European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell rings a small bell to open an informal meeting of foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc in Brussels on August 29, 2024.

 (Photo: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

EU's Top Diplomat Seeks Sanctions on Israeli Leaders for 'Incitement to Commit War Crimes'

While welcoming the move, one Amnesty International campaigner asserted that "the E.U.'s call for a cease-fire and curbing settler violence rings hollow until it takes concrete action."

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Thursday that he has recommended sanctioning Israeli leaders for hate speech and inciting war crimes in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.

Borrell said during a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in Brussels that he has asked member states if they support imposing sanctions on some Israeli Cabinet ministers who have disseminated "unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians" and have proposed "things that clearly go against international law" and amount to "an incitement to war crimes."

At least one E.U. member said it supports Borrell's recommendation.

"This is a war against Palestinians, not just against Hamas. The level of civilian casualties and dead is unconscionable," Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said Thursday in Brussels. "It's a war on the population. No point in trying to fudge this."

"It cannot be business as usual," Martin added. "It is very clear to us that international humanitarian law has been broken."

Earlier this year, the Irish Senate voted to impose sanctions on Israel, prohibit the transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel via Ireland, and push for an international arms embargo against the country.

While E.U. nations such as Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Slovenia have been outspoken critics of Israel's Gaza onslaught and have responded with moves including recognizing Palestinian statehood, other members of the bloc—notably Germany and France—have been staunch supporters of Israel, even as its forces have killed and wounded more than 144,000 Gazans and displaced, starved, or sickened millions more.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has threatened "severe consequences" for European nations that recognize Palestinian statehood.

Like the United States—Israel's biggest international backer—the E.U. has imposed sanctions on a handful of far-right Israeli individuals and groups, including extremist settler colonists who incited deadly West Bank pogroms and an organization whose members have blocked humanitarian aid shipments from entering Gaza.

While Borrell did not publicly identify specific Israeli ministers he believes should be sanctioned, he has recently condemned the words and actions of far-right figures including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Ben-Gvir was widely condemned for defending Israeli soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian man detained at the notorious Sde Teiman prison and for taking part in a highly controversial visit to Islam's third-holiest site, the al-Aqsa mosque compound—which is located on what Jews call the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred site. Ben-Gvir infuriated Muslims and other critics by declaring he wanted to "put an Israeli flag" and build a synagogue there.

Smotrich, who has also defended the alleged Sde Teiman rapists as "heroic warriors," has drawn condemnation for promoting new and expanded Israeli settler colonies in the West Bank, a policy he attributed partly to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) recent ruling affirming that Israel's 57-year occupation is a form of apartheid and illegal.

Statements by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich—who recently asserted that it may be "justified and moral" to starve 2 million Palestinians to death—have been entered as evidence in the South African-led ICJ genocide case concerning Israel's war on Gaza.

Borrell has mentioned some of the ministers' words and actions in previous calls for accountability for those who incite hate and violence.

"While the world pushes for a cease-fire in Gaza, Minister Ben-Gvir calls for cutting fuel and aid to civilians," he said on social media earlier this month. "Like Minister Smotrich's sinister statements, this is an incitement to war crimes."

"Sanctions must be on our E.U. agenda," Borrell added.

While human rights defenders welcomed Borrell's sanctions recommendations, some groups urged him to go even further.

"The [ICJ's] findings clearly point to violations of international law committed by Israel and to the obligations of third states not to legitimize or provide any assistance to Israel's illegal conduct," Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office, said on Thursday.

Geddie continued:

E.U. members states' supply of arms and equipment as well as their trade and investment with illegal Israeli settlements are enabling Israel's violations of international law and are contrary to their obligations under international law. There can be no business as usual with a state maintaining a brutal, unlawful occupation and perpetrating serious violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, on a mass scale.

The relentless bombardment of Gaza amid a clear risk of genocide, the deadly spike in state-backed settler violence, and the latest military offensive in the West Bank are all byproducts of Israel's unlawful occupation and decades of impunity enabled by E.U. inaction.

"The E.U.'s call for a cease-fire and curbing settler violence rings hollow until it takes concrete actions—an immediate arms embargo, a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, and support for action at the U.N. to bring an end to Israel's unlawful occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory," Geddie added.

COMMON DREAMS

 

Israel

“Wipe it off the Face of the Earth!” Israel’s War on the United Nations and International Law

Ramzy Baroud08/30/2024

( Middle East Monitor ) – Departing Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, has clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution. In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on 20 August, the disgruntled envoy said that, “The UN building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.” Whether Erdan realised it or not, his aggressive statement is an admission that his four-year career as Israel’s top UN diplomat was a failure.

In the interview, Erdan expressed his wish to become the head of Likud, the right-wing party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His choice of words could have been his way of appealing to the right and far-right constituencies that feed on such aggressive rhetoric.

However, there is more to Erdan’s hatred for the UN than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat. Israel has had a long and troubled history with the UN and its associated institutions. According to Israel’s political discourse and victim narrative, the UN is an “anti-Semitic” organisation, a label often invoked when Israel faced even the slightest criticism.

Israel’s relationship with the UN is particularly odd because the occupation state was created by a UN resolution.

That resolution itself was a direct outcome of UN political intrigues and western pressure. On 29 November, 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181, calling for the partition of historic Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It assigned most of the land, 56 per cent, to the Jewish population, then a minority, and the rest to the Palestinian Arab indigenous people. Shortly afterwards, the Jewish Zionist leadership began a military campaign that saw the nascent state occupy most of Palestine and ethnically cleanse most of its population.

Israel was admitted as a full UN member on 11 May, 1949, while Palestinians native to the land remain stateless. Although Israel’s admission to the international body was conditional upon the acceptance of Resolutions 181 and 194 — covering the status of Jerusalem as an international body, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees — Israel’s violations of these and other resolutions have not been punished thanks to strong backing from Washington and other western powers.

In June 1967, the rest of historic Palestine was conquered. Again, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and, ever since, the Palestinians remaining in their land as either “Arab Israelis” or refugees have lived under a draconian system of military occupation, apartheid, siege and a constant state of war.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of all the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people over the past eight decades and more. The war did not start on 7 October, 2023, nor will it end when a ceasefire is finally declared.

Aside from the November 1917 Balfour Declaration, wherein Britain pledged support for a “Jewish national home” in historic Palestine, UN Resolution 181, which allowed the establishment of Israel, could arguably be considered the genesis of ongoing Palestinian suffering.

Throughout this bloody, unjust history, the UN has neither penalised Israel for its violations of UN resolutions and other pillars of international law, nor granted Palestinians their long overdue justice. It has failed to implement or enforce any of its resolutions recognising the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Nevertheless, Palestinians continue to resort to the UN, since it is their only international platform that could constantly remind Israel, and the world, that Tel Aviv is an Occupying Power, and that international and humanitarian laws must apply to Palestinians as an occupied people. Such reminders were made frequently in the past, at the UN General Assembly and even at the Security Council, always to the annoyance of Israel and its western benefactors, especially the United States.

“UNO,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

The latest solid legal position was articulated through an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July. After the testimonies and interventions made by at least 52 countries and countless experts, the ICJ resolved that

Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.

Although the UN has not made any difference in forcing Israel to end its occupation, dismantle illegal settlements or respect the basic human rights of Palestinians, the international institution remains a source of frustration for the occupation state.

Ever since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israel has worked to change the status of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, and constantly challenged the very term “occupation”. It has done its utmost to rewrite history, illegally annex Palestinian and Arab land, and build illegal settlements to establish permanent “facts on the ground”.

In 2017, it looked as if Israel was succeeding in its quest to cancel the Palestinian cause altogether when Washington recognised Israel’s fraudulent claims to Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The international community, though, did not follow suit, as demonstrated in the ICJ’s recent legal ruling. As far as the UN is concerned, Israel remains an Occupying Power, bound to international laws and norms.

For Palestinians, however, such facts remain devoid of practical meaning, while for Israel, the UN position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler-colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the UN “wiped off from the face of the earth”. Even if the angry Israeli diplomat gets his wish, nothing will alter this historic truth: Israel is and will remain a settler-colonial regime, and Palestine and its people will continue to resist, until justice is finally served.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

 Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Filed Under: Israel, Israel/ Palestine, United Nations

About the Author

Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

INFORMED COMMENT

 

ISRAEL/ PALESTINE

Why are North American Synagogues selling Palestinians’ Real Estate in the West Bank?

YOAV LITVIN07/20/2024

From West Bank real estate ads to violent expulsions and ethnic cleansing, the theft of Palestinian land is key to the Zionist project, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – The marketing of ‘Anglo neighbourhoods’ in the occupied West Bank at real estate events in synagogues in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and other locations wouldn’t be out of place 30 years ago in apartheid South Africa or Rhodesia. But perhaps that’s the point. 

Branded ‘Anglo Neighbourhoods’, the marketing of illegal settlement real estate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank primarily target Zionist Jews from the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking West.

Corporate real estate investment by companies both within and outside Israel have long been integral to settlement policies, with new developments reinforcing this trend. 

A Human Rights Watch report reveals how Israeli and international companies build, finance, service and market settlement communities. Settlement businesses thrive on Israel’s unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, supporting the growth and functioning of settlements.

These businesses, from real estate to construction, benefit from Israel’s discriminatory policies in planning, zoning, land allocation and access to natural resources, financial incentives, utilities and infrastructure.

These policies displace Palestinians and disadvantage them compared to settlers. Consequently, the Palestinian economy suffers, forcing many Palestinians to work in settlements; a dependency used to justify settlement businesses.

But the sale of real estate in stolen land, while outrageous, is not surprising. It is just a recent tactic in a longstanding systematic problem that is now escalating beyond the point of no-return.

The establishment and expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are widely recognised as violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

These initiatives accurately encapsulate the function of Zionism in Palestine as a settler colonialist, capitalist and white supremacist movement which opportunistically and antisemitically coopts Judaism to justify its criminal practices of apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians.

Its strategy, tactics, and goals focus on land grabs and demographic dominance, utilising both official state-sponsored and unofficial methods, such as corporate real estate.

Official colonisation of Palestine

Contrary to the Zionist movement’s duplicitous claims that Palestine was largely uninhabited, Zionist leaders have recognised the necessity of assuming control over Indigenous Palestinian land to realise their exclusivist goals.

For this purpose, they’ve applied a variety of tactics orchestrated by official and unofficial state actors, ranging from peaceful appropriation within questionable legal confines to genocidal aggression.

Numerous official acts of genocide have been executed through deliberate warfare. A defining genocidal episode in Israel’s establishment, during the Palestinian Nakba, was Plan Dalet, a military initiative orchestrated by the Haganah under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership.

 

Further genocidal bouts of “mowing the lawn,” have demonstrated the Zionist settler colonial dynamic since Israel’s establishment to this day. 

The current Israeli government has enhanced its military aggression and prioritised illegal settlement construction, bolstered by the presence of several far-right ministers residing in illegal West Bank settlements.

Indeed, since the departure of former Defense Minister Benny Gantz from Israel’s emergency war cabinet amid disagreements over the Gaza war strategy and the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, Netanyahu has increasingly leaned on far-right factions within his coalition government.

In April 2024, the government expanded its control over West Bank land, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of settlement construction. At present, Israel’s Supreme Planning Council is poised to discuss proposals for 6,016 new housing units in West Bank settlements, underscoring the ongoing expansionist policies of the Netanyahu administration.

Notably, annexation and the acquisition of territory through military conquest are prohibited under international law, including the founding principles of the UN Charter.

Bezalel Smotrich, who resides in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, personifies Israel’s genocide-for-land-grab policies. Holding dual roles as Finance Minister and minister within the Defense Ministry overseeing Civil Administration, Smotrich has called for genocide and expulsion of Palestinian people both in Gaza and the West Bank.

In response to international pressures and increased European recognition of a Palestinian state, Smotrich has pursued legal recognition for settler outposts, announcing plans to advance thousands of housing units. Further, Smotrich has spoken in favour of illegally annexing the entirety of the West Bank under the Hebraized name “Judea and Samaria.” 

In June, the Israeli military quietly transferred significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants under Smotrich. He and his allies have long viewed control of the Civil Administration, or substantial portions of it, as a means to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. 

