Human rights and justice

I recently completed a mission to the Gaza Strip, entering by way of Egypt at the Rafah Crossing; as I am now in Doha attending the final days of the UN Climate Change negotiations, I have had no chance to write a post describing the moving and difficult circumstances that confront the people of Gaza, and the hopes and disappointments that followed the ceasefire that followed the Israeli onslaught; there are concerns about whether it will be fully implemented in accordance with expectations, and if not, whether events will move toward renewed cross-border violence. There are new hopes and complexities on two further fronts: the aftermath of Palestinian success in being confirmed as a non-member state by the General Assembly on November 29, and the new priority being accorded to reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. More than ever since Hamas assumed governing authority in June 2007, foreign leaders...

In appraising political developments most of us rely on trusted sources, our overall political orientation, what we have learned from past experience, and our personal hierarchy of hopes and fears. No matter how careful, and judicious, we are still reaching conclusions in settings of radical uncertainty, which incline our judgments to reflect a priori and interpretative biases. As militarists tends to favor reliance on force to resolve disputes among and within sovereign states, so war weary and pacifist citizens will seek to resolve even the most extreme dire conflict situations by insisting on the potentialities of non-violent diplomacy. In the end, even in liberal democracies most of us are far too dependent on rather untrustworthy and manipulated media assessments to form our judgments about unfolding world events. How then should we understand the terrible ongoing ordeal of violence in Syria?

Keynote Speech at the UN Human Rights Council SOCIAL FORUM  Your Excellencies! The title for this Sixth Social Forum – in the context of the 10 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development of 4 December 1986 – is very well chosen. The focus is on people-centered development – as opposed to system – centered economic growth. And on globalization, a challenging process involving all states and regions, nations and civilizations, humans and nature – as opposed to a globalized market with only three free flows, of capital, goods and services, not labor; increasing the global economic gap. And this in the context of rampant poverty, widening domestic inequalities, economic crises due to the disconnect between real and finance economies and greedy speculation, rising unemployment and popular unrest. Yesterday’s map dividing the world in developed and developing countries makes little sense when many of the developed are...

We transfer you directly to CNN

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Thankfully neither candidate for US president is threatening “a war against dictators”. If George W. Bush had been allowed a third term – as President Franklin Roosevelt was in the 1940s – then who knows where he and his Machiavellian vice-president, Dick Cheney, might have led us. Not for them the observation of General Colin Powell, when he was the US military’s top commander, who said “I am running out of demons”. They managed to find demons all over the place and doubtless if they were in power would have found many more. According to the new issue of World Policy Journal there are at least 10 living dictators who have all the reins of power in their own hands, controlling not just government but the law and the media. The Journal ranks them according to these criteria plus the percentage of the national income spent on the military,...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> When it comes to creating a peace in Afghanistan sufficient for the US and NATO to pull their troops out with some degree of confidence in the country’s future stability history offers conflicting lessons. The mantra is that war-shattered states must be guided into a liberal democracy and a market-orientated economic system. Yet there is much evidence that the process of political and economic liberalization can sometimes do more harm than good in states that have just emerged from civil war. Liberalization doesn’t always foster peace. Both democracy and capitalism are built on a paradox – the notion that societal competition can limit inter-communal competition and dampen conflict.

I have been disturbed by the recent exchanges of personal attacks in the comments section of my blog. I realize that the subject-matter, and my views, are controversial, and attract strong responses for and against. I have tried to be broadly receptive to this broad range of opinions, and have excluded only those that have no substantive serious content. From my perspective some of these views are quite extreme, and as such provocative and deeply objectionable to those who see things differently. This tension among readers of the posts, not surprisingly, is mainly in relation to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and relates to both my views and to those of some of those who take the trouble to submit comments. I had the hope that the comment section could serve as a dialogic channel for the exchange of views, but I increasingly realize that this was an unrealistic wish.

On August 28, an Israeli court rejected a civil lawsuit against Israeli occupation forces for the 2003 murder of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old American peace activist killed in the Gaza Strip, upholding a severely flawed internal Israeli military investigation. Amnesty International strongly condemned the decision, noting how “the verdict continues the pattern of impunity for Israeli military violations against civilians and human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The verdict shields Israeli military personnel from accountability and ignores deep flaws in the Israeli military’s internal investigation of Corrie’s death.”

A new resolution casts such a wide net over anti-Semitism that it includes legitimate opposition to Israeli policies. The California State Assembly has just passed a bipartisan resolution (HR 35) by voice vote which constitutes a serious attack on academic freedom and the rights of students and faculty to raise awareness about human rights abuses by U.S.-backed governments. While purporting to put the legislature on record in opposition of anti-Semitism on state university campuses, it defines anti-Semitism so widely as to include legitimate political activities in opposition to Israeli government policies.

– Month after month professor Richard Falk who is also the UN Secretary-General’s Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, urges you to be aware of this rampant but invisible human rights violation by Israeli authorities. Please speak up, share with your friends and alert your media and politicians wherever you are. Zionist lobbies throw around accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ which could be seen as a psycho-political projection of what might be appropriately be termed ‘anti-Palestinianism’, says blog editor Jan Oberg When it is realized that Mahatma Gandhi shook the British Empire with a series of hunger strikes, none lasting more than 21 days, it is shameful that Palestinian hunger strikers ever since last December continue to exhibit their extreme courage by refusing food for periods ranging between 40 and over 90 days, and yet these exploits are unreported by the media and generally ignored by relevant international institutions. The latest Palestinians who...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> There can be no question that if President Bashar al-Assad of Syria falls the International Criminal Court will want to put him on trial for war crimes. The long arm of international law will reach him wherever he flees to. The ICC has an unblemished record in bringing to The Hague, the Court’s headquarters, the people they want. As the great heavyweight boxer, Joe Louis, once said, “You can run but you can’t hide”. This week a new term begins for the justices.

President Obama has responded to the killing of six members of the Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this last Sunday with these words: “All of us recognize that these kinds of terrible, tragic events are happening with too much regularity. It is time for soul searching and we need to think of ways to reduce violence.” What is most noticeable here, as it was in Obama’s tepid message of consolation to the families of the victims of the Auror a movie theater shooting of two week ago, is this reality: party politics trumps moral principle and even common sense in the aftermath of these extreme challenges to civic peace in America. To fail to mention the grotesque absurdity of legally allowing almost everyone in the United States to buy assault weapons and large quantities of ammunition online or at neighborhood shops can only be explained by the intimidating influence of...