‘Sword Sirisena’ secretly invited 2 SC judges to Paget Road to smuggle out Gota ; Judges arrived in minister Mustafa’s car !

(Lanka-e-News - 26.Jan.2018, 10.00AM)  It is no less a person than president ‘Sword Sirisena’ who has halted the arrest of  notorious culprit Gotabaya Rajapakse , while the whole world is aware it is Gotabaya who misappropriated  over Rs. 90 million public funds to build a mausoleum of his parents .The president also  went as far as to   secretly send Gotabaya out of the country when he was about to be taken into custody over the mass murder of prisoners  committed within Welikade prison , Western province chief minister Isuru Devapriya stated openly  in his confession  . Unbelievably , the responsible president who acted this irresponsibly and criminally  despite being  the highest in the hierarchy of the country has still not denied those serious allegations mounted openly against him.

With a view to help Gotabaya to flee the country , the president has got down the then president of the appeal court L.T.B.  Dehideniya and another judge to his Paget Road residence secretly , and issued instructions to them , based  on reports reaching Lanka e news inside information division.

Faizer Mustafa the minister of local government and provincial councils who had transported the two judges on the sly in his car to Paget Road residence  to meet the president. 

It is well to recall  it is Judges L.T.B. Dehideniya and Shiran Gunaratne of the appeal court who gave an interim order in a day to restrain the filing of action under the public Property Act against Gotabaya the  crook. Besides, the restraining order that was taken up for hearing on 2017-12- 15 was extended until  2018-01-25.  Meanwhile Gota  fled to America on medical grounds. According to reports reaching Lanka e news , Gota who is in California is not suffering from any illness and he is meeting his  henchmen there which  has received publicity via You tube.

It is well to remember it is the same two judges L.T.B. Dehideniya and Shiran Gunaratne who even without hearing the trial acquitted Kumaran Padmanathan alias  K.P.  the only surviving leader  of the three LTTE leaders on 2017-12-04 . The decision delivered by these two judges that there are no valid charges even  to proceed with the case against K.P. a traitor who supplied weapons to the LTTE during the entire 30 years period of the War   sent a wave of rude shock across the whole  country. 

Interestingly , Dehideniya who gave verdicts to suit Sirisena’s whims was promoted as Supreme court judge , and Preethi Padman Surasena who was the president of Sirisena’s presidential Commission was appointed to fill the vacancy which arose  following Dehideniya’s promotion from the post of appeal court president. 

Dehideniya was elevated to SC judge position because the two SC judges , Anil Gunaratne and Upali Abeyratne  alias Pissu Poosa went on retirement .There is one more vacancy in the SC . Saying , he would promote AG Jayantha Jayasuriya to fill that vacancy , the president has made the AG  a  puppet in his hands to exploit  him to the maximum to serve president’s villainies. 

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by     (2018-01-26 04:54:31)

Sri Lanka: President says he has given the order not to arrest Gotabaya Rajapaksa

The move to arrest Rajapaksa was revealed by President Sirisena in response to a media query at a special President’s House briefing.

( January 27, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Maithripala Sirisena has told Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that the government shouldn’t move court against wartime Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa or anyone else for that matter unless it was sure of the case.

President Sirisena, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces revealed that he told the same to IGP Pujith Jayasundera several months ago when he was informed that the police had received instructions to arrest Rajapaksa.

The move to arrest Rajapaksa was revealed by President Sirisena in response to a media query at a special President’s House briefing.

The SLFP leader said that the IGP had contacted him over the phone while Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was away in New Delhi.

President Sirisena said he had repeatedly stressed the need to be sure of cases that were to be filed against the leaders of the previous administration.

SLFPYPA demands MR’s expulsion

Sri Lanka Freedom Party Young Professional’s Association (SLFPYPA) member Rajika Kodithuwakku speaking at yesterday’s press conference. Picture by Siripala Halwala

Saturday, January 27, 2018 

Sri Lanka Freedom Party Young Professional’s Association (SLFPYPA) representatives said that their association will urge the SLFP Central Committee to expel Parliamentarian Mahinda Rajapaksa from the post of party patron.

Addressing the media at the SLFP Headquarters yesterday, SLFPYPA member Rajika Kodithuwakku said the Parliamentarian Rajapaksa cannot be considered as a SLFP member anymore since he stands for the victory of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) of G.L. Peiris.

“It is clear that Rajapaksa is working for the SLPP.

 It seems that he is acting as the Brand Ambassador of the SLPP. Therefore, he is no more a SLFP member and how he can be an advisor of the party?” Kodithuwakku queried.

“Accordingly, the SLFPYPA will suggest to the Central Committee of SLFP to expel Rajapaksa from the SLFP adviser post with immediate effect,” he said.

Kodithuwakku claimed that Rajapaksa tries to split the SLFP by betraying it while promoting the SLPP of G.L.Peiris.

“As professionals, we request the Central Committee to sack those who betray the party and stand for the victory of any other political streams,” Kodithuwakku added. He further alleged that not only Rajapaksa, but his siblings Gotabhaya and Basil also had betrayed the SLFP.

“Both Gota and Basil are responsible for several financial irregularities amounting to billions,” he said.

“It has been estimated that there is financial misconduct of US $ 7.5 million relating to the MiG fighter jet deal for which Gota’s name is linked during the Rajapaksa regime. There is no responsible person for the huge loss of US $ 7.5 million eventhough the country lost such a huge amount of public wealth,” Kodithuwakku said.

Speaking on Basil Rajapaksa’s political conduct, Kodithuwakku said that Basil is engaging in a political game to coverup his black money. He does not need to make the SLPP win. Speaking on the Presidential Commission report on the Treasury Bond issue, Kodithuwakku said no Commission report was out during the Rajapaksa regime eventhough he appointed many commissions.

“Unlike President Sirisena, the Rajapaksas’ wanted to hide the truth by appointing a commission,” he said. “By speaking on the Treasury Bond Commission report, the Joint Opposition wants to protect their members, who have faced charges of financial irregularities.

LAW OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE View by Jury of Scene of Crime

By Chandra Tilake Edirisuriya-2018-01-26

On view by the jury of the place where the offence was committed, Section 224 of the Code of Criminal Procedure Act No. 15 of 1979 lays down that (1) whenever the Judge thinks that the jury should view the place in which the offence charged is alleged to have been committed or any other place in which any other transaction material to the trial is alleged to have occurred the Judge shall make an order to that effect; and the jury shall be conducted in a body under the care of an officer of the Court to such place which shall be shown to them by a person appointed by the Judge; and (2) such an officer shall not except with the permission of the Judge suffer any other person to speak to or hold any communication with any member of the jury; and unless the Court otherwise directs they shall when the view is finished be immediately conducted back into Court.

Prof. G.L. Peiris in his landmark thesis 'Criminal Procedure in Sri Lanka' says that the different implications of the above provision may be commented on in turn:

What purpose is served by a 'view' of the scene?

In Samaranayake v Wijesinghe (1951) 52 NLR 516, Basnayake CJ said: "The sole object of the visit appears to be to enable the jury to understand better the evidence." It was added: "The purpose of the view is not to find out the truth or falsity of the oral evidence, although incidentally the view may have the effect of exposing the false witness. Nor is it intended to be a means of obtaining evidence."
It is clear from the Section that a view of the scene of the crime can take place only whenever the Judge thinks that it is desirable and makes an order to that effect. In Vincent Fernando (1963) 65 NLR 265, Basnayake CJ observed: "The order that the Sub-section requires the Judge to make is not a mere minute or record, but a formal order stating the reasons or reason why the Judge thinks that the jury should view the place."

This opinion was reiterated by the Chief Justice in Julis (1963) 65 NLR 505. In this case, Basnayake CJ said: "As the enactment expressly provides that the persons under whose care the jury are to be conducted to the scene shall be a officer of Court, and does not enact a similar requirement in regard to the person whom the Judge should appoint to show the jury the place, any person acquainted with the place may be so appointed."

Orders by the Judge

The orders by the Judge requiring the jury to view the scene, appointing an officer of the Court under whose care the jury are to be conducted to the scene, and appointing a person to show the jury the place, have all been described as "imperative requirements of the statute which the Judge is bound to observe and are conditions precedent to a view by the jury," says Prof. Peiris.

At what stage of the trial is a view of the scene by the jury appropriate?

In Julis' case the visit to the scene took place after the prosecution and the defence had closed their respective cases. Basnayake CJ, speaking for the Court of Criminal Appeal, commented: "By itself, there seems to be no objection to a view at the end of the case. The Section imposes no restriction on the stage of the trial at which the view may take place. No hard and fast rule can be observed, but a view should not be ordered at a stage when it would not be in the interests of justice to do so. When evidence is recorded after the defence is closed, the accused are at a disadvantage when the further evidence taken touches aspects of the case which they were not called upon to meet at the time when they entered on their defence." This embodies a salutary caution which is vital for the purpose of the protection of the interests of the accused, says Prof. Peiris.

In Samaranayake v Wijesinghe (1951) 52 NLR 516, Basnayake CJ said: "In certain cases a view at the outset would help, in others a view after the important features of the case are known to the jury may be profitable, in still others the end of the case may be the most desirable stage for a view." It must be recognized, however, that the last situation is exceptional says Prof. Peiris.

In Gandhi (1961) 60 CLW 111, the Court of Criminal Appeal insisted that the jury should not be permitted to view the scene of the offence after the summing up by the Judge is concluded.
The Judge's presence at the scene is not compulsory.

In Arthur Perera (1956) 57 NLR 313, Basnayake ACJ, on behalf of the Court of Criminal Appeal, pointed out that: "The Section does not require that the Judge, Counsel and accused should accompany the jury."

In Aladin (1959) 61 NLR 7, Basnayake CJ said: "It is unnecessary to add that a Judge who does not take part in an inspection is at a disadvantage when it comes to charging the jury. They have a mind's picture of the scene, which he has not, and he is confined to the bare sketch which does not convey such a vivid picture as a view. He is thereby precluded from making the contribution he might have been able to make to the case had he taken part in the view."

Understand a sketch

In Aladin's case, the view was designed to help the jury to understand a sketch which puzzled them and which proved, on their visit to the scene, to be wrong in several material particulars. In a case of this nature, the Judge's presence at the scene of the crime is obviously desirable, says Prof. Peiris.
In any event, if it is proposed, during a scene by the jury, to conduct a demonstration concerning incidents relating to the commission of the alleged offence, the absence of the Trial Judge renders the proceedings illegal. This was emphatically asserted by Walagampaya J, on behalf of the Court of Criminal Appeal, in Fernando (1972) 76 NLR 160.

In this case, the Court of Criminal Appeal adopted unreservedly the following observations of Lord Denning in Tameshwar v R (1957) 2 All ER 683: "By giving a demonstration a witness gives evidence just as much as when in the witness-box he describes the place in words or refers to it on a plan. Such demonstration on the spot is more effective than words can ever be, because it is more readily understood. It is more vivid, as the witness points to the very place where he stood. It is more dramatic, as he re-enacts the scene. Now, if a view of this kind is part of the evidence, as their Lordships are clear that it is, it would seem to follow that it must be held in the presence of the Judge.

The summing up of the evidence by an impartial Judge with a trained mind is an essential part of every criminal trial, but it can only properly be done by a Judge who has heard all the evidence and seen all the demonstrations by witnesses. The Judge, for instance, may notice something at a demonstration which may be of vital importance, but passes unnoticed by everyone else until he draws attention to it. His presence ensures not only that the proceedings are properly conducted, but also that no relevant point on either side is overlooked."

In Fernando's case, the verdict and sentence were quashed, and the accused acquitted, on the ground of the absence of the Judge at the demonstration. The basis of the decision was that, having regard to the full re-enactment at the inspection of the alleged events, it was probable that the ultimate verdict of the jury was influenced by the impressions formed during the demonstration which, accordingly, ought to have been attended by the Judge.

No recording of evidence is permissible at the scene of the crime or other place viewed by the jury.
In Vincent Fernando (1963) 65 NLR 269, Basnayake CJ stated: "The Section does not provide for the Court visiting any place and, therefore, any proceedings that should be taken in Court, should not be taken at the place which is being viewed by the jury." The underlying principle is that "The view by the jury is not a judicial proceeding."

In Julis' case Weerasooriya SPJ observed: "The only irregularity of which any notice be taken is that the questions put to the witnesses and the replies they gave, took the form of evidence recorded at the inspection, instead of the witnesses being recalled in Court after the inspection was concluded and their evidence recorded as to what took place at the inspection, which is the procedure normally adopted."

Inspection in loco

In Arthur Perera's case Basnayake ACJ stated: "Though it is not necessary in every case that the observations made at an inspection in loco should be put before the Court in the form of a statement from a witness who is called, or recalled, after the inspection has been made, it is usual when the hearing is resumed, after an inspection, to call witnesses to give evidence in open Court under oath as to the matters indicated by them at the inspection."

The recording of evidence at the scene of the crime cannot be regarded as proper, merely because the Judge happened to be present. Basnayake CJ has stated: "When the Judge decided to attend the view by jury, though under no legal obligation to do, he had no power to exercise his functions and duties as presiding Judge at the place. His presence at the scene can only be warranted on the ground that he is there for the purpose of seeing for himself what the jury were to be shown."

Is it a 'simple view' of the scene by the jury that is permitted, or can demonstrations or experiments, be conducted with propriety at the scene?

In Aladin's case, the Court of Criminal Appeal stated: "We wish to guard ourselves against being understoodto mean that, at a view of the scene, witnesses cannot be asked to demonstrate or explain something which needs explanation or to take up certain positions which they say they occupied at the time the crime was committed. Witnesses can be asked to give demonstrations or explanations, but such demonstration and explanation must be given in the presence of the Judge and jury."
In Seneviratne (1936) 38 NLR 208, Lord Roche, speaking for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, emphasized that "Their Lordships have no desire to limit the proper exercise of discretion or to say that no view by a jury can include an inspection or demonstration of relevant sounds or smells."

In Rathinam (1968) 71 NLR 275, T.S. Fernando J, on behalf of the Court of Criminal Appeal reached the conclusion "That all demonstrations are not ruled out, is apparent from decisions on corresponding provisions of law."

The opinion had been expressed in some decided cases that no experiments or demonstrations should be permitted at the scene under any circumstances. Thus in Samaranayake v Wijesinghe, Basnayake J remarked that "The carrying out of experiments seems to fall outside the scope of a view by the jury." In Julis' case, Basnayake CJ in a similar vein, commented: "There is no Section of the law which provides for the carrying out of experiments or the making of tests at the place viewed by the jury."
It is apparent, however, that the approach reflected in these decisions is too absolute. The attitude now established for the law of Sri Lanka, is that demonstrations and experiments are permissible in appropriate circumstances, but subject to certain limitations and safeguards required by the law.

Muddled education, jumbled politics

By Fr. Augustine Fernando-January 26, 2018, 10:23 pm 

Diocese of Badulla

Justice and fairness, righteousness and truth do not easily surface in many human affairs. This is especially so in the political and public affairs of Sri Lanka due to the various types of persons who are corrupt and unable to measure up to responsibilities. These people slyly creep up or through political influence get posted to enviable positions. In Sri Lanka one needs political support to get to any positions one is not normally qualified to hold. And this holds true for high positions in the many fields in the public institutions, agencies of the government and its administrative service and even in the legal sphere.

Many in Sri Lanka are now habituated to illegally, illicitly and immorally adopt short-cuts to reach positions one cannot reach on merit. Far more than merit, other considerations not worthy of attention get preference.

TAMIL PRINCIPAL VS CM

It is in a context of an environment of muddled education and jumbled politics that the thorny issue has cropped up between the Principal of the Tamil School in Badulla and the Chief Minister of Uva Province. What has led to the present situation need to be taken up and inquired into. There are other related matters which I found in my investigations these past couple of days, as I too have been Parish Priest of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Badulla for nearly eight years and afterwards Vicar General of the Diocese of Badulla for twelve years. I have kept in touch with the Cathedral Parish of Badulla and its school children since 1976. Currently, I am the Director of the Institute of Integral Education, Bible Apostolate and Catechetics at Bandarawela and with the help of an Assistant Director concern myself about education and Catholic religious education of the children of the Diocese of Badulla which cover the whole of Uva Province. Our concern, as far as possible, extends to all schoolchildren of Uva in their integral education, social and civic consciousness, responsibility and reconciliation among different communities.

St. Ursula’s Convent school was taken over and vested in the State and that school has now been bifurcated and given new names, Vihara Maha Devi Balika Maha Vidyalaya and Tamil Balika Vidyalaya, quite contrary to the Act of state take-over, with the partisan political backing of that time,.

