Corporate complicity in crimes against Palestinians

Corporations play a decisive role in enabling Israel to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity like destroying Palestinian homes.

Seven key corporations – some of whom actually boast of their role – take centre stage in an indictment handed down by an international tribunal, which met in London recently. The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP), whose panel includes eminent British lawyers Michael Mansfield and Lord Gifford, heard what it called “compelling evidence” of complicity:

G4S, a multinational British/Danish corporation, supplies scanning equipment and full body scanners to several military checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. G4S also provides equipment for prisons for Palestinian political prisoners.

Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli multinational, supplied the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (otherwise known as Drones) that were extensively and illegally used in the Gaza conflict. The British army has recently awarded Elbit a $1 billion contract.

Caterpillar, based in the US, supply specifically modified military D9 bulldozers to Israel, which are used in: (i) the demolition of Palestinian homes; (ii) the construction of settlements and the Wall; and (iii) in urban warfare in the Gaza conflict.

Cement Roadstone Holdings, an Irish multinational corporation, owns 25% of the Israeli corporation Mashav Initiative and Development Ltd, which in turn owns Israel’s sole cement producer, supplying 75-90% of all cement in Israel and occupied Palestine.

Dexia, a Franco-Belgian corporation, finances Israeli settlements in the West Bank via its subsidiary Dexia Israel Public Finance Ltd.

Veolia Transport, a French corporation, is involved in the construction of the East Jerusalem light railway. Veolia also operates bus services to illegal Israeli settlements as well as landfills where settlements dump their garbage on Palestinian lands.

Carmel Agrexco, an Israeli corporation, is an exporter of agricultural produce, including oranges, olives, and avocadoes from the illegal settlements in the West Bank. It also exports Palestinian products which are mislabelled as “made in Israel”.

An RTF statement at the end of the two-day hearing said: “It is clear from the evidence of witnesses that this conduct is not only morally reprehensible, but also exposes those corporations to legal liability for very serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. What distinguishes the present situation from others in which international action has been called for, is that in this case both Israel and the corporations that are complicit in Israel’s unlawful actions are in clear violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Although companies were invited to defend their actions, only Veolia Environment, PFZW pension fund and security company G4S responded to the tribunal in writing. The jurors included former French ambassador Stephane Hessel; Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire; South African professor John Dugard; South African politician Ronald Kasrils; Spanish judge Jose Antonio Martin Pallin and former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Dugard, who recently served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said: “We are dealing with a criminal enterprise on the part of Israel. Under criminal and international law and in many cases under national legal systems, there is an obligation on the part of states to redress such illegality, but if states do not take action, there is also responsibility on the part of corporations and civil society to redress these wrongs.”

Israel’s response? The Israeli government is currently considering making protest along the lines of campaigning for boycotts and disinvestments a criminal offence. It has also just carried out a new swathe of demolition of Palestinian homes. I am waiting with bated breath for the leaked cable from the US embassy attacking such policies.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Israel continues to get away with murder

If the Israeli government thought it could get away with an act of piracy on the high seas, then it was because it had a green light from Washington and other capitals around the world to act with impunity in defiance of international law.

When the Israelis sent out warnings that it would intercept the aid convoy which set out from Turkey in a bid to break the blockade, the rest of the world said nothing. Worse, Turkey and Greece continued with plans for joint military exercises with Israel which only after the killing of at least 10 activists, who resisted when the ships were attacked, have they called off.

Washington officially supports the barbaric blockade of Gaza imposed in 2007. President Obama has simply continued with the policy of his predecessor which has created the biggest prison camp in the world aka Gaza. European Union governments, by refusing to recognise Hamas after its election victory, have sustained this policy.

Obama's support for the rogue state of Israel predictably led to a watering down of the Security Council http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10201202.stm statement issued today. It condemns only “those acts” that led to the assault, avoiding the mention of Israel directly, and asks for an “impartial investigation”. A call for the end of the blockade is noticeable by its absence. What a farce the United Nations has become, its resolutions demanding an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza gathering dust since they were passed decades ago.

With the help of the deeply reactionary Mubarak regime in Cairo, Israel has forced most of Gaza’s 1.5 million people into abject poverty and ill health through a blockade that resembles a medieval siege. Last year, a military assault killed more than 1,500 Palestinians and destroyed key plant and infrastructure. According to Amnesty International, the people of Gaza are victims of a systematic act of collective punishment by Israel’s government.

The blunt truth is that the present Israeli government has no intention of conceding an inch on the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. Knowing that Washington is a paper tiger on the matter, the Israelis continue apace with settlement building and the takeover of East Jerusalem.

Prime minister Netanyahu was on his way to Washington when the attack on the ships took place. He was due to agree to talks about talks with the Palestinians. Of course, he turned back en route to deal with the crisis that has resulted. How convenient the attack proved!

Netanyahu and company can't solve the problem of Gaza peacefully because that would call into question the whole basis for the state of Israel and the occupation, which is a key factor in the growth of the economy. Settlement building is big business – and it is done with cheap Palestinian labour.

But the gap between rich and poor in Israel itself is wider than ever. Palestinians inside the country are the poorest – and are now flexing their muscles. The authorities are currently prosecuting an Israeli Arab leader of the boycott movement, Ameer Makhoul. He was tortured into making a false confession, and is now on trial for his life.

In the end it is only action within Israel itself and a change of direction on the part of the Palestinians through the emergence of a new leadership that can change the situation. Ultimately, the “humanitarian” campaigns do not provide the answers. Palestinians need a fresh framework for the Intifada, which connects with the poor in Israel and exposes the relationship between Zionism and capitalism.

Hamas and Fatah between them have led the Palestinians into a dead end. A new, united way forward based on a single, secular state in the region for both Jew and Arab is not only necessary but is now patently the only realistic option.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Ahmadinejad undermines Palestinian cause

One of the many terrible things about Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is how his denial of the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis enables Israeli leaders to claim the moral high ground even while they systematically repress the Palestinian people.

Such was the case at the United Nations yesterday where Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to the podium to attack delegates who had not joined the walk-out when Ahmadinejad spoke the previous night. “Have you no shame?” “Have you no decency?”, said Netanyahu.

Coming from a man whose country stands accused of committing war crimes in Gaza in a UN report into its assault on the territory last year, and ignores all calls to halt settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, this is rich indeed.

Netanyahu was given the golden opportunity to portray Israel as the wronged party by Ahmadinejad’s speech in Tehran last week. Ahmadinejad, who himself clings to his country’s presidency by naked repression following the disputed election earlier this year, is an out-and-out Holocaust denier. And he was at again on a day set aside by Iran to mark the plight of the Palestinians.

Israel, claimed Ahmadinejad, was an “historical fabrication … based on a lie". And the “lie”? After accurately describing how the British, who had the mandate over Palestine, stood by as Zionists bought up land in the inter-war period, Ahmadinejad then went overboard, claiming: “… After the second world war they created the story of Holocaust … and then they made hundreds of films and wrote hundreds of books to argue they have suffered and need a home … This is a myth and Zionists are criminals, and corrupt."

For good measure, when he addressed the UN this week, Ahmadinejad alluded to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, saying; "It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks."

These are the dangerous and confused ranting of a man who almost certainly stole the Iranian election and has had his thugs beat up, arrest and kill young people who oppose the regime. All his speeches do is weaken the Palestinian cause and strengthen the hand of Netanyahu and his ilk.

Israeli leaders, for example, never tire of lumping together anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, when they are clearly different and Ahmadinejad comes in handy here because he makes no distinction. Yet there is absolutely nothing wrong in being against or hostile to Zionism – which historically campaigned for a Jewish state in Palestine – so long as it seen as just a political movement. This does not make you anti-Jewish. Far from it because many Jews, perhaps even most, do not consider themselves Zionists.

Fortunately, unlike Ahmadinejad there are movements that can make this distinction. Spain has expelled a group of Israeli scientists from a state-funded solar energy competition because they are based in occupied areas of the West Bank.

The team was from the Ariel University Centre of Samaria and was taking part in Solar Decathlon Europe. Their expulsion follows hard on the heels of the decision by the Trades Union Congress in Britain last week to campaign for a boycott of goods produced in and exported from the Occupied Territories.

These are just some of the ways to isolate the Israeli regime and support the Palestinians which are a million times more progressive than anything Ahmadinejad can utter.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor