Weapons
South Africa to file legal action with ICJ against UK, US, for war crime complicity
Nation whose case put Israel formally on trial for genocide joins Nicaragua in turning its sights on accomplices in genocide
South Africa’s legal team at the ICJ last month
A team of almost fifty South African lawyers is preparing a legal case to bring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, against the US and UK, for their complicity in Israel’s array of war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
South Africa’s successful ICJ case against Israel last month led to Israel being put formally on trial for genocide and resulted in a string of binding orders on Israel to stop its slaughter of Gazans and even to protect Palestinians from harm, as well as to ensure adequate aid reaches the strip’s 2.5 million people, many of whom are now starving and homeless.
Israel has flouted the rulings, continuing and even intensifying the mass murder and blockade, and is being supported in its flagrant disregard for international law by the UK and US, who are providing both material and financial aid, and giving political cover by refusing to condemn Israel’s actions or to call its crimes what they are, instead casting doubt on the mass deaths and brutality and denigrating the Court’s ruling.
South Africa joins Nicaragua in taking action against the UK and US. The Central American nation has also filed a case against Germany, Canada and the Netherlands.
The team of lawyers, which already numbers around fifty, is likely to grow further as more lawyers are set to join from other nations. Wikus van Rensburg, who is leading the action, said that it was time for the US and other complicit nations to “be held responsible for [their] crimes”.
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Norwegian Foreign Minister warns weapons-exporting states of complicity in Israeli genocide
UK, US and other supporters of Israeli apartheid and oppression are enabling slaughter of Palestinians
Espen Barth Eide, the Foreign Minister of Norway, has warned the UK, US and other states exporting weapons to Israel that they risk prosecution for participating in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.
Eide said:
States exporting weapons to Israel should reassess whether they are effective partners in the genocide in Gaza Strip or not.
The news was reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency but has, as usual, been ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media – just as most ignored or minimised the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding last week putting Israel on trial for genocide – or even helped Israel’s attempts to spin it away – and the court’s order to prevent the killing of any more Palestinians, an order that the apartheid state has already flouted.
Eide has also announced that Norway will continue to fund UNRWA, after the UK, US and others cut funding because of unsubstantiated allegations by Israel that twelve UNRWA employees participated in the 7 October kibbutz raid:
The Agency represents the lifeblood of millions of people suffering from tragic conditions, both in Gaza Strip and in the region as a whole.
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Palestine Action activist remanded to prison after Stock Exchange arrests
Anti-war activist Sean Middleborough
Palestine Action activist Sean Middleborough was remanded to prison yesterday following his arrest on Sunday morning over an alleged plan to disrupt business at the London Stock Exchange (LSE), charged with ‘conspiracy to commit public nuisance’ under the draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, after appearing at Wirral Magistrates Court. Five other activists were released from police custody without charges pending further investigation.
On his way into the custody van, Middlebrough was heard to shout “Free Palestine”. Lawyers will be submitting an application for immediate granting of bail.
Middleborough and five other activists are accused of having planned to blockade the LSE, which through its trading in bonds and shares plays a significant role in facilitating the occupation of Palestine. The LSE has raised over over £4.73 billion in bond sales for the apartheid state of Israel in the past six years. The exchange describes itself as “a key partner to Israeli businesses, by enabling them to raise capital internationally” and trades shares in weapons manufacturers arming Israel’s regime.
A meeting on 8 February 2022 between UK government and Israeli investors, which included representatives from Israeli weapons companies Elbit Systems and Rafael, noted that “The London Stock Exchange has a strong and important relationship with Israel”. This includes the LSE holding capital market conferences in Israel and hosting Israeli business on the exchange with a combined market capital of $14.7 billion.
The arrests came after a Daily Express ‘journalist’ spied on the group in order to report on activities and hand information on alleged plans to the police. Most of the UK press and broadcast media have ignored Israel’s crimes and worked to manufacture consent for its ongoing genocide of Palestinians, which so far has killed almost 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the latest Euro-Med Monitor report. If failing to report even the basic facts of Israel’s crimes – including against its own people on 7 October – wasn’t bad enough, ‘reporters’ have now gone as far as acting on behalf of the state to criminalise direct action movement opposing Israel’s war crimes.
The UK state has been taking ever more draconian measures to try to punish and deter activists who stand on the side of humanity and against genocide. Numerous activists seeking an end to bloodshed have found themselves detained by the British state and often charged, with varying levels of state success. Palestine Action has stated repeatedly that it will not be diverted from the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the ending of all UK arms production and shipments to apartheid Israel.
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Israeli families demand investigation as truth about mass ‘friendly fire’ deaths starts to percolate
‘Immense’ Israeli death toll from IDF shells, missiles and bullets is already on record – now Israeli families demand immediate investigation
Furious Israeli families have demanded an immediate investigation into the deaths of their loved ones caused by Israeli military fire during the 7 October Hamas raid.
The fact of ‘immense’ deaths to so-called ‘friendly fire’ has already been very quietly admitted by the IDF and reported by Israeli media, but has been ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media – including the UK’s – and have been slow to percolate into the awareness of ordinary Israelis, but the evidence is overwhelming that many and probably most of those killed during that day were killed by IDF weapons, fired either in panic and incompetence or as part of the military’s ‘Hannibal directive‘ to kill potential captives rather than allow them to be taken.
Ynet’s report of the IDF’s claim it would be wrong to investigate deaths because the number of deaths is ‘immense’
But awareness and outrage appear to be growing. Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that:
Family members of Israelis who were killed on October 7 after a standoff between Hamas terrorists and the Israeli army led to the army firing a tank at a house where the civilians were held hostage are demanding that the military probe its actions that day.
According to the paper, the families are insisting that the investigation take place right now and not, as the regime has proposed, after the ‘war’.
As journalist Jonathan Cook noted:
Their concerns have been heightened by the recent admission from an Israeli commander that he ordered a tank to fire a shell into a house where 14 Israelis had been taken hostage by Hamas in Be’eri. Many of those hostages were incinerated by the shell, along with the Hamas fighters. Nonetheless, Israel cited the charred bodies as proof of Hamas’ barbarity, and justification for its subsequent genocidal campaign in Gaza – rather than as evidence of its own scorched-earth policy, one indifferent to the lives of its own civilians.
Similarly, the incinerated bodies of Israelis found in cars at a rave near the kibbutz and near the Gaza border were caused by weapons that Hamas does not have – and released hostages have testified that they were protected and treated well by Hamas fighters but were fired on by Israeli helicopters and plans as their captors took them across the border, killing many.
So intense was this firestorm that for weeks the Israeli regime thought that some two hundred bodies it initially thought were Israelis were in fact Palestinians – and clearly Hamas did not incinerate them. Israeli police have also confirmed that many killed at the rave were in fact shot by Israeli helicopters.
The Israeli mainstream media have in fact been more honest than their UK and US counterparts in reporting these facts. Now that the families are demanding action, will UK papers and broadcasters finally start to cover them? Don’t hold your breath.
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In middle of Gaza genocide, 12 UK universities sign new research partnerships with Israel
Deaf ear to the suffering of Palestinian civilians as UK government gives away cash to incentivise partnering with Israel
Twelve universities across the UK have applied for and accepted government grants to undertake ‘a range of ‘mobility projects focussed on innovation and entrepreneurial skills development’ in partnership with Israeli universities.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is handing out the cash to pay for researchers to ‘hone their expertise via international collaboration’ with a focus on ‘entrepreneurship and Technology Readiness Levels’ (TRLs) ‘, according to the Universities UK website. The cash will also fund researchers to travel to Israel and will ‘further links with the Israeli ecosystem through existing research and innovation collaborations and open the door to new opportunities’.
At a time when students and activists around the world are demanding a boycott of Israeli products, services and institutions, the universities below have taken the cash – some of them twice:
- Aston University – Weizzman Institute of Science and Bar-Ilan University
- Edge Hill University – Tel Aviv University
- Queen Mary University of London – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University
- Royal Veterinary College – Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Teesside University – Tel Aviv University
- UCL – Tel Aviv University
- University of Exeter – Tel Aviv University
- University of Greenwich – Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- University of Kent – Technion
- University of Leeds – Tel Hai College
- University of Plymouth – Technion
- University of Surrey – Bar-Ilan University
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement has described Israeli universities as working closely with the Israeli state to develop weapons and systems that can be used to oppress and kill Palestinians:
Israeli universities are major, willing and persistent accomplices in Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
They are involved in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel’s recent war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza, justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, rationalizing gradual ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, providing moral justification for extra-judicial killings, systematically discriminating against “non-Jewish” students, and other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law.
To end this complicity in Israel’s violations of international law, Palestinian civil society has called for an academic boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions. Refusing to normalize oppression, many academic associations, student governments and unions as well as thousands of international academics now support the academic boycott of Israel.
As Skwawkbox revealed yesterday, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week promoted – and visited in 2022 – an Israeli data company with close links to the Israeli military that is processing NHS test results. The founder of the firm is a ‘tech entrepreneur’ who has spoken and written about the importance of technology in fighting ‘terrorism’. Yet another occasion where the ‘Labour’ front bench is completely aligned with the views and behaviour of the Tories they are supposed to be opposing.
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Video: Jewish Elders chain themselves to White House fence demanding ceasefire
At the same time, US Capitol police arrest dozens of Jewish peace protesters in Washington
Image: Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter account
A group of elderly Jewish people who want to see an end to Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians have chained themselves to the fence of the White House, demanding immediate action from US president Joe Biden to secure a ceasefire and chanting, “Biden, Biden, pick a side, Ceasefire not genocide”:
On Twitter, the group said:
We are Jewish elders, bubbies, tetas, and grandmothers chaining ourselves to the White House, demanding the US stop funding and arming genocide against Palestinians. This is not complicated. Never again means never again for anyone.
As the elders chanted outside Biden’s residence, US police arrested dozens of Jewish and Palestinian peace protesters, who had mounted a sit-in at the Senate to call for a ceasefire and the abandonment of a Biden plan to send billions more in military aid to Israel.
A spokeswoman for one of the groups involved in the protest said:
Funding more death and destruction of human life.. makes no one secure and instead fuels hatred and continued war.
The Senate must heed our urgent demand to stop funding militarism and instead invest in life.
The action by Jewish protesters to condemn Israel’s actions and demand a ceasefire undermines the false narrative pushed by the UK media and Establishment that all Jewish people intrinsically support Israel and its aims and that anti-zionist Jewish groups are somehow ‘fringe’ elements who should not be allowed a voice. In the US, despite moves by Congress to equate anti-zionism automatically with antisemitism, very many Jews are non- or anti-zionist and are fully supportive of Palestinian freedom, self-determination and right of return. Jewish groups have also been prominent in pro-Palestinian marches here, though the UK media often tries to avoid showing them.
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Video: Corbyn challenges Cameron over refusal to deny UK troops are operating in Gaza
Former Labour leader demands answers over dodging of Commons question
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to Foreign Secretary David Camerona over the refusal of his underling to say that UK troops are not operating on the ground in Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In his letter, Corbyn notes the hideous death toll of Palestinian civilians and Israel’s blatant war crimes in Gaza – and demands an answer from Cleverly to his question about the involvement of UK military personnel:
Any UK troops in Gaza are likely to be using Israel-made equipment to help Israel carry out its bombing: in 2021, the UK government awarded a £103m contract to Israeli weapons firm Elbit Systems to provide laser-marking systems.
Tory PM Rishi Sunak has already sent UK ships to the seas off Gaza to provide logistical support to Israeli bombers and troops, but the direct involvement of UK forces in the targeting and killing of civilians would be a major scandal. UK special forces have often operated to provide laser guidance for bombs and Israel’s mass bombing has killed well over 15,000 civilians, around half of them children.
Cameron is likely to copy his minion and dodge the question.
An earlier version of this article mentioned former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
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Video: Corbyn challenges Cleverly over refusal to deny UK troops are operating in Gaza
Former Labour leader demands answers over dodging of Commons question
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly over the refusal of his underling to say that UK troops are not operating on the ground in Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In his letter, Corbyn notes the hideous death toll of Palestinian civilians and Israel’s blatant war crimes in Gaza – and demands an answer from Cleverly to his question about the involvement of UK military personnel:
Any UK troops in Gaza are likely to be using Israel-made equipment to help Israel carry out its bombing: in 2021, the UK government awarded a £103m contract to Israeli weapons firm Elbit Systems to provide laser-marking systems.
Tory PM Rishi Sunak has already sent UK ships to the seas off Gaza to provide logistical support to Israeli bombers and troops, but the direct involvement of UK forces in the targeting and killing of civilians would be a major scandal. UK special forces have often operated to provide laser guidance for bombs and Israel’s mass bombing has killed well over 15,000 civilians, around half of them children.
Cleverly is likely to copy his minion and dodge the question.
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