LRB blog

It was bizarre to watch #Samantha_Power at the UN conveniently forget to mention all the massacres done in America’s name
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/samantha-power-un-us-ambassador-america-syria-aleppo-massacres-srebre

So there was Samantha Power doing her “shame” bit in the UN. “Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit?”, America’s ambassador to the UN asked the Russians and Syrians and Iranians. She spoke of Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica “and, now, Aleppo”.

Odd, that. For when Samantha talked about “barbarism against civilians” in Aleppo, I remembered climbing over the dead Palestinian civilians massacred at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, slaughtered by Israel’s Lebanese militia friends while the Israeli army – Washington’s most powerful ally in the Middle East – watched. But Samantha didn’t mention them. Not enough dead Palestinians, perhaps? Only 1,700 killed, including women and children. Halabja was up to 5,000 dead. But Sabra and Chatila certainly “creeped me out” at the time.

And then I recalled the monstrous American invasion of Iraq. Perhaps half a million dead. It’s one of the statistics for Rwanda’s dead. Certainly far more than Srebrenica’s 9,000 dead. And I can tell you that Iraq’s half million dead “creeped me out” rather a lot, not to mention the torture and murders in the CIA’s interrogation centres in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq. It also “creeped me out” to learn that the US president used to send innocent prisoners off to be interrogated in... Assad’s Syria! Yes, they were sent by Washington to be questioned in what Samantha now calls Syria’s “Gulags”.

#amnésie #Etats-Unis

Stop Blaming #Migrants
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/11/29/rachel-shabi/stop-blaming-migrants

This is the challenge facing the progressive left. Now more than ever, it’s the job of the left to trust that the majority of the population is not racist, and move away from the notion that more immigration controls are necessary, possible or desirable. The progressive response to a populist right-wing surge is to take away their fuel – fight to alleviate the economic pain it thrives on, and reject the division it creates. When the new Ukip leader says he wants to replace Labour and make his party ‘the patriotic voice of working people’, the progressive line is to redirect the blame away from migrants and onto political decisions, to focus on fighting poverty and creating secure jobs, not to patronise people by suggesting everything can be made better with a bit of ‘patriotism’. It’s a hard line to take and will be met with ridicule and attack. But that’s to be expected. That’s what challenging a dominant political narrative looks like.

But if the left doesn’t hold a line, it enables the surge of nativist nationalism by conceding ground, allowing the debate to shift ever rightwards. Fo we really want to find out where it all ends? Do we really want to see how far right we can go?

#gauche #extrême_droite

#Partenariats_publics_privés : les hôpitaux britanniques n’arrivent pas à payer la facture
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/01/23/partenariat-public-prive-les-hopitaux-britanniques-n-arrivent-pas-a-payer-la

Article de 2012

Dans ces conditions, comment expliquer la multiplication des PPP depuis vingt ans ? Cela permet tout simplement au gouvernement de maquiller ses comptes, puisque les contrats public-privé n’apparaissent pas dans les dettes de l’Etat. « Les PFI permettent d’obtenir quelque chose maintenant et de payer plus tard, accuse Andrew Tyrie, député conservateur et président du comité parlementaire au Trésor. On comprend pourquoi n’importe quel ministère en devient accro. Mais on ne peut pas continuer comme cela, en espérant que la prochaine génération de contribuables paiera l’addition. »

Le revenu garanti et ses faux amis, par @Mona Chollet
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/07/CHOLLET/55965

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/arton55965.jpg

Du Forum économique de Davos à la Silicon Valley en passant par les assemblées du mouvement Nuit debout en France, le revenu de base est sur toutes les lèvres depuis quelques mois. La Finlande affirme vouloir l’instaurer ; les Suisses ont voté sur le sujet en juin. Mais, entre l’utopie émancipatrice que portent certains et la réforme limitée que veulent les autres, il y a un monde…

Sisi’s New Prisons « LRB blog
Omar Robert Hamilton 14 July 2016

▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/07/14/omar-hamilton/sisis-new-prisons

I hadn’t seen Alaa for two years. Two years since we stood at his father’s funeral on the marble stairs of Omar Makram mosque. Two years since he was muscled by plainclothes police into an unmarked car back to prison. My cousin has been in prison for almost as long as Sisi has ruled Egypt. He was sentenced to five years for organising a protest. This month I was allowed to visit him.
Torah prison complex is built like a medieval fortress city. An outer wall rings a vast area that includes several prisons of varying horror, administrative buildings, farmland, a police academy and, now, a courthouse. We carried bags heavy with food and clean clothes up to the prison walls. We waited with the other visitors in the dusty runnels beside the cement blast walls for the man in black uniform to to drop his leg and let us pass. We sat on the metal seats of a brightly painted road train dragged by a tractor into the penal complex. ‘This is new,’ my aunt Laila said, gesturing at a grey concrete wall. ‘I think it’s maximum security.’ The train lurched forward.

Palestinian Women, Children Stop IDF Soldier Detaining a Minor - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.673469

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.673470!/image/3122644660.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_474/3122644660.jpg

L’armée israélienne en concurrence avec #Gorafi:

According to the army, the youth was throwing stones at the troops, who did not realize he was a minor.

#mineurs #Palestine #Israël #impunité #Israel

In Sofia

Djaved says he has learned that you can haggle with a policeman for anything in Sofia. At 10.15 on the morning we met it was already over 30ºC, but we went for a walk anyway. I grew up wandering these streets after school. Yuch Bunar, as the area near the Central Market Hall was once called, has traditionally been the home of migrants, Jews, traders, musicians. It is the most culturally and historically dense part of the city, and the buildings haven’t changed much since the late 19th century. They haven’t been intentionally preserved – just left undisturbed. The area has a synagogue, a mosque, one Catholic and two Orthodox churches, all working, all in one square mile, all peeling stucco in different shades of ochre, just minutes away from Parliament Square, where the buildings are in pale grey stone: the council of ministers, the presidential palace, the national bank.

Djaved escaped one war in Afghanistan, but there is another one in Bulgaria: the immigrants’ war, he calls it, ‘because you have to fight to be an immigrant.’

▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/07/15/neda-neynska/in-sofia
#Bulgarie #migration #asile #réfugiés

Iran’s Physicists « LRB blog
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/03/19/jeremy-bernstein/irans-physicists

The #Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran was founded in 1929 as a school of engineering. It became a general technological institute in 1972. It now has more than a dozen departments with thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Few if any American universities have a more complete list of undergraduate physics courses. Looking at the faculty reveals an interesting split. The senior professors all did much of their degree work abroad. One of them for example was an undergraduate at Columbia. The junior faculty, including one woman, all did their degree work in Iran. In another generation, it may be that all of Iran’s physicists will have been educated in Iran. No other country in the Middle East would show a demographic like this. Taken in the large this means that Iran has a serious scientific infrastructure, which must be taken into account in any negotiations over its nuclear programme. The notion that the country can be negotiated into a scientific stone age is nonsense.

#Physique #science

Israël et la CPI

La décision prise par la procureure générale de la Cour pénale internationale d’ouvrir un examen préliminaire sur la situation de la Palestine a peu de chances d’aboutir à la mise en procès de responsables israéliens pour crimes de guerre. Mais si ces mêmes responsables — et en particulier Benyamin Netanyahou — se disent outragés et menacent de "détruire" la CPI, c’est en réalité parce qu’ils craignent que le narratif israélien sur le conflit (déjà usé jusqu’à la corde) change officiellement avec cet examen, désignant une fois pour toutes qui est la victime et suscitant notamment une réinterprétation de la notion de violence légitime.

Israel and the ICC
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/01/21/nicola-perugini/israel-and-the-icc

#cpi#israel#palestine#justice

Moral Clarity « LRB blog
►http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/01/09/adam-shatz/moral-clarity

Today a new cry can be heard among intellectuals in the US: ‘Je suis Charlie.’ It is a curious slogan, all the more so since few of the Americans reciting it had ever heard of, much less read, Charlie Hebdo before the 7 January massacre. What does it mean, exactly? Seen in the best light, it means simply that we abhor violence against people exercising their democratic right to express their views. But it may also be creating what the French would call an amalgame, or confusion, between Charlie Hebdo and the open society of the West. In this sense, the slogan ‘je suis Charlie’ is less an expression of outrage and sympathy than a declaration of allegiance, with the implication that those who aren’t Charlie Hebdo are on the other side, with the killers, with the Islamic enemy that threatens life in the modern, democratic West, both from outside and from within.

“If France continues to treat French men of North African origin as if they were a threat to ‘our’ civilisation, more of them are likely to declare themselves a threat, and follow the example of the Kouachi brothers. This would be a gift both to Marine Le Pen and the jihadists, who operate from the same premise: that there is an apocalyptic war between Europe and Islam”
►http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/01/09/adam-shatz/moral-clarity

Europe’s Folly « LRB blog
►http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/11/07/aaron-bastani/europes-folly

Those are political choices. The week that #Triton was announced, the Home Office defended its decision not to contribute to a like-for-like replacement of #Mare_Nostrum. The new arrangements had been agreed by Europe’s interior ministers, including Theresa May, earlier in the month. Their explanation for the reduced role of Triton was that the expansive reach of its forerunner, operating in an area of 27,000 square kilometres, was a counterproductive ‘pull factor’ in attracting undocumented migrants.

It’s an absurd claim. People who have fled war zones, famine and economic deprivation will keep on trying to reach Europe, however treacherous the journey. By the end of August, the UN estimated that more than six million people had been displaced in Syria and three million more had fled to neighbouring countries. Their experiences are repeated, to differing degrees, along much of Europe’s periphery. It is meaningless to talk of ‘pull’ when the ‘push’ is so strong.

#Mare_Nostrum, c’est fini

Cette opération de sauvetage a permis d’éviter la noyade de plus de 150 000 migrants au large des côtes italiennes, en un an.

▻http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2014/10/31/mare-nostrum-c-est-fini_1133471

#fin #migration #asile #réfugié #sauvetage #mourir_en_mer #Forteresse_Europe #Méditerranée

When Mining Firms Sue « LRB blog
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/09/15/john-perry/when-mining-firms-sue

North American mining companies appear to find making claims against foreign states almost as #profitable as prospecting for minerals.

#ISDS #tribunal #Banque_mondiale #ONU

After the Ceasefire « LRB blog
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/09/12/omar-hamilton/after-the-ceasefire-2

On 26 August a ceasefire between #Israel and Hamas was agreed, bringing a fragile end to a war that killed 2150 Palestinians (mostly civilians) and 73 Israelis (mostly soldiers). Since then Hamas has not fired a single rocket, attacked an Israeli target, or done anything to break the terms of the ceasefire. Israel has done the following:
1. Annexed another 1500 acres of West Bank land
2. Seized $56 million of PA tax revenue
3. Not lifted the illegal blockade (as required by the ceasefire)
4. Broken the ceasefire by firing at fishermen on four separate occasions
6. Killed a 22-year-old, Issa al Qatari, a week before his wedding
7. Killed 16-year-old Mohammed Sinokrot with a rubber bullet to the head
8. Tortured a prisoner to the point of hospitalisation
9. Refused 13 members of the European Parliament entry into Gaza
10. Detained at least 127 people across the West Bank, including a seven-year-old boy in Hebron and two children, aged seven and eight, taken from the courtyard of their house in Silwad – and tear-gassed their mother
11. Continued to hold 33 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in prison
12. Continued to hold 500 prisoners in administrative detention without charge or trial
13. Destroyed Bedouin homes in Khan al Ahmar, near Jerusalem, leaving 14 people homeless, and unveiled a plan to forcibly move thousands of Bedouin away from Jerusalem into two purpose-built townships
14. Destroyed a dairy factory in Hebron whose profits supported an orphanage
15. Destroyed a family home in Silwan, making five children homeless
16. Destroyed a house in Jerusalem where aid supplies en route to Gaza were being stored
17. Destroyed a well near Hebron
18. Set fire to an olive grove near Hebron
19. Raided a health centre and a nursery school in Nablus, causing extensive damage
20. Destroyed a swathe of farmland in Rafah by driving tanks over it
21. Ordered the dismantling of a small monument in Jerusalem to Mohamed Abu Khdeir, murdered in July by an Israeli lynch mob
22. Continued building a vast tunnel network under Jerusalem
23. Stormed the al Aqsa mosque compound with a group of far right settlers
24. Assisted hundreds of settlers in storming Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus
25. Prevented students from entering al Quds University, firing stun grenades and rubber bullets at those who tried to go in
26. Earned unknown millions on reconstruction materials for Gaza, where 100,000 people need their destroyed homes rebuilt. The total bill is estimated at $7.8 billion

One-Eyed Knowledge « LRB blog
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/08/01/glen-newey/one-eyed-knowledge

The Germans still pussyfoot around Israel’s violations of international law, for obvious historical reasons. What is less obvious is why, for exactly the same reasons, they don’t shut up about Russia. In what Russians still call the Great Patriotic War after the launch of Barbarossa by the Nazis, the USSR lost between 18 and 24 million combatants and civilians, including a very large number of Russian Jews. In the selective historical memory of the EU politburo, those murders count as Jews, but not as Russians. Still more dangerous, perhaps, than wholesale ignorance is one-eyed knowledge.

Nothing Unintentional « LRB blog- Nadia Abu El-Haj- 29 July 2014
Tags: #israel | #palestine
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/07/29/nadia-abu-el-haj/nothing-unintentional

... imagine if Hamas were able to aim its rockets. Imagine it targeting the home of a high-ranking officer in the IDF, killing his wife and children, nieces and nephews, along with the family next door. Imagine these casualties being described as ‘collateral damage’ for which Hamas bore no legal or moral responsibility.

The IDF’s bombardment of Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals, indiscriminately pummelling the people of #Gaza into the ground, deserves to be called what it is: a war #crime.

#punition_collective #victimes_civiles #impunité #complicité

En Israël, l’extrême droite se déchaîne, en toute impunité | Mediapart
Par Pierre Puchot

►http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/310714/en-israel-lextreme-droite-se-dechaine-en-toute-impunite?onglet=full

De notre envoyé spécial à Haïfa. En Israël, il ne se passe désormais plus trois jours sans qu’une manifestation contre la guerre à Gaza ne fasse l’objet d’une violente répression de la part des militants d’extrême droite, souvent armés de barres de fer et défilant aux cris de « mort aux Arabes ! ». À Tel Aviv, la manifestation de samedi 26 juillet, qui a rassemblé 5 000 personnes, a dû être fortement encadrée par les forces de l’ordre, ce qui n’a pas empêché les incidents, comme on peut le voir dans cette vidéo, et le séjour à l’hôpital de plusieurs dizaines d’opposants à la guerre en cours.

Le phénomène a pris une ampleur considérable depuis le 18 juillet dernier à Haïfa, lorsque des milliers de militants ont attaqué une manifestation contre l’offensive terrestre à Gaza, et battu notamment l’adjoint au maire Suhail Assad : « J’ai eu peur pour ma vie et celle de mon fils », nous confiait la semaine passée cet élu âgé de 62 ans. « Ils étaient des milliers quand nous n’étions que quelques centaines. Heureusement, des citoyens se sont parfois interposés, sans quoi je ne sais pas bien comment cela aurait fini. »

À Haïfa, la communauté arabe est l’une des plus importantes d’Israël. Un lointain souvenir de la ville d’avant 1948, avant le grand exode et les centaines de milliers de Palestiniens expulsés à travers tout le pays, ce que les Palestiniens appellent la Nakba, la « catastrophe ».

Ancien journaliste, déjà très actif lors de la guerre du Liban en 1982 alors qu’il était étudiant, Jafar Farah (dont on peut aussi lire un portrait ici) dirige le centre Mossawa, dédié à l’étude des discriminations que subit en Israël la communauté arabe (20 % de la population totale du pays) et au lobbying auprès des institutions, du parlement et du gouvernement pour qu’elles cessent. « Les Juifs de Haïfa ne comprennent pas ce que les Arabes ressentent quand Gaza est bombardée, estime Jafar Farah. Ils ne comprennent pas pourquoi nous sommes en colère. Ils nous regardent et nous disent : "Mais comment, vous devriez être contents, Israël vous protège aussi." Contents ? Contents que les réfugiés soient tués, encore et encore ? Eux voudraient que nous soyons contents, faute de quoi, nous sommes considérés comme des traîtres, comme une cinquième colonne qu’il faut transférer en dehors d’Israël. C’est ce que pense Liberman (le ministre d’extrême droite des affaires étrangères – ndlr). » Entretien avec Jafar Farah.

Selfie Militarism « LRB blog
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/05/23/rebecca-l-stein/selfie-militarism-2

... the coupling of the occupation and social media conventions can make the violence banal, obscuring it through the patina of the digital everyday. The latest military selfies, with their missing faces, also replay a bigger Israeli fantasy of obfuscation: the fantasy of an absent perpetrator.

#délire #Israël

A History of ‘#Price-Tag’ Violence
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon 15 May 2014
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/05/15/neve-gordon-and-nicola-perugini/a-history-of-price-tag-violence

On 10 May, #Amos_Oz criticised the so-called ‘price-tag attacks’ carried out by Israeli settlers. The label is used by the culprits themselves to describe retaliatory violence against Palestinians: beatings and arson as well as racist graffiti sprayed on the walls of churches and mosques. Oz described the perpetrators as ‘Hebrew neo-Nazi groups’. (...)

Oz’s sentiments are shared by Israeli liberals and conservatives, who together condemn the attacks as repugnant. The Jerusalem Post said that ‘price-tag attacks fit the definition of terror no less than [suicide] bus bombings’.

But the equation with suicide bombers, like Oz’s provocative comparison with European neo-Nazism, does more to conceal than to reveal the violence perpetrated against Palestinians, above all the #violence of the Israeli state.

When Meir #Har-Zion died two months ago, there were obituaries in all the major news outlets celebrating the legendary hero.

Har-Zion was best known for his price-tag practices. He was one of the founding members (along with #Ariel_Sharon) of #Unit_101, which in October 1953 carried out a retributive massacre in the Jordanian village of #Qibya. ‘Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways,’ UN observers said, ‘and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them.’ According to Ben-Gurion’s biographer, ‘seventy corpses were found in the rubble, including dozens of women and children.’

In February 1955 Har-Zion’s sister was murdered in the Judean desert, which was then part of Jordan. The following month Har-Zion went to the desert with three friends to seek revenge. They captured six Palestinians, killed five of them and sent the sixth home to tell his village what had happened.

Israeli children are named after Har-Zion. For decades soldiers swore they would try to follow in his footsteps. He is not an outlier, but a paradigmatic example of Israel’s policies of punitive violence. House demolitions, curfews during the First Intifada, infantry offences during the Second Intifada and the more recent aerial bombing of Gaza have all been justified as retribution for a previous Palestinian act. ‘Price-tag’ is the justification that has informed both government policy and military practice since the country was established. Which raises the question: why do the recent price-tag attacks scandalise Amos Oz and several Israeli politicians?

For something to be scandalous it has to (appear to) be exceptional. By making the recent price-tag violence into a scandal, Oz – and the Israeli media more generally – transform it into an exception and in this way help conceal the fact that this kind of violence has structured Israel’s relations with Palestinians for more than 65 years. The only difference is that one is carried out by vigilantes and the other by the state. In other words, to depict the price-tag violence perpetrated by vigilantes as an outrageous exception helps to legitimise the price-tag violence perpetrated by the state, which has shaped the daily experiences of many Palestinians for decades.

This rhetorical trick allows liberals and conservatives alike to displace responsibility. The violence is measured in relation to the Other, the Israeli extremist who is more closely aligned to the European neo-Nazi or the Palestinian suicide bomber than to the state of Israel.

#prix_à_payer #Israël #Palestine