In letter to activists, UK foreign office blames Palestinians in Gaza for bringing suffering on themselves

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has this week exposed once again its one-sided view of relations between Gaza and Israel.

In identical letters sent to Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and PSC members, the FCO reiterated its belief that Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012 was a response to rocket attacks into Israel.

The letter came from Barry Griffiths of the Near East Department of the FCO, and was in response to emails sent in November asking for factual evidence for claims made by Foreign Secretary William Hague that “… it is Hamas that bears principal responsibility for starting all of this.”

Hague was speaking on 15 November, a day after the assault began, on Sky News’Murnaghan program, a weekly news show.

Specious arguments

After apologizing for the delay in replying to emails about Hague’s statement, Griffiths wrote: “I would like to reassure you that the UK in no way seeks to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

His next paragraph then began: “We made clear that Hamas bore principal responsibility for the start of the current crisis, because the conflict would not have happened without the significant increase in rocket attacks in 2012, and particularly in the latter months, including Hamas ending its own ceasefire.”

As with all people, governments and institutions that side with Israel, Griffiths gave the specious “rockets” argument which is propagated by Israeli politicians and PR chiefs, while ignoring the root cause of the “conflict” – decades of occupation and more than six years of siege.

In truth, “the conflict would not have happened,” as Griffiths puts it, if Israel paid heed to international law, ended its occupation of Palestinian land, lifted the blockade of Gaza and allowed the Palestinian people their right to self-determination.

Without specifying what ceasefire Hamas had allegedly broken and when, Griffiths also chose to ignore the documented fact that Israel violated an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on 14 November, when it carried out the extra-judicial assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari – the signal to its consequent onslaught on Gaza.

And, although he bemoaned a “significant increase in rocket attacks in 2012,” without providing any figures, Griffiths saw no reason to consider that the besieged people of Gaza might also be unhappy with living under near-constant Israeli bombing, shelling and artillery attack.

According to figures from the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 99 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by Israeli armed forces between 1 January and 14 November 2012. There were no Israeli fatalities caused by Palestinian rockets during this period. However, according to Griffiths’ fallacious argument, the deaths of nearly 100 Palestinians, including children, warranted no justified response from Gaza. Israel, on the other hand, was understandably provoked by the crude rockets being launched from the territory it lays siege to and could not, in any way, be blamed for the “current crisis.”

Tragic irony

Further highlighting the skewed FCO notion that only Palestinian violence is to be denounced, while Israeli state violence has its justifications and need only be toned down, Griffiths continued: “We have consistently condemned indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel which are contrary to international humanitarian law and do nothing to help the people of Gaza. At the same time, we called on Israel to seek every opportunity to de-escalate their military response, and to observe international humanitarian law and avoid civilian casualties.”

The tragic irony of asking a state whose collective punishment of the people of Gaza through siege is a breach of the Geneva Conventions, and whose health officials have calculated exactly how much food to let in to avoid starvation while they “put the Palestinians on a diet“ (Dov Weisglass, 2005), to “observe international humanitarian law” appeared to be lost on Griffiths. More

Of course it could be argued that the British Balfour Declaration was the beginning of the entire Palestine problem. Editor

Massacre of Shias in Quetta provides damning indictment of authorities: HRW

The government’s persistent failure to protect the minority Shia community from sectarian attacks by Sunni militant groups, is reprehensible and amounts to complicity in the barbaric slaughter of Pakistani citizens, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

“The government should immediately hold accountable those responsible for ordering and participating in deadly attacks targeting the Shia across Pakistan and particularly the Hazara Shia in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.”

On January 10, at least 4 bomb attacks took place in Quetta killing over 90 and injuring well over 150 people.

Those killed included at least 8 police personnel and one journalist.

“2012 was the bloodiest year for Pakistan’s Shia community in living memory and if this latest attack is any indication, 2013 has started on an even more dismal note,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch.

“As Shia community members continue to be slaughtered in cold blood, the callousness and indifference of authorities offers a damning indictment of the state, its military and security agencies.”

In 2012, well over 400 members of the Shia population were killed in targeted attacks. Over 120 of these were killed in Balochistan province, the vast majority from the Hazara Shia community.

Similar attacks targeting the Shia population have taken place repeatedly over the last year in Balochistan, Karachi, predominantly Shia populated areas of Gilgit Baltistan in the northern areas, and in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Human Rights Watch said.

“Pakistan’s tolerance for religious extremists is not just destroying lives and alienating entire communities, it is destroying Pakistani society across the board,” said Hasan. “Sectarian violence won’t end until those responsible are brought to trial and justice.”

Human Rights Watch urged the federal government and relevant provincial governments to make all possible efforts to promptly apprehend and prosecute those responsible for recent attacks and other crimes targeting the Shia population. More

 

Washington Post Supports Israeli Settlements

Post editors are contemptuous of fundamental human rights. They spurn democratic values. They consider rule of law principles quaint and out-of-date. Wealth, power, privilege, and dominance alone matter.

When America goes to war or plans one, they march supportively in lockstep. They ignore the worst of imperial crimes. They endorse Israeli occupation harshness.

Jewish rights alone matter, they believe. Settlement construction is legitimate, they suggest. It's no obstacle to peace, they claim. Further construction won't prevent a two-state solution.

Instead of telling readers what’s important to know, they defile responsible journalism. They turn truth on its head. They support wrong over right.

They believe might is right. They endorse Jewish supremacy and specialness. They're comfortable with belligerence, persecution and land theft.

Israel has a divine right to settlements, they suggest. On January 1, their editorial headlined "Overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements," saying:

The reaction to recent settlement construction plans is "counterproductive" and overheated. It "reinforces two mistaken but widely held notions: that the settlements are the principle obstacle to (peace), and that further construction will make a Palestinian state impossible."

Fact check

On November 15, 1988, Palestine achieved statehood. Most UN Member States recognize it.

Israel spurns peace. Netanyahu calls negotiating it "a waste of time." Decades of good faith Palestinian initiatives were spurned.

Conflict resolution is impossible without a reliable partner. Palestinians never had one. They don't now. Post editors understand. Instead of explaining, they conceal what what readers need to know.

They compound bad commentary with lies. Settlement policy changed after Oslo, they claim.

"Mr. Netanyahu's government, like several before it, has limited building almost entirely to areas that both sides expect Israel to annex through territorial swaps in an eventual settlement."

Fact check

Diana Buttu spent six years as Palestine's legal advisor. She "attended countless negotiations sessions." She "examined scores of proposals." She "devised numerous counterproposals."

She learned the futility of negotiating with Israel. It demands. It yields nothing. It imposes its will forcefully. Official policy is do things our way or else.

Oslo reflected betrayal. Rather than withdrawing to pre-1967 borders and "removing all illegal Israeli settlements, Israeli leaders decided to colonize more and annex more Palestinian territory."

"Every Israeli proposal….sought to accommodate" lawless behavior.

Two-state solution supporters "evoke the (notion) of 'land swaps.' In effect they're saying, 'The larcenist has succeeded. Let's respond to his bad behavior on his terms."

Conflict resolution is more distant today than 20 years ago.

Settler population "tripled from 200,000 in 1993 to almost 600,000" in February 2012. Currently it's greater. It's growing exponentially. It's on stolen Palestinian land. More

 

In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats

"Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change."

Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world's concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world's newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr Obama's drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as "bug splats", "since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed". Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama's counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that "you've got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back".

Like George Bush's government in Iraq, Obama's administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA's drone strikes in north-west Pakistan. But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom at least 64 were children. These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.

The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush's blunders killed 69 children.

The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had. Their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken.

Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don't know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA's extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.

Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama's press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are "classified". Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama's counter-terrorism assistant. Brennan insists that "al-Qaida's killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims".

He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the US. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a "cancerous tumour", the rest of society "the tissue around it". Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.

Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little "collateral damage", but the US takes "extraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life". It will act only if there's "an actual ongoing threat" to American lives. This is cock and bull with bells on.

The "signature strike" doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernible basis in law, merely looks for patterns. A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year. It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a video conference last January. The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that "the bottom line in the end is whose four-year-old gets killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that four-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror". As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing four-year-olds is what terrorists do. It doesn't prevent retaliatory murders, it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices. More