Israel’s mounting paranoia offers an excellent opportunity to analyze how news is slanted, by whom, and to whom.

A friend in Europe emails me news from various sources, and recently I received a story whose original source was the Near East News Agency (NENA), a collaborative of journalists working in the Near East that publishes in Italian and English. The story was about Israel’s efforts to prevent its neighbor Jordan from building an independent nuclear energy capability.

Israel is one of four countries with known nuclear capabilities not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea. Not- withstanding its own rogue position, Israel has been waging a relentless campaign to persuade the world that Iran is a mortal threat, not only to Israel, but to everyone else.

Now, just in case its campaign against the relatively distant threat should ultimately be unsuccessful, Israel now asserts that an equal threat lies next door, in Jordan, a tiny Muslim country which has been its steadfast ally.

The NENA article emphasized that Israel, with the backing of the U.S., is withholding “acceptance” of its neighbor’s plans to build two nuclear fuel plants, until Jordan promises that it will send its nuclear fuel abroad for reprocessing. (The NENA article also revealed that Jordan possesses 3% of known uranium deposits.)

Curious to know more about this story, I went to the New York Times. A May 2 Times article placed the Israel/Jordan controversy within the larger scope of U.S. efforts to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty during a month-long international conference. It pointed out that diplomats were negotiating agreements for overseas reprocessing with Jordan and Bahrain, and indicated there might also be a deal with Saudi Arabia.

The Times article quoted a participating diplomat saying that these endeavors were part of an attempt to isolate the Iranians, but that Iran and others at the United Nations non-Proliferation Conference, including Egypt, were more interested in forcing the region’s one nuclear-weapons state, Israel, to acknowledge its atomic arsenal and sign on to the nonproliferation treaty.

Egypt, in particular, wants the Middle East to be nuclear arms free, but the Obama administration only supports this idea within the context of a broad regional peace.
In other words, for Washington, a nuclear-free Middle East is contingent on resolving the situation with Iran, rather than the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

This is worrisome because Egypt, while lobbying for a conference next year on its proposal for a nuclear-free zone, also plans to build several nuclear reactors. According to The Times, Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak has hinted that if there is no agreement, his country might feel that needs to develop nuclear weapons, too.

Although the Times article has broader thrust, it manages to obscure the fact that the Obama administration accumulates blunders in the most volatile part of the world. Unlike the admittedly partisan NENA story, it fails to mention fthat Washington is threatening Jordan with a loss of 600 million a year in financial support if it goes ahead with a project that makes Israel nervous. Nor does it mention that our close allies, France and South Korea, are planning to help this tiny, resource poor county ensure its future energy needs.

Without several sources for world news, American voters are blindsided, taken totally unawares by major events. Nuclear non-pro-liferation is a major policy goal of President Obama. But alternate news sources reveal not only that in this, as in so many other laudable goals, his policies are counter-productive; they document the fact that a multi-faceted world can pursue laudable goals without us.

Today Otherjones is publishing a text by Professor Curtis Doebbler, professor of law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, representative of Nord Sud XXI to the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and a member of the Brussells Tribunal Advisory Committee. The link is www.brussellstribunal.org/Newsletters/Newsletter5EN.htm

“The starting point for any consideration of international law in relation to “the question of Palestine” — as the UN neutrally refers to it — is the right to self-determination. No right has been more important to so many peoples and states in the international community. Although we have a tendency to devote more attention to the international law of self-determination as it developed since the creation of the United Nations, the right to self-determination in the form that it is more relevant to “the question of Palestine” existed much earlier. In fact, this right can be traced back to the very existence of the nation-state, when it was decided that people living together in a particular territory have the right to form themselves into a sovereign state.

In other words, when there is no existing state, the right of self-determination gives the people concerned the right to form their own state. Applied to Palestine this means that after World War I when the Ottoman Empire was forced to relinquish sovereign over Palestine and when the British conquerors expressly denounced any interest in ruling Palestine, since that time the people living in Palestine have had the right to decide their own future.

