The vessel was flying the flag of the Pacific Island of Palau; however, prior to the drone hit, Palau withdrew the registration, leaving the crew vulnerable to accusations of being without official papers. Israel had also made accusations of terrorism, claiming that the crew of activists were Hamas militants. There is no basis to the claim that the peaceful activists have any military connections or intentions. The crew are internationals of conscience, who had gathered together from various countries in an attempt to break the blockade of Gaza, carry essential supplies, and draw attention to the desperate plight of people in Gaza.

A nearby Maltese tug boat was the first to arrive at the boat’s aid, having been alerted by the authorities to the SOS distress call. The tug boat was equipped with a fire hose and managed to extinguish the fire totally. However, with holes in the boat from the drone attack and extensive damage to the generator, the boat has been slowly taking on water. When the authorities arrived shortly after, the captain of the ‘Conscience’ informed them that the crew would not abandon their vessel or let any of the authorities board it.

The fears of the crew of sabotage from an unknown person or persons boarding their boat are not unrealistic. Besides incidents of sabotage, activists from the earlier Freedom Flotilla Coalitions, in attempting to break the siege of Gaza, have experienced deaths, arrests, theft, and the destruction of vessels. In 2008 the ‘Dignity’, was rammed – with clear lethal intent by the Israeli military. The damage was so extensive that the boat took on water, leaving it unseaworthy. Although the authorities in Israel and Egypt ignored the call for help, the Lebanese responded and rescued the sixteen international activists on board. In 2010, ten activists were murdered by the Israeli military. In 2018, Dr. Swee Ang, a passenger on the ‘Al Awda’ freedom boat, describes how prior to reaching the Gaza coastline, they were boarded by the Israeli military, arrested, humiliated, and stripped naked. Their boat was confiscated.

The young, well-known environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, is already in Malta and, along with other internationals, hopes to join the ‘Conscience’ as early as possible. However, being well-known is no guarantee of survival or success, as orthopaedic surgeon David Halpin can testify from his experience on the ‘Dignity’. The Israelis have a documented history of committing crimes against anyone – Palestinian or international, if they are perceived to challenge their Zionist aspirations to turn all of Palestine and beyond, into a Jewish State.

The Maltese authorities agreed to allow the boat to come into Malta and to assist with repairs. However, they insisted that the boat go through the normal customs procedures of inspection. With concerns for Malta’s security and a responsibility for the security of those on the boat from further attack, the Maltese Navy blocked all vessels from approaching the ‘Conscience’. Included in those blocked, from the area around the boat, were activists connected with the freedom flotilla. This led to a standoff between the two groups as each tried to express their security concerns while also addressing the vessel’s evident need for assistance.

All eyes turned away from Israel’s war crime and toward Malta. Sandwiched between Zionist political pressure from Israel on one side and pressure from international humanitarian groups on the other side, the Maltese authorities were thrown into the spotlight as the potential villains. The Maltese people and the internationals were ready to protest in the capital city of Valletta in support of the humanitarian venture. However, the protest was called off after it appeared that the crew and supporters of the ‘Conscience’ were in genuine negotiations with the Maltese Government.

This is a narrative that is still unfolding. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the activists and the Maltese Government, we must remind ourselves that the real villain here is not Malta, but Israel. If justice is ever to be achieved, the Israeli Government must be held accountable for its ongoing theft and coveting of Palestinian land. Only then will Palestinians be free of this hundred-year-plus catastrophe that has led to displacement, occupation, and genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

Walking through the camps one sees tangles of bare electric cable, dripped on by corroded air conditioning units, hanging dangerously low in the narrow, dark passages that run between people’s homes. This combination of raw electricity and water frequently results in puddles of electrified water. Adults and children alike have fallen victim to electrocution as they have passed along these narrow corridors. Ironically the only positive aspects of the all too frequent power cuts is that no one gets electrocuted. In the camp environment, where survival is precarious at best, there is no real or lasting security. Threat can come from both internal and outside forces. There are many reports of injuries when ceilings collapse as a result of substandard cement and rusted building frames. Besides the politically controlled ban on building materials into the camps, the scarcity of space and lack of financial resources means that as the camp population expands, the only way to go, is up. There is also no longer space to bury the dead so bodies are placed on top of already deceased family members. Women who have lost their husbands face particular difficulties, such as lack of income, protection and social standing.

The smell of open sewer pipes is especially acrid during the humid summer months. The possibility of earning a little extra to feed their families forces poverty stricken individuals to resort to rummaging through bags of rubbish to gain the meagre income paid out for the recycling of plastic. This leaves torn sacks of rubbish spilled out across the streets with rotting vegetables creating an environmental health hazard. In all of Lebanon there are growing concerns about the availability of fresh water. Should the plastic bottles of fresh drinking water become scarce the Palestinian refugees will be amongst the first to experience it.

However terrible as the conditions in the camp are, it isn’t the physical deprivation that sears the heart and leaves raw memories of exposed pain.  It is the remembrance of a lost homeland and the remembrance of lost loved ones. The massacre in Sabra and Shatila, compounded by the knowledge of earlier massacres and the threat of more brutality, remains an open wound. There has never been accountability for the crimes and there has never been justice. These open wounds go back as far as the 1948 massacres of Deir Yassin  and other Palestinian villages which led Palestinians to flee their homes and take refuge in nearby Arab countries, including Lebanon.

Some of those who fled the siege of Tel a’Zaatar  (1976), had taken refuge in Shatila. Amongst the Palestinian communities and those who seek accountability and justice for them, there is talk of establishing a cemetery and raising a monument in the Sabra/Shatila Camp to commemorate the lives of  3,500 plus who were brutally slaughtered in September 1982. Such a monument could bring about a modicum of comfort to the families of those who died. It would provide a place to go for family members to place small remembrance gifts and communicate with those they lost. Without acknowledgment of what happened it’s not possible for survivors and dependents of those slaughtered to move on. It is not possible or moral to bury the crime in the same way that Israeli soldiers came in with bulldozers and buried the dead.

