Geneva Conventions at 60: US should take the lead on civilian protection
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- Written by Oxfam America Oxfam America
- Published: 12 August 2009 12 August 2009
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Geneva Conventions at 60: US should take the lead on civilian protection
Aug 11, 2009
BOSTON—Sixty years after the Geneva Conventions of 1949 enshrined the rights of civilians in times of armed conflict, the fundamental principles that civilians should be protected from violence and have access to assistance are violated in every current conflict, said international aid agency Oxfam America today.
“If something is not done to reverse this trend, international humanitarian law may soon be irrelevant to those who need it most. The United States must take concrete steps to increase global adherence and accountability to the Geneva Conventions,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one the most extreme examples of threats facing civilians. Eight percent of the country's citizens have died in the ongoing conflict there. If the United States lost a similar proportion of civilians, 25 million people, more than the population of Texas, would have died. Yet, the cycle of killing and impunity in the Congo continues, not only through violence but through the disease and poverty that war brings with it. In Somalia, where civilians are killed daily, they are further endangered by a lack of access to life-saving assistance—a right enshrined in the Conventions.
The killing of civilians is not limited to the horror stories from Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia but includes conflicts such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, where civilians are among the many casualties of warfare.
Thankfully, the US is beginning to show a fresh commitment to upholding international humanitarian law in its own military and globally. This June, the new US commander in Afghanistan made a strong case for upholding the Conventions based on US national security interests and the new US strategy on Afghanistan puts the protection of civilians at the center of military policy. In addition to military support for increased US adherence to the Conventions, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, pledged in her first speech to the UN Security Council that the United States would work together with the United Nations and international organizations such as the ICRC in a new era in support for international humanitarian law.
“There have been encouraging signs from the Obama administration; however we need to take real action now. The US can use this change of policy and approach to lead the world on better adherence to the conventions,” said Offenheiser.
Oxfam recommends that the United States take the following actions to increase global adherence of the Geneva Conventions:
- The United States should adhere to the Conventions on its own military operations,
- Publicly challenge violations of International Humanitarian Law, even if the violators are US allies.
- Work with allies to engage in high-level diplomatic efforts to encourage countries to adhere to Conventions.
- When other efforts fail, work with the UN to impose and closely monitor the implementation of sanctions targeted on political and military leaders who commit war crimes.
- Build capacity of the Department of State to engage in preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution. Years of underinvestment in civilian foreign policy tools have left the US incapable of effectively using non-military tools to protect people caught in the crossfire.
The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything
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- Written by Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, The New York Times (Opinion) Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, The New York Times (Opinion)
- Published: 11 August 2009 11 August 2009
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The New York Times (Opinion)
August 11, 2009 - 12:00am
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
THE two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.
Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.
As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding?
As for Hamas, recognition of the state of Israel has always been and remains taboo. Until recently, the movement had hinted it might acquiesce to Israel’s de facto existence and resign itself to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This sentiment has now grown from hint to certitude.
President Obama’s June address in Cairo provoked among Hamas leaders a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. The American president criticized the movement but did not couple his mention of Hamas with the term terrorism, his recitation of the prerequisites for engagement bore the sound of a door cracked open rather than one slammed shut, and his acknowledgment that the Islamists enjoyed the support of some Palestinians was grudging but charitable by American standards. All of which was promising but also foreboding, prompting reflection within the Hamas movement over how to escape international confinement without betraying core beliefs.
The result of this deliberation was Hamas’s message that it would adhere to the internationally accepted wisdom — a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas also coupled its concession with caveats aplenty, demanding full Israeli withdrawal, full Palestinian sovereignty and respect for the refugees’ rights. In this, there was little to distinguish its position from conventional Palestinian attitudes.
The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state — and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees’ rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.
The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core. It can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 — Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.
Both positions enjoy broad support within their respective communities. Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears — for an end to Arab questioning of Israel’s legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees’ return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel’s Arab citizens.
Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. Their firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right. The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement — led by refugees and focused on their plight.
It’s easy to wince at these stands. They run against the grain of a peace process whose central premise is that ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state will bring this matter to a close. But to recall the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian clash is not to invent a new battle line. It is to resurrect an old one that did not disappear simply because powerful parties acted for some time as if it had ceased to exist.
Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle’s latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.
That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.
For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.
Israel's anti-immigration immigrants
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- Written by Seth Freedman, guardian.co.uk Seth Freedman, guardian.co.uk
- Published: 11 August 2009 11 August 2009
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Three out of four Israeli citizens of Russian extraction support the transfer of Arabs out of Israel – and sadly they are not alone
Well over a million of Israel's population come from the former Soviet Union (FSU), representing more than 15% of the total population – hence the political views of the Russian immigrant community are not easily brushed under the carpet. Their collective stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is credited with sweeping Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party into the upper echelons of power at the last election, and on the strength of the latest poll from the Israel Democracy Institute, it's not hard to see why Lieberman has become the poster boy of the Russian right.
According to the survey, three out of four citizens of Russian extraction support the transfer of Arabs out of Israel, an overwhelming display of hostility towards the original inhabitants of the state in which the Russians arrived a mere 20 years ago. On the face of it, their antipathy towards their Arab neighbours could be chalked up to the same inter-minority tensions prevalent around the world, such as African-American resentment of Koreans and Mexicans in the US, or even intra-minority antagonism, such as the shunning of Jewish immigrants to Britain in the first half of the 20th century by those Jews already long-established in the UK. In both cases, one group's feelings of insecurity about their own status in society foments bitterness towards others in a similar situation, and given the discrimination Russian immigrants have suffered at the hands of the wider Israeli populace, it isn't hard to apply the same logic here.
However, when viewed in the context of the attitudes of non-Russian Israelis, it becomes clear that while the FSU immigrants' opinions are undoubtedly hardline, the rest of Israel doesn't lag far behind – revealing just how wide the gulf is between mainstream Israeli public opinion and any kind of equitable and just settlement with the Palestinians. Over half of the Israeli Jews polled support the transfer of Arabs out of Israel, while 48% oppose any kind of retreat from settlements (compared with 64% of Russian interviewees). Such figures throw a spanner in the works of peace negotiations, since such ingrained nationalism gives carte blanche to Israeli leaders to take unyielding positions on the conflict if anything short of total acquiescence is offered by the Palestinian side.
There are those on the Palestinian side who display equally intransigent and unpalatable views on a final resolution, demanding Israel be rid of its Jewish presence and handed back to the Palestinians, and they deserve to be castigated just as much as the pro-transfer majority in Israel. However, their direct impact on the political process is minimal, since by and large all major decisions taken by Israel are enacted on a unilateral basis, despite opposition from either the Palestinian authorities or foreign governments.
The longer such unreconstructed attitudes persist in Israeli society, the harder it becomes to remove the calcified layer of mistrust and hostility so prevalent in Israeli minds. In a country where over half of the dominant ethnic group wishes to expel those of a different racial profile, the goalposts have shifted so far as to render standard political groupings almost irrelevant. What would pass as rightwing thinking in western countries is deemed simply middle-of-the-road in Israel; anyone who would occupy the centre ground in more enlightened countries is portrayed as a radical leftist here, sidelined to the point of obscurity and their party's views paid not the slightest heed by the man on the street.
On one level, it appears insane that a group of straight-off-the-boat immigrants such as the FSU olim should call overwhelmingly for displacing a group of fellow citizens who've been here for generations – but when considered against the raison d'etre of the Jewish state, their position becomes far easier to understand. However, to understand is not to excuse, and the core malaise at the heart of Israeli society is the unswerving belief that Israel has to be forever populated by a Jewish majority, and that only those of the right extraction qualify to stand at the state's helm and chart its course.
It is wholly immoral to demand that any racial group willingly roll over, play dead, and allow themselves to be subjugated by another people – as we Jews know firsthand, and have railed against throughout our history. Yet that is exactly what Israel's leaders assert must happen here and they have massive support from the electorate thanks to their ability to whip up the masses into a decades-old nationalistic frenzy.
Thus, the phenomenon of the racist Russian sector is deplorable, but not wildly out of kilter with the popular attitudes among Israel's Jewish population. Headlines might have focused on the Russian response to the poll, but missing the wood for the trees just perpetuates the underlying erosion taking place throughout Israeli society.
Likewise, blaming the Palestinians for simply refusing to accept that they deserve to be transferred, trampled and traded out of their heritage is a shameful path to tread. Their extremists aren't blameless for exacerbating the hostilities between the two sides, but that doesn't reduce in the slightest the validity of their claims to their homeland.
