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ZNet | Israel/Palestine

US - Israeli UN Resolution Hypocrisy

by Stephen Lendman; July 31, 2006

Two nations stand out above all others as notorious serial abusers of UN resolutions - the US and Israel. Over the last half century, the US has used its Security Council veto many dozens of times to prevent any resolutions from passing condemning Israel for its abusive or hostile actions or that were inimical to Israeli interests. It's also voted against dozens of others overwhelmingly supported by the rest of the world in the UN General Assembly. By its actions and with 6% of the world's population, the US has thus arrogantly ignored the will of nearly all the other 94% to support its client state even when Israel had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity the rest of the world demanded it be held to account for. In the words of one UK observer using a baseball analogy: "Only the USA could have a World Series and not invite the rest of the world."

The Israeli record on UN resolutions over that same period is far worse. With full US support for its actions, it's flagrantly and with little or no pretense routinely ignored over five dozen UN Resolutions condemning or censuring it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deploring it for committing them, or demanding, calling on or urging the Jewish state to end them. Israel never did or intends to up to the present, including the mass slaughter and destruction it's now inflicting on the people of Lebanon and the Palestinians in their Territories that Israel illegally occupies and attacks whenever it wishes. It does so with impunity using any contrived pretext it can get away with to deny the Palestinians any chance ever for a viable sovereign independent state and to avoid a political solution with them it won't ever tolerate.


UN Resolutions As Examples of US and Israeli Hypocrisy

Consider now three UN Resolutions as examples of gross hypocrisy - one Israel and its US paymaster and benefactor support and two others both countries do not so they ignore them. In September, 2004, the Security Council passed UN Resolution 1559, cosponsored by the US and France, that called on Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon and stop intervening in the Lebanese political process. It also demanded all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias (aimed mainly at Hezbollah, of course) disarm and disband (meaning surrender). Following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, in February, 2005, Syria bowed to international pressure and complied fully with the resolution by April. In so doing, it ended its 29 year occupation of the part of the country it controlled which excluded the rest in the South under Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) control that Israel maintained after its invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Hezbollah's military resistance wing did not comply. Had it done so, it would have left itself and the Shia third of the Lebanese population dependent on it defenseless against the Israelis. The Lebanese government and its small and weak security forces had no power to force Hezbollah's compliance and were unable to do it.

Hezbollah was born out of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the oppressive occupation that followed. It's a popular resistance movement, much like and in the same spirit as the French Resistance freedom fighters the Nazis called terrorists, formed to resist their illegal occupiers and expel them. Ever since, it's continued as an effective resistance force against the Israelis that finally withdrew from Lebanon in May, 2000 but maintained its occupation of the 25 square kilometer area of South Lebanon known as Shebaa Farms it never relinquished after seizing it in the 1967 war. Hezbollah, the Lebanese people and its government demand Israel give it back as well as cease its frequent hostile cross-border incursions, unjustifiable abductions, repeated violations of the country's airspace as well as end its current brutal assault and invasion of their country once again. To continue being an effective resistance force, Hezbollah remained armed, has every right to do so in its own self-defense whatever resolutions the UN passes, and will continue resisting Israeli oppression until it ends. It's now doing it against a vastly superior IDF invasion force in South Lebanon far more effectively than the Israeli government is willing to admit.

Now consider UN Resolutions 465 and 476. The Security Council unanimously adopted UN Resolution 465 in March, 1980 that addressed Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Among other provisions in it, it condemned Israel's policy of "setting parts of its population and new Immigrants in those territories (and said doing so constituted) a flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." It called on the government of Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease....the establishment, construction and planning of (new) settlements in the Arab territories since 1967, including Jerusalem."

In the last 26 years, Israel has flagrantly violated this resolution and still continues to build new settlements illegally in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The US supports and funds the Israeli government enabling it to do it, and the UN and world community have taken no action to bring Israel into compliance which it could do by imposing sanctions severe enough to force Israel to stop new settlement construction, dismantle the existing ones and make restitution to the Palestinians and Syrians for the harm caused them.

The Security Council also passed Resolution 476 in June, 1980. Like Resolution 465, it, too, reaffirms the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. It went on to condemn Israel for its continued refusal to do it or to comply with the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions demanding it does. It repeated provisions detailed in Resolution 465 and reaffirmed its determination in the event of Israeli non-compliance to examine practical ways to get it to do so. Israel never complied, and the UN never took action to see that it did. Also, by its reinvasion of Lebanon now and its unending occupation of the Shebaa Farms area it's held since 1967, Israel is also in violation of UN resolution 425 and nine additional ones demanding the withdrawal of its forces from South Lebanon. The net effect of UN action - many relevant and high-sounding words and speeches amounting to nothing, at least when it concerns Israel.


