For the better part of a decade, researchers working at the intersection of climate change and human health have been desperately sounding alarm bells about the significant public health threats lurking in every tenth of a degree of planetary warming. Billions of people are at risk from illnesses linked to extreme heat; malnutrition following crop failure; bacteria and viruses that lurk in…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza’s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital “cannot take more children with the wounds of war…with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones.”
Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing.”
We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the woefully inadequate gesture of a seven day truce. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza’s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners, disease.
Those with influence among authorities in Israel and the United States must reckon not only with the reckless carnage they are inflicting on children. They must also grasp the likelihood of an exponentially increased death toll from battlefield illnesses afflicting children. Surviving Gazans live amid ominous pre-conditions for outbreaks of water-borne diseases especially deadly to children: a mounting number of unburied corpses, unsafe drinking water, overcrowding in impromptu mass shelters where sick people are denied any access to health care, as well as a breakdown of basic sewage and sanitation systems.
The World Health Organization warns that Gaza is “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks.”
On November 15, 2023, the World Health Organization reported more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea had been documented in Gaza since mid-October — already a dramatic increase compared to previous years and after only two months of the bombardment.
“Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO.
Yet. without electricity and fuel, it’s impossible to repair Gaza’s collapsed health care system. Israeli authorities cut off Gaza’s electricity supply after October 11, according to UNOCHA, and fuel reserves for Gaza’s sole power plant have been dangerously depleted.
History repeatedly shows that children in war zones bear the brunt of punishment as bombing wars give way to even more lethal economic war, and what ought to be regarded as biological warfare against children. (It’s noteworthy that Israel is one of only eight world nations not to have signed the Biological Weapons Convention.)
The suffering inflicted on Iraqi children following the 1991 war and ensuing years of merciless economic sanctions is well known to U.S. and Israeli authorities
When the U.S. Desert Storm bombing war against Iraq ended, on Feb 28, 1991, a new kind of warfare proved far more devastating than even the worst of the bombing. By 1995, UN workers recognized that children were dying, first by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and eventually by the hundreds of thousands because economic sanctions prevented necessary access to medicines, clean water, and adequate food.
Demolished vehicles lining Highway 80 in Iraqi during Operation Desert Storm, April 8, 1991.
A similar pattern emerges if we turn our gaze toward the Saudi aerial bombing of Yemen from 2015 to 2018. The Saudi attacks against vital sewage and sanitation facilities, and against the electrical plants which powered them, contributed to severe shortages of potable water. The Saudis were also known to bomb sites where Yemenis were digging their own wells.
A report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated at least 85,000 children died from extreme hunger since the war began in 2015. The worst cholera outbreak ever recorded infected 2.26 million and cost nearly 4,000 lives. Attacks on hospitals and clinics led to closure of more than half of Yemen’s prewar facilities. Besieged on all sides, 3.65 million Yemenis were internally displaced. An entire generation of Yemeni children will suffer the trauma and disease caused by Saudi bombings using weapons supplied by U.S. and other western manufacturers.
Dr. Yara Asi, a professor of global health management, points out that “the Gaza Strip had fragile health and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors long before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and prompted the retaliatory airstrikes. The health system of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world, has long been plagued by underfunding and the effects of the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.”
In early 2023, an estimated 97% of water in the enclave was unfit to drink, and more than 12% of child mortality cases were caused by waterborne ailments. Diseases including typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A are very rare in areas with functional and adequate water systems.
Now, OCHA reports over 1.8 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80 per cent of the population, are internally displaced. Overcrowding at makeshift UNRWA shelters significantly increased cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, skin infection, and lice. Without wells and water desalination, dehydration and waterborne diseases are mounting threats.
We can’t help but ask whether Israeli officials, intent on continuing the war for possibly as long as a year, see the potential for widespread disease as motivation for families to leave Gaza, accepting massive ethnic cleansing that would displace them beyond Gaza’s borders.
In a recently published investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, an Israeli intelligence veteran notes Israel’s detailed information on where Gazan civilians are located: “Nothing happens by accident … When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed – that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home. ”
Rather than wait for Gazan parents to dig graves for the children sickened by lethal water-borne diseases, we must clamor for a permanent cease fire, reparations, and an end to Israel’s apartheid regime. In the United States, we must truthfully diagnose our diseased foreign policy, sickened for many decades by greed, fear and an addiction to war.
Worldwide, people are demonstrating their commitment to care about the Gazan children who survive this hideous war. The call for a permanent ceasefire includes the utter rejection of weaponizing disease to collectively punish children.
The post Predicting Pestilence first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Powerful meat corporations are planning to push false claims that meat is “sustainable nutrition” at COP28, an international environmental conference that meets yearly to establish a global response to the climate crisis. The meat lobbyists’ pro-meat communications strategy is contradicted by research showing that 57 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to food production are…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As the largest-ever United Nations climate summit kicks off Thursday in Dubai, we look at how the COP28 president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also CEO of the United Arab Emirates state oil company, has used climate summit meetings to lobby countries for oil and gas deals. The Centre for Climate Reporting obtained documents from meeting briefings that include Abu Dhabi National Oil Company…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Decades ago, most people had never even heard the term “death by incarceration,” the racially discriminatory and cruel practice commonly known as life imprisonment. Now in 2023, the United Nations has condemned it and called on the United States to abolish it. In October, as I sat facing the members of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, my mind drifted to moments during my 27…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Mohamed Hameed AlDaqqaq is a Bahraini citizen who was arbitrarily arrested when he was 23 years old near his home. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, medical neglect, an unfair trial, and ill-treatment during his detention. He is currently serving a 19-year prison sentence on political charges. Mohamed suffers from many diseases, most notably sickle cell anemia and the associated pain. His continuous deprivation of health care for years in Jau Prison has exacerbated his suffering, and his health has reached a perilous stage due to the progression of the disease. On 4 March 2019, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion deeming Mohammed’s detention arbitrary, calling on the government of Bahrain to immediately release him, expunging all his criminal records, and granting him the necessary compensation. On 18 September 2019, four United Nations Special Procedures offices published an allegation letter to the Government of Bahrain regarding the denial of adequate medical care to Mohammed, expressing concern at the allegations of his torture and ill-treatment, deteriorating health condition, denial of appropriate health care, and retaliation against him for peacefully protesting inside the prison.
On 5 January 2015, riot police forces apprehended Mohamed near his home without presenting an arrest warrant. Officers took Mohamed to the AlHoora Police Station after his arrest, where they held him in solitary confinement for two days. On the second day, they allowed him to call his family. He wasn’t brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest. After his third day at the station, officers transferred Mohamed to the Dry Dock Detention Center, and after 45 days, the authorities transferred him to Jau Prison.
While in Jau Prison, guards subjected Mohamed to various forms of torture. They dubbed him the “new guy,” making him responsible for cleaning the toilets as a means of punishment. Prison guards brutally beat and insulted him, including shaving half of his head and facial hair. They stripped him naked and poured cold water on him, leaving him in the cold air. The guards also forced Mohamed to crawl into a pool of water contaminated with human waste, alternating between making Mohamed crawl to one end of the room and then dragging him from his legs to the other end before making him crawl again.
On 5 March 2014, that is, before his arrest, Mohamed was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison on charges of arson and intentionally endangering a private means of transportation. On 19 March 2015, he was sentenced to six months in jail on charges of gathering, inciting a riot, and possessing flammable and explosive materials. On 7 May 2015, he was convicted for escaping from prison, and on 22 November 2015, he was sentenced for arson and criminal assembly. His total sentence initially amounted to 21 years before it was reduced to 19 years after the appeal. His trial relied on evidence extracted from him under torture, and he was denied access to a lawyer during the interrogation period.
Prison authorities have consistently disregarded Mohamed’s right to health as well. Mohamed suffers from sickle-cell anemia and a skin condition. He was born with one kidney, and due to the pain stemming from his sickle-cell anemia, he had to undergo a splenectomy surgery. This condition also requires him to take medication for the rest of his life, but the authorities have deprived him of that medication despite the seriousness of his situation.
On multiple occasions, Mohamed has suffered from pain attacks in detention. In response, guards have delayed taking him to the clinic, if they even take him at all. The authorities have also routinely refused to take Mohamed to the periodic examinations required for his condition, and they still prevent him from obtaining his proper medication. This neglect has resulted in him being hospitalized for 45 days on two different occasions in 2016 and 2018.
In April 2018, medical negligence led to two health setbacks for Mohamed, during which he experienced severe pain. On both occasions, he was subjected to ill-treatment by the medical staff, including the denial of medication (accompanied by accusations of addiction) and being slapped on the face. In both instances, the doctors only administered low-grade painkillers to Mohamed and refused to provide medication to treat his sickle-cell anemia.
In 2018, Mohamed also experienced a skin disease on his wrists due to guards severely handcuffing him, and his condition worsened as a result of the unsanitary conditions in Jau Prison. He also suffered from a tooth infection resulting from the extraction of a wisdom tooth under local anesthesia, as he was not given any painkillers or antibiotics after the operation. After more than a week of tooth pain, he suffered complete swelling of the face and severe inflammation, which led to him suffering from a severe pain attack resulting from sickle-cell anemia. After prolonged delays, he was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital 12 hours after the pain attack, where the doctor administered oral medication as punishment after he complained about the severity of the pain he was experiencing, and another doctor beat him.
The medical personnel and prison authorities have denied Mohamed proper treatment for his health problems, exacerbating his health condition. Additionally, Mohamed has reported poor living conditions in Jau Prison, including inadequate amounts of clean water or healthy food.
Mohamed’s family submitted complaints to the National Institution for Human Rights and to the Ministry of Interior’s Ombudsman regarding his 45-day stay in the hospital. This was due to the prison administration’s refusal to transfer him to a hospital specializing in hereditary blood diseases, depriving him of medications appropriate to his health condition. Additionally, he was denied medication for his skin disease, which worsened as a result of his hands being tied with iron handcuffs. Unfortunately, these complaints did not yield any results.
In August 2018, there was no news of Mohamed for more than two weeks after he was taken to the hospital for surgery. In October 2018, he complained in a call with his family about being deprived of the pain-relieving medication for the attacks of sickle cell disease that the doctor supervising his treatment at the military hospital had prescribed to him. This deprivation led to frequent episodes of sickle cell disease and an increase in the severity of the pain affecting his bones. Additionally, he was deprived of medication for skin allergies. Mohamed also complained about being subjected to nutritional neglect after the prison administration ignored the doctor’s recommendations to provide a meal appropriate for his medical condition.
In January 2019, Mohamed was transported by his fellow prisoners to the prison clinic after suffering for two weeks from a bout of pain resulting from sickle cell disease. This pain hindered his ability to stand, causing a lack of oxygen and a further deterioration in his health condition. The prison administration’s delay in transferring him regularly to the clinic contributed to the escalation of his health issues. The doctor at the clinic prescribed only a regular pain reliever and intravenous nutrients. Due to the lack of appropriate treatment, these seizures persisted, leading to multiple visits to the clinic. During one of these visits, Mohamed was physically assaulted and insulted by a nurse.
On 4 March 2019, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion on the arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the cases of five Bahrainis, including Mohamed. The Working Group considered the detention of these individuals arbitrary, calling on the Government of Bahrain to immediately release them, expunge all their criminal records, and grant them the necessary compensation. The Working Group found that Al-Daqqaq’s detention was arbitrary under Categories I and II, in violation of Articles 3, 9, and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This violation was attributed to the lack of an arrest warrant, lack of access to legal counsel, and his conviction in absentia.
In April 2019, Mohamed was denied visits and exposure to sunlight outside his cell after being transferred to solitary confinement for reasons unknown. His family, intending to visit him on 8 April 2019, arrived at the prison only to be informed by officers that their son was unable to leave his cell due to his transfer to solitary confinement ‘for unknown reasons.’ Additionally, Mohamed’s news was cut during his participation with fellow prisoners in Jau Prison in their hunger strike protesting mistreatment in August 2019.
On 18 September 2019, four UN Special Procedures offices issued an allegation letter to the Government of Bahrain concerning the denial of adequate medical care to prisoners in Jau Prison, including Mohamed. Experts expressed concern about allegations of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, particularly the deterioration of their health and the restrictions on their access to appropriate healthcare while in detention. The experts also voiced their apprehension regarding the measures taken by the Jau Prison administration in retaliation against prisoners peacefully protesting inside the prison, deeming it a violation of the right to freedom of opinion and peaceful assembly.
In March 2020, Mohamed complained of abdominal pain, which he believed was caused by the quantity and quality of meals served. As his condition worsened, he was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital Internal Medicine Department, where various tests and X-rays were conducted. The prison administration, citing the COVID-19 outbreak, prevented Mohamed from visiting the doctor. Instead, the doctor contacted Mohamed’s family and informed them that their son was suffering from a stomach infection, prescribing an urgent antibiotic to prevent a prolonged sickness. Three days later, Mohamed’s mother discovered that the doctor had not spoken directly to her son. Concerned, she contacted the prison administration, and after several attempts, Mohamed was able to talk with the doctor via video call. Mohamed also complained to another doctor in the prison clinic about pain in his joints and bones. The doctor prescribed nutritional supplements and calcium, and Mohamed’s family purchased the necessary medications, delivering them to the prison administration. However, two weeks later, Mohamed’s mother learned from one of his prison colleagues that Mohamed had not yet received the medications.
On 1 July 2020, Mohamed was beaten and pepper sprayed in the face by a police officer in prison until he fainted, causing his health to deteriorate. His colleagues had to bang on the cell door to save him, and he was subsequently transported by ambulance to the hospital. Following this incident, Mohamed forcibly disappeared for about a month. Despite his family’s repeated attempts to contact the Prisoner Affairs Department, they received no response.
On 1 October 2020, the Jau Prison administration imposed restrictions on detainees’ right to contact their families. They were only allowed to call five designated family phone numbers, with the requirement to specify the kinship of the owner of each number. Moreover, the calls were limited to a maximum of ten minutes and charged at a much higher rate than usual. These measures led detainees, including Mohamed, to reject the restrictions, prompting them to go on strike for more than three weeks in protest against these limitations.
From the time of his arrest until today, Mohamed’s family has continued their efforts to highlight the seriousness of the violations to which their son is exposed. They do so through appeals published on social media, urging intervention to save their son’s life from the policy of medical negligence and forced disappearance.
Mohamed’s arbitrary detention, denial of access to a lawyer, torture, subjection to solitary confinement, forced disappearance, and medical neglect affecting his deteriorating health, along with an unfair trial in absentia and another trial where confessions extracted under torture were used, as well as exposure to reprisal, constitute violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Mohamed and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, subjection to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, and medical neglect, while holding the perpetrators – including Jau Prison doctors who contribute to the mistreatment of prisoners and evade the responsibilities of their profession – accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB also raises concern about the serious deterioration in Mohamed’s health condition due to medical negligence and denial of medical care, especially the failure to provide appropriate treatment for the sickle cell disease he suffers from. ADHRB urges Bahrain to provide suitable treatment for Mohamed while holding it responsible for any additional deterioration in his health condition.
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We cannot pick and choose how and to whom human rights are applied. Disrespect and racism has no place in our society
We are all “born free and equal in dignity and rights”.
This first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out this simple aspiration for how we should interact and engage with each other as human beings.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The number of Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced from their homes has risen to roughly 1.7 million as of November 19, according to an update from the United Nations this week. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has decried the humanitarian crisis in the region as “unparalleled.” The number represents over three-quarters of the population of Gaza that has now been forcibly displaced by…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sentences risk silencing public concerns about the environment, climate change rapporteur Ian Fry says
Long sentences handed to two Just Stop Oil protesters for scaling the M25 bridge over the Thames are a potential breach of international law and risk silencing public concerns about the environment, a UN expert has said.
In a strongly worded intervention, Ian Fry, the UN’s rapporteur for climate change and human rights, said he was “particularly concerned” about the sentences, which were “significantly more severe than previous sentences imposed for this type of offending in the past”.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza based on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Speaking after the UN security council backed a resolution on 15 November calling for ‘urgent extended humanitarian pauses’, Turk said: ‘The only winner of such a war is likely to be extremism and further extremism.’ The Israel-Hamas war has left more than 11,100 Palestinians dead and displaced more than 1.5 million Gazan citizens from their homes, after Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The Bahraini citizen Husain Abdulla Mohamed (Juma’a) was arbitrarily arrested from his home when he was 20 years old. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, medical neglect, and an unfair trial during his detention. He is currently serving a life sentence in what was known as the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, in which he was among those for whom an opinion was issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, demanding his release. Currently, he is detained at Jau Prison.
On 10 November 2015 at 2:30 am, about 20 riot police officers, along with other officers from the Ministry of Interior (MoI), raided Husain’s home. They searched the house and arrested him without presenting arrest or search warrants. The officers then transferred Husain to the MoI’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) for interrogation, where he was able to contact his family to tell them about his whereabouts, but the call was cut off a few seconds after it began. After this call, Husain forcibly disappeared from his family for a month, and his news was cut. He was detained at the CID for two months, during which the authorities subjected him to physical and psychological torture.
During the interrogation, which took place without the presence of a lawyer, the police officers insulted him, beat him, and subjected him to electric shocks. As a result, his teeth were broken, and he suffered from back and foot pain. Husain asked that a doctor be allowed to examine him, but the authorities rejected his request. The authorities also prohibited anyone from visiting him during his interrogation, including his lawyer.
On 15 May 2018, during the mass trial of what was known as the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, which lacked the minimum standards for a fair trial, Husain was sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of his citizenship on charges of: 1) Attempting to detonate a fake bomb and participating in terrorist activities, including joining a terrorist cell, 2) Possessing and manufacturing explosives, 3) Financing terrorism, 4) Receiving weapons training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, and 5) Destroying privately owned goods.
He had also previously been sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to detonate a fake bomb. On 28 January 2019, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling against Husain. On 20 April 2019, King Hamad Bin Isa AlKhalifa issued a royal order restoring the citizenship of 551 Bahrainis who had previously been stripped of their citizenship, including Husain. On 1 July 2019, the Court of Cassation upheld his life imprisonment sentence, thus Husain had exhausted all remedies under Bahraini law.
When Husain was detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center, he was also subjected to torture after his sentence was issued. He was forced to strip naked, and officers threw objects at him. He was also subjected to solitary confinement.
Husain’s family submitted several complaints to the MOI Ombudsman regarding his arrest, solitary confinement, torture, and denial of medical care, but it didn’t respond to any of these complaints. It merely responded to one of them by transferring it to the Military Courts Administration, as it raised suspicion of a criminal crime. However, there has been no response since then.
On 14 October 2019, five UN Special Procedures offices sent an allegation letter to Bahrain concerning the trial of the so-called “Zulfiqar Brigades case. In this letter, the Special Procedures Offices expressed concern about the enforced disappearance and torture of those convicted in this case, compelling them to sign false confessions, depriving them of medical care, and engaging in unfair trial practices. This includes absentia hearings and denying defendants the right to attorney access, as well as using confessions obtained under torture to convict individuals of terrorist crimes. The letter also considered that the Ombudsman is not fully independent, which hinders the possibility of properly investigating concerns related to human rights violations due to its reliance on the MOI for funding and authority and on the Special Investigation Unit for allegations, as the Ombudsman has a low record of referrals to prosecution in only 5% of cases of violations committed by state agents. The letter also expressed concern about the Ombudsman’s negligence of cases of police abuse, contributing to fostering an environment of impunity.
On 15 May 2020, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published an opinion concerning the cases of twenty Bahraini citizens convicted by the Bahraini Fourth High Criminal Court in the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, including Husain, where the group considered their detention arbitrary due to their warrantless arrest and their exposure to torture to force them into signing false confessions, in addition to their exposure to enforced disappearance, denial of medical care, as well as unfair trials that included hearings in absentia, denying defendants the right to access a lawyer, and the use of forced confessions to convict defendants of terrorist crimes. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention requested the Bahraini government to take immediate action, by immediately and unconditionally releasing these convicts, ensuring that they receive medical care, granting them the right to obtain compensation and reparation, and expunging their criminal records in accordance with international law. The Working Group also urged the Bahraini government to conduct a full and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary detention of these defendants. Although more than three years have passed since this opinion was issued, Bahrain has not yet implemented any of these recommendations.
