RT is silenced all over Europe - Because truth is the first casualty of War

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the racism behind Europe’s refugee crisis to the surface – Ukrainians, apart from the Black variety, are the Right, White kind of refugees

UPDATE

'Russia's #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow Link: 

'Russia's #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow Link: 

Contrast the welcome for Ukrainian refugees with the reception for Afghan and Middle Eastern refugees

Why, you might ask, has RT been banned throughout Europe? Britain was supposed to have left the European Union with Brexit yet it has willingly succumbed to the temptation to clamp down on any alternative sources of information or narrative. What have they got to hide?

Let's remember how the prostitute press treated the invasion of Iraq, which broke international law and the ICC and UN didn't lift a finger

I listened to RT most of yesterday, before it was taken off air. It was remarkably balanced in its coverage, giving equal time to critics of Russia’s invasion. But that was the problem. The Government does not want any alternative coverage. It wants us to rely on the BBC, which is acting as a cheerleader for NATO. Al Jazeera isn’t much better either.

RT was broadcasting from the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, unlike the BBC. As far as the Government was concerned that was the problem.

Racism Rears its Ugly Head

Hungary has welcomed 85,000 Ukrainian refugees. Contrast this with the ‘daunting new barrier’ with Serbia

‘capable of delivering electric shocks to unwanted migrants and armed with heat sensors, cameras, and loudspeakers that blare in several languages.

Poland is another country which is noted for its hostile attitude to refugees, erecting barbed wire fences with Belarus. It, together with Latvia and Lithuania, described refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq as ‘not refugees but part of a “hybrid warfare” campaign being orchestrated by Belarus’. 

Poland sent 500 troops to fight the ‘invasion’ and there are reports that at least five people died. A Polish soldier who deserted in disgust at the behaviour of the Polish army reported that several refugees had been killed by the army. Contrast this with the welcome given to Ukrainian refugees.

However there is one exception. Black, Asian and Arab people in Ukraine are being prevented from getting out of the country and then, when they manage to get to the border, are being prevented by Poland from entering.

According to Al Jazeera

Since the war started, more than 870,000 refugees have fled from Ukraine to neighbouring countries, the United Nations said. Half of those are currently in Poland. Queues along the border are now tens of kilometres long with some African students describing to Al Jazeera how they have been waiting for days to cross amid freezing temperatures and with no food, blankets or shelters.

Contrast the coverage of Ukraine with Palestine

On Monday I went to my local store to be greeted with an almost unprecedented unity amongst the press. Every front page had a picture of a Ukrainian child and a variety of emotive headlines. Contrast this with Israel’s murder of Palestinian children.

18-year-old Shadi Najim (left) and 22-year-old Abdullah al-Husari (right) were killed by Israeli forces during a night raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday March 2, 2022. (Photo: Social Media)

In just one day this week three young Palestinians were killed with shots to the head. In May last year 62 children were killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza. You could have been forgiven if you missed the front page coverage because there wasn’t any. 

White children harmed or hurt make headlines, especially if opposition to the war is in line with American war aims. When it came to the war in Iraq when hundreds of thousands of children were killed, there were no headlines or coverage of victims of American military murder.  

When Julian Assange revealed the truth behind one particularly murderous assault from the air, which included shooting down two Reuters journalists, because it was filmed, it was Assange who was penalised. This is the hypocrisy which lies behind the wall to wall anti-Russian propaganda.

The Racism that runs through the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis – they are White like us

There has been a systematic and persistent racism in the coverage of the Ukrainian refugee problem.

On Radio 4′s Today programme Thought for the Day’ Tim Stanley, historian and Daily Telegraph writer said: “Ukraine has touched the West in a way that Syria or Yemen did not.’ And why was this? Stanley explained that ‘one of the reasons is that being a European country, it looks so familiar.’ In other words they are white.

As Nadine White wrote ‘From France to the UK and the US, much of the media coverage of the war in Ukraine has been saturated with racial bias.’

A CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata claimed that the attack on Ukraine cannot be compared to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because the Eastern European country is more “civilised”.

“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades,” he said. “This is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”

One shudders to think what D’Agata would have said if he wasn’t being careful.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s former deputy general prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze was interviewed on Radio 4

“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blonde hair and blue eyes being killed every day with Putin’s missiles and his helicopters and his rockets,” Sakvarelidze said.

The BBC presenter responded: “I understand and of course respect the emotion.”

Molotov Cocktails and Resistance

 

 “Amazing mainstream Western media gives glowing coverage of people resisting invasion by making molotov cocktails,” one social media user remarked. “If they were brown people in Yemen or Palestine doing the same they would be labeled terrorists deserving US-Israeli or US-Saudi drone bombing.”

Al Jazeera’s Peter Dobbie was forced to apologise after he said

“What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East [...] or North Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”

Nadine White observed how ‘

Visibly fighting back tears during a broadcast from Poland, Lucy Watson of ITV News said: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, third world nation, this is Europe”.

Yes it must be a shock that Europe is tasting a fraction of what it has visited on other countries.

We also saw the hypocrisy of the United Nations on full display today. The General Assembly voted to ‘deplore’ Russia’s invasion. So do I. But compare this with America and Britain’s invasion of Iraq which caused approximately one million deaths as well as destabilisation and slaughter across the Middle East. It was the Iraqi invasion which led to the creation of ISIS.  Yet what was the UN response? Absolutely nothing. There was no criticism of the USA.

I won’t bother detailing every instance of media racism because, as they say, every picture tells a story. It is a story of ingrained media racism.

Ukrainian Opposition to Becoming the United States’ Pawn and Plaything

And there’s something else that the mainstream media has not shown. That not all Ukrainians are happy that the United States, which has been enforcing austerity on Ukraine via the IMF and World Bank, is now using them as a pawn in its battle with Russia as it seeks to achieve hegemony in Europe and the world.

What coverage have there been of these demonstrations in Kyiv against US imperialism?  Again it doesn’t fit with the BBC narrative and now that RT is off the air, we can be sure that they won’t be shown either.

Tony Greenstein

"It's so odd (that) war is no longer being waged exclusively against Black, brown and poor people. Shock. Horror"

https://tinyurl.com/2p97hudx

‘We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime”

https://tinyurl.com/2p8fscf4

American Ignorance – ‘the lady on CNN just now said that the damage in Kyiv is something a capitol city in Europe hasn’t seen in almost a century… the siege on Sarajevo began on April 5, 1992 and didn’t end until February 29, 1996’

Molotovs – ‘If this was done by Palestinians, Afghanistan or other nations resisting occupation, it would be terrorism.’

https://tinyurl.com/29kpsw44

Al Jazeera racism – ‘The Supremacy around the media coverage of this isn't even subtle.’

Ukrainian President Zelensky

‘White supremacy is a core European value. #Ukraine “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed’

BBC Racism – ‘But people with 'blue eyes and blonde hair' dropping bombs over the Middle East and Africa is OK. And 'Blue eyes and blonde hair' is Hitler's words from the Mein Kampf about the superior Aryan race.’

This isn’t Iraq 

This isn’t Iraq 2

The uncivilised

Bulgarian Prime Minister

Bosnian Genocide

Lebanon

Palestinian men

Non-whites who resist occupation are of course terrorists

Raising funds for Ukrainian military

Raising funds for Ukrainian military 2

sanctions 1

sanctions 2

And then there is the Jewish Chronicle’s fascist sympathising editor, Stephen Pollard. According to Pollard Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel is ‘anti-Semitic’. But when applied to Russia it is perfectly kosher.

boycott 1

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backed the boycott of Russia from sports, but criticised the boycott of last month’s Sydney Cultural Festival over receiving sponsorship from the Israeli embassy.

Claudia Webbe, a British member of parliament, tweeted that the people who genuinely care about Ukrainians are the ones who will welcome all refugees with open arms.

“The rest?” she posted, “Well, they’re pretending.”

See They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine

Israel's War Crimes Against Children

UN battle to ‘shame’ Israel over abuse of children

5 May 2015

Attack on Gaza last year raises pressure on Ban Ki-moon to put Israeli army on same list as Islamic State and Taliban

Middle East Eye – 5 June 2015

Palestinian solidarity groups have taken to social media to step up the pressure on United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to include Israel for the first time on a “shame list” of serious violators of children’s rights.

The campaign, which culminates in the submission of an online petition to Ban’s office on 7 May, was launched after indications that Israel is exerting enormous pressure on UN officials to avoid being named.

Ban’s office is due to make the list public in the coming weeks.

A senior UN source, who wished to remain anonymous because of the diplomatically sensitive nature of any announcement, told Middle East Eye that Ban’s chief advisers had recommended that the Israeli army be identified as a serious violator of children’s rights.

That would place it, for the first time, alongside groups like Islamic State, the Taliban and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, pushing Israel further towards international isolation.

Israel has found ever fewer supporters in the international community as it has tried to prevent Palestinian moves both to win recognition at the UN for statehood and to be accepted at international bodies such as the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Relations with the White House have recently hit an unprecedented low.

The decision, the source said, had become all but inevitable after the recent findings of a UN inquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer known as Operation Protective Edge that killed more than 500 Palestinian children and injured at least 3,300 others.

The investigation concluded that the Israeli army had targeted six UN schools where civilians, including many children, were sheltering, even though it had been notified of the sites and their GPS coordinates in advance.

Ban described the attacks – which killed 44 Palestinians and injured 227 more – as “a matter of the utmost gravity”.

Large-scale killing and maiming of children, and attacks on schools, are among the “triggers” for inclusion on the list in a UN monitoring process of children’s right in conflicts around the world introduced a decade ago.

Intimidation of staff

However, there are concerns in the UN and among children’s rights experts that, despite the evidence against Israel, political pressure from Israel and the US could ensure that the Israeli army remains off the list.

In a sign of Israel’s concern, its officials protested strenuously in February when local UN staff in Jerusalem were due to ratify a recommendation to UN headquarters that Israel be included. At the last minute, the meeting was cancelled.

One of Ban’s officials privately complained to Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, over the intimidation of agency staff in Jerusalem, according to a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Despite Israel’s intervention, said the UN source, agency officials in Jerusalem and Ban’s advisers in New York had decided the evidence against Israel was compelling.

If Ban had received such a recommendation, the pressures on him would be intense, said Gerard Horton, a lawyer specialising in Israel’s treatment of children. “Once things move to New York, they become highly political,” he told MEE.

“After all, the US pays a large slice of the UN’s budget, so UN officials cannot afford to ignore the administration’s wishes. If UN officials want to help children in Africa and Iraq, they have to ask themselves whether it is worth risking it all for a fight over Israel.”

Activists on social media have established a new group, 4Palkids, to try to bring grassroots pressure to bear on Ban.

Ariyana Love, one of the organisers, said: “Our hope is that, if Israel is put on the list, it will begin a process of bringing sanctions to bear against Israel from the international community.”

UN credibility at stake

The UN source said it would be unprecedented if Ban vetoed the advice of his team in New York dealing with children and armed conflict, headed by Leila Zerrougui.

“The Secretary General has never before vetoed a recommendation for inclusion on this list and it will be hard for him to do so now and maintain the UN’s credibility in the Middle East,” said the source.

A spokeswoman in Jerusalem for UNICEF, which leads the local monitoring process, referred all questions to New York, saying the matter was “confidential”.

Ban’s office said the report would be published in June but would not comment on which countries were to be listed or whether Israel had lobbied the Secretary-General.

Off the record, UN officials have noted that Ban will have to take account of the fact that the UN’s Human Rights Council is due to submit its report into Operation Protective Edge in the coming months. The report is expected to be harshly critical of Israel’s 50-day operation and the resulting high number of casualties of Palestinian civilians.

Israel is regularly condemned by UN human rights commissions, most recently in a resolution by the Commission on the Status of Women. But Israel and the US usually dismiss such findings as partisan, given that the commissions represent national governments, including Arab and Muslim states.

A listing of Israel by Ban – with the implicit backing of the Security Council, which originally set up the monitoring of children’s rights in conflict zones – will carry much more weight.

Horton, a founder of Military Court Watch, an organisation monitoring Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, said western states’ current displeasure with Israel might give Ban the diplomatic room he needs to punish it.

“There is a lot of anger in Europe and the US towards the Israeli government, especially after [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu publicly declared during the recent election campaign that he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state,” he said.

“Placing Israel on the list might be a way to send a shot across the bows. It would be a major embarrassment for Israel, but it would draw a lot less blood than the US vetoing a resolution in the Security Council against, say, Israel’s settlements.”

‘List of shame’

Since 2005, UN agencies have been charged with monitoring 23 conflicts, including the one between Israel and the Palestinians, for serious violations of children’s rights.

Six grave violations have been identified that qualify a party to a conflict for inclusion on the list. They are: killing and maiming children, abductions, sexual attacks, attacks on schools and hospitals, the denial of humanitarian access, and the recruitment of children as soldiers.

The UN Secretary General’s office publishes detailed annual reports into all the conflicts, highlighting major violations of children’s rights. However, the Israeli army has so far avoided inclusion in an annex that has come to be known as the “list of shame”.

In last year’s report, 52 parties were named for the gravest violations against children in states such as Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Several government armed forces were included.

Although the Israeli army was not identified in that report as one of the most serious abusers, it was criticised for violations against Palestinian children that included: actions that led to deaths and injuries; night-time arrests; cruel and degrading treatment during interrogations; threats of sexual violence; transfers to Israeli prisons, in violation of the Geneva Conventions; attacks on schools; and the denial for patients in Gaza of required hospital treatments.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, has noted that inclusion on the list has proved successful in curbing states’ worst abuses of children’s rights.

“The ‘list of shame’ has been a remarkably effective tool in getting governments to improve their children’s rights records,” Bede Sheppard, the deputy director of the children’s rights division at HRW, noted earlier this year.

Issam Yunis, director of Al-Mezan, a human rights group in Gaza, told MEE that listing Israel was vital to increasing protections for Palestinians under occupation.

“At the moment, Israel is totally unaccountable, especially in Gaza, where it has a green light to do what it likes. Gaza is a society of children [figures show 44 per cent of the population are under 14] so it is inevitable that they pay the heaviest price for Israeli impunity.”

Breakthrough meeting

In the case of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, violations have been documented and monitored since 2007 by a working group led by the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. The group includes other major UN agencies, international aid organisations and Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations.

Until this year, Palestinian children’s rights experts noted, Israel had not only been excluded from the final list publicised by the UN Secretary General’s office, but had not even been discussed for inclusion.

“This year, there was a breakthrough in that the local report included a proposal for the first time to consider whether Israel should be on the list,” said Ayed Abed Eqtaish, a lawyer with the Palestine branch of Defence for Children International.

He said that was why Israel had sought to prevent the meeting in February.

He added: “Things are getting noticeably harder for Israel. The pressure is growing year by year.”

The Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council, a coalition of 12 Palestinian groups, sent a letter to Ban in February urging him to be “impartial” and include Israel on the list.

They wrote: “Repeated Israeli military offensives, prolonged military occupation, and recurrent military violence combined with complete disregard for international law has hindered any meaningful efforts toward implementing comprehensive protections for children living [under occupation].”

Inclusion on the list would add significantly to the mounting criticism of Israel’s conduct during last year’s Operation Protective Edge. Reports from human rights groups have already accused Israel of carrying out war crimes.

Soldiers’ testimonies

This week, a group of former Israeli soldiers, Breaking the Silence, published testimonies from soldiers who served in Gaza. Many said they had received similar orders from their commanders: to shoot any Palestinian, whether armed or not, in areas Israel considered combat zones.

A staff sergeant was quoted saying: “The instructions are to shoot right away. Whoever you spot – be they armed or unarmed, no matter what. The instructions are very clear. Any person you run into, that you see with your eyes – shoot to kill. It’s an explicit instruction.”

Breaking the Silence concluded that Israel was “at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population”.

Although criticism in the UN of Israel has focused on the killing and maiming of children in last year’s attack on Gaza, Yunis of Al-Mezan said Israel should have been listed long before for the grave violation of “denying humanitarian access”.

“The siege of Gaza has been going on for nearly a decade and meets the criteria of a grave violation,” he said. “If Israel is listed this year, it’s important that it stays there until it ends such violations.”