‘Right of Return’ – which is enshrined not only in International Law, but  basic to the higher laws of what is morally right and just, has left Palestinian refugees in a no man’s land of a legalistic political quagmire. On the one side the Lebanese authorities deny Palestinians the basic rights of work and ownership of property since they claim that to give Palestinians the full rights of Lebanese citizenship would discourage them from returning to their homeland. However, on the other side, Israel refuses to allow any consideration of ‘Right of Return’. This contrasts starkly with Israeli policy where ‘Right of Return’ is for all Jews around the world, regardless of whether they have any connection with historic Palestine, or not.

Western governments regularly publicly announce their ongoing allegiance to Israel. Liz Truss, being no exception, recently swore allegiance in her recent acceptance speech. This, and talk of normalisation in relations  between the Arab countries and Israel, leaves Palestinians with a sense of bitter betrayal. It creates a calculated amnesia that only serves the economic interests of the already privileged, elite. The lack of accountability for the series of massacres inflicted upon Palestinian populations — Deir Yassin, Tel a’Zaatar, Sabra and Shatila, Jenin, and more — is like rubbing salt in open wounds. Normalising relations without accountability and justice is to normalise crime. One wonders how long Palestinians will have to wait for justice to be served. For a true and lasting peace in our troubled world this must be a condition.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

I am disappointed that my question relating to the arbitrary detention of Julian Assange was not presented at the Hustings meeting at Kirbymoorside. I consider it to be a question of such vital importance for all those who share a common belief in justice, truth and commitment to democracy and freedom of speech, so I have chosen to re-present a significantly fuller version of the question by using an open letter form.

The treatment of Julian Assange, arguably one of the world’s most brilliant, courageous and outspoken personalities, raises serious concerns in so many ways that we urgently need an open discussion on it. These areas include: unlawful arbitrary detention, the law on asylum and extradition, democracy, sovereignty, torture, free speech, and state violence.

The initial investigation against Julian Assange, which originated in Sweden, never reached the stage of prosecution and all investigations have since been withdrawn. Julian Assange has also served time in prison for skipping bail by seeking asylum within the Ecuadorian Embassy because of the well-founded fear that he would be extradited to the United States. In such circumstances skipping bail and seeking asylum was a rational and fully justified decision. Nevertheless, our judicial system chose to punish him by giving him a prison sentence in Belmarsh — a prison reserved for Britain’s most dangerous and violent offenders.

That sentence has now been served which brings into question why Julian Assange continues to be detained. Within the UK extradition of political prisoners is prohibited. Therefore, questions arise as to the legality of this extradition order and what the justification is for his continued detention, especially within a top security prison. Julian Assange is charged with espionage, which by any definition, comes under the umbrella of political activity. Along with Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange is charged with publishing information regarding US war crimes in Iraq. The UK is a sovereign kingdom and signatory to international human rights laws, over and above its relation with the US. For UK laws to be subverted at the behest of a foreign government raises a further serious question. Just who is being represented here: the citizenry or some other power?

In 2016 a UN Working Party on arbitrary detention determined that the detention of Julian Assange was unlawful. How this same Working Party in 2019 would view his forcible extraction from the Embassy and his subsequent detention at Belmarsh Prison can only be speculated upon.

Nils Melzer, UN Rapporteur on torture, has stated that the current treatment of Julian Assange — of being under surveillance and placed in solidarity confinement, both during the latter years within the Ecuadorian Embassy and within Belmarsh Prison — amounts to psychological torture.

Julian Assange is a researcher and publisher. His crime has been to publish truthful information relating to serious war crimes committed against civilians, including journalists and children, by US forces within Iraq. Clearly this revelation is embarrassing for the US — which along with the allied military forces invaded Iraq on a contrived pretext — at the time deemed illegal by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The devastation of this war has been disastrous for civilians throughout much of the Middle East as this toxic war mentality kiled hundreds of thousands, created a huge refugee population, and contributed to terrorism that has expanded into Europe and beyond. Definitively, telling, writing, and publishing the facts was a moral obligation. There is a glaring irony here given that within the UK “it is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment ‘not’ to reveal information relating to a serious crime if one becomes aware of it.”

The state has normalised war just as it has normalised the extremes of wealth and power. The oligarchy has relegated a large segment of the population to a marginal economic existence. The so-called democracy has been subverted to the whims of transnational corporations, banks too big to fail, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical medical monopoly and special interest groups. The violence inflicted upon Julian Assange for his factual revelations should serve as a warning to all publishers, journalists, writers, artists, whistleblowers and anyone of integrity who values human rights, justice, honesty, and democracy.

Freedom of speech is what protects us all from tyrannical governments. It brings them into check when they acquire too much power. A government which represents those with money and power serves only to foster a climate of corruption and fear. It does nothing to address the increasing division between rich and poor and the growing population of those who find themselves afflicted by poverty or sent to fight wars of aggression.

Julian Assange was a leader in researching facts, exposing corruption, crime, and injustice. He became a teacher for those who value original thought and inspired critical thinking. Without such people our world is poorer.

My question therefore is: Where do you stand with regard to the treatment of Julian Assange and others who are willing to risk their freedoms in speaking truth and revealing information that the state finds embarrassing, including that of war crimes and crimes against humanity?

This article was posted on Monday, December 9th, 2019 at 8:00am and is filed under Chelsea Manning, Crimes against Humanity, Crimes against Peace, Extradiction, Julian Assange, Opinion, Political Prisoners, UK Politics, United Kingdom, War Crimes, WikiLeaks.