4 years prison for facebook postings

The establishment has gone bonkers. The government is announcing a new policy to deal with "disorder" every day, magistrates are being advised to ignore the usual sentencing rules when dealing with riot related defendants and now a judge has put two young guys away for four years each over stuff they put on facebook, inviting rather than inciting people to riot. Nobody turned up for the riot but the guys still got four years.

I told a criminal barrister last night what I thought I had heard on the radio and she was sure I had misheard. She actually convinced me for a while that I must have misheard.

Looking at most of today's front pages would also lead people to suspect that the belief that a 20 year old and a 22 year old had both been sentenced to 4 years in prison for what they posted on facebook was erroneous. Only two papers had the story on their front pages and they were The Times and the little i. I find that more shocking than the sentences themselves.

This Ian Bone chap puts it all much better than me. And on the riots more generally and the establishment responses to them, Mike Marqusee has a very useful article on his own site.

Justice for Itamar?

Magnes Zionist explains why there can never be justice in the case of the Fogel family members killed in the Itamar settlement now that two people have been arrested in connection with the case:

 I am puzzled by the silence of the decent folk here. Even if one is convinced that the Itamar murder suspects actually committed the murder – and given the justice system on the West Bank, that is hardly to be taken for granted – the manner of apprehending the suspects clearly involved massive violations of their due process, not to mention collective punishment of innocents.

Would we tolerate this sort of "investigation" if it were conducted against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship within the Green Line? And if a serial killer was discovered in Tel Aviv, would we tolerate the police going to a neighborhood where the murdered was known to have lived, rounding up people with no criminal record, or with no reasonable tie to the murders, arresting them in the middle of the night, at times, and questioning them, taking from men and women DNA samples forcibly, and damaging their property – so as to apprehend murder suspects? Would we tolerate this in murder cases where settlers are suspects?

Even if the murder suspects get a fair trial – and knowing West Bank justice, the likelihood is low -- we already know that justice will not be done in the Itamar murder case.

Mondoweiss has a useful roundup of news of the arrests.

Why is Goldstone now covering for Israel?

I'm revisiting this Goldstone affair because it's so troubling:

If you see Goldstone's op-ed piece in the Washington Post about his report and how it would be different if only the Israelis had co-operated and if he knew then what he knows now, the immediate issue is that he wrote the op-ed on his own and without any reference to his colleagues on the original report team.  Why was that?  Who authorised him to do this?  If he simply woke up one morning and phoned the Post and asked if he could jot down a quick and implausible mea culpa that would be weird in itself.  But how did it happen that the Washington Post was prepared to allow an eminent judge, Goldstone, to write such a ludicrous article and hammer a nail into the coffin of his career or at least his credibility as a judge of international conduct?

So the mere fact that he has written the article, no matter what it was saying, is both bizarre and plain morally, and possibly legally wrong.  But his logic is bizarre too. In my previous post on this I took issue with his focus on one case to the exclusion of others. But let's look again at how Goldstone tries to exonerate Israel this time around:

the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

But if Goldstone is telling the truth now, then second guessing is precisely what he was doing then. Poor old Israel thought that there was some kind of weaponry in a house that happened to have 29 civilians inside. Poor old Israel responded in the only way a responsible state could respond. Of course, it could have been negligent in which case, Goldstone is confident it will "respond accordingly". But when a suspect exercises their right to silence, judges usually direct juries to refrain from presumptions of guilt, don't they? If what Goldstone is saying now is true, then he presumed Israel guilty. But let's take a look at how the 29 members of the al-Samouni family died. Here's the Washington Post from the time:

Just before dawn on Jan. 4, a sledgehammer crashed through the living-room wall of the home of Almaz al-Samuni in this southern enclave of Gaza City, pounding a hole wide enough for someone to poke a rifle through while shouting in a language she didn't understand.

"Get out of the house now," an Israeli soldier ordered, this time in accented Arabic, she recalled. Almaz, small for her age of 13, and her family quickly did as they were told, heading for her uncle Wael's house nearby, where by daybreak 92 family members had packed in thigh-to-thigh. It was a week into Israel's 22-day war with Hamas.

So some al-Samouni's were ordered into the house of another al-Samouni. I mention that because Goldstone didn't.

At least 29 members of the Samuni family died over the next two weeks -- including Almaz's mother and two brothers. Sixteen or more were killed Jan. 5 when at least two Israeli shells smashed Wael al-Samuni's crowded house. 

So it took two weeks for Israel's possible negligence, over which it will "respond accordingly", to result in the killing of 29 members of the same family. Again, I mention this because from reading the Goldstone re-report you would never know that. And there's more:

At least six others wounded in that attack died more slowly, over more than three days when the Israeli army kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood, according to another teenager who had been stranded and later rescued from the house.

So Israel "kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood". Negligence? Is Goldstone calling the witnesses liars? Just a little caveat here:

This account of the Zaytoun attack and its aftermath was taken primarily from interviews with a dozen members of the Samuni family who survived the assault, as well as statements and patient logs from Gaza City's Shifa and al-Quds hospitals. The information largely parallels an earlier account given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that by thwarting rescue efforts for four days Israel had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law."

It's that absence of Israeli testimony again but Goldstone has severely glossed over the case of 29 members of the same family as if they were killed in one erroneous shelling when it took two weeks for them all to be killed and many appear to have died specifically because the Israeli army denied them emergency medical attention.

Well, in fairness, Judge Goldstone was only writing an op-ed for the Washington Post. He wasn't rewriting his entire report. Otherwise he might have mentioned the complaints of Israel using blindfolded civilians as human shields.  But somehow he managed to mention the recent murders at Itamar. He doesn't mention Itamar by name but see this:

the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

Now why should the Human Rights Council condemn a straightfoward, admittedly heinous, case of murder? Is Judge Goldstone accusing a political or state actor of these murders? If so, he has one up on the Israeli authorities who appear to be as clueless now about the atrocity that took place under their own jurisdiction in a very secure settlement from which Palestinians are barred as they were at the time.  Is he doing again what he is basically accusing himself of doing in his original report? Assuming guilt by accusation? And who is he accusing? Will he now involve himself in unsolved murders the world over? I'm guessing not.

So where does this leave us? Goldstone has pretty much shredded his credibility which means he has in many ways shredded the original report. We can speculate as to why he wrote such a ludicrous article but the result is to undermine his credibility on just about anything, certainly anything involving Israel or any other pet project of the west.

I should point out that there is a certain amount of hedging in the op-ed.  There are ifs and buts blaming Israel for not co-operating and little hints that there were individual cases if wrong-doing but the negation of a general policy of war criminality  whilst hurling tabloid style abuse at Hamas does shows the general thrust of the op-ed to be an apology to Israel and an apologetic for Israel.

The best zionist approach to this would be to simply leave well alone now but many want a feed frenzy as  Conal Urquhart reports on the op-ed in The Guardian.

Israeli media responded to Goldstone's article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma'ariv writers were unforgiving.

One wrote: "He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy" and had perpetrated "a despicable and shameful act".

Urquhart picks up, uncritically, the story of the 29 members of the al-Samouni family. I think that says as much about Urquhart as it does about the harm that Goldstone has now done whatever the latter's motive.

We can speculate as to why so eminent a judge has made himself look so ludicrous and in so widely read a newspaper. People will say that he simply couldn't take the pressure, I think we can rule out bribery.  He could have been directly threatened or had members of his family threatened but all of that speculation would miss the point that Goldstone has written an utterly ludicrous article in order to cover for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Israel must own up to calorie counting in Gaza

From the Gisha website:

·         The Defense Ministry must reveal the "red lines document" in which the state apparently established the minimum caloric intake required for the survival of residents of the Gaza Strip.

·         The court also demanded that the Defense Ministry reveal the names and positions of the officials enforcing the closure of Gaza, which were blacked out in the documents previously provided to Gisha.

·         In a two-year-long legal proceeding, Gisha managed to reveal additional documents connected with the closure policy: the procedure for monitoring and assessing inventories in the Gaza Strip, the procedure for approving transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip and the list of humanitarian products whose transfer into the Gaza Strip is permitted.

Gisha is Israel's "Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.

The need for the sabbath goy?

Could the Sabbath Goy be the Judaic principle standing between the Palestinians and an Arabrein Israel? The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has approved a bill that means that towns will be able to cherry pick their populations.

Israel already has towns designated by ethno-religious criteria - Jewish, Arab or mixed - and there are clearly no-go areas for Arabs throughout Palestine so this latest bill, like so many passing through the Knesset these days, merely adds insult to injury, compounding the racism of the most racist of states, the State of Israel.

Racism is vented not simply by the proposing or passing of these bills into law but also in their discussion. See this from Ha'aretz:

Israeli Arab MKs were outraged by the proposal and walked out on the committee's discussion of it.

MK Talab al-Sana (United Arab List – Ta'al) called the bill racist and said it was meant to prevent Arabs from joining Israeli towns. MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List – Ta'al) compared the bill to racist laws in Europe during World War Two, and the two told the committee members before leaving the hall: "We will not cooperate with this criminal law – you have crossed the line."

The committee's chairman, David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu), responded to claims the bill was meant to reject Arabs from joining Israeli towns. "In my opinion, every Jewish town needs at least one Arab. What would happen if my refrigerator stopped working on a Saturday?"

What a lovely man. Zionists are particularly fond of pointing out that there are Arab members of the Knesset. They tend not to say how routinely they suffer racial abuse from their parliamentary colleagues.

But still, the committee chairman was only echoing the sentiment of the spiritual leader of the Shas party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who recently caused no stir at all when he announced that gentiles were created to serve Jews.

From the Jerusalem Post:

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.”

That's assuming the Arab has kept the fridge in good working order.

Woops, the UK is still not quite a safe haven for war criminals

Sorry all. According to AJP in the comments box to the previous post, the UK is yet to change its rules on universal jurisdiction and so Israeli war crimes suspects, like say Tzipi Livni, still can't set foot in the UK unless they want to risk the indignity of leaving the country without even breathing the fresh Heathrow air, like that Almog chappie.

Spain is not the Costa del War Crime

Brits have long known Spain as the Costa del Crime because of its lack of extradition treaty with the UK though I think it has one now. Now, ironically, whilst the UK has changed its laws on universal jurisdiction to facilitate the comings and goings of Israeli war criminals, Spain has yet to fall into line. According to Yediot Ahranot or YNET, Israeli Knesset Member (MK), Avi Dichter, has been warned that he could face arrest if he turns up in Spain. Check out the crimes he is alleged to have been involved in. All the links in the YNET piece have been added by me and they link to wikipedia but remember zionists are all over that site and it shows:

MK Avi Dichter (Kadima) was planning on taking part in an international peace summit in Spain over the weekend, but was forced to cancel over fears he would be arrested, and possibly imprisoned, by Madrid authorities, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.

According to report several days ago, a Spanish organization called The Madrid Coalition, invited Israeli and Palestinian representatives to take part in a summit focusing on the peace process and the Saudi initiative. Senior officials from the Palestinian Authority, including Mohammed Dahlan had RSVP'd to the event.

The Madrid Coalition works in cooperation with the former Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos. The summit organizers decided to invite a small group of MKs from Israel to take part in the summit. Former Shin Bet Chief MK Avi Dichter was set to lead the delegation.

Earlier this week, Dichter requested to look into the possibility that he may face legal action in Spain over complaints against him for his involvement in the Salah Shehade assassination, which took place when Dichter was head of Shin Bet) and for his involvement in Operation Cast Lead, Dichter was Minister of Public Security at the time). After looking into the legal aspects of the situation,

Madrid officials told Dichter that Spain did not intend to offer him immunity from arrest or interrogation, after which he cancelled his participation in the event.

Salah Shehade is the Hamas chap who was killed by way of a one ton bomb dropped on an apartment building he was in. 14 other people, including Shehade's wife and 9 children, were killed in the same attack, though he was supposedly the target.

Judges tell judge, Silence in court!

A UK judge, in summing up in a case of some activists putting an arms factory in the UK out of action to save lives in Gaza, mentioned that what the Israelis are doing to Gaza isn't nice. He also commended the bravery of one or other of the activists. Well apparently, according to the Jewish Chronicle, some senior judges have officially "reprimanded" the guy.

The judge who suggested that one of the anti-Israel activists who was acquitted of damaging an arms factory should be awarded the George Cross has been reprimanded for his “personal views”.

Judge George Bathurst-Norman made the comments in his 87-page summing up of the July trial of seven activists who broke into the Brighton EDO MBM factory last year.

The “Smash EDO” group were acquitted of causing £180,000 worth of damage to the building, which they believed supplied Israel with arms equipment.

In his summing-up speech, he told the Hove Crown Court jury: “You may well thing that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered at that time.”

In a statement released today, a spokesperson for the Office for Judicial Complaints said: “At short notice, the judge assigned to try a politically sensitive trial at Hove Crown Court on 28 and 29 June 2010 was unable to sit. To avoid an adjournment, His Honour Bathurst-Norman agreed to replace to him.

“A number of complaints were made about some of the observations he made during the trial and summing up. An investigation found that a number of these observations did not arise directly from the evidence at trial and could be seen as an expression of the judge’s personal views on a political question. This was an error.

“The Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice considered the conclusions of the investigation and HH Bathurst-Norman was formally reprimanded.”

Of course, this doesn't change the outcome of the case and the case does still demonstrate that when the racist war criminals of the State of Israel are subjected to forensic examination they are generally found guilty, certainly more guilty than those who damage the equipment used (or to make the equipment used to make the equipment used) to commit the crimes that maintain the State of Israel as a foreign legion permanently garrisoned on the crossroads of Africa and Asia and existing at the expense of its native and neighbouring populations.

PS - here's an interesting factoid. George Alfred Bathurst Norman was born on 15 January 1939 at Tel Aviv, Israel. I'm assuming it's the same guy. There are zionists all over the internet going ape about this case and they are just thrilled with the reprimand. If this Bathurst Norman is the one who presided over the case then just watch the zionists try to make out that his place of birth had something to do with his summing up and therefore the outcome of the case.

Judge states obvious, shock!

Many thanks to a Simon Natas for posting this Guardian online article to the Just Peace UK list. It has Melanie Phillips's husband, Joshua Rozenberg, worrying that protesters who caused damage at an arms manufacturer's factory successfully availed of a "prevention of a worse crime" defence.

People may remember the case from back in July this year:

His Honour George Bathurst-Norman presided over the trial of eight campaigners who were acquitted of conspiring to cause criminal damageat a company in Brighton involved in the manufacture of weapons components for Israeli F-16 fighter jets.

Bathurst-Norman – who retired in 2004 and, therefore, sat as a deputy circuit judge – correctly directed the jury that a defendant has a lawful excuse for damaging someone's property in order to protect property belonging to someone else.

For that defence to apply, it is also necessary to show that the defendant believed that the other person's property was in immediate need of protection and that the means of protection used were reasonable in the circumstances. That would cover the case of a firefighter who smashes a window because he/she believes that a building may be in danger.

In this case, the defendants argued that they had damaged property in Brighton to protect property in Gaza from being damaged by the Israeli air force.

They also argued that they were entitled to use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of crime – in this case, war crimes. Unlike the "lawful excuse" defence, this is an objective test.

It appears from Bathurst-Norman's summing-up that the Crown Prosecution Service had accepted the defendants' claim that the Israelis were guilty of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, nearly two years ago.

That led the judge to make his personal feelings very clear while, in the same breath, telling the jury to ignore them. He said, for example: "It may be as you went through what I can only describe as horrific scenes, scenes of devastation to civilian population, scenes which one would rather have hoped to have disappeared with the Nazi regimes of the last war, you may have felt anger and been absolutely appalled by them, but you must put that emotion aside."

Using the classic formulation that judges adopt when distancing themselves from their own remarks, he added: "You may think that perhaps 'hell on earth' would be an understatement of what the Gazans endured at that time."

There have been calls for Bathurst-Norman to be disciplined over these remarks. He would no doubt say he was doing no more than reminding the jury of the evidence they had heard. The regulations under which judges may be disciplined say that a complaint must be dismissed if "it is about a judicial decision or judicial case management, and raises no question of misconduct".

That leaves Bathurst-Norman in the clear. Even so, I would not be surprised if Lord Judge, the lord chief justice, took the opportunity to remind judges that they should not appear to be giving their own opinions when addressing a jury.

More difficult, perhaps, is the decision to be taken by Dominic Grieve, the attorney general. Under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1972, he may seek the opinion of the court of appeal on a point of law in a case that has led to an acquittal. Whatever the outcome, however, the acquittal remains unaffected.

Grieve has been asked – by me and, I believe, others – to seek a ruling from the higher courts on whether the end can justify the means in cases such as this.

To some extent, senior judges have said it cannot – particularly Lord Hoffmann when ruling on charges of criminal damage and aggravated trespass against defendants seeking to disrupt Britain's involvement in the Iraq war.

But that case dealt with different offences. Without a clear ruling from the courts, there is a risk that campaigners will regard Bathurst-Norman's summing-up as some sort of legal precedent. It is not.

Hmm. I don't know if it is or it isn't. As the article says, there have been other examples of such defences being successful though I couldn't find any mention of the Raytheon case.

Zionists are particularly anxious about this case. If you followed the link above to the Daily Mail article, you would have seen that the headline claimed that the judge was accused of, guess what, antisemitism. If you read the article you would see that no one is actually quoted as accusing the judge of antisemitism, not even Jonathan Hoffman of Zionist Federation notoriety. Now that could have been interesting and it still could be. The judge compared the Israeli army actions in Gaza to the wartime atrocities of the nazis and, of course, the zionists in Europe are trying to get that kind of thing made illegal as it forms one of the examples of the stupid EUMC "working definition" of antisemitism. If that got tested in (and thrown out of) court, where would that leave the zionist campaign to have criticism of Israel made illegal?

Israel's lack of legitimacy

I just stumbled on this article by Faisal Bodi in The Guardian. I could call it timely but being titled Israel simply has no right to exist, as long as the State of Israel exists it will always be as timely as it was when it was first published in January 2001. I remember when it was first published. It is one of maybe two articles that have zionists whingeing that The Guardian is anti-Israel but have a read of it. It's all very straight forward:

Several years ago, I suggested in my students' union newspaper that Israel shouldn't exist. I also said the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect a call from the grim reaper.
Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right to exist. I know it's a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find irresponsible. But it's a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula.

Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical statement. Its raison d'être was famously delineated by former prime minister Golda Meir. "This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account."

That biblical promise is Israel's only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham that "unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates," it is doubtful that he intended it to be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited and owned by others.

It does no good to anyone to brush this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table. But that has been the failing with Oslo. When it signed the agreement, the PLO made the cardinal error of assuming that you could bury the hatchet by rewriting history. It accepted as a starting point that Israel had a right to exist. The trouble with this was that it also meant, by extension, an acceptance that the way Israel came into being was legitimate. As the latest troubles have shown, ordinary Palestinians are not prepared to follow their leaders in this feat of intellectual amnesia.

Israel's other potential claim to legitimacy, international recognition, is just as dubious. The two pacts which sealed Palestine's future were both concluded by Britain. First we signed the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, pledging to divvy up Ottoman spoils in the Levant. A year later, in 1917, the Balfour Declaration promised a national home for the Jewish people. Under international law the declaration was null and void since Palestine did not belong to Britain - under the pact of the League of Nations it belonged to Turkey.

By the time the UN accepted a resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled 80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country.

This then is the potted history of the iniquities surrounding its own birth that Israel must acknowledge in order for peace to have a chance. After years of war, peace comes from forgiving, not forgetting; people never forget but they have an extraordinary capacity to forgive. Just look at South Africa, which showed the world that a cathartic truth must precede reconciliation.

Far from being a force for liberation and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle of conflict. The "promise" breeds an arrogance which institutionalises the inferiority of other peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews.

More crucially, the promise limits Israel's capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties. It does not heal old wounds, let alone redress historical wrongs.

However, take away the biblical right and suddenly mutual coexistence, even a one-state solution, doesn't seem that far-fetched. What name that coexistence will take is less important than the fact that peoples have forgiven and that some measure of justice has been restored. Jews will continue to live in the Holy Land - as per the promise - as equals alongside its other rightful inhabitants.

If that kind of self-reproach is forthcoming, Israel can expect the Palestinians to be forgiving and magnanimous in return. The alternative is perpetual war.

I tried to see what Bodi is up now. He certainly has his detractors but that article certainly hits the spot.

Tomlinson Family Fighting Fund

Ian Tomlinson's family have now established a fighting fund in the wake of the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute anyone over the death of Ian Tomlinson. Now read on...

I found this on the New Left Project site first but it is a site in its own right:

New G20 footage shows Ian Tomlinson being hit by a policeman
Uploaded by ITN. - Up-to-the minute news videos.

About the Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign

This website and the Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign has been set up by Ian's family. We are grateful for the huge amount of public support received since Ian’s tragic death on April 1st 2009 at the G20 protests in London. It has been very hard for our family particularly following the release of images of the police assault on Ian emerged. Ian is deeply missed by us and we simply want justice for him.

We may have a long and difficult journey ahead to achieve justice and we will rely on your continued support.

Our family has set up this campaign for the following reasons:

• To demand a full investigation into Ian’s death that scrutinises the individual conduct and operational command tactics of police officers present at the G20 protest and those in command of them when Ian was assaulted and died

• To call for full criminal charges to be brought against any officer whose actions or failure of duty resulted in Ian’s death

• To campaign for change to any police policies, tactics or frequent abuses of power which may effectively endanger people’s lives rather than protect them, so that future deaths and injuries to the public can be prevented

• To raise awareness of any issues we may experience as a family seeking justice through statutory and judicial systems that are a cause for public concern

These are some things you may wish to do for now to support our campaign:

• Keep updated by checking this official family website for press releases, news articles and updates

• Join the official campaign mailing list by e-mail atiantomlinsonfamilycampaign@gmail.com and send any messages of support or ideas to this address.

• Stay in contact – send us updates of any events you have organised including pictures, letters received back, press articles etc.

• Write to your MP

• Direct any witness information to our lawyers so it may be used in evidence

With thanks,

Family of Ian Tomlinson

This post has previously appeared as Tomlinson Family Fight Funding. Woops! Many thanks to all those who didn't notice.

Justice in the land of the free

Prosecutors working for the Bush Administration accused the HLF of supporting Hamas by trying to "win hearts and minds" of the Palestinian population through humanitarian assistance, and that the charities HLF worked with were "front groups" for the political party. But after several years of wiretapping phone lines, seizing documents and following money trails, the prosecution couldn't support its allegations of an HLF-Hamas connection. Elashi said they then resorted to calling on an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer, who called himself "Avi," as a key witness who told the jury he was an expert who could "smell Hamas."

"It was the only time in the history of the United States that a witness inside a courtroom was allowed to remain anonymous, so the defense couldn't cross-examine him," Elashi said. "That in and of itself is huge grounds for appeal."

In fact, Israeli intelligence officers, in an unprecendented move, were allowed to testify in secret using pseudonyms and disguises and without the defense being given a full opportunity to cross-examine them during the 2006 federal trial in Chicago of American citizen Muhammad Salah and stateless Palestinian Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Accused of "racketeering" charges related to fundraising for Hamas, both men were acquitted of all the terrorism-related charges, but each was found guilty on single counts of obstruction of justice; Salah for lying on a form in a civil case and Ashqar for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

...

Meanwhile, private, US-based, pro-Israel groups are currently sending millions of dollars every year to support illegal settlement colonies and right-wing Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank. The New York Times reported on 5 July that at least 40 US-based organizations are actively donating more than $200 million in tax-deductible "gifts" to build and sustain illegal settlements. According to the Times, some of the donations also pay for "legally questionable" items such as bulletproof vests, guard dogs, weapon accessories and armored security vehicles ("Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank"). (Electronic Intifada)

Of course, there is that arcane document called "the constitution," supposedly there to guide the application of justice, which says that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him..." But the legal system of the land of the free, which in practice means the land with the highest per capita number of people deprived of their liberty, always made an exception for people of less than white complexion, the exact boundaries of said complexion being amenable to change.

Megrahi update

This oil spill business in the Gulf of Mexico has now washed up on the shores of Scotland with some American senators suggesting that BP may have lobbied to get Megrahi, the Libyan chap convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, freed from a Scottish jail. Cameron is grovelling to the yanks over the case but the sister of one of the victims is not so thrilled:

It is difficult to contain my anger at the announcement of the latest attempt by the US to discredit the administration of justice in respect of the prosecution and sentencing of the Lockerbie perpetrator(s). It is impossible to disguise my contempt for successive leaders of a nation which vaunts its model of democracy as sufficiently valuable to justify interference in other states' internal affairs.

After long international consideration, a unique court constituted for that purpose with agreed jurisdiction tried two men for the bombing. Megrahi alone was convicted. After the conviction, managing his sentence was a matter for the Scottish administration, and as the sister of one of the victims of the incident I both advocated for Megrahi's release and was delighted Scotland did free him.

It is not relevant to this decision that Megrahi may now have recovered somewhat. I wish him well and hope that, whether or not the conviction accurately reflected what actually happened, he will find some peace in the rest of his life.

What an insult by the US to all of us who have a direct personal interest in discovering and dealing with the truth about the largest modern mass murder in Britain, a truth which as yet is very far from ascertained.

Julia Cadman

St Helens, Merseyside

These opportunists across the pond ought to be careful. The truth might come out that Megrahi had nothing to do with the bombing in the first place.

Israel played the holocaust card for passport

I used to think that Israel's playing of the holocaust card was all about emotion but there's money to be had as Norman Finkelstein points out in the Holocaust Industry and now it turns out there are passports to be had. While the world's attention has been diverted by the flotilla and the World Cup, the case of the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai has rumbled on with one country after another expelling this or that Israeli diplomat/Mossad agent.

Well in Germany events have taken a twist given the way in which the German authorities believe the Israelis acquired a German passport. Here's Der Spiegel:

The day the Mossad operation on German soil began was a clear, sunny Sunday in late March 2009. Alexander Verin, who holds an Israeli passport, had an appointment with an attorney in Cologne to discuss naturalization. Verin was accompanied by a man named Michael Bodenheimer, who claimed that he was an Israeli of German descent. Bodenheimer wanted to apply for a German passport, but Verin, who had made the appointment, was doing most of the talking.

The two men explained that Bodenheimer's father Hans had emigrated to Israel to escape Nazi persecution. As proof, the Israelis showed the attorney what they claimed was the parents' marriage certificate, as well as a passport. In such cases, which number around 3,000 a year, Article 116 of Germany's constitution provides for a relatively straightforward naturalization procedure.
The two Israelis were staying in a Cologne hotel. Bodenheimer would later rent an apartment on a run-down street in Cologne's Eigelstein neighborhood, in a nondescript, sand-colored apartment building with a pizza takeout restaurant on the ground floor, near the railroad station. It was the perfect, cheap apartment for someone who didn't want to be noticed.

On June 16, 2009, the attorney submitted the naturalization application to a registry office in Cologne. A German passport was issued in the name of Michael Bodenheimer two days later. It looked like a routine procedure.

But it was everything but routine when the passport was used in January in connection with the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

I remember thinking at the time of the killing of al-Mabhouh that the Israelis were happy to implicate so many of their allies in the killing and nothing would come of it. In fact, I thought that the elements of the job that looked botched were as deliberate as the killing itself but now Poland has made an arrest that could be deeply embarrassing for Israel:

on June 4, 2010, Polish police arrested a man at Warsaw airport who German investigators believed was Alexander Verin. He now goes by the name Uri Brodsky, at least according to the passport he was carrying. German federal prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for the man, who they believe is an agent, on the basis of suspected involvement in intelligence activities on German soil and helping to obtain documents illegally. It is possible that his real name is neither Verin nor Brodsky.

What is clear, however, is that the arrest has triggered a crisis in Israel that has sparked questions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, cast a shadow on German-Israeli relations and could in fact turn into a serious political test of the relationship between the two countries. It is the first arrest worldwide that is directly related to the Dubai murder. German officials in Berlin are outraged that the Mossad apparently obtained a genuine German passport under false pretenses that involved -- of all things -- a fake story of Nazi persecution.

If the Polish government extradites the Israeli to Germany, he could face up to five years in prison. It would deal a major blow to German-Israeli relations if a German court, under the eyes of the world's media, sent a Jewish agent to prison because he worked for the Mossad.

And now there will all sorts of wrangling with senior Israeli politicians going on record to say how their man must be sprung from Polish or German authorities but:

German law forbids foreign intelligence services from conducting unauthorized operations on German soil, and it does not provide an exception for the Mossad. The Israelis did not request German permission to conduct the operation in question, because the Germans would never have permitted the use of a passport to facilitate a murder. And once a case has been opened in a constitutional democracy like Germany, the wheels of justice start turning.

I don't think the sheer arrogance of Israel's operations in the international arena can be divorced from their zionist ideology but they seem to be getting more accident prone lately and their allies are losing patience with them.

Criminalising BDS?

Actually this report isn't so much about criminalising boycott, divestment and sanctions as making it/them (?) illegal by civil means. This is from Jewish Voices for Peace project, Israel: The only democracy in the Middle East?

What is Israel’s reaction to the growing nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions? Well criminalize it, of course!

We just learned new bill has been introduced in the Israeli Knesset by 25 Knesset members, that would criminalize all BDS activities or even BDS advocacy inside or outside Israel. You can find info about this in English here and with more detail in Hebrew here.

The proposed bill would target those that initiate, encourage, or provide assistance or information about boycotts against Israel.

Israeli citizens or residents of Israel could be sued by whoever was harmed by the boycott and would have to pay up to 30,000 shekels in restitution and an additional amount according to the harm established by the Israeli courts.
This provision would endanger the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, New Profile, Boycott from Within, among others.

Those that are neither citizens nor residents of Israel would lose the ability of entering Israel for at least ten years and would be forbidden from economic activity in Israel (holding an account in an Israeli bank, owning Israeli stocks, land, or any other good that requires registration.)
It is not clear whether this provision would apply also to entry into the West Bank, although Prof. Noam Chomsky’s denial of entry may be a sign of things to come.

A group in a foreign country would also be forbidden from economic activism in Israel. This would apply tothe Palestinian Authority as well.
In the case of the PA, Israel would freeze transfer of money it owes and would use it to pay restitution to those harmed in Israel.

So Israel is mostly delegating the defence of zionist rule in occupied Palestine to individuals and corporations, unlike Scottish prosecutors who really did try to criminalise anti-racist activity.

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities

Here's a letter in today's Independent on the racist stereotyping of Muslims by various state agencies in the UK:

Smears and abuse of al-Qa'ida suspects

The Pakistani students accused of a terrorist plot have been spared deportation to torture, but they have been subjected to more abuse by the British state (" 'Al-Qa'ida operative' must not be deported to Pakistan, says judge", 19 May). As a present-day star chamber, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) has again accepted racist stereotyping of Muslims as terrorist threats, based partly on secret evidence which remains unknown to the accused and their defence lawyers. This character assassination is a substitute for a criminal trial, with its guaranteed procedures for testing evidence. SIAC colludes with MI5 and the Home Office in this attack on democratic rights.

Les Levidow, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), London NW5

Israeli victims?

In case you were wondering how the UK government is going to justify changing the law to allow Israeli war crimes suspects a free pass to enter and leave the UK without the fear of prosecution, yesterday's Guardian showed the way in an article by Alan Travis and Ian Black:

Changes in the law to remove the threat of foreign politicians becoming victims of "politically motivated" war crime arrests every time they visit Britain have been postponed until after the general election.

So that's it. Israelis suspected of crimes against humanity are to be considered victims now. Poor little lambs.

Book launch 5 October 2009

Shameless plug for a friend's book:

From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949

Here's the lowdown on the launch:

Date: Monday 5 October
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, 43 Upper Grosvenor St, London W1K 2NJ

Speakers:

Victor Kattan
Dr Brian Klug
Professor Mashood Baderin

Chair: Michel Abdel-Massih QC

This event is free, but guest-listing is compulsory for admittance. Please RSVP to info@arabmediawatch.com or 07956 455 528.

The book will be on sale at the event at a special 33% discount price of £20.

And here's the blurb:

About the book

The Palestine-Israel conflict often raises questions about international law, related to both Israel's legitimacy and violent Palestinian resistance to occupation. This book is the first of its kind to study the international legal methods used to create Israel, shedding light on the conflict as it exists today.

Kattan shows that international law was both flouted and manipulated in order to create a Jewish homeland in 1948, and that this disregard for international legality caused much of the dispute and violence that exists today. The period of the British Mandate is analysed very closely, revealing the lobbying tactics that were dressed up as legal imperative and used to deny Palestinians rights to land and self-determination.

This revealing and painstakingly researched book is a must for students of international law and anyone interested in the origins of the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict.

Read a review of the book at:

http://tinyurl.com/lubjqg

You might find further details here.

See you on the 5th Oct then...

Outlawing anti-racism?

The zios are at it again with an attempt to outlaw condemnation of the State of Israel. I saw this coming some time ago with the European Union Monitoring Committee's ludicrous and anti-Jewish definition of antisemitism that includes likening zionism to nazism or the State of Israel to nazi Germany and accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid. It also says that it is antisemitic to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination which is effectively saying that it is antisemitic to say that Jews are not allowed to get away with ethnic cleansing and exclusive Jewish sovereignty over a territory that most Jews don't come from.

Just an aside here. I tried the link to the EUMC working definition of antisemitism on this previous JSF post and the document has disappeared. So if you want a look at it try Batholomew's notes on religion.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, outlawing criticism or condemnation of the racist endeavour that is the State of Israel. Here's the Jewish Chronicle:

Parliament will be asked to consider whether the use of Nazi symbols and terms in reference to Jews, Israel and Zionism is breaking the law on incitement to racial hatred.

A new report by the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA) has highlighted the increasing use of what it terms the “Nazi card” in antisemitic discourse and has called for a number of measures to try to combat its spread.

“Playing the Nazi card” has been defined in the report as the use of Nazi-related terms or symbols — for example intertwining the swastika with the Star of David — while negatively referring to Jews, Israel, Zionism or other aspects of what it calls the Jewish experience.

The report, which was jointly published by EISCA and the Department for Communities and Local Government, recommends that the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police officers (ACPO) and the Crown Prosecution Service should prepare new guidance for the police on whether this kind of terminology amounts to incitement.

The report says that universities and adult education colleges should be surveyed to establish how they deal with antisemitic discourse.

It also suggests that the University and College Union and the National Union of Journalists use the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s definition of antisemitism to improve their harassment policies.

This is utterly insane. I was just discussing this with someone on the Just Peace UK list. If the EUMC's thoroughly dishonest definition of antisemitism passes into law we will have the absurd situation where EU states amend their laws to allow Israeli war criminals to freely come and go to and from Europe whilst Israeli dissidents and oppositionists could face prosecutions in EU countries if they so much as call for the Palestinians to be allowed the right of return.

Zionism and books

French Zionist thugs assaulted a radical bookstore in Paris, smashing computers and destroying books.

Librairie Résistances agressée
envoyé par chrisdenhond. - L'info internationale vidéo.

The JDL, Jewish Defense League, to which the thugs claimed to belong, is considered a terrorist group in the U.S., but is legal in France, perhaps because France has an infamous history of assaults on anti-colonial bookstores. Perhaps because Jews can do no wrong in France.

This is Zionism. More on that at Tony Greenstein, Europalestine and Kedma (multilingual).