Amnesty International released a report today detailing the indiscriminate use of weapons by Israel in the latest war on Gaza. Having found undeniable evidence of the IDF’s use of US-made weapons against civilians – hence war crimes – it is calling on the new Obama administration and the UN Security Council to impose “an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo” on Israel and Hamas. Here is The Guardian‘s brief summary of the report.
Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.
In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.
A vibrant and wonderful student movement has flowered a the Strathclyde University which has scored two major victories for peace and justice within this month. We at PULSE salute all the students, in particular Strathclyde Stop the War, Action Palestine, and the Strathclyde University Muslim Students Association (SUMSA) for their indispensable work. In today’s excellent guest editorial, Kim Bizzarri, who has himself lead from the front, reports on these successes and the prospects for future.
GLASGOW, February 21 – Students at Strathclyde University won the vote on Thursday to cut the university’s ties with arms manufacturer BAe Systems which supplied components used by the Israeli military in the recent massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Students win majority support in historic AGM
The vote, which took place in relation to a motion submitted by a group of students to their Union’s General Meeting (AGM) – the student’s highest decision-making body – won with an overwhelming majority of the over 200 students who queued in the union’s corridors and stairs to participate in the event. Such a high student attendance had been unprecedented in any previous AGM, most of which failed in the past 10 years to even reach quorum.
Despite attempts by the Union’s administration to dilute the substance of the motion and have it voted upon by the conservative Student Representative Council (SRC) – who had already rejected a similar popular motion two years earlier given the uncomfortable position it placed the University vis-à-vis its corporate funders – the fervent group of passionate students were successful in galvanising sufficient support amongst their fellows to turn the motion into student policy.
Within weeks of occupying the McCance Building – heart of the University’s administration – the original 60 students involved in the occupation have already gained the support of a sizable number of their fellow students.
David Cronin of IPS describes the EU’s complicity in Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.
European Union aid has been given to an Israeli oil company which has reduced the supply of fuel to Gaza as part of an economic blockade internationally recognised as illegal, Brussels officials have admitted.
Almost 97 million euros (124 million dollars) in funds managed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, were handed over directly to the firm Dor Alon between February 2008 and January this year. Under orders from the Israeli authorities, Dor Alon has been rationing the amount of industrial diesel brought into Gaza in order to deprive its 1.5 million inhabitants of electricity. Power cuts have been a regular occurrence in Gaza because of Israeli actions undertaken since the militant party Hamas won an unexpected victory in Palestinian legislative elections during 2006.
A Camp Follower Who Aims to Please. Norman Finkelstein exposes another fraud — how Anthony Cordesman ‘proved’ at the behest of the American Jewish Committee that Israel fought a clean war.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has published a “strategic analysis” of the Gaza massacre.(1) He reaches the remarkable conclusion that “Israel did not violate the laws of war.” The report is based on “briefings in Israeli [sic] during and immediately after the fighting made possible by a visit sponsored by Project Interchange, and using day-to-day reporting issued by the Israeli Defense Spokesman.” Cordesman omits mention that Project Interchange is funded by the American Jewish Committee.
England set the precedent for the world. We at Strathclyde set a precedent for Scotland. And then it spread across the Atlantic. First it was Rochester, and now its NYU. This is historic.
NYU BUILDING TAKEOVER!!!
At approximately 10pm tonight (Feb. 18), students of Take Back NYU! took over the Kimmel Marketplace. They have blockaded the doors and declared an occupation! They presented their demands to the NYU administration. They read as follows:
DEMANDS
We, the students of NYU, declare an occupation of this space. This occupation is the culmination of a two-year campaign by the Take Back NYU! coalition, and of campaigns from years past, in whose footsteps we follow.
In order to create a more accountable, democratic and socially responsible university, we demand the following:
Having presented a petition signed by over 30 academics and 700 students to the Principal of the University, around 50 St Andrews University students have occupied Lower College Hall in protest at the University’s links with the Israeli occupation.
We, the concerned students of the University of St. Andrews demand that the university condemns the illegal bombing and genocide in Gaza and Israel’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians. In particular, as an educational establishment we urge that it shows practical solidarity with the Islamic university of Gaza and other schools and colleges damaged during the bombing. Continue reading “St Andrews University Student Occupation”
In this excellent article, Jimmy Johnson explains how the IDF’s long-standing experience with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to quell Palestinian resistance is becoming a central technology of state violence designed to monitor, supress and, if necessary, destroy those social forces around the world which oppose “institutions of hegemony and power that seek to keep systems of inequality more or less sustainable.” With the increasing concentration of the dispossessed majority in urban slums, “the pacification laboratory in Gaza, Nablus and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory will continue to be of use for the forces occupying Kabul and Baghdad today, and those who might aim for Karachi, Lagos, Caracas and other centers of ‘desperation and anger’ tomorrow.”
Aeronautics Defense Systems, based in the Israeli city of Yavne, was recently awarded a contract by the Dutch Ministry of Defense “to supply unmanned air vehicle capacity to Dutch troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.” [1] The Netherlands is not the only nation to employ Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in foreign occupation. They are also utilized by Canadian, US, UK and Australian forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their foreign sale has developed largely because of significant use in the wars against and occupations of Lebanon and Palestine. A variety of Israeli firms are developing new unmanned aerial, terrestrial and nautical vehicles. As these are proven in combat, here it can be expected that they too will be exported to foreign forces.
An article by Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus detailing Israel’s use of its brand new arsenal of lethal weapons.
Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war.”It was as if they had stepped on a mine,” he says of certain Palestinian patients he treated. “But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before.”
Dr. Fosse was describing the effects of a U.S. “focused lethality” weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. But where did the Israelis get this weapon? And was their widespread use in the attack on Gaza a field test for a new generation of explosives?
P U L S E 