2021-09-29
The Names You’ll Never Know
A civilian deaths memorial could zig zag across the U.S., suggests Nick Turse. It could keep extending westwards, in a way that would spur Americans’ interest in their nation’s history and conflicts abroad.
By Nick Turse
Consortium News
Within two weeks, a New York Times investigation would dismantle that official narrative. Seven days later, even the Pentagon admitted it. Instead of killing an ISIS suicide bomber, the United States had slaughtered 10 civilians: Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group; three of his children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 10; Ahmadi’s cousin Naser, 30; three children of Ahmadi’s brother Romal, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6, and Hayat, 2; and two 3-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya.
The names of the dead from the Kabul strike are as important as they are rare. So many civilians have been obliterated, incinerated, or — as in the Aug. 29 attack — “shredded” in America’s forever wars.
Who in the United States remembers them? Who here ever knew of them in the first place? Twenty years after 9/11, with the Afghan War declared over, combat in Iraq set to conclude, and President Joe Biden announcing the end of “an era of major military operations to remake other countries,” who will give their deaths another thought?
Americans have been killing civilians since before there was a United States. At home and abroad, civilians — Pequots, African Americans, Cheyenne and Arapaho, Filipinos, Haitians, Japanese, Germans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and Somalis, among others — have been shot, burned, and bombed to death. The slaughter at Sand Creek, the Bud Dajo massacre, the firebombing of Dresden, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the My Lai massacre — the United States has done what it can to sweep it all under the rug through denial, cover-ups, and the most effective means of all: forgetting.
There’s little hope of Americans ever truly coming to terms with the Pequot or Haitian or Vietnamese blood on their hands. But before the forever wars slip from the news and the dead slide into the memory hole that holds several centuries worth of corpses, it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking about Zemari Ahmadi, Benyamin, Hayat, Malika, Somaya, and all the civilians who were going about their lives until the U.S. military ended them.
Names Remembered and Names Forgotten
Over the last 20 years, the United States has conducted more than 93,300 air strikes — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — that killed between 22,679 and 48,308 civilians, according to figures recently released by Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. The total number of civilians who have died from direct violence in America’s wars since 9/11 tops out at 364,000 to 387,000, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Who were those nearly 400,000 people?
There’s Malana. In 2019, at age 25, she had just given birth to a son, when her health began to deteriorate. Her relatives were driving her to a clinic in Afghanistan’s Khost Province when their vehicle was attacked by a U.S. drone, killing Malana and four others.
And Gul Mudin. He was wounded by a grenade and shot with a rifle, one of at least three civilians murdered by a U.S. Army “kill team” in Kandahar Province in 2010.
Then there was Gulalai, one of seven people, including three women — two of them pregnant — who were shot and killed in a Feb. 12, 2010, raid by Special Operations forces in Afghanistan’s Paktia Province.
And the four members of the Razzo family — Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad, and Najib — killed in a Sept. 20, 2015, airstrike in Mosul, Iraq.
And there were the eight men, three women, and four children — Abdul Rashid as well as Abdul Rahman, Asadullah, Hayatullah, Mohamadullah, Osman, Tahira, Nadia, Khatima, Jundullah, Soheil, Amir, and two men, ages 25 and 36 respectively, named Abdul Waheed — who were killed in a Sept. 7, 2013, drone strike on Rashid’s red Toyota pickup in Afghanistan.
Then there were 22-year-old Lul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilo Muse, who were killed in an April 1, 2018, airstrike in Somalia.
And between 2013 and 2020, in seven separate U.S. attacks in Yemen — six drone strikes and one raid — 36 members of the al Ameri and al Taisy families were slaughtered.
Those names we know. Or knew, if only barely and fleetingly. Then there are the countless anonymous victims like the three civilians in a blue Kia van killed by Marines in Iraq in 2003. “Two bodies were slumped over in the front seats; they were men in street clothes and had no weapons that I could see. In the back seat, a woman in a black chador had fallen to the floor; she was dead, too,” wrote Peter Maass in The New York Times Magazine in 2003. Years later, at The Intercept, he painted an even more vivid picture of the “blue van, with its tires shot out and its windows shattered by bullets, its interior stained with blood and smelling of death, with flies feasting on already-rotting flesh.”
Those three civilians in Iraq were all too typical of the many anonymous dead of this country’s forever wars — the man shot for carrying a flashlight in an “offensive” manner; the children killed by an “errant” rocket; the man slain by “warning shots”; the three women and one man “machine-gunned” to death; and the men, women and children reduced to “charred meat” in an American bombing.
Who were the 11 Afghans — four of them children — who died in a 2004 helicopter attack, or the “dozen or more” civilians killed in 2010 during a nighttime raid by U.S. troops in that same country? And what about those 30 pine-nut farm workers slaughtered a year later by a drone strike there? And what were the names of Mohanned Tadfi’s mother, brother, sister-in-law, and seven nieces and nephews killed in the U.S. bombing that flattened the city of Raqqa, Syria, in 2017?
Often, the U.S. military had no idea whom they were killing. It frequently carried out “signature strikes” that executed unknown people due to suspicious behavior. So often, Americans killed such individuals for little or no reason — like holding a weapon in places where, as in this country, firearms were ubiquitous — and then counted them as enemy dead.
An investigation by Connecting Vets found that during a 2019 air campaign in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, for example, the threshold for an attack “could be met by as little as a person using or even touching a radio” or if an Afghan carrying “commercially bought two-way radios stepped into a home, the entire building would sometimes be leveled by a drone strike.”
Targeted assassinations were equally imprecise. Secret documents obtained by The Intercept revealed that, during a five-month stretch of Operation Haymaker — a drone campaign in 2011 and 2013 aimed at al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders along the Afghan-Pakistan border — 200 people were killed in airstrikes conducted to assassinate 35 high-value targets. In other words, nearly nine out of 10 people slain in those “targeted” killings were not the intended targets. So, who were they?
Even if targeting was ordinarily more accurate than during Operation Haymaker, U.S. policy has consistently adhered to the dictum that “military-age males” killed in airstrikes should automatically be classified as combatants unless proven innocent. In addition to killing people for spurious reasons, the U.S. also opted for allies who would prove at least as bad as, if not worse than, those they were fighting. For two decades, such American-taxpayer-funded warlords and militiamen murdered, raped, or shook-down the very people the U.S. government was supposedly protecting. And, of course, no one knows the names of all those killed by such allies who were being advised, trained, armed and funded by the United States.
Who, for instance, were the two men tied to the rear fender of a Toyota pickup truck in southeastern Afghanistan in 2012 by members of an Afghan militia backed by U.S. Special Operations forces? They were, wrote reporter Anand Gopal, dragged “along six miles of rock-studded road” until they were dead. Then their “bodies were left decomposing for days, a warning to anyone who thought of disobeying Azizullah,” the U.S.-allied local commander.
Or what about the 12 boys gunned down by CIA-backed militiamen at a madrassa in the Afghan village of Omar Khail? Or the six boys similarly slain at a school in nearby Dadow Khail? Or any of the dead from 10 raids in 2018 and 2019 by that same militia, which summarily executed at least 51 civilians, including boys as young as eight years old, few of whom, wrote reporter Andrew Quilty, appeared “to have had any formal relationship with the Taliban”?
How many reporters’ notebooks are filled with the unpublished names of just such victims? Or counts of those killed? Or the stories of their deaths? And how many of those who were murdered never received even a mention in an article anywhere?
Last year, I wrote 4,500 words for The New York Times Magazine about the deteriorating situation in Burkina Faso. As I noted then, that nation was one of the largest recipients of American security aid in West Africa, even though the State Department admitted that U.S.-backed forces were implicated in a litany of human-rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings.
What never made it into the piece was any mention of three men who were executed in two separate attacks. On May 22, 2019, uniformed Burkinabe troops arrived in the village of Konga and took two brothers, aged 38 and 25, away in the middle of the night. The next day, a relative found them on the side of the road, bound and executed. Most of the family fled the area. “The Army came back a week later,” a relative told me. “My uncle was the only one in our family who stayed. He was shot in broad daylight.” Such deaths are ubiquitous but aren’t even factored into the 360,000-plus civilian deaths counted by the Costs of War project, which offers no estimate for those killed in America’s “smaller war zones.”
Build the Wall!
We live in a world filled with monuments celebrating lives and deaths, trailblazers and memorable events, heroes and villains. They run the gamut from civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and women’s rights pioneers to the chieftains of the American Confederacy and Belgium’s King Leopold.
In the United States, there’s no shortage of memorials and monuments commemorating America’s wars and fallen soldiers. One of the most poignant lists the names of the American military dead of the Vietnam War. Initially derided by hawkish veterans and conservatives as a “black gash of shame” and a “nihilistic slab,” it’s now one of the most celebrated monuments in Washington, D.C. More than 58,000 men and women are represented on the visually arresting black granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Vietnam itself has no shortage of monuments of its own. Many are Soviet-style memorials to those who died defeating the United States and reuniting their country. Others are seldom-seen, tiny memorials to massacres perpetrated by the Americans and their allies. No one knows how many similar cenotaphs exist in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other forever-war countries, but in 2017, journalist Emran Feroz found just such a memorial in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province — a remembrance of five civilians slain in drone strikes during 2013 and 2014.
There have been other attempts to memorialize the civilian dead of the forever wars from art installations to innovative visual protests to virtual commemorations.
In 2018, after then-President Trump signed a bill approving the construction of a Global War on Terrorism Memorial, Peter Maass proposed, even if only half-seriously, that the bullet-riddled blue Kia van he saw in Iraq should be placed on a pedestal on the National Mall. “If we start building monuments that focus our attention on the pitiless killing of civilians in our wars,” he wrote, “maybe we would have fewer wars to fight and less reason to build these monuments.”
A blue Kia on the National Mall would be a good starting point. But if we’re ever to grasp the meaning of the post-9/11 wars and all the conflicts that set the stage for them, however, we may need a wall as well — one that starts at the Kia and heads west. It would, of course, be immense. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial spans a total of 400 feet. The celebrated Vietnam War photographer Philip Jones Griffiths observed that a wall for the Vietnamese dead, counting combatants, of the American War would be nine miles long.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is arrayed in a unique chronological format, but the Civilian Deaths Memorial could begin with anyone. The last civilians killed by the United States as part of its 2001 to 2021 Afghan War – Zemari Ahmadi, Zamir, Faisal, Farzad, Naser, Arwin, Benyamin, Hayat, Malika, and Somaya – could lead it off. Then maybe Abdul Rashid and the 14 passengers from his red pick-up truck. Then Malana, Gul Mudin, Gul Rahim, Gulalai, Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad, Najib, Lul Dahir Mohamed, and Mariam Shilo Muse. Then maybe Ngo Thi Sau, Cao Muoi, Cao Thi Thong, Tran Cong Chau Em, Nguyen Thi Nhi, Cao Thi Tu, Le Thi Chuyen, Dang Thi Doi, Ngo Thi Chiec, Tran Thi Song, Nguyen Thi Mot, Nguyen Thi Hai, Nguyen Thi Ba, Nguyen Thi Bon, Ho Thi Tho, Vo Thi Hoan, Pham Thi Sau, Dinh Van Xuan, Dinh Van Ba, Tran Cong Viet, Nguyen Thi Nham, Ngo Quang Duong, Duong Thi Hien, Pham Thi Kha, Huynh Van Binh, Huynh Thi Bay, Huynh Thi Ty, Le Van Van, Le Thi Trinh, Le Thi Duong, and Le Vo Danh and her unborn child, all slaughtered in the tiny South Vietnamese village of Phi Phu by U.S. troops (without any of the attention accorded to the My Lai massacre). They could be followed by the names of, or placeholders for, the remaining 2 million Vietnamese civilian dead and by countless Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis and Yemenis.
The Civilian Wall could be built in a zig-zag fashion across the U.S. with the land in its way — homes and businesses, parks and roadways — seized by eminent domain, making Americans care about civilian deaths in ways that news articles never could.
When you lose your home to a slab of granite that reads “Pequot adult, Pequot adult, Pequot child…” 500 times, you may actually take notice. When you hear about renewed attacks in Iraq or drone strikes in Somalia or a Navy SEAL raid gone awry in Yemen and worry that the path of the wall might soon turn toward your town, you’re likely to pay far more attention to America’s conflicts abroad.
