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Category: United Nations

  • Israel’s War on the World


    Photo credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim, Wikimedia Commons

    Each new week brings new calamities for people in the countries neighboring Israel, as its leaders try to bomb their way to the promised land of an ever-expanding Greater Israel.

    In Gaza, Israel appears to be launching its “Generals’ Plan” to drive the most devastated and traumatized 2.2 million people in the world into the southern half of their open-air prison. Under this plan, Israel would hand the northern half over to greedy developers and settlers who, after decades of U.S. encouragement, have become a dominant force in Israeli politics and society. The redoubled slaughter of those who cannot move or refuse to move south has already begun.

    In Lebanon, millions are fleeing for their lives and thousands are being blown to pieces in a repeat of the first phase of the genocide in Gaza. For Israel’s leaders, every person killed or forced to flee and every demolished building in a neighboring country opens the way for future Israeli settlements. The people of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia ask themselves which of them will be next.

    Israel is not only attacking its neighbors. It is at war with the entire world. Israel is especially threatened when the governments of the world come together at the United Nations and in international courts to try to enforce the rule of international law, under which Israel is legally bound by the same rules that all countries have signed up to in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

    In July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 is illegal, and that it must withdraw its military forces and settlers from all those territories. In September, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution giving Israel one year to complete that withdrawal. If, as expected, Israel fails to comply, the UN Security Council or the General Assembly may take stronger measures, such as an international arms embargo, economic sanctions or even the use of force.

    Now, amid the escalating violence of Israel’s latest bombing and invasion of Lebanon, Israel is attacking the UNIFIL UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, whose thankless job is to monitor and mitigate the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

    On October 10 and 11, Israeli forces fired on three UNIFIL positions in Lebanon. At least five peacekeepers were injured. UNIFIL also accused Israeli soldiers of deliberately firing at and disabling the monitoring cameras at its headquarters, before two Israeli tanks later drove through and destroyed its gates. On October 15, an Israeli tank fired at a UNIFIL watchtower in what it described as “direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position.” Deliberately targeting UN missions is a war crime.

    This is far from the first time the soldiers of UNIFIL have come under attack by Israel. Since UNIFIL took up its positions in southern Lebanon in 1978, Israel has killed blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers from Ireland, Norway, Nepal, France, Finland, Austria and China.

    The South Lebanon Army, Israel’s Christian militia proxy in Lebanon from 1984 to 2000, killed many more, and other Palestinian and Lebanese groups have also killed peacekeepers. Three hundred and thirty-seven UN peacekeepers from all over the world have given their lives trying to keep the peace in southern Lebanon, which is sovereign Lebanese territory and should not be subject to repeated invasions by Israel in the first place. UNIFIL has the worst death toll of any of the 52 peacekeeping missions conducted by the UN around the world since 1948.

    Fifty countries currently contribute to the 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping mission, anchored by battalions from France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Nepal and Spain. All those governments have strongly and unanimously condemned Israel’s latest attacks, and insisted that “such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated.”

    Israel’s assault on UN agencies is not confined to attacking its peacekeepers in Lebanon. The even more vulnerable, unarmed, civilian agency, UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency), is under even more vicious assault by Israel in Gaza. In the past year alone, Israel has killed a horrifying number of UNRWA workers, about 230, as it has bombed and fired at UNRWA schools, warehouses, aid convoys and UN personnel.

    UNRWA was created in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to provide relief to some 700,000 Palestinian refugees after the 1948 “Nakba,” or catastrophe. The Zionist militias that later became the Israeli army violently expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland, ignoring the UN partition plan and seizing by force much of the land the UN plan had allocated to form a Palestinian state.

    When the UN recognized all that Zionist-occupied territory as the new state of Israel in 1949, Israel’s most aggressive and racist leaders concluded that they could get away with making and remaking their own borders by force, and that the world would not lift a finger to stop them. Emboldened by its growing military and diplomatic alliance with the United States, Israel has only expanded its territorial ambitions.

    Netanyahu now brazenly stands before the whole world and displays maps of a Greater Israel that includes all the land it illegally occupies, while Israelis openly talk of annexing parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

    Dismantling UNRWA has been a long-standing Israeli goal. In 2017, Netanyahu accused the agency of inciting anti-Israeli sentiment. He blamed UNRWA for “perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem” instead of solving it and called for it to be eliminated.

    After October 7, 2023, Israel accused 12 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff of being involved in Hamas’s attack on Israel. UNRWA immediately suspended those workers, and many countries suspended their funding of UNRWA. Since a UN report found that Israeli authorities had not provided “any supporting evidence” to back up their allegations, every country that funds UNRWA has restored its funding, with the sole exception of the United States.

    Israel’s assault on the refugee agency has only continued. There are now three anti-UNRWA bills in the Israeli Knesset: one to ban the organization from operating in Israel; another to strip UNRWA’s staff of legal protections afforded to UN workers under Israeli law; and a third that would brand the agency as a terrorist organization. In addition, Israeli members of parliament are proposing legislation to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in Jerusalem and use the land for new settlements.

    UN Secretary General Guterres warned that, if these bills become law and UNRWA is unable to deliver aid to the people of Gaza, “it would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

    Israel’s relationship with the UN and the rest of the world is at a breaking point. When Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly in New York in September, he called the UN a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” But the UN is not an alien body from another planet. It is simply the nations of the world coming together to try to solve our most serious common problems, including the endless crisis that Israel is causing for its neighbors and, increasingly, for the whole world.

    Now Israel wants to ban the secretary general of the UN from even entering the country. On October 1st, Israel invaded Lebanon, and Iran launched 180 missiles at Israel, in response to a whole series of Israeli attacks and assassinations. Secretary General Antonio Guterres put out a statement deploring the “broadening conflict in the Middle East,” but did not specifically mention Iran. Israel responded by declaring the UN Secretary General persona non grata in Israel, a new low in relations between Israel and UN officials.

    Over the years, the U.S. has partnered with Israel in its attacks on the UN, using its veto in the Security Council 40 times to obstruct the world’s efforts to force Israel to comply with international law.

    American obstruction offers no solution to this crisis. It can only fuel it, as the violence and chaos grows and spreads and the United States’ unconditional support for Israel gradually draws it into a more direct role in the conflict.

    The rest of the world is looking on in horror, and many world leaders are making sincere efforts to activate the collective mechanisms of the UN system. These mechanisms were built, with American leadership, after the Second World War ended in 1945, so that the world would “never again” be consumed by world war and genocide.

