Israel will coordinate with the U.S., U.K. and France to ensure the Security Council vetoes Arab countries' resolutions on the Goldstone report, Israeli officials told Haaretz.
The report, prepared by Richard Goldstone's committee, states that Israel perpetrated war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last winter.
On Thursday night, the UN General Assembly adopted the report, with 114 countries voting in favor of discussing it in the Security Council.
Eighteen countries opposed, and 44 abstained.
Israeli officials believe the Security Council discussion will not yield a binding resolution.
One source said the report's demand that Israel conduct its own investigation into the allegations is more troubling.
This is because UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon may decide to form another committee of inquiry if the Israeli probe's findings are not deemed satisfactory, or request the International Court of Justice in Hague advise on the issue.
The General Assembly "requests the secretary general to report to the General Assembly within a period of three months, on the implementation of the present resolution, with a view to considering further action, if necessary, by the relevant United Nations organs and bodies, including the Security Council," stated the resolution passed on Thursday night.
Two weeks before the vote, former prime minister Ehud Olmert met with the president of Panama. The central American country voted against adopting the report, unlike many of the continent's economic powers, including Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador.
The General Assembly "requests the secretary general to transmit the report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict to the Security Council," the resolution said.
The new resolution urged Israel and Palestine to launch investigations that "are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards" within three months.
According to Israeli sources, there is "little support" among Security Council members for approving practical actions to implement the report, with the U.S., France and the U.K. opposing the mere discussion of the report, and Russia and China inclined to vote against its adoption.
An Israeli foreign ministry statement called the UN endorsement "completely detached from realities on the ground." It also called the 18 votes against the resolution, including the U.S., and the 44 abstentions, including many European countries, the "moral majority."
The Goldstone report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, and concludes that Israel had "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity."
It also found evidence that Palestinian militant groups - including Hamas, which controls Gaza - had committed war crimes.
Is using aid to Israel as leverage becoming a mainstream idea?
By Glenn Greenwald
Tom Friedman today has some very harsh words for both the Israelis and Palestinians, both of whom -- he claims -- are not serious about reaching a peace agreement. As a result, these are the principles which Friedman -- rather surprisingly -- advocates the U.S. should follow:
Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: `My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.`
Indeed, it`s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: `When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.` . . .
If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us.
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The only specific course of action Friedman explicitly advocates to fulfill those principles is that the U.S. cease its efforts to forge a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stop trying to pressure them into concessions, instead leaving each side to stew in the status quo -- in other words, do exactly that which the Netanyahu government would like most. That would be a perfectly fine suggestion if not for the fact that the U.S. is heavily invested in the outcome of that process and its interests substantially and directly impacted by what happens. That`s because we single-handedly enable Israeli behavior with our massive amounts of military aid, diplomatic protection, and weapons supplying, which means Israeli behavior is rationally perceived by much of the Muslim world as being one and the same as American behavior. Muslim anger towards Israel will inevitably translate into Muslim anger towards the U.S. for as long as we continue to flood Israel with aid and cover.
Friedman doesn`t explicitly advocate this, of course, but isn`t the logical outcome of his prescription -- that we `just get out of the picture` and tell them to `stay out of our lives` and no longer `subsidize it` -- the cessation of all of that massive aid and assistance to Israel? How are we remotely `getting out of the picture` and telling these governments `to stay out of our lives` and no longer `subsidizing` the conflict if we remain the single largest financial and military enabler of Israeli actions as long as they continue on their current path? While Friedman isn`t willing to follow his surprisingly blunt premises to their logical conclusions, Time`s Joe Klein is willing do so, as this is what he wrote earlier this week about what the Obama administration should do in the face of Israeli recalcitrance:
It should start by putting a hold on all economic and military aid to Israel; the aid should not be discontinued, just held, for a nice long review until the Netanyahu government comes to understand that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine, and that if you actually want peace, you don`t build illegal settlement colonies in the Palestinian capital.
