge whomever they please for foreign crimes committed elsewhere against foreign victims, and it has directed federal courts to hear these cases.

This will open the floodgates to more U.S. government kidnappings and expand radically the power of American presidents to seize political or journalist adversaries abroad just to silence them. It also gives American presidents another tool for war below the radar as they can now legally – but not constitutionally – send small armies of federal agents dressed in military garb and possessing military gear into any countries the president chooses in order to extract someone the president hates or fears.

And if the kidnapped person is eventually acquitted here in a criminal trial, because of the Supreme Court’s recent intellectually dishonest presidential immunity ruling, he cannot sue the president for authorizing his abduction.

This is not the rule of law. This is the rule of brute force. And because no American need be harmed and no American law need be broken, the president can target literally any foreigner he chooses.

Lest one think my warnings are fanciful, this has already happened.

When former President Barack Obama dispatched drones to kill Americans and their foreign companions in Yemen in 2011 – none of whom had been charged with an American crime, and all of whom were surrounded by 12 U.S. agents during the final 48 hours of their lives – he justified his murders by arguing that he killed fewer folks by his drones than those folks might have killed had they lived.

This tortuous, perverse and authoritarian rationale is a complete rejection of natural law principles and due process, which absolutely prohibit the first use of aggression against others and require jury trials before punishment.

Yet, public acceptance of American foreign excess – searching for monsters to destroy – leads to acceptance of war, and to acceptance of war by other means.

If it is lawful for the U.S. government to enter Mexico and kidnap a Mexican physician for prescribing drugs, is it lawful for the Chinese government to enter Hawaii and kidnap an American tech executive for bribing Chinese officials? Can the U.S. kidnap Benjamin Netanyahu and try him here for murder and genocide committed in Gaza? Yes, but don’t hold your breath. He’s America’s monster.

Thomas Paine warned that the passion to punish is dangerous to liberty, even the liberty of those doing the punishing. It often makes the law unrecognizable. “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Erdan’s War on the UN: The Brutal Wish of Failed Israel Diplomat

Departing Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution.

In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on August 20, the disgruntled envoy said that “the UN building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.”

Whether Erdan has made this realization or not, his aggressive statement indicates that his four-year career as Israel’s top UN diplomat was a failure.

In the interview, Erdan expressed his wish to become the head of Likud, the right-wing party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Erdan’s violent language could be his way of appealing to the right and far-right constituencies that feed on such violence.

However, there is more to Erdan’s hatred for the UN than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat.

Israel has had a long and troubled history with the United Nations and other UN-linked institutions. According to Israel’s political discourse, the UN is an ‘antisemitic’ organization, a label Israelis often invoke when their country is subjected to the slightest criticism.

Israel’s relationship with the UN is particularly odd because Israel was created by a UN decision, itself a direct outcome of UN political intrigues and western pressure.

On November 29, 1947, the UN passed resolution 181, calling for the division of historic Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. 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 UN member on May 11, 1949, while native Palestinians remain stateless. Though Israel’s admission to the international body was conditioned on the acceptance of Resolutions 181 and 194 – on the status of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – Israel’s violations of these and other resolutions, spared it punishment, thanks to strong backing from Washington and other western powers.

In June 1967, the rest of historic Palestine was conquered. Again, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and, ever since, the remaining Palestinians have lived under a draconian system of military occupation, apartheid, siege and a constant state of war.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of all the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people throughout the decades. The war did not start on October 7, 2023, nor will it end when a ceasefire is finally declared.

Aside from the Balfour Declaration, where Britain pledged to construct a Jewish state in historic Palestine in November 1917, UN resolution 181, which allowed the establishment of Israel, could arguably be considered the genesis of all Palestinian suffering.

Throughout this bloody, unjust history, the UN neither penalized Israel nor granted Palestinians their long overdue justice. It even failed to implement or enforce any of its subsequent resolutions recognizing the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Yet, Palestinians continue to resort to the UN, since it is their only international platform that could constantly remind Israel, and the world, that Tel Aviv is an Occupying Power, and that international and humanitarian laws must apply to Palestinians as an occupied nation.

These reminders were made frequently in the past, at the UN General Assembly and even at the Security Council, always to the displeasure of Israel and its western benefactors, mainly the United States.

The last solid legal position was articulated through an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19. After the testimonies and interventions made by at least 52 countries and countless experts, the ICJ resolved that “Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.”

Although the UN has not made any difference in forcing Israel to end its occupation, dismantle illegal settlements or respect the basic human rights of Palestinians, the international institution remains a source of frustration for Israel.

Since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israel has worked to change the status of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, and constantly challenged the very term “occupation”. It has done its utmost to rewrite history, illegally annexed Palestinian and Arab land, and built illegal settlements as if permanent ‘facts on the ground’.

In 2017, it looked as if Israel was succeeding in its quest to cancel the Palestinian cause altogether when Washington recognized Israel’s fraudulent claims to Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Yet, the world did not follow suit, as demonstrated in the ICJ’s recent legal ruling.

As far as the United Nations is concerned, Israel remains an Occupying Power, bound to international laws and norms.

Though for Palestinians, such facts remain devoid of practical meaning, for Israel, the UN position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the UN “wiped off from the face of the earth”.

Even if the angry Israeli diplomat gets his wish, nothing will alter this historic truth: Israel will remain a colonial regime, and Palestine will continue to resist, till justice is finally restored.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

She Was Brutally Killed Before She Could Write Her Story for the World

The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2024)

by Vijay Prashad / August 29th, 2024

Arpita Singh (India), My Lollypop City: Gemini Rising, 2005.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible violence. Since Indian law forbids revealing the names of victims of sexual crimes, her name will not appear in this newsletter.

This young doctor’s story is by no means an isolated incident: every fifteen minutes, a woman in India reports a rape. In 2022, at least 31,000 rapes were reported, a 12% increase from 2020. These statistics vastly underrepresent the extent of sexual crimes, many of which go unreported for fear of social sanction and patriarchal disbelief. In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an extensive study of violence against women using data from 161 countries between 2000 and 2018, which showed that nearly one in three, or 30%, of women ‘have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner or both’. What this young doctor faced was an extreme version of an outrageously commonplace occurrence.

Nalini Malini (India), Listening to the Shades, 2007.

Not long after her body was discovered, RG Kar College Principal Dr Sandip Ghosh revealed the victim’s name and blamed her for what had happened. The hospital authorities informed the young doctor’s parents that she had committed suicide. They waited hours for the authorities to allow a post-mortem, which was done in haste. ‘She was my only daughter’, her mother said. ‘I worked hard for her to become a doctor. And now she is gone’. The police surrounded the family home and would not allow anyone to meet them, and the government pressured the family to cremate her body quickly and organised the entire cremation process. They wanted the truth to vanish. It was only because activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) blocked the ambulance that the family was able to see the body.

On 10 August, the day after the young doctor’s body was discovered, the DYFI, Students Federation of India (SFI), Communist Party of India (Marxist), and other organisations held protests across West Bengal to ensure justice. These protests grew rapidly, with medical personnel across the state, and then across India, standing outside their workplaces with placards expressing their political anger. The women’s movement, which saw massive protests in 2012 after a young woman in Delhi was gang raped and murdered, again took to the streets. The number of young women who attended these protests reflects the scale of sexual violence in Indian society, and their speeches and posters were saturated with sadness and anger. ‘Reclaim the night’, tens of thousands of women shouted in protests across West Bengal on 14 August, India’s independence day.

Rani Chanda (India), The Solace, 1932

The most remarkable aspect of this protest movement was the mobilisation of medical unions and doctors. On 12 August, the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), with whom the murdered doctor was affiliated, called upon all doctors to suspend non-emergency medical services. The next day, doctors in government hospitals across India put on their white coats and complied. The head of the Indian Medical Association, Dr RV Asokan, met with Union Health Minister JP Nadda to present five demands:

hospitals must be safe zones;
the central government must pass a law protecting health workers;
the family must be given adequate compensation;
the government must conduct a time-bound investigation; and
resident doctors must have decent working conditions (and not have to work a 36-hour shift).

The WHO reports that up to 38% of health workers suffer physical violence during their careers, but in India the numbers are astronomically higher. For instance, nearly 75% of Indian doctors report experiencing some form of violence while more than 80% say that they are over-stressed and 56% do not get enough sleep. Most of these doctors are attacked by patients’ families who believe their relatives have not received adequate healthcare. Testimonies of female doctors during the protests indicate that women health workers routinely experience sexual harassment and violence not only from patients, but from other hospital employees. The dangerous culture in these institutions, many of them say, is unbearable, as is evidenced by the high suicide rates among nurses that are committed in response to sexual and other forms of harassment – a serious problem that received little attention. An online search using the keywords ‘nurses’, ‘India’, ‘sexual harassment’, and ‘suicide’ brings up a stunning number of reports from just the past year. This explains why doctors and nurses have reacted with such vehemence to the death of the young doctor at RG Kar.