Their ultimate goal is direct control by the central government and its ministries. This transfer methodology diminishes the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development. By consolidating power, they aim to facilitate and accelerate settlement growth, thereby entrenching Israeli presence and diminishing Palestinian claims.

TRT World: Pro-Israel Mob attacks at Real Estate Event

Unofficial colonisation in the West Bank

Genocidal actions not directly affiliated with the state of Israel have assisted in the circumvention of state accountability before international bodies.

These include settler vigilante rampages often emboldened by military protection and legal cover. Claiming a fictional divine sanction, radical far-right settlers seize hilltops on Palestinian land, forcibly evicting residents to establish illegal outposts. These outposts are subsequently fortified by the Israeli military and eventually legitimised by Israel. 

This dynamic has played out in the occupied West Bank since 1967, spanning administrations led by both Labor “liberal” Zionists and right-wing “revisionist” governments alike. 

In quasi-legalistic efforts to appropriate Palestinian land, unofficial state organisations antisemitically conflate Zionism and Judaism, appealing to sympathetic Jewish and Christian Zionists globally.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has played a pivotal role since its establishment in 1901 as a key land appropriation agency of the Zionist movement. The JNF’s efforts have included land acquisition, settlement development and influencing land policy.

Since its foundation, it has employed various methods to prevent the return of land to its original owners, including land title acquisition, development of Jewish-only colonies, discriminatory practices, forestation, legal frameworks, political influence, land confiscation, settlement construction and legal actions.

These strategies, often cloaked under the guise of ‘environmental sustainability,’ perpetuate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, preventing their return to their land.

The JNF has also served a propaganda function by Hebraizing and renaming Palestinian lands, effectively erasing Palestinian heritage. For instance, the JNF named a forest after Coretta Scott King.

This act sought to appropriate American and Christian Zionist culture and belief, fostering a notion of a shared struggle between African Americans and Jewish people, promoting the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, while undermining the natural alliance between Black people and Palestinians against white supremacy and rebranding white settler colonialism as a popular, victorious struggle of victims against their oppressors. 

Nowadays, and in line with the government’s shamelessness and unlimited impunity, a large section of the JNF’s function has been superseded by brazen private capitalist companies. 

 

Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and destruction of infrastructure serves to bolster Zionist capitalist fantasies of a real estate bonanza. In March, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who may return to the White House in January, praised the “very valuable potential of Gaza’s waterfront property.” 

Whether Kushner’s statement was a slip or wishful thinking, an Israeli real estate firm based in the occupied West Bank had already developed building plans dating back to December 2023, only three months into the Gaza genocide, with several of its employees directly participating in the aggression. It is unclear whether Israel’s alleged use of depleted uranium bombs, or threats of nuclear war will affect sales at future real estate marketing events.

With impunity from the white supremacist West and especially the US, Zionist praxis of genocide-for-land-grab can replicate without restraint in Gaza, the West Bank, in historic Palestine, South Lebanon and even the Sinai peninsula. 

Unless the Zionist regime, including its corporate proxies, is held accountable with its crimes ended and impunity challenged and abolished, Israel’s malign process will continue indefinitely, destroying the lives and futures of countless Indigenous Palestinian people and endangering the wider Middle East and global communities, including the growing number of conscientious Jewish people who support Palestinian rights and do not identify with Israel and Zionism.

Republished from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

About the Author

Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer.

INFORMED COMMENT

PATRICK LAWRENCE: US Endgame in Ukraine — War Without End, Amen

 

PATRICK LAWRENCE:
US Endgame in Ukraine —
War Without End, Amen

What happens when a powerful nation cannot afford to lose a war it has already lost? Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Caitlin Johnstone:
Knowing How Unfree You Are

If Americans were actually in charge, there would be some option available to them to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But when it comes to matters of such importance, they never get a vote. Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Vijay Prashad: Three Evils

There is no ambiguity about Israel causing Gaza to suffer occupation, apartheid and genocide. To counter Israeli denialism, here is a short primer on why these terms are accurate. Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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Irelands Shame The Betrayal of Palestine

in Palestine

by Fra Hughes

03/03/2024

800 years the Irish have fought a genocidal British occupation .

Eight centuries of ethnic cleansing,land clearances,massacres,starvation,colonisation and a brutal military oppression.

Sucessive generations of Irish men and women ,boys and girls have fought clandestinely and openly to liberate Ireland from foreign imperialist control.

Ireland was Britains first conquest.

The British Empire went on to occupy and at times colonise approximately three quarters of the worlds land mass and citizenry.

Australia,Canada,NewZealand, North America,South Africa, Egypt, India,China to name just a few.

The only difference between the British occupation of Ireland and the Zionist occupation of Palestine is one of time and scale.

Ireland endured a British imposed Famine.

In 1847 the ‘potatoe blight’ destroyed a large percentage of the harvest leading to a shortage of a basic food staple and a subsequent increase in prices.

Ireland having been invaded centuries before was now a land of tenants ruled by absentee land lords.Sections of British aristocracy owned large swaves of Irish land stolen through military occupation.

The Irish were disposessed of their homes and farms and forced to become almost indentured slaves ,tilling the land and raising cattle only for the profits of their labour to be extracted for the largess of a foreign occupier who enacted laws to oppress the indugenous population while protecting the invader.

One law for the occupied a separate law for the occupier.

Two million died or emigrated.This is why there are Irish communitues all over the globe.

54 million North Americans claim to be of Irish descent.

The Irish people wers deliberately starved.

Hunger and famine were used as a weapon of war to end ‘ The Irish Question’ at the heart of British politics.

Those who resisted occupation were murdered imprisoned or deported as Felons to Australia, the Americas and the Carribean.

Massacres,land theft,colonisation,famine,imprisonment,ethnic cleansing.These were the weapons of the oppressor.

This is the fate of all people who live under occupation.

This is Irelands history.A legacy of suffering before partial liberation.

People in Ireland support the people of Palestine.That is a fact.

There is a moral imperative on all people who are suffering or have suffered under  foreign occupation or colonisation to support each other.

Ireland gained partial independence in1922 when Britain partially withdrew from 26 of Irelands 32 counties.

This resulted in the Irish civil war were those opppsed to partition were then attacked with British guns and British artillary being operated by their former comrades.

Fratricide, imprisonment torture and summary executions once used as tactics of war  by the oppressor were adopted  by pro partition Irishmen onto the inheritors of the ideals of a fully independent soverign Irish Republic.

In 1969 a new generation of oppressed Irish people in the British  created state of   Northern  Ireland fought to reunify the country.After 30 years of

Struggle a prece deal was agreed between the protangonist.The Irish Republican Movement The British Government The Irish Government and the counter revolutionary death squads armed and directed by British intelligence alongside their locally recruited merecenary forces.

Through out all those years of armed political resistance the Irish Republican Movement supported their comrades in Palestine.

From the Fayedeen through the PLO to the PA.

Now in N Ireland history has been made by the selection for the first time in the countries history an Irish Republican is now First Minister

A party that I have supported all my life is now in government.

Irish reunification is only now a matter time.

Sadly the Irish Republican Movement in the form of Sinn Fein is no longer a radical Republican party.

It is a shallow shadow of its former glory.

Now a Nationalist constitutional party it has embraced the establishment and the trappings of power and although still endorsed by many it has abandoned its revolutionary roots and embraced neo liberalism.

There is a growing chorus in Ireland demanding that Irish politicians do not observe the traditional St Patricks day celebrations at the White House on March 17 2024.

While Shame Fein party members and elected representatives north and south attend and even organise/ control some of these rallies calling for a ceasefire they have publicly asserted their intention to go to Washington .

While Shame Fein and other corporate endorsed Irish politicians drown there shamrock alongside genocide Joe, while posing for selfies,Palestinians will be drowning in their own blood or suffocating slowly to death under the rubble, as the death toll rises under the bombardment of American imperialist bombs remember the treachery of Sinn Fein.

It is not the bombs of our enemies that hurt us the most but the duplicity of our friends and the treachery of their deeds. 

Fra Hughes is a Belfast based Palestine solidarity activist

https://countercurrents.org/2024/03/irelands-shame-the-betrayal-of-palestine/