Showing posts with label ICCA 2001. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICCA 2001. Show all posts

16 July 2024

If Hamas Had Planted a Bomb in Jerusalem, in an Attempt to Assassinate Netanyahu, Killing Over 90 Civilians, Would the World’s Leaders Remain Silent? Yet that’s what happened in Al Mawasi, Gaza

Israel Prefers Killing Palestinians to Saving their Hostages - the Palestinian Resistance Should Act Accordingly

John Kirby, US National Security Council spokesperson, is on record as saying that he hasn’t yet seen an Israeli war crime or violation of international humanitarian law. Kirby’s determination not to see anything wrong with exterminating 50,000 Palestinians (at a minimum) extended to describing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice as ‘meritless’.

John Kirby – No Violation of Humanitarian Law

How have these apologists for genocide justified Israel’s latest atrocity? Al Mawasi, which was specifically designated by Israel as a ‘safe zone’? Israeli planes bombed the tents in this desolate area on the pretext of trying to murder Hamas leader Mohamad El Deif. Their response is to say nothing.

Israel Bombs Schools

As with Israel’s ignoring of the ICJ’s order not to enter Rafah, Western leaders once again demonstrate that their claims to moral superiority over Russia and China are as hollow as their words. Biden’s ‘red lines’ over entering Rafah vanished the moment the Israeli military entered.

Starmer's selective condemnations of violence - his concern for Ukrainian children doesn't extend to Palestinian children 

Keir Starmer condemned Russia’s missile attack on a Kiev children’s hospital but there has been no mention, still less condemnation, of Israel’s strike on al-Mawasi, even though at least 3 times as many people died in the attack. Like you I am sure that this was just an oversight!

However you will be glad to know that Starmer found time to say “I am appalled by the shocking scenes at President Trump’s rally” where someone took a pot shot at Trump.  Not once has Starmer said how appalled he was by Israel’s bombing and attacks on every single hospital and health facility in Gaza. It’s all a question of priorities.

Israel's bombing of children in the 'safe zone in Khan Younis of Al Muwasi

Today Israel flattened UNWRA’s headquarters in Gaza City. It is the 190th UNWRA facility that has been attacked. Why? Because UNWRA was specifically set up to support Palestinian refugees and Israel prefers them to disappear entirely.

Murder at al-Mawasi


Israel's Missile Strike on a School Football Match 

When Israel recently launched a missile strike on a school and football match in al-Awda school in Abasan al-Kabira they murdered 31 Palestinians, mainly children.  Their excuse was that:

“A warplane, using precision munitions, attacked a terrorist from the military wing of Hamas who participated in the hideous massacre on 7 October,”

Seeking to kill Hamas leaders is the favourite excuse for Israel’s perpetration of massacres. An excuse Western leaders are happy to go along with.

Education Minister Yoav Kisch Threatens to 'annihilate' Lebanon - More Nazi Talk

The destruction of Hamas is being used as a pretext for the genocide and destruction of Gaza. There is no difference between this and the Nazis’ shooting of 100 hostages in response to the killing of a single soldier, except that Israel’s massacres far exceed a 100-1 ratio.

Nothing has been said by Starmer or Biden about Israel's repeated attacks on Hospitals

The silence of politicians and newspapers about Israeli war crimes, the same people who were so eager to condemn Russia’s attack on a hospital, speaks volumes. It does not go unnoticed in the Arab world and the Global South. What Starmer, Biden, Blinken and Schultz are saying is that the end justifies the means. That the goal of eliminating Hamas justifies any and every atrocity. Which raises the question:

Is Hamas such a heinous terrorist organisation that any amount of destruction, including the murder of 40,000 Palestinians, which a letter in the Lancet says is far, far higher (186,000), justified? Because that is the sole Israeli declared war aim.

Hamas, which Israel was in large measure responsible for creating, has arisen because of Israel’s 57 year occupation of land that is not theirs. Israel’s occupation of Gaza is illegal. It doesn’t belong to them. There is therefore an international law right on the part of the indigenous population to resist that occupation in exactly the same way as the French resisted the Nazis and the Algerians resisted the French.

Israel and the imperialists brand the Palestinian Resistance as ‘terrorists’. This has always been the label that the West has applied to those who resisted colonisation. The Mau Mau in Kenya were called terrorists. Thatcher and Reagan described the ANC as terrorists. The Nazis too branded the Partisans as terrorists.

As Lord Carrington, Thatcher’s first Foreign Minister once remarked: ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorists’.

British law, aka section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, under which I was arrested last December, may proscribe Hamas as a terrorist organisation but that does not mean it is a terrorist organisation. The law may say that Black = White but that does not mean it is. All it means is that the law has incorporated a lie and made it a criminal offence to disagree.

We can rely on Britain’s police to prosecute opponents of genocide rather than prosecute war criminals like David Cameron for supplying Israel with weapons. Section 52 The International Criminal Court Act 2001 which makes conduct ancillary to an act of genocide a criminal offence seems to be a dead letter as far as the police are concerned.

It is Israel which is a terrorist state and the British and US leaders are the enablers of terrorism for supplying Israel with the means to commit mass murder.

The US has supplied some 14,000 2000lb bombs. Gaza is 365 square kilometers, compared to Britain which is a quarter of a million square kilometres, yet it has been pounded by high explosives for 9 months. More bombs, 70,000 lbs, have been dropped on Gaza than were dropped on London, Hamburg and Dresden in WWII. The US and British governments are accessories to mass murder as long as they supply Israel with weapons of mass murder.

We should be demanding that the new Starmer government immediately ceases supplying Israel with weapons to kill children.

Yet what has Starmer done? Contrary to previous reports he is refusing to withdraw the Tory government’s objection to the ICC issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

This is despite Israel deliberately creating famine in Gaza. Aid lorries are no longer entering Gaza since the Rafah operation.

It is abundantly clear that Israel is not interested in any ceasefire that does not allow it to resume its genocide. Given the choice between killing Palestinians and saving its hostages it has chosen the former.

The hostages who have been released have all looked healthy and been well treated. Even the Israeli army, after freeing 4 hostages (and killing 200+ Palestinians in the process) stated that ‘the released hostages were all in good health.’

The hostages have all told how their main fear was of being killed by Israeli bombs. Contrast this with the emaciated bodies, wracked by torture, of Palestinian prisoners who have emerged from Israel’s dungeons. 54 Palestinians have died as a result of torture in Israeli prisons. Israeli doctors in Sde Teiman and elsewhere have, like the Nazi doctors of 80 years ago, participated in torture including the use of medical procedures without anaesthetic.


Hamas is anything but a terrorist organisation. This is simply a term of abuse. After October 7 Netanyahu spoke of ‘Hamas – ISIS’ yet this is one more lie from the world’s most infamous liar. ISIS beheaded those it captured. Hamas has fed them and done its best to keep them alive.

ISIS was elected by no one. It ruled by fear and terror. It was also a product of Britain and America’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 but the Israel and the West didn’t like the outcome. Hamas is the most popular political current both in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 2001 Hamas’ military wing was proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000. This was despite the fact that Hamas have never attacked a target outside Palestine/Israel. Another difference with ISIS (& Israel!). In 2021, for nakedly political reasons, under pressure from the Zionist lobby, Hamas’ political wing was proscribed. The justification for this was non-existent.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000 ‘terrorism’ is defined as

Under this definition the Israeli state should be proscribed. Its war against the Palestinians in Gaza is being conducted for racial, ideological and political reasons – settlement/ethnic cleansing. It has involved serious violence. So it is a political decision not to brand Israel a terrorist state.

During the Troubles in the North of Ireland the IRA was proscribed and still is. Despite Loyalist and Unionist pressure, the British government resisted the temptation to proscribe the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein. If Sinn Fein had been proscribed then the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 would not have happened. We would not have had a quarter century of peace in Ireland.

The decision of Priti Patel to proscribe Hamas’ military wing had no factual justification. It was profoundly undemocratic since it is the Palestinian people who elected them as its government in Gaza. Hamas is no more a terrorist organisation than the ANC or Sinn Fein was.

The question is what the Palestinian resistance should do in the current situation given that Israel and Netanyahu have made it clear that they oppose any permanent ceasefire. Israel is determined to continue its attacks on Gaza until it has achieved the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In January 11 Israeli cabinet members and 15 members of the government attended a conference calling for the ethnic cleansing and settlement of Gaza.

People should remember that the Nazis started with ethnic cleansing and ended up with extermination. The same is true in Gaza which today is a death camp.

Israel has systematically destroyed all civilian infrastructure from schools, hospitals, universities, churches, mosques. It has deliberately killed Gaza’s doctors, 108 journalists, humanitarian and health workers. This has clearly been undertaken to destroy the Palestinians as a people, the classic definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Israel knows Hamas comes from the people and is therefore destroying the people. Is it seriously believed that Israel bombed the world’s third oldest church, the Greek Orthodox St. Porphyrius, because it was a Hamas base?

As the BBC reported,

Gaza is home to some of the oldest churches and mosques in the world, but many have not escaped the widespread destruction of Israel's military offensive.

The Israeli army claimed that Hamas were using churches and mosques as bases to launch attacks from without providing one single iota of proof. In the case of St. Porphyrius Al Jazeera reported that

Israel’s military says it is reviewing reports on casualties after Hamas says the attack on the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City killed and injured a ‘large number’ of people.

Suffice to say the Israeli military has not reported its ‘findings’. The IDF has a 100% record of acquitting itself!

The choice facing the resistance is quite simple. In a situation where the Israeli government has made clear its preference for ethnic cleansing and genocide over saving its hostages, then the Israeli people should be given a simple choice – either exchange their hostages for Palestinian hostages (of which there are some 10,000) or accept that they won’t be coming home.

Genocidal Zionist woman's hilarious interview with Piers Morgan

The Palestinian Resistance should tell Israel that every time a Palestinian child dies, be it from a sniper, a missile strike or bombing then one of their military hostages will be shot. They should give them a list of who will be shot first. Israel would then face a choice of continuing to slaughter Gaza’s children and have its hostages die or immediately cease its campaign of mass murder.

In addition the Palestinian Resistance should inform Israel that until the aid lorries and food are allowed in unhindered, without Israel shooting those trying to receive it, that none of their hostages will be fed. Palestinian prisoners in Israel are on a starvation diet. The same should apply to Israel’s hostages. That way political pressure will build quickly for a ceasefire. At the moment Netanyahu is playing with the Palestinian resistance like a cat with a mouse.

The double standards of the West and its prostitute press are staggering. Just imagine that the Palestinian Resistance decided that Israel’s war criminals, Netanyahu, Gvir, Smotrich and Gallant should be assassinated and they planted bombs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to achieve that object, killing in the process dozens of Israeli civilians. You can be sure the BBC would not fail to document every gory detail. But when it comes to bombing schools, hospitals and tents, there is utter silence.

Our media is as complicit in Israel’s genocide as Biden, Blinken and Starmer. They bear the same relationship to them as Goebbels had to Hitler.

Tony Greenstein

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31 July 2023

Free all Palestine Action Protesters – Preventing War Crimes is Not A Crime

The Public Order Act 2023 which Starmer Supported is Intended to Criminalise All Effective Protest


Brighton & Hove Protest in Support of Palestine Action Prisoners

As people may know I together with 3 other Defendants am awaiting sentence after having been convicted of ‘intent to cause criminal damage without lawful excuse’ to the Shenstone Elbit factory of Israeli arms factory, Elbit.

The Judge ruled out all lawful excuses holding that there were no lawful excuses, thus leading inevitably to our convictions.

All five Defendants, including one whom the jury was deadlocked on, have issued the following statement:

When Justice is Neither Done Nor Seen to be Done

Statement from the Elbit 5

On March 9 2021 we were arrested by the Police before we could reach Elbit’s Shenstone factory where some of us intended to occupy the roof and decorate the factory with paint in the blood red colour of the victims of its drones. Elbit is an Israeli arms company.