     A US arms embargo against Israel and an end to U.S. obstruction in the UN Security Council could tip the political balance of power in favor of the world’s collective efforts to resolve the crisis.

    The post Israel’s War on the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Carpet bomb the Irish area and then drop napalm over it.”

    The post “Carpet bomb the Irish area and then drop napalm over it.” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Denouncing the Renewal of the U.S.-Kenya Mission to Haiti

    The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace strongly denounces the UN Security Council’s vote to extend the U.S. funded, Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti. We assert that any U.S./UN-led armed intervention in Haiti is not only unjustifiable but also unlawful. We stand with the Haitian people and civil society groups who have consistently opposed foreign armed intervention, arguing that Haiti’s issues stem from ongoing and long-standing interference by the U.S., the UN, and the Core Group.

    On Monday, September 30, the UN Security Council unanimously  adopted  a  resolution extending for one year the authorization for the MSS mission to Haiti, which claims to help quell rampant gang violence. Yet, the mission will only be the latest in a line of failed interventions aimed at denying the popular sovereignty of the Haitian people. Prior to this vote, members of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Haiti/Americas Team delivered letters to the permanent UN Missions and Embassies of several countries represented on the UN Security Council, asking them to support the Haitian masses and oppose ongoing U.S.-orchestrated armed intervention. A public version of this letter appears here. While our letters were unsuccessful, we will continue to mobilize against this expanding intervention, which lacks legitimacy: the MSS was authorized under an illegitimate U.S.-installed Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, and deployed through the nine-member “Presidential Council” and Prime Minister, neither of which has any legal status or legitimacy in Haiti.

    Though the Biden administration has halted its efforts to convert the MSS into an official United Nations Peacekeeping operation, we understand that a full, long-term foreign military occupation of Haiti is the eventual goal of the U.S. and its neocolonial proxies. We warn that the U.S. aims to use Haiti as a staging ground for a permanent military base in the region to, as articulated in its foreign policy documents, secure “U.S. national security and interests” and manage rival powers, presumably Russia and China.

    In a time of global upheaval, marked by a live-streamed genocide in Gaza and violent clashes between cartels and police in Mexico, it is perplexing that the U.S., France, and Canada continue to call for the foreign occupation of Haiti — a country that, while facing internal conflicts, does not threaten regional or global security. We once again call on the international community to respect Haitian sovereignty and support the Haitian masses in their ongoing struggle against the relentless occupation by foreign powers. Allowing continuous U.S. and Western control over Haiti’s political apparatus not only threatens to extinguish the nation’s hard-won sovereignty, but also weakens the sovereignty and self-determination of every other nation in the Caribbean, and Central and South America. There can be no “Zone of Peace” in the Americas if there is no peace and freedom for the people of Haiti.

    U.S. out of Haiti!

    Kenya out of Haiti!

    No to Another Occupation!

    Free Haiti!

    The post Denouncing the Renewal of the U.S.-Kenya Mission to Haiti first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel’s War on the United Nations

    The United Nations is an easy body to hate.  At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone.  It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred briefly stemmed.  Over the ruins of the Second World War, the builders were favoured over the destroyers and mischief makers – at least for a time.

    On its establishment, the UN became a hostage to the political intrigues and power blocs that have continued to plague it for its duration.  Of particular concern was the body’s pursuit of international law protocols – formulation, drafting and implementation.  A central feature of this: resolutions passed by various bodies, the most significant being by the UN Security Council.  Such measures are followed by nation states when convenient, ignored when not.

    One such nation state in the mischief making class is Israel.  Its relationship with the UN has often been tetchy.  The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, admits that the body “played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Jewish State by passing UN Resolution 181 in 1947”.  The resolution, with its hefty consequences, called for “the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.”  The same organisation, however, goes on to note with satisfaction the remarks in April 2007 by then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: “Unfortunately, because of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, Israel’s been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias – and sometimes even discrimination.”

    For various periods of its history, Israel has felt hard done by in the international forum.  The folder of resolutions against it has burgeoned. Notable ones include UNSC Resolution 242 (1967) which asserts, in accordance with the UN Charter principles, that a “just and lasting peace in the Middle East” includes the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from territories occupied during the Six Day War and the termination of territorial claims and affirmation of sovereignty of all States in the area.  UNSC Resolution 338 (1973), passed in response to the Yom Kippur War between Israel, Egypt and Syria, called on the parties to cease hostilities within 12 hours and implement Resolution 242 “in all its parts”.

    UN Resolution 2334, passed in December 2016, particularly hurt, striking at the expansionist, displacing drive of the Jewish state through settlements in occupied territory that amount to de facto colonisation. It particularly condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem”.  This included, among other matters, the expansion of the settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land and the displacement of Palestinian civilians.

    Instead of seeing such a measure as a clear assessment of predation in breach of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it an unnecessary reward to the Palestinians “to continue down a dangerous path they have chosen” in avoiding direct negotiations with Israel. That Israel cared not a jot on that score hardly mattered.

    A number of recent incidents reveals the poor regard the United Nations is held in, notably within Israel’s warring circles.  Its agency aiding Palestinians, UNRWA, is threatened by two bills before the Israeli parliament that will significantly hamper its operations by evicting the body from its premise in territories within Israel’s control.  The proposed laws will also abolish any associated privileges and immunities.  Having failed to convince all major donors to the organisation that it should be defunded for being packed with Hamas apologists and operatives (the evidence has always been paltry on that score), the Israeli government is using a legal sledgehammer fashioned by the Knesset.

    The passage of the bills, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.”  The provision of shelter, food and healthcare “would grind to a halt” without the agency.  Some 600,000 children “would lose the only entity that is able to re-start education, risking the fate of an entire generation.”

    With Israel’s broadening campaign against Hezbollah to the north, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is facing continuous harassment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).  Established in 1978 by the Security Council to confirm the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon and aid Lebanese authorities restore peace and security in the area, UNIFIL has been a source of endless irritation to the IDF’s operations.

    In an October 13 statement, UNIFIL revealed that two IDF Merkava tanks at 4.30 that morning had gone about the business of destroying the main gate of their post in Ramyah, near the Israeli border.  The tanks forcibly entered, after which Israeli personnel demanded that the base turn out its lights.  “The tanks left about 45 minutes later after UNIFIL protested through our liaison mechanism, saying that IDF presence was putting peacekeepers in danger.”

