ACARIGUA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Twenty-nine detainees were killed and 19 police officers were wounded in a confrontation in a cellblock in central Venezuela in what a state official called a failed escape attempt, but human rights groups described as a massacre.
The incident took place in the town of Acarigua in a municipal police cellblock in the central state of Portuguesa.
“There was an attempted escape and a fight broke out among(rival) gangs,” Portuguesa Citizen Security Secretary Oscar Valero told reporters. “With police intervention to prevent the escape, well, there were 29 deaths,” he said, adding that some 355 people were being held in the cellblock.
Detainees detonated three grenades, which wounded 19 police officers, he said. Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Human rights groups questioned the official version of the events.
“How is it that there was a confrontation between prisoners and police, but there are only dead prisoners?” Humberto Prado of the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory said in a telephone interview. “And if the prisoners had weapons, how did those weapons get in?”
Detainees for several days had been demanding that government ombudsmen help them avoid being transferred to distant prisons where they would not be able to receive visits from relatives, Prado said.
Authorities entered the cell block to carry out searches and remove visiting women when violence broke out, Prado said, estimating the facility in fact held some 540 inmates.
Police cellblocks in Venezuela are meant to hold citizens for 48 hours while they face formal charges. But detained citizens can spend months or even years in such facilities because prisons are too overcrowded to receive them and because of chronic delays in basic criminal justice proceedings required to indict them.
In 2018, a riot that led to a fire in a police cellblock in the central city of Valencia killed 68 people, including two women who were visiting.
Carlos Nieto of human rights group A Window to Freedom said the country has around 500 cellblocks with capacity to hold around 7,000 people that currently have nearly 55,000 detainees in custody.
Audience anger serves as a warning about indiscriminate violence.
Daenerys aims her dragon at King’s Landing in HBO's Game of Thrones.HBO
BYCHARLI CARPENTER,ALEXANDER H. MONTGOMERY|Audiences were horrified when, in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen, a leader often portrayed as a human rights defender, torched a city full of terrified civilians from astride her dragon. It seemed out of character, some said. As a plot point, argued others, it was poorly built up. It ruined a feminist hero. But the underlying reason for the outcry went unspoken: The deliberate targeting of civilians from the air, using incendiary weapons that are impossible to escape, is rightlyrecognized by Americans as a terrible crime—something good actors just don’t do.
Although it seems obvious that Americans would oppose such war crimes, it was not a historical inevitability. After all, the United States perpetrated some of the most horrifying episodes of aerial firebombing in history and largely with public support. Saturation bombing of civilians in World War II killed, by one scholar’s estimate, around 750,000 civilians—several times the number who died in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Babies were burned alive on their mothers’ backs, and whole families suffocated in cellars, but Americans largely shrugged.
So what does HBO’s depiction of a firebombing, and the outrage afterward, tell us about war crimes in the present-day American conscience? Would Americans have been so quick to judge Daenerys if the city hadn’t surrendered before she began her murderous spree? Would Americans be so morally outraged if the United States’ own troops’ lives were on the line? With the Trump
administration rumbling about war with Iran just as audiences were gasping over the sack of King’s Landing, these questions are not merely academic.
Back in July 2017, around the time Daenerys first landed at Dragonstone, two political scientists from Stanford University and Dartmouth College published a survey in which they asked 780 Americans exactly this kind of question. Survey respondents were told to imagine whether, in an intractable and bloody war with Iran, they might agree to a Targaryen-style saturation bombing of a populated city—likely to kill 100,000 civilians—in order to induce an Iranian surrender and save the lives of 20,000 U.S. troops. When put this way, two-thirds of respondents leaned toward a “shock” strike against a civilian city over an ongoing and bloody ground war. The authors concluded that “the U.S. public’s support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is shallow and easily overcome by the pressures of war.”