On May 15 2023, after a 7 week trial, we were found guilty of intent to cause criminal damage without lawful excuse. Judge Michael Chambers refused to admit all lawful excuse defences under s.3 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 or let us explain why it was that we had targeted Elbit. The jury was therefore left with the impression that our only purpose was to commit criminal damage.

At no point was the jury told that they have the right to reach a verdict based on whether it was unjust to convict and whether or not the use of the CDA in this case was oppressive. This is despite it being a longstanding feature of British jurisprudence since Bushell’s case in 1670, that a jury has the right to reach a verdict according to their conscience.

Patrick Devlin, a former Law Lord said that the right to bring in ‘perverse acquittals’ gives protection against laws which the ordinary man regards as harsh and oppressive . . . an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man's ideas of what is fair and just. If it does not, the jury will not be a party to its enforcement.

Similarly Heather Hallett, a member of the Court of Appeal from 2005 to 2019 and who is now chairing the COVID Inquiry, said in her 2017 Blackstone lecture on the Role of the Jury, A jury may refuse to convict in spite of the law and the evidence because it concludes that the law is an unjust law. The jury passes its verdict on the law. Secondly, it ensures that the prosecution and the judge are on trial….

Israel’s recent attack on Jenin where 12 Palestinians, including 4 children, were killed is precisely why we targeted Elbit. We should have been allowed to use the defence of necessity whereby it is permissible to commit a smaller crime in order to prevent a far greater ill. However the courts have decided that the victims of Elbit’s drones are too ‘remote’ from Elbit’s factories in this country.

The ‘logic’ that was employed in our trial was that in order to avail ourselves of this defence it was necessary to identify the particular engine in the particular drone that killed the particular child. We believe that this is merely playing with words whilst people are dying. In practice it enables Elbit to avoid responsibility for the death of hundreds if not thousands of civilian victims, including children and allows it to evade legislation on the prevention of war crimes. Elbit are merchants of death plying their lethal trade with the protection of the law.

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers  in a statement calling for the release of Palestinian Action prisoners noted  how, on 21 June 2023, an Elbit drone extrajudicially assassinated three Palestinians in Jenin. This was a war crime as was the attack on Jenin where thousands of people were evicted from their homes and forced to wander the streets without food, water or shelter.

The International Criminal Court Act 2001 make the commission of war crimes by British nationals or residents, or being ancillary to war crimes, be they in this country or abroad, an offence. It would seem obvious that actions intended to prevent the production of Elbit Drones in this country must be lawful in so far as such actions are intended to prevent the commission of far greater crimes.

In the eyes of our judiciary, criminal damage against Elbit factories is more serious than the enabling of war crimes.

We are at the moment awaiting sentence and have been remanded for reports. HHJ Chambers has stated that our offences ‘cross the custody threshold’. The date of sentencing was originally intended to be on June 26. It was then postponed to July 10 and then August 11. The latest date is September 1 and we understand that it may be postponed again.

This continual delay in sentence is in itself a form of punishment as a cloud of uncertainty hangs over all of us. One of us lost his job due to the conviction imposed and finding other means of employment will be extremely difficult while there is no closure. Overall, this case has been hanging over us for more than two years and now it is being delayed again for reasons that we have not been given but which we understand to relate to the inability of the court to agree a date with our barristers."

We have therefore decided to issue this statement in order that people who have been following the trials and prosecution, some would say persecution, of Palestine Action activists, are made aware of what is happening in this case.

Tony Greenstein

Jeremy Parker

Ibrahim Samadi

Alex Waters

Helen Caney (not convicted)

 

Mike Lynch White (centre), cofounder of Scientist Rebellion was sentenced to 27 months in prison at Chester Crown Court 

I seem to recall a saying that Justice Delayed is Justice Denied. This was first coined by Sir Edward Coke, the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobin periods, who was variously Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and King’s Bench as well as Attorney General.

In the Case of Proclamations and Dr. Bonham's Case, Coke declared the King to be subject to the law, and the laws of Parliament to be void if in violation of "common right and reason". Cases which foreshadowed Bushel’s Case of 1670 where a jury decided not to enforce a tyrannical statute.

A week ago, Saturday 22 July, was Prisoners’ Day of Action. There are currently 7 supporters of Palestine Action in prison for taking action to disrupt the production of Israeli weapons on British soil.

Four of them are detained after dismantling American weapons factory, Teledyne Labtech in Wales. Teledyne are the largest listed exporters of weapons from Britain to the Apartheid State of Israel. Two others are in prison for occupying APPH, a Canadian weapons factory, and supplier of parts for Israeli Elbit drones and fighter jets.

Over 100 more face trials for taking direct action against a range of weapons companies, mainly Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons firm. Elbit supply the majority of Israel’s military drone fleet, land equipment and munitions. Their weapons are used against the Palestinian people, and then marketed as “battle-tested” and sold on to other oppressive regimes across the world. Using the captive population of Gaza as a laboratory is a crime against humanity. All strikes against that industry are not only legitimate but essential.

The British State’s complicity with the colonisation of Palestine goes back all the way to the Balfour Declaration when, in the words of Arthur Koestler ‘“One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”  

Palestine Action  to date have shut down two Israeli weapons factories and cost Elbit hundreds of million pounds in lost contracts. By imprisoning activists, the British state is demonstrating that it prioritises protecting the military supply chain of a foreign apartheid state over the freedom of its own citizens.

In addition to handing down prison sentences, the State has imprisoned activists without trial and on occasions the Crown Prosecution Service have reintroduced previously dropped charges, after Elbit asked for a review. In reaction to both growing public support for direct action and the number of ‘perverse acquittals’ by juries, especially the Colston acquittals the Court of Appeal ruled, on reference from the Attorney General, that ‘lawful excuse’ defences such as Necessity (preventing a greater crime) and Human Rights defences of proportionality did not apply to cases of criminal damage.

For further information see Palestine Action Prisoners Day of Action on Saturday 22nd July

Almost 80 public figures, including members of the European Parliament, screenwriters, lecturers, musicians, writers and journalists, have signed an open letter calling on the UK to release detained Palestine Action protesters who "sacrificed their liberty to challenge colonial violence".

The protesters were arrested while obstructing the entrances to several sites belonging to Israel's largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, in the UK. Elbit, the letter says, manufactures "an array of weaponry, including drones equipped with payloads", and "profit from the captive population of Palestine — they have turned civilians into a human laboratory where experimental weaponry can be tested, improved on, and then marketed as "field-proven" and branded as "battle-tested" surveillance technology and components for tanks and fighter jets."

The signatories, who include Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd and musicians Roger Waters and Lowkey, added:

We demand the charges are dropped against those already incarcerated and at risk of prison over their work to disrupt the criminal production of Israeli weapons on British soil.

We stand with those who have sacrificed their liberty to challenge colonial violence and we call on others to do the same until they, and the Palestinian people, are free.

Palestine Action demo outside Newcastle Crown Court

Steps taken by Palestine Action, the letter continued,

have resulted in the closing down of two of Elbit's sites, and the loss of millions of pounds through the severance of MoD contracts. Palestine Action has inspired local communities across the country to rise up against these immoral factories which profit from the business of war and destruction.

In spite of this, the UK government

has decided to prioritise its interests in protecting the military supply chain of a foreign apartheid state by incarcerating its own people.

The heroes who have taken courageous action to expose and dismantle Britain's role in the colonisation of Palestine should be celebrated and rewarded, not imprisoned. We therefore call for the release of all Palestine Action political prisoners, and for the charges to be dropped.

Signatories to the letter also include British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, lawyer and winner of the Palestine Book Award 2019 Academic Award, Professor Noura Erakat, and 2020 Creative Award Winner Susan Abulhawa, in addition to CAGE Director Moazzam Begg, MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly and academic David Miller, who was fired from Bristol University following a campaign by the Israel lobby over his criticism of the Zionist state.

Here is the full statement calling for the release of Palestine Action prisoners

Solidarity from Greece



Banner Drop Manchester

Dabka in Leicester

Liverpool Protest


Leicester Keysight Technologies

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