MARIÂNGELA BERQUÓ enfoca a Geopolítica: Reality check: For the Middle East, Biden is no better than Trump II

Asked about his thoughts on Kamala Harris’ promise to maintain unconditional aid to Israel, Dr. Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, said: “I am disappointed of course by the Harris-Biden positions on Israel. I would have hoped for something closer to what Bernie Sanders was saying as a way of shifting the policies closer to what I think a majority of American people would support and want.” Dr. Falk stated. “Again, it illustrates this disparity between the will of the people and the will of the governing elites…I don’t think we can be very hopeful. Possibly on the annexation issue…but I am not very optimistic that there will be any changes.”

Once again, this presidential election cycle has given American voters once again a choice: the lesser of two evils.

Yet, in this election, it is particularly difficult to differ between the two candidates, especially their attitudes towards the Israeli occupation and American responsibilities towards the former, being their military’s largest sponsor.

Notably, the “progressive” Biden does not have a discourse which is more developed than his conservative opponent. In July, he ordered the removal of any reference to the “Israeli occupation” from his campaign platform in July, in contradiction with international recognition of Israel as a belligerent occupation.

Progressive Americans organized against the Trump administration for his frequent violations of constitutional law and lack of human rights standards, domestically and internationally.

Many have missed that Biden has already committed to campaign promises which guarantee not only a lack of regard for international law, but guarantee his violations of U.S. law.

Tony Blinken, Joe Biden’s senior advisor, stated: “He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he’s committed to it.”

Of course, Kamala Harris has reaffirmed the sentiments communicated by Blinken. Harris stated in an virtual event on August 26^th: “Joe (Biden) has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes, and I couldn’t agree more,”

These various statements should have struck many as more problematic than they did. After all, they are pledging to break the law for Israel.

In 1998, the first of what are known as the Leahy Laws were established by Vermont Senator, Patrick Leahy. The first institution of which resides in the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 in Section 620M, the second of which resides in the Department of Defense appropriations bill/the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. Essentially, the law states that foreign military assistance must be suspended or discontinued if there exists credible information that the recipient foreign security force unit has committed a gross human rights violation. A “gross human rights violation” is defined by the FAA as:

“Cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges and trial; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons; and other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person.”

Since 1946, the American government has provided billions in military aid to Israel, as well billions in loan guarantees to help Israel develop its qualitative military edge which it uses to almost exclusively torment and slaughter Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Whether that be to fund Israeli prisons, where an approximate 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted each year, over 75% of whom report being tortured and physically abused, the white phosphorus which rains over Gaza, or the bullets that murder and disable thousands of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators.

In theory, a single violation is enough to have military aid revoked from the violating unit, as per the Leahy Laws. And the most reputable of human rights organizations have reported Israel’s violations extensively. However, aid packages to Israel have only increased annually, with the help of Joe Biden. Yet, only a single publically known investigation has ever taking place against Israel in 2006. Even though, the very author of the law, Senator Leahy, requested that the State Department investigate Israeli human rights violations in 2016.

In 2017, and again in 2019, Minnesota Representative, Betty McCollum drafted a bill, now classified under H.R. 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. The bill employs the Leahy Laws to argue for an inclusion of the issue of Palestinian youth forced to stand before Israel military courts into the legislation, and therefore revoke aid from Israeli military and police units which conduct these practices.

In August of this year, Representative McCollum has similarly released H.R. 8050: Israeli Annexation Non-Recognition Act, which vows to revoke aid from Israel that could be used to directly or indirectly assist the annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

This legislation has garnered more and more support from representatives around the country, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (NY-14), Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) and Ilhan Omar (MN-05), reserving a space for Palestine in American politics. Yet unfortunately, the conversation amongst electoral candidates remains uninformed, trivial and dangerous.

Regardless of who prevails in November, both candidates undoubtedly have an “unshakeable” commitment to the apartheid regime that is Israel, and must be held to U.S. law at the very least. This is not about electability, but complicity in crimes against humanity, and American voters have every right to raise their standards.

PALESTINA

In an open letter, more than a thousand academics and lawyers call on academic and government institutions around the world to cease subjecting those defending justice for Palestinians to censorship and penalisation.

As lawyers and academics, we are deeply troubled and exasperated by the pervasive repression of speech and scholarship on Palestine. This includes recent reports that the University of Toronto’s Faculty of law rescinded an employment offer to noted international human rights scholar Valentina Azarova, following a complaint by a sitting judge regarding her research on Israel’s occupation policies*.

The reported treatment of Azarova is consistent with a broader and intensifying climate of suppression. Lawyers, academics, journalists, teachers, artists, students, activists, and trade unions in Canada have been subjected to smear campaigns, event cancellations, physical violence, professional disciplinary measures, and condemnation by the prime minister and other political leaders for opposing Israel’s gross violations of international law and expressing solidarity with Palestinians. In August, Indigenous CBC journalist Duncan McCue was required to apologise simply for using the word “Palestine” on-air.

The situation in Canada mirrors that of other countries. In the United States, for example, 1,494 incidents taking aim at free speech were reported to NGO Palestine Legal from 2014 to 2019; 74 percent were directed at students and academics at universities. In France, rights activists have been criminally convicted for their support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign pressuring Israel to comply with international law. This criminalisation was recently condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of freedom of expression.

The clampdown threatens to be further exacerbated by the institutionalisation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

As a 2018 letter from more than 40 Jewish organisations around the world warns: “The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.” A statement signed by more than 400 academics opposes the implementation of this definition in Canada for this reason.

Even the original drafter of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, has cautioned against “enshrin[ing] this definition into law” due to the danger of legally conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Yet Ontario’s Bill 168 proposes to do precisely that, by mandating the use of the IHRA definition to interpret anti-discrimination and anti-hate laws. Motions to adopt this problematic definition have also been tabled in municipal councils across the country.

The intensification of speech repression coincides with the intensification of Palestinian oppression and dispossession, with Israel’s planned formal annexation of Palestinian territory – denounced by 48 UN human rights experts as the “crystallisation of an already unjust reality.”

In the face of these gross and flagrant transgressions, it is vital that the space for scholarship, speech, and activism in defence of the most basic rights of Palestinians be preserved. This includes the work of scholars such as Azarova. It is highly perturbing when academic institutions and law faculties – instead of protecting free speech and fundamental rights – are participants in the suppression.

We call on the University of Toronto Faculty of Law to restore Azarova’s employment offer and issue an apology. We also call on the Canadian Judicial Council to investigate the conduct of the judge who complained about Azarova’s appointment. And we call on all academic and government institutions to cease subjecting those defending justice for Palestinians to censorship and penalisation.

Signatories: Judith Butler: University of California, Berkeley ; Diana Buttu: lawyer, University of Toronto Faculty of Law alumnus ; Noam Chomsky: Laureate Professor, University of Arizona; Institute Professor (emeritus), MIT ; Angela Davis: Professor Emerita, UCSC ; John Dugard SC: Emeritus Professor of Law, Leiden and Witwatersrand; former Judge ad hoc, International Court of Justice ; Noura Erakat: Assistant Professor, Rutgers University-New Brunswick ; Richard Falk: Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law, Princeton University ; Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France: former UN Expert on People of African Descent ; Leilani Farha: former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (2014-2020); Global Director, The Shift ; Guy S Goodwin-Gill: Professor of Law, University of New South Wales; Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford ; Ghada Karmi: doctor; author; former Research Fellow, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter ; Robin DG Kelley: Gary B Nash Endowed Chair in US History, UCLA ; Viet Nguyen: University Professor, University of Southern California; Pulitzer Prize winner, Literature ; Ilan Pappe: University of Exeter ; Avi Shlaim: Emeritus Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford.

Full list of 1300+ signatories can be viewed here.