    At 6.40 am, peacekeepers at the same post reported the firing of several smoke emitting rounds 100 metres to the north.  “Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp.”

    On October 14, persisting in its approach of impeding and harrying the peacekeeping force, the IDF halted “a critical UNIFIL logistical movement near Meiss ej Jebel, denying it passage.  The critical movement could not be completed.”

    The statement goes on to remind the IDF about its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers and property.  Breaching a UN position violated UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), while any deliberate attack on peacekeepers was a serious violation of international humanitarian law, in addition to breaching resolution 1701.

    In an almost disdainful manner, the IDF suggested in a statement that the peacekeepers had entirely misunderstood the brutal encroachment.  The actions had been motivated by goodwill to evacuate soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile.  “For the sake of evacuating the wounded, two tanks drove backwards, in a place where they could not advance otherwise in light of the threat of shooting, a few metres towards the UNIFIL position.”  The smokescreen had been created to aid the evacuation, while the entire operation was conducted throughout with continuous contact with the UN peacekeepers. After a time, the dressing of lies becomes tatty and banal.

    Typically, it fell to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to shed some light on the mendacious fog.  UNIFIL, he suggested, had to immediately withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon.  “It is time for you,” stated the PM in a pointed message to Guterres, “to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.”  Yet again, international law which, in this case, provides legitimacy to the UN peacekeeping operations in the area, could be treated as a tissue easily torn.

    The post Israel’s War on the United Nations first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israeli airstrike kills more than 20 in Christian town in northern Lebanon

    Hezbollah fires rockets at Tel Aviv in apparent response, while Israeli attacks on Gaza include a hospital courtyard

    More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to fire rockets at Tel Aviv, as Israel’s multifront war continues to escalate.

    It was also a particularly bloody 24 hours in the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital courtyard in central Gaza, another strike on a nearby school used as a shelter killed at least 20 people, and a drone strike killed five children playing on the street in al-Shati camp in Gaza City, according to local health authorities.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • US Silent as Over 100 Nations Back UN Chief

    The U.S. was not among the more than 100 United Nations member states that signed a new letter of support for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after Israel’s foreign minister declared him “persona non grata” and barred him from entering the country. The letter, spearheaded by Chile, said Israel’s attack on Guterres would “undermine the United Nations’ ability to carry out its mandate…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Post-WWII “Never Again” Pledge Is Being Broken in Gaza, UN Experts Say

    Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the “most profound crisis” globally since World War II, UN experts have warned, adding that impunity for Israel as it has killed tens of thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of Palestinians endangers the very structure of international humanitarian rights. On Friday, the group of 37 UN experts, including UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Attacks UN Peacekeeper Headquarters in Lebanon for Second Time in 2 Days

    The UN peacekeepers’ headquarters in Lebanon came under Israeli attack for the second time in two days on Friday, the group reported as human rights experts raise alarm about Israel’s continued impunity for committing likely war crimes against UN staff and facilities. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in Naqoura, Lebanon, “was affected by explosions” on Friday morning…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bring France into decolonisation talks, French Polynesian president tells UN

    By Stefan Armbruster 0f BenarNews

    French Polynesia’s president and civil society leaders have called on the United Nations to bring France to the negotiating table and set a timetable for the decolonisation of the Pacific territory.

    More than a decade after the archipelago was re-listed for decolonisation by the UN General Assembly, France has refused to acknowledge the world’s peak diplomatic organisation has a legitimate role.

    France’s reputation has taken a battering as an out-of-touch colonial power since deadly violence erupted in Kanaky New Caledonia in May, sparked by a now abandoned French government attempt to dilute the voting power of indigenous Kanak people.

    Pro-independence French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson told the UN Decolonisation Committee’s annual meeting in New York on Monday that “after a decade of silence” France must be “guided” to participate in “dialogue.”

    “Our government’s full support for a comprehensive, transparent and peaceful decolonisation process with France, under the scrutiny of the United Nations, can pave the way for a decolonisation process that serves as an example to the world,” Brotherson said.

    Brotherson called for France to finally co-operate in creating a roadmap and timeline for the decolonisation process, pointing to unrest in New Caledonia that “reminds us of the delicate balance that peace requires”.

    ‘Problem with decolonisation’
    In August, he warned France “always had a problem with decolonisation” in the Pacific, where it also controls the territories of New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna.

    The 121 islands of French Polynesia stretch over a vast expanse of the Pacific, with a population of about 280,000, and was first settled more than 2000 years ago.

    Often referred to as Tahiti after the island with the biggest population, France declared the archipelago a protectorate in 1842, followed by full annexation in 1880.

    France last year attended the UN committee for the first time since the territory’s re-inscription in 2013 as awaiting decolonisation, after decades of campaigning by French Polynesian politicians.

    2024107 French rep at UN.jpg
    French Permanent Representative to the UN Nicolas De Rivière responds to French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson at the 79th session of the Decolonisation Committe on Monday. Image: UNTV

    “I would like to clarify once again that this change of method does not imply a change of policy,” French permanent representative to the UN Nicolas De Rivière told the committee on Monday.

    “There is no process between the state and the Polynesian territory that reserves a role for the United Nations,” he said, and pointed out France contributes almost 2 billion euros (US $2.2 billion) each year, or almost 30 percent of the territory’s GDP.

    After the UN session, Brotherson told the media that France’s position is “off the mark”.

    17 speakers back independence
    French Polynesia was initially listed for decolonisation by the UN in 1946 but removed a year later as France fought to hold onto its overseas territories after the Second World War.

    Granted limited autonomy in 1984, with control over local government services, France retained administration over justice, security, defence, foreign policy and the currency.

    Seventeen pro-independence and four pro-autonomy – who support the status quo – speakers gave impassioned testimony to the committee.

    Lawyer and Protestant church spokesman Philippe Neuffer highlighted children in the territory “solely learn French and Western history”.

    “They deserve the right to learn our complete history, not the one centred on the French side of the story,” he said.

    “Talking about the nuclear tests without even mentioning our veterans’ history and how they fought to get a court to condemn France for poisoning people with nuclear radiation.”

    France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

    ‘We demand justice’
    “Our lands are contaminated, our health compromised and our spirits burned,” president of the Mururoa E Tatou Association Tevaerai Puarai told the UN denouncing it as French “nuclear colonialism”.

    “We demand justice. We demand freedom,” Puarai said.

    He said France needed to take full responsibility for its “nuclear crimes”, referencing a controversial 10-year compensation deal reached in 2009.

    Some Māʼohi indigenous people, many French residents and descendants in the territory fear independence and the resulting loss of subsidies would devastate the local economy and public services.

    Pro-autonomy local Assembly member Tepuaraurii Teriitahi told the committee, “French Polynesia is neither oppressed nor exploited by France.”

    “The idea that we could find 2 billion a year to replace this contribution on our own is an illusion that would lead to the impoverishment and downfall of our hitherto prosperous country,” she said.

    Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

  • Israel’s Blockade Bars WFP From Distributing Food “in Any Form” in North Gaza

    The World Food Programme (WFP) has reported that it has been forced to suspend distribution of food parcels across all of Gaza, and food distribution “in any form” in north Gaza, as Palestinians across the region starve due to Israel’s humanitarian aid blockade. The group said on Wednesday that aid entry into Gaza has hit its lowest point in months and that food distribution has been halted…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Carries Out 3 Attacks on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon

    The Israeli military opened fire on UN peacekeepers and their facilities this week as part of its ground invasion of southern Lebanon, the latest example of Israel targeting UN workers amid its genocide. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reported that Israeli forces fired at peacekeepers in three attacks on Wednesday and Thursday, as Israel’s recent escalation causes “widespread…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Critics May Face Repression in Azerbaijan Amid COP29, Human Rights Watch Warns

    Human Rights Watch on Thursday revealed the host country agreement between the United Nations and Azerbaijan for next month’s climate summit, on the heels of an HRW report exposing “the government’s concerted efforts to decimate civil society and silence its critics.” COP29 is scheduled for November 11-22 in Baku. Although the agreement was signed in August by U.N.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Saudi Arabia narrowly fails in bid to win a seat on UN human rights council

    The country had faced a campaign from rights groups who accused it of being ‘unfit to serve on the Human Rights Council’

    Saudi Arabia narrowly failed in its bid to win a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, a blow to Riyadh’s efforts to boost the country’s rights reputation abroad, four years after it was rejected in a 2020 bid to join the 47-member body.

    Saudi Arabia is spending billions to transform its global image from a country known for strict religious restrictions and human rights abuses into a tourism and entertainment hub under a plan its Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, launched known as Vision 2030.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN’s High Ideals Brought down by American Legislation

    After a full year of unbridled genocide in Gaza, escalating slaughter in the West Bank, and now similar crimes inflicted on the Lebanese, Britain’s brand-new prime minister Keir Starmer made this astounding announcement the other day: “We stand with Israel.”

    He also has the UK military helping to protect Israel from Iran’s rockets while doing nothing to defend unarmed Palestinian women and children from the daily carnage inflicted by Israel’s “most moral” military.

    He refers to Hamas’s murderous breakout last October 7 but never mentions Israel’s massacres and other atrocities against Palestinians in the decades leading up to October 7. Yet he practised as a human rights lawyer and was Director of Public Prosecutions. Would you believe it?

    So what makes Western leaders abandon all sense of justice, all common sense and all norms of human decency in order to support, protect and supply a rogue regime in its lust to dominate, oppress, steal and butcher? Why such adoration for Israel in our corridors of power? Nobody I’ve spoken to can understand it.

    But it looks like the culprit could be America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME).

    Ensuring the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours

    Legislation defines QME as “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from nonstate actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or nonstate actors.”

    In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on 4 November 2011, Andrew Shapiro (Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department), enlarged on QME saying: “As a result of the Obama Administration’s commitment, our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper and more intense than ever before. One of my primary responsibilities is to preserve Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, or QME. This is not just a top priority for me, it is a top priority for the Secretary and for the President.

    “It is widely known that our two countries share a special bond that is rooted in our common values and interwoven cultures…. We are committed to that special bond, and we are going to do what’s required to back that up, not just with words but with actions.’

    “The cornerstone of America’s security commitment to Israel has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its qualitative military edge. This commitment was written into law in 2008 and each and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of our policy to uphold Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge.”

    ‘Strongly in sync’

    Shapiro explained how, for three decades, Israel had been the leading beneficiary of US security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing programme (FMF) which was providing $3 billion per year for training and equipment. A 2007 memorandum of understanding provided for $30 billion in security assistance over 10 years, allowing Israel to purchase the sophisticated defence equipment it needs to maintain its qualitative military edge. 60 percent of US security assistance funding to some 70 countries went to Israel.

    And here’s the funny bit. Shapiro claimed: “Our support for Israel’s security helps preserve peace and stability in the region. If Israel were weaker, its enemies would be bolder. This would make broader conflict more likely, which would be catastrophic to American interests in the region. It is the very strength of Israel’s military which deters potential aggressors and helps foster peace and stability. Ensuring Israel’s military strength and its superiority in the region, is therefore critical to regional stability and as a result is fundamentally a core interest of the United States.”

    That’s worked well, hasn’t it?

    “The United States also experiences a number of tangible benefits from our close partnership with Israel. For instance, joint exercises allow us to learn from Israel’s experience in urban warfare and counterterrorism.” Yes, gained from decades of assaults, bombardments and brutal persecution of the captive Palestinian people under Israeli military occupation.

    “Israeli technology is proving critical to improving our Homeland Security and protecting our troops. One only has to look at Afghanistan and Iraq…..

    “Israel is a vital ally and serves as a cornerstone of our regional security commitments. From confronting Iranian aggression, to working together to combat transnational terrorist networks, to stopping nuclear proliferation and supporting democratic change and economic development in the region – it is clear that both our strategic outlook, as well as our national interests are strongly in sync…. Our security assistance to Israel also helps support American jobs, since the vast majority of security assistance to Israel is spent on American-made goods and services.”

    It was then time for him to demonise Iran. “The Iranian regime continues to be committed to upsetting peace and stability in the region and beyond. Iran’s nuclear program is a serious concern, particularly in light of Iran’s expansion of the program over the past several years in defiance of its international obligations.”

    Speaking of international obligations, how safe is the region under the threat of Israel’s nukes? Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat? Why hasn’t Israel signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and why has it signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention?

    Shapiro went on: “Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas enables these groups to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers.” A bit like America’s support for the Israeli Offence Force then. “Iran’s extensive arms smuggling operations, many of which originate in Tehran and Damascus, weaken regional security and disrupt efforts to establish lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. As change sweeps the region, Iran has and should be expected to continue its attempts to exploit much positive change for its own cynical ambitions.”