Dipali Bhattacharya (India), Untitled, 2007.

On 13 August, the Calcutta High Court ordered the police to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. On the night of 14 August, vandals destroyed a great deal of campus property, attacked doctors who were holding a midnight vigil, threw stones at nearby police, and destroyed evidence that remained on the scene, including the seminar room where the doctor was found, suggesting an attempt to disrupt any investigation. In response to the attack, FORDA resumed its strike.

Rather than arrest anyone on the scene, the authorities accused leaders of the peaceful protests of being the culprits, including the DYFI and SFI leaders who had initiated the first protests. DYFI Secretary for West Bengal Minakshi Mukherjee was one of those summoned by the police. ‘The people who are connected to the vandalism of a hospital’, she said, ‘cannot be from civil society. Who, then, is protecting these people?’

The police also summoned two doctors, Dr Subarna Goswami and Dr Kunal Sarkar, to the police station on the charge of spreading misinformation about the post-mortem report. In fact, the two are vocal critics of the state government, and the community of doctors saw the summons as an act of intimidation and marched with them to the police station.

There is widespread discontent about the West Bengal state government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress, a centre-right party formed in 1998 that has been in power since 2011. A particularly salient example of the source of this lack of confidence in the state government is its decision to hastily rehire Dr Ghosh after his resignation from RG Kar to be the principal of the National Medical College in Kolkata. The Calcutta High Court rebuked the government for this decision and demanded that Dr Ghosh be placed on extended leave while the investigation continued.

Dr Ghosh not only grossly mishandled the murder case of this young doctor: he is also accused of fraud. Accusations that the murdered doctor was going to release more evidence of Dr Ghosh’s corruption at the college are now spreading across the country alongside allegations that sexual violence and murder were being wielded to silence someone who had evidence of another crime. Whether the government will investigate these accusations is unlikely given the wide latitude afforded to powerful people.

Sunayani Devi (India), Lady with Parrot, 1920s.

The West Bengal government is defined by its fear of the people. On 18 August, the state’s two iconic football teams, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, were set to play for the Durand Cup. When it became clear that fans intended to protest from the stands, the government cancelled the match. This did not stop the teams’ fans from joining with fans of the third-most important West Bengal football team, Mohammedan Sporting, to mobilise outside the Yuva Bharati Stadium to protest the match cancellation and the young doctor’s murder. ‘We want justice for RG Kar’, they said. In response, they were attacked by the police.

Shipra Bhattacharya (India), Desire, 2006.

Many years ago, the poet Subho Dasgupta wrote the beloved and powerful poem Ami sei meye (I Am That Girl), which could very well be the soundtrack of these struggles:

I am that girl.
The one you see every day on the bus, train, street
whose sari, tip of forehead, earrings, and ankles
you see everyday
and
dream of seeing more.
You see me in your dreams, as you wished.
I am that girl.
…
I am that girl – from the shanty Kamin Basti in Chai Bagan, Assam
who you want to abduct to the Sahibi Bungalow at midnight,
want to see her naked body with your eyes intoxicated with the burning light of the fireplace.
I am that girl.
…
In hard times, the family relies on me.
Mother’s medicine is bought with my tuition earnings.
My extra income bought my brother’s books.
My whole body was drenched in heavy rain
with the black sky on his head.
I am an umbrella.
The family lives happily under my protection.
…
Like a destructive wildfire
I will continue to move forward! And on either side of my way forward
numerous headless bodies
will continue to suffer from
terrible pain:
the body of civilisation
body of progress
body of improvement.
The body of society.
Maybe I’m the girl! Maybe! Maybe…

The paintings in this newsletter are all done by women who were born in Bengal.

Warmly,

VijayFacebook

Twitter Reddit Email

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

You Will Hear the Names of the Dead: The DNC in Chicago

Luxury SUVs carried important people into important buildings for important events. And between us and the importance, there were police with rifles strapped to their chests.

by Danaka Katovich / August 29th, 2024

This blog originally appeared here on Proof That I’m Alive.

