Zionism – Features

Sa government faces challenges to arrest war criminals

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Firoz Osman

Has South Africa joined the United States of America and European countries in providing Israel geopolitical insulation?

This question arises against the backdrop of an intense week during which international media attention was focused on whether a senior Israeli politician faced the prospect of being arrested upon her travel to SA.

It also arises because of a perception that the Tzipi Livni trip had been planned months ago and would only proceed without hitch if the SA government had given it a green light.

The (now cancelled) visit by Israel’s leader of the opposition and former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, led to charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity, being laid before the National Director of Public Prosecutions. This is unprecedented in South African history and presents numerous challenges to the judiciary of our country.

Only icc can bring closure on Gaza attacks

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Ibrahim Vawda – Media Review Network

(source: Pretoria News Newspaper, Wed, 20/04/2011, Pg13)

I would like to remind Peter Fabricius and the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), that Richard Goldstone was not the only author of the report submitted by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict on “Operation Cast Lead.” The report was submitted to the United Nations (UN), and an op-ed in the Washington Post does not carry the same weight as a UN commissioned report. Hence, the euphoria displayed by the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and Israeli advocates is best described as a failed public relations exercise.

Hina Gilani, member of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict commented on the Op-ed and confirmed that, “Nothing will change the substance of the original report………….” She further says that, “… No process or acceptable procedure would invalidate the UN report; if it does, it would be deemed as a ‘suspect move’. ”

The Goldstone Report never claimed that Israel “intentionally murdered civilians,” as claimed by his “retraction.” The report said that the force used during Operation Cast Lead was “deliberately disproportionate” and intended to “punish, humiliate and terrorize” the Palestinians. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch emphasises this point when he says that the “crime of indiscriminate war fare” and not “deliberate killing” was Israeli policy. This part of the report is not retracted.

Human Rights Watch, testimonies by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers, “Breaking the Silence,” B’Tselem and Amnesty International concurred with the Goldstone Report.

The most invisible silent embassy

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Stuart Littlewood – London

(source: Palestine Chronicle)

As if they didn’t have enough problems, tormented Palestinians suffer the added misfortune of being represented here in London – the media capital of the western world – by the most invisible and silent embassy it is possible to imagine.

A year ago, campaigners urged the ambassador to get his act together or go home. He angrily retorted that he had "a plan of how to influence British Media to give us the Palestinians more exposure".

Whatever the plan was, it hasn’t worked. Press releases and briefings are non-existent. It is many months since I last heard the ambassador on radio or TV, while his Israeli opposite number pops up on the national airwaves with nauseating regularity. And the Palestinians’ precious shop window – their embassy website – never functioned properly and has now been taken down. What a way, as the Americans say, to run a f***ing railroad. So what’s going on?

Uprising in amazon more urgent than Irans

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

The Uprising In The Amazon Is More Urgent Than Iran’s – It Will Determine The Future Of The Planet
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world

By Johann Hari

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine. In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies – and, for today, they have won.

Here’s the story of how it happened – and how we all need to pick up this fight.

Earlier this year, Peru’s President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 percent of his country’s swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon’s trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia’s plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn’t bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are currently facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block 1AB, said in 2007: "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests." The company denies liability, saying they are "aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts".