Just Foreign Policy News
November 4, 2010
US: We’re Through Palling Around With Iranian Terrorists
On Wednesday – burying the news in the post-election media frenzy – the State Department, at long last, announced its formal designation of the Iranian terrorist organization Jundallah as a "foreign terrorist organization."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-were-through-palling-a_b_778959.html
G-20: Take Action on Financial Transaction Taxes
183 civil society organizations from 42 countries collectively representing over 200 million people urge G-20 leaders to make concrete progress towards the introduction of an internationally coordinated financial transactions tax (FTT) at the upcoming summit in Seoul.
http://bit.ly/99zjfD
The Best Government Money Can Buy
A recent film by Francis Megahy sounds the alarm about corporate control of Washington through the current system of campaign finance and lobbying by the suppliers of campaign finance, as well as the bind that reform of the system ultimately has to be enacted by incumbents that have been produced by the current system, and the need for outside agitation.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bestgovernment
South of the Border on DVD
Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border was released on DVD last week. Why did the center-left cruise to victory in Brazil? You can get the DVD here.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southoftheborder
Help Support Our Work
Your donation helps us educate Americans and create opportunities to advocate for a just foreign policy.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Two public health experts said researchers should determine whether UN peacekeepers were the source of a deadly outbreak of cholera in Haiti, AP reports. The CDC found that the strain of cholera that has killed at least 442 people the past three weeks matches strains found in South Asia. CDC, WHO and the UN say it’s not possible to pinpoint the source and investigating further would distract from efforts to fight the disease. But leading experts consulted by AP challenged that, saying it is both possible and necessary to track the source to prevent future deaths. "That sounds like politics to me, not science," Dr. Paul Farmer, a U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti and a noted expert on poverty and medicine, said of the reluctance to delve further into what caused the outbreak.
The suspicion that a Nepalese U.N. peacekeeping base could have been a source of the infection fueled a protest last week during which hundreds of Haitians denounced the peacekeepers. John Mekalanos, a cholera expert and chairman of Harvard University’s microbiology department, said it is important to know exactly where and how the disease emerged because it is a novel, virulent strain previously unknown in the Western Hemisphere – and public health officials need to know how it spreads. Mekalanos said evidence suggests Nepalese soldiers carried the disease when they arrived in early October following outbreaks in their homeland.
2) Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon, expected to become the next chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he wanted to boost defense spending but would not alter President Obama’s deadline to start pulling out of Afghanistan, Reuters reports.
3) As tropical storm Tomas speeds toward Haiti, some 1.3 million people are virtually trapped in Port-au-Prince’s flimsy tent cities, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Authorities have advised anyone living in makeshift camps to seek refuge in sturdier buildings, but many say they don’t have that option. "The majority of people have nowhere to go," says Stefan Reynier, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Léogâne. "Those people will not be protected."
4) The Pentagon awarded a major jet fuel contract to Mina Corp., a secretive company that has declined to reveal its ownership, the Washington Post reports. The contract, which may be worth more than $600 million, covers supplies for a U.S. Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan. The Pentagon’s dealings with Mina and an associated firm, Red Star Enterprises, have been under investigation for the past six months by the House subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs. Since the Afghan war began, the companies have come from nowhere to win Pentagon contracts worth about $3 billion. Contracting regulations do not require that companies detail their ownership, even though U.S. law makes it illegal to do business with firms owned by certain individuals and countries. Mina and Red Star are controlled by Douglas Edelman. [On Monday, the Post reported that Edelman did not comply with a July subpoena from the subcommittee – JFP.]
5) In a memoir published this week, former President George W. Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of waterboarding, an admission human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him, the Washington Post reports. The UN Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere. "Waterboarding is broadly seen by legal experts around the world as torture, and it is universally prosecutable as a crime," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable," said Georgetown University law professor David Cole. "But politics can change."
6) The mere prospect that the incoming congressional class will cut military spending has some Beltway insiders manning the ramparts, write Christopher Preble and John Samples of CATO in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But it’s absurd to argue that there’s no room for cuts. The Pentagon’s budget has grown nearly 86 percent in real terms since 1998.
Afghanistan
7) The U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul, AP reports. The U.S. has signed contracts to expand US diplomatic facilities that total $790 million. The figure includes the embassy expansion, which should be completed by June 2014.
Yemen
8) Many Yemenis regard al Qaeda as a hoax cooked up by the government to shake down the West for aid and crush its domestic opponents, or by the West to justify military intervention, the New York Times reports. That view is only partly conspiracy theory, the Times notes. The Yemeni government sometimes conflates the Qaeda threat and the unrelated political insurgencies it has fought in northern and southern Yemen in recent years. "This latest episode with the packages is only making it worse," said a Sana University professor. "Many people think it was all about the elections in the U.S., or an excuse for American military intervention here."
Israel/Palestine
9) Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against in a West Bank village against the construction of the Separation Barrier on Palestinian lands, writes Ayed Morrar, a participant in that struggle, in the Huffington Post. But today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. Twenty Palestinians have since been killed during unarmed demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Barrier. On October 11th, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, one of Bil’in’s most prominent protest organizers, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to twelve months in jail. During Abdallah’s trial, Israel’s military prosecution repeatedly demanded that an ‘example’ be made of him to deter others who might organize civil resistance. If Americans want to see the example of Budrus continue to spread, individuals, civil society groups and the US government must act to pressure Israel to end its brutal crackdown on civilian protesters, Morrar writes.
10) Israeli officials cancelled a trip to London this month for an annual British-Israeli strategic dialogue because of the fear of arrest, the New York Times reports. Britain adheres to the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows its judges to issue arrest warrants against anyone suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world.
Haiti
11) Haitian garment workers in the US-promoted CODEVI "free trade" zone make less than the legal Haitian minimum wage, reports Alexis Erkert Depp of the Mennonite Central Committee. They must meet a quota of 4,000 units a week to make $20 a week. If they don’t meet weekly quotas, they are paid $15. They spend more than $10 a week just to feed their families.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Experts: Did UN troops infect Haiti?
Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press, Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 5:40 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110306660.html
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – Researchers should determine whether United Nations peacekeepers were the source of a deadly outbreak of cholera in Haiti, two public health experts, including a U.N. official, said Wednesday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the strain of cholera that has killed at least 442 people the past three weeks matches strains found in South Asia. The CDC, World Health Organization and United Nations say it’s not possible to pinpoint the source and investigating further would distract from efforts to fight the disease.
But leading experts on cholera and medicine consulted by The Associated Press challenged that position, saying it is both possible and necessary to track the source to prevent future deaths.
"That sounds like politics to me, not science," Dr. Paul Farmer, a U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti and a noted expert on poverty and medicine, said of the reluctance to delve further into what caused the outbreak. "Knowing where the point source is – or source, or sources – would seem to be a good enterprise in terms of public health."
The suspicion that a Nepalese U.N. peacekeeping base on a tributary to the infected Artibonite River could have been a source of the infection fueled a protest last week during which hundreds of Haitians denounced the peacekeepers.
John Mekalanos, a cholera expert and chairman of Harvard University’s microbiology department, said it is important to know exactly where and how the disease emerged because it is a novel, virulent strain previously unknown in the Western Hemisphere – and public health officials need to know how it spreads.
Interviewed by phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mekalanos said evidence suggests Nepalese soldiers carried the disease when they arrived in early October following outbreaks in their homeland.
"The organism that is causing the disease is very uncharacteristic of (Haiti and the Caribbean), and is quite characteristic of the region from where the soldiers in the base came," said Mekalanos, a colleague of Farmer. "I don’t see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism occurred."
Cholera, which had never before been documented in Haiti, has killed at least 442 people and hospitalized more than 6,742 with fever, diarrhea and vomiting since late October. It is now present in at least half of Haiti’s political regions, called departments.
[…] Suspicions that the Nepalese base could have been a source of the infection intensified Monday after the CDC revealed the strain in Haiti matches those found in South Asia, including Nepal.
But nothing has been proven conclusively, and in the meantime the case remains politically charged and diplomatically sensitive. The United Nations has a 12,000-strong force in Haiti that has provided badly needed security in the country since 2004. But their presence is not universally welcomed, and some Haitian politicians have seized upon the cholera accusations, calling for a full-scale investigation and fomenting demonstrations.