A couple of weeks ago, I plunged into Lake Michigan. Unlike usual, the water felt warm. It was easy to run all the way in and easy to float over the waves. Montrose beach was crowded with families, pitching tents to keep out of the sun. Children played, laughed, and cried. Midwesterners who still hadn’t made it out into the sun crisped their pale shoulders. It would have been a perfectly relaxing day, but fighter jets circled above everyone’s heads — doing dives and turning every which way. Mothers plugged their children’s ears and I saw a baby wearing noise canceling headphones.

It was the Air and Water show — an annual proud display of American military capabilities. They are the same jets that fly over the shores of Gaza, dropping bombs on families. That’s what I thought about — it was just by happenstance that we were there watching these planes as a performance rather than in Gaza as a weapon of mass slaughter. The more places I travel to, the more I realize how much the world looks the same. People everywhere are really kind and generous — the only thing that separates us is if the stars align to have us born under the boot of the United States or not.

As the jets flew over our heads I felt my stomach sour. In two weeks, the Democratic National Convention would come to Chicago and it was a present opportunity to make clear the contradictions that kept me up at night. Once months and months away, the DNC was finally around the corner.

This week, members of the Democratic Party came from all parts of the country to convene in Chicago. They were coronating Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee, a woman no one really voted for. Even in the face of this blatant lack of democracy, the party members were elated to choose her. They carried signs with her husband’s name and applause erupted from the tens of thousands of people in the United Center when she declared that the United States would have the “most lethal military” in the world under her leadership. To the people well aware of the millions of people the United States killed in the last twenty years alone, her statement was a threat.

The week was marked by the obvious gaps between the people going into the United Center and the people outside of it.

There was a young woman that sat outside the exit of the Democratic National Convention on its third night reading the names of the children Israel has killed in the last ten months. She did it for hours, until her speaker battery died. She did it alone, taking care to pronounce every child’s name correctly and to say their age at the time of their murder. Without her, many of the DNC guests wouldn’t necessarily be confronted with the carnage members of their party is carrying out.

Outside the gates of the DNC I saw a young woman making sure the children of Palestine weren’t just numbers, and I saw people laughing at her for doing so. They laughed loudly and mocked her voice. They mocked the names of the dead babies. They yelled at her to leave them alone. They left the coronation ceremony livid that they had to even hear about Gaza.

That night was demoralizing, and it’s something I will remember for the rest of my life.

Democrats laugh at the names of dead children. They openly refuse to let a Palestinian speak for two minutes at their four day long event. They order riot cops on people protesting a genocide. They have their parties, fundraisers, and happy hours while bodies pile up. If they really didn’t think the genocide was so bad, they wouldn’t get so mad at us for reminding them. They knew that the people they were rallying behind are cheering on mass slaughter — they’ve just weighed their fun, their careers, and their vanity against the lives of 180,000 Palestinians and decided that nothing could be more important than themselves. I don’t care what they said to me, or my friends, but I hope our faces and our presence made them feel even an ounce of discomfort. In the best case scenario, I hope they went to sleep hearing the echoes of the martyrs’ names. I still foolishly hope they turn a corner at some point.

There’s a lot to be said about the Democratic National Convention. It happened in the city with the largest Palestinian population in the United States. Plenty of our neighbors here have lost dozens and dozens of their immediate and extended families and Kamala Harris took to the stage to promise her ironclad support to their executioners. Riot cops filed into the streets, prepared to use the kettling tactics they used from the Israeli military. All of a sudden, the place I call home felt unrecognizable. The air of the coronation felt heavy — it didn’t feel like home. There were points where I was with thousands of other people, chanting in unison, but still felt so lonely. Luxury SUVs carried important people into important buildings for important events. And between us and the importance, there were police with rifles strapped to their chests.

But there were also good people. Like the girl outside the convention. And the thousand of people that marched with us. And the Shake Shack worker that joined us because he had 15 minutes before his shift started. And the security that had to kick us out to keep their job but told us how much what we were doing meant to them.

In the lead up to the DNC, we spent so much time thinking about the last DNC that happened here in 1968. Protests against the Vietnam war took to the streets in small numbers, demanding an end to the war. They were met with horrible police brutality, and mass arrests with long legal battles in their wake. Our mentors from ‘68 urged us not to be nostalgic for those days. I still admire them for going face to face with the Chicago riot cops, but I’ve also taken their reflections of ‘68 very seriously — they didn’t end the war on Vietnam. Many of them feel like they could have focused more on building a sustainable movement that people could join for the long haul. The 2024 DNC in Chicago presented us a unique opportunity — we had to take this huge moment of mass mobilization and make sure our efforts and organization doesn’t get washed away when all the balloons on the United Center floor are popped, and the important people fly out of O’Hare. When the dust settles and the most powerful people in the world leave our city, how will we keep fighting? I was happy when so many people asked us what was next, because it meant we were thinking long term.