The only solution is for sectarianism to be sidelined and for all people of the region to be dealt with on a level playing field; whether that means one state or two depends on the terms of the settlement, but whatever settlement is reached must treat every concerned party as equal. However, given the dominant thinking on the Israeli street, such pipe dreams are as unlikely to become reality as ever before – Russians or no Russians, Israeli society is dooming itself and its neighbours to a future of conflict while such rank prejudice prevails.
Hard Right Zionists Try to “Freeman” Peace Activist Mary Robinson
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- Written by James M. Wall James M. Wall
- Published: 10 August 2009 10 August 2009
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Whether Bibi used the term or not is not the issue. What is important is that someone in Israel’s ruling circles wanted the ”self-hating Jew” term out there. The term fits into the campaign to undercut Barack Obama’s credentials as a friend of Israel.
The strategy is obvious. Hard right Israeli Zionists, and their American neocon Zionist colleagues (HRZs, for short), spend considerable energy intimidating western civilization into believing any negative criticism of Israeli policies is, in the case of non Jews, a sign of latent or overt anti-semitism, or in the case of Jews, a sure sign that the guilty party is a “self hating Jew”.
With even the slightest hint that an anti-semite or self-hating Jew has been sighted, the culprit must be revealed and punished. The higher profile of the offending culprit, the more vicious the attacks.
The latest sighting involves two high-ranking White House officials, Emanuel and Axelrod, neither of whom are even remotely “self-hating Jews”. The ludicrous charge against two men I have known for more than three decades, was thrown at them because they are close to Obama. The Jewish online Forward has the sordid details on how the attacks unfolded. Getty Images
Five months ago, in Febuary, just weeks after Obama’s inauguration, the radar screen set up by the HRZs, detected a potential threat to Israel’s security when Charles Freeman was chosen to serve as Obama’s Director of the National Intelligence Council, the high-level interagency group that prepares evaluations for the president and other senior officials.
Before the Main Stream Media (MSM) bothered to notice, Freeman, an experienced foreign policy expert with an impeccable record was hit with a firestorm of deceptive, fraudulent and vicious attacks on his record of public service.
After Freeman withdrew his nomination he was strongly defended by Washington Post columnist David Broder, who wrote that Freeman’s withdrawal was “the country’s loss”.
I wrote a series of postings on Freeman’s ordeal at the time, two of which are available here and here. A longer version of those postings is available here.
Which brings us to Mary Robinson, the most recent target of the HRZ zeal that eliminated Freeman from the Obama team.
On July 30, President Obama named Mary Robinson as one of 16 recipients of America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The awards are scheduled to be presented at a White House ceremony Wednesday night, August 12.
Mary Robinson, is one of the Elders, the group of world leaders initially formed by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. A former president of Ireland and a former UN human rights official, Robinson now lives in New York City, where she is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative.
Her full resume is available on the Elders page. The Realizing Rights web site sums up her current assignments:
Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, Vice President of the Club of Madrid, honorary President of Oxfam International, Member of the Vaccine Fund Board of Directors and member of the Leadership Council the UN Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. She is a Professor of Practice at Columbia University and member of the Advisory Board of the Earth Institute, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria.
Bear in mind that Robinson is being honored with the Presidential Medal. She is not being nominated to hold a position in the Obama Administration. It would be inconceivable for the White House to withdraw Robinson’s name from the list of Medal of Freedom winners. But this has not stopped the HRZ attacks.
The HRZs are not likely to pull a Freeman on Mary Robinson, but they are determined to smear her and her supporters. Time is short, but already they have secured some friendly U.S. media attention for their smear attacks. The Chicago Tribune, for example, marching, as usual, to the beat of AIPAC’s spin, runs a story which begins:
Jewish congressional members and lobbying groups are protesting President Obama’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Irish leader Mary Robinson, who they say has a long record of harshly criticizing Israel.
The award pronouncement prompted the first criticism of Obama by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group he courted during last year’s campaign. Jewish groups in the U.S. have been largely supportive of the president. But the Robinson award is the latest in a series of recent disagreements with Obama, and some Jewish leaders are growing skeptical of his commitment to Israel.