When is the last time there were serious discussions like this in the establishment media about cutting off aid to Israel if they refused to cease taking actions that harmed American interests? That was probably 1992, when then-Secretary of State Jim Baker repeatedly tried to link continued American aid and loan guarantees to Israeli cessation of settlement expansions and increased good faith in negotiating a peace agreement with the Palestinians -- which caused a major political backlash in the U.S., fueled by what then-NYT-reporter Tom Friedman described as `a number of pro-Israeli Senators.` It`s amazing how little has changed vis-a-vis American debates over Israel in the 17 years since then.
In countless ways, our foreign policy has long and directly violated George Washington`s 1796 warning that `nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded`; that `the nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave`; and that `a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.` The typical justification for violating those warnings is that our interests are served by maintaining and steadfastly supporting permanent alliances of this sort.
Yet here is one such nation that receives more American support than any other, stubbornly refusing to cease conduct which our government officially proclaims to be deeply harmful to our interests, and the notion of using our vast leverage to make them change behavior is decreed to be one of the most impenetrable taboos (even the Executive Director of the ostensibly orthodoxy-fighting J Street recently demanded that such a step not even be entertained). For so long, it`s been an unchallengeable given that we are required to continue to lavish Israel with aid and diplomatic protection even if they do things that our own government believes (or at least claims to believe) is directly harming the United States. Perhaps Friedman`s implicit (if unintended) call for that to change -- and Klein`s explicit call that it change -- signals a long-overdue erosion of that taboo.
The Israeli perversion
By Akiva Eldar
What does Mahmoud Abbas want from us? He should stop crying and start talking. Even Benjamin Netanyahu, born in the rightist camp, has promised him a state; and Shaul Mofaz, the horror of Palestinians, is willing to hand over, on credit, 20 percent of the West Bank. Abbas may be able to fool the Americans, but the Israelis are no suckers. We are not impressed by all of these resignation tricks. We know that no one throws out the keys to his office because of a few thousand settlers. Every child in Ramallah knows that, in the end, the settlements located outside of the "settlement blocs" will be part of Palestine.
The attitude of the average Israeli on the issue of the settlements is one of the effects of a chronic illness threatening the existence of the Jewish State: an inability to walk in the shoes, even for a minute, of their neighbor. What would we say if Abbas were to ask that we agree to the return of refugees to their home in Jaffa? Not much, just a few hundred, temporarily. In any case, we will eventually have to reach an agreed upon solution to the refugee problem. How would we respond if Syria, during the Yom Kippur War, had managed to conquer the Galilee - and years later refused to stop building its own settlements in the territory of "Greater Syria," despite continuing peace talks with Israel? Because it is not that bad, it's only lands that are part of the "settlement blocs" in Area C that are under Syrian military and civilian control? (Sixty percent of the West Bank is described as Area C, and no Palestinian building is allowed there.) After all, it is only a matter of a few kindergartens and day care centers. And we must give consideration to their natural growth.
If the Syrians had decided to disengage unilaterally from Nahariya, would the Israeli freedom fighters in the broader area of Tiberias have put down their arms? How many Baruch Goldsteins would blow themselves up in mosques if Syrian soldiers were searching the vehicles of Jews at road blocks, or were imposing a curfew on them on Muslim holidays? And what would happen to an Israeli leader who promised that in September 1993 Syrian occupation would end by the end of the decade - only the end of the decade would come and he would be caught up in empty maneuvering on temporarily freezing construction in part of the Galilee? How many days would a government of the Israeli Authority - set up as a temporary entity, an intermediate arrangement on the way to political independence, only to become a subcontractor in the management of the occupation - actually last? What terms would be used to describe the Israeli Abbas and Salam Fayyad?
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There is no Arab identified with insistence on this solution more than Abbas, through his courageous opposition to violence and patience in the face of the acrobatics of Israeli politics. But no leader is capable of carrying out negotiations on loaded issues, such as borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees, without public backing from his people. No public will grant him the legitimacy to carry out negotiations concerning the fate of its country and avert its gaze while the other side bites into chunks of it.
Now we are being assuaged and told that nothing will affect the good-old status quo. We are promised that Abbas will cancel elections and will continue serving the occupation until his final days. At the same time, we rally our perversion against the Fayyad initiative to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. The option has been and remains one of the following: two states for two peoples along the 1967 borders; or one state, in which two peoples continue to make each other miserable. Israel is galloping toward this latter disaster with eyes wide shut.
Shulamit Aloni / Shas 'racial purity' policy toward migrant kids is a disgrace | |
| By Shulamit Aloni The manifestations of formal racism in Israel have become reminiscent of the black days of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, when the authorities decided that only a Catholic could be a Spaniard. The descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain later reestablished an independent state in which the rabbis have become the inquisitors with regard to anything involving those who do not have a Jewish mother, as well as conversion. Now those zealots who insist on racial purity have issued a call to expel from the "Jewish democratic" state (is it indeed democratic?) children who were born here and have assimilated into Israeli society. This racist campaign is being led by the Shas party, headed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai. Since these self-righteous people, along with their rabbi, are familiar with the wisdom of Israel over the generations, there is no choice but to assume that they have chosen to ignore what is inconvenient for them. For example, that it's stated in the Tractate Kiddushin that those who have become assimilated are assimilated, and one does not make inquiries about them. There is no doubt immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were born to a non-Jewish mother assimilate here - they speak Hebrew, receive an Israeli education, serve in the Israel Defense Forces and so forth. There is no need to torture them with sadistic conversion processes so that they can get the rights they deserve - from a country that invited them to come here and has the pretensions of being democratic. If this is true for the Russian immigrants, shouldn't it be true to an even greater extent for the children of foreign workers who were born here, grew up here, for whom this is their country and Hebrew is their language, and who have no connection to any other country. To expel them is disgraceful - it is this disgrace that we must expel. In the face of these demands, those who observe what happens within the ultra-Orthodox parties - the money they receive, the release of yeshiva students from the obligation to work and serve in the army - cannot fail to recall the line from Deuteronomy: "But Yeshurun grew fat and kicked." Our present prime minister has granted them a great deal of fat; apparently his Judaism has made him crazy. It is not sufficient for him to be Israeli - even though in all the prayers one finds expressions only about the people of Israel, the God of Israel, the Torah of Israel, while the word "Jew" is never mentioned. The simple reason for this is that "Jews" are a religious ethnic group born in the Diaspora, and whose place is in the Diaspora, while we are a sovereign country where a Hebrew community existed and where today citizens of the State of Israel reside. However, during our time, the students of Jabotinsky have decided that Israel is not a democracy but in fact an ethnocracy. We have become a state subject to the authority of religious priests who despise progress, science and civil rights, and oppose granting full equality to women citizens. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fallen in love with the Judaism of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and other holy men around him, and despises the principles embodied in the founding document of the state - the "declaration of independence" that ensures the country will be developed "for the benefit of all its residents," that there will be "complete equality of rights for all citizens regardless of origin, race, religion or gender," as well as "freedom of religion and conscience." It seems our premier is convinced that democracy means elections when they need to be held and the existence of competing parties. As everyone knows, this is what they have in Iran, too. Nevertheless, all hope is not yet lost that Netanyahu might have a sudden revelation, that he will remember the history of the people of Israel and understand that expelling workers and their children will be a stain that cannot be washed out. If there is anyone who feels I've been too harsh in my criticism of the system - which is supposed to "keep the nation clean" according to the Orthodox version - let him examine the draft laws that have been brought before this Knesset since its election: to oblige every member of the government to swear allegiance "to the State of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, to its symbols and values"; to swear allegiance to the state "as a Jewish and Zionist state, and to its flag and national anthem" as a condition for receiving an ID card, even in reference to children; and to ban mentioning the Arabs' disaster and the destruction of their villages during the War of Independence. All of these policies are aimed at getting non-Jewish citizens to leave the country. If one of the democratic countries in which Jews live were to adopt ethnocentric laws like these while enforcing a religious and nationalistic outlook, along with Christian values and symbols - as is being done here with Judaism and Jewish symbols - then all those who earn a living from accusing Gentiles of anti-Semitism would be having a ball. However, in all other democratic countries Jews are citizens with equal rights, without having to take vows or declare loyalty. They also have the right to decide what kind of Jews they want to be and how they want to get married. But here we live under religious coercion, there is no civil marriage, and the law forces us to be subject to the Orthodox rabbinate while other streams of Judaism are treated