The Hypocrisy of the US Congress

Now consider a further gross hypocrisy. On July 20, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly 410 - 8 to unconditionally endorse Israel's illegal aggression against the Palestinians and people of Lebanon. Earlier in the week, the US Senate passed a similar resolution by voice vote, but added a worthless and outrageous clause that "urges all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure." The House version showed no such disingenuous delicacy, and in language Orwell would love, actually praised Israel for "minimizing civilian loss" ignoring the obvious evidence to the contrary.

Along with its arrogance, the Congressional resolution violated the UN Charter by unjustifiably claiming Israel has the right of self-defense guaranteed it under Article 51 and thus has just cause to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure and kill innocent civilians to do it. Once again, Orwell would approve. These House and Senate resolutions are compelling evidence of both parties' unconditional support for Israel whatever it does. They also show the Bush administration's utter contempt for all international laws and norms and its unconditional endorsement of Israel when it violates them as it did so egregiously in its outrageous attack on a civilian target in Qana on July 30 killing 60 or more innocent men, women and at least 37 children.

The Congressional resolution also unjustifiably accused, and by implication condemned, Lebanon for failing to observe UN Resolution 1559 by not disbanding and disarming Hezbollah and allowing it instead to amass thousands of rockets and other weapons. It also criticized the legitimate integration of Hezbollah into the Lebanese government where it's represented by 11 democratically elected lawmakers in the Parliament and two ministers in the country's cabinet. The Congressional resolution ignores the fact that UN Resolution 1559 calls only for Hezbollah's armed militia to be disarmed and disbanded, regardless of how unreasonable that demand is.

For Lebanon's failure to enforce UN Resolution 1559, including provisions not even in it, the US Congress, in effect, gave Israel its approval to destroy the country and kill many hundreds of its people. At the same time, Israel never complied with UN Resolutions 465 and 476 demanding it withdraw from the Occupied Territories and Golan Heights it holds illegally, UN Resolution 425 and nine others making the same demand it remove its forces from all Lebanese territory, and all the dozens of other UN resolutions Israel routinely violates or disregards.

The US Congress, UN, world leaders and most Arab states remain committed to Israel overtly or tacitly. They've done it despite Israel's many violations including the crime of aggression in its ongoing brutal assaults on Lebanon and the Occupied Territories that it falsely and disingenuously claims to be a justifiable response to the capture (not kidnapping) of three of its soldiers, a minor provocation at most. At the same time, the Congress and world leaders remain silent refusing to condemn Israel for its failure to comply with UN Resolutions 465, 476, 425, nine similar ones. and all the other UN resolutions against it for the past half century.

The message is clear. When it comes to the UN, the US runs the show, and no substantive or significant action can be taken with teeth unless it approves - especially when it applies to Israel, in part, because of the power of the Israeli lobby in the US. Also, all actions of a valued US client state are quite acceptable, even when they violate the UN Charter and international law, so long as they serve Washington's interests. Israel's illegal aggression in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories clearly do. In spite of it, the US, as de facto ruler of the world, has given the Israelis carte blanche to run amuck and commit the supreme war crime with impunity. In the kind of world Orwell understood, Israel's mass killing and destruction is in the US's imperial interest, especially in the strategically important Middle East where oil is central to all else, so its scorched-earth policy is quite acceptable and may go on unabated and end only when the two allies decide to stop it. It doesn't matter what the law is or that the innocent are paying the supreme price for its violation.

Peacekeeping Hypocrisy

A brief word about still more hypocrisy. The US, UK and Israel have called for a robust international military force (Israel appears to want a NATO run one) to serve as "peacekeepers" in South Lebanon once Israel ceases its aggression and allows it to come in. No one is considering the wishes of Hezbollah, the people of South Lebanon it serves or the Lebanese government. Only Israel and its US and UK allies are to be allowed to decide or whatever other countries Israel is willing to allow in the decision-making loop. It's also undiscussed publicly what Israel really has in mind, how oppressive the Christian South Lebanon Army (SLA) was when it acted as Israel's occupying enforcer after 1978 or how ineffective the current UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been since it was first put in place in 1978 and never succeeded in establishing peace or security.

