ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND THE US

 

Not if they're from Massachusetts, it seems.

Will Progressives in the U.S. Congress Support Palestinian Children’s Human Rights?

13 Members of Congress have now joined the call for Palestinian children’s human rights. Led by U.S. Representative Betty McCollum, these elected officials are signing a letter (PDF) to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that urges him to raise the human rights of Palestinian children in his dealings with the Government of Israel. Many – but not all – of the signers are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  But many members of the Progressive Caucus have yet to sign the letter. According to UNICEF (PDF), since 2003, more than 7,000 Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank have been detained, interrogated, prosecuted, and/or imprisoned within the Israeli military justice system.  The UN has separately reported that Israeli forces have been responsible for injuring more than 1,500 Palestinian children there in the span of three years.  More

 

The letter includes the following message to Secretary of State John Kerry:

“Secretary Kerry, we urge the Department of State to elevate the human rights of Palestinian children to a priority status in our bilateral relationship with the Government of Israel.  Furthermore, we fully expect the State Department to address the status of Israel’s military detention system’s treatment of Palestinian children in its annual human rights report.”

 

No Mass Representatives signed the letter as of yesterday.

 

Israel exonerates itself over killing of Gaza boys on beach

The results of an inquiry into one of the most heavily-publicised episodes of the 50-day war were released quietly by text and email at just after 9.30pm local time on Thursday - the end of the Israeli working week. The timing may have been calculated in the hope that it would escape widespread media attention.  The report was published in advance of an anticipated visit to the region by a delegation from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which the Palestinian Authority formally joined in April. The court's chief prosecutor has ordered a preliminary inquiry to assess whether war crimes may have committed in the occupied Palestinian territories… However, journalists who reported seeing the incident - at least one of them British - said that no attempt was made to interview them, although they brought it to the military advocate general's attention that they had witness testimony…  Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for B'tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said the inquiry conducted by the army's own investigators lacked credibility.   More

 

Can US Stop Enabling Israel?

There are those who argue that Israel is a sovereign state and no other country, including the U.S., can dictate what Israel can or cannot do. The problem is that Israel depends on the U.S. politically, and to safeguard its national security, and cannot at the same time defy the U.S. and continue to expect this unconditional support… The U.S. must now work closely with its European and Arab allies to come up with a binding United Nation’s Security Council resolution that will compel both Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement.  If Israel refuses to abide by the resolution or negotiate in good faith, the U.S. should withdraw its political cover, thereby exposing Israel to international censure.   More

 

BDS and Israel: A new kind of war

Israel is not at war, but its political leaders are showing rare unity over what they see as a potent new threat to the survival of the Jewish state.  That threat is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), an umbrella campaign of international activists that models itself on the movement that helped topple apartheid in South Africa. Though a decade old, BDS’s message — that Israel should be isolated economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands — has appeared to come into its own in recent weeks. A series of votes by overseas groups condemning Israel and a high-profile flap between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Orange, the French telecoms group, have contributed to the sense that BDS is becoming a force to be reckoned with… The dimming of hope for a negotiated solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, BDS activists say, buoyed their argument that only concerted economic pressure on Israel will sway its actions.   More

 

Israel’s behaviour will bankrupt it over time

The Rand Corporation’s research shows that Israel could lose $250 billion (Dh919bn) over the next decade if it fails to make peace with the Palestinians and there is a return to violence. Ending the occupation, on the other hand, could bring a dividend of more than $120 billion into the nation’s coffers.Meanwhile, the Israeli finance ministry predicts an even more dismal future unless Israel reinvents itself. It is likely to be bankrupt within a few decades, the finance ministry report says, because of the rapid growth of two unproductive groups.

By 2059, half the population will be either ultra-Orthodox Jews, who prefer prayer to work, or members of Israel’s Palestinian minority, most of whom are failed by their separate education system and then excluded from much of the economy… Despite this doomsday scenario, Israel seems far from ready to undertake the urgent restructuring needed to salvage its economy. Zionism, Israel’s official ideology, is predicated on core principles of ethnic separation, Judaisation of territory and Hebrew labour. It has always depended on the marginalisation at best, exclusion at worst, of non-Jews.   More