Faced with dragon fire, television audiences did not react as this survey finding would predict. The response has implications far beyond fiction. Because successful TV shows transport audiences to a world that feels realistic, viewers experience that world, and react to it, much the same way they experience reality. Audience reactions to the final arc of Game of Thrones—with a sample size much larger than 780—are perhaps another, perhaps even better indication of how Americans might react to a real-world firebombing today.
Consider major commentaries about the penultimate episode. We did not hear commentators argue that the firebombing of King’s Landing would have been perfectly fine if the city hadn’t surrendered, as Tokyo refused to do before the Hiroshima bombing and as Iran refused to do in the political scientists’ fictional scenario. Nor did we hear that Daenerys should have simply incinerated the city’s civilians while her troops waited safely outside the walls.
Consider also reactions to the show’s finale. The complaints varied, but few argue that Daenerys deserved the throne after what she did—only 11 percent of U.S. viewers still supported her after the sack of King’s Landing. For most viewers, it was not a question of whether the show would punish Daenerys for her crimes but how. That the punishment came from the adopted son of Ned Stark, a man whose last act while in power was sentencing a man to death for massacring civilians, only confirms the point. Despite arguments to the contrary, the show’s key message was that rulers ignore ethical norms at their own peril. Sure, Ned lost his head, and Daenerys lost her mind, but the narrative arc of the story bent ultimately in the direction of justice. Fans complain about much but not about this.
Like survey experiments, pop culture—and audiences’ reaction to it—can be a window into a society’s values. What Game of Thrones has revealed more clearly than any survey is that most Americans care more about fighting wars justly than some political scientists would have us believe. Most of all, Americans care about following the laws of war: Survey experiments show opposition to torture and civilian targeting increase the more information participants are given about international law.
New survey research shows this to be true even of saturation bombing, in contrast to the Stanford/Dartmouth finding. In a working paper recently presented at the International Studies Association, we asked 2,250 Americans whether or not they agreed with the statement that targeting civilians in war is categorically wrong. Eighty percent “strongly agreed” or “somewhat agreed” with this statement.
Agreement That It’s Wrong to Attack Civilian Populations
SOURCE: WORKING PAPER BY CHARLI CARPENTER AND ALEXANDER H. MONTGOMERY, BASED ON A SURVEY OF 2,250 AMERICANS.Respondents were also asked to explain their answers: Why is it wrong to target civilians? The results were striking. Many of those who strongly agreed that targeting civilians is wrong refused to even answer. They declined to weigh cost-benefit calculations or consider the moral culpability of the civilian population or even invoke such explanations as the Geneva Conventions. “It’s just wrong,” they said in their open-ended comments. Or: “You just can’t.” One wrote: “Why would you even ask such a thing?”
When we replicated the earlier Stanford/Dartmouth experiment, but with an open-ended question rather than forcing respondents to choose between two terrible options, we found much more nuanced moral thinking than the original authors. The majority of Americans rejected both the ground war and the strike in the fictional Iran scenario, arguing for other options: precision air power against military targets, diplomacy, or retreat. We found support for the strike went down even further when respondents were informed about international laws and norms or even were asked to just think about ethics—something Game of Thrones constantly invited its viewers to do.
Our research confirms the evidence from reactions to the show’s finale. Americans would have wanted Daenerys to use air power but only against military targets such as the Iron Fleet. They would have wanted her to limit its use inside the city walls to avoid collateral damage. They would have wanted her to target the Red Keep, if needed, but not the streets of Flea Bottom. They would have chosen to let boots on the ground do the work of breaching the Red Keep and capturing Cersei Lannister and expected the Unsullied, Dothraki, and Northmen to fight soldiers rather than massacre civilians. All of these arguments show a clear and consistent understanding of, and sensitivity to, the international laws of war.
As such, watching beloved characters turn into war criminals will always be deeply disturbing for American audiences—just as watching the country’s politicians turn U.S. airmen and troops into war criminals or pardon them for terrible crimes is seen by political audiences as a national disgrace. The firebombing of King’s Landing, and viewers’ reaction to it, should be a warning to presidents who want to bring back torture, politicians who speak of carpet-bombing, or others who might contemplate similar “shock and awe” actions in any future war.
After the end of WW II, in October 1945, 50 countries (Poland signed later making it 51) including the US, Britain, France, China (it was actually Taiwan) and Soviet Russia formed the United Nations and declared, “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS are DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedoms”, making it the vision, mission and sole responsibility of this new world body. The United Nations now have 193 member countries which have also accepted the same Charter.
Accepting such a noble responsibility by almost all the countries the world over should have left peace and human dignity in abundance on Planet Earth. New generations after the Second WW should have grown wholly unaware of wars except in text books. Standing armies, manufacture of military hardware should have become obsolete by now, left as museum exhibits and literature for new generations. Nuclear power should have been turned into societal use of consumers and not as “threatening” and risky “power” in the hands of aggressive States. But what happened to the UN’s determination and responsibility “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” was just the opposite. Major players of global power in the UN Security Council (UNSC) kept investing in improving and modernising the technology for manufacture of military hardware and for military surveillance and intelligence gathering. It was the silent and undeclared race between the US and Soviet Russia to be the world economic “super” power that has triggered the new arms race. The brutal use of the A-bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the US was not mere revenge over Japan’s Pearl Harbour bombing. It was perhaps to tell all “Allies” in general and Soviet Russia in particular that post-WW II politics would have to be decided on US terms. That instead provoked Soviet leaders to accelerate their Nuclear power project and surprised US leaders when Soviet Russia tested its first A-bomb in 1948. That led to heavy and improved manufacture of military hardware, despite the UN Charter for peace and human dignity. “Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the introduction of new technologies led to remarkable advances in the manufacture of aircraft, missiles, ships, satellites, land vehicles, electronic equipment, and many other weapons and supporting systems employed by the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marine Corps” is the opening sentence in the Forward to “Re-arming for the Cold War – 1945 to 1960”, a study by the “Historical Office” of the “Office of the Secretary of Defence, Washington DC” in 2012”. In its Preface it says, “…from the end of World War II through the mid 1990’s the United States spent over $5 trillion (including the cost of the wartime atomic bomb project) on the development, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons, and on the systems for delivering and defending against them. Twenty percent of that sum was expended between 1945 and 1960”
"That instead provoked Soviet leaders to accelerate their Nuclear power project and surprised US leaders when Soviet Russia tested its first A-bomb in 1948"
With all indications the global neo-liberal economy was running into stagnation and to a possible meltdown in a few years to come, the US was determined to encroach upon other oil reserves in the Middle East and North Africa in their bid to have control over the global economy. Vali Nasr, an associate professor at the University of San Diego, specialising on Saudi Arabia and Islamic fundamentalism says, “In fact, this whole phenomenon that we are confronting, which Al Qaeda is a part of, is very closely associated with Saudi Arabia’s financial and religious projects for the Muslim world as a whole.” He then gave his explanation for Saudi Regime’s proxy work for the US. “There’s no country in the Middle East with which we (US) are as intertwined as Saudi Arabia. American oil companies ensured the rise of the Saud family, ensured the dominance of the Saud family over Saudi Arabia. The very fact that the peninsula was integrated together into one single kingdom, one single nation State, has a lot to do with US presence in the country.” Nasr told “Frontline”. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/interviews/nasr.html)
While Taliban still remains a serious threat to Afghanistan’s stability, the Al Qaeda was crushed and Bin Laden assassinated to give that space to the ISIS for a different project. The ISIS it is claimed by another geo political analyst Tony Catalucci based in Bangkok, is a product of the US, created through NATO. In his article, “NATO’s Terror Hordes In Iraq A Pretext For Syria Invasion” he argues, “In actuality, ISIS is the product of a joint NATO-GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 where US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran’s arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean.” ISIS turned out in the most brutal anti-Christian form of Islamic fundamentalism and attracted “activists” from across Europe and North America with heavy publicity in Western media than all other terrorist groups including Al Qaeda put together. The US-Saudi project that eliminated Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muamar Gaddafi in Libya, nevertheless turned out a cropper with ISIS failing to dislodge President Bashar al-Assad and his regime in Syria.
"The very fact that the peninsula was integrated into one single kingdom, one single nation State, has a lot to do with US presence in the country"
During the five years up to 2017, value of weapon sales increased by 10 per cent compared to the previous five years with the Syrian and Yemeni wars in particular and the Middle East caught in conflicts all round. US arms sales thus increased from US$9,601 million in 2014 to US$52,480 million in 2018. During that same period, France increased from US$1,643 million to US$9,948 million, Germany from US$1,790 million to US$9,324 million, while Britain increased from US$1,651 to US$6,171 million. China in the UN Security Council is now the PRC since 1971 and not Taiwan anymore. Their share increased from US$1,160 million to US$7,633 million. (SIPRI data). All these decades, permanent members of the UNSC kept gaining more dollars with every armed conflict that left human tragedies in countries and regions outside of theirs.
With Taliban restricted to Afghanistan, Al Qaeda wiped out and the ISIS crushed by Russian-backed Kurdish and Syrian forces, all permanent members in the UNSC would have to find big time armed conflicts elsewhere to earn the dollars they earned from civil wars during the past years. There will therefore have to be a new form of “terrorism” in a new region or the ISIS will have to be revived on a larger map for UNSC members to make profits while pushing their geopolitical agenda. With US spoken of in a battle for supremacy in the Indian ocean, the question is what or who next will remain high in South Asian politics in the months to come.
Trade unions and human rights organizations in France are celebrating as a victory the withdrawal of train manufacturer Alstom from the Jerusalem light rail.
Meanwhile it has also been confirmed that a Greek-led consortium failed to submit a bid.
France’s Alstom confirmed to media last week that it had dropped plans to bid on the extension of the Israeli railway that links settlements in the West Bank to each other and to Jerusalem.
Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a war crime.
Alstom’s would-be Israeli partners had revealed earlier this month that the French firm had backed out, citing concerns over how the settler railway violates Palestinian human rights and international law.
The international human rights group FIDH, Palestine’s Al-Haq and French labor federations CFDT and CGT are among a coalition of organizations that welcomed Alstom’s decision as a “win for law.”
Those organizations have long campaigned to end the complicity of French firms in the railway, which they describe as “a tool of the Israeli settlement and annexation policy” in Jerusalem.
Systra, a subsidiary of French state rail firm SNCF and Paris transit authority RATP, had already pulled out of the Israeli project last year.
Earlier this month, The Electronic Intifada broke the news that Canada’s Bombardier had pulled out, along with Australia’s Macquarie and Germany’s Siemens.
With the withdrawal of the Alstom-led consortium, the number of bids on the light rail expansion dropped from an initial seven to just two – one involving China’s CRRC and one including Spanish firm CAF.
The Palestinian Authority’s office in Athens on Thursday welcomed the decision by a Greek-led consortium not to put in a bid to expand the light rail.
The PA embassy expressed its “deep satisfaction that the deadline for the bidding to construct the light railway project in occupied East Jerusalem expired on 13 May 2019, and neither private nor public Greek companies submitted bids.”
“This decision is a clear expression of rejection of colonization,” the PA office added.
Greece’s government, led by the nominally left-wing party Syriza, had previously given strong backing to the consortium that included publicly owned transit firm STASY and private construction firm GEK Terna.
The PA office thanked lawmakers, trade unions, municipalities and activists who had taken a stand against Greek involvement in the settler railway.
Some of the lawmakers who raised questions in parliament about the Greek bid were from Syriza.
Arab ambassadors had also raised objections over the project in a meeting with the Greek foreign minister, according to the PA.
Last month, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister turned pan-European political campaigner, joined the chorus of criticism.
Varoufakis said he was “deeply ashamed of my former Syriza colleagues” for supporting the project and pledged that his new political movement would “commit to fighting against this.”
Deeply ashamed of my former Syriza comrades. MeRA25 and DiEM25 commit to fighting against this. Watch this spacehttps://t.co/9wvpe6heqb
The French and Palestinian human rights and labor groups are calling on all European governments to “take a clear stance against companies’ involvement in the Israeli policies of annexation, colonization and occupation.”
Chinese role
The other consortium still in the running involves Chinese company CRRC.
“The Chinese entry into the infrastructure market in Israel is alarming the US,” according to Globes.
The Trump administration is mounting a global effort to contain China economically and to sanction companies like CRRC that do business in Iran.
This could place Israel under US pressure not to give the contract to the Chinese-led consortium.
In 2016, China voted to support a UN Security Council resolution reaffirming the illegality of Israel’s settlements and “Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”
If activists keep up the pace and extend their campaign to include pressuring China to match its rhetoric with action, Israel’s settler railway could be going nowhere fast.
The State Department is allowing elderly Mexicans to visit their undocumented children in the United States, reuniting families separated for years, even decades.
MarĂa Dominga Romero LeĂłn, 68, sets aside her embroidery to cook lunch over a fire in her village of Cheran, Mexico. Three of her six children are longtime undocumented immigrants in the United States.
CHERAN, Mexico — MarĂa Dominga Romero LeĂłn bent over a small black suitcase and packed her things, one by one: A folder of photographs, a half-finished blouse, a bag of wooden toys for the grandchildren she’d never met.
It began with a pledge to fight “burning injustices” and ended in tears.
After almost three years in Number 10, the doomed struggle to deliver Brexit, and a snap general election which destroyed her parliamentary majority as well as her own authority, Theresa May is likely to be remembered among the great failures of British political history, rather than among its great leaders.
But it was her struggle to deliver Brexit that defined her whole time in office.
A man (C) enters in a smoking cabin, developed by Southern Globe Corporation (SGC), outside an office building in Singapore on May 22, 2019. Source: Roslan RAHMAN / AFP
Smokers in Singapore will no longer have to sneak a drag on the street, with the launch of the city-state’s first air-conditioned “smoking cabin”, but the experience won few fans among cigarette puffers on Wednesday.
The city-state has some of the world’s strictest anti-tobacco laws and smoking is banned in most public places, with a fine of up to Sg$1,000 ($725) if caught. E-cigarettes are also banned outright.
The new cabins, which are fitted with a Danish filtration system that can purify cigarette smoke before it is released into the air, can reportedly fit up to 10 people at a time.
But tobacco enthusiasts appeared unimpressed, with many choosing to light up at a nearby open-air smoking corner instead.
A man (C) enters in a smoking cabin, developed by Southern Globe Corporation (SGC), outside an office building in Singapore on May 22, 2019. Source: Roslan RAHMAN / AFP
People smoke inside a smoking cabin, developed by Southern Globe Corporation (SGC), outside an office building in Singapore on May 22, 2019. Roslan RAHMAN / AFP
“The atmosphere in there is stifling, honestly. Because it’s so small and squeezy, I feel a bit like a second-class citizen smoking in there,” e-commerce executive Azfar Zain told AFP after using the cabin.
“There are no seats, either. I’m not comfortable with smoking there unless they make the room bigger.”
Office worker Rama Dass said he preferred to smoke outside, adding, “sometimes I just need a bit of fresh air”.
Singapore-based Southern Globe Corporation, which launched the cabin on Tuesday, said it planned to deploy 60 such structures by the end of the year.
Singapore first introduced anti-tobacco laws in the 1970s as part of a national effort to reduce smoking.
It has since expanded the number of public places where lighting up is prohibited, including university campuses, common areas around apartment blocks, and inside private cars with the windows down.
The government should remember that it is for the first time the people of Bangladesh allow this government to run the country for the third time, so there is no excuse if they fail to satisfy the people.
by Swadesh Roy-2019-05-23
The present government has started its consecutive third terms. People gave them a verdict to give more delivery in every sector anticipating the continuation of a government is better for development. For any new government, it would take time to understand the government clearly, for they would design their own economy plan which would vary from the previous government, even they would cut down many economy plans from their previous government.
However, the people of Bangladesh were happy with the economy policy and the development of the Awami league led government of the last ten years, so they wanted this government to continue again. They thought that if the Awami league led government continued again, it would deliver more from the commencement day of the government because it would not be a new government, but a continuation.
In Bangladesh, the government has already passed four and a half months, a very short period of time, but in the west, there is a convention of counting one-hundred-days of any new government when people and the media do a review of these first one hundred days. Basically, they want to show the day through the morning. That is why many governments in the west arrange some programs in the first one hundred days. Although the present government of Bangladesh did not through any extra program for the first one hundred days, one of the leading research-based organizations in Bangladesh analyses the first one hundred days and in their press conference they said that the government couldn’t deliver any new and any extraordinary, but people are happy.
In this third consecutive term of the government, a main thing is that the Prime Minister has selected many new and young ministers, and another thing is that from the very first day the government is very much against any type of corruptions. Besides, the price of necessary commodity is stable. On the other hand, all the big projects, mainly the infrastructure building like coal-based big electricity plants, coal handling port, LNG port, the new seaport, and the remarkable Padma bridge construction are being continued as usual.
But if the government becomes satisfied with these things, they will make a mistake. They have to understand all of these are the continuation of their previous time’s job, and they have to remember that people allow them to run the government for the third term consecutively, so they have to do more new in this term.
Anyway, the government is going to project its new and the first budget of this term on 13 June. As we know, this budget will be a five lakh crore taka’s budget, and if it is a five lakh crore taka’s budget, it is nothing new, just the continuation of the last budget. So, the government should try to enlarge the size of the budget by making it a six or seven lakh crore. Now making a budget of six or seven lakh crore is not an impossible task or a big deal, for our internal market is huge and the money and size of this market is so big that it is easy to make a jump to this budget. To some extent, it is only depending on an optimistic mind; government can make a jump in its first budget. If the government makes a jump in its first budget, the total attitude of the government and its economy will be changed, and the people will be able to understand the result of having a government for the consecutive third-time.
Moreover, this budget should be the broader outline of the next four budgets, and it will be then basically the `morning shows the day.’ In this budget, it should be made clear that, after five years, where Bangladesh will go? Budget is never a copy of an accounting book, budget is not only the guideline of the economy of the government, for sure, it is a mirror on which the face of the government reflects. In this context, the first budget should be that type of magic mirror on which people can see the next five years.
After this budget, according to the guideline of it, the government should start with a full temperament to deliver new and more. The government should remember that it is for the first time the people of Bangladesh allow this government to run the country for the third time, so there is no excuse if they fail to satisfy the people. They should deliver more and even more than what they did last ten years in these upcoming five years. This is not a demand,this is their obvious duty.
Swadesh Roy, Senior Journalist, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is a highest state award winning journalist and can be reached at swadeshroy@gmail.com
Palestinians hold banners during a protest against the German parliament’s vote equating the BDS movement with anti-Semitism, outside Germany’s diplomatic mission in Gaza City on 23 May. A similar march took place a day earlier in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
This week Palestinians marched to Germany’s diplomatic offices in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and in the besieged Gaza Strip to protest the German Bundestag’s recent resolution equating the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.
The marchers in Ramallah on Wednesday delivered a letter signed by representatives of 200 Palestinian civil society groups condemning “in the strongest terms the German parliament’s resolution, which is based on outright lies.”
Yesterday, Palestinians protested against German parliament's resolution which equates BDS with anti-Semitism outside the German representatives office in Ramallah. (Photo WAFA Images / Tamer Bana)
“We note that the resolution was issued on the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, the deliberate and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the displacement of over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians by Zionist militias and, later, the state of Israel,” the letter states.
BDS is an explicitly anti-racist movement modeled on the international solidarity campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa.
It calls for peaceful pressure on Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid – as well as against complicit corporations and institutions – until Israel fully respects Palestinian rights and international law.
More than 40 Jewish organizations around the world have condemned the “the fraudulent conflation between hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other,” the groups recall in their letter.
Chorus of condemnation
Israel and its lobby have been pressuring governments and institutions around the world to adopt definitionsof anti-Semitism that make it easier to justify demonizing and cracking down on campaigners who call for Israel to respect Palestinian rights or who oppose Israel’s state ideology, Zionism.
Zionism is racist because it justifies Israel’s expulsion and exclusion of Palestinians from their homeland, and its violent military attacks and discrimination against them, solely on the grounds that they are not Jewish.
“With this shameful resolution, the Bundestag is undermining the right to freedom of expression, a characteristic of undemocratic and authoritarian regimes, including Israel’s far-right government,” the letter states.
The chorus of condemnation has come from across Palestinian society.
Another Palestinian civil society letter signed by labor and human rights groups calls on international bodies to “to firmly denounce and publicly reject the Bundestag resolution, and to prevent it from passing into law.”
Palestinian Christian groups said they were “saddened and confused” by the German parliament’s condemnation of a movement that “embraces the logic of peaceful means of resistance” against occupation and human rights violations.
Even the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the nominally representative body that is currently controlled by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, called the German Parliament’s resolution “an attack against the Palestinian people and their legitimate and inalienable rights.”
Zionism allied with anti-Semitism
While the vote in the Bundestag is nonbinding, it carries extra symbolism because German elites dress their hostility to Palestinians seeking liberation from Israeli military occupation and apartheid as a form of atonement for the German-led European Christian genocide of European Jews.
In effect, German elites are exporting their Holocaust guilt and making Palestinians pay the price of the crimes of their Nazi parents and grandparents.
The European Union, through its “coordinator on combating antisemitism” Katherina von Schnurbein, has been particularly active in encouraging member states to equate opposition to Zionism, on the one hand, with anti-Jewish bigotry, on the other:
Following the adoption of a resolution on #antisemitism and @TheIHRA definition by the Belgian Senat 14 Dec 2018, today President Jacques Brotchi at @SenaatSenat opened a colloquium discussing in which way #antiZionism is a new form of antisemitism. Organised by @
But as Columbia University professor Joseph Massad recently observed, Israel’s “strategy of equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is, in fact, a strategy to conceal and distract from the very real, old anti-Semitism that was always an ally of the Zionist movement – an alliance that goes back to the 1890s and continues to this very day.”
On the left: Viktor Orban, who praised as an "exceptional statesman" the Nazi puppet Miklos Horthy who sent 500,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths in Hitler's camps.
On the right: Yair Netanyahu.
Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin.
That alliance continues today with the Israeli leadership’s embrace of such far-right, anti-Semitic leaders as US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The Palestinian civil society groups call on the Bundestag to repeal its “anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab resolution” and for Germany to end its complicity in “Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid by banning Israel’s illegal settlement products and services [and] ending all military trade and military research with Israel.”
Mariangel Moro-MAY 24, 2019
Daenerys aims her dragon at King’s Landing in HBO's Game of Thrones. 
MarĂa Dominga Romero LeĂłn, 68, sets aside her embroidery to cook lunch over a fire in her village of Cheran, Mexico. Three of her six children are longtime undocumented immigrants in the United States.
WAFA Images / Tamer Bana)