Obviously, a westward-traveling wall memorializing civilian carnage is a non-starter in this country, but the next time you hear some fleeting murmur about a family wiped out by a drone strike or read a passing news story about killings by a U.S.-backed militia, think about that imaginary wall and how, in a just world, it might be headed in your direction. In the meantime, perhaps the best we can hope for is Maass’s proposal for that blue Kia on the Mall. Perhaps it could be accompanied by the inscription found on a granite slab at the Heidefriedhof, a cemetery in Dresden, Germany, the site of a mass grave for civilians killed in a 1945 U.S. and British fire-bombing. It begins: “How many died? Who knows the number?”
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author most recently of Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan and of the bestselling Kill Anything That Moves.
2021-01-14
Trump’s Latest Yemen Move Far Worse Than Capitol Riot
Caitlin Johnstone condemns the U.S. designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization and the scarce media coverage of the Saudi-led conflict’s deadly toll.
By Caitlin Johnstone
The U.S. State Department has officially announced its intention to designate Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group, as many had previously warned. Humanitarian organizations have been condemning the move as it will make it more difficult to provide aid to a population that is already being brutalized by the worst mass atrocity in the entire world, a Saudi-led atrocity which could not occur without the help of the western power alliance.
We are already seeing some effects of this designation.
Antiwar‘s Dave DeCamp reports the following:
“The terror designation will hamper the efforts of international charities that deliver food to Houthi-controlled areas, where 70 percent of Yemen’s population lives and malnutrition is the most widespread.
Aid agencies fear their work in north Yemen will now be criminalized since the Houthis are the authority they have to deal with and make transactions with. US terror designations open up sanctions on any individuals or entities that do business with those Washington brands as terrorists.
Pompeo said exemptions would be made for humanitarian goods. But any additional roadblocks for aid agencies will cause more suffering in Yemen since the situation is so dire. “Even with exemptions, the operation will be compromised,” said Janti Soeripto, the president of Save the Children, according to AP News.”
The United Nations conservatively estimates that some 233,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war between the Houthis and the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition, mostly from what it calls “indirect causes.” Those indirect causes would be disease and starvation resulting from what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls “the worst famine the world has seen for decades.”
When people hear the word “famine” they usually think of mass hunger caused by droughts or other naturally occurring phenomena, but in reality the starvation deaths we are seeing in Yemen (a huge percentage of which are children under the age of 5) are caused by something that is no more natural than the starvation deaths you’d see in a medieval siege. They are the result of the Saudi coalition’s use of blockades and its deliberate targeting of farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites, and cholera treatment centers with airstrikes aimed at making the Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen so weak and miserable that they break.
In other words, the U.S. and its allies have been helping Saudi Arabia deliberately kill children and other civilians on mass scale in order to achieve a political goal. Which would of course be a perfect example of any standard definition of terrorism. The unfathomably savage and bloodthirsty U.S. empire designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization is the least funny joke that has ever been told.
This move is quantifiably far, far worse than anything Trump could possibly have done to incite the Capitol riot, as it will kill far, far more people, yet the mass media fixate on one news story while virtually ignoring the other. This is because the Capitol riot story feeds into partisan narratives and manufactures consent for authoritarian domestic terrorism laws, while the Yemen story highlights the depravity of U.S. imperialism. The plutocrat-owned media does not exist to give you a truthful representation of the world, it exists to keep the wheels of the empire rolling along.
There’s a weird taboo against saying some things are worse than other things, especially when it involves things the mass media tell us are of cataclysmic significance. People shriek “Why are you minimizing the Capitol raid??” and “Why are you comparing them! It’s not a pissing contest!” This is stupid. All things are not equal to all other things, and figuring out the ways in which news coverage is disproportionate and not reflective of reality is a very important part of making sense of the world.
So now Americans are being fed a steady diet of narratives about the threat Trump’s radicalized base poses to people of color, while ignoring the fact that Trump is currently implementing policies which facilitate the butchery of people of color. Only difference is the latter is hidden behind geographical remoteness, and is far more egregious.
It matters that the mass media do not cover news stories with an accurate degree of proportion. It matters that they keep the public’s gaze diverted from the horrors of empire while radically distorting their sense of reality. This isn’t some idle “contrarian take.” This matters.
In the last couple of centuries, we’ve progressed all the way from expecting our leaders to murder brown-skinned people while saying racist things to expecting our leaders to murder brown-skinned people while condemning racism. The murder hasn’t changed, and the racism hasn’t really changed either. All that’s changed is the norms of how it is put into practice.
This matters.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
2020-01-06
Israeli Justice… a Futile Chase
by Stanley L. Cohen
CounterPunch
“Doctrine of Futility”
Seventeen years ago, 23 year old Rachel Corrie (a Washington State volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement) was crushed to death by an armored military bulldozer as she stood on top of a mound of dirt trying to prevent the dozer from destroying a civilian home in the Southern Gaza Strip village of Rafa. Wearing a bright orange vest and shouting out at the bulldozer through a megaphone, Corrie was murdered for the temerity of her unarmed act of peaceful defiance. More than a dozen years later the Israeli Supreme Court rejected her parents’ suit to hold Israel’s military accountable for her death. In finding that an “explicit statutory provision of the Knesset overrides the provisions of international law”, the Israeli High Court sacrificed well more than a century of settled international protections, including those memorialized under the laws of war and human rights, to the endless Israeli talisman of “wartime activity.”
More than a few historians can recall that very chant, raised and rejected at the Nuremberg Tribunals, which held Nazis accountable for targeted attacks on civilians throughout World War II.
Less than two months after the murder of Corrie, 34 year old James Henry Dominic Miller (a Welsh cameraman, producer and director who had won five Emmy awards for his work) was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, at night, while filming a documentary in the Rafah refugee camp. Moments after he and his crew left a Palestinian home bearing a white flag, two shots rang out. After the first shot a crew member cried out, “…we are British journalists.”. Soon, a second shot hit Miller, killing him instantly. Initially, one spokesperson reported that after the IDF discovered a tunnel at the house Miller had exited, he was shot in the back when caught in the middle of a crossfire precipitated by an anti-tank missile fired at Israeli troops. Another spokesperson said his death occurred during “…an operation taking place at night, in which the [Israeli] force was under fire and in which the force returned fire with light weapons.”
Later, both versions were retracted when it turned out that the round that killed Miller had entered not through his back but the front of his neck. Likewise, the tale of crossfire fell apart with witnesses reporting no such exchange of gunfire and none having been heard on an audio recording made contemporaneous to the incident.
Some two years later, an Israeli military police investigation into Miller’s killing was closed without returning any criminal charges against the Israeli soldier suspected of firing the fatal shot … though he was to be “disciplined” for violating the rules of engagement and for altering his account of what had occurred.
The following year, an inquest jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court in London returned a verdict finding that Miller had been “murdered” and that the fatal shot matched rounds used by the IDF. Not long thereafter, the UK Attorney General made a formal request to Israel for it to prosecute the soldier responsible for firing the shot. That request was ignored. To date, no such proceedings have been undertaken by Israel …be it by an independent investigatory body, the military or the office of the state prosecutor.
In March of 2009, thirty-eight year old California native, Tristan Anderson, was hit in the forehead by a high-velocity teargas canister fired directly at him by an Israeli border policeman, some 60 metres away, following a regular joint Palestinian -Jewish demonstration against the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. When struck, Anderson was simply talking with three or four other activists in the center of the village some distance from the “shame wall” where the demonstration had earlier occurred. In the months prior, four Palestinians had been killed by soldiers during like demonstrations.
Taken to a hospital with his head split open, Anderson underwent three emergency brain operations which required the partial removal of his frontal lobe. The surgery, which left him in a coma and in critical condition, blinded his right eye and paralyzed half of his body. After fifteen months of hospitalization, Anderson returned home where, a decade later, he continues to require around the clock care because of permanent cognitive impairment and physical disability.
Several days after Anderson was crippled, Israeli police opened an investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. Given the 400 plus metre range of the canister, and their respective positions, there was clear evidence of criminal intent on the part of the soldier who shot Anderson. Despite this, the investigation was closed, some six months later, without explanation or any public finding… and with no criminal charges filed against any police or military personnel.
When no criminal charges were filed against those involved, the Andersons filed a civil law suit against Israel but waited years for the case to proceed in an Israeli court. Years later, the case remains very much in a state of judicial limbo with no determination as to it merits. Not unusual at all, counsel for the Anderson’s has noted that “…[t]he astonishing negligence of this investigation and of the prosecutorial team that monitored its outcome is unacceptable, but it epitomizes Israel’s culture of impunity. Tristan’s case is actually not rare; it represents hundreds of other cases of Palestinian victims whose investigations have also failed.”
As she walked out of the courtroom after a judicial proceeding into the civil lawsuit regarding the shooting of her partner, Gabby Silverman, who is Jewish, was served with an order that she had to leave Israel within the following 7 days because there was “insufficient proof that there was a lawsuit going on, and insufficient proof that she is a Jew.”
These three matters involving the murder or cripple of foreign nationals by Israel are very much the rule and not the exception in a state that sees dissent or disobedience as an open invitation for retaliation. For the fortunate, it means but arrest or expulsion for the less so …outright assassination.
For those who survive politically rooted Israeli assault, or their mourning heirs, the road to equity remains a dead end… one blocked by walls of incompetence or indifference… smothered by systemic delay and legislative fiat that convert black robes of justice to mere rubber stamps of state. To be sure, Israel’s failure to promptly and thoroughly investigate facts and circumstances, let alone to prosecute its agents… military or otherwise… who commit crimes against foreign nationals or to provide for an equitable and expeditious civil remedy for them or their loved ones, is well-known, indeed, notorious throughout the world.
For Palestinians, every step outside their home is to navigate a mine field of uncertainty; every encounter with an Israeli soldier or police officer a literal tempt to their life or liberty. The famed Israeli human rights center, B’Tselem, has archived a veritable cemetery of Palestinians victimized by extra-judicial Israeli assassination. Most cry out for justice from beyond the headstones that mark their name with little else but the smile of their memory. Meanwhile, loved ones wait for the call of justice… an echo, for almost all, never to be heard.
Thus, on January 1, 2013, twenty-one year old ‘Udai Muhammad Salameh Darawish of a-Ramadin, Hebron District, was shot dead by soldiers near the Meitar checkpoint as he fled them after he entered Israel, for work purposes, without a permit. Following a military investigation and plea bargain to negligent manslaughter, a soldier received a seven-month suspended sentence and was demoted to sergeant.
Two more recent judicial miscarriages remind us, once again, that law in Israel remains but a gavel for Jews and a bludgeon for all others:
On May 10th of this year, Elor Azaria, an Israeli medic who faced up to 20 years upon his conviction for manslaughter, walked out of prison after serving but nine months of an eighteen month sentence originally imposed on him by a military court. It was subsequently reduced to fourteen months by the IDF chief of staff and then again by the army’s prison parole board (and agreed to by military prosecutors) for his cold-blooded execution of twenty-one year old Abdul Fatah al-Sharif who lay injured and motionless on the ground after stabbing, but not seriously injuring, an Israeli soldier in Occupied Hebron. With calm, deliberate ease, Azaria was recorded as he approached his victim, cocked his rifle and executed him with a single shot to his head.
Not long ago, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to one month of the military’s equivalent of community service over the execution of fifteen year old Othman Rami Halles who he shot dead during protests near the Israel fence east of the Gaza Strip on July 13, 2018. The unnamed soldier was convicted for “…acting without authorisation in a manner endangering to life and well-being.”
These sentences pale in comparison to those routinely imposed upon Palestinian children convicted of throwing stones. For example, sixteen year old stone thrower Saleh Ashraf Ishtayya was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Fourteen year-olds Muhammad Ahmad Jaber and Murad Raed Alqam received three year sentences. Seventeen year old Muhammad Na’el and sixteen year old Zaid Ayed al-Taweel each received two years and four months in prison for the same offense. None of these children injured, let alone, took the life of an Israeli.
Tragically, casualties have long been the anguished, up-close face of the Occupation with an historical character that wields a deadly reach unmatched and long ignored by the world. As very much a perverse rite of passage, thousands of Palestinian civilians have paid the ultimate price for little more than their presence… lost to multiple high-tech military operations that have targeted residential communities and schools, hospitals and core infrastructure. Many more have been wounded or crippled by relentless Israeli attacks designed to leave survivors not just overwhelmed and battered but with a sense of isolation and futility. Nowhere has this brutal assault on fundamental human rights and international law been more conspicuous than through the sniper attacks on Gaza, over the past 18 months, that have slaughtered or injured tens of thousands of demonstrators whose only weapons have been the step of their march and the resound of their voice. And what of international law?