Though the Tamil Balika Vidyalaya Principal has an axe to grind against the Chief Minister and the Chief Minister is accused of overstepping in the manner of ordering the Principal, and a propaganda campaign is on in favour of the Principal, finding the truth of what actually happened may be problematic. Yet an impartial inquiry is very much needed.

1. As matters stand presently, it is presumed that the truth of what happened cannot be reliably obtained from the accusing Principal nor the Chief Minister.

2. The Principal had at first said that when she met the Chief Minister who had ordered her to come to meet him, he did not order her to kneel down. When she said that, she has been quite calm and not agitated. Later, she changed her stance. Did partisan politics creep in?

3. It is said that the Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office in a reprimanding manner told her to kneel down and ask pardon as the Chief Minister threatened to transfer her to a school in a rural area. And she knelt down and asked pardon. What happened exactly?

4. Is the Secretary a person with loyalties to the JVP whose prominent members in the Badulla district were at the Chief Ministers at the time? And did they try to twist matters and make use of this incident to their political advantage?

5. The Chief Minister had ordered the Principal to meet him as a parent of a child had complained to the Chief Minister that the Principal refused to admit the student even though the Chief Minister had recommended the application.

6. What are the admission policies adopted by the Principal? Are they departmental policies or personal policies? Why did the child not qualify for admission? Have parents to go after politicians to get a child admitted to this school?

7. Did the Principal not refuse to admit two poor children (siblings) to Grade 3 and 4, under the care of their grandmother as the father had abandoned them and the mother had died.

8. Did the Parish Priest of Badulla St. Mary’s Cathedral, intervene on behalf of the two poor children and again meet with her refusal.

9. Did not the Parish Priest then appeal to the Provincial Director of Education, with documentary evidence regarding the two helpless poor children.

10. Did not Provincial Director of Education, considering the facts presented to him, order the Principal of the Tamil Balika Vidyalaya, Badulla to admit the two children?

11. Did the Principal not admit them immediately?

12. The Tamil Balika Vidyalaya, Badulla, is a school founded by the Catholic Church and vested in the Government. Yet does the Principal not routinely refuse to admit Catholic girls to the School when they have all the rights to get admittance ?

13. Did the Principal not keep a small poor child standing out in the sun without letting her come into her class? Could someone be so wicked to children and be still found fit to be a Principal?

14. Is a person evidently prejudiced against non Hindus fit to be a Principal of a Vested Catholic School?

15. Is the Principal so evidently prejudiced against poor children, fit to be a Principal?

16. Did the Principal refuse to permit a child, of the Girls’ Home (within the School premises, which had been there for so many years, as an orphanage) with a patch on her hand to attend the School and forbid all the children from the Girls’ Home from attending the school and did she not ask all of them to be sent home?

17. Did she not have to withdraw her arbitrary order and allow the children of the Girls’ Home to come to school as that patch on the child’s hand was not infectious and was not a danger to other children? Was that after an order from the Provincial Director of Education?

18. Did she not have an insidious plan to close down the Girls’ Home and forcibly acquire those premises for the Tamil School?

19. Did not the Principal try to turn this Vested Catholic School to a Hindu Tamil School?

Did not the Chief Minister disallow such name change and turning it to an exclusive Hindu school and prevent Catholic and Muslim children from being admitted to the School? Is not the Chief Minister quite aware that the Act of vestition of the School in the State makes it improper to change the name of a vested school? Is not the Principal's attitude a 'couldn't care less' one?

20. Is not this incident, between the Principal and the Chief Minister, the result of a final build-up of the conduct characteristic of the Tamil School Principal?

21. Didn’t the Principal weep profusely and shed tears before the TV cameras and when that was over suddenly return to cheerful laughter so much so that the observing children remarked that the Principal is a good actress?

Let not short-sighted politicians try to muddy the water and fish there at election time as they usually do disgracefully and opportunistically. If an inquiry is being made, let not an incident be overblown out of context and the whole background that led to this incident be forgotten.

Quite apart from the Tamil Balika Vidyalaya Principal trying to turn tables on the Chief Minister, inquiry should be made to determine whether this person on the whole is fit to be a school teacher, let alone a Principal. Let the Education Department be mindful of the school children and scrutinize the candidates for appointment as Principals and even give them an in-service training to better equip them to handle so responsible a mission.

The primary and vital intention of the Catholic Church in founding this school as every other Catholic school, is to give a wholesome education to children and not to give employment to anyone, even priests and religious men and women, even though much care and preparation is made to enable them to competently handle the mission of education. The ill-conceived schools take-over distorted that vision and the chaos and disorder of jumbled politics messed up education and continues its running riot up to the present day.

Why Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel

by Zena Tahhan & Farah Najjar10 Dec 2017

US President Donald Trump called Jerusalem the capital of Israel on December 6 and began the process of moving his country's embassy to the city.

The move sparked global condemnation from world leaders.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem at the end of the 1967 War with Syria, Egypt and Jordan; the western half of the holy city had been captured in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem effectively put the entire city under de facto Israeli control.

Israeli jurisdiction and ownership of Jerusalem, however, is not recognised by the international community, including the United States.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the main sticking points in efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

International community position 

Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan to divide historical Palestine between Jewish and Arab states, Jerusalem was granted special status and was meant to be placed under international sovereignty and control. The special status was based on Jerusalem's religious importance to the three Abrahamic religions.

In the 1948 war, following the UN's recommendation to divide Palestine, Zionist forces took control of the western half of the city and declared the territory part of its state.

During the 1967 war, Israel captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, which was under Jordanian control at the time, and proceeded to effectively annex it by extending Israeli law, bringing it directly under its jurisdiction, in a breach of international law.

In 1980, Israel passed the "Jerusalem Law", stating that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel", thereby formalising its annexation of East Jerusalem.

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READ MORE: Who owns Jerusalem?

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In response, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 478 in 1980, declaring the law "null and void". The illegal Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem violates several principles under international law, which outlines that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.

The international community officially regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory.
Moreover, no country in the world recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with the exception of the US and Russia, the latter which announced its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and East Jerusalem as "the capital of the future Palestinian state."

As of now, embassies in Israel are based in the commercial capital, Tel Aviv, although some countries have based their consulate offices in Jerusalem.

Palestinians in Jerusalem

Despite Israel's de facto annexation of East Jerusalem, Palestinians who live there were not granted Israeli citizenship.

Today, some 420,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem have "permanent residency" ID cards. They also carry temporary Jordanian passports without a national identification number. This means that they are not full Jordanian citizens - they need a work permit to work in Jordan and do not have access to governmental services and benefits such as reduced education fees.

Palestinian Jerusalemites are essentially stateless, stuck in legal limbo - they are not citizens of Israel, nor are they citizens of Jordan or Palestine.

Israel treats Palestinians in East Jerusalem as foreign immigrants who live there as a favour granted to them by the state and not by right, despite having been born there. They are required to fulfil a certain set of requirements to maintain their residency status and live in constant fear of having their residency revoked.

Any Palestinian who has lived outside the boundaries of Jerusalem for a certain period of time, whether in a foreign country or even in the West Bank, is at risk of losing their right to live there.

Those who cannot prove that the "centre of their life" is in Jerusalem and that they have lived there continuously, lose their right to live in their city of birth. They must submit dozens of documents including title deeds, rent contracts and salary slips. Obtaining citizenship from another country also leads to the revocation of their status.

In the meantime, any Jew around the world enjoys the right to live in Israel and to obtain Israeli citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.

Since 1967, Israel has revoked the status of 14,000 Palestinians, according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

Settlements

Israel's settlement project in East Jerusalem, which is aimed at the consolidation of Israel's control over the city, is also considered illegal under international law.

The UN has affirmed in several resolutions that the settlement project is in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying country from transferring its population into the areas it occupies.

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READ MORE: What are illegal Israeli settlements?

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There are several reasons behind this: to ensure that the occupation is temporary and to prevent the occupying state from establishing a long-term presence through military rule; to protect the occupied civilians from the theft of resources; to prevent apartheid and changes in the demographic makeup of the territory.

Yet, since 1967, Israel has built more than a dozen housing complexes for Jewish Israelis, known as settlements, some in the middle of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

About 200,000 Israeli citizens live in East Jerusalem under army and police protection, with the largest single settlement complex housing 44,000 Israelis.

Such fortified settlements, often scattered between Palestinians' homes, infringe on the freedom of movement, privacy and security of Palestinians.

Though Israel claims Jerusalem as its undivided capital, the realities for those who live there cannot be more different.

While Palestinians live under apartheid-like conditions, Israelis enjoy a sense of normality, guaranteed for them by their state. 

New York Times “debate” on Palestinian refugees leaves out Palestinian experts

Palestinian schoolgirls class at a school run by UNRWA in Gaza City on 22 January. A New York Times “debate” on the future of the agency for Palestine refugees was notably lacking in Palestinian expertise.Mohamad AsadAPA images

Michael F. Brown- 26 January 2018

The New York Times recently gave a platform to the head of an organization that thinks it is acceptable to deprive children of basic needs in order to pressure Palestinian leaders to cede rights.
This fits with the newspaper’s continued failure to give fair coverage to Palestinians, and especially the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Asaf Romirowsky works as executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a group that operates on campuses as part of Israel lobby efforts to thwart the growing Palestine solidarity movement.

Romirowsky is a former Israeli army officer and fellow with the Middle East Forum, the organization run by the prominent Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian demagogue Daniel Pipes.

In a 17 January Times article on the Trump administration’s slashing of the US contribution to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, David M. Halbfinger characterized Romirowsky’s position as being that “freezing the agency’s money could be a good step if it forced Israel and the Palestinians to the table.”

By contrast, the humanitarian agency has said that the cut has precipitated “the worst financial crisis in UNRWA’s history,” putting the futures of half a million children at stake.

UNRWA provides healthcare, education and other basic humanitarian support to more than five million Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Half of the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip depend on emergency food aid provided by UNRWA.

So what Romirowsky is advocating, in the name of an allegedly scholarly organization, is that stripping some of the most vulnerable people in the world of food, healthcare and schools could be a good thing.

That is open advocacy of human rights abuses on a massive scale.

But Romirowsky reveals that his real agenda is not restarting negotiations that could lead to any kind of just outcome: “The endgame from a political standpoint has to be about fully ending refugee status and ending the right of return.”

In other words, Romirowsky supports the permanent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Vilification

Elsewhere, Romirowsky has vilified the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker human rights organization whose members were recently barred by Israel from territory it controls.

The century-old AFSC won the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize in part for its work rescuing Jews from the Nazis during World War II. It also stood with African Americans in the struggle against segregation in the American South.

Yet merely because it extends its universal commitment to human rights to Palestinians, Romirowsky has charged that AFSC “has gone from trying to save Jews to vilifying them.” He has urged Jewish parents to reconsider sending their children to Quaker schools.

Romirowsky has also attacked other human rights defenders blacklisted by Israel, including Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which he calls “odious.”

Yet in the Times, Romirowsky’s views are framed as a legitimate position within a sober “debate.”
Halbfinger provides a list of complaints anti-Palestinian groups routinely lob at UNRWA, including that “its schools inculcate hostility to Israel or even breed terrorists.”

Yet he fails to note that Israeli accusations against UNRWA have been repeatedly debunked.

The kind of fact-checking that is now so fashionable when it comes to false statements by President Donald Trump is still seldom found regarding Israeli claims.

Leaving out Palestinians

It’s not just that Halbfinger provides a platform for anti-Palestinian propagandists like Romirowsky and Einat Wilf, a former Israeli lawmaker whom he quotes accusing UNRWA of being “devoted to the Palestinian agenda of erasing Israel.”

It’s that the Times once again excludes Palestinian experts. True, two Palestinian refugees are quoted – one in Gaza “huddled beneath a flimsy nylon-and-sheet-metal roof” and another “outside a falafel shop at the Shatila camp in Beirut” – and they do raise powerful concerns, but all voices of authority and expertise are non-Palestinians.

Even one of the “defenders” of UNRWA that Halbfinger quotes is an Israeli politician, Yossi Beilin – an opponent of Palestinian refugee rights.

The headline of the article presages a “debate on [the] Palestinian refugee agency,” but it is a conversation in which Palestinian experts are silenced.

Halbfinger’s report also misstated history, referring to “approximately 700,000 Palestinians who fled the wars in 1948 and 1967.”

In fact some 750,000 Palestinians fled “or were expelled from their homes” – words Halbfinger’s article does use elsewhere – during the 1948 Nakba alone.

Approximately 300,000 more Palestinians were displaced in 1967.

Following an inquiry from The Electronic Intifada, the newspaper did issue a correction acknowledging that “an earlier version of this article misstated the total number of Palestinian refugees who fled wars in 1948 and 1967. It was about one million, not 700,000.”
The Times issued a similar correction in 2010.

Distorting BDS

And in an 18 January Times article on a key Senate committee’s approval of Kenneth Marcus as head of the US education department’s civil rights division, Erica L. Green misrepresents the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Marcus is a former board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and headed an organization that filed a series of failed complaints to the civil rights office he will likely lead, claiming that universities were failing to protect Jewish students because they were not cracking down on Palestine solidarity activism.

Green claims that on “campus after campus” the BDS movement “has driven a wedge between Jewish students and students of color, challenging university administrations and straining the traditional bonds between Jews and other minorities.”

Another journalist might well have written that students – and off-campus Israel lobby groups – who reject equal rights for Palestinians are the ones driving the wedge.

Green fails to describe the goals of the BDS movement in its own terms: implementing international law by ending Israeli occupation and colonization, securing equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and guaranteeing the rights of Palestinian refugees.

Instead, she labels it the “anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”
It is difficult to imagine the Times describing, say, Romirowsky as “anti-Palestinian” even when that is clearly the case.

And while she refers repeatedly to Marcus’ accusations of anti-Semitism, Green fails to note that the Palestinian leadership of the BDS movement has strongly denounced all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.

Such misrepresentations and omissions about BDS remain common in US media.

Green denies readers another piece of critical information: the Senate committee voted 12-11 to confirm Marcus – on strict party lines.

This may be evidence that Democratic leaders are responding to a party base that increasingly disapproves of Israel’s denial of Palestinian freedom and rights.

Israel behind car bombing that injured Hamas official, says Lebanon

Mohammad Hamdan was wounded when a bomb placed in his car exploded in Sidon

Lebanese security forces secure the area following a car bomb blast in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon (AFP)

Friday 26 January 2018

Lebanese authorities on Friday said Israel was involved in a car bomb blast that targeted a Hamas official in southern Lebanon earlier this month.

Mohammad Hamdan was wounded when a bomb placed in his car detonated in the southern port city of Sidon on January 14.

Hamdan did not appear to have a public or political role in Hamas, but according to a Palestinian security source, he was a member of the organisation's security structure.

On Friday, the press office of Lebanese Interior Minister Nouhad Mashnuq said one of the perpetrators had been coordinating with Israel.

In a statement distributed to reporters, it said investigators were able to arrest "one of the main perpetrators of the crime, who confessed to being tasked with Israeli intelligence".

The statement did not specify the suspect's nationality, but said investigators seized "very advanced communications mechanisms from his home and correspondence between him and his handlers."

Hamas also accused Israel of involvement in the attack against Hamdan.

The Palestinian Islamist group has fought three wars with Israel in the past decade and is based in Gaza, but it operates branches elsewhere in the Middle East including Lebanon.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, many of them in 12 camps across the country.

The most densely-populated is Ain al-Hilweh, which lies near Sidon and is home to an estimated 61,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 who have fled the war in neighbouring Syria.

By longstanding convention, Lebanese authorities do not enter Palestinian camps, where security is instead left to joint Palestinian security forces.

These units which include Hamas, rival Palestinian faction Fatah and other groups -have fought several battles with militant groups inside Ain al-Hilweh.

In 2010, Lebanon sentenced a former security officer to death for collaborating with Israel to assassinate two Islamic Jihad leaders in Sidon. 

The Mueller confrontation that Republicans were trying to avoid has just arrived

Before it came out that President Trump sought to fire Robert Mueller last June, Trump and his aides repeatedly said he wasn't giving "any thought" to the idea. (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Amber Phillips January 26 at 8:16 AM

This story has been updated with more Republican reaction to the news.

The firing of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has long been a red line for most Republicans in Congress who are trying to work with their president.

But it's a red line they'd rather not act on — and now, with news that President Trump actually made moves to do it, they may be forced to.

There are two bills in Congress, both of which have some Republican support, that would protect Mueller from being fired by Trump. But neither bill has been seriously considered by leadership.
Up until this point, Republicans had given Trump the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't launch a constitutional crisis. From their perspective, why take action and cause a confrontation with the president (and jeopardize their agenda) if they don't absolutely have to?

Now they may have to.

Trump moved to fire Mueller in June, shortly after the special counsel took over the investigation of Russia meddling in the 2016 election, the New York Times, then The Washington Post, reported on Thursday night. Trump seemed pretty dead set on it, and only backed off after the White House's top lawyer, Donald McGahn, threatened to resign.

[Trump moved to fire Mueller in June, bringing White House counsel to the brink of leaving]

1:12

'Fake news': Trump dismisses report he ordered Mueller's firing

President Trump denied reports on Jan. 26 that he had ordered special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to be fired in June 2017, calling them “fake news." (Reuters)

Reports that Trump wanted to get rid of the special counsel don't entirely come out of the blue — he's frequently complained this investigation is a “hoax” and suggested it's politically motivated. There has also been evidence that Trump was toying with the idea of first firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He even hinted in a July interview with the New York Times that he'd fire Mueller if the independent investigation started looking into his finances.

Firing Sessions is one of the clearest paths for the president to get rid of the special counsel, who technically answers to the Justice Department. And that got some Republicans' attention.

“There will be holy hell to pay,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) warned Trump via reporters in July of what would happen if the president fired Sessions. A few weeks later, two pairs of bipartisan senators unveiled legislation to protect Mueller if Trump tried to fire people in the Justice Department in a way that would eventually lead to getting rid of Mueller.

Even some of Trump's biggest Republican critics in the Senate didn't believe he'd go that far. “I can't imagine any administration taking a move like that,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters in October.

But this revelation is more concrete than news over the summer. Trump didn't just think about firing Mueller, he moved to do it. According to The Post's Rosalind Helderman and Josh Dawsey, discussions were had and meetings were held by his aides to try to get him to back off.

Republicans in Congress may not have been privy to any of the internal White House conversations at the time about the firing of Mueller, which could be one reason they backed off passing protections for the special counsel.

“I don’t hear much pressure to pass anything,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told MSNBC in November. “There’s been no indication that the president or the White House are not cooperating with the special counsel.”

“I’ve never been convinced they’re constitutional,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), told The Post of one proposal requiring a three-judge panel to review any firing from the executive branch.
Or, they just might not be interested in a confrontation with the president. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) signed onto Democratic legislation this summer to protect Mueller. But on Friday, the Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff reports he's stopped trying to lobby his colleagues to do it. Trump may have wanted to fire Mueller in June, but that was June: "[T]he chatter that the administration is considering removing Special Counsel Mueller has completely come to a halt," Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin told the Daily Beast.

There is no serious bipartisan bill to protect Mueller in the House of Representatives either, where some vocal Republican lawmakers are instead saying Mueller should step down because of what they allege are various levels of bias.

[It's looking more and more like there is a coordinated GOP effort to discredit the Russia investigation]

Democrats involved in Congress's Russia investigation were so worried by Republicans' shrugs about protecting Mueller that in December Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, gave a speech warning a “constitutional crisis” would happen if Trump fired Mueller while Congress was gone.

The debate in Congress probably won't immediately shift to how to protect Mueller. Instead, it will probably zero in on whether it's Congress's job to do it in the first place. “I believe now that this revelation has been made public, that there will be increasing pressure to protect Mueller,” moderate Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told my Post colleagues.

But either way, the confrontation with the president that Republicans were trying to avoid has just landed on their doorstep.

Correction: There are currently bills in the House of Representatives to protect Mueller, but none of them appear to have significant bipartisan support to be viable. 

Jeremy Corbyn’s Anti-Imperial Nostalgia

The British Labour leader’s worldview is antiquated, authoritarian, and dangerous.

Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a speech from the top of a double-decker bus as Communist Party of Great Britain flags fly at a May Day rally in London on May 1, 2016. (JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

BY COLIN SHINDLER-

JANUARY 26, 2018, 1:00 AM

Five years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was an obscure member of the British Parliament — someone on the far fringes of the Labour Party who was seen as less likely to attain power than Donald Trump was in the United States. With Labour’s defeat in the 2015 general election, Corbyn scrambled to obtain the necessary votes from his parliamentary colleagues to become a candidate for the leadership. His “ordinariness” and advocacy of a return to true socialism in place of New Labour neoliberalism helped him stand out from his bland opponents, who robotically repeated the mantra of the Tony Blair years.

Few of his parliamentary colleagues backed Corbyn, yet the party’s new membership system allowed in not only many enthusiastic young people keen to repair British society but also those on the far-left, who had been excluded from the party since 1918. They had instead found homes in the Communist Party, various Trotskyist sects, the Greens, and a variety of minuscule groups that treasured ideological purity. With their support, Corbyn demolished his opponents in a landslide victory. His strong views had struck a chord, particular among young people and party members, fed up with the perorations of the men in blue suits in a time of austerity. Despite being past normal retirement age, he was seen as the oracle of the future.

Unlike in other European countries, there has never been a viable far-left party in Britain; only the Labour Party attracted the working-class vote. Yet recent elections indicate a dramatic erosion of working-class support for Labour and a drift toward the anti-immigration, anti-European Union UK Independence Party. Corbyn and his supporters were in a prime position to take advantage of Labour’s disarray. They formed a bridge between Labour and the extraparliamentary British left. It also meant that they were willing to share a platform with those whose world outlook was regarded as politically repugnant and reactionary. Corbyn placed the greater good of uniting the left above any qualms about associating with politically controversial figures — especially when it came to matters of foreign policy.

The most pointed charge he faced was that of anti-Semitism. On the tortuous question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Corbyn never differentiated between Palestinian nationalists and Palestinian Islamists, attempting to unify support for the Palestinian cause even if it meant appearing on platforms with people of unsavory and sometimes anti-Semitic views. While believing that Zionism was a historical mistake, he finally accepted a two-state solution after he became party leader. Yet Corbyn has never said the Jews have a right to national self-determination — as do the Palestinians.

The broader problem of anti-Semitism was not taken seriously — even by the rank and file. A YouGov poll of party members in 2016 revealed that 49 percent of respondents believed Labour did not have a problem with anti-Semitism and that the issue was “created by the press and Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents to attack him.”

While Corbyn himself is no anti-Semite, his apparent willingness to turn a blind eye when anti-Zionism tipped over into anti-Semitism has had wider repercussions. Anti-racists and many long-term Labour Jews have either left the party or remained within it in terminal despair.

Although Corbyn has been severely criticized for his one-sided stand on Israel-Palestine, he has never acted as an intermediary between the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps. His position on the issue is part of a broader foreign-policy worldview that is narrow, selective, and myopic.

Upon attaining the leadership, Corbyn moved to cement his inner circle with comrades from the 1980s — several of whom had formed the pro-Kremlin faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain and others who had belonged to a variety of Trotskyist groups. Corbyn’s elite advisors were not “Old Labour” but instead recruits from the far-left outside the party. His close friend, Andrew Murray, who had worked for Novosti, the Soviet press agency in the 1980s, joined the Labour Party recently as a Corbyn advisor after 40 years as a stalwart of the Communist Party.

Corbyn’s foreign-policy views were forged during the era of decolonization in the 1960s, when he spent two years volunteering in Jamaica. It translated into an alignment with newly independent nations and support for groups perceived to be fighting for liberation. It meant sympathy for the Irish Republican Army in the 1980s and solidarity with the Palestinians during the 1990s and since. It also meant selective outrage — that Corbyn condemned only some injustices while on others he remained silent.

 To this mixture, he added a touch of anti-Americanism and opposition to liberal interventionism. So, while he could condemn Saudi Arabia for its bombing of Yemen, he stayed silent on grassroots protests against corruption in Iran in late 2017.

Corbyn gave a speech following the suicide bombing last year at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, U.K., criticizing the West’s war on terror. He linked liberal interventionism — in this case, Britain’s intervention against Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces in Libya in 2011 — with the attack in Manchester by a jihadi of Libyan origin. It reflected his long-held views that “the war on terror is simply not working.”

On the far-left, there is an admiration for countries such as China and Cuba that have taken multitudes of people out of poverty, provided them with education and health care, and attempted to close the gap between the rich and poor. Yet there is an accompanying silence on the state persecution, imprisonment, and often exile of dissenters who wish to explore a different narrative. Despite the hunger queues in Caracas, Corbyn has praised the policies of Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, and expressed his admiration for the late Hugo Chávez.

Corbyn has praised the policies of Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, and expressed his admiration for the late Hugo Chávez.

 In a Trump-worthy feat of moral equivocation, Corbyn blamed the recent violence on all sides and has had little to say about the fate of Maduro’s imprisoned dissenters.

Corbyn’s longtime friend, the former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, has a record of making insensitive anti-Semitic comments. In 2016, he implied that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism despite research by eminent academics that indicates the opposite. Livingstone’s public pronouncements spoke of “collaboration” and “collaborators” — a term that conjures images of Vichy France and Quisling Norway. The insinuation was that Zionists had somehow worked with the Nazis, not to rescue Jews but because they quietly approved of Hitler’s revolution in German society. While Livingstone was clearly an embarrassment to most Labour members, he was suspended from the party and not expelled.

Last week, the far-left took control of the Labour National Executive Committee. One of its first acts was to remove the longtime chair of the party’s disputes panel. The fear is that many of those suspended for alleged anti-Semitism, such as Livingstone, will now be readmitted to the party and the issue glossed over permanently.

When Corbyn first became the Labour leader, many Conservative Party activists were delighted. They believed that Corbyn would be an albatross around Labour’s neck when Theresa May called an election in June 2017. Yet these were uncertain times with the quicksand of Brexit negotiations, Trump in the White House, and a host of authoritarian figures walking the world’s stage. May proved to be an aloof politician fighting a lackluster campaign. In contrast, Corbyn promised a socialist bounty of heaven on earth, a message that was amplified by his social media-savvy young enthusiasts, changing the public perception of him from colorless and peripheral to bold and prophetic.

In part, this had been achieved by a populist election manifesto that argued for taking back utilities such as the railways and water into public ownership, greater funding for the National Health Service, tighter control over big business, more public housing, and hints about the abolition of tuition fees at universities. This brought back many voters who had previously deserted Labour. It conveyed traditional Labour values, and the manifesto’s message was warmly received.

Yet foreign policy in a period of deprivation and bewilderment became a secondary concern for many. Now, as May’s government sways from crisis to crisis and her standing in the polls plummets, Corbyn’s is rising. Only the fear of a far-left Corbyn government rallies Conservative support and prevents total disintegration.

For many who demand radical changes at home, Corbyn is the messiah for whom they have waited a lifetime. His defense of autocrats, and ambivalence on Brexit, however is a throwback to the bad old days of the Cold War. It lacks any scintilla of socialist morality and is a betrayal of Labour values. Such a foreign-policy vision will prove to be catastrophic and signal a closing of the progressive mind to those who expect solidarity and support from Britain.