[…] Mekalanos said researchers might be more aggressive in finding the source of the infection if the case was less sensitive. "I think that it is an attempt to maybe do the politically right thing and leave some agencies a way out of this embarrassment. But they should understand that … there is a bigger picture here," he said. "It’s a threat to the whole region."
[…]
2) McKeon’s remarks on U.S. defense spending, Afghan war
Phil Stewart, Reuters, 03 Nov 2010 22:55:05 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N03139704.htm
Washington – A Republican lawmaker who is expected to play a central role in setting U.S. military policy in the new Republican-led Congress said on Wednesday he wanted to boost defense spending but would not alter President Barack Obama’s deadline to start pulling out of Afghanistan.
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon, expected to become the next chair of the House Armed Services Committee, also balked at Obama’s plans to push through a repeal of the military’s ban on gays before the new Congress takes power in January.
Following is a transcript of his remarks, with questions abbreviated for brevity.
[…] Reuters: Should there be any changes to Obama’s July 2011 deadline to start withdrawing from Afghanistan?
McKeon: My problem with the deadline was if it was done, period. Because I thought that undermined us with some of our NATO allies and with the people in Afghanistan and it gave a talking point to the Taliban to say: "Hey, they’re going to be gone anyway. We’ll just wait them out. And if you help them (U.S. forces) out, remember we’re going to be here." So the damage is done.
What I think we need to focus on is whenever the Secretary or the commanders would come up to testify, they all have said it would be based on conditions on the ground. So I’ve also been reading (Bob Woodward’s book) "Obama’s Wars" … and I get the feeling some of the things that came out of their meetings are a little bit different than what we’ve heard. So, I think we just want to be very careful that this isn’t used as an opportunity to pull everybody out and leave the Afghans hanging and leave the potential for al Qaeda to come back in for another safehaven.
Reuters: But the actual deadline itself, you’re not going to press for that to be changed?
McKeon: No. I think that’s installed.
[…] Reuters: Do you believe there is a need for a greater increase in overall defense spending?
McKeon: We’re spending less than at times in the past and we’re involved in two wars, as a percentage of our gross product. So I think, myself, I think you have to be very careful of the taxpayer dollar and I think the things the Secretary (of Defense) is pushing for with increased savings through efficiency. I support that. But I also support a higher top line because we have underlying costs that are taking such a high percentage of our budget that we’re not going to have enough to do the R&D and do the weaponry spending to provide the wherewithal to have the defense that we need. So, you know, they cut back in missile defense. They cut back in the F-22. They cut back in the next generation bomber. All these things for the future, and we can’t wait for the future to come. We need to be prepared for it. So, I think we need more money in defense and I think we need to do a better job spending that money.
3) Haiti’s tent cities to bear worst of potential hurricane Tomas
Some 1.3 million Haitians in the capital’s tent cities have nowhere to go as potential hurricane Tomas approaches, even as 120,000 homes sit vacant and easily repairable.
Stephen Kurczy, Christian Science Monitor, November 4, 2010 at 7:05 am EDT
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/1104/Haiti-s-tent-cities-to-bear-worst-of-potential-hurricane-Tomas
As tropical storm Tomas speeds toward Haiti, threatening to turn into a hurricane before it passes just west of the island Friday morning, some 1.3 million people are virtually trapped in Port-au-Prince’s flimsy tent cities.
In the countryside, hundreds of thousands more Haitians still live in tents following the 7.0 earthquake the leveled the capital and surrounding areas in January.
Authorities have advised anyone living in makeshift camps to seek refuge in sturdier buildings, but many say they don’t have that option. "The majority of people have nowhere to go," says Stefan Reynier, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Léogâne, 18 miles west of the capital. "Those people will not be protected."
[…]
4) Pentagon awards jet fuel contract to secretive company
Andrew Higgins and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 3, 2010; 11:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110307624.html
In a move that could anger a vital ally in the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon on Wednesday awarded a major jet fuel contract to Mina Corp., a secretive company that has declined to reveal its ownership but has nonetheless become a trusted partner with the U.S. military.