with contempt. Now they wish to tie us to "the values and symbols" of the Judaism that emanates from the study halls of Shas and the ultra-Orthodox. It's strange that the prime minister has yet to promise to provide a living next year for 80,000 parasites called yeshiva students, instead of the 50,000 we have this year. Everyone is aware that no "mountain movers" will emerge from among them, but rather kashrut observers and rioters against the general public which works and fights, builds and creates culture. We will enjoy a great many of these members of society, according to the "values and symbols" of the Judaism zealously protecting the purity of the Jewish race. British activists kick off week-long boycottagainst Israeli settlement productsAs part of the international Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK has implemented a week-long boycott against several large supermarket chains in the UK that carry Israeli products. The week-long boycott is targeting the Waitrose and Morrisons supermarket chains, in an attempt to pressure the stores to discontinue the sale of fruits and vegetables grown and processed on Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- settlements that have been deemed illegal under international law, as they are constructed on land illegally confiscated from the indigenous Palestinian population by military force.The activists say that they have tried other tactics, such as petitioning the stores to stop selling what they call 'apartheid products', but the stores' managers have been unresponsive. One of the stores, Waitrose, released a statement saying that the produce is grown on farms where "a Palestinian and Israeli workforce have worked side by side for years." But the Palestine Solidarity Committee says that such a statement is entirely disingenuous, given that the farms in question are on Israeli settlements, built on illegally confiscated Palestinian land, and that there is no equality between the Palestinian workers, who are forced to work in the settlements because their own economy has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation. The British activists cited documentation of the conditions on Israeli settlement agricultural plantations, documented in reports of the Israeli human rights group Kav LaOved. According to the evidence compiled by Kav LaOved, the settlements are built on stolen land and are irrigated by water stolen from the Palestinians, Palestinian children as young as 12 work on settlement farms, Palestinian workers in Israeli Settlements earn less than 50% of the minimum wage, and sometimes as little as five US cents an hour, and Palestinian settlement workers receive no holiday pay, pensions or sick pay. In addition, Palestinian workers require permits to work, which can be removed if they complain about their conditions or ask for a pay rise. Israeli workers do not require work permits. Palestinian workers must travel through Israeli barriers and checkpoints every day in order to get to their place of employment, then get home again. Queues of workers start forming at checkpoints as early as 2am, with little or no shelter provided for those in line. Israeli workers are free to move around the Palestinian West Bank without restrictions, and special roads, which Palestinians are forbidden to use, have been built for them. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign's week of actions include demonstrations outside stores, and mass, co-ordinated phone calls to the management of both stores on Wednesday. The group is part of an international movement boycotting what they call Israeli apartheid practices of discrimination and segregation against the indigenous Palestinian population. The movement compares Israel's practices to the 'apartheid' system implemented by white South Africans from 1948 - 1994, in which black and mixed race South Africans were forced to live in certain areas, carry ID cards and discriminated against by a number of apartheid laws. What do we need? A civil rights investigation in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal! When do we need it? Now! Thursday, November 12 11:30 a.m. Press Conference New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1313 New York Avenue Washington, D.C. March to the Justice Department 1:30 pm Delivery of Letters to Attorney General Eric Holder at the Justice Department We demand that the Justice Department conduct a civil rights investigation into the 28-year conspiracy—organized through police, prosecutorial, and judicial criminal misconduct—to railroad Mumia, an innocent man, to death. As U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has the duty to monitor and remedy racist and corrupt practices in law enforcement and to safeguard our civil rights. He can challenge the Philly DA’s outrageous pursuit of Mumia’s execution and Governor Rendell’s promise to sighn the death warrant. A civil rights investigation could lead to Mumia’s release! Co-sponsors (in formation): International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia-Abu-Jamal, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition--NYC, the Peace and Justice Foundation, Families United for Justice in America, WESPAC, International Action Center, Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Nat Turner Rebellion, Black August Planning Committee, National Lawyers Guild—NYC Chapter, Iglesia San Romero (UCC) For Information and Transportation: NYC: 212-330-8029; Philadelphia: 215-476-8812; Washington, DC: 301-762-9162; www.freemumia.com
African-Americans slam Obama in White House protest AFP
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