The attack machine used against Charles Freeman was not the same as the one now pursuing Mary Robinson. AIPAC pretended to stay out of the Freeman affair. But now the “all powerful” lobby group smears Robinson for her role as the UN Human Rights Commission chair and her “criticism” of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
It is hard to escape the feeling that AIPAC hauled out some of its congressional minions just to darken Robinson’s big day. What AIPAC really did, however, was reveal the decline of fire power in its paranoia arsenal by attacking a woman with a distinguished record who fully deserves to be one of the honorees this Wednesday.
The White House announcement of the awards puts them into perspective:
The Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
The awardees were chosen for their work as agents of change. Among their many accomplishments in fields ranging from sports and art to science and medicine to politics and public policy, these men and women have changed the world for the better. They have blazed trails and broken down barriers. They have discovered new theories, launched new initiatives, and opened minds to new possibilities.
Joining Robinson among the honorees, presuming the AIPAC “protests” fail, are 15 other luminaries:
Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated; the late Republican congressman Jack Kemp, a onetime pro football standout; ailing Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, American civil rights activist; Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop and Nobel laureate; tennis star Billie Jean King; first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; actor Sidney Poitier,singer Chita Rivera; British cosmologist Stephen Hawking; Nancy Goodman Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer grass-roots organization; Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr., founder of an agency that provides medical care to more than 10,000 homeless patients a year in Miami; Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief and author of major works in Native American history and culture; Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, an American human geneticist internationally renowned for her work on leukemia and lymphoma; and Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner who has provided loans to help millions of people fight poverty by starting businesses.
A sample of the blog attacks against Mary Robinson is ugly to behold, but instructive as to the level of discourse to which the HRZ has descended. Here is Ed Lasky, writing for The American Thinker, evoking Nazi Germany in his tirade:
President Barack Obama’s decision to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson, who headed a United Nation Commission that condoned suicide bombing against Israelis and who also was in charge of the Durban Conference Against Racism that became an anti-Semitic hate-fest reminiscent of Nazi Germany (and that the United States and Israel boycotted, to Robinson’s consternation), has elicited some measure of controversy.
Michael Rubin weighs in on the American Enterprise Institute blog:
Robinson is a poor choice to receive the President (cq) Medal of Freedom. She may have dedicated her career to human rights, but she is also responsible for accelerating the politicization of that field and the growth of moral equivalency. She was a headline-seeker, rather than a sincere devotee of causes. Her stewardship of the Durban conference was atrocious and single-handedly blessed the resurgence of anti-Semitism. . .
Abraham Foxman, one of the HRZs best known generals, is quoted on Powerline, a conservative website which features U.S. and Israeli flags on its home page.
[Robinson] issued distorted and detrimental reports on the conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and blamed Israel for the outbreak of Palestinian violence – the Second Intifada. As the convener of the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, she allowed the process to be hijacked to promote the delegitimizing of Israel and pronouncements of hateful anti-Jewish canards, such as “Zionism is racism.” She failed miserably in her leadership role, opting to join the anti-Israel forces rather than temper them. . .
There is more out there in the blogosphere, nasty and distorted cannon fodder to inspire the MSM, like the Chicago Tribune, to treat the Robinson award as “controversial”.
It is not controversial, except in the HRZ circle of influence that thrives on hate language, distortions, and character assassinations. Fortunately, that circle is growing smaller, which could explain why its methods are even more obnoxious and ugly.
The final word on Mary Robinson and the HRZs must come from Robinson. After reading criticisms of her career, she talked to The Irish Times:
Former President Mary Robinson has described as “unjust and unwarranted” criticism from American pro-Israel groups of President Barack Obama’s award to her of the medal of freedom, the highest civilian award in the US.
Mrs Robinson, who will receive the award with 16 others at a White House ceremony next week, told The Irish Times that she was “hurt and dismayed” by accusations that she had shown a consistent bias against Israel and failed to prevent anti-Semitic declarations at an anti-racism summit in Durban in 2001.
“I have made it absolutely clear and I’ve been totally consistent on this, that human rights is not on the side of either the Israelis or the Palestinians – it’s on the side of both,” she said.
“If you’re a human rights person, you have to be fair, you have to be unbiased when you’re addressing situations of human rights violations. That’s the pledge of my life and that’s what I live by.”
Rattling the Cage: Sheikh Jarrah really says it all
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- Written by Larry Derfner Larry Derfner
- Published: 09 August 2009 09 August 2009
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