On 28 September 2022, an audio recording of Husain was circulated on social media in which he spoke about being deprived of regular diabetes treatment, leading to irregular sugar levels. He also talked about the difficulties he faced with the provided meals, which did not align with his health condition. He conveyed his struggles to the prison clinic physician and the officers, urging them to provide suitable meals for his health condition and administer insulin doses regularly to prevent health setbacks. However, his repeated requests were ignored by the doctor and officers.
Husain’s arbitrary detention, denial of access to a lawyer, torture, and subjection to solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, medical neglect, and an unfair mass trial – which included hearings in absentia during which confessions extracted under torture were used in which he was sentenced in terrorist cases – constitute a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Accordingly, ADHRB calls upon Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Husain and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, subjection to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, and medical neglect, while holding the perpetrators accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB also raises the alarm about the deterioration of Husain’s health condition due to medical negligence, especially with regard to his irregular blood sugar level due to not providing him with regular treatment and depriving him of appropriate food for his health condition. ADHRB calls on Bahrain to urgently provide appropriate treatment for Husain, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.
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The head of the United Nations’ emergency relief operations said Wednesday that he was “appalled” by news of the Israeli military’s raid of Gaza’s largest hospital, where hundreds of patients and healthcare workers and thousands of displaced people are sheltering. “The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In stark contrast to the appalling response of western leaders, throughout the world tens of thousands have taken to the streets protesting Israels barbaric actions in Gaza. In the US, Canada, Europe, and UK, in Asia and the Middle East with one voice people have cried out, condemning Israel and the US, calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza and full scale humanitarian support for Palestinians.
Israel ignores all such demands, and continues its relentless attack on Palestinian civilians. Violating International Humanitarian Law (including carrying out a process of Collective Punishment) as it does so. Amnesty International has “documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes”.
The UN Secretary General says he is “deeply concerned by the clear violations of humanitarian law that we are witnessing.” A coalition of Palestinian human rights groups have now filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC), “Urging the body to investigate Israel for “apartheid” as well as “genocide” and issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.” And yet western ‘leaders’ say little of consequence and do nothing to stop the slaughter.
According to the UN more than 40% of Palestinians killed in Gaza are children, and 70% killed are women and children. As Guterres has said, “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.” Just under 4,000 children are reported dead (over 420 children are being killed or injured each day), and a further 1,250 are missing — presumed buried under destroyed or damaged buildings. This is systematic genocide, long in the planning, carried out by a fanatic right wing Israeli government that is deliberately targeting children and women.
The ferocious IDF assault is destroying homes, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, schools, UN facilities — the attacks are indiscriminate. Pregnant women and babies are particularly at risk; as hospitals close and/or are bombed. “Some women are having to give birth in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble,” the UN said. The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, said “the true cost of this latest escalation will be measured in children’s lives — those lost to the violence and those forever changed by it”.
Journalists are also being killed; according to the UN more journalist have been killed in a month than in any conflict in the last thirty years.
The carnage in Gaza and the siege of the territory is horrific and the response from western governments — these ‘champions of democracy and peace’, utterly appalling. With the US leading the pack, they are facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel, and then publicly justifying it.
The UK and EU appear incapable to expressing a view that contradicts US policy. Even the leader of the UK Labour party Kier Starmer, potentially the UK’s next Prime-Minister, is towing the US line, virtually word for word. It’s pathetic. His callous response is a depressing sign of the kind of PM he would be; weak, unprincipled, cowardly. As the Labour leader of Burnley council said when he resigned in protest, “Instead of talking of peace — all of our world leaders, including the leader of the Labour Party, are talking about humanitarian pauses. It’s just nonsensical.”
Obviously there should be an immediate unconditional ceasefire. A growing number of nations, particularly those within the region, together with outraged citizens throughout the world, including Israeli’s and Jews, are calling for this common-sense step. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has warned that, unless a path to peace is found quickly, the war risked pushing the region into an “abyss of hatred and dehumanisation”.
But as the causalities increase and the suffering intensifies the message of the US and Co., to Israel is carry on killing, but maybe consider allowing a ‘humanitarian pause’ to let aid into Gaza, and by the way, please ‘do more to protect civilians’. Even this half hearted proposal has been rejected by Israel, with Prime-Minister Netanyahu saying the IDF would continue bombing Gaza with “all of its power.” Hate knows no limits.
It is a shameful display of inaction and facilitation, one that makes the US and anyone who supports its shameful approach complicit in the genocide that is taking place.
The US has the greatest responsibility here, because if Israel will listen to anyone it is potentially the US. Washington’s unconditional support has, for decades, allowed Israel to ignore international law (which Israel appears to believe does not apply to them), suppress the Palestinians, and is now allowing the massacre to take place in Gaza.
Listen to the UN
This devastating crisis has revealed once again that the world is bereft of true leaders; men and women of courage and principles, who can act with wisdom and compassion, free from short-term national interest. In the midst of this sea of mediocrity stands the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. A clear and consistent voice of reason on all topics.
He has repeatedly called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for unimpeded humanitarian access to be granted…safely and to scale, in order to meet the urgent needs created by the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.” His words, rational and right, have, however, been constantly ignored. More than that, he, himself, has come under attack from the Israeli authorities.
It is the UN, which was founded to establish peace and security in the world, led by Guterres that should be tasked with bringing the relevant parties together to discuss, not just a ceasefire, but the long term issues; the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians and the resulting insecurity felt by Israeli’s. That means the Israeli government sitting down with Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. There is no other solution.
The crisis in Gaza, as Guterres correctly points out, “Is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a Crisis of Humanity.” The mass slaughter that is taking place is a symptom, a loud and bloody symptom of this broader crisis. The “Crisis of Humanity” is ultimately a crisis of values, and as such could correctly be called a spiritual crisis. If humanity wants to live in peace, and the vast majority desperately want this, then certain fundamental changes in approach are needed.
Firstly, the recognition that humanity is one, and the cultivation of unity. Identifying and cutting out all systems and ways of thinking that strengthen division — this is essential; in particular tribal nationalism. And creating socio-economic systems that promote social justice. Sharing is key to building trust — sharing land and natural resources, sharing knowledge, wealth and skills.
Without sharing and social justice (both of which are totally absent in Palestine) peace will remain a fantasy, and tragedies like the one taking place before our eyes in Gaza will continue.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
“The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis.” That’s how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres began his Tuesday remarks about a new U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or countries’ plans to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, including its 1.5°C temperature target. The UNFCCC analysis “provides…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
For decades, the most widely touted solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has been based on the idea of two independent states — one Israeli and one Palestinian — encompassing separate parts of the historic land of Palestine. Known as the “two-state solution,” it has long been the agreed-upon framework by the United Nations (UN), most of the world’s countries, and regional organizations such as the European Union (EU). The UN General Assembly frequently votes on resolutions calling for a settlement to the conflict based on two states. These resolutions usually receive the support of all the world’s nations except for Israel, the United States, and a handful of others (often tiny US-dependent Pacific island nations).
Support for the two-state solution has also enjoyed support from across the establishment political spectrum in the West. In 2002, then-US President George W. Bush (a Republican) became the first president to publicly endorse it. On the other end of the truncated spectrum that represents establishment political thought, independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (a self-described democratic socialist) has also pledged his support for the two-state framework. Even some “radical professors” in the academic world have said they think it’s the most realistic option. This includes the linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky and political scientist Norman Finkelstein.
Now, however, a high-ranking UN human rights official has issued a damning condemnation of both the viability and morality of the two-state solution. In a letter resigning from his post as director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber slammed the two-state solution as no longer possible nor desirable. And he’s far from being the first high-profile person to do this volte face. Numerous high-profile supporters of the two-state solution have in recent years openly repudiated it and come out in favor of the rival “one-state solution.”
Previously considered a fringe proposal within Western countries, a settlement based on a single democratic, non-sectarian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is now looking more and more mainstream. Receiving support from a former senior UN official surely represents a seminal chapter in the long struggle one-state supporters have been waging to bring this solution to greater public attention.
“An Open Joke in the Corridors of the UN”
Mokhiber’s letter states: “The mantra of the “two-state solution” has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.” During an interview with Al-Jazeera English, Mokhiber elaborated: “When people are not talking from official talking points, you hear increasingly about a one-state solution. And what that means is beginning to advocate for the principle of equality, of human rights instead of these old political taglines. That would mean a state in which you have equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews based upon human rights and based upon the rule of law.”
The idea of a single democratic state with equal rights for all people who live in historic Palestine is far from a new idea. In fact, it was the official goal of all the major Palestinian nationalist parties until comparatively recently. It was only in 1993 that Fatah, the largest party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), agreed to settle for a Palestinian state in a partitioned part of historic Palestine, which it did in exchange for Israel recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
More left-leaning factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) retained support for the one-state solution and have suffered marginalization from Fatah as a consequence. Hamas, meanwhile, has historically been committed in principle to an Islamic republic encompassing all of historic Palestine, but in 2017 revised its charter by indicating pragmatic support for two states.
Two-state Solution “Destroyed By Israel”
Fatah officials have largely held to the two-state line since 1993. But recently even some of its senior figures have come out against it and instead pledged their support for a one-state solution. Hanan Ashrawi, for example, was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council and appointed as Minister of Higher Education for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1996. In 2009 she became the first woman to be elected to the Executive Committee of the PLO. In 2017 during a television segment on Al-Jazeera English, Ashrawi said that the two-state solution is “a solution that the Palestinians had agreed to as a result of a long, painful discussion, internal debate, and a painstaking debate to agree to the principle of partition and to accepting two states on the historical land of Palestine.” She added: “We made this compromise in order to prepare the ground for a new relationship, for peace and stability within the region.”
However, in May 2021 — during Israel’s most recent periodic massacre in Gaza before the current one — Ashrawi said during an interview with RT: “I think the two-state solution is dead. That agenda has been destroyed by Israel — by Israeli actions — because Israel did not comply with any of its obligations.” She added: “I don’t think a one-state solution has become an agenda, but it is the outcome.” Ashrawi also pointed to the effect that the two-state discourse has had on Israel’s actions and the international community’s inaction in holding it to account. She said: “Israel felt that it can just say, ‘we are in the middle of talks’, or ‘we are negotiating’, or whatever, and at the same time continue to steal more land, more resources, build more settlements… and [it] continues to kill and demolish and carry out a comprehensive ethnic cleansing plan.”
“A Transparent Sleight of Hand”
This idea that the two-state solution has provided a smokescreen to embolden Israel’s actions and allowed it to endlessly delay any kind of resolution has become a common criticism amongst one-state supporters. As Palestinian-American activist Yousef Munayyer puts it: “You have this constant conversation around the two-state solution being a goal and that keeps open this idea of negotiations. And these negotiations, as we have seen, have only resulted in an opportunity for Israel to say to the world, ‘look, this is a temporary condition.’” He added: “And at the same time, [Israel is] creating realities on the ground that make that impossible.”
Mokhiber alludes to exactly this phenomenon in his resignation letter, stating: “The (US-scripted) deference to ‘agreements between the parties themselves’ (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.” He pointed in particular to the role of the so-called “Quartet” (the group of self-appointed mediators to the conflict made up of the UN, the United States, the EU and Russia), which he argues “has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo.”
“Embrace the Goal of Jewish–Palestinian Equality”
In addition to Ashrawi, other prominent former supporters of the two-state solution have changed tack in favor of one state. This includes the former editor of the arch-Zionist magazine The New Republic, Peter Beinart. In an essay published at Jewish Currents in July 2020, he stated:
The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades — a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews — has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It risks becoming, instead, a way of camouflaging and enabling that path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.
In a similar vein, former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher, said during a forum hosted by the Carnegie Council for International Peace: “We are already in a one-state reality. The question is becoming increasingly: Is this reality going to turn into an apartheid state or a democratic state?” Others who are casting doubt on the viability of the two-state solution include none other than the aforementioned George W. Bush. He stated in May 2021 that the two-state solution would be “very difficult at this stage.”
Shifting the Focus From 1967 to 1948
Clearly, the two-state solution is increasingly looking like a dinosaur that not only fails to offer a viable framework for resolving the conflict but also provides a smokescreen for Israel’s endless stalling and undermining of peace. But there is a more fundamental problem with the two-state solution. Because it calls for the dividing line between Israel and a Palestinian state to be based on Israel’s border before the June 1967 war. During this war, Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip and has occupied them ever since. (It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 though still maintains a siege via control of its border, coast, and airspace.) The two-state solution entails returning these areas to the Palestinians in order for them to establish a state on these lands.
The problem with this, however, is that these lands constitute only 22% of historic Palestine. A fairer division of the land in a two-state scenario would be something like 50–50. But this aside, the major crime that was committed against the Palestinian people was not the 1967 invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, the major crime was the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1947 and 1948, which has come to be known as “al-Nakba.” During this time, at least half of Palestine’s non-Jewish population was forced out of its home and pushed as refugees into the West Bank and Gaza or into neighboring Arab countries.
Given this history, Palestinians have a right to return to their country, which encompasses all of historic Palestine. And therefore, Palestinians have never been under any obligation whatsoever to accept partition. Indeed, though a central tenet of Zionist propaganda is the notion that Palestinians deserve their fate for having rejected the November 1947 partition plan set out in UN Resolution 181, the reality is that the UN had no right to partition the country in the first place. Indeed, doing so was in violation of the UN’s own charter. In any case, the Palestinians were not even under any legal obligation, let alone moral obligation, to accept it given that Resolution 181 was a non-binding resolution and the UN Security Council didn’t ever officially adopt it.
Finally to consider is comparison with the political solutions that have been proposed, and in some cases implemented, in other countries around the world. And this seems to point overwhelmingly to the single democratic, nonsectarian state vision based on equal rights proffered by supporters of the one-state solution. The UN never proposed, for example, the formation of separate states in South Africa for each of its ethnic groups as a way of resolving the conflict in that country. As Mokhiber puts it: “It is what we call for in every other circumstance around the world. And the question is, ‘why is the United Nations not calling for that in Israel-Palestine as well?’”
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Truthout (11/9/23)
This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media use at least a couple of largely unexplored lenses through which to present US human rights violations. One is: The US does not commit human rights violations, except by accident, or as unavoidable collateral for an ultimately net-gain mission, be that international or domestic.
The other is: They aren’t violations if the US does them, because we’re in a civilization war, a fight of good over evil, so all battles are holy, and you can’t commit human rights violations against non-humans, after all, so where’s the problem? Again, the narrative covers global and at-home violations.
Elite media have trouble navigating the place of the US in a global context, and the media-consuming public suffers as a result. There’s a new report from the UN about this country and human rights. We’ll hear about it from Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (CC photo: Gage Skidmore)
Also on the show: Headlines tell us that the US public don’t know a lot about Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House of Representatives. That’s true as far as it goes, but isn’t it also a kind of admission of failure for a press corps that really should be actively involved in informing us about the person third in line for the presidency—like maybe his idea that some of the people he’s nominally representing should just burn in Hell?
Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, will give us some things to consider as we see coverage of Mike Johnson unfold.
The post Jamil Dakwar on US & Human Rights, Matt Gertz on Mike Johnson appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on CounterSpin.
Twenty-two Democrats in the U.S. House voted with Republicans on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian-American member of Congress — over her response to the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military’s response, which has killed more than 10,000 people in just a month. The censure resolution, led by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), falsely accuses Tlaib (D-Mich.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
At the United Nations this week, the world community has overwhelmingly spoken out against the relentless U.S. embargo on Cuba. Yet President Biden remains unmoved, stubbornly clinging to the anachronic policies that are deliberately and systematically causing harm to the well-being of more than 11 million Cubans. Despite the world’s condemnation of the blockade every year since 1992, the U.S. government continues to act in complete isolation from the international community.
In this solitary corner, the United States was joined only by Israel, a country that relies on the United States for billions of dollars, money that is now set to increase by an additional $14.5 billion to intensify the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
But President Biden is not only turning a deaf ear to the international community, he is also ignoring the democratic voice of his own people. Over a hundred resolutions condemning the blockade have been passed across the U.S., representing about 55 million Americans calling for an end to the inhumane unilateral siege on Cuba that has persisted for over 60 years.
The U.S. embargo has a negative impact on all sectors of Cuba’s economy and has unquestionably worsened the quality of life of Cubans by limiting their access to basic necessities, including medicines, food, and fuel. According to the Cuban government, from March 2022 to February 2023, the blockade caused an estimated $4.8 billion in losses to Cuba, representing more than $555,000 for each hour of the blockade. The inclusion of Cuba in the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism on January 12, 2021 exacerbates the impact of the economic embargo. This has led to an massive increase in the number of Cubans migrating to the United States in search of economic opportunities.
The embargo is unjust and hinders Cuba’s inalienable right to development. It is also illegal and violates the United Nations charter and the principles of international law. The embargo’s extraterritorial provisions have not only prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Cuba through third-party countries, but have also prevented foreign companies from doing legitimate and lawful business in Cuba.
While Cuba prioritizes healthcare and solidarity, the U.S. persists in causing harm and inflicting pain on the Cuban people in its failed, 60-year-old effort at regime change. We, at CODEPINK, will not stand idly by. We pledge to continue advocating for justice and tirelessly demanding that our government change its hostile policy towards Cuba by lifting the economic, commercial and financial embargo. We will persist in our call for the immediate removal of Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism—a designation that should never have been imposed in the first place.
U.S. policymakers must abandon their outdated Cold War mentality towards Cuba, and instead listen to the world and start being a good neighbor.
A United Nations (UN) poverty expert has called on the CEOs of Amazon, DoorDash and Walmart to address allegations that inadequate pay, hostile union-busting tactics, and the misclassification of workers as “independent contractors” are trapping workers in poverty. “I am extremely disturbed that workers in some of the world’s most profitable companies — in one of the richest countries on earth…
On October 28, Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva (and I here, in boldface, add a few links for documentation of some of his assertions):
This will be my last official communication to you. …
The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions, are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms [against Arabs] are accompanied by Israeli military units.
Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, [Jewish] settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities. …
We must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points: 1. Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law. 2. Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity. 3. One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land. …
Israelis learned well from Hitler: they elected governments that did (or else condoned doing) to the non-Jewish natives in their land (who before 1948 were 61% Muslim, 30% Jewish, and 8% Christian), what Hitler had done to Jews in Christian Europe — and now they are being supported by the U.S. and its allies to deliver Israel’s final solution to the Palestinian problem: extermination.
The self-defense by Israel and its apologists, for this reality that drove Mokhiber to quit and to condemn them, is for them to ignore all of that reality, and to focus instead upon the responses to it by the Palestinians. The self-defense, in other words, is to condemn not the side that started this war (themselves) beginning in 1948, but the side that then, and even earlier (in the late 1930s), were trying to prevent or avoid it (the Palestinians). The evil in this deception by the perpetrators — by the Israelis and their apologists — is obvious, and here is how it is driving a surge in anti-Semitism:
Israel and its apologists say that anti-Israelism is the same thing as anti-Semitism (so that to condemn Israel is to condemn all Jews), but here they lie yet again because outside of Israel are many Jews who loathe what Israel has been doing in their names. The very idea that all Jews are Israelis, or even support the Israelis and oppose the Palestinians in this war between the aggressor (Israelis) and the defender (the Palestinians), is stupid. That idea simply is not the case; but yet many Jews are being targeted by AUTHENTIC anti-Semites as-if it WERE the case.
Comments by many readers and viewers online are rife with such anti-Semitism, and the global community of that authentic anti-Semitism grows ever-larger, the closer that Israel and the U.S. get to delivering their final solution to the Palestinian problem. A great many of these anti-Semitic comments are coming from individuals who condemn all Jews on the basis of anti-Semitic lines from the New Testament (such as John 8:44, Matthew 23:31-38, and the earliest-written one of them all, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 — all of which lines I have discussed here). However, many come instead from the Old Testament, which historians consider to be mythical but theologians and preachers believe instead to be “the Word of God”; and, so, scholars cannot agree with one-another on what is history and what in the Old Testament is instead merely myth (religious propaganda, for spreading the Jewish faith).
According to Wikipedia’s article on the “Kingdom of Judah“:
Centered in the highlands of Judea, the kingdom’s capital was Jerusalem.[3] Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it.[4][5] The Hebrew Bible depicts the Kingdom of Judah as a successor to the United Kingdom of Israel, a term denoting the united monarchy under biblical kings Saul, David and Solomon and covering the territory of Judah and Israel. However, during the 1980s, some biblical scholars began to argue that the archaeological evidence for an extensive kingdom before the late-8th century BCE is too weak, and that the methodology used to obtain the evidence is flawed.[6][7] In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small rural settlements, most of them unfortified.[8]
and Wikipedia’s “Davidic line” says that,
as for David and his immediate descendants themselves, the position of some scholars, as described by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed, espouses that David and Solomon may well be based on “certain historical kernels”, and probably did exist in their own right, but their historical counterparts simply could not have ruled over a wealthy lavish empire as described in the Bible, and were more likely chieftains of a comparatively modest Israelite society in Judah and not regents over a kingdom proper.[27]
If the actual historical nation of Israel was ONLY what is shown on the map as constituting the Kingdom of Judah, then neither Gaza nor the northern two-thirds of the West Bank had ever been in any ancient Israel; and, so, anyone who says that the Jews in 1948 were ‘coming home’ to ‘Israel’ is historically wrong. However, those Jews were ethnically cleansing the land. It’s well-documented, such as here, here, here, and here. And even if ancient Israel had included all of the land that now is Israel, it wasn’t so at all in recent centuries, when virtually all of the residents there were Muslims and Christians — though Jews were demanding to control it while being only a tiny percentage of the population there. Their supremacism was clearly not only fascist but racist; it was Jewish Nazism. Furthermore, during the 1930s, Zionists considered themselves to be fascists; and fascists in both Germany and Italy considered Zionists to be Jewish fascists, ideological brothers of both Italy’s and Germany’s fascists (Christianity’s fascists). And Albert Einstein and other prominent progressive Jews in the U.S. after World War II described as “fascists” Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom subsequently became elected by Israel’s Jews to lead Israel. And yet the U.S. Government backed them, not only when Begin and Shamir were leading massacres of Arab villages in the 1940s, but when both men became Israel’s leaders in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s — and afterward, under their political follower Benjamin Netanyahu: clearly, a racist-supremacist apartheid regime ever since its founding, a regime which defines the supreme group, “Jew,” not only by religion, but by descent; that is, racially. Under U.S. President Harry S. Truman, the America and the world that his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was against the formation of a Jewish state and even resisted his aides who backed Churchill’s strong support for the creation of Israel, and who also was opposed to Winston Churchill’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s urgings for a war against the Soviet Union) had sought and carefully planned — the world that FDR had been intensively working to build — abruptly ended. And, more than anything else, this is the reason why, on 28 October 2023, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva, to resign his post. He resigned his post because now the final solution to the Palestinian problem — the problem that Truman and his successors enabled fascist Jews to create — is about to come to a head. And decent Jews everywhere will be experiencing the backlash from what the indecent ones — who are the majority in Israel — are doing. The decent Jews will be getting the backlash for what the indecent ones are doing, but the blame really should go ONLY to the Israelis, and to the UK and U.S. billionaires (and their politicians and ‘news’-media) who have been constantly propagandizing for them.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On October 28, Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva (and I here, in boldface, add a few links for documentation of some of his assertions):
This will be my last official communication to you. …
The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions, are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms [against Arabs] are accompanied by Israeli military units.
Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, [Jewish] settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities. …
We must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points: 1. Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law. 2. Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity. 3. One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land. …
Israelis learned well from Hitler: they elected governments that did (or else condoned doing) to the non-Jewish natives in their land (who before 1948 were 61% Muslim, 30% Jewish, and 8% Christian), what Hitler had done to Jews in Christian Europe — and now they are being supported by the U.S. and its allies to deliver Israel’s final solution to the Palestinian problem: extermination.
The self-defense by Israel and its apologists, for this reality that drove Mokhiber to quit and to condemn them, is for them to ignore all of that reality, and to focus instead upon the responses to it by the Palestinians. The self-defense, in other words, is to condemn not the side that started this war (themselves) beginning in 1948, but the side that then, and even earlier (in the late 1930s), were trying to prevent or avoid it (the Palestinians). The evil in this deception by the perpetrators — by the Israelis and their apologists — is obvious, and here is how it is driving a surge in anti-Semitism:
Israel and its apologists say that anti-Israelism is the same thing as anti-Semitism (so that to condemn Israel is to condemn all Jews), but here they lie yet again because outside of Israel are many Jews who loathe what Israel has been doing in their names. The very idea that all Jews are Israelis, or even support the Israelis and oppose the Palestinians in this war between the aggressor (Israelis) and the defender (the Palestinians), is stupid. That idea simply is not the case; but yet many Jews are being targeted by AUTHENTIC anti-Semites as-if it WERE the case.
Comments by many readers and viewers online are rife with such anti-Semitism, and the global community of that authentic anti-Semitism grows ever-larger, the closer that Israel and the U.S. get to delivering their final solution to the Palestinian problem. A great many of these anti-Semitic comments are coming from individuals who condemn all Jews on the basis of anti-Semitic lines from the New Testament (such as John 8:44, Matthew 23:31-38, and the earliest-written one of them all, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 — all of which lines I have discussed here). However, many come instead from the Old Testament, which historians consider to be mythical but theologians and preachers believe instead to be “the Word of God”; and, so, scholars cannot agree with one-another on what is history and what in the Old Testament is instead merely myth (religious propaganda, for spreading the Jewish faith).
According to Wikipedia’s article on the “Kingdom of Judah“:
Centered in the highlands of Judea, the kingdom’s capital was Jerusalem.[3] Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it.[4][5] The Hebrew Bible depicts the Kingdom of Judah as a successor to the United Kingdom of Israel, a term denoting the united monarchy under biblical kings Saul, David and Solomon and covering the territory of Judah and Israel. However, during the 1980s, some biblical scholars began to argue that the archaeological evidence for an extensive kingdom before the late-8th century BCE is too weak, and that the methodology used to obtain the evidence is flawed.[6][7] In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small rural settlements, most of them unfortified.[8]
and Wikipedia’s “Davidic line” says that,
as for David and his immediate descendants themselves, the position of some scholars, as described by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed, espouses that David and Solomon may well be based on “certain historical kernels”, and probably did exist in their own right, but their historical counterparts simply could not have ruled over a wealthy lavish empire as described in the Bible, and were more likely chieftains of a comparatively modest Israelite society in Judah and not regents over a kingdom proper.[27]
If the actual historical nation of Israel was ONLY what is shown on the map as constituting the Kingdom of Judah, then neither Gaza nor the northern two-thirds of the West Bank had ever been in any ancient Israel; and, so, anyone who says that the Jews in 1948 were ‘coming home’ to ‘Israel’ is historically wrong. However, those Jews were ethnically cleansing the land. It’s well-documented, such as here, here, here, and here. And even if ancient Israel had included all of the land that now is Israel, it wasn’t so at all in recent centuries, when virtually all of the residents there were Muslims and Christians — though Jews were demanding to control it while being only a tiny percentage of the population there. Their supremacism was clearly not only fascist but racist; it was Jewish Nazism. Furthermore, during the 1930s, Zionists considered themselves to be fascists; and fascists in both Germany and Italy considered Zionists to be Jewish fascists, ideological brothers of both Italy’s and Germany’s fascists (Christianity’s fascists). And Albert Einstein and other prominent progressive Jews in the U.S. after World War II described as “fascists” Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom subsequently became elected by Israel’s Jews to lead Israel. And yet the U.S. Government backed them, not only when Begin and Shamir were leading massacres of Arab villages in the 1940s, but when both men became Israel’s leaders in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s — and afterward, under their political follower Benjamin Netanyahu: clearly, a racist-supremacist apartheid regime ever since its founding, a regime which defines the supreme group, “Jew,” not only by religion, but by descent; that is, racially. Under U.S. President Harry S. Truman, the America and the world that his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was against the formation of a Jewish state and even resisted his aides who backed Churchill’s strong support for the creation of Israel, and who also was opposed to Winston Churchill’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s urgings for a war against the Soviet Union) had sought and carefully planned — the world that FDR had been intensively working to build — abruptly ended. And, more than anything else, this is the reason why, on 28 October 2023, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva, to resign his post. He resigned his post because now the final solution to the Palestinian problem — the problem that Truman and his successors enabled fascist Jews to create — is about to come to a head. And decent Jews everywhere will be experiencing the backlash from what the indecent ones — who are the majority in Israel — are doing. The decent Jews will be getting the backlash for what the indecent ones are doing, but the blame really should go ONLY to the Israelis, and to the UK and U.S. billionaires (and their politicians and ‘news’-media) who have been constantly propagandizing for them.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Prof Ben Saul cautions that exceeding the limits of international law only breeds extremism and discontent, and is no recipe for peace
As he takes office as the UN’s sole special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism this week, Prof Ben Saul’s purview is dominated by what he views as one serious, though not unprecedented, “mistake”: countering terrorism with military might.
“Unfortunately, when 9/11 came, the same kind of pressure to take the gloves off became manifest pretty quickly,” says the incoming monitor and Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney, as he reflects upon Israel’s siege of Gaza in response to Hamas’s attacks on 7 October.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
A former top United Nations official in New York joins us for an in-depth interview about why he has resigned after publicly accusing the U.N. of failing to address what he calls a “text book case of genocide” unfolding in Gaza. Craig Mokhiber is a longtime international human rights lawyer who served as director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Craig Mokhiber, director of human rights body, accuses the US, UK and much of Europe as ‘wholly complicit in the horrific assault’
The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.
Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Life in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. Photo credit: canada talks israel palestine
On Friday, October 27, the nations of the world voted in the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 120 to 14, for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. The resolution was sponsored by the government of sometime U.S. ally King Abdullah of Jordan.
Israel’s UN Ambassador responded with utter disdain, accusing those who voted in favor of the “ridiculous resolution” of supporting “the defense of Nazi terrorists” over Israel. In Gaza, Israel’s response to the global call for a truce was to escalate its bombing and expand its ground invasion.
The U.S. corporate media have not helped Americans understand how isolated our government is in its unconditional support and resupply of weapons for Israel’s genocidal military campaign, which has killed over 8,000 Palestinians, 30% of them women and 40% of them children, while destroying hospitals, apartment buildings, streets and schools, and turning Gaza into nothing short of hell on Earth for the bereaved survivors. According to Save the Children, Israel has killed more children in Gaza in three weeks than have been killed in all global conflicts since 2019.
The UN vote makes it clear how diplomatically isolated Israel and the United States are. The mere 12 countries that sided with Israel and the U.S. in the General Assembly were 4 from eastern Europe (Austria, Croatia, Czechia and Hungary); 2 from Latin America (Guatemala and Paraguay); and 6 small island nations in the Pacific.
Not a single country from western Europe, Africa, the mainland of Asia, the Caribbean or the Middle East voted with the U.S. and Israel. The countries that voted for a truce included many traditional U.S. allies (France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, New Zealand), while other U.S. allies like the U.K., Germany, Canada and Japan were among the 45 countries that abstained.
Israel and the United States are not only diplomatically isolated, but their governments are out of touch with their own people. As Israel prepared to launch its ground invasion of Gaza, a Maariv poll of Israelis found that public support for an immediate large-scale ground offensive of Gaza had fallen from 65% on October 17th to only 29% a week later.
Israelis, like the rest of the world, are watching the horrors of the massacre in Gaza, and have realized that their government has no real plan beyond massive, indiscriminate violence for its stated goal of destroying Hamas, which may well be unachievable no matter how many Israeli soldiers, prisoners captured on October 7 and Palestinian civilians it is ready to sacrifice.
In the United States, a Data for Progress poll, published on October 20, found that 66% of Americans wanted their government to “call for a ceasefire and a deescalation of violence in Gaza,” and to “leverage its close diplomatic relationship with Israel to prevent further violence and civilian deaths.”
Support was across party lines, but, for a Democratic administration and Democratic members of Congress, the 80% of Democrats who agreed with the poll’s statement should have been a wake-up call. Evidently they slept through the alarm, as Congress passed a bill promising unconditional military support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza by 412 votes to 10 on October 24, a green light for the anticipated escalation that followed.
By October 30, only 18 members of Congress had signed the resolution introduced by Rep. Cori Bush calling for an “immediate de-escalation and ceasefire.” The new House Speaker Mike Johnson has pledged that the first piece of binding legislation he will put to the floor is one to spend $14 billion to resupply Israel with weapons, a bill that is likely to sail through with overwhelming support from both parties.
The impotence of the U.S. government to contain the chaos its policies have unleashed can hardly be exaggerated. The U.S. embassy in Beirut has posted a message to all U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon immediately. It says, “You should have a plan of action for crisis situations that does not rely on U.S. government assistance,” and tells them they will have to sign a promissory note to reimburse the U.S. government if it helps to evacuate them.
So the results of the U.S. government’s massive investments in the power to kill and destroy have left it unable to protect or help its own citizens around the world. It instead directs them to a State Department web page titled “What the Department of State Can and Can’t Do in a Crisis.”
The current international isolation of the United States stands in sharp contrast to the way that Biden’s defeat of Trump in 2020 was welcomed around the world. Biden promised a new era of U.S. diplomacy, an end to U.S. wars in the Middle East, and renewed international cooperation on the most serious problems facing the world.
Instead, his policies are the worst of all worlds, continuing Trump’s ratcheting up of military spending and his illegal sanctions against Iran, Cuba and a dozen other countries, while shifting Trump’s Cold War with Russia and China into overdrive, and now fueling and escalating catastrophic proxy wars in Ukraine and Palestine.
But alternatives to American “leadership” are finally emerging. The UN Security Council is immobilized by self-serving U.S. and Russian vetoes, and exclusive rich boys’ clubs like the G7 and the World Economic Forum have only further entrenched neocolonialism and inequality. But now the world is turning to more representative fora like the UN General Assembly, the G20, G77, BRICS and regional groupings like the African Union, ASEAN and CELAC to more honestly debate our common problems and find new ways to solve them.
As the world comes together to build a post-neocolonial, multipolar world, U.S. propaganda is losing its power to shape the way people look at each new crisis. Israeli and U.S. officials, including Biden, have done their best to cast doubt on the death toll in Gaza, but these numbers are meticulously documented by Palestinian health authorities and accepted by the World Health Organization, UN agencies and NGOs that work there.
U.S. officials and media are more inclined to listen to Israeli officials than Palestinian ones, but this only increases U.S. isolation by making it complicit in Israeli propaganda, both in fact and in the eyes of people and governments around the world.
King Abdullah of Jordan, President Sisi of Egypt and Palestinian leader Abu Mazen canceled a meeting with Biden after Israel apparently killed hundreds of people with what appeared to be an air-burst bomb, as they sheltered at the Anglican Church’s Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. Biden validated Abdullah, Sisi and Abu Mazen’s decision by doing exactly as they feared and publicly claiming that “the other team” was responsible for the hospital bombing.
While Palestinian officials have identified over 8,000 people killed in Gaza, Israeli officials have so far only identified 933 of the 1,300 or 1,400 people they say were killed in the Palestinian attack on October 7.
The Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel has a web page with photos, names, ages and some personal details of the people killed in Israel who have been identified. At the prompting of the Israeli military, many Western politicians and media have painted the Palestinian attack as a massacre of civilians, so it may come as a surprise to see that at least 361 of the 933 dead so far identified were in fact soldiers, police and security officers.
But Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian fighters also killed hundreds of civilians on October 7, as surely as Israel’s air strikes have killed thousands of civilians in Gaza. The prisoners they took back to Gaza also included both soldiers and civilians.
Ha’aretz’s records also raise questions about another story that has been widely repeated by Western media and politicians, including President Biden, which is that Israeli soldiers found 40 dead babies who had been decapitated by Hamas. There are 7 children below the age of 10 among the 572 civilian dead identified in Ha’aretz, but the youngest was 4 years old, not a baby. As with all these questions, we don’t know the answers, but we should be skeptical of unverified atrocity claims, especially since Israel has lied about previous war crimes and resisted independent, international investigations of them.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union left the United States with no rival to act as a check on its leaders’ unbridled and often unrealistic ambitions for global power, the U.S. has squandered a historic chance to build a peaceful, just and sustainable country, with shared prosperity for us and our neighbors around the world.
Our leaders’ illusion of military superiority has been a poison pill that has undermined every aspect of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy. It has led them down a dead end from where they can no longer imagine alternatives to fighting and killing or arming their proxies to fight and kill, even as the consequences of these policies have become so deadly and destabilizing that they undermine the position of the United States in the world and leave it increasingly isolated.
Apart from the United States, the world is remarkably united behind the goal of ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967. The United States should stop fueling the occupation with an endless supply of weapons, and stop diplomatically shielding Israel from international efforts to end the occupation. Since the United States has utterly failed in its role as a mediator and honest broker between Israel and Palestine, acting instead as a party to the conflict on Israel’s side, it must now step aside to allow real mediators to take on that role.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On 17 September 2023, approximately 28 young Bahraini detainees in the Dry Dock Detention Center began a new hunger strike in protest against the continued violations committed against them by the prison administration, and the neglect of the relevant state institutions to carry out their duties, notably the National Institution for Human Rights, and the Ombudsman.
The rights of children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center are subject to serious violations, as most of the arrests are based on political backgrounds, and the victims are subjected to unfair trials. In 2011, the state security institutions launched a series of arbitrary arrest campaigns that affected various Bahraini regions and towns and included citizens of different age groups, including children who were not over the legal age at the time of their arrest, for participating in peaceful demonstrations in the movement demanding reform and democracy. Since that date, the scene has been repeated as part of the policies of suppressing freedom and encouraging impunity in Bahrain.
Due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Interior’s data, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detained children. However, investigative reports have previously revealed that Bahrain detains about 150 children, 10 of whom are in Jau Prison – which is designated for adults – while the remaining 140 are divided into two wards. One ward is designated for children aged between 15 and 18 years old, and the other is designated for solitary confinement. Despite these reports, the Bahraini government claims that it has no children in detention, stating instead that those arrested from the age group of 15 to 18 years are serving their sentence in a private reform center.
Young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center are exposed to many human rights violations, including fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Their most prominent demands relate to the following:
– The right to education;
– The right to medical treatment;
– The right to obtain diverse and healthy diets;
– The right to communicate with the outside world;
– The right to family visits;
– The right to have appropriate clothing; and
– The right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice and the Protection of Children from Mistreatment.
The Law on Restorative Justice for Children and their Protection from Mistreatment was approved on 15 February 2021 and came into effect on 18 August 2021. However, its effects were not reflected on the conditions of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, nor on those who were arrested after the enactment of this law. These include:
Since its passage, this law has been subjected to numerous criticisms, as the government of Bahrain exploits its promulgation to promote the reforms that it has carried out. Unfortunately, its application is still limited to a very small number of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, despite the fact that many of them meet the conditions of the law and almost all of them demand the right to benefit from it.
