Obama With Blood On His Hands

By Nicolas J S Davies

26 January, 2010
Consortiumnews.com

On Sept. 4, German forces in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan called in a U.S. air strike on two fuel tankers that had been captured by "anti-coalition forces" (ACF).

German officials knew that there was a crowd of civilians around the tankers helping themselves to a windfall of free fuel, but they called in the air strike anyway. This was a clear violation of the laws of war, which prohibit attacking civilians even when there are believed to be combatants amongst them.

In the aftermath of the attack, it was found that 142 people had been killed, and that the great majority of them were civilians.

General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the Chief of Staff of the German Army, and Franz Josef Jung, who was the Defense Minister at the time, were both forced to resign, and Peter Wichert, the junior civilian official who approved the air strike, was suspended.

An obvious question must occur to Americans reading this tragic story. We know that thousands of U.S. air strikes have killed tens or even hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why has no U.S. general or defense secretary resigned over any of those incidents?

In other ways, the stories in the press have followed the same pattern. They begin with denials and assertions that only combatants were targeted and killed. Then there are investigations, and eventually U.S. officials admit that they killed large numbers of civilians, although the figure acknowledged is always less than that cited in reports by U.N. or local officials.

But nobody is court martialed, and nobody resigns. We've all seen this story repeated dozens of times since 2001.

Air Strikes

In reality, U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have operated under standing orders to "call for fire" (an air-strike) whenever resistance fighters take cover in a house or apartment building, even when large numbers of civilians may also be inside the building.

The overriding priorities have always been to avoid risking American lives in dangerous house searches and to kill "insurgents."

Human rights reports by the U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) have documented many such incidents in which civilians have been killed, as well as extensive discussions between U.N. and U.S. officials about them.

For instance, in its human rights report for the 2nd quarter of 2007, UNAMI insisted that American air strikes in densely populated civilian areas were violations of international law.

The section of the report headed "MNF (multi-national force) military operations and the killing of civilians" included this footnote:

"Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area."

The report demanded, "that all credible allegations of unlawful killings by MNF forces be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force... The initiation of investigation into such incidents, as well as their findings, should be made public."

On further examination, the contrast between American and international responses to the killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan has roots that extend well beyond these immediate incidents and the officials involved.

American attitudes to protecting civilians in wartime and other requirements of international humanitarian law differ sharply from those of people in other countries.

This dichotomy raises questions of collective responsibility for war crimes that implicate American civil society as a whole, from our media and educational systems to our fundamental view of ourselves as a civilized people.

And it has made occupation by American forces especially dangerous and deadly for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Public Attitudes

The People on War report by the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) illustrates the dichotomy very well.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions in 1999, the ICRC conducted a survey of 17,000 people in 17 countries to see how well people understood the restrictions that the Geneva Conventions place on military forces in order to protect civilians, combatants and prisoners in wartime.

The 17 countries surveyed included 12 that had recently experienced war on their own soil, four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and Switzerland, where the ICRC is based.

The report noted that war has changed over the past century. Whereas about 86 percent of the people killed in the First World War were actual combatants, 90 percent of those killed in contemporary wars are civilians.

The report concluded that, in the modern world, "war is war on civilians." It went on:

"The more these conflicts have degenerated into wars on civilians, the more people have reacted by reaffirming the norms, traditions, conventions and rules that seek to create a barrier between those who carry arms into battle and the civilian population.

“In the face of unending violence, these populations have not abandoned their principles nor forsaken their traditions. Large majorities in every war-torn country reject attacks on civilians in general and a wide range of actions that by design or default could harm the innocent.

“The experience has heightened consciousness of what is right and wrong in war. People in battle zones across the globe are looking to forces in civil society, their own state institutions, and international organizations to assert themselves and impose limits that will protect civilians."

Protecting Civilians

People in the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France and Switzerland were asked about the importance of protecting civilians in time of war.

They were asked to choose between a firm statement that combatants "must attack only other combatants and leave civilians alone" and a weaker one that "combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible."

In Great Britain (72 percent), Russia (77 percent), France (76 percent) and Switzerland (77 percent), about three quarters of those surveyed chose the absolute prohibition on attacking civilians, which in fact accords with international law under the Fourth Geneva Convention, while 17 percent in Russia and France, 16 percent in Switzerland and 26 percent in Britain chose the weaker one.

In the United States, however, a different pattern emerged. Only 52 percent agreed that combatants "must leave civilians alone," while 42 percent chose the weaker option, roughly twice as many as in the other countries.

The report said, "Across a wide range of questions, in fact, American attitudes towards attacks on civilians were much more lax."

A similar discrepancy emerged in response to questions about torture and the treatment of prisoners of war. More than one in three Americans thought that torture could be justified, compared with 19 percent in Britain and 10 percent in France.

The survey also asked questions about the Geneva Conventions themselves. Respondents were asked whether they believed that the Conventions can help prevent wars from getting worse or whether they "make no real difference."

Only a minority (28 percent) of people in the 12 countries that had experienced war thought the conventions "make no real difference," along with 33 percent of Russians and 45 percent in France.

But a majority of British (55 percent) and Americans (57 percent) agreed with the statement that the Conventions "make no real difference."

Why are "American attitudes towards attacks on civilians more lax" than the attitudes of people in other countries?

This is a form of American exceptionalism, but Americans have generally believed that they are exceptional in their commitment to justice and human rights, not in their disregard for them.

Breakdown of Norms

When the victims of war in the People on War survey were asked to explain the breakdown in civilized norms that led to combatants killing civilians, they chose the will to win at any cost and disrespect for the laws of war as the two principal factors.

Another reasonable explanation they offered placed greater responsibility with political and military leaders, and seems relevant to the case of the United States:

"Many people think the limits are breached because ordinary people have been ordered to harass, dislodge or even attack civilian populations, sometimes uncomfortably at odds with their own beliefs and prevailing norms.

“Political and military leaders, it is believed, have chosen to pursue the battle in ways that endanger civilians, but people are prepared to believe that the leaders have a plan or a good reason for their course of action. At the very least, they are ready to follow their orders, because as ordinary people they have little choice."

But these general explanations don't account for the discrepancy in the case of the United States. There must be specific factors in the U.S. educational and doctrinal system that result in either a lower regard for the lives of people in other countries or a disrespect for the laws of war or both.

Without further research, it is hard to be specific, but several factors that make the United States exceptional spring to mind.

One factor could be that Americans have not experienced war on their own soil since the American Civil War. Americans may therefore find it harder to empathize with the predicament of civilians in war-zones.

Or perhaps Americans have been gradually conditioned over time by deferential political and media responses to the killing of civilians by U.S. forces to regard it as regrettable but acceptable.

Or American leaders may have made a more or less conscious choice not to educate people about the laws of war for fear that that might weaken the United States' ability to commit military forces to combat or limit the ways in which they could be used.

But in that case we would still have to explain the difference between American leaders and their counterparts in other countries.

Crossing Lines

The history of U.S. wars, covert operations and proxy wars that have killed millions of people all over the world, must also be relevant. Covert forms of violence in particular, by their very nature, violate both laws and moral codes.

When the United States has already crossed legal and moral lines on such a scale since it signed the conventions in 1949, perhaps it is unrealistic to expect the public to respect rules that its government so flagrantly disrespects.

Some combination of these factors (isolation from the reality of war; the more deferential attitude of U.S. media; a deliberate lack of education in this area; and the corrosive effect of the government's own actions) may account for the unique results in the American portion of the People on War survey.

Whatever accounts for our country's disrespect for the laws of war, we cannot deny our collective responsibility for its consequences. While international law holds individuals responsible for war crimes, it also holds countries that commit war crimes collectively responsible for compensating their victims.

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is a group of Americans who are uniquely qualified to assess the collective responsibility of the United States for the death and destruction inflicted on the people of Iraq.

IVAW has three principal demands. In addition to calling for the immediate withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for adequate medical treatment and benefits for veterans, IVAW insists that the United States should pay reparations to Iraq.

Reparations are the traditional means of assessing collective responsibility for aggression and other war crimes committed by one country against another.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, a U.N. Compensation Commission ordered Iraq to pay $52.5 billion in reparations to the government of Kuwait and its people.

A just imposition of U.S. reparations to Iraq would help to compensate some of the victims and rebuild some of Iraq's devastated infrastructure. And it could have an important added benefit. It might just teach us to take international law more seriously in the future.

Soldiers and the Rules

People on War also surveyed members of the armed forces in each country, and found little difference between the attitudes of military personnel and civilians.

This seems to confirm the premise of the study that it is the general attitudes of civilian populations that countries send to war with their soldiers.

The general lack of education in the United States could be overcome by intensive emphasis and education on the laws of war within its armed forces.

So it is unfortunate that the United States armed forces do not have such a program. Each soldier receives only a one-hour lecture on the laws of war during basic training and a refresher prior to deployment to a theater of war.

An officer I spoke to in the Centcom press office and other soldiers I've talked to remembered their JAG lecture covering the treatment of prisoners but couldn't remember what was said about the 4th Geneva Convention, which defines the responsibilities of occupying forces toward civilians.

This of course stands in stark contrast with the provisions of the Convention itself. Article 144 of the Convention requires that, "Any civilian, military, police or other authorities, who in time of war assume responsibilities in respect of protected persons, must possess the text of the Convention and be specially instructed as to its provisions".

Once in theater, military training and discipline is designed to produce unquestioning obedience to orders, but even the basic accountability of a military chain of command has been subverted throughout U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The National Guard unit from my neighborhood in Miami found themselves guarding Iraqi prisoners at Al-Assad air-base, preparing them for interrogation with techniques of sleep deprivation and death threats.

But the only orders their officers gave them were to do whatever they were told by "spooks," known by code-names like "Scooter" and "Bear." They had no idea who was really issuing their orders or from what military or civilian agency they originated.

Accountability for the crimes they were committing was not just absent - it was carefully and deliberately forestalled.

Killing Civilians

But the most far-reaching breakdown of the laws of war is the failure to make the fundamental distinction between civilians and combatants. This is especially difficult for soldiers in hostile occupied territory where any civilian can become a resistance fighter

But the laws of war are clear that the distinction must be made on an individual basis and that collective punishment of groups or communities of people because of the actions of a few of them is prohibited.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, without proper training or strict discipline, U.S. forces have often come to treat all adult males and teenage boys as "insurgents."

At a court martial for murder at Camp Pendleton in California on July 14, 2007, a Marine Corporal testified for the defense that he did not see the cold-blooded killing of an innocent civilian as a summary execution.

"I see it as killing the enemy", he told the court, adding that, "Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency."

When this attitude extends to senior officers, it inevitably permeates the forces under their command.

Following the cold-blooded murders of three civilians on an island in Lake Tharthar in northern Iraq, a court martial heard that the colonel in command of the brigade had given the order at the outset of the operation to "kill all military-age males."

When the troops did not immediately kill two of the men, a sergeant at company headquarters asked over the radio why they had not killed them as they'd been ordered to do. They then told the men to run away and shot them in the back.

The colonel was allowed to testify in secret at the court martial of his troops and he was not charged with a crime.

Iraqi towns besieged by U.S. forces were sealed off with barbed wire and earthen berms and denied food, water, electricity and medicine, a classic case of collective punishment.

Any resistance to these medieval siege techniques became a pretext for air strikes and artillery fire into the besieged towns.

The Assault on Fallujah

In the case of Fallujah, an all-out aerial and ground assault was launched on a city where U.N. officials estimated that 50,000 civilians remained trapped.

U.S. forces had set up checkpoints around the city to prevent men and boys between the ages of 15 and 55 from fleeing the kill-zone before the assault began.

But, unlike the civilians, the Iraqi Resistance was able to evade the U.S. cordon, and it redeployed about half of its forces to Mosul and elsewhere before the attack.

This forced U.S. commanders to withdraw the two Stryker battalions manning the cordon around Fallujah four days into the battle as resistance erupted in Mosul. That maneuver, in turn, permitted most of the estimated 1,000 Resistance fighters remaining in Fallujah to escape.

U.S. Marines and air forces killed an estimated 4,000 civilians in Fallujah.

In a flagrant violation of the 1st Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, U.S. Marines are trained to "dead-check" wounded resistance fighters.

"They teach us to do dead-checking when we're clearing rooms," a marine told Evan Wright of the Village Voice. "You put two bullets into the guy's chest and one in the brain. But when you enter a room where guys are wounded you might not know if they're alive or dead. So they teach you to dead-check them by pressing them in the eye with your boot, because generally a person, even if he's faking being dead, will flinch if you poke him there. If he moves, you put a bullet in the brain."

‘Amoral’ Behavior

Many present-day Americans have accepted the pseudo-realist proposition that foreign policy is "amoral" and that our country's war crimes are just part of a long and inevitable history of murderous and extra-legal behavior.

This indoctrination may partially explain the results of the People on War survey. But it is not historically accurate.

The United States emerged onto the world scene at the end of the 19th century with a genuinely new vision of international affairs. American diplomats and international lawyers led the "legalist" movement to construct a legal framework for international politics.

With American leadership, diplomats and international lawyers from the major powers negotiated mechanisms to peacefully resolve disputes; to establish international courts; to codify customary international law into explicit international treaties; and to regulate the conduct of war so as to limit some of its most horrific consequences.

They achieved limited but real progress, leading to the Hague peace conferences (1899 & 1907), the League of Nations, the Permanent Court of International Justice (1922), the Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) to "renounce war as an instrument of national policy," and eventually to the United Nations Charter (1945) and the Geneva Conventions (1949).

The U.N. Charter brought together many elements of the earlier treaties and institutions in a comprehensive system dedicated to peace as the predominant value and goal in international affairs.

The civilized norms established through this process did not originally extend to U.S. or European colonies, and the United States historically regarded the sovereignty of small countries in Central America and the Caribbean as subservient to its own interests.

However, with the end of the colonial era, the legal framework of international law was extended to apply to people everywhere on the basis of universally recognized rights.

The U.N. Charter, which originally offered protection from foreign aggression to the people of only 51 member countries, now extends to 192 countries.

America's commitment to the framework of international law that its former leaders and diplomats worked so hard to construct has gradually been eroded by a dangerous belief that its own military power can replace the rules and institutions of international law as the ultimate arbiter of international affairs.

Since the Cold War

This erosion has accelerated since the end of the Cold War. In 1997, the Quadrennial Defense Review published by the U.S. Department of Defense violated the United Nations Charter by explicitly threatening unilateral military action to gain access to economic and strategic resources in other countries:

"When the interests at stake are vital...we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power. U.S. vital national interests include, but are not limited to... preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition ... (and) ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources."

Different countries' "vital national interests" frequently come into conflict with each other, so that justifying military action based on "defending vital interests" simply resurrects the central historical problem of international relations.

This is the very problem that the legalist approach to international relations was designed to resolve.

As the senior British legal adviser told his government during the Suez crisis, "The plea of vital interest, which has been one of the main justifications for wars in the past, is indeed the very one which the U.N. Charter was intended to exclude."

But it is only in this decade that the desire of American leaders to replace the rule of international law with the rule of U.S. military power has been seriously tested in the real world, and the results have been catastrophic.

Instead of responding to terrorism by applying and strengthening the rule of international law, the United States trapped itself in a downward spiral in which its weakening economic position, its opportunistic and illegal applications of military force and the growing confidence of all who seek to break free of its control are reinforcing each other to exacerbate the underlying crisis in its political economy.

The opportunities that the Obama administration has missed to break this downward spiral during its first year in office may come to haunt the United States for the remainder of its history.

The decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan stands as a critical mistake, and reveals that U.S. leaders remain largely oblivious to their own folly. Despite all the evidence of recent history, they remain incapable of judging how other people and countries will react to American violence.

If we doubt that the corporate-backed U.S. regime is ultimately susceptible to overwhelming public pressure, we only have to look at other countries. It was public pressure on U.S. allies that stranded the United States as a lonely occupier in Iraq.

The Netherlands is withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in 2010, followed by Canada in 2011. With enough public and international pressure, President Obama and his corporate backers will abandon a war that they can never win and that, like Iraq, is progressively undermining Brand U.S.A.

If President Obama finds it politically impossible to withdraw, his successor will do so, but how many people must die for his doomed ambitions and the dictates of our plutocratic political system?

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood on our hands: the American invasion and destruction of Iraq, due out in March. He is a writer and activist in Miami, where he coordinates the Miami chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (www.pdamerica.org).

The Liebarak

By Uri Avnery

25 January, 2010
Gush Shalom

The business is registered in the name of Binyamin Netanyahu. But the reality is different.

Netanyahu has never been more than a slick patent medicine salesman. That is a type that appears frequently in American Westerns and sells an elixir that is good for everything: against the flu and against tuberculosis, against heart attacks and against lunacy. The main weapon of the vendor is his tongue: his stream of words builds castles in the air, blows up glistening bubbles and silences all doubt.

Since the election almost a year ago, his biggest (literally) achievement has been the setting up of a cabinet: 30 ministers and a bunch of deputies, most of them without any perceptible duties, some of them in charge of ministries for which they are the most unsuited of all possible candidates. From then on his main occupation has been the one in which he is most adept: political survival.

In this governmental zoo, the one really important creature is the Liebarak – a two-headed monster that terrifies all the other animals. This animal is 50% Lieberman, 50% Barak, 0% human.

WHEN LIEBERMAN first appeared on the stage, many looked on him with disdain. Such a person, they decided, has no chance in Israeli politics.

For ten years, he has been under investigation by the police on suspicion of corruption, receiving money from mysterious foreign sources and more.

Moreover, in the eyes of many Israelis, he is the most un-Israeli figure imaginable. They have tagged him permanently as a “new immigrant”, even though he has been here for over 30 years. They consider his outward appearance, body language and dialect as blatantly “un-Israeli”, belonging to someone who is “not one of us”. How can Israelis vote for such a person?

Lieberman is a settler based in Nokdim, a settlement near Bethlehem, and the settlers are not popular in Israel. He is openly racist, a hater of Arabs who despises peace, a man whose declared aim is to rid Israel of the Arabs. True, there is in Israel (as in any country) a lot of silent racism, partly unconscious, but this racism is denied. Israelis - it was believed - will not vote for an outright racist.

The last elections put an end to this belief. Lieberman’s party won 15 Knesset seats, two more than Barak’s party, and became the third biggest Knesset faction. Not a few “real” Israeli youngsters, Sabras through and through, voted for him. They saw him as a good address for their protest vote.

The establishment was not too upset. OK, so there was a protest vote. In every Israeli election campaign there appears an election list from nowhere that wilts the next day, like the gourd of the prophet Jonah. Where are they all now?

But Lieberman is not General Yigael Yadin, who created the Dash party, or Tommy Lapid, the leader of Shinui. He is a man of brutal power, lacking any scruples, a man ready to appeal – as Joseph Goebbels put it – to the most primitive instincts of the masses.

We may yet see in Israel a coalition of all the malcontents and the angry, as the Bible says about David when he fled from King Saul: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves around him, and he became a captain over them.” (1 Samuel 22:2). Lieberman’s home turf is the community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who have not been absorbed into Israeli society and who live in a spiritual and social ghetto. They may be joined by other sectors: the settlers, the Oriental Jews who feel that the Likud betrayed them, young people who see him as a man who expresses openly what they believe in secret: that the Arabs should be expelled from the state, and from the entire country.

Lieberman’s un-Israeli appearance may yet turn out to be an advantage for him. A person who is so un-Israeli may become the ideal leader of a camp united by its hatred of the “elites”, the Supreme Court, the police, the media and the other pillars of Israeli democracy.

The police investigations, too, may elevate him in the eyes of this public. They believe that he is being persecuted by the hypocritical elites. The dark cloud of suspicion did not deter Netanyahu from giving him control of both the Ministry of Police and the Ministry of Justice, the two ministries charged with upholding the rule of law, which are now under the direction of his lackeys.

This danger should not be underrated. Other historical leaders of his ilk were at first considered clowns and ridiculed, before they came to power and wrought havoc.

BUT THE second head of the Liebarak is more dangerous than the first. The danger of Lieberman lies in the future. The danger of Ehud Barak is immediate and real.

This week, Barak did something that should turn on a another red light. On the demand of Lieberman, Barak accorded the Settlers’ college in Ariel the status of a university.

Unlike the “foreign” Lieberman, Barak comes from the epicenter of old-time Israel. He grew up in a kibbutz, was a commander in the elite “General Staff commando” and speaks perfect Hebrew with the right intonation. As a former Chief of Staff and a present Minister of Defense, he represents the might of the most formidable sector in Israel: the army.

Lieberman has not yet succeeded in hurting the chances of peace, except by talking. Barak has acted. I once called him a “peace criminal”, in contradistinction to a “war criminal” – though nowadays many would accord him this distinction, too.

The fatal blow dealt by Barak to the chances of peace came after the 2000 Camp David conference. To recount briefly: when he was elected in 1999 with a landslide majority, on the wave of enthusiasm of the peace camp and with the help of clear peace slogans (“Education instead of Settlements!”), he induced Presidents Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat to meet him at a summit conference. In a typical mixture of arrogance and ignorance, he believed that if he offered the Palestinians the chance to found a Palestinian state, they would give up all their other claims. His offers were indeed more far-reaching than those of his predecessors, but still far from the minimum acceptable to Palestinians. The conference failed.

Coming home from Camp David, he did not make the usual announcement (“Much progress has been achieved and negotiations will continue…”), nor an unusual one (“Sorry, I was wrong, I had no idea!”) Rather, he coined a mantra that has since become the center of the national consensus: “I have turned every stone on the way to peace / I have offered the Palestinians everything they could ask for / They have rejected everything / We Have No Partner For Peace.”

This declaration by the leader of the Labor Party, who often calls himself “the head of the peace camp”, dealt a mortal blow to the Israeli peace forces, who had hoped so much from him. The vast majority of the Israelis believe now with all their heart that “we have no partner for peace”. Thereby he opened the way for the ascent to power of Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu.

Throughout his time in office, Barak established and enlarged settlements. On his orders, the Commanding Officer of Central Command issued a permit for a radio station of the settlers (which has lately started to broadcast, after a long delaying fight by Gush Shalom against it.) In this respect, too, he has trumped Lieberman. His decision about the Ariel university fits into this pattern.

“WAIT A MINUTE!” a sensible person may ask. “What has this to do with Barak? He is the Minister of Defense, isn’t he, and not the Minister of Education!”

Ariel is occupied territory. In the occupied territories, the army is the sovereign power. Barak is in charge of the army. The directive to upgrade the Ariel College was given by Barak to the commanding officer. As Yossi Sarid, a former Minister of Education, pointed out, the “Ariel University Center” is the only civil university in the democratic world set up by the army.

An Israeli academic institution has to go a long way before being accorded university status by the competent authorities. There are many colleges in Israel, far more outstanding than the Ariel College, which aspire to this status. In the occupied territories, a general’s approval is enough.

This fact throws light on the unprecedented Israeli invention: the Eternal Occupation.

An occupation regime is by its nature a temporary situation. It comes into being when one side in a war conquers territory of the other side. The occupying power is supposed to rule it, under detailed international laws, until the end of the war, when a peace agreement must decide the future of the territory.

A war may last some years, at most, and therefore the occupation is a temporary matter. Successive Israeli governments have turned it into a permanent situation.

Why? At the outset of the occupation, the then Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, discovered that the occupation is really an ideal situation. It gives the occupier absolute power without any obligation to accord the inhabitants any citizenship rights whatsoever. If Israel were to annex the territories, it would have to decide what to do with the population. That would create an embarrassing situation. The inhabitants of East Jerusalem, which was formally annexed to Israel in 1967, did not receive citizenship, but only the status of ”residents”. Successive Israeli governments have been afraid that the world would not accept a “democratic” state in which a third of the population have no rights.

A status of occupation solves all these problems. The inhabitants of the occupied territories have, de facto, no rights whatsoever – neither national, nor civil, nor human. The Israel government builds settlements wherever it sees fit, also contrary to international law, and now it is setting up a university, too.

(Lately an original proposal was put forward by Sari Nusseibeh, the president of the Palestinian al-Quds University in annexed East Jerusalem: the Palestinians should demand that Israel annex all the occupied territories, without demanding citizenship. Nusseibeh hopes, so it seems, that in the long run Israel would not be able to withstand international pressure and would be compelled to accord them citizenship, and then the Palestinians would already be the majority in the state and able to do what they want. I appreciate Nusseibeh very, very highly, but feel the gamble would be too risky.)

THE SPANISH government has already declared a boycott of the Ariel college and cancelled its participation in an international architectural competition run by Spain.

I hope that more governments and academic institutions will follow this example and declare a boycott on this “university”.

True, the Liebarak couldn’t care less. This two-headed monster is indifferent to boycotts. But an academic institution cannot be indifferent to a boycott by its peers around the world. And if the Israeli academic community does not rise up against this prostitution of its ideals by the setting up of a university of the settlers under military auspices - it is inviting a boycott on all Israeli universities.

Israel Creates First ‘Army-Owned’ University

By Jonathan Cook

25 January, 2010

Nazareth: Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, approved last week the upgrading to university status of a college in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a move certain to further undermine Palestinian confidence in the peace process.
The decision, authorising the first Israeli university in Palestinian territory, is expected to entitle the college to significant extra funding, allowing it to expand its student population.
About 11,000 students, most from inside Israel, already attend the college in Ariel, studying amid a population of 18,000 settlers.
The expansion of Ariel, 20km inside the West Bank and close to Nablus, is likely to increase tensions with the US administration of Barack Obama. The White House has demanded a settlement freeze that is being only temporarily and partially honoured by Israel.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly clashed over Israeli plans to extend its separation wall east of Ariel, effectively annexing the settlement and separating the central and northern parts of the West Bank.
Peace groups have been particularly shocked that authorisation for Ariel college’s upgrade came from Mr Barak, leader of the Labor Party. Members of his centre-left faction had previously blocked attempts by right-wing parties to change the college’s status.
Several Israeli academics also warned that it would add fuel to existing campaigns in Europe to boycott Israeli universities, which have been accused of complicity with the occupation.
“This is all about trying to make the settlement of Ariel ‘kosher’,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlement growth. “It helps to reinforce the growing consensus in Israel that Ariel should remain part of Israel permanently.”
Ariel College has grown dramatically since its founding in 1982 as the West Bank campus of Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, close to Tel Aviv. On becoming independent in 2004, the college immediately began lobbying for university status. A year later it won the backing of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister then, who described the upgrade as of “great importance” in realising a policy of “strengthening the settlements”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, declared at the time that a university in Ariel would ensure the settlement “will forever remain part of the state of Israel”.
The upgrade was opposed by Israel’s education oversight body, the Higher Education Council, which threatened to withhold recognition of the college’s degrees.
Nonetheless, in 2007 the college renamed itself the “Ariel University Centre”, a change of status initially endorsed by the government of Ehud Olmert. Under pressure from education officials, however, the decision was reversed on the grounds that only Israeli military authorities in the West Bank – under Mr Barak – could authorise such a change.
Despite opposition from members of his party, the defence minister finally consented last week.
Yossi Sarid, a former chairman of the Higher Education Council, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday: “Thanks to [Mr Barak], we will have the only university in the free world whose founders and owners are uniformed officers.”
Mr Barak’s approval suggested the growing power of the far right in Mr Netanyahu’s government, said Anat Matar, a philosophy professor at Tel Aviv Universty.
Two weeks ago, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, threatened to block all legislative proposals from Labor unless Ariel College’s upgrade was approved.
Yisrael Beiteinu has made the settlement’s expansion a key plank in its platform because Ariel has a large proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Mr Lieberman’s core constituency.
Alex Miller, an Ariel resident and Yisrael Beiteinu politician, issued a statement last week welcoming the decision as an “important shot of encouragement for the settlements”.
Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, has said he intends to turn the settlement into Israel’s version of Princeton, a US town that has flourished on the back of its Ivy League university.
Mr Barak’s officials said the new status of “university centre” would be a transitional measure before Ariel College became Israel’s eighth fully fledged university, probably within two years.
Ariel College plans to double its intake of students over the next decade, triple the size of its campus and build a new neighbourhood for staff. About 70 per cent of the college’s students are drawn from the Tel Aviv area inside Israel, as well as a small number of Israeli Arab students.
The college displays an Israeli flag in every classroom and requires all students to take at least one course on Judaism or Jewish heritage, usually overseen by settler rabbis.
Ariel, the fourth-largest settlement in the West Bank, is considered by most Israelis as one of the “settlement blocs” that will be annexed to Israel in a peace deal. Palestinians say such an annexation would effectively cut the West Bank in two.
There are widespread fears among Israeli academics that calls for a boycott of Israeli universities will intensify following the Ariel College decision. Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the decision the “academisation of the occupation”.
Amal Jamal, the head of political science at Tel Aviv University, said the upgrade would also highlight the extent to which universities inside Israel colluded with the West Bank college. “There is strong support for the college among some academics at Israeli universities, which co-operate with it in holding conferences, conducting research, supervising doctoral students and teaching,” he said.
A vote by the British lecturers’ union in 2005, in favour of a limited academic boycott of Israel, targeted Bar Ilan University because of its links to Ariel College. Similar boycott motions have been passed annually by the union, though later overturned.
Last November, a Norwegian university, Trondheim, became the first to vote on boycotting Israeli universities, though the motion was rejected.
Ariel College found itself at the centre of a diplomatic row last year when Spain disqualified its researchers from the finals of a competition to design a solar-powered house. Spanish officials said the institution could not participate because it was built on occupied Palestinian land.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Bounties for War Criminals: We Should Not 'Move On' from Mass Murder

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Chilcot and the courts won't do it, so it is up to us to show that we won't let an illegal act of mass murder go unpunished

by George Monbiot

The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.

But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November: "Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it's the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality - they have not asked because they don't want the answer."

Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had "no sound mandate in international law". Last month Lord Steyn, a former law lord, said that "in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal". In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was "a serious violation of international law and the rule of law".

Under the United Nations charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN security council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection (all references are on my website). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.

We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war - "self-defence, ­humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [security council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Bush and Blair later failed to obtain security council authorisation.

As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal adviser to the ­Foreign Office, revealed, her office had ­"consistently" advised that an ­invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression". Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot inquiry tomorrow. Expect fireworks.

Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression", once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.

There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.

Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws, though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains ­illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass ­murder commissioned overseas.

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush's government, at the Hay festival in 2008, and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, ­payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn't of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website - www.arrestblair.org - whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the ­reward, the greater the number of ­people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press ­governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No ­civilised country can allow mass ­murderers to move on.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com

Obama’s Human Rights Policy a Disappointment

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)

by Stephen Zunes

The Obama administration's record on human rights has been a major disappointment.

In part because the Bush administration abused the promotion of democracy and human rights to rationalize its militaristic policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama administration has at times been reluctant to be a forceful advocate for those struggling against oppression. For example, Obama was cautious in supporting the ongoing freedom struggle in Iran, in part because he believes that more overt advocacy could set back what he sees as the more critical issue of curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. He is also aware of how the history of U.S. interventionism in that country, overt threats of "regime change" by the previous administration, and the U.S. invasion of two neighboring countries in the name of promoting democracy could lead to a nationalist reaction to such grandstanding. (Despite this caution, however, the Iranian regime has falsely accused Obama of guiding the massive pro-democracy movement that is challenging the increasingly repressive rule in that country.)

Harder to defend is Obama's continuation of the Bush administration's policy of arming and training security forces in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Jordan and other dictatorial regimes in the region.

During his highly anticipated address in Cairo last June, Obama failed to praise his autocratic host, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. He also invited leading critics of the regime, including secular liberals and moderate Islamists, to witness his speech. On the other hand, he refused to criticize the Mubarak regime, acknowledge its autocratic nature, or address any concern over its thousands of political prisoners - even when pushed to do so in a BBC interview. Indeed, Egyptian grassroots pro-democracy group Kefaya chose to boycott the speech, demanding that Obama show his commitment to democracy in deeds, not just words. Obama's foreign aid budget includes over $1.5 billion in unconditional aid to the Mubarak dictatorship. And Washington didn't publicly express concern when Egyptian police attacked American human rights activists attempting to deliver relief supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip last month.

Most of the opposition to Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been based on cost and the dubious prospects of victory. But there is concern that the government for which Americans are expected to fight and die is a serious abuser of human rights. Not only did U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai steal the most recent presidential election, but his cabinet includes a number of notorious warlords who have engaged in serious crimes against humanity. Furthermore, U.S.-backed Afghan security forces have engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations, and U.S. bomb and missile attacks killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan since Obama assumed office. Similarly, U.S. forces remain in Iraq, and billions of dollars support the sectarian regime despite ongoing violations of human rights by Baghdad's rulers. The recent dismissal of charges against U.S. Blackwater mercenaries, who massacred 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad's Al-Nusur Square, and the Obama administration's refusal to extradite them to face justice have also raised concerns regarding the U.S. commitment to basic human rights.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration rejected calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend military aid to Israel following its use of U.S. weaponry against civilian targets in last year's war on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 700 civilian deaths, over 300 of whom were children. Even worse, Obama has pledged to increase military aid over and above the more than $10 billion provided to the Israelis by the Bush administration. The Obama administration called on Israel to freeze expansion of its colonization efforts in the occupied West Bank and threatened to cut planned loan guarantees to the Israeli government if it continues to refuse. But Obama still rejects conditioning direct aid and has similarly refused to call on Israel to withdraw from the its illegal settlements, as required under international humanitarian law and confirmed through a series of UN Security Council resolutions.

When the UN Human Rights Council investigation led by Richard Goldstone documented war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government - confirming previous investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others - the Obama administration rejected the commission's findings, calling them "deeply flawed."  Rather than challenge the content of the meticulously documented 575-page report, U.S. officials instead issued strong but vague critiques. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was particularly critical of the report's recommendation that Palestinians and Israelis suspected of war crimes should be tried before the International Criminal Court. "Our view is that we need to be focused on the future," she argued.

The human rights community was initially pleased when Obama appointed Michael Posner, cofounder and director of Human Rights First, as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. However, Posner took the lead in quashing the Goldstone Commission report, insisting it "should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process." Ironically, just weeks earlier, the Obama administration argued during a UN debate on Darfur that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons.

The Obama administration has shown a lack of concern for democracy and human rights outside the Middle East as well. Washington initially raised objections to the coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. But then Obama - in opposition to virtually the entire hemisphere - recognized the November elections that took place under a censured media, widespread political repression, and a boycott by pro-democracy forces. The administration also pledged to continue sending over half a billion dollars of aid annually to the Colombian regime, despite its notoriously poor human rights record. It even signed an agreement that allows U.S. forces to be stationed at seven military bases across that country. Though ostensibly the focus is to curb the drug trade, such aid has also been used in broader counterinsurgency efforts that have serious human rights consequences.

Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration decided to boycott the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva. And most disturbingly, the Obama administration decided to continue the Bush administration's policy of remaining one of the few nations in the world to refuse to sign the international treaty banning landmines, completing its review process in secret without allowing for any input from human rights organizations.

Despite all this, there have been some gestures in support of individual human rights activists. For example, in an unprecedented move, the White House hosted the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, with Obama personally honoring this year's recipients, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, who have been struggling for human rights under the repressive Mugabe regime. The White House also intervened on behalf of the 2008 winner, Western Saharan nonviolent activist Aminatou Haidar, as she verged on death from a hunger strike following expulsion from her country by Moroccan occupation authorities. The Obama administration has failed, however, to demand that Morocco honor a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a World Court ruling allowing the people of Western Sahara the right of self-determination.

To Obama's credit, there is now a subtle but important shift in the U.S. government's discourse on human rights. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view of human rights. It focused, for instance, on elections - which can easily be rigged and manipulated in many cases - in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing the rights of free expression, particularly the right of protest, and recognizing that human rights reform can only come from below and not through imposed means.

In the short term, however, Obama's failure to more boldly address human rights concerns have alienated much of Obama's progressive base of support. The right wing, meanwhile, disingenuously portrays Obama as retreating from his predecessor's supposed support for democracy and human rights. Although the Bush administration provided even more assistance to governments engaged in human rights abuses and used pro-democracy rhetoric largely as a ruse for empire, Obama's lukewarm support for human rights has enabled right-wingers to seize the moral high ground. As a result, the perceived weakness of the Obama administration's human rights record raises important ethical and political questions.

© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

Bagram: The Annotated Prisoner List (A Cooperative Project)

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

by Andy Worthington

On Friday January 15, 2010, the Pentagon responded to a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU last April, and released (PDF) the first ever list of 645 prisoners held, as of September 22, 2009, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan (the Bagram Theater Internment Facility), which has been in operation for eight years.

In the hope of making the list more readily accessible - and searchable - than it is through a poorly photocopied Pentagon document, I reproduce it as a separate web page here, with commentary on some the prisoners I have been able to identify. This is very much a work-in-progress, of course, as the state of knowledge regarding Bagram is akin to that regarding Guantánamo back in 2005, before the prisoner lists and 8,000 pages of documents were released that allowed me to research and write my book The Guantánamo Files, and to begin a new career as a full-time journalist on Guantánamo and related issues.

In an article accompanying this post, "Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List," I examined what the list - which contains only the prisoners' names, and not their nationalities or the date and place of their capture - revealed about the small number of foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries, three of whom are currently waiting to see if the Court of Appeals will overturn the right to habeas corpus that was granted to them by Judge John D. Bates last March, and raised questions about the whereabouts of other known "ghost prisoners" who do not appear to have been included on the list.

In an article to follow, I'll examine how the list reveals not only that around 3,000 prisoners have been held at Bagram in the last six years, but also how the majority of the prisoners listed were seized in 2008 and 2009 - and I'll examine what this means with regard to the US administration's detention policies and the Geneva Conventions, which were discarded by George W. Bush and have clearly not been reintroduced by Barack Obama.

Although I believe that I have had some success tracking down the stories of some of the 100 or so prisoners on the list who have been held at Bagram for between three and seven years, I have found few clues as to the identities of the majority of those listed, who, as mentioned above, were seized in the last two years. Most reports - by the US military or the media - of raids or skirmishes that led to the capture of those held have not furnished the names of those seized, and on the rare occasion that names have been provided it has tended to be because they are regarded as significant figures.

I have no idea whether the allegations against these men are true, but, more importantly, I have not failed to notice that the majority of the prisoners (often men identified by only one name) are clearly not significant figures at all, and my fear - which, I have no doubt, will be confirmed when more information emerges - is that many of them will be revealed to be victims of the same chaotic approach to the capture of prisoners that has done so much to lose the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq for the last eight years, and which, with regard to the 218 prisoners seized in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2003 and sent to Guantánamo, I chronicled in The Guantánamo Files.

One sign that this is indeed the case was reported on NPR last August, when NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman explained how Maj. Gen. Doug Stone had recently been sent to Afghanistan by Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander of Afghanistan and Iraq, because he "liked the way Stone revamped the detention centers in Iraq, how he changed them for the better." Bowman explained that Stone "went to Afghanistan with a team, interviewed detainees, visited detention facilities," and produced a 700-page report, in which he estimated that "as many as 400 of the 600 held at Bagram can be released," explaining that "many of these men were swept up in raids" and "have little connection to the insurgency."

Bowman added that Maj. Gen. Stone "wants to focus on rehabilitation, just like he did in Iraq where he ran the detention system there. He had 21,000 detainees. But he found that most of these Iraqi detainees - as many as two-thirds - were not radicals, but mostly illiterate and jobless young people. Some were innocents and others worked for the insurgency because they just needed the money. And Stone worried that detaining them was only making matters worse, actually turning them into radicals."

As Stone explained to NPR at the time:

Now you've got a bunch of moderates who really shouldn't be in there in the first place. And I can hold them forever, but eventually they're going to say, "Why are you holding me? What's the fairness in this?" And eventually they'll say something about America that we don't want to hear. They're going to say, "Wait a minute, you're not here to better the population, you're here to conquer us and you're taking me hostage."

If you have any further information about any of the men on this list, please feel free to email me, and I will incorporate the information into the list.

Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in America's illegal prison. For more information, visit his blog here.