Volumes have been written on humanitarian law… the law of war and human rights. No doubt they line the walls of judicial halls throughout Israel… from its lowest military courtroom in the Occupied Territories to the highest civilian chamber that claims to rule supreme as the guardian of due process and equal protection for Israeli citizens and those held captive by it. Yet, even a cursory glance by an untrained eye leaves the imprint of a judicial system that is subservient to the chant of state security and legislative fiat and slowed to a process of delay that drags on and on for years leaving no one but Israeli Jews comfortable in the notion that they will have their day in court and with speed and fairness.
Millions of Palestinians are held captive in the Occupied Territories be it in the West Bank by security onslaught or military patrol or by the heap of Concertina wire, sniper mounds and air force and naval watch that keeps all of Gaza imprisoned every minute of every hour of every day. For these foreign nationals… and they are foreign nationals… they never see the inside of an Israeli civilian court or the due process it infers. For these perpetual prisoners, the uniformed soldiers that carry weapons become uniformed soldiers that investigate and prosecute cases to uniformed soldiers that pass judgment adorned not by robes of independence but by order of salute. As noted above in the archive of causality, few if any Palestinians ever obtain due process and equal protection of the law, let alone with independent and foreseeable resolution, as investigations and cases linger on for years pushed, predictably, to the back of the line as each new public outrage unfolds. This is not justice but the “Doctrine of Futility” at its primordial worst.
International Relief
It is settled law that before seeking international relief, aggrieved parties must first seek redress for harm, caused by a state, within its own domestic legal system. Exhaustion of local remedies (ELR) is intended to uphold state sovereignty by recognizing its own judicial process as a presumptive vehicle for the independent, equitable and expeditious resolution of claims against the state. ELR presumes a state’s judicial and administrative systems provide for a credible and apolitical avenue for injured foreign nationals to obtain their day in court before moving-on for diplomatic protection or undertaking international proceedings directly against the state. Yet, very much the proverbial beauty locked in the eyes of the beholder, provisions like equitable, independent and expeditious are routinely recast by repressive regimes across the globe to mirror little more than partisan safeguard of the state’s tyrannical needs and agenda.
Nowhere is that more palpably evident or painfully clear than it is in Israel where judicial remedies have long and repeatedly proven to be little more than a convenient faith based tease… a non-existent march to the beat of the overarching political gavel of the Knesset. For Israeli Jews, “all rise” portends opportunity denied all others. For Israeli Jews, lady justice cheats as she peeks out from behind her blindfold… for all others, she is but a symbol without a sign.
The ELR rule is a foundational mainstay of all global and regional international human rights entities and covenants. For example, within the UN, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mandates that it’s Human Rights Committee “shall deal with a matter referred to it only after it has ascertained that all available domestic remedies have been invoked and exhausted in the matter, in conformity with the generally recognized principles of international law.”
Likewise, the European Convention on Human Rights provides that the European Court of Human Rights “may only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been exhausted, according to the generally recognized rules of international law.”
The American Convention on Human Rights requires exhaustion of local remedies “in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law” before the submission of petitions or communications to the commission.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights provides that the Commission “can only deal with a matter submitted to it after making sure that all local remedies, if they exist, have been exhausted, unless it is obvious to the Commission that the procedure of achieving these remedies would be unduly prolonged.”
This exemption is but one of several that find smooth fit within the so-called “Doctrine of Futility.” Under this doctrine, while release from the requirements of the ELR fluctuates from venue to venue, by-in-large one need not chase domestic justice where none can be had. Thus, in general, ELR may be bypassed:
And just who are foreign nationals? In most jurisdictions they cut a relatively narrow swath; typically but a handful of tourists, temporary workers, or businesses and those incidentally injured by practices of cross-border states. Yet, the numbers balloon to millions of foreign nationals in occupied Palestine where all aspects of every Palestinian’s life is impacted… if not controlled… daily by an occupation force and judicial process of another state.
Independent of the pervasive culture of military and security violence and its companion lack of fairness and accountability, the Israeli judicial system… both criminal and civil… presents a compelling case study in a double standard delayed and disabled based solely upon ones faith and national identity.
Child Prisoners
Over the last two decades, more than 8,000 Palestinian children (foreign nationals) have been arrested in the Occupied Territories and prosecuted in an Israeli military system devoid of any meaningful due process or equal protection for the most vulnerable and traumatized among those that have known nothing but the bark of occupation their entire lives. It is a military justice process notorious for the systematic ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children.
Several hours after their arrest, these children arrive at an interrogation and detention center alone, tired, and frightened. All interrogations, by their very nature, are inherently coercive no matter the age or experience of its victim. None are more so than for an often bruised and scared child forced to go through the process without the benefit of counsel or the presence of parents who are never permitted to participate.
Israeli law provides that all military interrogations must be undertaken in a prisoner’s native language and that any statement made must be reduced to writing in that language. Despite this prohibition, Palestinian detainees are typically coerced into signing statements, through verbal abuse, threats, and physical violence, that is memorialized by police in Hebrew… which most cannot understand. These statements usually provide the main evidence against children in Israeli military courts.
The Military Court Process
The military “courts” themselves are held inside military bases and closed to the public… and usually family members of the accused. Within these courts, military orders supersede Israeli civilian and international law.
In military courts, all parties… the judge, prosecutor and translators… are members of the Israeli armed forces. The judges are military officers with minimal judicial training and, by-in- large, served as military prosecutors before assuming the bench. The prosecutors are Israeli soldiers, some not yet certified as attorneys by the Israeli Bar. Under the rules of Occupation, all defendants in military courts are Palestinian… as the jurisdiction of the Israeli military court never extends to some eight hundred thousand Jewish settlers living in the West Bank who are accorded the full panoply and safeguard of Israeli civil law.
Under military law, Palestinians can be held without charge, for the purpose of interrogation, for a total period of 90 days during which they are denied the benefit of counsel. Detention can be extended without limit and requires but an ex parte request of military prosecutors. By comparison, a Jewish citizen accused of a security offense, within the Occupied Territory, can be held without indictment in the civil process for a period of up to 64 days during which time counsel is available at all times.
Though Palestinian detainees are entitled to military trials which must be completed within eighteen months of their arrest, their detention can be extended indefinitely, by a military judge, in multiple six-month increments. It is this limitless process which has left thousands of Palestinian political detainees imprisoned for years on end without the benefit of counsel, formal charges, or trial. The comparable time limit for detainees in Israeli civilian courts is no more than nine months.
While criminal liability begins at age twelve for Palestinians and Israelis alike, under the military system Palestinians can be tried as adults at sixteen. For Israelis, prosecution as an adult in a civilian court is eighteen. This two year difference, without physical distinction of consequence, can mean a sentence disparity of many years should a conviction ensue. In some cases, it can literally mean a difference between a few years in prison versus decades upon conviction.
Although the United Nations has repeatedly held that the military justice system in the Occupied Territory violates international law, it has done nothing to ensure equal protection and due process to hundreds of thousands denied justice by virtue of being Palestinian and nothing else. This continues to be true for Palestinian minors. According to B’tselem “…at the end of October 2019, 185 Palestinian minors were held in Israeli prisons as security detainees and prisoners, including one under the age of 14.”
Neighborhood Cleansing
With the onset of the Occupation in 1967, Israel initiated a wide range of largely extrajudicial strategies in its incessant effort to claim new municipal boundaries and to remake the age old Palestinian character of east Jerusalem. What began with the seize of large swaths of vacant land surrounding the Old City… for the construction of illegal Jewish settlements… eventually gave rise to the de facto annexation of East Jerusalem… universally condemned as a flaunt of international law. However, never ones to allow legal standards to become barricade to political needs, successive Israeli governments have accelerated the Judaization of the historic capital of Palestine, typically using the call of security as a pretext, while Israel’s judiciary has looked away…largely indifferent to its responsibility to ensure that equal justice be done.
Recently, Israel destroyed 10 mostly unfinished buildings containing some 70 apartments, in the Wadi Hummus neighborhood on the edge of southeast Jerusalem, which were being built with permits issued by the Palestinian Authority in an area under its recognized jurisdiction. Displacing 17 Palestinians, including an older couple and five children, from apartments that were finished, the demolitions also left several hundred others, awaiting housing in the buildings, saddled with ensuing economic loss. Though condemned by the United Nations, the government nonetheless proceeded with the demolitions after Israel’s High Court refused to intervene on the grounds that the project was being built in a military-declared buffer zone near a “security” fence that had gone up years before. That barrier, which is part of the system of steel fences and concrete walls which runs throughout the West Bank and around Jerusalem, was subsequently found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Like hundreds of other international declarations, Israel ignored the findings.
The destruction of these residential buildings is by no means an isolated or unpredictable phenomenon. In point of fact, another one-hundred buildings completed, or under construction, under similar circumstances in the same neighborhood, face the same risk.
While the proffered basis for demolitions has changed to suit the Israeli needs of the moment, they play an essential mainstay in its intended policy of ethnic cleansing throughout east Jerusalem. This modern-day pogrom finds its genesis in a cap that was placed on the expansion of Palestinian neighborhoods in the days following the seizure of east Jerusalem, thereby forcing many to build illegally according to the laws of the Occupation. This artificial limit has been exacerbated by systemic discrimination when it comes to the issue of building permits in east Jerusalem. Though Palestinians make up more than 60% of the population of the Old City according to the Israeli civil rights group Peace Now, they have received just 30% of the building permits issued by Israel dating back to 1991. Given these circumstances, it has been estimated that more than twenty-thousand housing units built in traditional Palestinian neighborhoods dating back to 1967 fall into the category of illegal… thus placing them at risk of demolition no matter what their condition, how long they have stood or the numbers of their occupants.
This danger has found new impetus since the United States moved its Embassy to east Jerusalem, essentially declaring it to be the capital of Israel. Emboldened by this act, and not now fearing either political or economic reprisal by the United States (or meaningful intervention by its own courts), Israel has recently accelerated its demolition policy leading to the destruction of several hundred residential and commercial structures… leaving hundreds of Palestinians homeless and dozens of businesses in ruins.
While precise figures are unknown, it is estimated that, over the last fifteen years, more than one thousand- five hundred residential and commercial units have been demolished by Israel leaving more than three-thousand Palestinians homeless… including some one thousand- five hundred minors.
Of late, we have seen an increase in the number of demolitions carried out by Palestinians, themselves. While some construe the demolition of several dozen Palestinian structures by their own residents as almost a willful, romanticized act of political defiance, self-demolition has less to do with self-determination than it does the unbearable cruelty and cost of the moment. The aching reality is that a judicial system without justice has authorized the state to bill those for the cost of the destruction of their own homes… lest they do so themselves.
Collective Punishment
While Israeli authorities have argued that punitive home demolitions provide “…a severe message of deterrence to terrorists and their accomplices”, such demolitions violate the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as a host of Israel’s human rights obligations… in particular that no-one should be punished for an act they did not commit. Under Israeli law, those subject to punitive home demolitions are accorded an opportunity to appeal a demolition order to a court. However, Israel’s High Court has routinely refused to consider the absolute prohibition in customary international law against collective punishment of civilians in occupied territory when ruling on petitions against punitive home demolitions in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem. As almost settled law, the Court has held that demolitions can, in general, be justified as “proportionate” when balanced against the need to deter other Palestinians from carrying out future attacks. Moreover, as a practical matter, rare are the opportunities for prospective victims to obtain timely judicial relief thru applications for review of looming military demolitions.
Thus, according to Article 119 of the Military Authority, the IDF commanders responsible for application of military measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are empowered to confiscate and demolish any property, if he determines that the inhabitant…and not necessarily owner… of the property resorted to terrorist violence. That power is not vested or required to go through judicial process but rather is purely administrative. Thus there is no need for a court order to authorize house demolitions and the evidence required to demolish a home carries for the military a low threshold of internal administrative proof …“…convincing in the eyes of a reasonable decision maker.”
Though reprisal has long enjoyed a high degree of support among the Israeli public, and thus politicians, there can be no reasoned debate over whether house demolitions constitute a form of collective punishment, and thus a war crime. Prohibited under basic principles of human rights law and Articles 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Article 50 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, demolitions also constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and are selectively applied as against Palestinians and never Jews who commit acts of terrorism.
