Gaza aid vessel boarding legal?: The BIG lie debunked

Robin Churchill, a professor of international law at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said the Israeli commandos boarded the ship outside of Israel's territorial waters. "As far as I can see, there is no legal basis for boarding these ships," Churchill said.

Ove Bring, Swedish expert on public international law, said that Israel had no right to take military action. That is also supported by Mark Klamberg at Stockholm University.

Hugo Tiberg, professor in maritime law, states that Israel had no right to attack the ships.

Canadian scholar Michael Byers notes that the event would only be legal if the Israeli boarding were necessary and proportionate for the country's self defence. Byers believes that "the action does not appear to have been necessary in that the threat was not imminent.

Jason Alderwick, a maritime analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London, is quoted as saying that the Israeli raid did not appear to have been conducted lawfully under the convention.

http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part7.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_VII_of_the_United_Nations_Charter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242

SA academic study finds that Israel is practicing apartheid and colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The study is being posted for public debate on this website.

The interim report, which will form part of a discussion at an upcoming HSRC conference on the subject, titled Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine, on 13 and 14 June in Cape Town, serves as a document to be finalised later this year.

The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct the study. The resulting 300-page draft, titled Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law, represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel's practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israel practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

You can download the report here:

--  Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid, Executive Summary  [950KB]    or Full Study  [3.5MB]

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel's policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s in response to the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel's economy, and imposed a system of domination over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of colonialism.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel's laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of their respective identities, which function in this case as racialised identities in the sense provided by international law. Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six 'inhuman acts' listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic 'reserves' in the West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of 'Grand Apartheid' in apartheid South Africa, in which black South Africans were confined to black homelands delineated by the South African government, while white South Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the rest of the country.

The Executive Summary of the report says that the three pillars of apartheid in South Africa are all practiced by Israel in the OPT. In South Africa, the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third pillar was "a matrix of draconian 'security' laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination."

The Report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same three 'pillars' of apartheid:

The first pillar "derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews".

The second pillar is reflected in "Israel's 'grand' policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by Israel's extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians".

The third pillar is "Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group."

The research team included scholars and international lawyers based at the HSRC, the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban), the Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and al-Haq/West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Consultation on the study's theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe.

The HSRC serves as the national social science council for South Africa. The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the South African government and civil society and the concerned international community.

For more information or interviews, contact: mep@hsrc.ac.za  or +27-21-466-7924.

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'Reflections by a Former US Marine on the Mavi Marmara'

From On Cowardice and Violence by Ken O'Keefe

... I remember being asked during the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq  if I was a pacifist, I responded with a quote from Gandhi by  saying I am not a passive anything.  To the contrary I believe in  action, and I also believe in self-defence, 100 per cent, without  reservation.  I would be incapable of standing by while a tyrant  murders my family, and the attack on the Mavi Marmara was like an  attack on my Palestinian family.  I am proud to have stood  shoulder to shoulder with those who refused to let a rogue Israeli  military exert their will without a fight.

And yes, we fought.

When I was asked, in the event of an Israeli attack on the Mavi  Marmara, would I use the camera, or would I defend the ship?  I  enthusiastically committed to defence of the ship.  Although I am  also a huge supporter of non-violence, in fact I believe  non-violence must always be the first option.  Nonetheless I  joined the defence of the Mavi Mamara understanding that  violence could be used against us and that we may very well be  compelled to use violence in self defence.  

I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin  Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was  directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos.  This  was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from  commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen  that day.  One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his  forehead, in what appeared to be an execution.

I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of  them.  I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to  use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one  of my brothers.  But that is not what I, nor any other defender of  the ship did.  I took that weapon away, removed the bullets,  proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the  gun.  I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and  submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli  authorities for mass murder.  I also helped to physically separate one commando from his assault  rifle, which another brother apparently threw into the sea.

I and hundreds of others know the truth that makes a mockery of the  brave and moral Israeli military.  We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos.  These boys were at our mercy, they were out of reach of their fellow murderers,  inside the ship and surrounded by 100 or more men.  I looked into  the eyes of all three of these boys and I can tell you they had  the fear of God in them.  They looked at us as if we were them,  and I have no doubt they did not believe there was any way they  would survive that day.  They looked like frightened children in  the face of an abusive father.  

But they did not face an enemy as ruthless as they.  Instead the  woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released,  battered and bruised for sure, but alive.  Able to live another  day.  Able to feel the sun over head and the embrace of loved  ones.  Unlike those they murdered.  Despite mourning the loss of  our brothers, feeling rage towards these boys, we let them go. ...

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G20 protesters could be hit with sonic guns

The addition of sound cannons to the arsenal available to security forces managing G20 protests comes as no surprise to groups planning to demonstrate in Toronto at next month's summit.

They say it's just one more signal amid an unprecedented security operation that dissenting voices are being muzzled.

“We were expecting the use of sound cannons, sound grenades, Tasers, tear gas — they've been used in the past against Canadian protesters,” Sharmeen Khan, spokeswoman for the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, said Thursday.

“We definitely are concerned that this will scare people away.”

The sound cannons are capable of emitting ear-piercing and hearing-damaging alerts, not unlike that of a smoke detector, that can be heard up to 1.5 kilometres away.

Formally known as long-range acoustical devices, they can also be used to broadcast pre-recorded and other messages to protesters.

“It will allow our officers to speak to the crowd over and above chanting, yelling, screaming — noise that is most commonly part of protests,” said Const. Wendy Drummond, spokeswoman for Toronto police.

“It will allow us to communicate, most effectively, our demands to the crowd.”

Toronto police have purchased four of the devices — three hand-held and one mounted — from Vancouver-based Current Corp.

The devices — some call them weapons — use an array of tweeters familiar to any hi-fi enthusiast that work in tandem to produce the high volume levels.

They can be pointed at specific targets to minimize the impact on bystanders and have been used around the world for a variety of functions, including against protesters at last year's G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

While the sound cannons can cause hearing damage, police said they planned to follow both manufacturer and internal guidelines in their use, including firing alert bursts of only two to three seconds.

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Demand a bullet proof Arms Trade Treaty

Every minute, one person dies as a result of armed violence. As the United States prepares for the first session of the Preparatory Committee to deliberate on the content of an international Arms Trade Treaty in July 2010, we write to stress the urgent need for an effective treaty that will stop irresponsible arms transfers in places such as Myanmar where the violence is great.