As we know, this right was never recognised. Instead, first Britain and the international community acting through the United Nations denied the Palestinian people this right. This violated international law, as there is nothing in the UN Charter that allows the organisation the right to violate the right to self-determination. In fact, Article 1 of the UN Charter makes the right to self-determination one of the purposes for which the United Nations exists.

According to international law existing at the time, the creation of the State of Israel was illegal. Moreover, we know that once an illegal act has been committed by states, the consequences of that act remain illegal and may not be recognised as legal by other states. Thus even today it is correct to say that Israel is an illegal state and has been since its creation, no matter what its de facto position might be.

Even if one were to acknowledge the creation of Israel by the UN General Assembly’s adoption of resolution 181 on 29 November 1947, that resolution itself states, in Part 1, Subsection A, Paragraph 3, that “independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem … shall come into existence in Palestine.” In other words, in the very same paragraph as the State of Israel is created, so is the state of Palestine and the “international” city of Jerusalem.

Neither Israel nor the international community have respected the terms of this resolution. Instead, not only has Palestine been denied statehood, but also Palestinians are being offered about 3.5 per cent of the territory to which they had — and have — a right under the “roadmap” that the Quartet stresses as the basis for negotiations. Instead of a solution, this looks more like the theft of the right of self-determination from the Palestinian people.

Moreover, Israel has continued from 1947 to date to violate UN resolutions with impunity.

The occupation and international law

Just a day before the UN actually created the State of Israel, Israel proclaimed its own independence. Again this was done in violation of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and in violation of the League of Nations Mandate to the British, which was still in effect.

When the Arab states took up arms to defend the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, Western states — as they had done regularly for centuries — supported the colonisation of Palestine by Zionists claiming to have a right to create the State of Israel. Whatever religious, historical or political basis the Zionists had, they did not have any grounds under international law and in fact violated this law.

Rather than reacting to a violation of international law, the international community allowed Israel to act unlawfully and even ratified the de facto outcome of the occupation of Palestine. Even territories that the international community agreed did not come under any Israeli claim were allowed to be annexed. The process of annexation continues to this day.

According to the United Nations, parts of the territory over which the Palestinians were denied their right to self-determination became Israel. About 45 per cent of the original mandate territory was considered by the UN as occupied.

Putting aside disagreement about Israel’s illegitimacy, according to Article 47 of the Hague Regulations annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention from 1907, an act of occupation become de jure when the occupying power de facto exercises jurisdiction over a territory. By the 1970s, Israel had de facto jurisdiction over all of the mandate territory, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and parts of Southern Lebanon. As such Israel became an occupying power over these territories and people within in them.

Somewhat like a mandate holder under the League of Nations system, Israel was therefore required by the rules of international humanitarian law to provide for the occupied population under its control. This means ensuring proper administration, judicial facilities, educational facilities, and healthcare facilities. Instead, Israel has increasing denied Palestinians these services. This has been most notably the case in Gaza.

While claiming to be acting in the name of national security, Israeli soldiers have shot and killed infants, children, women and men. Israel has repeatedly denied Palestinians the right to reach school and hospitals. And Israel regularly imposes it own administrative system of checkpoints and other forms of harassment, including its own courts, on Palestinians. All of these actions violate the international legal duties of an occupying power.

Israel’s actions denying the people of Gaza the basic necessities of life are a particularly onerous form of oppression that violates norms of international humanitarian law including the prohibition against collective punishment that is found in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The right of self-defence

Israel has repeatedly invoked its right of self-defence to fight back against the Palestinians. While it is true that Israel may have a right to use force to protect itself from attack, it cannot justify the use of force to perpetuate an illegal situation. Thus, if one views the creation of Israel to be illegal, then so is any force used to maintain this illegal situation.

Even states entitled to use force in self-defence must satisfy several criteria. There must first be an armed attack against the state by another state, and any force used must be proportionate and necessary to achieve a lawful objective.

As indicated above, even if Israel had been entitled to use force against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla — which it was argued it was not — it would have only been able to use proportionate and necessary force.

A more interesting question is what type of force might be used against Israel, as it is the entity that has and continues to violate international law.

First, the UN Security Council could authorise the use of force against Israel, but this is a political decision that Israeli friends with veto power on the Security Council are likely to prevent.

Second, the UN General Assembly could authorise the use of force against Israel. This could be done by a simple majority of the assembly with no state having veto power. The action of the General Assembly is limited while the Security Council is seized of a matter, and arguably, acting on it, but it is the General Assembly that has the power to decide this question.

Third, Palestinians have a legitimate right of self-determination that entitles them to use force against Israel. Such use of force, although prima facie legal under international law, must conform to the rules of international humanitarian law. These rules include prohibition of attacks against civilians, either by design or because they are indiscriminate.

And fourth, every state in the international community has the right to assist the Palestinians in their struggle, including their armed struggle, to achieve their right to self-determination. Again, of course, such assistance must conform to the rules of international humanitarian law.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla is an example of such assistance. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla is a general phrase that can be used to describe the boats attempting to bring humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. Even the Israelis do not deny that the boats are bringing humanitarian assistance. Nevertheless, Israel sees itself as entitled to stop the boats based on its suspicion that they will assist the self-determination struggle of the Gaza people, particularly their use of force against Israel.

The problematic nature of this argument is readily apparent. How can a state that is violating international law by subjecting an occupied people to inhuman and collective punishment justify actions to maintain its illegal ways? The simple answer is that it cannot. It is violating international law merely by maintaining an illegal regime, and just about everything it does that serves that end is illegal. This was the case with South Africa as it struggled to maintain its illegal apartheid regime. It increasingly exercised police powers to maintain its illegal hold over black South Africans. Sometimes the police acted less forcefully, and sometimes, black South Africans were subjected to court proceedings, but irrespective of the standards of these “concessions”, the South African government was acting illegally. Two UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights in Palestine — one a South African anti-apartheid campaigner and one a Jewish American professor — have criticised Israel for its illegal actions that they refer to as similar to, or worse than, the South African apartheid government’s actions.

The Israel argument is sometimes expressed in a more nuanced form concerning its embargo on Gaza. It claims that it no longer occupies Gaza and is therefore entitled to act against it in self-defence, through an embargo and the interdiction of ships bringing humanitarian assistance. The legal errors in this argument are many.

First, Israel interdicted the Gaza ships on the high seas. No state is allowed to stop and board ships on the high seas without the permission of the ship, unless the ships have been involved in international piracy. In fact, to act in violation of this fundamental rule of international law is itself piracy. Moreover, the crew of a ship under attack by pirates or unauthorised persons attempting to enter their ship by force are entitled to use necessary and proportionate force to repel the illegal invaders. In this case, this would mean that the ships crew would be entitled to use force that is equivalent to that of as highly qualified and heavily armed invader as the Israeli military.

Second, according to Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua Case, the provision of humanitarian assistance to people in need, especially under occupation, is always allowed and never an unfriendly act.

Third, the preventing of humanitarian assistance to a people in need is itself an illegal act.

Despite the importance of international law, this law is impotent unless it is applied, and Israel and its allies have proven themselves to be quite intransigent in their failure to respect international law. The law, nevertheless, is a powerful tool in the hands of those who seek to promote the rule of law.

Thus even if states like Israel do not respect the law, the law continues to exist as a minimum common denominator that has been agreed upon by states in the international community. It continues to serve as the best chance we have to live together, not even as friends, but merely without annihilating each other.

What wackiness to wake up to on a Sunday morning! On CNN’s State of the Union, Joe Lieberman tells Candy Crowley that the government should police the internet – taking China as an example!

A stunning example of the fact that, as I have written elsewhere, however different their regimes, and notwithstanding their external antagonisms, political leaders share a common attitude vis a vis their subjects.

But would internet security suddenly have become a burning issue had the cooperatively-run internet site Wikileaks – which, coincidentally, Wikipedia says was founded by Chinese dissidents some years ago – not recently show an American helicopter gunship deliberately targeting and killing a dozen civilians and wounding two children in Afghanistan? The footage, complete with the two-way ground-to-air conversation was leaked by an American soldier, who has been arrested, and a hunt is on for Julian Assange, the Australian who is the public face of Wikileaks, now and not for the first time, in hiding.

