UK would 'recognise Palestine as state' under Labour government, Jeremy Corbyn says

Party leader says Labour would take step 'very early on' after winning power as he visits Palestinian refugees

• Chris Baynes

23-06-2018 

Jeremy Corbyn walks through a market during his visit to the Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan ( AP )

The UK would swiftly “recognise Palestine as a state” under a Labour government, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The party’s leader said he would take steps towards “a genuine two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “very early on” if Labour won a general election.

Mr Corbyn was speaking in Jordan during his first international trip outside Europe since he was elected Labour leader in 2015.

It included a visit to a decades-old camp for Palestinians uprooted during Arab-Israeli wars.

“I think there has to be a recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to their own state which we as a Labour Party said we would recognise in government as a full state as part of the United Nations,” said Mr Corbyn.

Ahead of a visit to Al-Baqa’a refugee camp on Saturday, home to about 100,000 Palestinians, he tweeted: “The next Labour government will recognise Palestine as a state as one step towards a genuine two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Mr Corbyn is a vocal critic of the Israeli government's actions towards Palestinians and has previously called on the UK government to unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war. 

In April, he attacked Western “silence” over Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border and said Britain should consider stopping stopping the sale of arms to Israel that “could be used in violation of international law”.

Allegations of antisemitism within the Labour Party have dogged Mr Corbyn since his election as Labour leader, with critics accusing him of allowing abuse to go unchecked. 

Asked about the issue by reporters in Jordan, he said there was “no place whatsoever for antisemitism in our society”.

“There has to be a peace process, and there has to be a right of the Palestinian people to live in peace, as well as the right of Israel,” he added. 

Mr Corbyn described Donald Trump’s decision to recognise contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US Embassy to the disputed city as a “catastrophic mistake”.

With the trip to Jordan, Mr Corbyn appeared to be attempting to boost his foreign policy credentials. 

On Friday, he toured Zaatari, Jordan’s largest camp for Syrian refugees. Taking questions from reporters its market, he said a Labour government would “work very, very hard to regenerate the peace process” in Syria.

Without a solution, “the conflict will continue, more people will die in Syria and many many more will go to refugee camps, either here in Jordan or come to Europe or elsewhere,” he added.

More than six million Syrians have fled war in their homeland, with a majority finding refuge in neighbouring host countries such as Jordan. Hundreds of thousands more have migrated onward to Europe, with Germany taking in the bulk. 

Mr Corbyn said Britain could do much more to shelter Syrian refugees, particularly unaccompanied children, arguing that the government’s quota of 20,000 refugees was “very, very small compared to any other European country".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/palestine-state-recognition-jeremy-corbyn-labour-government-israel-soon-a8413796.html

The Palestinian Tipping Point

JUNE 20, 2018

The Palestinian Tipping Point

by NICOLA PERUGINI

Photo by Trocaire | CC BY 2.0

On Wednesday, 13 June, for the second time in few days, Palestinians took the streets of central Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, as part of a popular campaign launched against the financial sanctions imposed by the Palestinian Authority on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The hardships imposed by the Fatah-led PA on the tormented coastal enclave include cutting the wages of over 63,000 government employees, refusing to pay Gaza’s electricity bill, ending all spending on ministerial functions in Gaza, and severely limiting support to Gaza’s healthcare ministry and system, including decreasing permits for patients to leave the strip. The aim of the sanctions is to try to topple the Hamas government, in what many Palestinians, especially from young generations, perceive as a cheeky collaboration with the regime of siege and isolation inflicted on the Gaza population by Israel and Egypt.

In Ramallah, the demonstrators defied an order issued by President Abbas which banned protests until the end of the three-day Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Ramadan month of fasting. Can you imagine living under military occupation and your own people who claim to struggle for your national liberation impose on you the same measures of the occupying power?

As it has often happened during the recent years, the protests were met with brutal repression: tear gas, stun grenades, bullets shot in the air, journalists and protesters beaten, arbitrary arrests.

Among the many who were detained by the PA security forces there was Laith Abu Zayed, one of my former students at Al Quds Bard College Human Rights Program. After a brilliant study career, Laith has worked for several years for the rights of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli and Palestinian jails at Addameer (the Palestinian Support and Human Rights Association), before being hired by Amnesty International, for which he was monitoring the Ramallah protest, before being detained, severely beaten, and tortured while in police custody. 

Amnesty reported that “Upon his release, he recalled seeing 18 other fellow detainees receive the same treatment. His plight is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mass show of excessive force and torture unleashed by the Palestinian security forces last night. We demand a full, independent investigation into these violations, and call for all those responsible to be held to account.”

Laith is part of a new generation of Palestinians who have grown under the shadow of the Second Intifada, witnessing the increasing transformation of the Palestinian 

Authority into an entity that vicariously enforces Israel’s colonial policies through its collaboration with the occupying power: from the assistance to the Israeli military in maintaining Israel’s security through a cooperation that has resulted in the arrest and killing of many Palestinians who fought for their right to self-determination; through the reproduction of an economic system of dependency from the occupation; to the imposition of fratricide measures like the sanctions that West Bank Palestinians have decided to oppose at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Palestinian question has reached a point of no return, no matter how much violence is deployed by the Palestinian security forces to repress internal democracy. To Laith, those who participated in the demonstrations he was monitoring, and the many Palestinians who still do not take the streets for the fear of the PA repression, it has become clear that the struggle for justice in Palestine is not anymore merely a struggle against Israel’s regime of dispossession. They are aware that like in other colonial situations, the colonizer has built a mechanism of indirect rule with the participation of the colonized elite, as the sanctions on Gaza clearly reveal. Thus, they have realized that the meaning of the word liberation has irreversibly changed, and self-determination will be achieved only by making the struggle against the occupier and that for the end of internal political divisions, democracy and human rights at home part of the same political horizon.

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/20/the-palestinian-tipping-point
/

WATCH 

Trump AG on Nazi Germany Comparisons: 'They Were Keeping the Jews From Leaving'

'Well it’s a real exaggeration. Of course in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,' Jeff Sessions told Fox News' Laura Ingraham

Jun 19, 2018 1:59 PM

Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the Senate intelligence meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 13, 2017.SAUL LOEB/AFP

Fox News' Laura Ingraham asked U.S. President Donald Trump's embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions if comparisons between Trump immigration policy and the Holocaust were reasonable.

“Well it’s a real exaggeration. Of course in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions said.

“This is a serious matter,” he continued. “We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit and what they think is their family’s benefit is not a basis for a claim of asylum.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions: "We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit...is not a basis for a claim of asylum." 

@IngrahamAnglepic.twitter.com/ae0QoEMAVD

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 19, 2018

Comparisons between Nazi concentration camps and U.S. internment camps for immigrant children separated from their parents has triggered much debate on Twitter, with the term #TrumpCamps trending in recent days.

‘Also, the president doesn’t have a moustache.’ https://t.co/zI7RVuDI1q

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 19, 2018

However, the term really took off on Saturday when former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden tweeted an image of Birkenau concentration camp with the words "Other governments have separated mothers and children." Later, he tweeted, "This is Birkenau. Then Germany. Now Poland. NO ONE who now walks through that portal on that siding can casually believe that civilized behavior is guaranteed."

Harry Potter author and regular Trump critic on Twitter, J.K. Rowling, responded to Sessions's comments also trying to explain the difference between Nazi Germany and Trump, writing, "Also, the president doesn’t have a moustache."

A Department of Justice spokeswoman told the Washington, DC newspaper The Hill: "that the Nazi comparisons that others are making" were just a "desperate attempt to distract from the fact that their policies led to the number of families illegally crossing the border jumping five-fold over the last four years.”

The Justice Department asked the high court to make the injunction issued by a federal judge in Chicago cover only that city and not the entire country. Republican President Donald Trump's administration has gone on an offensive against Democratic-governed cities and states that protect illegal immigrants as part of his hard-line immigration policies.

The Justice Department said the injunction "strays far beyond the traditional, proper role of federal courts." The justices likely will ask the city of Chicago for a response before deciding on the request.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has criticized lower courts for imposing nationwide injunctions against some of the administration's most contentious policies.

Chicago sued the administration last year after Sessions said he would cut off cities from certain grants unless they allowed federal immigration authorities unlimited access to local jails and provided advance notice before releasing anyone wanted for immigration violations.

Since the injunction was issued last year, the Justice Department said it has not issued grants to the nearly 1,000 state and local jurisdictions that have applied, amounting to more than $250 million in funds.

The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the injunction in April, saying Sessions likely exceeded his authority in imposing the conditions on the grants. The 7th Circuit said that because nationwide injunctions have such a powerful effect, judges should rarely grant them, but doing so was proper in this case.

Nationwide injunctions also have blocked Trump's bid to wind down a program protecting immigrants brought into the United States illegally as children from deportation, and to exempt more religious-based employers from a requirement that health insurance provided to employees covers birth control for women.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-ag-on-nazi-comparisons-they-were-keeping-jews-from-leaving-1.6193605

US lobbyist for Russian oligarch visited Julian Assange nine times last year

US lobbyist for Russian oligarch visited Julian Assange nine times last year

It is unclear whether Adam Waldman’s 2017 visits had connection to Oleg Deripaska

Adam Waldman, left, and Oleg Deripaska at the Oktoberfest in Munich in 2015. Photograph: Gisela Schober/Getty Images

Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Luke Harding

Wed 20 Jun 2018 06.08 EDT

A longtime US lobbyist for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska visited Julian Assange nine times at the Ecuadorian embassy in London last year, according to visitor logs seen by the Guardian.

Adam Waldman, who has worked as a Washington lobbyist for the metals tycoon since 2009, had more meetings with Assange in 2017 than almost anyone else, the records show.

It is not clear why Waldman went to the WikiLeaks founder or whether the meetings had any connection to the Russian billionaire, who is now subject to US sanctions. But the disclosure is likely to raise further questions about the extent and nature of Assange’s alleged ties to Russia.

US intelligence agencies concluded with “high confidence” last year, in an unclassified intelligence assessment, that the Kremlin shared hacked emails with WikiLeaks that undermined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as part of its effort to sway the 2016 election in favour of Donald Trump.

Waldman is a lawyer and consultant in Washington and Deripaska’s primary lobbyist. He also represents other clients including Hollywood stars. Last year Deripaska paid Waldman about $562,000. According to filings to the Department of Justice (DoJ) by Waldman’s firm, the Endeavor Group, his work for Deripaska focused on advising the oligarch’s company UC Rusal on legal issues.

When Deripaska first hired him, in 2009, Waldman’s firm was on a $40,000-per-month retainer. The Russian magnate was having problems obtaining a visa because of alleged connections to organised crime, which Deripaska denies. Waldman lobbied the US government to get Deripaska a visa.

Waldman also served as a counsel for Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. A 2010 DoJ filing showed that the Endeavor Group was hired by Lavrov to help ease the “persistent state of limbo” that Deripaska faced as a result of his being refused entry into the US. In a letter to Waldman, Lavrov hailed Deripaska as one of Russia’s “prominent business leaders”.

Waldman declined to answer questions from the Guardian about his meetings with Assange or whether they were connected to the Russian billionaire.

Waldman has not registered himself as a lobbyist for the WikiLeaks founder.

A report last year by Fox News, which obtained leaked text messages between Waldman and the US senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, suggested Waldman tried to broker a deal between Assange and the DoJ and that the negotiations were fruitless. It is not clear whether Waldman was brokering the deal on Assange’s behalf or someone else’s.

One text sent by Waldman in April 2017 said: “I convinced him [Assange] to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those [with] DoJ.”

The logs, obtained by the Guardian and Focus Ecuador, reveal details of Assange’s life inside the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been staying since June 2012. Waldman allegedly visited Assange twice on 12 and 13 January 2017, days before Trump’s inauguration as president, and again immediately after the ceremony, on 27 January.

The Guardian has separately corroborated that Waldman was in London in late March, when he saw Assange twice more. He visited the embassy three times in April and made two more visits at the end of November 2017.

Deripaska is a key person in the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

According to the Associated Press, Trump’s future campaign manager Paul Manafort began work for Deripaska in 2005 and pitched a plan that would “greatly benefit [Vladimir] Putin’s government.” In 2006 Manafort signed a $10m annual contract with Deripaska, a close ally of Russia’s president.

In summer 2016, when he was Trump’s campaign chief, Manafort offered Deripaska a confidential briefing, emails turned over to Congress and Mueller show. The briefing never happened, Manafort says. Deripaska was filmed soon afterwards on his luxury yacht discussing the forthcoming US election with Russia’s deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko.

Deripaska was subjected to more US sanctions in April. They were imposed on close associates of Putin’s in retaliation for alleged Kremlin meddling in the US vote. Meanwhile, Manafort faces multiple charges of money laundering arising from his work in Ukraine, and accusations of tampering with potential witnesses. He denies all charges. His bail was revoked last week and he is now awaiting trial in prison.

Waldman’s relationship with Deripaska goes beyond consultancy. According to filings, in 2008 he travelled to Moscow, Amsterdam and Siberia with the oligarch for the purpose of “friendship”. In 2015 Waldman and his German second wife, Barbara Sturm, posed for photos with Deripaska at Munich’s Oktoberfest. Sturm, a dermatologist and beauty expert, has a major business presence in Russia.

In April Waldman placed an article by Deripaska with the conservative Daily Caller news website, sources say. The oligarch called allegations of collusion “invented” and said he and the Russian government were victims of a “deep state” Washington plot.

Waldman has cultivated connections with senior Democratic politicians and spent summers with many of them in Martha’s Vineyard.

According to filings, Deripaska has paid Waldman via a series of offshore firms, with cash routed via shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize and Jersey. At least one of Deripaska’s companies, Sea Chaika Corporation, appears in the Panama Papers. In 2010 it transferred at least $85,000 to Waldman’s accounts. Sea Chaika is connected to anonymous firms registered in Cyprus.

Deripaska and UC Rusal did not comment. Assange has denied the hacked Democratic party emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016 came from Moscow.

Last month Lenín Moreno, the president of Ecuador, said Assange could continue to live in the embassy as long as he complied with the conditions of his stay and avoided voicing political opinions on Twitter. In March, Moreno restricted Assange’s visitors, cut his internet access and shelved a $5m (£3.7m) secret spy operation to protect him, called “Operation Hotel”.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/20/us-lobbyist-for-russian-oligarch-visited-julian-assange-nine-times-last-year