    And are we to believe that Israel’s long-term illegal occupation of its neighbours’ territories such as Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms has nothing whatsoever to do with the Zionists’ “cynical ambitions”? Has it never occurred to the Americans that Israel’s QME — all that power in the hands of an abusive regime — makes peace impossible? It is deeply worrying that successive US administration don’t seem to realise that Israel doesn’t want peace and never has — that peace gets in the way of its territorial ambitions. Or has America indeed realised this and made it part of the US’s “cynical ambition”.

    Shapiro complained that despite its instability Syria was still providing Hezbollah with critical military and logistical support and that Syria might be supplying sophisticated missile technology. Perhaps he forgets that Hezbollah was set up in 1982 by Muslim clerics to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

    “For six decades, Israelis have guarded their borders vigilantly,” he said. But he surely knows that Israel has never declared its borders for the simple reason it intends to constantly expand them.

    “We are taking steps to help Israel better defend itself from the threat of rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas. This is a very real daily concern for ordinary Israelis living in border towns such as Sderot, who know that a rocket fired from Gaza may come crashing down at any moment.” Funny he should mention Sderot, now home to Israeli land-grabbers. It is built on the lands of a Palestinian village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed by Jewish terrorists in May 1948 before Israel declared itself a state. The 600+ villagers, all Muslim, were forced to flee for their lives.

    Najd was not allocated to the Jews in the 1947 UN Partition Plan, they stole it using armed force. Britain, the mandated government, was in charge while this and many other atrocities were committed by rampaging Jewish militia, Najd being one of 418 Palestinian villages and towns they wiped off the map. Its 82 homes were bulldozed and their inhabitants, presumably, became refugees in nearby Gaza. Their families are probably still living in camps there. The sweet irony is that some of them are quite likely manning the rocket launchers.

    Being a target for Gaza’s rockets and only a mile from the prison camp fence, Sderot has become known as ‘the bomb shelter capital of the world’, residents having little time to take cover. It is now a major propaganda asset of the Israeli regime and a compulsory stop on the brainwash tour for gullible politicians and journalists. When Barak Obama visited in 2008 he said: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.” Yes, Mr Obama. But hopefully you wouldn’t be such a plonker as to live on land stolen from your neighbour at gun-point.

    Shapiro revealed that the funding for Iron Dome was above and beyond the $3 billion from FMF. He also remarked that “many Israeli officers and enlisted personnel attend US military schools such as the National War College. These personnel exchanges allow Israel’s future military leaders to acquire essential professional skills, as well as build life-long relationships with their U.S. military counterparts.”

    So it really is a cosy setup.

    Additionally, “Israel benefits from a War Reserve Stockpile that is maintained in Israel by US European Command. This can be used to boost Israeli defenses in the case of a significant military emergency…. Israel is also able to access millions of dollars in free or discounted military equipment each year through the Department of Defense’s Excess Defense Articles program.”

    Sheer bribery

    Shapiro also touched on how the US keeps other nearby nations sweet. “Our longstanding friendship and our extraordinary relationship of cooperation is reflected in the more than $300 million in security assistance that we provide Jordan annually…. For the past 30 years, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt has served as the basis for the $1.3 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing (FMF) that we provide Egypt. This assistance helps Egypt maintain a strong and disciplined professional defense force that is able to act as a regional leader and a moderating influence. Our assistance helps build ties between militaries, ensures that foreign militaries conduct themselves in restrained and professional ways, and creates strong incentives for recipient countries to maintain good ties with the United States.

    “We have continued to rely on Egypt to support and advance US interests in the region, including peace with Israel, confronting Iranian ambitions, interdicting smugglers, and supporting Iraq.”

    Shapiro was also aware of diplomatic efforts from some quarters to question Israel’s legitimacy. “As the President has said, Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate. We have consistently opposed efforts to isolate Israel. We have stood up strongly for Israel and its right to defend itself…. We have refused to attend events that endorse or commemorate the flawed 2001 World Conference Against Racism, which outrageously singled out Israel for criticism. This Administration has also made clear that a lasting and sustainable peace can only come though negotiations and remains firmly opposed to one-sided efforts to seek recognition of statehood outside the framework of negotiations, whether in the UN Security Council or other international fora.”

    QME’s collision with international law

    He was referring, presumably, to those same old lopsided negotiations that have led nowhere. Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat emanating from a territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). UN Resolution 3246 also calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subjected to colonial and foreign domination and to assist them in their struggle.

    Furthermore Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination – it’s theirs by right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The US, UK and Israel (the latter stating repeatedly that it will not allow a Palestinian state to be created) arrogantly ignore the rights of others. But legal opinion (Wilde) has it that when 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, this had the effect of establishing statehood.

    Seriously, could no-one see that America’s crooked QME doctine would clash with justice and international law?

    A further boost to this US-Israel love affair came in July 2012 with an Act called the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. It included the following policy statement:

    (1) To reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state. As President Barack Obama stated on December 16, 2011, ‘‘America’s commitment and my commitment to Israel and Israel’s security is unshakeable.’’ And as President George W. Bush stated before the Israeli Knesset on May 15, 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, ‘‘The alliance between our governments is unbreakable, yet the source of our friend ship runs deeper than any treaty.’’.

    (2) To help the Government of Israel preserve its qualitative military edge amid rapid and uncertain regional political trans-formation.

    (3) To veto any one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.

    (4) To support Israel’s inherent right to self-defense.

    (5) To pursue avenues to expand cooperation with the Government of Israel both in defense and across the spectrum of civilian sectors, including high technology, agriculture, medicine, health, pharmaceuticals, and energy.

    (6) To assist the Government of Israel with its ongoing efforts to forge a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that results in two states living side-by-side in peace and security, and to encourage Israel’s neighbors to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

    (7) To encourage further development of advanced technology programs between the United States and Israel given current trends and instability in the region.

    Policy (6) is nonsensical given the Israelis’ continuing refusal to recognize Palestine’s right to statehood, the recent passing of nation state laws reinforcing Israel’s apartheid, and the sidelining of international law and justice in seeking instead to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by arm-twisting negotiation.

    Need to eliminate the Zionist Tendency

    As Shapiro reminded his audience, President Truman famously took just 11 minutes to extend official, diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel when it was founded in 1948. He didn’t even have the sense to sleep on it, and the US’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security has been one of the fundamental tenets of America’s national security ever since. While Truman, a self-declared Zionist, felt sorry for “the victims of Hitler’s madness” his hasty decision created millions of victims of Israel’s evil intent, which was so obvious from the start and is now laid bare for all to see.

    It seems as if the UK has been roped in and superglued to America’s ridiculous infatuation with the apartheid regime and its genocidal maniacs. Here it’s a criminal offence to show support for Hamas or Hezbollah, but it’s business as usual with the loathsome regime in Israel. Clubs supporting Israel are still allowed to flourish at Westminster.

    Our new trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds is reported to be in talks with a minister in Tel Aviv, Nir Barkat, who is one of the more extreme proponents of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. The department says: “Our teams will be entering negotiating rooms as soon as possible, laser-focused on creating new opportunities for UK firms”, while British embassy officials in Israel talk about the “tremendous opportunity for collaboration between Israeli and British companies”.

    Reynolds was responsible for the decision to end a mere 30 out of the 350 arms export licences to Israel, which was widely considered insufficient for sending the right message. Unsurprisingly Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel. As such he appears to be in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which state that “holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” But people with such dangerous affiliation are allowed to occupy many senior Government positions.

    The influence of the Israel lobby is so strong, and its enforcers so enmeshed in the fabric of Westminster politics, that politicians feel they must join their party’s Friends of Israel group and undergo indoctrination to qualify for a senior position.

    With American presidents and senior politicians “either side of the aisle” so firmly shackled to Israel’s nauseating ambitions, it’s no surprise that their poodle, the UK, is similarly compromised. Successive prime ministers and their foreign secretaries have been amazingly keen to endorse Israel’s sense of impunity and grovel to its stooges inside and outside Westminster. How are we to rid ourselves of this malign influence?

    One of the first tasks in securing peace is to purge the ‘Zionist tendency’ from all corridors of power in the West. This is where the problem lies. These are Israel’s pimps and stooges who identify with Zionism and promote its sinister and unlawful ambitions inside the UK and other Western parliaments. They are the root cause of strife in the Middle East. Time they were removed.

    The post UN’s High Ideals Brought down by American Legislation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What is gender apartheid – and can anything be done to stop it?

    Activists hope a change in international law could help to address the intensifying erosion of women and girls’ rights in Afghanistan

    Read more: Afghan exiles on the Taliban’s gender apartheid

    Over the past three years, the world has watched in horror as women and girls in Afghanistan have had their rights and freedoms systematically stripped away.

    In the face of inaction by the international community, a campaign for the conditions being imposed on Afghan and Iranian women to be made a crime under international law as gender apartheid was launched last year. What does the term mean and will it make a difference?

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Afghan women fight to hold Taliban to account over gender apartheid

    What women face in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity, say activists pushing for recognition by UN

    Explainer: What is gender apartheid – and can anything be done to stop it?

    When Sima Samar and other Afghan women came up with the term “gender apartheid” in the 1990s to describe the systematic oppression faced by women and girls under Taliban rule, she never imagined it would have become a key weapon in the fight to hold a second Taliban regime to account for their crimes two decades later.

    “When the first Taliban regime fell, the idea that we would once again see the persecution, isolation and segregational and systematic repression of half the Afghan population on the basis of their gender seemed impossible,” says Samar, who served as the minister for women’s affairs after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and now lives in exile. “But now, in 2024, it is happening again and this time we must find a way to fight for justice.”

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • WHO: Disease Outbreaks Imminent in Lebanon With Over 1M Displaced by Israel

    Israel’s mass forced displacement campaign in Lebanon may soon cause major disease outbreaks, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned as Israel attacks health care centers in the country. In a press briefing on Tuesday, WHO Deputy Incident Manager for Lebanon Ian Clarke warned of the danger of the crowded conditions in displacement shelters within Lebanon, where officials report an…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli Forces Killed 28 Health Care Workers in Lebanon in 24 Hours, WHO Says

    The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that Israeli forces killed dozens of health care workers over the course of just 24 hours in Lebanon, as Israel expands its tactic of targeting health care workers and facilities. Israeli forces killed 28 health care workers in Lebanon in just the past day, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press briefing on Thursday. So far…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Bans UN Secretary General From the Country, Drawing Public Condemnation

    Israel’s foreign minister said Wednesday that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is “persona non grata in Israel” and barred him from entering the country after the U.N. chief issued a brief statement condemning all escalatory military actions in the Middle East. In a social media post, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz accused Guterres of failing to “unequivocally condemn”…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • No to Foreign Military Intervention in Haiti!

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) urges the leaders of the nations of the Americas to oppose the upcoming United Nations’ decision to renew the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti for another 12 months. Additionally, we call on these regional leaders to challenge the United States’ proposal to convert this MSS into a full-fledged UN Peacekeeping mission by 2025.

    On October 16, 2022, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) sent a letter urging the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation to “respect Haitian sovereignty and support the Haitian masses in their stand against the ongoing occupation of their country by foreign powers” by using their veto power and voting against another armed intervention and occupation into Haiti. In this letter, we outlined why the Haitian people perceive the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) as a foreign occupation that has undermined their independence and sovereignty since 2004. On October 3, 2023, we and over 100 social and civic movements and organizations throughout the Americas, including in Haiti and the diaspora, issued a joint statement denouncing the UN Security Council’s approval of the U.S.-orchestrated, Kenya-led MSS to Haiti. In these, we laid out demands in line with those of Haitian civic and social organizations. The Haitian people are resolute in their opposition to foreign intervention and remain steadfast in their commitment to self-determination.

    As we articulated in our previous letter and statement, Haiti has endured a long history of U.S. intervention and occupation. The Haitian people recognize that their current challenges stem directly from the persistent meddling of the United States, the United Nations, and the Core Group. They are unequivocal in their belief that all U.S.-led foreign interventions over the past decades have been illegal and illegitimate. Notably, the current Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) lacks legitimacy, having been authorized under the auspices of an illegitimate and U.S.-installed Prime Minister, Ariel Henry. Subsequently, the U.S., with the support of CARICOM, established a nine-member “Presidential Council” and Prime Minister, neither of which has any legal status or legitimacy in Haiti, all without the backing of the Haitian populace or the opportunity for a democratic selection process. Importantly, the U.S. demanded that those permitted on the “Presidential Council” consent to foreign intervention (the MSS). Thus, the entire process that led to the imposition of a foreign force in Haiti is fundamentally fraudulent.