In our own discourses on the left, the week was consumed by the discussion of tactics – what works and what doesn’t. An organizer I know reminded us about our responsibility to be a movement people want to join. There are plenty of people who are sympathetic to our cause but haven’t figured out how to be part of it. There’s millions of people without a movement home. Our cause is already popular, it’s already growing every day. Are we doing what we can to make sure people know where to go? Are we keeping our eyes on the prize or are we getting so wrapped up in nostalgia that we can’t see what we will be capable of a year from now if we move strategically? We are nothing without the people. Our responsibility is to the people —not to our egos, not to our careers, not to the vanity of our organizations, and not to our impulses. As a movement we generally have to be better at unlearning instant gratification and also embracing a diversity of tactics. But that’s something for another day.

It is easy to stand on a police line. It’s easy to yell at politicians. It’s easy to say things and do things by yourself. It’s hard to organize your neighbors and talk to new people about things they don’t immediately understand — my hope comes from the idea that once we get really good at that, the light at the end of the tunnel will be as clear as day.

Chicagoans are loud, principled, and good people and because of that there are 2.6 million reasons to love this city. For a few days Chicagoans made certain democrats couldn’t walk around our city without seeing and hearing about the people of Gaza. It’s my hope that we see that as a small success, and also my hope that we saw the week of mobilizations as a jumping off point for building the world we want to see.

Lake Michigan is connected to the ocean through narrow waterways along the northern border of the United States, and someone mentioned at a protest that it’s not unfathomable that the waves crashing onto the shores of Gaza were once here in Chicago, and vice versa. Even if we don’t have skies that are absent of fighter jets in my lifetime, every second spent moving us towards that kind of life was worth it. As long as we don’t throw in the towel, we are closer than ever to that reality.Facebook Twitter

Reddit Email

Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK's National Co-Director. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in Political Science in November 2020. Read other articles by Danaka, or visit Danaka's website.

Israel supporters flout Canadian law with impunity

by Yves Engler / August 29th, 2024

As an observer of foreign affairs, I’ve often written about the hypocrisy of Liberal and Conservative governments’ failure to uphold “an international rules-based order” despite claims of its importance. In the case of Israel, the duplicity is even more glaring. Our governments, past and present, repeatedly fail to uphold Canadian law.

Activists have long shown how arms sales and military recruitment to Israel violates the law. But Global Affairs, Minister of Justice, RCMP and other government agencies have generally ignored their legal responsibilities when it comes to the genocidal apartheid state.

Issuing arms permits to Israel contravenes Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act. According to the law, Canada shouldn’t export arms to a country if there is “a substantial risk” they would undermine peace and security or be used to violate international law. As a signatory to the UN Arms Trade Treaty Canada is also obliged to not transfer arms to a country responsible for grave human rights violations. Two recent International Court of Justice rulings strengthen the legal case against Canadian arms sales to Israel. Still, Global Affairs allows arms transfers.

The Minister of Justice and RCMP have also failed to apply the law regarding Israel, refusing to enforce the Foreign Enlistment Act and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. In 2020 a formal legal complaint and public letter signed by numerous prominent individuals were released calling on the federal government to investigate individuals for violating the Foreign Enlistment Act by inducing Canadians to join the Israeli military. The Trudeau government effectively ignored the public letter and legal complaint even though it was published on the front page of Le Devoir. Then Justice Minister David Lametti responded by simply saying it was up to the police to investigate. For their part, the police refused to seriously investigate. Partly in response to the police’s unwillingness to take the matter seriously, a case was launched through a private prosecution against Sar-El Canada, which brings Canadians to volunteer on Israeli military bases. A Justice of the Peace agreed the evidence warranted a hearing, but the Crown interceded to dismiss the case against Sar-El. They clearly didn’t want a court to adjudicate the matter.

More recently, Canadians fighting in a force that’s slaughtered tens of thousands should be investigated under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Highlighting reports of Canadians in the Israeli military, a Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East letter to Justice Minister Arif Virani called on him to “Issue a warning to Canadian nationals that serving or volunteering with the Israeli military may make them criminally liable under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act”. CJPME’s January letter also requested the minister “launch an investigation under its War Crimes Program into the participation of Canadian nationals involved in Israel’s military offensive.”