At their core, these demolitions, which also violate the prohibition on the destruction of private property set forth under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 23(g) of the 1907 Hague Regulations, seek not to penalize a “terrorist” who is likely dead or in custody charged with serious offenses and facing years, if not decades, in prison, but rather, family members who reside in the home targeted for military reprisal. Thus, innocent parents, husbands or wives, children and siblings or other residents are left homeless as they are forced to bear the consequences of the acts of loved ones, even in the absence of any prior knowledge or nexus to them.
Although Israel has periodically suspended home demolitions, in times of heightened tension or militant resistance they have become very much part of the military mainstream since the onset of the Occupation. While the exact number of such demolitions is neither documented nor certain, it is estimated that more than 2,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed pursuant to Article 119 since 1967. Though the Israeli High Court requires the IDF commander to hold a hearing for the residents of a property to be destroyed and permits a petition to the court to stay the demolition, these “safeguards” have proven to be a promise without purpose. While the court has stressed those demolitions are harsh security measures that should be used only in “extreme circumstances” not once has it overridden the authority of the IDF to proceed accordingly.
Lest there be any doubt that history can be but a harbinger of things to come, some of those that run the bulldozer of today in Palestine are progeny of those who picked through the rubble of homes and businesses ransacked and destroyed as collective punishment for acts of terrorism. Undoubtedly a pretext, in 1938, following the assassination of a German Embassy attaché in Paris by a young Polish-German Jew, a campaign of collective reprisal was unleashed against Jews in Germany. Known as Kristallnacht, crowds set fire to synagogues, smashed shop windows, demolished furniture and stocks of goods with the approval of the German Government. Years later Nazis applied the principle of Sippenhaft (collective responsibility) to avenge the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ,the architect of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question”, through mass executions and the destruction of two Czech villages… Lidice and Lezaky.
With predictable promote, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently indicted the ICC investigation of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity as little more than anti-Semitism. Putting aside Netanyahu’s readily transparent canard, at its core, the ICC typically does not exercise its jurisdiction pursuant to the Rome Statute unless and until a state fails to provide a meaningful domestic remedy for violations of international law. On this score, few can deny that no such equitable and effective opportunity exists within Israel. As noted by Human Rights Watch, “…the impetus for the establishment of the ICC is the stark failure of national court systems to hold the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes accountable under law.”
Be it by virtue of the blanket political control of the Knesset or the deadly untamed reach of its security apparatus, Israel’s judiciary stands as an emasculated reminder that foreign nationals, whether occupied Palestinians or Westerners seen as enemies of the state, have not, and cannot, obtain due process and equal protection of the law, let alone in an independent and expeditious manner, through Israel’s judicial process. Under these circumstances, the Doctrine of Futility overshadows the need to exhaust local remedies to seek international relief for domestic wrongs. The Doctrine does not provide for an easy and settled pathway for foreign nationals to obtain justice outside the confines of extant domestic procedure. Yet, at its core, this international exemption finds its greatest potential and need when and where, as here, a judicial system is built upon a double standard of law… one for Palestinians, the other for Jews.
Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
CounterPunch
Seventeen years ago, 23 year old Rachel Corrie (a Washington State volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement) was crushed to death by an armored military bulldozer as she stood on top of a mound of dirt trying to prevent the dozer from destroying a civilian home in the Southern Gaza Strip village of Rafa. Wearing a bright orange vest and shouting out at the bulldozer through a megaphone, Corrie was murdered for the temerity of her unarmed act of peaceful defiance. More than a dozen years later the Israeli Supreme Court rejected her parents’ suit to hold Israel’s military accountable for her death. In finding that an “explicit statutory provision of the Knesset overrides the provisions of international law”, the Israeli High Court sacrificed well more than a century of settled international protections, including those memorialized under the laws of war and human rights, to the endless Israeli talisman of “wartime activity.”
More than a few historians can recall that very chant, raised and rejected at the Nuremberg Tribunals, which held Nazis accountable for targeted attacks on civilians throughout World War II.
Less than two months after the murder of Corrie, 34 year old James Henry Dominic Miller (a Welsh cameraman, producer and director who had won five Emmy awards for his work) was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, at night, while filming a documentary in the Rafah refugee camp. Moments after he and his crew left a Palestinian home bearing a white flag, two shots rang out. After the first shot a crew member cried out, “…we are British journalists.”. Soon, a second shot hit Miller, killing him instantly. Initially, one spokesperson reported that after the IDF discovered a tunnel at the house Miller had exited, he was shot in the back when caught in the middle of a crossfire precipitated by an anti-tank missile fired at Israeli troops. Another spokesperson said his death occurred during “…an operation taking place at night, in which the [Israeli] force was under fire and in which the force returned fire with light weapons.”
Later, both versions were retracted when it turned out that the round that killed Miller had entered not through his back but the front of his neck. Likewise, the tale of crossfire fell apart with witnesses reporting no such exchange of gunfire and none having been heard on an audio recording made contemporaneous to the incident.
Some two years later, an Israeli military police investigation into Miller’s killing was closed without returning any criminal charges against the Israeli soldier suspected of firing the fatal shot … though he was to be “disciplined” for violating the rules of engagement and for altering his account of what had occurred.
The following year, an inquest jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court in London returned a verdict finding that Miller had been “murdered” and that the fatal shot matched rounds used by the IDF. Not long thereafter, the UK Attorney General made a formal request to Israel for it to prosecute the soldier responsible for firing the shot. That request was ignored. To date, no such proceedings have been undertaken by Israel …be it by an independent investigatory body, the military or the office of the state prosecutor.
In March of 2009, thirty-eight year old California native, Tristan Anderson, was hit in the forehead by a high-velocity teargas canister fired directly at him by an Israeli border policeman, some 60 metres away, following a regular joint Palestinian -Jewish demonstration against the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. When struck, Anderson was simply talking with three or four other activists in the center of the village some distance from the “shame wall” where the demonstration had earlier occurred. In the months prior, four Palestinians had been killed by soldiers during like demonstrations.
Taken to a hospital with his head split open, Anderson underwent three emergency brain operations which required the partial removal of his frontal lobe. The surgery, which left him in a coma and in critical condition, blinded his right eye and paralyzed half of his body. After fifteen months of hospitalization, Anderson returned home where, a decade later, he continues to require around the clock care because of permanent cognitive impairment and physical disability.
Several days after Anderson was crippled, Israeli police opened an investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. Given the 400 plus metre range of the canister, and their respective positions, there was clear evidence of criminal intent on the part of the soldier who shot Anderson. Despite this, the investigation was closed, some six months later, without explanation or any public finding… and with no criminal charges filed against any police or military personnel.
When no criminal charges were filed against those involved, the Andersons filed a civil law suit against Israel but waited years for the case to proceed in an Israeli court. Years later, the case remains very much in a state of judicial limbo with no determination as to it merits. Not unusual at all, counsel for the Anderson’s has noted that “…[t]he astonishing negligence of this investigation and of the prosecutorial team that monitored its outcome is unacceptable, but it epitomizes Israel’s culture of impunity. Tristan’s case is actually not rare; it represents hundreds of other cases of Palestinian victims whose investigations have also failed.”
As she walked out of the courtroom after a judicial proceeding into the civil lawsuit regarding the shooting of her partner, Gabby Silverman, who is Jewish, was served with an order that she had to leave Israel within the following 7 days because there was “insufficient proof that there was a lawsuit going on, and insufficient proof that she is a Jew.”
These three matters involving the murder or cripple of foreign nationals by Israel are very much the rule and not the exception in a state that sees dissent or disobedience as an open invitation for retaliation. For the fortunate, it means but arrest or expulsion for the less so …outright assassination.
For those who survive politically rooted Israeli assault, or their mourning heirs, the road to equity remains a dead end… one blocked by walls of incompetence or indifference… smothered by systemic delay and legislative fiat that convert black robes of justice to mere rubber stamps of state. To be sure, Israel’s failure to promptly and thoroughly investigate facts and circumstances, let alone to prosecute its agents… military or otherwise… who commit crimes against foreign nationals or to provide for an equitable and expeditious civil remedy for them or their loved ones, is well-known, indeed, notorious throughout the world.
For Palestinians, every step outside their home is to navigate a mine field of uncertainty; every encounter with an Israeli soldier or police officer a literal tempt to their life or liberty. The famed Israeli human rights center, B’Tselem, has archived a veritable cemetery of Palestinians victimized by extra-judicial Israeli assassination. Most cry out for justice from beyond the headstones that mark their name with little else but the smile of their memory. Meanwhile, loved ones wait for the call of justice… an echo, for almost all, never to be heard.
On July 13, 2011, twenty-one year old Ibrahim ‘Omar Muhammad Sarhan was shot dead at al-Far’ah Refugee Camp by soldiers who ordered him to stop during an arrest operation. When he refused, he was killed. Though a military investigation into his killing was opened, it was eventually closed, with no one charged, on the grounds “…that the shooting soldier’s conduct was not unreasonable given the overall circumstances and his understanding of the situation at the time.”These horrors are but a microcosm of a deadly, systemic tradition that has raged unabated for generations in which thousands of largely young Palestinians have been targeted, crippled and murdered without penalty of consequence to Israel’s military or security structure… essentially unmonitored and uncontrolled… indifferent to human rights and international law. Yes, there have been those rare empty exceptions in which a perverse judicial performance has made a mockery of life and law with token punishment meted out for crimes that shock the conscience of humanity.
On February 23, 2012 twenty-five year old Tal’at ‘Abd a-Rahman Ziad Ramyeh was shot dead at the northeast corner to a-Ram, al-Quds District, after throwing a firecracker at soldiers during a clash with demonstrators. A military investigation into his death was closed “…on the grounds that the gunfire that killed Ramyeh was carried out in accordance with open fire regulations.”
On March 27, 2012, twenty-seven year old Rashad Dhib Hassan Shawakhah was wounded, in the village of Rammun, when he and his two brothers confronted two out-of-uniform soldiers who approached their home in the middle of the night. Believing the men to be burglars, the brothers, armed with a knife and a club, confronted the soldiers who, without identifying themselves, shot the three of them. Uniformed soldiers arriving at the scene shot Rashad, again, as he lay wounded on the ground. He died six days later. Although a military investigation was opened, more than seven years later no action has yet been taken.
On January 15, 2013, sixteen year old Samir Ahmad Muhammad ‘Awad of Budrus, Ramallah District, was shot and killed by soldiers near the Separation Barrier. After crossing the first barbed wire fence of the barrier, Awad was shot in the back and in the head as he tried to flee the soldiers’ ambush and return to Budrus. Although two soldiers were indicted, several years later, for reckless and negligent use of a firearm, the charges were eventually dismissed when prosecutors told the court that because their evidence had “weakened” there was no longer “…a reasonable prospect of conviction.”
On January 23, 2013, twenty-one year old Lubna Munir Sa’id al-Hanash was shot and killed while walking on the grounds of Al-‘ Arrub College, after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an Israeli car traveling ahead of the vehicle in which the soldier who fired and the second-in-command of the Yehuda Brigade were passengers. The following year, an investigation into the killing by the military was closed after a finding that the “… shooting did not breach protocol and did not constitute any type of criminal offense.”
On December 7, 2013, fifteen year old Wajih Wajdi Wajih a-Ramahi was shot in the back and killed by soldiers, at the Jalazon Refugee Camp, while standing in the vicinity of teenagers in the camp who were throwing stones at the soldiers from approximately 200 meters away. Six years later, the case remains under military “investigation.”
On March 19, 2014, fourteen year old Yusef Sami Yusef a-Shawamreh of Deir al-‘Asal al-Foqa, Hebron District, was shot by soldiers after he and two friends crossed a gap in the Separation Barrier to gather gundelia [Arabic: ‘Akub], a thistle-like edible plant. Not long thereafter, a military investigation of the shooting was closed with a finding of the “…absence of a suspected breach of open fire regulations or criminal conduct on the part of any military personnel.”
On May 15, 2014, sixteen year old Muhammad Mahmoud ‘Odeh Salameh was shot in the back and killed in a protest near the village of Bitunya, near the Ofer military base, that included stone-throwing. He was not throwing stones when killed. Two years later, the military closed an investigation into the killing after it claimed that no evidence was found connecting a soldier to the shooting.
On July 22, 2014, twenty-nine year old Mahmoud Saleh ‘Ali Hamamreh of Husan, Bethlehem District, was shot in the chest and killed by soldiers when he stepped out of his grocery shop to observe clashes underway in the village. While a military investigation was initiated soon thereafter, four years later no decision has yet to be reached.
On August 10, 2014, ten year old Khalil Muhammad Ahmad al-‘Anati of the al-Fawwar Refugee Camp was shot in the back by a soldier while near other boys who were throwing stones at a military jeep in the Camp. He died of his wounds in hospital. Several years later, a military investigation into the child’s killing ended after “…the investigation found that the troops had acted out of a sense of mortal danger, and that no link between the gunfire and the death of the boy… could be proven.”
On July 23, 2015, fifty-three year old Fallah Hamdi Zamel Abu Maryah of Beit Ummar, Hebron District, was killed after soldiers entered his home, to make an arrest, and shot and wounded his son. When Abu Mariyah threw pottery at the soldiers from a second floor balcony of his home, soldiers shot him three times in the chest. A military “investigation” continues.
On September 18, 2015, twenty-four year old Ahmad ‘Izat ‘Issa Khatatbeh of Beit Furik, Nablus District, who was congenitally deaf, was shot in the back by soldiers near the Beit Furik Checkpoint. He died six days later. To date, it appears no investigation into his killing has been initiated.
On September 22, 2015, eighteen year old Hadil Salah a-Din Sadeq al-Hashlamun of Hebron was shot and killed when hit multiple times in her legs and upper body after refusing to stop on her way out of the Police (Shoter) Checkpoint. As it turned out a concealed knife was recovered from her. No criminal investigation into her killing was undertaken.
On October 5, 2015, thirteen year old ‘Abd a-Rahman Shadi Khalil ‘Obeidallah of the ‘Aydah Refugee Camp, Bethlehem District, was shot dead by soldiers as he stood, with other teenagers, approximately 200 meters away from a military post at Rachel’s Tomb where minor clashes were underway between Palestinians and soldiers. Although a military investigation into the child’s killing was initiated, no decisions have been reached more than four years later.
On November 6, 2015, seventy-two year old Tharwat Ibrahim Suliman a-Sha’rawi was shot dead by soldiers standing on a road after they “suspected” she was trying to run some of them over. Even after the car passed, soldiers continued firing at her. The military reported no investigation was launched as a “…preliminary review of the incident did not indicate suspicion of a criminal offense.”
On November 13, 2015, twenty year old Lafy Yusef Mustafa ‘Awad of Budrus, Ramallah District, was critically injured when shot in the back by soldiers after he broke free from their grasp and began to flee. Driven to hospital in a civilian vehicle, which necessarily took longer because of a military checkpoint, he was pronounced dead upon arrival. No investigation was undertaken as the military stated “…a preliminary review of the incident did not indicate suspicion of a criminal offense.”
On December 11, 2015, fifty-six year old ‘Issa Ibrahim Salameh al-Hrub of Deir Samit, Hebron District was shot and killed by Border Police and soldiers who “suspected” he was trying to run them over. Six months later, the military advised that no investigation would be launched into the incident as a “…preliminary review of the incident did not indicate suspicion of a criminal offense.”
On December 18, 2015, thirty–four year old Nasha’t Jamal ‘Abd a-Razeq ‘Asfur of Sinjil, Ramallah District, was shot and critically wounded, while walking home, by soldiers more than a hundred meters away who opened fire while other Palestinians threw stones at them. He died later that day in hospital. While a military investigation was opened it was apparently closed without any charges.
On February 10, 2016, fifteen years old ‘Omar Yusef Isma’il Madi of the al-‘Arrub Refugee Camp, Hebron District, was shot dead by a soldier in a military tower, at the entrance to the camp, while stones were being thrown at the tower. Though an investigation was launched, more than three year later no conclusion has been reported.
On May 4, 2016, twenty-three year old Arif Sharif ‘Abd al-Ghafar Jaradat of Sa’ir, Hebron District, (who had Down’s syndrome) was shot as he approached soldiers as they were leaving his village. He died six weeks later. Although a military investigation was closed because “…the gunfire at the casualty did not deviate from open-fire regulations” an appeal has been filed.
On June 21, 2016, fifteen year old Mahmoud Raafat Mahmoud Mustafa Badran of Beit ‘Ur a-Tahta, Ramallah, was fatally shot… and four other young men injured… by soldiers who fired on their car while they were driving through a tunnel on their way home from a night at a swimming pool. An investigation was closed by the military which concluded “…in light of the circumstances of the incident, the miss-identification of the car was an honest and reasonable error, and it was permissible for the troops to initiate suspect apprehension procedure.”
On October 20, 2016, fifteen year old Khaled Bahar Ahmad Bahar of Beit Ummar, Hebron District, was shot in the back and killed as he ran into a grove fleeing soldiers. Although an investigation was reportedly begun, more than three year later no action has ensued.
On October 31, 2017, twenty-six year old Muhammad ‘Abdallah ‘Ali Musa of Deir Ballut, was shot dead by soldiers, while driving to Ramallah with his sister, after soldiers had reportedly been alerted that a suspicious vehicle was approaching. Ordering the car to stop, one of the soldiers began to fire at the car, and continued even after it had passed by, without any of its passengers having tried to harm anyone. It was reported that Musa lay wounded on the ground for some 10 minutes without receiving any medical care and was later seized by soldiers while being treated by a Palestinian ambulance team. Two years after the military opened an investigation, it was closed because the soldiers had “…acted in accordance with open-fire regulations and because their operational actions did not evince ethic deficiency.”
On January 30, 2018, sixteen year old Layth Haitham Fathi Abu Na’im of al-Mughayir, Ramallah, was shot in the head and critically injured by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by a soldier from 20 meters away, after returning to his village post clashes he had taken part in had ended. A military investigation is pending.
On December 4, 2018, twenty-two year old Muhammad Husam ‘Abd a-Latif Hbali of Tulkarm Refugee Camp, was shot in the head by soldiers from behind. Intellectually disabled, when shot, he was moving away from soldiers while carrying a stick. All was quiet at the time he was shot. A military investigation has been on-going since.
On December 14, 2018, eighteen year old Mahmoud Yusef Mahmoud Nakhleh of al-Jalazun Refugee Camp Ramallah, was shot in the back by soldiers from about 80 meters away while running near the entrance to the refugee camp… after others had thrown stones at a military post at its entrance. Soldiers dragged Nakhleh away by the arms and legs and denied him medical treatment for about 15 minutes. He died soon thereafter. A year ago, a military investigation was launched.
On December 20, 2018, seventeen year old Qassem Muhammad ‘Ali ‘Abasi of Ras al-‘Amud, East Jerusalem, was fatally shot in the back by soldiers, who were stationed near a checkpoint, as the car in which he and three of his relatives were passengers was driving away from the checkpoint. A military investigation was opened.
On March 20, 2019, twenty-two year old Ahmad Jamal Mahmoud Manasrah of Wadi Fukin, Bethlehem, was shot dead by a soldier who fired at him from a military tower near a local checkpoint. At the time he was killed, he was helping a family whose car had been shot at by soldiers and had pulled over. An investigation is pending.
On March 7, 2019, seventeen year old Sajed ‘Abd al-Hakim Helmi Muzher, a volunteer medic, from the a-Duheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem District, was shot in the stomach as he ran to evacuate a Palestinian who had been shot in the leg when stones were being thrown at troops who had entered the camp. He died later that day. A military investigation is on-going.
Thus, on January 1, 2013, twenty-one year old ‘Udai Muhammad Salameh Darawish of a-Ramadin, Hebron District, was shot dead by soldiers near the Meitar checkpoint as he fled them after he entered Israel, for work purposes, without a permit. Following a military investigation and plea bargain to negligent manslaughter, a soldier received a seven-month suspended sentence and was demoted to sergeant.
Two more recent judicial miscarriages remind us, once again, that law in Israel remains but a gavel for Jews and a bludgeon for all others:
On May 10th of this year, Elor Azaria, an Israeli medic who faced up to 20 years upon his conviction for manslaughter, walked out of prison after serving but nine months of an eighteen month sentence originally imposed on him by a military court. It was subsequently reduced to fourteen months by the IDF chief of staff and then again by the army’s prison parole board (and agreed to by military prosecutors) for his cold-blooded execution of twenty-one year old Abdul Fatah al-Sharif who lay injured and motionless on the ground after stabbing, but not seriously injuring, an Israeli soldier in Occupied Hebron. With calm, deliberate ease, Azaria was recorded as he approached his victim, cocked his rifle and executed him with a single shot to his head.
Not long ago, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to one month of the military’s equivalent of community service over the execution of fifteen year old Othman Rami Halles who he shot dead during protests near the Israel fence east of the Gaza Strip on July 13, 2018. The unnamed soldier was convicted for “…acting without authorisation in a manner endangering to life and well-being.”
These sentences pale in comparison to those routinely imposed upon Palestinian children convicted of throwing stones. For example, sixteen year old stone thrower Saleh Ashraf Ishtayya was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Fourteen year-olds Muhammad Ahmad Jaber and Murad Raed Alqam received three year sentences. Seventeen year old Muhammad Na’el and sixteen year old Zaid Ayed al-Taweel each received two years and four months in prison for the same offense. None of these children injured, let alone, took the life of an Israeli.
Tragically, casualties have long been the anguished, up-close face of the Occupation with an historical character that wields a deadly reach unmatched and long ignored by the world. As very much a perverse rite of passage, thousands of Palestinian civilians have paid the ultimate price for little more than their presence… lost to multiple high-tech military operations that have targeted residential communities and schools, hospitals and core infrastructure. Many more have been wounded or crippled by relentless Israeli attacks designed to leave survivors not just overwhelmed and battered but with a sense of isolation and futility. Nowhere has this brutal assault on fundamental human rights and international law been more conspicuous than through the sniper attacks on Gaza, over the past 18 months, that have slaughtered or injured tens of thousands of demonstrators whose only weapons have been the step of their march and the resound of their voice. And what of international law?
Volumes have been written on humanitarian law… the law of war and human rights. No doubt they line the walls of judicial halls throughout Israel… from its lowest military courtroom in the Occupied Territories to the highest civilian chamber that claims to rule supreme as the guardian of due process and equal protection for Israeli citizens and those held captive by it. Yet, even a cursory glance by an untrained eye leaves the imprint of a judicial system that is subservient to the chant of state security and legislative fiat and slowed to a process of delay that drags on and on for years leaving no one but Israeli Jews comfortable in the notion that they will have their day in court and with speed and fairness.
Millions of Palestinians are held captive in the Occupied Territories be it in the West Bank by security onslaught or military patrol or by the heap of Concertina wire, sniper mounds and air force and naval watch that keeps all of Gaza imprisoned every minute of every hour of every day. For these foreign nationals… and they are foreign nationals… they never see the inside of an Israeli civilian court or the due process it infers. For these perpetual prisoners, the uniformed soldiers that carry weapons become uniformed soldiers that investigate and prosecute cases to uniformed soldiers that pass judgment adorned not by robes of independence but by order of salute. As noted above in the archive of causality, few if any Palestinians ever obtain due process and equal protection of the law, let alone with independent and foreseeable resolution, as investigations and cases linger on for years pushed, predictably, to the back of the line as each new public outrage unfolds. This is not justice but the “Doctrine of Futility” at its primordial worst.
International Relief
It is settled law that before seeking international relief, aggrieved parties must first seek redress for harm, caused by a state, within its own domestic legal system. Exhaustion of local remedies (ELR) is intended to uphold state sovereignty by recognizing its own judicial process as a presumptive vehicle for the independent, equitable and expeditious resolution of claims against the state. ELR presumes a state’s judicial and administrative systems provide for a credible and apolitical avenue for injured foreign nationals to obtain their day in court before moving-on for diplomatic protection or undertaking international proceedings directly against the state. Yet, very much the proverbial beauty locked in the eyes of the beholder, provisions like equitable, independent and expeditious are routinely recast by repressive regimes across the globe to mirror little more than partisan safeguard of the state’s tyrannical needs and agenda.
Nowhere is that more palpably evident or painfully clear than it is in Israel where judicial remedies have long and repeatedly proven to be little more than a convenient faith based tease… a non-existent march to the beat of the overarching political gavel of the Knesset. For Israeli Jews, “all rise” portends opportunity denied all others. For Israeli Jews, lady justice cheats as she peeks out from behind her blindfold… for all others, she is but a symbol without a sign.
The ELR rule is a foundational mainstay of all global and regional international human rights entities and covenants. For example, within the UN, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mandates that it’s Human Rights Committee “shall deal with a matter referred to it only after it has ascertained that all available domestic remedies have been invoked and exhausted in the matter, in conformity with the generally recognized principles of international law.”
Likewise, the European Convention on Human Rights provides that the European Court of Human Rights “may only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been exhausted, according to the generally recognized rules of international law.”
The American Convention on Human Rights requires exhaustion of local remedies “in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law” before the submission of petitions or communications to the commission.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights provides that the Commission “can only deal with a matter submitted to it after making sure that all local remedies, if they exist, have been exhausted, unless it is obvious to the Commission that the procedure of achieving these remedies would be unduly prolonged.”
This exemption is but one of several that find smooth fit within the so-called “Doctrine of Futility.” Under this doctrine, while release from the requirements of the ELR fluctuates from venue to venue, by-in-large one need not chase domestic justice where none can be had. Thus, in general, ELR may be bypassed:
a. If the domestic legislation of the state concerned does not afford due process of law for the protection of the right or rights that have allegedly been violated;Israel is a veritable primer, a law school’s teach, on when and where all three damning exemptions merge to validate an apt and speedy march to the nearest international forum in pursuit of justice and human rights otherwise willfully denied foreign nationals in any courthouse or military barrack that flies the banner of the Star of David.
b. If the party alleging violation of his rights has been denied access to the remedies under domestic law or has been prevented from exhausting them; or
c. If there has been unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under these remedies.
And just who are foreign nationals? In most jurisdictions they cut a relatively narrow swath; typically but a handful of tourists, temporary workers, or businesses and those incidentally injured by practices of cross-border states. Yet, the numbers balloon to millions of foreign nationals in occupied Palestine where all aspects of every Palestinian’s life is impacted… if not controlled… daily by an occupation force and judicial process of another state.
Independent of the pervasive culture of military and security violence and its companion lack of fairness and accountability, the Israeli judicial system… both criminal and civil… presents a compelling case study in a double standard delayed and disabled based solely upon ones faith and national identity.
Child Prisoners
Over the last two decades, more than 8,000 Palestinian children (foreign nationals) have been arrested in the Occupied Territories and prosecuted in an Israeli military system devoid of any meaningful due process or equal protection for the most vulnerable and traumatized among those that have known nothing but the bark of occupation their entire lives. It is a military justice process notorious for the systematic ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children.
Several hours after their arrest, these children arrive at an interrogation and detention center alone, tired, and frightened. All interrogations, by their very nature, are inherently coercive no matter the age or experience of its victim. None are more so than for an often bruised and scared child forced to go through the process without the benefit of counsel or the presence of parents who are never permitted to participate.
Israeli law provides that all military interrogations must be undertaken in a prisoner’s native language and that any statement made must be reduced to writing in that language. Despite this prohibition, Palestinian detainees are typically coerced into signing statements, through verbal abuse, threats, and physical violence, that is memorialized by police in Hebrew… which most cannot understand. These statements usually provide the main evidence against children in Israeli military courts.
The Military Court Process
The military “courts” themselves are held inside military bases and closed to the public… and usually family members of the accused. Within these courts, military orders supersede Israeli civilian and international law.
In military courts, all parties… the judge, prosecutor and translators… are members of the Israeli armed forces. The judges are military officers with minimal judicial training and, by-in- large, served as military prosecutors before assuming the bench. The prosecutors are Israeli soldiers, some not yet certified as attorneys by the Israeli Bar. Under the rules of Occupation, all defendants in military courts are Palestinian… as the jurisdiction of the Israeli military court never extends to some eight hundred thousand Jewish settlers living in the West Bank who are accorded the full panoply and safeguard of Israeli civil law.
Under military law, Palestinians can be held without charge, for the purpose of interrogation, for a total period of 90 days during which they are denied the benefit of counsel. Detention can be extended without limit and requires but an ex parte request of military prosecutors. By comparison, a Jewish citizen accused of a security offense, within the Occupied Territory, can be held without indictment in the civil process for a period of up to 64 days during which time counsel is available at all times.
Though Palestinian detainees are entitled to military trials which must be completed within eighteen months of their arrest, their detention can be extended indefinitely, by a military judge, in multiple six-month increments. It is this limitless process which has left thousands of Palestinian political detainees imprisoned for years on end without the benefit of counsel, formal charges, or trial. The comparable time limit for detainees in Israeli civilian courts is no more than nine months.
While criminal liability begins at age twelve for Palestinians and Israelis alike, under the military system Palestinians can be tried as adults at sixteen. For Israelis, prosecution as an adult in a civilian court is eighteen. This two year difference, without physical distinction of consequence, can mean a sentence disparity of many years should a conviction ensue. In some cases, it can literally mean a difference between a few years in prison versus decades upon conviction.
Although the United Nations has repeatedly held that the military justice system in the Occupied Territory violates international law, it has done nothing to ensure equal protection and due process to hundreds of thousands denied justice by virtue of being Palestinian and nothing else. This continues to be true for Palestinian minors. According to B’tselem “…at the end of October 2019, 185 Palestinian minors were held in Israeli prisons as security detainees and prisoners, including one under the age of 14.”
Neighborhood Cleansing
With the onset of the Occupation in 1967, Israel initiated a wide range of largely extrajudicial strategies in its incessant effort to claim new municipal boundaries and to remake the age old Palestinian character of east Jerusalem. What began with the seize of large swaths of vacant land surrounding the Old City… for the construction of illegal Jewish settlements… eventually gave rise to the de facto annexation of East Jerusalem… universally condemned as a flaunt of international law. However, never ones to allow legal standards to become barricade to political needs, successive Israeli governments have accelerated the Judaization of the historic capital of Palestine, typically using the call of security as a pretext, while Israel’s judiciary has looked away…largely indifferent to its responsibility to ensure that equal justice be done.
Recently, Israel destroyed 10 mostly unfinished buildings containing some 70 apartments, in the Wadi Hummus neighborhood on the edge of southeast Jerusalem, which were being built with permits issued by the Palestinian Authority in an area under its recognized jurisdiction. Displacing 17 Palestinians, including an older couple and five children, from apartments that were finished, the demolitions also left several hundred others, awaiting housing in the buildings, saddled with ensuing economic loss. Though condemned by the United Nations, the government nonetheless proceeded with the demolitions after Israel’s High Court refused to intervene on the grounds that the project was being built in a military-declared buffer zone near a “security” fence that had gone up years before. That barrier, which is part of the system of steel fences and concrete walls which runs throughout the West Bank and around Jerusalem, was subsequently found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Like hundreds of other international declarations, Israel ignored the findings.
The destruction of these residential buildings is by no means an isolated or unpredictable phenomenon. In point of fact, another one-hundred buildings completed, or under construction, under similar circumstances in the same neighborhood, face the same risk.
While the proffered basis for demolitions has changed to suit the Israeli needs of the moment, they play an essential mainstay in its intended policy of ethnic cleansing throughout east Jerusalem. This modern-day pogrom finds its genesis in a cap that was placed on the expansion of Palestinian neighborhoods in the days following the seizure of east Jerusalem, thereby forcing many to build illegally according to the laws of the Occupation. This artificial limit has been exacerbated by systemic discrimination when it comes to the issue of building permits in east Jerusalem. Though Palestinians make up more than 60% of the population of the Old City according to the Israeli civil rights group Peace Now, they have received just 30% of the building permits issued by Israel dating back to 1991. Given these circumstances, it has been estimated that more than twenty-thousand housing units built in traditional Palestinian neighborhoods dating back to 1967 fall into the category of illegal… thus placing them at risk of demolition no matter what their condition, how long they have stood or the numbers of their occupants.
This danger has found new impetus since the United States moved its Embassy to east Jerusalem, essentially declaring it to be the capital of Israel. Emboldened by this act, and not now fearing either political or economic reprisal by the United States (or meaningful intervention by its own courts), Israel has recently accelerated its demolition policy leading to the destruction of several hundred residential and commercial structures… leaving hundreds of Palestinians homeless and dozens of businesses in ruins.
While precise figures are unknown, it is estimated that, over the last fifteen years, more than one thousand- five hundred residential and commercial units have been demolished by Israel leaving more than three-thousand Palestinians homeless… including some one thousand- five hundred minors.
Of late, we have seen an increase in the number of demolitions carried out by Palestinians, themselves. While some construe the demolition of several dozen Palestinian structures by their own residents as almost a willful, romanticized act of political defiance, self-demolition has less to do with self-determination than it does the unbearable cruelty and cost of the moment. The aching reality is that a judicial system without justice has authorized the state to bill those for the cost of the destruction of their own homes… lest they do so themselves.
Collective Punishment
While Israeli authorities have argued that punitive home demolitions provide “…a severe message of deterrence to terrorists and their accomplices”, such demolitions violate the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as a host of Israel’s human rights obligations… in particular that no-one should be punished for an act they did not commit. Under Israeli law, those subject to punitive home demolitions are accorded an opportunity to appeal a demolition order to a court. However, Israel’s High Court has routinely refused to consider the absolute prohibition in customary international law against collective punishment of civilians in occupied territory when ruling on petitions against punitive home demolitions in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem. As almost settled law, the Court has held that demolitions can, in general, be justified as “proportionate” when balanced against the need to deter other Palestinians from carrying out future attacks. Moreover, as a practical matter, rare are the opportunities for prospective victims to obtain timely judicial relief thru applications for review of looming military demolitions.
Thus, according to Article 119 of the Military Authority, the IDF commanders responsible for application of military measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are empowered to confiscate and demolish any property, if he determines that the inhabitant…and not necessarily owner… of the property resorted to terrorist violence. That power is not vested or required to go through judicial process but rather is purely administrative. Thus there is no need for a court order to authorize house demolitions and the evidence required to demolish a home carries for the military a low threshold of internal administrative proof …“…convincing in the eyes of a reasonable decision maker.”
Though reprisal has long enjoyed a high degree of support among the Israeli public, and thus politicians, there can be no reasoned debate over whether house demolitions constitute a form of collective punishment, and thus a war crime. Prohibited under basic principles of human rights law and Articles 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Article 50 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, demolitions also constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and are selectively applied as against Palestinians and never Jews who commit acts of terrorism.
At their core, these demolitions, which also violate the prohibition on the destruction of private property set forth under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 23(g) of the 1907 Hague Regulations, seek not to penalize a “terrorist” who is likely dead or in custody charged with serious offenses and facing years, if not decades, in prison, but rather, family members who reside in the home targeted for military reprisal. Thus, innocent parents, husbands or wives, children and siblings or other residents are left homeless as they are forced to bear the consequences of the acts of loved ones, even in the absence of any prior knowledge or nexus to them.
Although Israel has periodically suspended home demolitions, in times of heightened tension or militant resistance they have become very much part of the military mainstream since the onset of the Occupation. While the exact number of such demolitions is neither documented nor certain, it is estimated that more than 2,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed pursuant to Article 119 since 1967. Though the Israeli High Court requires the IDF commander to hold a hearing for the residents of a property to be destroyed and permits a petition to the court to stay the demolition, these “safeguards” have proven to be a promise without purpose. While the court has stressed those demolitions are harsh security measures that should be used only in “extreme circumstances” not once has it overridden the authority of the IDF to proceed accordingly.
Lest there be any doubt that history can be but a harbinger of things to come, some of those that run the bulldozer of today in Palestine are progeny of those who picked through the rubble of homes and businesses ransacked and destroyed as collective punishment for acts of terrorism. Undoubtedly a pretext, in 1938, following the assassination of a German Embassy attaché in Paris by a young Polish-German Jew, a campaign of collective reprisal was unleashed against Jews in Germany. Known as Kristallnacht, crowds set fire to synagogues, smashed shop windows, demolished furniture and stocks of goods with the approval of the German Government. Years later Nazis applied the principle of Sippenhaft (collective responsibility) to avenge the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ,the architect of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question”, through mass executions and the destruction of two Czech villages… Lidice and Lezaky.
With predictable promote, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently indicted the ICC investigation of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity as little more than anti-Semitism. Putting aside Netanyahu’s readily transparent canard, at its core, the ICC typically does not exercise its jurisdiction pursuant to the Rome Statute unless and until a state fails to provide a meaningful domestic remedy for violations of international law. On this score, few can deny that no such equitable and effective opportunity exists within Israel. As noted by Human Rights Watch, “…the impetus for the establishment of the ICC is the stark failure of national court systems to hold the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes accountable under law.”