But let’s not lose the thread here: Senator Lieberman is proposing legislation that would authorize the White House to prevent use of the internet that could threaten our national security – as does China, a country which is officially Communist, and in any case recognized as an authoritarian regime. Yet Senator Lieberman, like most of his colleagues in the Congress, would not be caught dead recommending that the United States emulate in any way, shape or form, the social-democratic countries of Europe, which, as the world stands today, are widely considered to be the best that humans have achieved so far in terms of governance.

As for where the world stands today, an Arizona lawmaker proposes that birth certificates be denied children of illegal immigrants, never mind that according to the Constitution, any person born on U.S. soil is an American citizen; and Israelis of European origin demonstrate against having their children schooled together with those of Sephardic, usually North-African, origin.

More encouragingly, civilians around the world are increasingly adopting similar attitudes toward those that govern them, whether it be Americans on the Gulf Coast tired of waiting for government and BP to clean up the oil mess, college students voting to divest from companies doing business with Israel, West bank Palestinians boycotting settler products, South American Indians or Africans of the Niger Delta suing big oil for polluting their lands.

Friday, June 4th:I know that ore than half of the volunteers in the flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza were Turks, but does that statistic explain why all of this killed were Turks? (One held an American passport but was of Turkish origin.) Would Turks stand out among fair-skinned Americans, British, French, etc. individuals on board the Turkish ship that was boarded in a pre-dawn raid last Monday?

One of the early Israeli reports said that its soldiers were surprised to hear ‘Arabic’ (more likely Turkish) being spoken on the ship. I have not heard anyone raise this issue. Why? Racial profiling isn’t an American monopoly.

Saturday: On today’s news, someone was suggesting that the Israeli attackers had a hit list. Maybe they didn’t have a list, but the idea would certainly suggest that they were instructed to use racial profiling.

After seeing the recent film “Inglorious Basterds” by Quentin Tarantino it occured to me that the Israelis are on a master race kick. In the film, a group of Jewish Americans inflict a series of vicious punishments on Third Reich combatants, ending with the assassination of Hitler and his entire general staff! Tarantino fans like the fact that the film is horrendously violent. As a film lover, I do not recommend it. Aside from that, I believe that it unapologetically represents a communal Israeli dream of being able to overcome even the most powerful enemies.

Israel’s handling of relief efforts for the people of Gaza would seem to confirm that the country is under a sort of superman spell. How long before it wakes up?

Although the American Heritage Dictionary refers to ‘entering’ or going aboard a vehicle or ship, the Israeli army’s reference to its troops ‘going aboard’ the Turkish ship carrying relief supplies does not evoke men rappelling down from a helicopter in full riot gear in the middle of the night.

How to be surprised that they were greeted with clubs and knives?

A ‘boarding party’ comes alongside a ship on another ship, and requests permission to come aboard. Usually in broad daylight.

Israel could have done this, in order to inspect the cargoes being carried, which could then have been ‘safely’ delivered to Gaza.

There is a famous French nursery rhyme that says “My heart cannot choose between the Christine and Brigitte.”

What transpired today, between endless chatter about the oil spill, and brief allusions to Israel’s attack on unarmed civilians in the high seas, is that the United States is going to have to choose between two long-time allies: Israel and Turkey.

To be sure, the nature of our relations with these two countries is not the same: Israel is a sixty-year old love story that grew out of the Second World War. Turkey was “the southern bulwark against the Soviet Union“ during the Cold War, and more recently, has been indispensable to our pursuit of military operations in Iraq. And now, at a time when, according to CNN, the U.S. needs Turkey’s support to pass a sanctions resolution against Iran, Turkey today declared that Israel had forfeited its right to be considered a respected member of the international community.

By late afternoon, it transpired that Turkey had gone further: it demanded that the United States join the Security Council’s condemnation of Israel. Imagine! A not-so-long-ago third world country demanding a certain behavior of the world superpower!

The full impact of this development has probably not dawned in Washington yet. Or if it, has, Washington will pretend nothing is amiss. But this is as significant a development as the Gulf oil spill: from now on, we can start keeping a record of the ways in which the world spells out for the United States the fact that it no longer calls the shots.

What a way for Israel to celebrate America’s Memorial Day! Did Lieberman take advantage of Bibi’s absence to commit murder? Did Bibi cancel his trip to Washington to avoid having his knuckles rapped?

President Obama is caught between multiples rocks and hard places: he can control neither the oil barons operating off our shores, nor the new crusaders who want to take over the Holy Land, and who, having killed thousands of Gaza civilians, thinks nothing of killing members of an international group committed to a humanitarian mission.

Yesterday, interviewing the BP operations manager on CNN, Candy Crowley appeared not to know that the American congress caved to the oil industry’s demand to free it from the obligation it has in the rest of the world to install an off-switch that would have prevented the Gulf disaster, while at the same time, perhaps, trying to get the oilman to confess.

Today the question is will President Obama will buy the unbelievably weak excuse announced by the Israeli ambassador according to which the Israeli attackers found weapons ready to use against them on the ship carrying relief to Gaza. (In other words, if you carry a defensive weapon, I will attack you!) The ambassador made no mention of arms being carried as cargo, and in fact the AP story on The Huffington Post mentions knives and clubs as the arms prepared by the convoy – a reverse David and Goliath situation.

The attack happened in international waters, another serious issue. And by the way, before ousting Fatah from Gaza militarily, Hamas won the June 2007 parliamentary election there. Hamas must have had in mind what happened in the Algerian election of 1992: when the Islamic party won a first round, the government in power, with the backing of France, cancelled the second round to prevent it from taking power, sparking years of violence.

The commander of the Israeli troops who rappelled to the Turkish lead ship from a helicopter stated that he was surprised to hear Arabic spoken on board, the implication being that only Arabs support the Gazans. This is willful ignorance on the part of supposedly sophisticated Israelis, similar to the assumption on the part of many Americans that Cuba, which receives thousands of foreign visitors, is isolated from the rest of the world.

Last but not least, while Turkey has been Israel’s most steadfast ally in the MIddle East, a Turkish charity played a lead role in organizing the humani-tarian flotilla, and Turkey’s Islamic government could do no less than recall its ambassador to Tel Aviv after its ship was attacked.

But the irony goes further: together with Brazil, Turkey recently finalized a deal with Iran to reprocess its nuclear waste. The diplomatic breakthrough by these two “second tier” countries annoyed Secretary Clinton, even though President Obama had previous stated that such a deal was desirable. During the recent financial meltdown Brazil’s highly popular president Lula da Silva stated bluntly that it had been caused by “people with blue eyes”; and Turkey, located between Europe and Asia, recently indicated it would reorient its diplomacy away from the EU and toward the Arab world.

By continuing to support “the only democratic country in the Middle East”, the one supposedly founded on Enlightenment principles, rather than recognizing “facts on the ground”, Washington, like Israel, continues its blind march to oblivion.



Today I’m hosting Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s piece in the Isareli paper Haaretz:http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/gaza-flotilla-drives-israel-into-a-sea-of-stupidity-1.292959
Published 02:37 30.05.10

The Israeli propaganda machine has reached new highs its hopeless frenzy. It has distributed menus from Gaza restaurants, along with false information. It embarrassed itself by entering a futile public relations battle, which it might have been better off never starting. They want to maintain the ineffective, illegal and unethical siege on Gaza and not let the “peace flotilla” dock off the Gaza coast? There is nothing to explain, certainly not to a world that will never buy the web of explanations, lies and tactics.

Only in Israel do people still accept these tainted goods. Reminiscent of a pre-battle ritual from ancient times, the chorus cheered without asking questions. White uniformed soldiers got ready in our name. Spokesmen delivered their deceptive explanations in our name. The grotesque scene is at our expense. And virtually none of us have disturbed the performance.

The chorus has been singing songs of falsehood and lies. We are all in the chorus saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We are all part of the chorus claiming the occupation of Gaza has ended, and that the flotilla is a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty – the cement is for building bunkers and the convoy is being funded by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli siege of Gaza will topple Hamas and free Gilad Shalit. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy, one of the most ridiculous of the propagandists, outdid himself when he unblinkingly proclaimed that the aid convoy headed toward Gaza was a violation of international law.