So what's really going on? After just days on the ground inside Lebanon, the IDF is finding the going very rough. It's already admitted to taking significant losses with dozens of its soldiers killed and hundreds more injured in intense fighting with a determined and resilient Hezbollah force as committed now to expelling an invading Israeli force as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when it succeeded in doing it. Clearly the IDF is struggling and taking more losses than it's willing to continue sustaining. So it wants instead to have a proxy army it can control come into South Lebanon, again act as its enforcers, engage Hezbollah in confrontation if necessary and have it do its killing and dying for it. Will Hezbollah and the people of South Lebanon now allow it in when they were unwilling to accept their SLA and UNIFIL occupiers in the past? Not a chance, Israel and the US know it, and yet both countries are going through the charade of trying to convince the world, the Lebanese people throughout the country, and its government that they will. Once the fighting ends, the IDF likely will withdraw and an occupying force acceptable to Israel will move in to serve in its place. It will be as unwelcome as the others that preceded it and eventually it will be driven out. But before it is, many more will die and suffer, and the long struggle of the Lebanese people and Palestinians as well in the Occupied Territories will go on unresolved.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10673

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ZNet | Europe

Imperial Whitewash

by Mike Marqusee; The Guardian; July 31, 2006

As of November last year, anyone applying for British citizenship has to pass a test demonstrating both proficiency in English and "sufficient knowledge of life in the United Kingdom". In preparation for the test, applicants are asked to study a booklet that begins with a brief history of Britain. Sanctioned and published by the Home office, this is the closest we have to an "official" history, though it was written by an individual, Professor Bernard Crick, political commentator and biographer of Orwell.

Crick disclaims any official status for his 9,000-word essay and states clearly:

Any account of British history, whether long or short, is an interpretation. No one person would agree with another what to put in, what to leave out, and how to say it.

None the less, his text drew fire from historians, who noted a host of embarrassing errors. Crick misquotes Churchill, misrepresents the Magna Carta, and wrongly asserts that the massacre at Glencoe took place before the Battle of the Boyne and that unemployment "vanished" after 1945.

Some of the omissions seem indefensible. There are 210 words on the end of the Highland clans in 1745 but not a single one about the Chartists, the rise of the trade union movement or the general strike of 1926; there is a relatively lengthy account of the Thatcher years - more than 300 words - but no mention of the Falklands war, inner-city riots or the miners' strike of 1984-85, surely one of modern Britain's watershed events.
What is most disturbing, however, is the treatment of the British empire. While the Atlantic slave trade is condemned unequivocally as "evil", the empire is given a positive gloss:

For many indigenous peoples in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere, the British empire often brought more regular, acceptable and impartial systems of law and order ... The spread of English helped unite disparate tribal areas ... Public health, peace, and access to education can mean more to ordinary people than precisely who are their rulers ...

It is noted that the British did not try to impose Christianity on India, which leads to the observation that "the English tolerance of different national cultures in the United Kingdom itself may have influenced the character of their imperial rule in India." So, apparently, there was no policy of divide and rule and no racial discrimination against the natives.

There's not a single mention of the empire carrying out acts of repression or exploitation - anywhere, ever; no mention of the famines that killed millions in British-ruled India; and, crucially, not a word about resistance to empire, except for a passing reference to "liberation or self-government movements that had been growing in India in the 1930s". In Crick's account, the empire came to a peaceful end after the second world war simply because the British public was not interested in it and "the Labour party believed in establishing self-government in the former colonies."

But the empire did not quietly expire in 1947. British forces waged wars against insurgents in Malaya (from 1948 to 1960), Cyprus (1955 to 1959) and Aden (1963 to 1967). Between 1952 and 1956, the British suppressed the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya at horrific cost (the minimum estimate is 12,000 dead, but some studies claim more than 100,000). In 1953 and again in 1962, British troops were used to sabotage democracy in Guyana. And in 1956, Britain joined France and Israel in attacking Egypt in an attempt to repossess the Suez canal. After that, Britain became a subordinate power to the US, and in that capacity is still deeply enmeshed in the military and economic coercion of people in foreign lands.

The great majority of those who will take the new citizenship test come from countries once ruled by the British or other European empires, and their view of empire is likely to be better informed and more critical than Crick's. What is also worrying is that his kid-glove approach is part of a wider trend, in which rightwing commentators like Niall Fergusson and Robert Kaplan have sought to resuscitate the idea of imperial rule, ignoring or minimising its ill effects while exaggerating its beneficence.

Very few Britons are aware that their country occupied Egypt in 1882 and remained its de facto ruler for 72 years, during which time its economy was profoundly distorted; or that between 1899 and 1920 Britain waged a savage campaign against the Dervish uprising in Somalia, wiping out one third of the population, 100,000 souls.

With 8,000 British troops currently fighting insurgents in Iraq and another 4,000 doing the same in Afghanistan, ignorance of imperial history and attempts to whitewash that history are of more than academic concern. This is not about asking people to feel guilt for the sins of the past; it is about ensuring that today's British citizens are equipped to analyse and contextualise their government's policies.

Because of Kipling and the Great Game, there is some awareness that Britain has been in Afghanistan before. But few have more than a fuzzy idea of the three Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839-42, 1878-80 and 1919), in each of which British forces sought to impose Britain's will on a recalcitrant people, exacting and suffering substantial casualties before being forced to retreat.

Fewer still know of Britain's previous adventures in Iraq. Using Indian soldiers, the British occupied Mesopotamia in 1918 and stayed there, effectively, until 1958. A national revolt in 1920 was put down with the utmost brutality, involving the use of poison gas and the relentless terror bombing of mud, stone and reed villages. In a single year, the RAF dropped 97 tonnes of ordnance, killing some 9,000 Iraqis for the loss of only nine soldiers. The rebellion nevertheless continued for a decade, as did the punitive bombing raids, under the command of Arthur Harris, who was to mastermind the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, which took 35,000 lives.

Harris's statue stands today in London's Fleet Street. Alas, nowhere in Britain is there a memorial to Air Commodore Lionel Charlton, who resigned from his post in 1924 after visiting a hospital and facing the armless and legless victims of British air raids.

Commenting in 1934 on the British and French claim that the "sole aim" of their appropriation of the old Ottoman possessions in the Middle East was the emancipation of its peoples, Jawaharlal Nehru offered a scathing and still pertinent indictment: "They shoot and kill and destroy only for the good of the people shot down. The novel feature of the modern type of imperialism is its attempt to hide its terrorism and exploitation behind pious phrases ."

If people in Britain, whether native born or naturalised citizens, are to strip away the pious phrases of today's empire builders, they need a much more realistic account of their past than the one being offered by Professor Crick and the Home Office.

www.mikemarqusee.com

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=10672

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ZNet | Corporate Globalization

Signs Of The Times

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman; July 31, 2006

Using a statistical lens, two just-released books shed light on the ravages of corporate globalization.

Vital Signs 2006-2007 from the Washington, D.C.-based WorldWatch Institute contends that "the health of the global economy and the stability of nations will be shaped by our ability to address the huge imbalances in natural resource systems."

The Least Developed Countries Report 2006, issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), argues that while there have been relatively higher rates of economic growth in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs, a UN-designated group of the world's poorest 50 countries), it is "not translating into poverty reduction and improved human well-being."

Here are 20 factoids from the reports, the first 10 from Vital Signs, the second 10 from The Least Developed Countries Report:

1. Global oil consumption in 2004 was 3.7 billion tons, about eight times more than in 1950. Coal consumption was two-and-a-half times more than 1950, and natural gas more than 15 times greater.

2. 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded on Earth. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide reached 379.6 parts per million for 2005.

3. Thanks largely to Hurricane Katrina, weather-related disasters caused more than $200 billion in damage, nearly double the previous record.
Three of the 10 strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred in 2005.

4. More money was spent on advertising in 2005 than ever before - $570 billion, about half of which was spent in the United States. The global figure is 11 times more than was spent in 1950, measured in constant dollars.

5. More than 37 million people have died from AIDS over the last two decades.

6. The world's governments spent more than a trillion dollars on the military in 2004, the highest figure since the end of the Cold War.

7. An estimated 20 percent of the world's coral reefs have been effectively destroyed.

8. Twelve percent of all bird species are threatened.

9. A billion people worldwide live in slums.

10. More than 300 million people worldwide are obese. U.S. obesity levels have doubled since 1990, to about 40 percent. Chinese levels have doubled during the same period, now standing at 7 percent.

11. Per capita, for every 100 researchers and scientists doing R&D in rich countries, there are only two in LDCs.

12. In 2004, LDCs had a combined trade deficit of $6.5 billion. Exclude the oil exporters, and the combined deficit was $18.6 billion - more than 50 percent of the size of non-oil-exporting LDCs' exports.

13. LDCs imported $7.6 billion in food in 2003, while exporting only
$2.2 billion worth of food.

14. The average years of schooling in LDCs is three years.

15. About one-in-five high-skill workers in LDCs (defined as some college or technical school education) was working in a rich country in 2000.

16. Thanks to International Monetary Fund and World Bank structural adjustment programs, governments in LDCs are only half the proportional size of rich country governments, with LDCs devoting only 3.5 percent of their national economy (GDP) to state administrative services.

17. Between 1991 and 2004, only 20 U.S. patents were granted to citizens from LDCs, compared with 14,824 from other developing countries, and 1.8 million to citizens of rich countries.

18. Labor productivity in LDCs is one-ninety-fourth the level of rich countries.

19. There are 3 percent as many phone lines per person in LDCs as in rich countries.

20. LDC energy consumption is 1.6 percent the level of rich countries.

Not all the news is so bad. Malnourishment is declining quickly in about a third of LDCs. Globally, infant mortality is at a record low - although gains are coming very slowly in the poorest countries. (Only four LDCs are on target to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015.) Bicycle production is rising rapidly, with 101 million bikes manufactured in
2003 (the latest year for which data is available), nearing record levels. Global production of photovoltaic cells - which generate electricity from sunlight - increased 45 percent in 2005, with current levels six times the amount produced in 2000.

Overall, however, there's no way to look at the data in these two books and conclude anything but that the current way of doing things is not working.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=10671