Boycott this Israeli settlement builder Abe Hayeem

Boycott this Israeli settlement builder

Abe Hayeem
The UK Foreign Office will no longer rent from Lev Leviev. Now other states must also boycott this builder of illegal settlements
Tuesday 28 April 200909.30 EDT

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office must be commended for its decision to cancel renting premises for the UK embassy in Tel Aviv from the company Africa-Israel, owned by Israeli businessman and settlement builder Lev Leviev. This is an encouraging step that should now be backed by stronger sanctions against the building of the separation wall and the building of illegal settlements by Israel. Furthermore, the governments of Norway and Dubai should emulate the example set by the UK and sever their relationships with Leviev's companies.

The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported on 3 March 2009 that "Due to the public pressure" several months ago in a special debate in parliament, Kim Howells of the Foreign Office was asked to explain plans to rent the embassy from Leviev.

This pressure, by a letters campaign to the FCO, was initiated by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine with human rights organisation Adalah-New York, followed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, former BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn and hundreds of others.

Further voices included Daniel Machover of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Palestinian notables including Hanan Ashrawi, Mustafa Barghouti and Luisa Morgantini, vice president of the European parliament.

The move was frozen after ambassador Tom Phillips requested details from Africa-Israel about its activities in the settlements.

Subsequently, on 5 March, the BBC reported the FCO's Karen Kaufman saying that: "We looked into the issue of Africa-Israel and settlements and settlement holdings and we asked for clarification .... The UK government has always regarded settlements as illegal, but what has happened in recent months is that we are looking for ways to make a difference on this issue."

Still, despite the FCO decision, Leviev's companies persist in their goal, backed by the Land Redemption Fund to which Leviev is one the largest donors, of "blurring the Green Line" and connecting the illegally built Zufim settlement with Israeli communities inside the Green Line, retaining 6,000 dunams of the village Jayyous's land sequestered by the wall. This land grab is being facilitated by the enforced construction of the apartheid wall, which the International Court of Justice firmly judged to be illegal under international law in 2004, and demanded its removal.

There are weekly non-violent protests by the Jayyous villagers, Israeli and international peace groups, together with Bil'in to stop their precious land from being taken to expand settlements and build the wall. These are being suppressed by Israeli forces on a terror rampage with live fire, beatings, tear gassings, mass arrests, house occupations and, more recently, threats of home demolitions, and pogroms.

Following an Israeli supreme court ruling that the route of the wall in Jayyous should be moved slightly, Israeli authorities are trying to blackmail Jayyous's mayor, saying if he doesn't accept the new wall route, there will be no gates in it for the village's farmers to access their lands. The mayor has refused to sign. Without international intervention, Jayyous will not be able to hold on to its lands behind the wall, which contain their four vital agricultural wells and most of their greenhouses. Leviev will then be able to freely expand Zufim on to Jayyous's stolen lands. Currently, Leviev is building 35 new housing units in Zufim.

At Bil'in, where Leviev companies are also building settlements, mainstream media failed to cover the 17 April murder of Bil'in non-violent protester Bassem Abu Rahmeh, 29, by Israeli forces. A soldier shot him with the same new type of "rocket" tear gas round, as fast and lethal as live ammunition that left US activistTristan Anderson in critical condition.

The brutal crackdown in Bil'in continues despite three Israeli supreme court orders to move the wall in Bil'in closer to the Matityahu East settlement "outpost" where Leviev's Danya Cebus built about 30% of the units. Israel's court has shown itself to be the accessory of this land grab. Israel's architects, designing these settlements, are also in breach of professional ethics, and will be held to account by their international peers.

While the US, UK and the EU seem to be keen to join Israel, the perpetrator of war crimes, in boycotting the Palestinians who are the victims of crippling sieges, deadly incursions and a prison-like occupation, they are reluctant to take any positive action to stop Israel's breaches of international law. For instance, the Norwegian government has invested €875m in 2008 in Africa-Israel. By investing its populace's pension fund in a company at the heart of illegal Israeli settlement building, the country that sponsored the Oslo accords violates its spirit. Norway should follow the precedent set by the UK's FCO, in one of the latter's few bold moves, and divest from this company.

The United Arab Emirates is also shamefully equivocating after a year-long campaign against Leviev selling his diamonds in the emirate of Dubai. Dubai's government, despite repeated assurances that Leviev would not be allowed to open two diamond boutiques in the emirate, has allowed Leviev to open stores under another name while his website advertises a Leviev store-in-store at one of the "Levant" shops of his Dubai partner, Arif bin Khadra. A second Levant store in Dubai's Atlantis hotel boldly touts the Leviev brand.

If Dubai does not wish to be become known as the "emirate that supports settlements", it should take immediate action, and follow the UK's lead and demonstrate it will not allow Leviev to profit from this indirect funding of his settlement building, that steals the future of Jayyous's children who are growing up in the shadow of Leviev's ever-expanding Zufim settlement.

While the new Netanyahu/Leiberman government is doing all it can to obfuscate the issue of a proper peace settlement to establish a viable Palestinian state, a clear message must be sent to Israel. The sanctions against Leviev should be the start of a wider boycott of all who profit from the enforced acquisition of Palestinian land.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/israel-boycott-leviev

Charlie Hebdo: When Freedom of Speech Isn't Paramount

Charlie Hebdo : When Freedom of Speech Isn't Paramount

Before people start leaping to the ramparts, shouting "Freedom of speech is paramount" or "Devotion must prevail," let's start with some very general statements about societies and work toward the specifics to see if we can gain a clearer picture. (Photo: Valentina Calà)

Tuesday, 17 February 2015 00:00By Niall McLaren, Truthout | Op-Ed

The concept of a civil society depends on far more than simply unrestrained freedom of speech.

Now that Dominic Strauss-Kahn's sordid adventures have replaced the attack on Charlie Hebdo in the headlines; now that the millions of supporters of freedom of speech have gone home, including such liberals as the King of Jordan, the Turkish president and the prime minister of Israel, it is perhaps time to examine the broader social context of this tragic event.

I appreciate that many people feel the headlines said it all, that brutality does not require analysis, and that more war, more police and fewer civil rights will prevent any further attacks. However, I believe that would miss some critically important points.

Before people start leaping to the ramparts, shouting "Freedom of speech is paramount" or "Devotion must prevail," let's start with some very general statements about societies and work toward the specifics to see if we can gain a clearer picture. This way, any flaws in the case will be obvious.

1. We are social animals living in an increasingly crowded world in which the limited necessities of life are inequitably distributed. An ordered society depends on all citizens adhering to certain standard rules. Without such basic agreement, human society cannot exist.

2. It used to be that a society's fundamental rules were directed at stability, even at the cost of condemning the majority of its members to miserable lives, but now we want broader, more liberal sets of rules so that people gain some degree of fulfillment from their lives.

3. The only authority for these rules is human; they come from, are justified by and enforced by humans. All rules are matters of opinion, not of fact. As long as there are humans with opinions, there will be humans with differences of opinions. Claims such as "Freedom of speech trumps all" or "Religion is beyond criticism" are just opinions. Arguing over matters of opinion is pointless: There's no accounting for taste.

4. To avoid constant dispute, it is necessary for human groups to agree upon methods of settling differences of opinion. I accept there are people like Adolf Hitler and Dick Cheney who believe there is room for only one set of opinions, theirs, and they have the weapons to prove it. Nonetheless, the great majority of people do not accept that we can build a civil society on the notion of Macht hat Recht, that might is right.

5. Humans have a strong, innate sense of fairness. This competes (often unsuccessfully) with other innate drives, such as territorialism, the urge to form dominance hierarchies, the thrill of aggression, the pleasure of sex, etc. Rationally balancing these drives sometimes requires diligent and self-denying effort. As Edgar Doctorow said: "After all, why compose fiction when you could be devoting your life to your appetites? Why wrestle with a book when you could be amassing a fortune? Why write when you could be shooting someone?"

6. All societies depend on their members accepting restraints on their behavior. If we wish to live meaningfully in a group, we can't always do what we like. We agree to limit our behavior even though there is constant debate over where those limits should be drawn. To at least some extent, rules must be defined and then obeyed, otherwise society will collapse: "Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought." (Lord Acton).

7. As a matter of psychology, humans have beliefs, some of which serve to define their self-perception. These are known as core beliefs; empirically, assailing a person's core beliefs results in intense distress. Prolonged intense distress is unendurable, but people react to it in different ways. Some cry; some drink; some run away; some abandon their beliefs and identify with the aggressor and some retaliate. The concept of a civil society says that submitting people to intense distress for no particular reason is unacceptable.

8. Most people take their religion very seriously because religious beliefs lie close to core of the individual's self-perception. Part of the concept of taking an idea seriously is reacting negatively when those ideas are repeatedly assailed, especially for no good reason. Most people agree that taking one's religion seriously is virtuous. Most believers want nonbelievers to treat their beliefs with a degree of respect.

9. Many people also agree that, as a matter of fairness, affording your neighbor's religious beliefs and practices a degree of respect is part of the concept of living in an ordered society that offers individuals the best chance of self-actualization.

10. Part of the concept of an enlightened rule-governed, ordered society is the notion that the powerful should not regard the weak simply as a resource to be abused or plundered. Responsible citizens understand the notion that repeatedly assailing your neighbor's core beliefs for no good purpose is likely to destabilize the society in a manner which will not benefit individuals or the larger society. The victims of such attacks are those least able to protect themselves; the strong always protect their own core beliefs.

11. The strong may despise the weak (consider Mitt Romney's "47 percent"), but the concept of a stable society requires that the core beliefs of the weak be afforded something approaching respect. It is a two-way process because that's what society means: We all agree to abide by a common set of rules. If the strong continue to assail the weak, then there will come a point at which the weak react; the society will be overturned and many will suffer.

12. Pure self-interest aside, it is virtuous for the strong to avoid assailing the religious and other core beliefs of the weak. By virtuous, I mean that because of the asymmetry of power in their relationship, there are certain things that the strong ought to do, and others they ought not to do. For example, if I find a lost kitten, I ought to care for it while I make arrangements for its welfare. I ought not to dip it in petrol then set fire to it for a laugh, just because that is bad. If, however, we have an innate drive to virtue, it is weak; in general, we are better at recognizing lack of virtue directed at ourselves than we are at acting virtuously toward others.

13. There is no truly rational society. Every rule we make involves compromise, conciliation, agreement to disagree, a delicate balancing of one sectoral interest against another - in a word, politics. When balancing opposing opinions, the question will always be: Where do we draw the line? There is no formula to tell us. We have to use common sense and a sense of fair play.

14. The overwhelming Western reaction to the Charlie Hebdo murders was thatfreedom of expression is sacrosanct, that it always overrides opinions such as the right to protect one's core beliefs. However, that is an extremist position. Freedom of expression always comes with conditions, qualifications, hedges and fudges. We are all familiar with the argument that one is not free to run into a crowded theater and shout "Fire." Individuals need to be protected; in particular, the weak need to be protected against the strong because that is what the civil  in civil society means.

15. Is there a moral case to restrict freedom of political expression? This is an incredibly complex issue involving a delicate balance of individual and social rights and obligations. I believe there is a strong case for a civil society to have laws against slander, calumny and willful offense because without them, the society won't last. The "cartoons" that provoked so much trouble in France and earlier in Denmark cannot be published in this country, and I don't believe my life is any the worse for it.

16. After January 7, is it possible to say the editors of Charlie Hebdo were advancing an important social debate, albeit by unconventional means, or were they acting as irresponsibly as the man shouting "Fire"? Were they just immature people making fun of others for selfish reasons and wallowing in the self-generated publicity? Or were their motives more sinister, profiting from using their position of strength to assail disempowered people by attacking their core beliefs, hiding behind the power of the state they affected to despise, all the while knowing there was nothing their targets could do to respond? Was, indeed, Charlie Hebdo just another face of the capitalist monster, determined to smash any and all potential sources of authority that might get in its way of devouring the defenseless?

17. It avails Hebdo's many defenders naught to say the editors were not part of the power structure. But go to the banlieues and ask the unemployed, under-educated and dispossessed Muslim youths who held the power in their "relationship" with the editors. Ask whether they were ever offered the right of reply. It is a fact of life that educated, socially sophisticated, middle-aged, upper-middle class white males, like myself, have power; we must take responsibility for how we manage that power. The concept of a civil society demands that asymmetrical levels of power be balanced by asymmetrical levels of responsibility.

18. Charlie Hebdo points to the endless moral dilemma of the "reasonable man": How does a reasonable person deal with unreasonable people without resorting to their methods? The victim of repeated religious abuse is forced either to pretend it didn't happen, thereby failing his religious and personal duty and having to live with that failure, or to try to do something about it, thereby hoping to retrieve his sense of self-worth. But what can he do? By definition, the social power structures in a hierarchical society are tipped against him: That's what hierarchy means.

19. It behooves all of us to examine our daily actions in terms of power structures. Educated and sophisticated people should not use their asymmetrical power to attack and humiliate the dispossessed. I do not believe that repeated, carefully directed, violent attacks upon the core beliefs of a dispossessed minority will benefit anybody. It is certainly not virtuous. While I don't believe the violence of the retaliatory attacks was justified, given the circumstances, it was about as unexpected as tomorrow's sunrise. And, as I have warned before (here and here), if we keep up the vitriol, there will be more attacks. Extremism breeds extremism.

20. The deceased editorial director of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, believed with fanatical (extremist religious) intensity in publishing anything and everything he fancied. He had the power to put his belief into practice and the means: When one journal was forced to close, he had the contacts to start another. He had been warned and warned about his provocative behavior, even from theprime minister's office. Invariably, his response was to publish more and more offensive material, on the basis that he would "rather die on his feet than live on his knees."

21. His many millions of supporters around the world, apparently including a considerable number of repressive and/or tyrannical governments, should not complain if a couple of orphaned, unemployed Muslim men with few prospects in life felt the same way.

Niall McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist, author and critic, although not necessarily in that order.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/29101-charlie-hebdo-when-freedom-of-speech-isn-t-paramount#

Inside the Islamic State ‘capital’: no end in sight to its grim rule

US air strikes have damaged morale in Raqqa, Syria, but a local anti-Isis activist says no one is expecting the group to be driven out

 People inspect a site after it was hit by what activists said were airs trikes by forces loyal to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in Raqqa, Syria. Photograph: Nour Fourat /Reuters

Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi   Saturday 21 February 2015 22.31 GMT

When Isis took over Raqqa, a wave of black swept over the city. The group’s dark flags were raised where its members lived or worked, women were required to shroud themselves in black, and black paint was daubed on buildings and in public spaces.

When US air strikes started, though, activists warned families not to dry dark clothes outside or on their roofs, in case they were mistaken for Isis flags. Perhaps Isis was worried, too, as it has started repainting everything. One central square, where crucifixion and other gruesome punishments are carried out in public, has been decked out in candy colours – pink, green and white. Another is golden.

Apparently, the pressures of publicity and the mundane and expensive business of ruling a city have pushed even Isis to make some compromises.

Last summer, crimes like smoking or failing to shutter a shop during prayer time would have earned transgressors several dozen lashes, but some religious police have started to accept fines in place of punishment from those who can afford it. There are even reports that they have been forcing traders to stay open through prayers, so that they can collect more money from them – around 1,500 Syrian pounds (around £5) each time.

It is not just money that they are short of. They lack blood for fighters injured in air strikes or on the frontline. People don’t want to donate, so they compel them. Anyone with business at the Islamic court is told first to go to a certain hospital, donate a pint of blood, then return with the receipt. Only then will the case be processed.

You can’t pay your way out of that donation, even if you do have money, which not everyone does. They have shut down many companies, including legal firms, for instance. Isis doesn’t believe in the old legal system, claiming that it tries to replace Allah’s law with the law of men.

Isis doesn’t want people to work, it just wants them to suffer, so that the men will join the group, and the women will marry Isis fighters. The Isis men seem to be sex-mad. They are always confiscating Viagra from pharmacies, which people think they use themselves. Many take several wives and are still looking forcaptives to take as concubines, like the Yazidi women.

The city has become a prison for women under 45. The regime says they cannot leave because they may be raped in areas held by Isis or other rebel groups, but most people inside Raqqa think that it is because they are desperate for more wives for the fighters.

The female brigades have put out a notice saying that anyone who wants to marry an Isis fighter should wear a white veil under their black one, and they will be contacted. Girls don’t really like them, and don’t want to marry them, but some families have economic problems.

But when the women do marry they have other problems. Some don’t even know the true identity of their husbands, only the nom de guerre; one woman’s husband was killed in battle but all she knows is that he came from Tunisia. She has no way of contacting his family, or even finding out where they are.

Isis has banned men born after 1992 from leaving the city for regime areas, to take exams, collect salaries or anything else. That means that no one can go any more, because who wants to flee to Turkey without their wife or daughters and sons?

Also, people don’t want to leave because as soon as anyone goes, Isis seizes their house. It has confiscated many homes from Christians, members of the Free Syrian Army and any activists it has caught.

Before Isis took over, the population of Raqqa was 1 million; now it is 400,000. But people say, ‘Where will I go? What will I do? I have no money to live in Turkey. And they will take my house.’ So they just stay here, waiting for an unknown tomorrow.

With no work, they mostly just stay at home watching television or using the internet. Ordinary people cannot live without internet and Isis cannot live without the internet; it’s like the heroin trade here, everyone is addicted.

They just go on Facebook or WhatsApp, since they can’t really watch videos or Skype, and in any case people worry about causing trouble with Isis. They sometimes inspect your phone at checkpoints, and if they find un-Islamic pictures or messages, you are in trouble.

People are worried about their children. No children are being forced to join up, but they are bored. They have no school, and Isis bans anyone under 13 from working. All day children are surrounded by fighters with Kalashnikovs. It’s like the movies – they see these things and eventually they want to go to the recruitment camps, so it’s very dangerous.

After being closed for a year, the schools reopened this month, but teachers had to go and denounce themselves for using “infidel” textbooks in the past. No one is happy about the new Isis ones they have been given.

School goes only up to ninth grade (middle school) and parents are so worried that their children will be brainwashed that they mostly keep them at home. A few people run small schools at home to teach their children, but it is extremely dangerous. Isis says it will kill any teachers who it catches running private schools, particularly ones for girls.

No one thinks that Isis will be forced out soon, because there are so many of them. The number of foreign fighters in the city is shocking. There is no neighbourhood without them and dozens of houses have been taken over.

People don’t look at Kobani and see a defeat, because everyone had to leave and the Americans bombed it to rubble to win. There are too many people in Raqqa to leave, and Isis knows that no countries want to send in troops to fight on the ground.

The jihadis from other countries tend to stick in groups by nationality or language – the British together, the Dutch together – and they don’t have much to do with ordinary people here. Both sides are afraid of each other.

If someone tries to talk with the foreigners, the Islamic police are likely to turn up and ask why he is bothering them, or perhaps accuse him of being a spy. But the foreigners are also nervous, perhaps because their families or governments in their countries don’t know they are here. Maybe they are worried that their photos or real names might be published, and that this will cause problems if they want to go home.

In fact, though, there is little chance of them going back. It’s easy to get into Raqqa, but very hard to get out. When foreign fighters go to Raqqa the first thing they do is confiscate their passports, and in sermons at the mosques Isis has warned people against giving foreigners new IDs.

Some of them just get bored when they arrive here from London or New York. Raqqa was never an exciting city and now there is nothing to do at all, so they lose enthusiasm. Others just came to live a good life under the caliphate, but they don’t really want to fight, so when Isis needs men and tries to take them to the frontline they are unhappy.

Isis can’t afford news to get out of people defecting, so anyone attempting to sneak out is executed in secret. They killed several people in the west of the city and just dumped their bodies in a hole until the smell got so bad that they had to bury them.

■ As told to the Observer. Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi is an activist with the groupRaqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/21/islamic-state-capital-raqqa-syria-isis