    We find it extremely worrisome that the U.S. has enlisted foreign proxies—such as police and military forces from Kenya, Jamaica, and Belize—to implement its foreign policy objectives in the region. It is equally alarming that these foreign forces, as part of the MSS, enjoy effective immunity for their actions in Haiti. Given the traumatic legacy of the last UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH, 2004-2017), which was marred by violence, sexual exploitation, and a cholera epidemic, we view the MSS as a threat not only to Haiti’s sovereignty but also to the health and wellbeing of its people, particularly its children.

    The Black Alliance for Peace also challenges the U.S. claim of addressing “gang violence” in Haiti. We assert that the U.S. and the so-called “international community” (including France and Canada) are fully aware that the current “gang violence” is funded and supported by Haiti’s oligarchs and the U.S.-backed political elite. This group imports weapons into the country and pays young men to instigate chaos, which is then used to manufacture consent for further invasion and occupation of Haiti. This is similar to the way the U.S. and France have increased the problem of “terrorism” in West and East Africa as a ruse to create U.S. military forces in that region, which we see in the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The awareness of these underlying dynamics is underscored by the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Canada on several members of Haiti’s economic and political elite, including former Haitian president Michel Martelly, who was installed by the U.S.

    In a time of global upheaval, marked by a live-streamed genocide in Gaza and violent clashes between cartels and police in Mexico, it is perplexing that the U.S., France, and Canada are advocating for foreign occupation of Haiti—a country facing internal conflicts that do not threaten regional or global security. We must question the U.S. insistence on maintaining a military presence in Haiti at this juncture.

    As an anti-war and anti-imperialist organization, the Black Alliance for Peace warns that the U.S. aims to use Haiti as a staging ground for a permanent military base in the region to, as articulated in its foreign policy documents, secure “U.S. national security and interests” and manage rival powers, presumably Russia and China.

    We once again call on your countries to respect Haitian sovereignty and support the Haitian masses in their ongoing struggle against the relentless occupation by foreign powers. Only the Haitian people can determine their own solutions. Their leaders must not be selected by the U.S. or any other foreign entity. Allowing continuous U.S. and Western control over Haiti’s political apparatus not only threatens to extinguish the nation’s hard-won sovereignty, but also weakens the sovereignty and self-determinative capacities of every other nation in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

    As we know, Haiti is a laboratory for U.S. and Western imperialist policies and practices of domination and intervention. What is visited upon Haiti will inevitably be visited upon other nations in the hemisphere. We have seen this in Honduras as the U.S. ambassador acts like a government representative in a foreign land, against the sovereignty of that nation and its President, Xiomara Castro. This is a strategy that was fine-tuned in Haiti under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy apparatus and continues to this day.

    We ask that you, leaders throughout the Americas, reject the old colonial divisions that have made the region more susceptible to U.S. intervention, sabotage and neocolonial rule, and use regional mechanisms like CELAC to support Haitian sovereignty. As nations have stood in solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua against imperialist assaults, sanctions, and subterfuge aimed at undermining their sovereignty, so should you oppose the interventionist crimes and colonial impositions visited upon Haiti and its people by the U.S., UN and Core Group. As the overwhelming majority of nations and people of the Americas have decried the zionist genocide in Gaza and the ongoing violation of the sovereignty of Palestine and Lebanon, so should you fight against the imperialist actions that have resulted in instability, violence, and mass death in Haiti. There can be no “Zone of Peace” in the Americas if there is no peace and freedom for the people of Haiti.

    The Black Alliance for Peace, in alignment with the wishes of the Haitian masses and their supporters, unequivocally opposes continued foreign armed intervention in Haiti. We stand firm in our demand for an end to the relentless meddling by the United States and Western powers in Haitian affairs. We urge your governments and nations to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people in their fight for liberation by opposing the extension of the MSS and any future plans to convert this mission into a UN peacekeeping operation.

    The post No to Foreign Military Intervention in Haiti! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon Kill at Least 569, Displace Tens of Thousands

    The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Kills 2 UN Workers in Lebanon Bombing Campaign

    Israel killed two workers for the UN Refugee Agency, the agency has said, in bombardments across Lebanon on Monday that resulted in the deadliest single day of attacks in the country in decades. The UN Human High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office announced that workers Dina Darwiche and Ali Basma, who worked in UN offices in eastern and southern Lebanon, respectively, were killed.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • CPJ, 28 others urge UN to prioritize human rights in Bahrain

    On September 23, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined 28 human rights organizations during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in urging all member states to address human rights concerns in Bahrain, including the ongoing arbitrary detention of journalists, human rights defenders, scholars, bloggers, and opposition leaders.

    The letter included the case of Abduljalil Alsingace, an award-winning Bahraini academic, blogger, and human rights defender who has been arbitrarily detained since 2011. He began a hunger strike on July 8, 2021, after prison authorities confiscated his manuscript on Bahraini dialects of Arabic, which he spent four years researching and writing. Alsingace, who has a disability, has reportedly been tortured during his detention.

    Read the full statement here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Speech, Biden Boasts About Peace — Then Justifies Israel’s Attacks on Lebanon

    As the death toll continued to climb in Lebanon amid Israel’s attacks on the country this week, President Joe Biden suggested in an address to the UN that Israel’s bombing campaign is legitimate, even as other officials in the chamber have warned that Israel’s massacres amount to war crimes. In his final address to the UN General Assembly as the U.S. president on Tuesday…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Chief: World Has Entered “Age of Impunity” as Israel’s Aggression Spreads

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a stark warning on Tuesday that the world has entered an “age of impunity” as Israel’s genocide in Gaza — and now, escalation against Lebanon — continues without consequence, despite the clear ability of world powers to stop the atrocities. In his address at the opening of this year’s session of the United Nations General Assembly…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • CPJ calls for stronger action to safeguard press freedoms at UN Summit of the Future

    Ahead of the United Nations’ Summit of the Future that began Sunday, the Committee to Protect Journalists and 123 other signatories released a statement September 19, 2024, welcoming the final revision of the Pact for the Future and urging strong action to safeguard media freedom, freedom of expression, and access to information.

    The Pact for the Future is an agreement by world leaders that aims to  boost implementation of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals as the roadmap for overcoming crises and securing a better future for all. CPJ had earlier called for previous drafts of the Pact to be strengthened, with those recommendations largely being reflected in the final text of the Pact and its appendix, the Global Digital Compact.

    Recognizing the significant threats facing the world’s media and journalists and “the utmost importance of access to information and freedom of expression in empowering people to address shared needs,” the joint statement calls on member states and the U.N. to not only uphold their commitments in the agreed texts but to also “take further actions that align with key international human rights frameworks.”

    Read the statement here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Rebecca Redelmeier and Elena Rodina/CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN General Assembly Passes a Resolution to End Israeli Occupation

    The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding that the Israeli government end its occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months, affirming a recent International Court of Justice opinion that deemed the decadeslong occupation unlawful. The Palestine-led resolution, co-sponsored by dozens of nations, calls on Israel to swiftly withdraw “all its…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Is Carrying Out Deliberate “Starvation Campaign” in Gaza, Says UN Expert

    Top United Nations human rights experts have condemned Western nations for supporting Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, urging the world to stop an unfolding genocide in Palestine. This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, is accusing Israel in a new report of carrying out a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza. “What we are witnessing in Gaza is the…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Reports Human Rights Violations in Sudan, Some Amounting to War Crimes

    In Sudan, a recent United Nations fact-finding mission documented “harrowing” human rights violations committed by both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, schools, hospitals, water and power supplies. Civilians have also been subjected to torture, arbitrary detention and gruesome sexual violence. Over 20,000…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Lies about Haitians reflect racist imperialism

    A crass new iteration of anti-Haitianism has recently received a remarkable amount of attention. This novel form of racism with deep anti-Black roots was even referenced in the US presidential debate.

    Recently racist and ignorant social media users have circulated the idea that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets. US Vice presidential candidate JD Vance greatly boosted the anti-Haitian claim with a post to X stating, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

    Vance’s X post had over 11 million views with Donald Trump even referencing the claim in the presidential debate. This despite an absence of any evidence whatsoever. Springfield officials haven’t received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets.

    The ‘Haitians eat pets’ tale is the latest in a long line of anti-Haitian claims. In the early 1980s Haitians were stigmatized as the originators of the HIV virus in the US. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) labeled Haitians as a risk group, which gave rise to “the 4-H’s” designation of Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin addicts and Haitians. At the time the Canadian Red Cross publicly identified Haitians as a “high-risk” group for AIDS, the only nationality singled out. In 1983 they called on homosexuals and bisexuals with multiple partners, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and recent immigrants from Haiti to voluntarily stop giving blood. A Canadian government pamphlet, which was distributed in shopping malls, also linked Haitians with AIDS. Again, this was despite a lack of evidence that the incidence of AIDS in Haiti was greater than in the US. By 1987 it was lower in Haiti than in the US and other Caribbean nations. But, as a result of the unfounded stigmatization, the country’s significant tourism basically collapsed overnight. Out of fear the virus may transmit through goods, some Haitian exports were even blocked from entering the US!

    The Haitians are responsible for AIDS allegation still pops up. During an explosion of xenophobia against Haitian migrants in Guyana in 2019 reports focused on HIV/AIDS and Voodoo and in a 2016 radio outburst former Canadian Member of Parliament, André Arthur, labeled Haiti a “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes responsible for HIV/AIDS.

    In another example of stigmatizing Haitians over disease, CDC incident manager for the Haiti cholera response, Jordan W. Tappero, blamed Haitian cultural norms for the 2010 cholera outbreak that caused tens of thousands of deaths. He told Associated Press journalist Jonathan Katz that Haitians don’t experience the “shame associated with open defecation.” As was then suspected and later confirmed, cholera was introduced to Haiti by UN forces who followed poor sanitation practices.

    Ten months earlier influential US pastor Pat Robertson suggested the terrible January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas was due to a “deal made with Satan” two centuries earlier. Robertson claimed Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever … And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’” Robertson added, “you know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

    Canadian Protestant groups have promoted similar thinking about the August 1791 Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caïman) Vodou ceremony that helped launch the Haitian Revolution. In “Haiti’s Pact with the Devil?: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Haiti” Bertin M. Louis points out that some Haitian Canadian Protestants believe Haiti was consecrated to the devil. Mainstream Canadian voices have repeatedly denigrated voodoo. After the 2004 US/France/Canada coup the National Post published an editorial headlined “Voodoo is not enough”, arguing for “a coalition of the willing to permanently extract the country from the quagmire. A 1952 Globe and Mail story attempting to be sympathetic to the country began by noting, “Haiti’s principal export is not, as popularly supposed, Zombies.” One of the first books to expose North Americans to the voodoo zombie was Magic Island, a 1929 book by William Buehler Seabrook. The book sensationalized encounters with voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

    Voodoo has been demonized by white supremacist and Christian forces for over two centuries. Important for defeating slavery and securing Haitian independence, the religion offered spiritual/ideological strength to those who revolted against their slave masters in maybe the greatest example of liberation in the history of humanity.

    The 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution was simultaneously a struggle against slavery, colonialism and white supremacy. Defeating the French, British and Spanish empires, it led to freedom for all people regardless of colour, decades before this idea found traction in Europe or North America. The Haitian revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies. It also spurred London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

    The Haitian Revolution led to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. “Arguably”, notes Peter Hallward, “there is no single event in the whole of modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant global order of things.”

    But, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution thousands of photos, articles and books denigrated Haiti, depicting the slaves as barbaric despise the fact 350,000 Africans were killed, versus 75,000 Europeans, over the 13 years. Anti-Haitianism has deep roots.

    It’s easy to mock those who claim Haitian immigrants are eating cats. But overt anti-Haitianism is also relayed by ‘sophisticated’ liberals. Their high-minded commentaries calling for foreign tutelage of the country appear regularly in the pages of the Globe and Mail and Boston Globe.

    Anti-Haitianism flows out of and reinforces the country’s weakness, which is spurred by imperial domination. Technically “independent” for more than two centuries, outsiders have long shaped Haitian affairs. Through isolation, economic asphyxiation, debt dependence, gunboat diplomacy, occupation, foreignsupported dictatorships, structural adjustment programs, “democracy promotion”, coups and rigged elections, Haiti is no stranger to the various forms of foreign political manipulation.

    JD Vance’s anti-Haitian musings have deep roots in centuries of anti-Black racism and US imperial ambitions. All those who fail to support real Haitian independenc are tainted by this legacy and present-day reality.

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