Thousands messaged the minister calling on him to investigate Canadians committing war crimes in Gaza. Following up on this push, I asked Virani directly if he’d investigate those killing Palestinians under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. He refused to answer, walking down the wrong hallway to escape my questioning.

While staying mum on Canadians killing Palestinians, the Trudeau government actually interceded to block a bureaucratic move to properly label wines from illegal colonies. After David Kattenburg repeatedly complained about inaccurate labels on two wines sold in Ontario, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) notified the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) in 2017 that it “would not be acceptable and would be considered misleading” to declare wines produced in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as “products of Israel”. But, immediately after the decision became public the government reversed the advisory and then appealed a judge’s ruling to block accurate labelling of wines produced in the occupied West Bank.

In a major form of Israel-focused criminality, dozens of registered charities violate the Income Tax Act by supporting the Israeli military, racist organizations and West Bank colonies. In a bid to press the CRA to uphold the law, formal complaints have been submitted to the revenue agency detailing a dozen charities’ – with over $100 million in annual revenue – violating the rules. That campaign contributed to the recent revocation of the charitable status of Canada’s second most powerful Zionist charity, the Jewish National Fund of Canada (as well as the Ne’eman Foundation). While its recent revocations restore some confidence in the CRA’s ability to act independently, a law-abiding revenue agency would do far more to curtail illegal subsidies to Israel.

To press the CRA to revoke the charitable status of other Israel-focused organizations violating the law, actions will be held at CRA offices across the country on International Day of Charity. On September 5 join one of the many protests calling on the CRA to stop subsidizing war crimes and apartheid.

One has to wonder why we must take to the streets to convince our government to uphold Canadian law.Facebook

Twitter Reddit Email

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

Hanging On with Gaza

by Kathy Kelly / August 29th, 2024

During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with twelve different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands, (cf. the July 19th advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice), the genocide will end quickly.

In each encounter at a Permanent Mission to the UN, its staff asked if we, as U.S. citizens, have addressed our government’s unwavering support for the genocide against impoverished and forcibly displaced people.

It was a deeply meaningful moment when the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations showed our delegation a miniature replica of John Behan’s poignant statue depicting the Irish exodus – it showed weary, hungry people disembarking from a boat after a stormy ocean voyage.

“You have to see each one of these as a human being,” he said.

My mother was an Irish indentured servant first in Ireland and then in England. As things go, she was among the more fortunate. She never endured being chained day and night in the Middle Passage of a slave ship carrying captives here, or in a human trafficker’s overcrowded, lethally airless truck container. Nor did she have to cling to the remains of an overcrowded ship to keep from drowning after it capsized in the Mediterranean.

Life in Gaza is a desperate moment-to-moment ordeal of clinging to such wreckage, trying to stay above water, to stay alive, while both major U.S. political parties struggle to push you under.

In an article published by The Guardian, Israeli-American Omer Bartov, an eminent Holocaust historian and expert on genocide, lamented the unwillingness of many Israelis—some of whom are his friends, neighbors, colleagues, and even former students—to see Palestinians as human beings. He comments: “Many of my friends…feel that in the struggle between justice and existence, existence must win out…it is our own cause that must be triumphant, no matter the price… This feeling did not appear suddenly on 7 October.”

Is it futile to ask Israelis to reconsider this vengeance – avenging hundreds of civilians with several hundred thousand, half of them children – while the U.S. continues to arm Israel for the task?

Bartov continues: By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that …Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. … the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, … as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, … Israel was acting ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part’, the Palestinian population in Gaza, ‘as such, by killing, causing serious harm… inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction’”.

How can United States citizens cope in a nation not just gone mad on war, but gone mad on genocide? We do not have to cope with lingering, state-enforced starvation or the memory of our lifeless children pulled from under rubble. But we must cope with our complicity.

When we can, we must act.

We cannot say we did not know. The United Nations member states watch the entire edifice of international law crumble as a genocide is broadcast across our screens. Israeli military forces may have killed close to 200,000 Gazans although only 40,000 bodies have been recovered for counting. The Israeli government’s siege is starving Palestinian children and has brought Gaza to the brink of a full-blown famine. Meanwhile, polio has made a return.