The contract, which may be worth more than $600 million, covers supplies for a U.S. Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished former Soviet republic where public anger over alleged corruption in jet fuel deals has helped topple two presidents in the past five years. All American troops entering and leaving Afghanistan pass through the American base outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The base is also home to aero-tankers that refuel U.S. aircraft operating over Afghanistan.
The Pentagon’s dealings with Mina and an associated firm, Red Star Enterprises, have been under investigation for the past six months by the House subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs. Since the Afghan war began, the companies have come from nowhere to win Pentagon contracts worth about $3 billion.
Congressional investigators, people close to the inquiry say, have found no evidence of wrongdoing but, in a report due later this month, will fault the Pentagon contracting process as paying little heed to the diplomatic and strategic fallout of deals cloaked in secrecy.
[…] Contracting regulations do not require that companies detail their ownership, even though U.S. law makes it illegal to do business with firms owned by certain individuals and countries.
[…] Mina and Red Star are controlled by Douglas Edelman, an elusive California businessman who used to run a bar and hamburger joint in Bishkek, and a young Kyrgyz partner, Erkin Bekbolotov, according to people familiar with the business.
[…] [On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Edelman did not comply with a July subpoena from the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/750#November0110m5 – JFP.]
5) In new memoir, Bush makes clear he approved use of waterboarding
R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 9:03 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110308082.html
Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.
In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.
[…] President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have both said waterboarding is an act of torture proscribed by international law, a viewpoint supported by a handful of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and opposed by other Republicans. But the Obama administration has not sought to punish former Bush administration officials for approving it.
The 26-year-old United Nations Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere. That provision, known as universal jurisdiction, has been cited in the past by prosecutors in Spain and Belgium to justify investigations of acts by foreign officials. But no such trials have occurred in foreign courts.
Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said, "Waterboarding is broadly seen by legal experts around the world as torture, and it is universally prosecutable as a crime. The fact that none of us expect any serious consequences from this admission is what is most interesting."
[…] Georgetown University law professor David Cole, a long-standing critic of Bush’s interrogation and detention policies, called prosecution unlikely. "The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable. . . . But politics can change."
6) Will The Tea Tempest Storm The Pentagon?
Some hawks are getting defensive about the budget.
Christopher Preble and John Samples, Philadelphia Inquirer, Thu, Nov. 4, 2010
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20101104_Will_the_tea_tempest_storm_the_Pentagon_.html
With a number of tea party-backed candidates victorious and on their way to Washington, there is much speculation about how they might affect foreign policy. "It’s hard to divine because they haven’t articulated clear views," explains James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. "We are left wondering: What exactly would they do?"
The tea party movement has no clear foreign policy agenda. It seems unlikely, however, that the same tea partyers who want the U.S. government to do less at home are anxious to do more everywhere else.
For example, the movement and its new representatives in Washington might prefer to avoid sending U.S. forces into unnecessary and futile wars. Accordingly, they might also realize that substantial reductions in military spending are strategically wise, fiscally prudent, and politically necessary.
The mere prospect that the incoming congressional class will cut military spending has some Beltway insiders manning the ramparts. Last month, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, and Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation joined forces in a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that military spending "is neither the true source of our fiscal woes, nor an appropriate target for indiscriminate budget-slashing in a still-dangerous world."
It’s absurd to argue that there’s no room for cuts. The Pentagon’s budget has grown nearly 86 percent in real terms since 1998.
[…] Will the tea party’s candidates side with the Washington consensus when they move inside the Beltway? Or will they stay true to their small-government principles and remind Washington insiders that the Constitution provides for "the common defence" of ourselves and our posterity, not of the entire world? We will find out soon enough.
Afghanistan
7) US to spend $511 million to expand Kabul embassy
Rahim Faiez, Associated Press, Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 12:02 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110304204.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday, describing the work as a demonstration of America’s long-term commitment to Afghanistan.
"We make this commitment by commemorating the recent award of a $511 million contract to expand the U.S. Embassy here in Kabul," Ambassador Karl Eikenberry said during a ceremony at the construction site that marked the formal announcement of the contract.
[…] Over the last two years, the U.S. has signed contracts to expand American diplomatic facilities in Kabul and consulates in Mazar-e Sharif and Herat provinces that total $790 million, he said. The figure includes the embassy expansion, which should be completed by June 2014.
Yemen
8) Yemen’s Drive On Al Qaeda Faces Internal Skepticism
Mona El-Naggar and Robert F. Worth, New York Times, November 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html
Sana, Yemen – As Yemen intensifies its military campaign against Al Qaeda’s regional arm, it faces a serious obstacle: most Yemenis consider the group a myth, or a ploy by their president to squeeze the West for aid money and punish his domestic opponents.
Those cynical attitudes – rooted in Yemen’s history of manipulative politics – complicate any effort to track down the perpetrators of the recent plot to send explosives by courier to the United States. They also make it harder to win public support for the fight against jihadist violence, whatever label one attaches to it.
"What is Al Qaeda? The truth is there is no Al Qaeda," said Lutfi Muhammad, a weary-looking unemployed 50-year-old walking through this city’s tumultuous Tahrir Square. Instead, he said, the violence is "because of the regime and the lack of stability and the internal struggles."
That view, echoed across Yemen, is only partly a conspiracy theory. The Yemeni government has used jihadists as proxy soldiers in the past, and sometimes conflates the Qaeda threat and the unrelated political insurgencies it has fought in northern and southern Yemen in recent years. In a country where political and tribal violence is endemic, it is often impossible to tell who is killing whom, and why.
One thing is clear: Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has stepped up his commitment to fighting Al Qaeda in the past year, with far more military raids and airstrikes, including some carried out by the American military. His government has paid a price. On Saturday, a day after the discovery of the air freight bomb plot, Mr. Saleh said during a news conference that Al Qaeda had killed 70 police officers and soldiers in the past four weeks. That is a sharp increase over previous years, and some analysts have taken it as proof that Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch is growing.
But many Yemenis seem doubtful that Al Qaeda was guilty in all or even most of those killings, which took place in the same southern parts of the country where a secessionist movement has been growing for the past three years.
"We cannot differentiate between what is propaganda and what is real," said Abdullah al-Faqih, a professor of political science at Sana University. "It’s impossible to tell who is killing who; you have tribal feuds, Al Qaeda and the Southern Movement, and the state is doing a lot of manipulation."
In a sense, there are two narratives about Al Qaeda in Yemen. One of them, presented by both the Yemeni government and Al Qaeda’s Internet postings – and echoed in the West – portrays a black-and-white struggle between the groups. The other narrative is the view from the ground in Yemen: a confusing welter of attacks by armed groups with shifting loyalties, some fighting under political or religious banners, some merely looking for money.
The Yemeni authorities have long paid tribal leaders to fight domestic enemies, or even other tribes that were causing trouble for the government. That policy has helped foster a culture of blackmail: some tribal figures promote violence, whether through jihadists or mere criminals, and then offer to quell it in exchange for cash. "Some of what looks like Al Qaeda is really terror as a business," Mr. Faqih said.
Yemen’s tribes are often cast as the chief obstacle in the fight against Al Qaeda, sheltering the militants because of tribal hospitality or even ideological kinship. In fact, few tribal leaders have any sympathy for the group, and some tribes have forced Qaeda members to leave their areas in the past year.
[…] Instead, Al Qaeda seems to thrive where tribal authority has eroded, or in the southern areas where hatred of the government is most intense. In many of the recent attacks, it is difficult to draw a line between Al Qaeda and angry, impoverished young men who have easy access to weapons.
This is particularly true of the secessionist movement in the south. "There are many unemployed young men and people with personal interests who rebelled against the state and against the movement itself," said Saleh al-Hanashi, an adviser to the governor of Abyan, a southern province where the protest movement thrives and many of the recent killings have taken place. "They became these chaos-inciting groups. And these groups now in Abyan shoot at cars belonging to the state and do other destructive acts against the state." This kind of vandalism is easily attributed to Al Qaeda, whether the group claims responsibility for it or not. The latest issue of the group’s English-language magazine, Inspire, features a banner headline on the front cover: "Photos From the Operations of Abyan." Inside, there are gruesome pictures of burning Jeeps and dead Yemeni soldiers.
Many southerners view Mr. Saleh’s government as an occupying force, and while the secessionist movement’s leaders say they reject violence, some of its members may be willing to make common cause with jihadists. North and south Yemen, once separate countries, unified in 1990, then fought a bitter civil war four years later. Many in the south say they have been treated unequally ever since.
[…] For now, most Yemenis seem to dismiss reports of Al Qaeda killings as a "masrah," or drama, staged by the government and its American backers. The suspicion runs so deep that any action by the Yemeni government seems to confirm it: counterterrorist raids are often described as punitive measures against domestic foes, and the failure to act decisively is derided as collusion. "This latest episode with the packages is only making it worse," said Mr. Faqih, the Sana University professor. "Many people think it was all about the elections in the U.S., or an excuse for American military intervention here."
Israel/Palestine
9) Civil Resistance to Bring Down the Walls
Ayed Morrar, Huffington Post, November 1, 2010 02:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ayed-morrar/post_1175_b_776257.html
Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against Israel’s military occupation in my small West Bank village. Our struggle’s success and the consequent expansion of civil resistance to other West Bank communities may provide hope to viewers desperate for positive news from the Middle East, but today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. For our movement to thrive and serve as a true alternative to violence, we need Americans’ to demand that Israel, a close US ally, end this repression.
Budrus depicts our ten month campaign of protest marches in 2003-2004, which included participation by men, women and children, and by representatives from all Palestinian political factions, along with Israeli and international activists, to resist the construction of Israel’s Separation Barrier on our lands. Young women, led by my 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, ran past armed Israeli soldiers and jumped In front of the bulldozers that were uprooting our ancient olive trees. The soldiers regularly met us with clubs, rubber-coated bullets, curfews, arrests and even live ammunition. But we won in the end. The Israeli military rerouted the barrier in Budrus, allowing us access to almost all of our land.
The film ends with Palestinian and Israeli activists heading to the neighboring village of Ni’ilin where the struggle to save Palestinian land continues today. But following Budrus’s success and faced by a growing numbers of civilians protesting the confiscation of their lands, Israel has responded with military might, attempting to quell this new movement. Twenty Palestinians have since been killed during unarmed demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Barrier.
In Ni’ilin, in the dark of night, Israeli soldiers have staged hundreds of military raids and arrests of civilians from the village; hundreds more were injured – forty by live ammunition, and five, including a ten year old, were shot dead. Today, a horrid 25 foot concrete wall stands in Ni’ilin, behind which lie 620 acres of village lands taken for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
Through a five-year protest campaign, another nearby village, Bil’in, has become an international symbol of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, with world leaders from Jimmy Carter to Desmond Tutu visiting to show support. On October 11th, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, one of Bil’in’s most prominent protest organizers, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to twelve months in jail. His crime – leading demonstrations in his village that were very similar to those I led in Budrus.
During Abdallah’s trial, Israel’s military prosecution repeatedly demanded that an ‘example’ be made of him to deter others who might organize civil resistance. The EU, Britain, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all condemned Abdallah’s incarceration, yet he remains in prison.
Palestinians’ wishes are simple – we want what is ours, our land, with true sovereignty. We want freedom, equality and civil rights – what Martin Luther King, Jr. called in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail "our constitutional and God-given rights."
But Israel is sending a clear message – even unarmed resistance by ordinary civilians demanding basic rights will be crushed. It is little known that the second intifada began not with guns and suicide bombings against civilians, but rather with protest marches to Israeli military checkpoints inside the occupied West Bank, and with civil disobedience in the tradition of the US civil rights movement. Israel responded by firing over 1.3 million live bullets in one month into crowds of protesters. When ordinary people could no longer afford to risk protesting, small groups turned, in anger and despair, to armed resistance.
Budrus’s struggle showed that civil resistance can bring down walls, both literal and those of the heart, and set an example for a bright future for Israelis and Palestinians in this biblical land. Today Palestinian and Israeli protesters are together confronting Israel’s military occupation in other villages. But this hopeful possibility is now threatened again by Israeli bullets and arrests.
For this future to materialize, those who are outraged by the violence deployed against protesters must demand an end to the injustice. If Americans want to see the example of Budrus continue to spread, individuals, civil society groups and the US government must act to pressure Israel to end its brutal crackdown on civilian protesters.
10) Israel: Officials Cancel Trip To Britain
Isabel Kershner, New York Times, November 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/world/middleeast/04briefs-Israel.html
A Foreign Ministry official confirmed Wednesday that Israeli officials would not travel to London this month for an annual British-Israeli strategic dialogue because of the fear of arrest. Britain adheres to the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows its judges to issue arrest warrants against anyone suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world. Pro-Palestinian activists have threatened Israeli officials with arrest on allegations of war crimes against Palestinians, causing several officials to cancel plans to visit Britain. In Jerusalem on Wednesday, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, reiterated his government’s commitment to resolving what he called the "unacceptable situation" with regard to universal jurisdiction. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said that the issue was the "top item" on Israel’s agenda for Mr. Hague’s visit.
Haiti
11) Made in Haiti: A Good Thing?
Alexis Erkert Depp, Mennonite Central Committee, November 2, 2010
http://washingtonmemo.org/2010/11/02/made-in-haiti-a-good-thing/
[Depp coordinates MCC Haiti’s advocacy program.]
If you’re wearing Gap, Calvin Klein or Levi Strauss jeans there’s a chance that I’ve met the worker that made your belt loops or your waistband. If you’ve recently bought Hanes underwear or a Maidenform bra, check the label. Was it made in Haiti? If not, the next pair you buy probably will be.
As part of an effort to help Haiti rebuild its economy after the earthquake, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in May of this year to extend U.S. trade preferences to Haiti through 2020 and nearly triple duty-free quotas for Haitian garment exports to the U.S. Last month the World Bank, Haiti and the U.S. signed an agreement with a South Korean clothing producer, Sae-A to build another free-trade garment assembly factory in Haiti.
Garment assembly plants that employ low-wage laborers in poor countries have been seen as a powerful strategy for economic development for several decades. But who really benefits from these factories?
In August, I visited CODEVI, a free trade zone made up of 6 garment assembly factories in Ounaminthe, in Haiti’s North-East Department on the border with the Dominican Republic. A free trade zone is an area of a country where normal trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas are eliminated and bureaucratic requirements, like minimum wage laws, are lowered in hopes of attracting businesses and foreign investments.
Attracting foreign investment in this way was part of Haiti’s "Poverty Reduction Strategy" plan prior to the earthquake and continues to be a priority now for the Haitian government, the world’s International Financial Institutions, donor countries and, of course, multinational companies looking to capitalize on Haiti’s high unemployment and cheap labor. Note that this list of advocates doesn’t include Haitian factory workers, most of whom work full-time and remain in poverty.
Yannick Etienne is the director of the Haitian workers rights’ organization, Batay Ouvriye and tirelessly advocates for workers’ basic rights. Etienne believes, "It is evident that this model of development with free trade zones as its backbone for creating jobs is a failure. It creates wealth for the foreign investors and local factory owners but more misery for the workers. It’s a model that sacrifices the future of our youth and puts our country in a more dependent framework. That type of international aid won’t bring the change Haitian people envisioned for themselves."
I spoke to some of the workers from the factories in Ounaminthe during their lunch hour. Thousands of workers were crowded under make-shift tin roofs in the 95 degree heat, eating their main meal of the day, diri Miami (imported rice) and sos pwa (bean sauce).
These workers are barely scraping by. They have a union and have succeeded in demanding a pay raise. They have also succeeded in getting factory owners to hire a Haitian doctor. Nevertheless, they must meet the taxing quota of 4,000 units a week to make 800 gourdes ($20.00 U.S.) a week, which is less than the legal Haitian minimum wage. If they don’t meet weekly quotas, they are paid 600 gourdes ($15.00). They spend more than $10.00 a week just to feed their families.
Higher-paid staff and supervisors are mostly Dominican. The free trade zone employs approximately 6,000 workers, most of whom are younger than 35 years old. 75% of the workforce is women and workers report that sexual harassment is common.
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.