Right. Exactly.

It’s not the siege that is illegal, but rather the flotilla. It wasn’t enough to distribute menus from Gaza restaurants through the Prime Minister’s Office, (including the highly recommended beef Stroganoff and cream of spinach soup ) and flaunt the quantities of fuel that the Israeli army spokesman says Israel is shipping in. The propaganda operation has tried to sell us and the world the idea that the occupation of Gaza is over, but in any case, Israel has legal authority to bar humanitarian aid. All one pack of lies.

Only one voice spoiled the illusory celebration a little: an Amnesty International report on the situation in Gaza. Four out of five Gaza residents need humanitarian assistance. Hundreds are waiting to the point of embarrassment to be allowed out for medical treatment, and 28 already have died. This is despite all the Israeli army spokesman’s briefings on the absence of a siege and the presence of assistance, but who cares?

And the preparations for the operation are also reminiscent of a particularly amusing farce: the feverish debate among the septet of ministers; the deployment of the Masada unit, the prison service’s commando unit that specializes in penetrating prison cells; naval commando fighters with backup from the special police anti-terror unit and the army’s Oketz canine unit; a special detention facility set up at the Ashdod port; and the electronic shield that was supposed to block broadcast of the ship’s capture and the detention of those on board.

And all of this in the face of what? A few hundred international activists, mostly people of conscience whose reputation Israeli propaganda has sought to besmirch. They are really mostly people who care, which is their right and obligation, even if the siege doesn’t concern us at all. Yes, this flotilla is indeed a political provocation, and what is protest action if not political provocation?
And facing them on the seas has been the Israeli ship of fools, floating but not knowing where or why. Why detain people? That’s how it is. Why a siege? That’s how it is. It’s like the Noam Chomsky affair all over again, but big time this time. Of course the peace flotilla will not bring peace, and it won’t even manage to reach the Gaza shore. The action plan has included dragging the ships to Ashdod port, but it has again dragged us to the shores of stupidity and wrongdoing. Again we will be portrayed not only as the ones that have blocked assistance, but also as fools who do everything to even further undermine our own standing. If that was one of the goals of the peace flotilla’s organizers, they won big yesterday.

Five years ago, the noted Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who is a Jerusalem Prize laureate, after concluding his visit to Israel, said the Israeli occupation was approaching its grotesque phase. Over the weekend Vargas Llosa, who considers himself a friend of Israel, was present to see that that phase has since reached new heights of absurdity.

When North Caucasus groups send suicide bombers to Moscow at the same time as right-wing militias are arrested for plotting to kill law enforcement officers in the U.S.,

When Juarez, on the U.S. Mexican border, becomes the most violent city on the planet;

When young people in Philadelphia use their communications devices to converge by the hundreds on certain popular streets (without anyone guessing as to why);

When increasingly, elections all over the world are contested, the latest being the Iraqi election;

When the most powerful nation in the world counts a growing minority of citizens who resent having to share a basic right to health care;

When all these things are in the news on any given day, we have to recognize that the entire world is in turmoil, and try to see through an apparent thicket to the trees.

Several factors come immediately to mind (but my readers will suggest others, no doubt): the existence, since 1945, of the atomic threat, which has increased over time with ever more lethal weapons; increased ease of communication between individuals; television and internet bringing reality in distant places to increasing numbers of people;

The growing desire for people rendered powerless by the above to live amongst like-minded Others whether for religious, national or sexual reasons – a powerlessness undiminished by the availability of mind-numbing drugs – causes rebellions against governments and ruling elites who place gain above psychological comfort.

Forcing a compromise in Afghanistan will not solve this problem. If it happens, it will be a dent in the wall of Other refusal – while we continue to send un-manned drones over Pakistan, and the Israeli government continues to defy world opinion and increasingly, the opinion of American taxpayers.

Refusal of Otherness is the umbrella category that encompasses all the elements of a world crisis.