More protective words from Tom Harris

Further to our prior correspondence, another exchange with Tom Harris, MP.
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24 February 2010

Dear Mr Hilley

Please forgive my failure to previously to give you [sic] an unambiguous response to your request that I sign Early Day Motion 502: I will not.

As for Ivan Lewis's membership of Labour Friends of Israel, I am absolutely confident that membership of Labour Friends of Israel, as indeed a pro-Palestinian grouping, would have no bearing on his ability to carry out his ministerial duties.

Best wishes

Tom Harris MP
Member of Parliament for Glasgow South

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26 February 2010

Dear Mr Harris

Thanks for your unqualified statement on Early Day Motion 502. Your rejection of a parliamentary initiative to bring known state murderers to justice is duly noted. The main point was to have your dismissal of 502 on record.

Yes, Ivan Lewis is most able to dispense his ministerial duties, foremost among which is his government's selective resolve to protect and advance Israeli interests at all costs. Lewis's Labour Friends of Israel membership and his ministerial duties for the Middle East are an obvious conflict of interest and should invalidate him from holding such office.

I'm sure you can also see how that close affiliation influences Lewis's and other LFI members' view of the issues, including Goldstone, but choose to deny the obvious with your "confident" 'assurance' about his ministerial 'objectivity'. It's all part of the same political closure reserved for Israel.

The Foreign Office's soft treatment of Israel and its ambassador over the recent assassination in Dubai is the latest example of that selective protection. Imagine the government's reaction if such a plot, with covert use of UK passports, had been carried out by Iranian agents.

Actually, I'd prefer an 'I support Israel unreservedly' response rather than the tortured circumventions noted in this correspondence. The former, at least, is true. Readers of these exchanges will form their own view, but I don't think they're so gullible and naive as to believe that people like Lewis and yourself hold neutral, disinterested positions.

It's that coupling of bland official-speak and coy evasion which so diminishes politicians in the public's eye.

I'm a great believer in clarity of one's beliefs, loyalties and subjective feelings. Better being straightforward and open about the causes we endorse. I support the Palestinian people, the illegally occupied and oppressed in this case. You and Lewis support the Israeli state, the illegal occupier and oppressor. Our personal words and actions demonstrate the choices we make in helping to end or maintain that oppression. No more need be said.

Regards

John Hilley

Love and money - at the movies

Whatever their risky impulses, people generally value relative security in economic and emotional matters. Many, of course, revel in the chance and insecurity of speculative activity, financial and romantic. But, for most, there's usually a human limit to such gambles and flutters. Basically, we take primal comfort in being nurtured and loved.

The intricacies of love and money have been captured in a thousand make-believe movies. From Some Like It Hot to Slumdog Millionaire, our fascination for riches of the pocket and treasures of the heart provide the illusionary cushion to the dreamily fanciful or rarely realisable.

Some permit a little more critical inspection of the theme, such as Up In the Air, Hollywood's current take on the dual issues of mercenary economics and personal affairs. It's a tale of corporate and emotional detachment from human concerns, a feel-good-feel-bad mix on the clinical truths of life and love under the credit crunch.

Though conveyed in soft whimsical style - liberal Hollywood's sanitised nod to the recessionary detritus - George Clooney's professional bad-news dispenser helps depict the cruel execution of the company firing process, the multi-faceted trauma of employees facing rejection and losing their livelihoods, in some cases contemplating the final abyss. Like Clooney's multi-air-miled check-in case, people are regarded, and discarded, as "baggage", their worth stripped-down to basic requirements, their needs and complexities too cumbersome to carry and hold.

Threatening this clinical 'reality', Clooney's rigidly-controlled lifestyle is disrupted by the potentialities of love and lust, a mixture of hot passion and cold calculus serving to pose more human questions about what's really valuable in life.

Though ultimately a cosy escapist narrative, evading the true unsparing nature of the corporate machine, there's still something useful in the film's coy message that love and the need to be wanted are more important than lonely gratification and instant materialism.

There's nothing new here, of course. With box-office alertness, Hollywood has always been ready to tap into emotional disenchantment with capitalism's impersonal hand. For example, screen favourites like It's a Wonderful Life carry an enduring message of human fortitude, announcing that, even in the face of economic depression and despair, love and loyalty can conquer profit and greed.

Yet, beyond such celluloid homilies, the constant incursion of economic insecurity into our lives remains a sobering limitation to love and wellbeing. We may take a certain message of hope from screened poverty, but there's no romanticising the real take.

Being poor is not just a question of being part of an economic 'underclass'. (That term was always, to the mind of my old sociology lecturer, a misnomer in itself - as though being 'beneath' the lowest recognised class level - "working" - gave those struggling on token wages some kind of respectable economic status relative to those on just paltry benefits or worse.) It robs people of their right to emotional sustenance, including the space to develop one's loving couplings. Riches certainly don't always bring happiness - 'money can't buy me love' - but a little economic reassurance can go a long way in promoting stress-reduced relations.

Almost thirteen years on from the Blairite 'coming', social and economic division in Britain has never been more expansive. New Labour just gave Thatcherism the Tony-love-smile Mrs tough-love lacked. Nowadays, the only discernible difference walking the depressed streets of Glasgow's east end is the greater proliferation of cold, metal panopticon cameras, keeping a stern eye on the 'lowly' orders. Like the CCTV monitors in the much-acclaimed Red Road, maybe they're recording year-on-year footage of the bleak human decline, a loveless archive of those marked out for a life of appointed deprivation.

All of which, as Ian Bell observes, makes redundant the conventional language of "class":

"This is not an accident. The gap between rich and poor has not reached its widest point since the war thanks to some act of God. A supremely talented elite deserving its golden ticket has not arisen from nowhere. Money breeds money; poverty breeds poverty; and those with the power to amend this state of affairs like it that way. Given income distributions, life chances, and the unbreakable circuits of self-selecting privilege, we should cease to speak of class and start talking about caste.

"Each according to their station, each according to their caste. Disadvantage is perpetuated while the lie of opportunity for all is maintained. In reality, the sole rational ambition for those born poor is simply to escape poverty. A seat on the board is not on offer. Yet millions of the naive and gullible want to go on believing otherwise. You almost have to admire the gall of those who practise the deceit."

Michael Moore's Capitalism: a Love Story is a powerfully mischievous essay on that grand deceit, laying bare our, and particularly America's, 'romantic' attachment to a system that depends for its very survival on division rather than unity. Instead of a society built on common regard and mutual care, Moore shows how our own infatuation with capitalism keeps us locked into a lifelong 'relationship' of abusive dependency.

"Capitalism is evil", declares Moore, a conclusion echoed without qualification, or base class rhetoric, by his life-long priest friends in Moore's still-broken Flint hometown. It's a way of living, they and many others concur, totally at odds with any humanitarian principles of fairness, justice, compassion or love.

While the stealthy-wealthy of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street run the show on Capitol Hill and beyond - stealing countless, unrecoverable billions in the process - ordinary citizens live in perpetual fear of having their basic homes repossessed, of falling sick and of losing their burger joint jobs.

Moore tracks the chronic insecurity and ruthlessness that stalks America, from the airline pilot surviving on food stamps and another side-jobbing as a waitress, to the truly disgusting practice of major corporations like Wal Mart taking out secretive death insurance policies on their employees - referred to in the industry as "Dead Peasants" when they die and the corporations collect.

How have they managed to get away with all this, asks Moore? Where was the resistance to corporate-determined deregulation and community-breaking Reaganomics? Where, invoking FDR and his long-ignored Second Bill of Rights speech (1936), is the concern to enshrine that other set of constitutional liberties, basic economic security?

Delivered in Moore's quintessentially-grounded style, Capitalism is an acutely simple statement on the massive daily exercise in blanket propaganda that inhibits us from even noticing, never mind questioning, capitalism's irrational brutality. That's largely because we're taught, from birth, to aspire, compete and behave as zero-sum beings towards each other. Love has no meaningful place here.

Uncomfortably, Moore's film places a little too much respectful love - or, perhaps, lingering hope - in the Obama 'manifesto'. There's passing mention of corporate America's calculated bankrolling of the 'saviour' President, but the tougher question needs to be asked: where is our 'partnership' going here? Even Moore's 'critical love' can be a little too blind to select political darlings.

Yet, the film's essential message still comes clearly through: capitalism can't just be modified or tinkered with, it has to be "eliminated." Divorce, in other words, based on irreconcilable breakdown.

Fear hangs around all our lives: fear of being poor, of falling ill, of having to care for others, of losing those we love. Yet, it's our resilient capacity, in the face of economic and emotional adversity, to stay loving and caring that keeps us above that inhuman system. People are not commodities. Real love doesn't always depend on another's 'shelf-life' or market 'attraction'. We are not somehow predisposed to competition and acquisition at all costs.

Which may all still sound over-romantic. But, in the hopeful spirit of caring and sharing, here are some Time Tested Beauty Tips associated with Audrey Hepburn, an iconic actress who came from poverty to riches, yet never lost her capacity for compassion, kindness and loving thought:

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself and one for helping others.

Imagine an economic system built around those simple, loving principles.

During her later work for UNICEF, Hepburn said:

"I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics."

Nice thought. We're after the same rainbow's end ....

x John

Tom Harris: "stunt" and "frenzy" fears in apprehending war criminals

Further to our previous correspondence, my ongoing exchange with Tom Harris, MP.
--------------------------
9 February 2010

Dear Mr Hilley

UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION

Thank you for your reply to my letter regarding universal jurisdiction. I would like to make it clear that I support the principle of universal jurisdiction absolutely. However I do not support the use of universal jurisdiction as a political stunt. In England and Wales, arrest warrants can be obtained against those alleged to have committed war crimes and acts of torture either by a private individual presenting prima facie evidence to a magistrate or by the Metropolitan Police's Anti-Terrorist Branch in co-operation with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

In the case of the arrest warrant that was issued against Tzipi Livni, the warrant was issued by a magistrate based on prima facie evidence that, as Israel's foreign minister during Israel's operation in Gaza last winter, she may have committed war crimes. However, even if Tzipi Livni had visited the UK and had been arrested, any prosecution would only have been able to proceed if the CPS were able to persuade the Attorney General that the prosecution was likely to succeed and was in the public interest. This means that the magistrate route should pose little attraction to those wanting to see a prosecution and conviction. I think that it is highly likely that if Ms Livni had been arrested via the magistrate route, charges would not have been brought. The private individual who requested the arrest warrant from the magistrate would have also known this, which is presumably why he/she did not present evidence to the police. It leads me to believe that the whole thing was orchestrated not in the interests of justice, but for maximum publicity effect.

In Scotland, the magistrate route is not available. Magistrates here cannot consent to private requests for arrest warrants without a Criminal Letter from The High Court of the Justiciary, which is unlikely to be granted without the agreement of the Lord Advocate. Yet, the principle of universal jurisdiction still exists and is still important. It can be pursued via the CPS/police route and occurred in July 2005 when Afghan militia leader Faryadi Zardad was convicted of acts of torture and hostage taking.

The information allows me to draw a number of conclusions. Firstly, that arrest warrants issued by magistrates under universal jurisdiction have not, as yet, ever led to a successful prosecution. That, as in the case in Scotland, magistrate powers to issue arrest warrants under universal jurisdiction are not necessary for an individual to be prosecuted for war crimes or acts of torture. And finally, as the only ever successful prosecution under universal jurisdiction has succeeded via the CPS/police route, the issue of warrants by magistrates serves to act as nothing more than a political stunt orchestrated by a private individual to create a media and public frenzy.

It is quite possible that under existing rules, President Obama could be arrested during his next visit to the UK if an individual provided sufficient evidence about the regime in Guantanamo Bay to a magistrate. That would clearly be an absurd situation which would do irreparable damage to the UK's international reputation.

I trust this makes my position clear.

Best wishes

Tom Harris MP
Member of Parliament for Glasgow South


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19 February 2010

Dear Mr Harris

Thanks for your reply of 9 February 2010.

Like your (and Ivan Lewis's) rejection of the Goldstone report, it's another revealing example of blatant pro-Israeli bias posing as practical objection.

Over 1400 people are slaughtered in Gaza, and your response is to castigate those seeking justice as mere organisers of a "political stunt".

Even if you disapproved of this particular arrest application, it didn't stop you signing Early Day Motion (EDM) 502 in general support of universal jurisdiction. It's not difficult to see the connection between that avoidance and your condemnation of the arrest warrant applicants in the Livni case.

Doesn't the very fact of the magistrate-granted warrant against Livni indicate that there is an actual case to answer? Recall that Livni was sufficiently worried about the magistrate-granted warrant to cancel her trip. It's odd that you, unlike her, should, thus, dismiss the warrant against her as a "political stunt."

The 'logic' of your position is that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)/police - Attorney General (AG) route is unlikely to be actioned (you omit, of course, to say why), therefore potential warrant applicants should just accept this and refrain from seeking warrants from magistrates. In other words, sit back and do nothing.

Arrest warrants via the magistrate route may be unlikely to succeed, at present, but that doesn't invalidate their authenticity. On the other hand, are we to believe that the CPS/AG route would prove any more fruitful, given the current leanings of the political-legal establishment?

If MPs like yourself were more-readily prepared to register and vocalise the case for universal jurisdiction, including, without favour, the indictment of people like Livni, then the CPS/AG avenue might become more politically and legally viable. By adding individual and collective weight to the call for Livni to be arrested, MPs and other prominent public servants might not only help bring a prima facie criminal to justice, but also help deter similar actions by other state villains, thus helping to preserve innocent life.

Your prevarications on the Livni case further undermine citizens' recourse to the law on such matters. Removing magistrates' discretionary powers and handing more powers to the Attorney General, as currently planned, will run contrary to every international provision behind universal jurisdiction.

Just to remind you: the UK has entered into binding obligations on these issues. As submitted in this parliamentary briefing:

"In the UK, we have legislated to give our courts jurisdiction to prosecute all suspected war criminals and torturers, even where neither the victim nor the suspect has any connection with Britain. This is because, in common with all state parties, we have entered into binding legal obligations commitments (i.e. in the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and Protocol I to those Conventions – which protect civilians and those outside combat - and in the 1984 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), where states effectively promised that there will be no safe haven for perpetrators in any country party to the instruments concerned. For example, Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by the UK half a century ago on 23 September 1957, expressly states that the UK is

“under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts.” "

Please see here a full statement on the case for non-exceptional application of universal jurisdiction and why MPs should support EDM 502 in defence of existing international provisions:

http://www.redress.org/reports/UJ_Parliamentary_briefing_27_01_2010.pdf

Amongst which, here's one very practical reason for victims' representatives seeking an arrest warrant from a magistrate, as they're entitled to do:

"An arrest warrant is an important legal tool used by lawyers acting on behalf of victims of crime in cases of urgency, to ensure that a suspect is apprehended who might otherwise escape from the jurisdiction. Without this power, victims fear that in most cases an effective legal process will never start, for the simple reasons that the suspect will flee abroad – this is obviously a far greater statistical risk in this type of offence than most other (i.e. non-international) offences.

Specifically, in cases of serious international crimes, it has been particularly important to prevent a suspect from escaping while the police and/or Crown Prosecution Service make a fully informed decision whether to devote resources to an investigation. The police are naturally reluctant at relatively short notice to arrest such suspects using their ordinary powers of arrest. But where victims can secure the suspect’s arrest, this ensures that time is available for the Crown Prosecution Service and/or the Attorney General to consider the matter carefully and decide whether they will take over and/or consent to the prosecution of the suspect."

Contrary to these safeguard provisions, your contrived reason for inaction is helping to promote criminal impunity and immunity. All this is well recognised by Israeli and other war crimes elites.

You further claim that the arrest application would only have served "to create a media and public frenzy." That's a facile conclusion, as if the granting of such a warrant would have the public, fuelled by the media (if only most editors and journalists had the courage to make such calls) making 'frenzied' calls for Livni's (and her cohorts') prosecution.

I don't recall any particular "frenzy" in the Pinochet case. As with Livni, Pinochet was calmly pursued by studious lawyers and supporters through the courts, while the Attorney General and 'frenzied' ministers ran around Whitehall and the courts doing all they could to protect him.

The case against Livni and her associates is now well recognised. It's documented in the Goldstone findings, in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports and in multiple other public accounts of Israel's human rights violations.

It may seem "absurd" to you that state elites, including Obama, should be hauled up for their involvement in torture or murderous activities (such as the illegal bombing of villages along the Pakistan/Afghan border under Obama's watch). Such is your selective view of criminality. But what about the "irreparable damage to the UK's international reputation" caused by this government's desperate efforts to circumvent universal jurisdiction, a principle which you claim to support "absolutely"?

Your lame excuses over this case and others supportive of Israel is also now in the public domain. That makes you, like Ivan Lewis and other parliamentary apologists, openly complicit in the protection of such prima facie war criminals.

So, I ask again: will you sign EDM 502 and endorse the call for alleged Israeli war crimes elites to be prosecuted?

Likewise, I note that you continue to ignore my question regarding Ivan Lewis's Labour Friends of Israel affiliations and how that motivated his refusal to endorse the Goldstone report. As one of your constituents, will you make this enquiry?

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley

Universal jurisdiction: more evasions from Tom Harris and Ivan Lewis

A further exchange with my MP, Tom Harris, on universal jurisdiction. Previous exchange here.

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3 February 2010

Dear Mr Hilley

EARLY DAY MOTION 502 LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about universal jurisdiction and asking me to sign Early Day Motion 502 Law and Human Rights.

Rather than sign the motion, I decided to seek ministerial advice on the matter. As such, I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and have now received a reply.

Please find enclosed a copy of the Minister's response. I would be interested to hear your views on this.

Best wishes

Tom Harris MP
Member of Parliament for Glasgow South
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office

20 January 2010

Tom Harris Esq MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A OAA

Dear Tom

Thank you for your letter of 11 January to the Foreign Secretary, on behalf of your constituents, about Tzipi Livni and arrest warrants. I am replying as Minister responsible for our relations with the Middle East.

Israel is an important strategic partner for the UK across a number of foreign policy priorities. We need to maintain and develop ties with Israeli leaders as well as other key international partners. It is essential that Israeli leaders, and leaders from other countries, should be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the UK government. The UK cannot hope to advance its principal goal of a just and lasting two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict if it cannot host discussions with and between leaders from key regional states. The cancelled visit of Mrs Livni had included a scheduled meeting with the Foreign Secretary.

We are looking currently at what options are available to us to address this issue. I can assure your constituents that any amendment to the current system will not undermine our commitment to ensuring those guilty of war crimes are held to account for their actions.

Ivan Lewis
Minister of State

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6 February 2010

Dear Mr Harris

Thank you for your letter of 3 February 2010.

Your prevarications and evasions are becoming all too predictable. Either you support the case for universal jurisdiction, or you don't. If not, please just say so, rather than referring to Ivan Lewis and the Foreign Office which has sought to bend, ignore and undermine every legal and judicial rule in the book to protect Tzipi Livni and other prima facie Israeli war criminals.

The parliamentary motion in support of universal jurisdiction - as advocated in the Goldstone report - applies to any person reasonably suspected of committing war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. There should be no practical or ethical reason for failing to support it. Or do you believe that the free movement of elites involved in mass murder is more important than justice for the victims of those actions?

If UK government ministers wish to speak with their Israeli counterparts, they can always travel to Israel - knowing that they'll be safe in that territory from indictment over their own criminal conduct in Iraq.

But we know, of course, that this is about much more than the convenience of diplomatic dialogue. It's about this government's priority treatment of Israel and panicked efforts to block due legal process. Labour Friends of Israel, indeed.

It's also notable that you had no such reticence in signing a petition recently in support of Tony Blair http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/ban-blair-baiting.html. It's darkly ironic that he is now technically at risk of arrest in countries signed up to universal jurisdiction, while you refuse to sign a motion calling for similar indictment of war criminals in this country.

I note also that you continue to evade my question regarding Ivan Lewis's membership of LFoI and its relevance to his dismissal of Goldstone.

As ever, all this is duly noted. I hope your constituents pay appropriate attention come the election.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley

Panorama showing face in East Jerusalem

Panorama has just shown its 'hard-hitting' account of Palestinian suffering around East Jerusalem (A Walk in the Park, BBC 1, 18 January, 2010).

By the BBC's usual woeful standards, Israel came out pretty badly. How, one might ask, could it appear otherwise, even to this most tepid of news organisations, given the glaringly obvious extent of Israel's ruthless conduct?

But not so badly that we got a truly comprehensive picture of the ethnic cleansing going on. Indeed, Jane Corbin never dared explore that term - as stated in the film by one Palestinian man, Jawad Sayam - or the associated word “apartheid” to describe the kind of systematic oppression and exclusion being carried out by the Israeli state.

Forty more Palestinian homes are due for demolition this year, Corbin tells us at the start of the film. “That's because the municipal government has a budget it has to use up for demolitions.” No, actually, it's because the Israeli state, and its municipal enforcer, are intent on eradicating Palestinians from the land – continued ethnic cleansing, in more plain and honest words. Why not simply say so?

At no point did Corbin seriously challenge the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, and other settler ideologists in the film. Think what someone like John Pilger might have said in his calm, probing way to Barkat's posturing claims that Jews should be free to live in an undivided city.

Likewise, there was no direct challenge to the interviewed settler family about the actual illegality of their presence. As they were being escorted around by government-funded armed guards, all we got from Corbin was some weak, assumed comment about the atmosphere between them and their Palestinian neighbours not being "very warm".

We did see graphic images of Israeli brutality and mapped illustrations of the land grab, alongside moving and articulate expressions from the Hanouns and other Palestinian families. The Israeli lawyer Danny Seidemann's evidence, explaining Israel's mendacious "facts on the ground" agenda, was also exemplary, serving to show the courageous resistance of many concerned Jews to Zionist propaganda.

Yet, herein lay an essential problem in Corbin's report: it never actually mentioned or contextualised that unremitting spectre of Zionist control, occupation and expansion. The term "Zionist" is also, seemingly, far too hot for the BBC to countenance, no doubt because of its deeper, 'troubling' implications about Israel's formative ethnic cleansing and the continued application of this state-centred doctrine.

Some Zionist utterings may, of course, need little side commentary. Reasonable viewers should have been able to see Arieh King, head of the Israeli Land Fund, for the cruel evicting zealot that he is. But, again, where was the direct challenge from Corbin other than to ask if he's just helping to create hostility: "Aren't you worried about the tension you're causing by buying up these Jewish properties in a predominantly Arab area?"

As "Arieh" serves eviction notices on Arab homes, Corbin does link his protection by Israeli soldiers with the Israeli state's plan to control more land, but can only conclude that Palestinians are being "squeezed out" of Jerusalem rather than being ethnically cleansed. The term "transfer" is, likewise, never considered. The language throughout is carefully neutralised.

While Corbin's report does provide a useful illumination of the Israeli state's stealthy manoeuvring, it is always cautiously tempered by 'balanced' BBC mitigation. Thus, "tension in Silwan is growing, and both sides are suffering," Corbin declares.

The following account of Ahmed Qaareen being shot by an Israeli is harrowing, his young son's pitiful crying serving to demonstrate the sense of Palestinian despair. Yet, it's a forewarning, so we're told, of the inflammatory possibilities to come. Where, one wonders, has Corbin and her peers been these past years, other than viewing the 'conflict' from inside the BBC's privileged West Jerusalem offices.

Coming back into the Old City, Corbin states that Israeli police superintendent, Ofer Shomer, "has one of the hardest police jobs in the world." This coy line is a brazen circumvention of the Israeli state's oppressive control over the holy sites. Corbin stood silently by, allowing Shomer to blame Muslims for the recent riots at the Al Aqsa mosque, failing to ask about the constant incitement of Jewish fundamentalists and how Palestinians are routinely prevented from entering this part of the city to visit and pray.

Walking along the "separation barrier", as Corbin dutifully calls it, there's no explanation that the Wall was declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court. Again, Israel's illegal occupation of East Jerusalem and construction of the wall, as defined under international law, was never broadened out to show that it's just part of the wider occupation of the West Bank and imprisonment of Gaza. Indeed, Gaza is never once mentioned in the film. Here would have been an obvious point to cite the numerous conclusions of key figures like UN Rapporteur Richard Falk and the landmark Goldstone report.

Doron Spielman, from the Elad settler organisation, gave further vent to the claim that Israel is "the sovereign entity" and that he's proud he can enable more Jewish people to live here. Taking Corbin around the excavations under Silwan, Spielman conjures up the ancestral spirits: "You close your eyes, you sit on one of these stones, you walk through this place with a bible and you literally see the people from the bible jumping out of the pages at you."

In response to Spielman's pretexts and 'literal apparitions', Corbin can only muster a feeble question about putting Jewish history before Arab history, rather than accusing him and his state sponsors of using archaelogy - and biblical ghosts - to advance the ethnic cleansing process.

Corbin did briefly reference Israel's efforts to link the Old City with its outlying East Jerusalem settlements, thereby cutting off the West Bank from Palestinians in East Jerusalem, yet still managed to portray Jerusalem as an enclave-type conflict bearing little relation to Israel's wider oppressions.

Nor, through all of this film, was there the slightest reference to US/UK backing for Israel and the West's complicity in permitting this apartheid process to continue. Typical of BBC foreign affairs output, it was framed as a conflict between two warring parties, the standard two sides narrative, with no mention of Obama's supplications, appeasements and refusal to wield the necessary pressure on Israel.

The BBC will, no doubt, proclaim this as evidence of fearless, flagship journalism. In fact, Corbin's was the safest pair of hands the BBC could find to deliver the message of "powderkeg" Jerusalem, as opposed to apartheid Jerusalem.

As ever, the problem running through such BBC presentation is the pretend tone of "impartiality" and "objectivity", conveniently disabling any more pressing investigation and exposure of the gross injustice going on. Serious, honest journalism is not about giving 'fair' time and voice to 'each side'. It's about journalists' willingness to speak critically to power, particularly when it's obvious to those journalists that power is wielding the big, brutal stick against the powerless.

It's instructive to note that the BBC are only just now shining a little attention on the plight of those being evicted and forced to watch their homes being torn down in East Jerusalem. Corbin's film also looks like a tokenised 'top-journo-visits' reportage attempting to raise the BBC's lowly reputation as a serious media player in the region.Which begs the question: where was the reporting of the al-Kurd family's removal in 2008, resulting in Mr al-Kurd's death, and the concentrated legal, political and military enforcements used to facilitate settler occupation in places like Sheikh Jarrah?

We'll, no doubt, get another cursory half hour review of the issues in a year or so, the BBC having dispensed its 'Reithian duties' for now. This film did cast a certain accusatory light, and it's always helpful to get further exposure of the issues. Yet, the limited extent of such output is still an appalling abrogation by the BBC, particularly when one considers the centrality of the Palestinian case with its vital ramifications for the Middle East and beyond.

John

Scottish trade visit to Israel: an exchange with SDI

Scottish Development International are planning a trade mission to Israel (10 - 15 January 2010). The news will come as cold comfort to struggling Palestinians, particularly those enduring primitive hardships inside Gaza. It will also disgust many people here in Scotland, averse to the notion that trade with an apartheid state should come before humanitarian support for an occupied and brutalised people.

I wrote to SDI requesting an explanation.

Dear Elaine Philip

I've been reading the web page regarding SDI's planned visit to Israel.

I find it deeply disturbing that a Scottish government-backed body could even countenance such a 'mission' when Israel continues its illegal occupation and Gaza lies in ruins, its 1.5 million people victim to a merciless economic and humanitarian siege.

The First Minister and many of his government have proclaimed their open support and sympathy for suffering Palestinians, condemning Israel's occupation and the mass murder of over 1400 Gazans this time last year. The SDI's visit goes against the very grain of that humanitarian position.

You will also be aware of the recent Goldstone report (ratified by the UN General Assembly) into these events, concluding that there's an overwhelming case to indict Israel for war crimes.

Following its own exhaustive visit to Palestine and Israel, the STUC has also formally endorsed the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) policy, convinced of the need to counter Israel's apartheid treatment of Palestinians.

I note the SDI's ambitions to develop trade links with Israel's "life sciences" sector. That's a dark, ugly irony given the Israeli state's massive concentration on death sciences; a military-R&D-driven economy that's using Gaza as a human laboratory to deploy new lethal weaponry, including the illegal use of white phosphorous on innocent civilians in Gaza.

All this has been forensically recorded in the Goldstone document, as well as Amnesty International and International Red Cross on-the-ground reports.

For all these reasons, any proposed SDI trade relations with Israel is to be utterly condemned. I'm sure many Scottish people would be appalled to learn that they are paying for such a delegation.

In the name of humanity, please give your most urgent consideration to Israel's criminal violations of international law and cancel the visit.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley
For Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear John

I acknowledge receipt of your email. I will ensure your comments, together with others received both for and against the planned trade mission, are passed to relevant members of staff.

Regards

Elaine

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Dear Elaine

Thanks for your reply. The main point of my mail, aside from stating our objections to the visit, was to elicit a specific explanatory response. I'd be pleased if you could ensure this is forthcoming.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley
For Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign

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Dear Mr Hilley

Thank you for your message about the trade mission to Israel arranged by Scottish Development International (SDI) as part of its planned programme of trade missions overseas.

This mission is being organised in partnership with UK Trade and Investment. Its purpose is consistent with all international work undertaken by SDI, which is to assist Scottish companies in developing links to secure new investment and jobs into Scotland by increasing their overseas markets. The Scottish Government and SDI supports a number of trade related missions to the Middle East. For example, last October SDI visited the United Arab Emirates.

with best regards

Anne MacColl
Scottish Development International

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Dear Anne

Thanks for responding.

With respect, that's a complete evasion of the questions I put to SDI regarding the moral and legal standing of this visit. It's further lamentable that you attempt to legitimise SDI's involvement through association with UK-level trade and investment bodies. The complicit promotions of an Israel-friendly British government suggests no similar onus on their Scottish counterparts.

While your delegation prepares to be feted in Tel Aviv, the people of Gaza are, again, being bombed and murdered by Israeli forces. Israel continues to block basic food, medicines and essential fuel supplies from crossing any of Gaza's entry points. Despite new UK trading standard directives, illegal Israeli settlements are labelling produce for export as 'West Bank', further strangling what passes for a Palestinian 'economy'. Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni, senior Israeli army officers and other planners of the Cast Lead attacks have cancelled visits to the UK fearing arrest over war crimes. Is this really an appropriate state to be conducting favourable trade links with?

Moreover, your assertion that the Scottish Government supports various Middle East trade missions takes no account of that same government's recorded denunciations of Israel's illegal occupation and criminality in Gaza.

Have you stopped to consider that in cultivating Israel in order "to secure new investment and jobs into Scotland", the SDI is helping to legitimise its occupation-based economy, thus prolonging the political impasse and giving a green light to more Palestinian suffering? Are these supposed trade openings for Scottish companies more important than human lives and the growing global effort to make Israel abide by UN resolutions and international law?

Again, I request your specific consideration of the following with regard to SDI's visit:

The Goldstone report's conclusions on Israel's pre-planned attack on Gaza and its illegal economic siege.

The STUC's BDS policy, based on an extensive study of Israel's military, economic and human rights violations.

The evidence of Israeli apartheid, as presented by UN Rapporteur Richard Falk and other notable international figures.

I look forward to your more considered response on these matters.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley
For Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign

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A further exchange (11 January 2010):

Dear Mr Hilley

thanks for your return message.

In addition to my comments from my message to you on Friday, the position from the Scottish Government position regarding the situation in Gaza is very clear and the Deputy First Minister announced a package of humanitarian aid last year. The Scottish Ministers strongly believe that, in the longer term, only engagement and dialogue leading to a two state solution, based on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the need for a safe and secure Israel and Palestine, can form the basis of a lasting peace in the Middle East.

best regards

Anne MacColl
EMEA Operations DIrector, Scottish Development International

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Dear Anne

Thanks for your further response.

Yes, I'm very aware of the humanitarian package and some Scottish ministers' concerns. But why should this be presented as some kind of mitigating argument for the SDI's trade visit?

The desire for "engagement and dialogue" is all very noble, but these 'well-intentioned' calls mean precisely nothing to a state zealously intent on maintaining its illegal occupation, murderous attacks and apartheid persecutions. How convenient to hide the imperatives of business and profit behind such ersatz peace talk.

The actual point of trade-related action - as with trade sanctions against South Africa - is to help push the principal aggressor party towards that very position of serious, engaged dialogue. Continuing to build and normalise trade and political relations only serves to legitimise the aggressor's behaviour, further negating any prospect of a just negotiation. The SDI is, thus, serving to intensify the problem, not diminish it.

The "need for a safe and secure Israel and Palestine" also falls into that same 'two sides to blame' cliche-speak so redolent of 'sensible business'. And it's always telling to see Israel's 'safety and security' noted first in such sentences.

There wiil be no just and durable peace in the Middle East until Israel's mass criminality is seriously challenged and checked by the 'respectable international community' of which SDI apparently forms a part. In its determination to forge closer ties with Israel, the SDI is, in effect, a complicit party to ongoing Palestinian suffering.

Yours sincerely

John Hilley
For Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign
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Scottish Parliamentary motion proposed by Sandra White (SNP) MSP:

S3M-05463 Sandra White (Glasgow) (Scottish National Party): Scottish Development International Trade Mission to Israel— That the Parliament notes with concern the proposed trade mission on 10 to 15 January 2010 organised by Scottish Development International (SDI) to Israel, a state that is currently in contravention of numerous United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions and stands accused of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the Gaza conflict, amounting to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity; notes that this trade mission was postponed in January 2009 after advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the wake of Israel’s December 2008 offensive, and, while welcoming the Scottish Government’s clear position on the situation in Gaza and the substantial package of humanitarian aid announced last year by the Deputy First Minister, urges SDI to reconsider its current stance while Israel continues to flout international law and stands accused of possible crimes against humanity.

Supported by: Patrick Harvie, Hugh O'Donnell, Bill Kidd, Christine Grahame, Shirley-Anne Somerville, Robin Harper, Dr Bill Wilson, Aileen Campbell, Mike Pringle, Elaine Smith, Hugh Henry, Angela Constance, Anne McLaughlin

Lodged on Thursday, January 07, 2010; Current

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John

Ending the decade - rationally speaking

Rational - adjective:
agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible

Words. Rational words. Words of concern. Words of dissent. Aren't they all, the zillions and zillions of them, ultimately superfluous in the face of what actually occurs, what the powerful dismissively, uncaringly, unilaterally, conspiratorially, calculatingly, wantonly, finally do?

Just think of all the campaigning, the street demonstrations, the hard-boiled evidence, the just legal opinions, the challenging letters, the humanitarian pleas, the mass condemnations directed at the warmongers who murder with impunity, the financial masters who profit and wreck lives, the climate vandals motivated only by selfish intent. The results? The bombs keep dropping on innocents, the bankers steal away with more public booty and the planet remains on a collision course with oblivion.

Tony Blair continues to walk in our midst, a criminal at large, a "peace envoy", no less, not simply unrepentant but mindfully self-assured about his 'divine' part in the genocide of Iraq. What 'rational' state would permit such a quantum abuse of power? The one, we must assume, which offers the Chilcot inquiry as a 'rational' investigation of those matters. Shouldn't we fear not only those who rationalised the intelligence in pursuit of war, but also the dark intelligence of those appointed to rationalise the crimes of the rationalisers?

Meanwhile, fear, of the economic kind, continues to stalk people's lives, the rational consequence of an irrational free market system. The massive daily exercise in hegemonic ideology underpinning capitalist society helps maintain the relentless message that banking bailouts and rampant speculation of public money are all good, rational practices; that more neoliberalism is the only rational way out of the 'mess' (as though all was well and rational 'before'); and that we will all, according to 'rational' Treasury forecasts, be ultimate beneficiaries of the great state handout to the fat cats.

The coming general election will see another intensive assault on the poorest and socially vulnerable to pay for the great 'New Deal' in saving the financier elite. Economic recovery, so it goes, remains ever-dependent on the stability of the banking sector and protection of its executive class.

Usefully, some rational evidence is now at hand to show just how irrational that dependence is:

"Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests.

The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid. It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy. They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to "create stress". The study says they are responsible for campaigns which create dissatisfaction and misery, and encourage over-consumption."

We live in a society where poor souls sit hungry and cold outside Tesco and other supermarket cities with their groaning shelves of food, all serving to keep an owner class in fabulous wealth. One might rationally say, go inside and take what you need. Act rationally, not according to the irrational rules of super/market society. Don't deprive yourself of life's basic necessities when they are all readily available. Rationalise according to your higher human rights, not what the market deems the supremacy of property rights.

That, of course, would be condemned as not just illegal, but dangerously anarchic; threatening to the 'rational' order of things. To those appalled by such gross inequality, it should make perfect rational sense.

Taking with moral intent, balancing, sharing, acting in compassionate consideration of others, thinking sustainably: these are all the hallmarks of rational non-market behaviour.

Corporate behaviour, on the other hand, predicated on zero-sum competition and greed, cannot, by rational definition, also be governed by reason or sensible judgement about human well-being. The irrationality of financial speculation underlying the present bout of economic woes - for those at the bottom end, not the high financiers - is testament to that rationally deducted truth.

And there's no more rational illustration of profit-led anarchy than the climate change crisis.

Copenhagen signifies man's most staggering capacity for blind irrationality. Even when presented with all the evidence of climate disaster, even when given the rare collective opportunity to correct the problem, the chance is not just lost, but, worse, sabotaged and dismissed by politicians protecting corporate interests.

Having just sent another thirty thousand troops to Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Nobel 'peace' man, flew into town and presided over the biggest exercise in hand-wringing stagecraft the world has ever witnessed. The poor nations, those now facing the gravest threat of flood, hunger and mass death, argued with rational conviction that a deal must be secured in order to avert the looming catastrophe - and were, predictably, blamed for the gathering's collapse. The victims victimised. It was ever thus.

Words? Even rational words? Is it any use in stating the obvious, mentioning the plain, scientific truths, re-issuing the warnings, reprising the dire implications, the prospect of imminent death warrants for millions? Power decides. Power spins. Power walks away.

Is that all too pessimistic a summary, a prognosis? Perhaps. It's always easy to forget that other kind of power: the power of people to mobilise, resist and effect rational change.

I think, for example, of how Palestine has, in the words of Omar Barghouti, now reached its "South Africa moment." Whatever the massive task in ending Israel's occupation and brutality, that shift in international support for the Palestinian cause didn't seem on the cards even a decade ago. Rational persuasion, much of it from sustained and patient campaigning - applied words - has helped change that. A year on from the slaughter of over 1400 in Gaza, many more people have come to see that holding 1.5 million people captive, deprived and fearful inside a human laboratory isn't a very enlightened or rational way of treating human beings. Nor, even for some now-realising Israelis, is it any rational way to maintain their own perceived security.

The same rational objections to state murder and political deceit are also encouraging demands for the architects of such crimes to be brought to justice. Beyond the servile rationalising of the war-friendly media, the word "Blair" has become, like a brand name, synonymous with mendacity, mass murder and the singular art of saving one's neck.

And with that rational take on word association, here's three key terms to reflect upon, with hopeful and, perhaps, not so hopeful significance, for the coming decade:

Universal jurisdiction

The Goldstone report, citing Israel's gross violations in Gaza (and the West Bank/East Jerusalem), carried a specific call for universal jurisdiction to be incorporated into individual state laws, providing a much stronger hand for campaign groups seeking grounds for indictment against the higher powers. As with the recent arrest warrant granted in a London court against Tzipi Livni, the growing application of universal jurisdiction takes us another step towards the possible arraignment of senior warmongers.

Corporate dependency

Irrational capitalist greed has necessitated emergency state action, primarily into the banking and financial sector. Of course, bankers' generous bonuses continue while banks hound struggling mortgage defaulters. There's no progressive agenda here. Socialism it's not. But the crisis intervention does, effectively, signal the end of the neoliberal ascendancy and the supreme fiction of free market 'wealth creation'. It's another rational, if harsh, lesson in understanding and rejecting the false promises of market life.

Climate countdown

Alas, one is forced to assume the most rational, realistic reading of the climate issue: ongoing environmental decline. Copenhagen was never a "sell-out": the rejection of any serious plan for carbon reduction was already decided behind the scenes, instructed by corporate lobbies and executed by their political appointees. Yet, still rationally speaking, there remains the enduring prospect of counter-action from below, from concerned and active citizens, based on the reasonable, rational assumption that too much is at stake to allow the forces of irrationalism to kill the planet.

Still time, in short, to wake up..."before they turn the summer into dust."

Peace, love and encouragement towards rational words and action this coming year.

John