Be it by virtue of the blanket political control of the Knesset or the deadly untamed reach of its security apparatus, Israel’s judiciary stands as an emasculated reminder that foreign nationals, whether occupied Palestinians or Westerners seen as enemies of the state, have not, and cannot, obtain due process and equal protection of the law, let alone in an independent and expeditious manner, through Israel’s judicial process. Under these circumstances, the Doctrine of Futility overshadows the need to exhaust local remedies to seek international relief for domestic wrongs. The Doctrine does not provide for an easy and settled pathway for foreign nationals to obtain justice outside the confines of extant domestic procedure. Yet, at its core, this international exemption finds its greatest potential and need when and where, as here, a judicial system is built upon a double standard of law… one for Palestinians, the other for Jews.
Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
2019-10-18
Settlers Use Crowbars to Beat Up Rabbi, 80, Who was Aiding Palestinian Olive Harvest
Octogenarian Israeli activist and four foreigners injured in northern West Bank when assailants arrived with crowbars, went on to burn hundreds of trees, Yesh Din says
by Jacob Magid
Gush Shalom
An 80-year-old Israeli activist said he “feared for his life” on Wednesday when a group of masked settler youth armed with crowbars charged at him and a group of largely foreign volunteers assisting Palestinian farmers with the annual olive harvest in the northern West Bank.
Rabbi Moshe Yehudai made the comments to Army Radio hours after he and fellow volunteers endured a brutal assault documented by rights groups at the scene.
Of the five volunteers who were injured, four were visiting from the US, UK and other European countries, said a field worker for the Yesh Din NGO. Yehudai, an Israeli activist from Rabbis for Human Rights, was the fifth person targeted, suffering blows to the arm and head. He was evacuated to the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba with a broken arm.
Rabbis for Human Rights recruits Israeli and foreign volunteers to accompany Palestinians, who say they face regular intimidation and violence while tending to crops located near settlements throughout the West Bank.
On Wednesday morning, roughly ten volunteers were assisting Palestinian farmers from the villages of Burin and Haware when a group of over 30 masked settlers descended from Yitzhar, a settlement identified by the Israeli security establishment as a hotbed for extremism, according to a Yesh Din field worker.
The Yesh Din field worker who spoke to The Times of Israel said that he arrived at the scene shortly after the assault began. After an IDF jeep was seen from a distance making its way to the field, the settler youth ignited a brushfire and retreated toward Yitzhar. At which point, the army vehicle turned around, the NGO staffer said.
Firefighter planes were dispatched to the scene to put out the fire which burned down hundreds of olive trees, some decades old, according to Yesh Din.
An IDF spokeswoman said she was looking into the incident, but was unable to provide any additional information.
A Yesh Din volunteer with wounds sustained during an altercation with settlers int he West Bank on October 16, 2019. (Courtesy Yesh Din/Lexie Botzum)
The foreign volunteers filed a report at a nearby police station in the settlement of Ariel, but a spokeswoman for law enforcement could not provide any details on whether an investigation had been opened.
A statement from Yitzhar settlement later Wednesday blamed the incident on “provocations caused by extreme-left activists,” who together with Palestinian approached the settlement, which the statement said created “a security hazard.”
Speaking from the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance that tended to his injuries near the scene of the assault, Yehudai recalled assisting the Palestinian farmers with the other volunteers when the settlers charged at them.
“Suddenly, the settlers came with their faces [covered]. They started running at us, they surrounded me, threw rocks at me, hit me with crowbars, giving me a head injury,” he said.
“I told them I’m 80-years-old. Leave me alone,” he added, lamenting that the assailants refused to do so.
The incident came as the annual olive harvest was just beginning. More than 100,000 Palestinian families rely to some extent on the income they generate from their olives and some 18 percent of Palestinian agricultural production comes from olives, according to statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The harvest is a frequent site of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers that the Israel Defense Forces says it seeks to prevent.
Palestinian media and rights groups have reported multiple cases of Israelis interfering with the annual harvest, attacking Palestinians, stealing olives and uprooting trees.
In many places, farmers say they face intimidation and violence from nearby extremist settlers and call in help from both foreign and Israeli supporters, including Jewish rabbis, to protect them and their crops.
Some of the incidents are seen as attempts at revenge following Palestinian attacks on Israelis, even if the farmers targeted were not involved.
In other cases, rights groups say, there is little motivation other than just to destroy Palestinian property.
Israeli settlers charge that their crops have also been damaged by Palestinians, including one incident in May 2018 when around 1,000 grapevines were destroyed.
Hate crime
Also Wednesday morning, residents of the central West Bank village of Deir Ammar woke up to find 10 vehicles vandalized and walls spray-painted with Hebrew slogans in the latest apparent hate crime targeting Palestinians over the Green Line.
Phrases daubed on cars and walls included: “When our brothers are being murdered, it is our obligation to not forget” and “The nation of Israel lives,” according to a Yesh Din field worker who arrived at the scene and provided photos of the damages.
Police said they were aware of the incident and were looking into the matter.
Last week, law enforcement opened an investigation after Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of Qira woke up to find 13 vehicles vandalized and Hebrew-language hate messages graffitied on walls throughout the town.
Among the phrases spray-painted in the town north of the Ariel settlement were “There is no room for enemies in Israel” and “When Jews are hurt, it is our obligation not to forget.”
Footage from security cameras in Qira caught several masked individuals walking through the village and slashing tires of a tractor and other vehicles in their path.
Abdullah Kamil, the Governor of the Salfit District in which Qira resides, told Haaretz that the Israeli government “bears responsibility for the crime and the repeated attacks by settlers.”
Despite the dozens of hate crimes targeting Palestinians and their property over the past year, few perpetrators are ever arrested or charged, according to rights groups.
The incidents, often referred to as price tag attacks, are usually limited to arson and graffiti, but have sometimes included physical assaults and even murder.
In December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report that showed a 69% increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017.
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Settlers attack olive harvesters, Israeli volunteers in West Bank villagehttps://972mag.com/settlers-attack-olive-harvest-west-bank/143950/
Masked settlers uproot olive trees, set groves ablaze, and beat several Israeli volunteers with stones and metal rods in the West Bank village of Burin.
Masked men from the settlement of Yitzhar wielding metal rods and stones attacked volunteers from Rabbis for Human Rights, a human rights organization based in Israel, while they were picking olives alongside Palestinian farmers in the West Bank village of Burin on Wednesday. According to a spokesperson for the organization, settlers set fire to the olive groves, causing a blaze that spread rapidly and burned for hours.
Rabbi Moshe Yehudai, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights’ board, was taken to Meir Medical Center after suffering severe wounds. He recounted the incident while lying on a gurney in an ambulance, as medics bandaged his head. One of the masked youths had hit him on the head with an iron rod, while another instructed him to leave. “I told them to leave me alone, that I am 80 years old and cannot run,” he said.
Avi Dabush, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, said the incident highlighted the lawlessness in the West Bank, stressing that the volunteers would not be deterred from helping the Palestinian farmers as they harvest their olives. “For the last 17 years we have helped with the harvest, and we will continue to stand up against violent bullies,” he said, adding that this was the only way toward a peaceful joint future between Jews and Arabs living on the land.
AFP reported that Israel sent fire extinguishing planes to extinguish the fire set by the settlers. Researchers for Israeli human rights group Yesh Din estimate that the blaze consumed hundreds of acres of farmland in Burin and Huwara, both villages in the Nablus area.
The Rabbis for Human Rights spokesperson said that a group of settlers had threatened the farmers earlier in the week, threatening to beat them and vandalize their crops. The army has failed to protect the farmers from settler attacks, he noted. Israel’s occupation policies often prevent Palestinians from accessing their own lands, while violent settlers are allowed to roam freely.
Earlier on Wednesday morning, residents of the village of Deir Ammar woke up to discover that unknown vandals, most likely settlers from nearby outposts, had slashed tires and spray-painted Hebrew slogans and Stars of David on their homes and on their cars.
by Jacob Magid
Gush Shalom
An 80-year-old Israeli activist said he “feared for his life” on Wednesday when a group of masked settler youth armed with crowbars charged at him and a group of largely foreign volunteers assisting Palestinian farmers with the annual olive harvest in the northern West Bank.
Rabbi Moshe Yehudai made the comments to Army Radio hours after he and fellow volunteers endured a brutal assault documented by rights groups at the scene.
Of the five volunteers who were injured, four were visiting from the US, UK and other European countries, said a field worker for the Yesh Din NGO. Yehudai, an Israeli activist from Rabbis for Human Rights, was the fifth person targeted, suffering blows to the arm and head. He was evacuated to the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba with a broken arm.
Rabbis for Human Rights recruits Israeli and foreign volunteers to accompany Palestinians, who say they face regular intimidation and violence while tending to crops located near settlements throughout the West Bank.
On Wednesday morning, roughly ten volunteers were assisting Palestinian farmers from the villages of Burin and Haware when a group of over 30 masked settlers descended from Yitzhar, a settlement identified by the Israeli security establishment as a hotbed for extremism, according to a Yesh Din field worker.
The Yesh Din field worker who spoke to The Times of Israel said that he arrived at the scene shortly after the assault began. After an IDF jeep was seen from a distance making its way to the field, the settler youth ignited a brushfire and retreated toward Yitzhar. At which point, the army vehicle turned around, the NGO staffer said.
Firefighter planes were dispatched to the scene to put out the fire which burned down hundreds of olive trees, some decades old, according to Yesh Din.
An IDF spokeswoman said she was looking into the incident, but was unable to provide any additional information.
A Yesh Din volunteer with wounds sustained during an altercation with settlers int he West Bank on October 16, 2019. (Courtesy Yesh Din/Lexie Botzum)
The foreign volunteers filed a report at a nearby police station in the settlement of Ariel, but a spokeswoman for law enforcement could not provide any details on whether an investigation had been opened.
A statement from Yitzhar settlement later Wednesday blamed the incident on “provocations caused by extreme-left activists,” who together with Palestinian approached the settlement, which the statement said created “a security hazard.”
Speaking from the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance that tended to his injuries near the scene of the assault, Yehudai recalled assisting the Palestinian farmers with the other volunteers when the settlers charged at them.
“Suddenly, the settlers came with their faces [covered]. They started running at us, they surrounded me, threw rocks at me, hit me with crowbars, giving me a head injury,” he said.
“I told them I’m 80-years-old. Leave me alone,” he added, lamenting that the assailants refused to do so.
The incident came as the annual olive harvest was just beginning. More than 100,000 Palestinian families rely to some extent on the income they generate from their olives and some 18 percent of Palestinian agricultural production comes from olives, according to statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The harvest is a frequent site of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers that the Israel Defense Forces says it seeks to prevent.
Palestinian media and rights groups have reported multiple cases of Israelis interfering with the annual harvest, attacking Palestinians, stealing olives and uprooting trees.
In many places, farmers say they face intimidation and violence from nearby extremist settlers and call in help from both foreign and Israeli supporters, including Jewish rabbis, to protect them and their crops.
Some of the incidents are seen as attempts at revenge following Palestinian attacks on Israelis, even if the farmers targeted were not involved.
In other cases, rights groups say, there is little motivation other than just to destroy Palestinian property.
Israeli settlers charge that their crops have also been damaged by Palestinians, including one incident in May 2018 when around 1,000 grapevines were destroyed.
Hate crime
Also Wednesday morning, residents of the central West Bank village of Deir Ammar woke up to find 10 vehicles vandalized and walls spray-painted with Hebrew slogans in the latest apparent hate crime targeting Palestinians over the Green Line.
Phrases daubed on cars and walls included: “When our brothers are being murdered, it is our obligation to not forget” and “The nation of Israel lives,” according to a Yesh Din field worker who arrived at the scene and provided photos of the damages.
Police said they were aware of the incident and were looking into the matter.
Last week, law enforcement opened an investigation after Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of Qira woke up to find 13 vehicles vandalized and Hebrew-language hate messages graffitied on walls throughout the town.
Among the phrases spray-painted in the town north of the Ariel settlement were “There is no room for enemies in Israel” and “When Jews are hurt, it is our obligation not to forget.”
Footage from security cameras in Qira caught several masked individuals walking through the village and slashing tires of a tractor and other vehicles in their path.
Abdullah Kamil, the Governor of the Salfit District in which Qira resides, told Haaretz that the Israeli government “bears responsibility for the crime and the repeated attacks by settlers.”
Despite the dozens of hate crimes targeting Palestinians and their property over the past year, few perpetrators are ever arrested or charged, according to rights groups.
The incidents, often referred to as price tag attacks, are usually limited to arson and graffiti, but have sometimes included physical assaults and even murder.
In December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report that showed a 69% increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017.
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Settlers attack olive harvesters, Israeli volunteers in West Bank villagehttps://972mag.com/settlers-attack-olive-harvest-west-bank/143950/
Masked settlers uproot olive trees, set groves ablaze, and beat several Israeli volunteers with stones and metal rods in the West Bank village of Burin.
Masked men from the settlement of Yitzhar wielding metal rods and stones attacked volunteers from Rabbis for Human Rights, a human rights organization based in Israel, while they were picking olives alongside Palestinian farmers in the West Bank village of Burin on Wednesday. According to a spokesperson for the organization, settlers set fire to the olive groves, causing a blaze that spread rapidly and burned for hours.
Rabbi Moshe Yehudai, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights’ board, was taken to Meir Medical Center after suffering severe wounds. He recounted the incident while lying on a gurney in an ambulance, as medics bandaged his head. One of the masked youths had hit him on the head with an iron rod, while another instructed him to leave. “I told them to leave me alone, that I am 80 years old and cannot run,” he said.
Avi Dabush, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, said the incident highlighted the lawlessness in the West Bank, stressing that the volunteers would not be deterred from helping the Palestinian farmers as they harvest their olives. “For the last 17 years we have helped with the harvest, and we will continue to stand up against violent bullies,” he said, adding that this was the only way toward a peaceful joint future between Jews and Arabs living on the land.
AFP reported that Israel sent fire extinguishing planes to extinguish the fire set by the settlers. Researchers for Israeli human rights group Yesh Din estimate that the blaze consumed hundreds of acres of farmland in Burin and Huwara, both villages in the Nablus area.
The Rabbis for Human Rights spokesperson said that a group of settlers had threatened the farmers earlier in the week, threatening to beat them and vandalize their crops. The army has failed to protect the farmers from settler attacks, he noted. Israel’s occupation policies often prevent Palestinians from accessing their own lands, while violent settlers are allowed to roam freely.
Earlier on Wednesday morning, residents of the village of Deir Ammar woke up to discover that unknown vandals, most likely settlers from nearby outposts, had slashed tires and spray-painted Hebrew slogans and Stars of David on their homes and on their cars.
2019-03-05
Victory for the Chagos Islanders
by John Pilger
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has handed down a momentous judgement that says Britain's colonial authority over the Chagos Islands is no longer legal. John Pilger, whose 2004 film, Stealing a Nation, alerted much of the world to the plight of the islanders, tells their story here.
You can watch Stealing a Nation here.
There are times when one tragedy tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic façade and helps us understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments often justify their actions with lies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the British Government of Harold Wilson expelled the entire population of the Chagos Islands, a British crown colony in the Indian Ocean, to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island. In high secrecy, the Americans offered a discounted Polaris nuclear submarine as payment for use of the islands.
The truth of this conspiracy did not emerge for another 20 years when secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy. The British media all but ignored it; the Washington Post called it a 'mass kidnapping'.
I first heard of the plight of the Chagossians in 1982, during the Falklands War. Britain had sent a fleet to the aid of 2,000 Falkland Islanders at the other end of the world while another 2,000 British citizens from islands in the Indian Ocean had been expelled by British governments and hardly anyone knew.
The difference was that the Falkland Islanders were white and the Chagossians were black and, crucially, the United States wanted the islands - especially Diego Garcia - as a major military base from which to command the Indian Ocean.
The Chagos Islands were a natural paradise. The 1,500 islanders were self-sufficient with an abundance of natural produce, and extreme weather was rare. There were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life - until a secret 1961 Anglo-American survey of Diego Garcia led to the deportation of the entire population.
The expulsions began in 1965. People were herded into the hold of a rusting ship, the women and children forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. They were dumped in the Seychelles, where they were held in prison cells, then shipped on to Mauritius, where they were taken to a derelict housing estate with no water or electricity.
Twenty-six families died here in brutal poverty, there were nine suicides; and girls were forced into prostitution to survive.
I interviewed many of them. One woman recalled how she and her husband took their baby to Mauritius for medical treatment and were told they could not return. The shock was so great that her husband suffered a stroke and died. Others described how the British and Americans gassed their dogs - beloved pets to the islanders - as an intimidation to pack up and leave. Lizette Talate told me how her children had 'died of sadness'. She herself has since died.
The depopulation of the archipelago was completed within 10 years and Diego Garcia became home to one of the United States' biggest bases, with more than 2,000 troops, two bomber runways, 30 warships, facilities for nuclear-armed submarines and a satellite spy station. Iraq and Afghanistan were bombed from the former paradise. Following 9/11, America's perceived enemies were 'rendered' here and there is evidence they were tortured.
All the while, the Chagos remained a British possession and its people a British responsibility. After demonstrating on the streets of Mauritius in 1982, the exiled islanders were given the derisory compensation of less than £3,000 each by the British government.
When declassified British Foreign Office files were discovered, the full sordid story was laid bare. One file was headed, 'Maintaining the Fiction' and instructed British officials to lie that the islanders were itinerant workers, not a stable indigenous population. Secretly, British officials recognised they were open to 'charges of dishonesty' because they were planning to 'cook the books' - lie.
In 2000, the High Court in London ruled the expulsions illegal. In response, the Labour government of Tony Blair invoked the Royal Prerogative, an archaic power invested in the Queen's 'Privy Council' that allows the government to bypass Parliament and the courts. In this way, the government hoped, the islanders could be prevented from ever returning home.
The High Court again ruled that the Chagossians were entitled to return and in 2008, the Foreign Office appealed to the Supreme Court. Although based on no new evidence, the appeal was successful.
I was in Parliament - where the highest court then sat in the House of Lords - on the day of the judgement. I have never seen such shame-faced judges in what was clearly a political decision.
In 2010, the British government sought to reinforce this by establishing a marine nature reserve around the Chagos Islands. The ruse was exposed by WikiLeaks, which published a US Embassy diplomatic cable from 2009 that read, 'Establishing a marine reserve might indeed, as the FCO's [Colin] Roberts stated, be the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands' former inhabitants or descendants from resettling.'
Now the International Court of Justice has decided that the British government of the day had no right in law to separate the Chagos Islands from Mauritius when it granted Mauritius independence. The Court, whose powers are advisory, has said Britain must end its authority over the islands. By extension, that almost certainly makes the US base illegal.
Of course, the indefatigable campaign of the Chagossians and their supporters will not stop there: not until the first islander goes home.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has handed down a momentous judgement that says Britain's colonial authority over the Chagos Islands is no longer legal. John Pilger, whose 2004 film, Stealing a Nation, alerted much of the world to the plight of the islanders, tells their story here.
You can watch Stealing a Nation here.
There are times when one tragedy tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic façade and helps us understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments often justify their actions with lies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the British Government of Harold Wilson expelled the entire population of the Chagos Islands, a British crown colony in the Indian Ocean, to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island. In high secrecy, the Americans offered a discounted Polaris nuclear submarine as payment for use of the islands.
The truth of this conspiracy did not emerge for another 20 years when secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy. The British media all but ignored it; the Washington Post called it a 'mass kidnapping'.
I first heard of the plight of the Chagossians in 1982, during the Falklands War. Britain had sent a fleet to the aid of 2,000 Falkland Islanders at the other end of the world while another 2,000 British citizens from islands in the Indian Ocean had been expelled by British governments and hardly anyone knew.
The difference was that the Falkland Islanders were white and the Chagossians were black and, crucially, the United States wanted the islands - especially Diego Garcia - as a major military base from which to command the Indian Ocean.
The Chagos Islands were a natural paradise. The 1,500 islanders were self-sufficient with an abundance of natural produce, and extreme weather was rare. There were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life - until a secret 1961 Anglo-American survey of Diego Garcia led to the deportation of the entire population.
The expulsions began in 1965. People were herded into the hold of a rusting ship, the women and children forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. They were dumped in the Seychelles, where they were held in prison cells, then shipped on to Mauritius, where they were taken to a derelict housing estate with no water or electricity.
Twenty-six families died here in brutal poverty, there were nine suicides; and girls were forced into prostitution to survive.
I interviewed many of them. One woman recalled how she and her husband took their baby to Mauritius for medical treatment and were told they could not return. The shock was so great that her husband suffered a stroke and died. Others described how the British and Americans gassed their dogs - beloved pets to the islanders - as an intimidation to pack up and leave. Lizette Talate told me how her children had 'died of sadness'. She herself has since died.
The depopulation of the archipelago was completed within 10 years and Diego Garcia became home to one of the United States' biggest bases, with more than 2,000 troops, two bomber runways, 30 warships, facilities for nuclear-armed submarines and a satellite spy station. Iraq and Afghanistan were bombed from the former paradise. Following 9/11, America's perceived enemies were 'rendered' here and there is evidence they were tortured.
All the while, the Chagos remained a British possession and its people a British responsibility. After demonstrating on the streets of Mauritius in 1982, the exiled islanders were given the derisory compensation of less than £3,000 each by the British government.
When declassified British Foreign Office files were discovered, the full sordid story was laid bare. One file was headed, 'Maintaining the Fiction' and instructed British officials to lie that the islanders were itinerant workers, not a stable indigenous population. Secretly, British officials recognised they were open to 'charges of dishonesty' because they were planning to 'cook the books' - lie.
In 2000, the High Court in London ruled the expulsions illegal. In response, the Labour government of Tony Blair invoked the Royal Prerogative, an archaic power invested in the Queen's 'Privy Council' that allows the government to bypass Parliament and the courts. In this way, the government hoped, the islanders could be prevented from ever returning home.
The High Court again ruled that the Chagossians were entitled to return and in 2008, the Foreign Office appealed to the Supreme Court. Although based on no new evidence, the appeal was successful.
I was in Parliament - where the highest court then sat in the House of Lords - on the day of the judgement. I have never seen such shame-faced judges in what was clearly a political decision.
In 2010, the British government sought to reinforce this by establishing a marine nature reserve around the Chagos Islands. The ruse was exposed by WikiLeaks, which published a US Embassy diplomatic cable from 2009 that read, 'Establishing a marine reserve might indeed, as the FCO's [Colin] Roberts stated, be the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands' former inhabitants or descendants from resettling.'
Now the International Court of Justice has decided that the British government of the day had no right in law to separate the Chagos Islands from Mauritius when it granted Mauritius independence. The Court, whose powers are advisory, has said Britain must end its authority over the islands. By extension, that almost certainly makes the US base illegal.
Of course, the indefatigable campaign of the Chagossians and their supporters will not stop there: not until the first islander goes home.
2018-07-31
The Homecoming
by Alice Speri
The Intercept
How Ahed Tamimi Became the Symbol of Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Oppression
NABI SALEH, WEST BANK — As if anyone needed reminding, even on the day of her release from prison, Israeli authorities seemed to want to show Ahed Tamimi, her family, and her many supporters that they control Palestinian lives.
Ahed and her mother, Nariman, were supposed to be freed on Saturday after serving an eight-month sentence in an Israeli military prison, but because Saturday is not a work day in Israel, their release was postponed. On Sunday, their family was told that they would be freed at 7 a.m. at a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank, nearly an hour and a half drive from their village, Nabi Saleh. When relatives and friends arrived there, the military sent them, as well as dozens of members of the press, to a different checkpoint, nearly two hours in the opposite direction. When they reached there, Bassem Tamimi was told, again, that his daughter and wife would be released at the first checkpoint. As the convoy of cars turned around one more time, they received another call telling them to head back to the second checkpoint.
“They were playing cat and mouse; they were trying to break everyone,” Manal Tamimi, Ahed’s aunt, told The Intercept. “They don’t need to give any justification. They just do what they want.”
More...
The Intercept
How Ahed Tamimi Became the Symbol of Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Oppression
Ahed and her mother, Nariman, were supposed to be freed on Saturday after serving an eight-month sentence in an Israeli military prison, but because Saturday is not a work day in Israel, their release was postponed. On Sunday, their family was told that they would be freed at 7 a.m. at a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank, nearly an hour and a half drive from their village, Nabi Saleh. When relatives and friends arrived there, the military sent them, as well as dozens of members of the press, to a different checkpoint, nearly two hours in the opposite direction. When they reached there, Bassem Tamimi was told, again, that his daughter and wife would be released at the first checkpoint. As the convoy of cars turned around one more time, they received another call telling them to head back to the second checkpoint.
“They were playing cat and mouse; they were trying to break everyone,” Manal Tamimi, Ahed’s aunt, told The Intercept. “They don’t need to give any justification. They just do what they want.”
More...
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