As well, the law fails to guarantee children’s fundamental rights to due process. The law does not prohibit questioning or interrogating children without the presence of a lawyer or their guardians. Article 66 states that “health, social, legal and rehabilitative services must be provided to accused children” at “all stages”, including during “arrest and investigation.” However, Article 67 stipulates that a child has no right to a lawyer until after the child’s case reaches trial. The law also fails to clearly stipulate the child’s right to appeal his deprivation of liberty, while Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in conflict with the law has the right to “immediate access to legal assistance.”
International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have previously condemned the failure of this law to protect the fundamental rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it legitimizes arbitrary detention on charges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly, and allows the interrogation and investigation of children without the presence of their parents or attorney.
The prison for young convicts fails to uphold the most fundamental rights, and detainees on charges related to the right to expression are subjected to ill-treatment, torture, and reprisal. They are deprived of healthy meals and clothing, are denied family visits, and are denied means of entertainment, which exposes them to psychological and health risks and harms, and which is inconsistent with human and moral principles and values.
As a result of all of this mistreatment, many of the children have undertaken repeated hunger strikes, despite the dangers that such actions pose to their health. Recently, they announced their hunger strike on 17 September 2023, in protest against the Public Prosecution’s neglect of their right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice as a means that may help them get escape these violations. Among them is Hussein Ahmed Habib, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison; he was less than 16 years old at the time his alleged offense was committed. He submitted more than five requests to more than one public prosecutor representative, demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but to no avail. Also, Mujtaba Abdul Hussein Abdulla, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old, is demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but the public prosecution rejects his repeated requests.
Instead of children being behind their school desks, they are deprived of the right to education. This violation does not stop there – it destroys their future even after the end of their sentence, as they are deprived of job opportunities due to the denial of “good conduct” certificates for political prisoners.
Among them is Ali Isa Jasim, one of the young convicts who was deprived of his fundamental rights, after he was arrested when he was fifteen years old. He went on two hunger strikes in one month, protesting the denial of his right to education. Despite the promises he has received from the prison administration to provide him with an education, he has yet to be given access to learning resources. His suffering is shared by Khalil Ebrahim Sabah, who resorted to a hunger strike to protest the deprivation of his fundamental rights, including education, for two years. They are therefore waiting to be transferred to Jau Prison to obtain this right.
In addition to the torture, forced disappearance, solitary confinement, and psychological threats they endure, many child detainees also face deprivation of the necessary treatment and medical care. They are denied medical visits, and the prison administration ignores the conditions of those suffering from illnesses and in need of constant follow-up. On 17 June 2023, six young convicts, including Khalil Sabah and Fares Salman, declared a hunger strike to protest against their deprivation of health care for their scabies disease, which they contracted while in prison due to squalid conditions. Further, Haidar Ebrahim Mulla Hasan, who was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in three different cases, did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest, but as a result of torture and the dire conditions in prison, including medical neglect, he began to suffer from severe stomach pains to the point of vomiting and defecating blood. He continues to suffer from severe headaches, difficulty breathing, and a dental problem. Despite this, the prison administration refuses to refer him to a doctor for a diagnosis of his condition, and he has not received any treatment yet. In fact, the last time he was presented to a doctor was over a year ago.
Following the crackdown on popular protests that the country witnessed in 2011, criticism prompted Bahrain to establish three bodies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior: the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission (PDRC), the Ombudsman, and the Special Investigation Unit in the Public Prosecution, but the lack of independence of these bodies and their political affiliations has rendered them unfit for purpose. Since their establishment, complaints raised by detainees, especially young convicts, have not been investigated, and the security forces responsible for torturing political prisoners have not been held accountable.
By exposing young convicts to violations, including forced detention, torture, denial of medical care, and of the right to education, Bahrain is violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stress the rights of Prisoners, including:
Hence, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to:
The post Young convicts in the Dry Dock: ongoing violations and delayed justice appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
A country broken by constant foreign interventions, its tyrannical regimes propped up by the back brace of the United States (when it wasn’t intervening to adjust it), marred by appalling natural disasters, tells a sad tale of the crippled Haitian state. Haiti’s political existence is the stuff and stuffing of pornographic violence, the crutch upon which moralists can always point to as the end, doom and despair that needs change. Every conundrum needs its intrusive deliverer, even though that deliverer is bound to make things worse.
Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations to renewed interest. The staleness is evident in the menu: servings of failed state canapes; vicious, murderous, raping, pillaging gangs as the main musical score; collapse of civic institutions as the dessert. It’s the sort of menu to rile and aggravate any mission or charity, and yet, military-security interventions continue to capture the feeble imagination.
Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the constant theme in reporting from Haiti is that of rampant, freely operating gangs. Sophie Hills, a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, offered this description in October last year: “Armed gangs have immobilized the capital, Port-au-Prince, shutting down the already troubled economy and creating fear among citizens to even walk the streets.”
This October 23, the UN special envoy to Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, reported to the UN Security Council that the situation had continued “to deteriorate as growing gang violence plunge the lives of the people of Haiti into disarray and major crimes are rising sharply to new record highs.” These included killings and sexual violence, the latter marked by instances of rape and mutilation.
To add further complexity to the situation, vigilante groups such as the “Bwa Kale” movement have responded through resorting to lynching (395 alleged gang members are said to have perished in that gruesome way between April 24 and September).
Moïse’s opportunistic replacement, Ariel Henry, has served as acting prime minister, persistently calling for foreign intervention to right the worn vessel he is steering into a sunset oblivion. The past presidential elections were last held in 2016, but Henry has not deemed it appropriate to stage elections, preferring the bureaucratic formula of a High Transition Council (HTC) tasked with eventually achieving that goal. When the announcement establishing the body was made in February, Henry loftily claimed that this was “the beginning of the end of dysfunction in our democratic institutions.”
These weak assertions have not translated into credible change on the ground. The contempt with which the HTC has been viewed was indicated by the news from the UN envoy that its Secretary General had been kidnapped by gang members posing as police officers.
In September, Henry addressed the UN hoping to add some mettle to the Haitian National Police, urging the Security Council to adopt measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to “authorize the deployment of a multinational support mission to underpin the security of Haiti”.
The measure can be read as a stalling measure to keep Henry and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) ensconced. This is certainly the view of the National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Family Action Network Movement (FANM). In their September letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the organisations warned that, “Any military intervention supporting Haiti’s corrupt, repressive, unelected regime will likely exacerbate the current political crisis to a catastrophic one.” The move would “further entrench the regime, deepening Haiti’s political crisis while generating significant civilian casualties and migration pressure.”
In its eternal wisdom, the United Nations Security Council felt that an intervention force consisting of Kenyan police, supplemented by assistance from other states, would be required for this mission. Resolution 2699, establishing a Multinational Security Support Mission led by Kenya, received a vote of 13 in favour, with Russia and China abstaining. This would entail a co-deployment with Haitian personnel who have melted before the marauding gangs. Thus, history continues to rhyme (the US occupation, 1915-1934 and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004-2017).
Armed gangs feature as a demonic presence in the UN deliberations, regularly paired with such opaque terms as “a multidimensional crisis”. It is telling that the cliché-governed reasons for that crisis never focus on how the gang phenomenon took root, not least those mouldering state institutions that have failed to protect the populace. Little wonder then, that the Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia felt that sending in armed elements was “an extreme measure” that unnecessarily invoked the provisions of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.
Undeterred by such views, the US representative Jeffrey Delaurentis noted that the mission would require the “inclusion of dedicated expertise in anti-gang operations, community-oriented policing, and children and women’s protection.” That Washington approved the measure can be put down to endorsing a policy which might discourage – if only in the short term – the arrival of Haitian asylum seekers which have been turned around en masse.
Despite claiming a different tack from his predecessor in approaching the troubled Caribbean state, President Biden has sought to restrict the influx of Haitian applications using, for instance, Title 42, a Trump policy put in place to deport individuals who pose a pandemic risk, in spite of any asylum credentials they might have. Within 12 months, the Biden administration was responsible for expelling more than 20,000 Haitians – or as many as the combined totals of three different presidents over two decades.
Resolution 2699 also suffers from another glaring fault. Kenya’s dominant contribution to the exercise has raised searching questions back home. Opposition politician Ekuru Aukot, himself a lawyer who had aided in drafting Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution, saw no legal basis for the government to authorise the Haitian deployment. In his view, the deployment was unconstitutional, lacking any legal backbone or treaty.
In granting Aukot an interim injunction, this point was considered by the Nairobi High Court worthy of resolution. Judge Enock Mwita was “satisfied that the application and petition raise substantial issues of national importance and public interest and require urgent consideration.” The judge accordingly issued a conservatory order “restraining the respondents from deploying police officers to Haiti or any other country until 24th October 2023.”
On October 24, Judge Mwita extended the duration of the interim order till November 9, when an open session is scheduled for the petition to be argued. “This court became seized of this matter earlier than everyone else and it would not make sense for it to set aside or allow the interim orders to lapse.” The whole operation risks being scuttled even before it sets sail.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said, “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” The Israeli Ambassador responded that Guterres’ comments were “shocking”, “unfathomable” and “disconnected from reality”. He called for the Secretary General’s resignation. Below are some facts about Gaza to evaluate whether Guterres was accurate or not.
Gaza is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean coast with the 5,000 year old Gaza City in the north. The entire strip is only 5 miles wide by 25 miles in length with 2.3 million Palestinians locked in this territory by Israel. It is the size of a small US city.
In 1996 Israeli journalist Amira Haas published the book Drinking the Sea at Gaza. After living and researching in Gaza, she described the history, conditions, religion and politics. The subtitle was “Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege”. Gaza has been under siege for decades.
About 80% of the people in Gaza are descendants of refugees who were expelled from their villages in what is now southern Israel in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). Most Gazans have never been able to set foot outside the territory. They are born, live their lives and die in this concentration camp.
At least 50% of Gaza’s work force is unemployed. Israel restricts nearly all aspects of their economy. For example, Gaza’s fishermen are prevented from going into deeper waters to fish. If they try, they are fired on by Israeli naval boats. Farmers and shepherds are also fired on as they try to eke out a living.
From December 1998 to February 2001, there was an airport in Gaza until Israel bombed the control tower and destroyed the runways to make it unusable.
Gaza has a port but foreign boats are prevented from landing. In 2010, six civilian ships including the Turkish Mavi Marmara tried to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza. Israeli paratroopers attacked the ships, killing 9 passengers including one American.
Israel routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinians. In 2003, American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the destruction of the home of a Palestinian pharmacist in Gaza.
Israel routinely denies exit permits to outstanding youth who have received scholarships to study abroad.
In 2014 Israel bombed Gaza’s water reservoir and sanitation treatment facilities, escalating the shortage of drinking water while sewage ran in the streets. Since then, as documented by Oxfam, Israel has prevented the importation of equipment necessary to rebuild sanitation and water treatment.
In spring 2018 Gazans demonstrated against their imprisonment. They called it the Great March of Return. The two year report documents that 217 Palestinians were killed and over 19,000 injured by Israeli soldiers.
In 2020 the UN issued a report saying that Gaza is not liveable. “The primary cause of this ‘unliveable environment is a highly restrictive Israeli blockade … which has reduced Gaza to the point of ‘systematic collapse.’”
Conclusion
Clearly, the Secretary General was accurate in his statement that Palestinians have endured decades of “suffocating occupation”. It is a measure of the Israeli Ambassador’s sense of impunity that he attacks the top UN official who dares to mention this.
The diplomatic conflict will increase in the coming days and weeks as Israel’s genocidal campaign continues.
The facts about Gaza and Palestine are clear: Israel is violating international law and Western states that support this are complicit. It is up to the people all over the world to speak out.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The relevance given to a UN Secretary-General is often judged by the degree of controversy caused. In history, the most relevant are usually targeted. Dag Hammarskjöld, refusing to remain a mere bauble of international office, was almost certainly murdered over his intervention in the Congo civil war in 1961. The least relevant (who was that sweet little fella, Ban Ki-Moon?) have barely registered a note of dissent. The big powers like to know they can render such figures impotent, if not insignificant.
It was, for that reason, refreshing to see the current occupant of that post make the less than startling remark that the atrocious attacks of October 7 staged by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israeli soil could not be seen as standalone acts of individual, unprovoked outrage. António Guterres was careful to also note that there was “nothing” that could “justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets”.
Guterres also noted that it was “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” The Palestinians had “been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”
While the attacks by Hamas could not be justified to address such grievances, they also could not be used as a pretext to “justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” Even war, he explained to his colleagues, had rules.
The Secretary-General also reiterated the principle of protecting civilians during armed conflict. This precluded using them as human shields and ordering “more than one million people to evacuate the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”
Such comments did not go down well with the Israeli Foreign Minister. Bullies of international relations are always easily slighted. And so it was that Eli Cohen would gasp and wonder which world the secretary-general was living in. “Definitely, this is not our world.”
The foreign minister made it fairly clear what sort of world that was. “I will not meet the UN Secretary-General. After the October 7th massacre, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet.”
Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, spoke in the voice of complacency outraged, going so far as to demand the resignation of Guterres. “A Secretary-General who does not understand that the murder of innocents can never be understood by any ‘background’ cannot be Secretary-General.” With a callow splutter, he suggested that the UN chief had “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder.”
On army radio, Erdan also announced that Israel would be refusing “to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already refused a visa for the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”
As ever, Erdan’s reasoning confused explication with justification, but in that world, the nuanced explanation huffs and puffs in tired resignation, leaving the murderous justification to take the front position.
The comments from Guterres also come in light of the perilous operational state of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The humanitarian agency has been starved of resources and will be forced to cease the provision of hospital care, largely occasioned by Israel’s blockade on fuel. “Current stocks are almost completely exhausted,” the agency states in its October 26 situation report, “forcing life-saving services to come to a halt. This includes the supply of piped water as well as fuel for the health sector, bakeries, and generators.” Staff have also suffered a horrendous: 39 have been killed since October 7.
As for the attacks on his own integrity, Guterres has been combative. “I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statement … as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.”
The brainstorming session in the Netanyahu-IDF meetings must have been straightforward: de-historicise conflict, first and foremost; relegate Hamas to some equivalent monstrous organisation, in this case, ISIS; and then, just to make sure, use Nazism and the Holocaust as recyclable motifs.
Along the way, massive Palestinian casualties, many children (2,360 deaths over three weeks), can be excused by pointing the finger at Hamas, because it is not Israeli jets and weapons doing the killing but the policy of a terrorist organisation. And besides, Israel is, as Cohen insists, doing it for “the civilised world”.
The Israeli strategy here is to excuse the inexcusable: the collective, mass laceration of a people. In this, they simply perpetuate the tragic crimes that have been visited, not only upon the Jews, but upon any ethnicity or group in history. The Whig statesman Edmund Burke spoke about not knowing “the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.” Unfortunately, in this conflict, that indictment was drawn up some time ago, and is being prosecuted with relentless ruthlessness.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Abdulla Mohamed AlDurazi, an 18-year-old Saudi citizen from the Qatif region in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was arrested without an arrest warrant while walking alone on 27 August 2014. His detention has been marred by multiple human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and an unfair trial. He was sentenced to death for alleged freedom of expression-related crimes committed when he was a minor. He is currently detained in the General Directorate Investigations prison in Al-Dammam, awaiting execution, as the Saudi Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on 8 August 2022, meaning he could be executed at any time without prior notice, in a clear violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, despite the 2020 Saudi Royal Decree aiming to abolish the death penalty for child defendants. On 16 October 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions, issued a press release, in which he urged “the Saudi judiciary and other institutions in Saudi Arabia to ensure that Abdullah AlDurazi’s execution is not carried out”.
On 27 August 2014, while Abdulla was walking alone in the street, Saudi security officers seized him, beat him, and arrested him without presenting an arrest warrant. After being taken to the Tarout Police Station and then Qatif Prison, he was moved to the Dammam Investigations Center six months following his arrest. Abdulla forcibly disappeared for three months and endured approximately six months of solitary confinement, during which he was subjected to physical and psychological torture. Prison officers inflicted severe burns around his eye, broke his tooth, and injured his knee while he was restrained for a long time. Because of the cruel torture he endured, he suffered a severe ear injury, and he was hospitalized, where he spent two weeks in a coma. Under this brutal torture, Abdulla was forced into signing a false confession, which he was not allowed to read, claiming his involvement with a terrorist group.
Following three years of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and solitary confinement, Abdulla faced trial before the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court in August 2017. During the trial, he cited the details of the torture he endured during the investigation period, which forced him into signing an already prepared written false confession that he was not allowed to read. He also made many requests for the court for his medical records to be admitted, which shows evidence of his hospitalization from the torture he endured to coerce his confession, but the court ignored them. It also denied Abdulla access to a court-appointed lawyer, which made his father, who works in the fishing sector and has no legal training, represent him at his trial before the Specialized Criminal Court, as his family could not afford to appoint a private lawyer.
Abdulla’s trial relied only on his coerced confession, as the court did not present any other evidence for his alleged involvement in the crimes of which he was accused. Additionally, all of these alleged offenses are not considered among the most serious crimes. Consequently, Abdulla was convicted of 1) participating in the formation of a terrorist cell aimed at destabilizing the internal security in the country and targeting security officers, 2) participating in demonstrations and marches, 3) attacking and destroying public property, carrying out acts of sabotage and chaos, blocking the road and seeking to cause strife and division in the country, 4) assaulting security men by throwing Molotov cocktails at them, 5) blocking the road for pedestrians by burning tires, 6) chanting anti-state slogans, and 7) participating in Ahmed AlMatar’s funeral and distributing water during it, and organizing this funeral. The court even exaggerated and fabricated charges that were not included in the investigation books and the statements extracted under torture, in which Abdulla did not mention the formation of a terrorist cell. Even though all these crimes allegedly occurred before Abdulla turned 18, except for one crime in relation to peaceful protest-related activities that took place in May 2014, when Abdulla was 18, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced him to death in February 2018.
Despite the 2020 Royal Decree by Saudi King Salman abolishing the death penalty for child defendants, and Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman’s statement in an interview with “The Atlantic” on 3 March 2022 that the death penalty had been abolished except for murder charges, the Court of Appeal upheld his death sentence on 8 August 2022 and rejected Abdulla’s appeal, ignoring the protection provided in the 2020 Royal Decree to minors in Saudi Arabia for discretionary offenses (ta’zir), which involve the charges brought against Abdulla. Notably, the alleged crimes were protest-related and did not involve crimes considered the most serious, such as murder. Abdulla appealed his sentence before the Saudi Supreme Court, and in October 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, meaning he could be executed at any time.
On 16 October 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions, issued a press release, in which he expressed concern at the imminent execution of Abdullah AlDurazi, who was a child when he allegedly committed his crime and urged “the Saudi judiciary and other institutions in Saudi Arabia to ensure that Abdullah AlDurazi’s execution is not carried out”. He added that “the Juvenile Act does not extend to mandatory and retributive death sentences, allowing for the execution of children sentenced under the provisions of the Sharia legal system” – that is, according to the Saudi interpretation of Sharia. Accordingly, he called on Saudi Arabia “to publish the text of the 2020 Royal Decree and enforce it for all defendants below the age of 18, regardless of their crime”. Reprieve, in collaboration with other organizations, had worked on this issue, contributed to its promotion, and shed light on it, warning of the danger of Saudi Arabia carrying out Abdulla’s execution at any time.
Abdulla’s warrantless arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and unfair trial go against the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), to which Saudi Arabia is a party. Additionally, the violations that he faced despite being a minor violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
As such, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) urgently highlights the imminent threat to execute Abdulla and at least two other children in Saudi Arabia for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. ADHRB calls on the international community to take immediate action and pressure the Saudi government to revoke the death sentences imposed on all minors in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it urges Saudi authorities to release Abdulla immediately, given the absence of a fair trial and proper legal procedures. It further demands an investigation into the allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and ill-treatment, holding the perpetrators accountable. Compensation for the violations he endured should be provided, or at the very least, a fair retrial must be granted, leading to his release.
The post Profile in Persecution: Abdulla Mohamed AlDurazi appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