From September 10 – September 30, World BEYOND War, Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, Pax Christi and other coalition partners will leaflet, demonstrate, and nonviolently act to expose and oppose Israeli and U.S. actions which flout international law. We will gather before both the United States’ U.N. Mission and the Israeli consulate demanding both nations desist from further massacres, forcible displacement, and the use of starvation and disease as weapons.

We will remind people that Israel possesses thermonuclear weapons but refuses to acknowledge this fact and thereby avoids any assessment or safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Association and any involvement in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

We will express earnest concern both for Hamas’ prisoners and the more than a thousand Palestinians incarcerated without charge by Israel, many of them women and children.

Currently, the United States and Israel have effectively decided on death for the remaining hostages rather than a settlement that would free Palestinian women and children. In a reckless bid to spark a U.S.-Iran war, Israel recently assassinated, in Tehran, the chief Hamas negotiator for a hostage release.

And still the U.S.’ arms flow continues.

Last week, the world watched as the Democratic Party leadership, at its convention, squelched voices of the uncommitted delegates. DNC speakers repeated the lie that their party was seeking a ceasefire, while flatly refusing to stop replacing the guns and missiles Israel has used to shed blood and destroy infrastructure.

We all should rely on the covenant virtues of traditional Judaism, those virtues celebrated as essential for survival: truth, justice, and forgiving love. We should appeal to secular and faith-based people across the United States as we face precarities of nuclear annihilation and ecological collapse. Securing a better future for all children requires bolstering respect for human rights, searching always for ways to abolish war.

The U.S. government is complicit in genocide, and we, in whose name it is acting, are also complicit if we remain silent.

It is time for the United Nations to liberate itself from a Security Council structure giving five permanent, nuclear armed members a vise-like grip on the world’s ability to counter the scourge of war. We must join with the call of the South African government which bravely upheld international law. We must clamor for the General Assembly to enact the “uniting for peace” resolution.

As the forthright Jewish delegate at last week’s DNC, after he and two others unfurled a banner “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”, said, “Never again means never again!”

We invite you to join us. https://events.worldbeyondwar.org/

• A version of this article first appeared on World BEYOND War’s website. https://worldbeyondwar.org/hanging-on-with-gaza/Facebook

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is the board president of World BEYOND War (worldbeyondwar.org) and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. (merchantsofdeath.org) Read other articles by Kathy.

Georgia's Future at Stake: Zurabishvili Warns of 'Existential' Election

By RFE/RL staff - Aug 28, 2024

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has characterized the upcoming parliamentary elections as a pivotal choice between European alignment and Russian influence.

Zurabishvili emphasized the high stakes of the election, framing it as a decision between "war and peace" and a determinant of Georgia's future trajectory.
The president's remarks highlight the geopolitical tensions surrounding Georgia's aspirations to join NATO and the EU, amid strained relations with the West due to perceived pro-Russian shifts in the government's policies.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has called the country's upcoming parliamentary elections a "choice between Europe and Russia" for the South Caucasus nation.

Zurabishvili's statement came after she signed a decree announcing October 26, the last Saturday of October, as the day for the parliamentary polls, saying that voters will have to "choose between war and peace" in the election.

"The day of the decision, the day of choice, the day of survival is coming," Zurabishvili said, stressing that the election will be "existential" for the former Soviet republic and will "define the country's destiny for many years to come."

"Nobody in Georgia wants a war, and nobody is planning it.... The choice will be between being Russia's slave or cooperation with Europe," Zurabishvili added.

Despite Georgia's longtime aspiration to join NATO and the European Union, the government's relationship with the West has been going downhill in recent years amid Tbilisi's visible turn toward Russia.

Brussels has paused ongoing EU accession negotiations with Tbilisi and the United States has undertaken a "comprehensive review" of relations with Georgia over the controversial "foreign agent law" that was recently adopted by the Georgian government -- which is ruled by the Georgian Dream party of billionaire former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili -- amid fierce protests.

"The choice will be between obedience to Russia via miserable concessions and actual selling the soul to Russia and being an equal state in Europe, promoting our identity, history, talents, and opportunities -- Georgia's adequate representation in a free and peaceful environment. There will not be a second chance," Zurabishvili said.

Georgia's civil society has for years sought to move the country away from the influence of Russia, which still maintains thousands of troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway Georgian regions that Moscow recognized as independent states following a five-day war with Tbilisi in 2008.

By RFE/RL

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment