Time for outrage over Israel’s meddling in European affairs
David Cronin, Electronic Intifada, May 21 2024
Lobbying for Israel can be lucrative. David Siegel heads the organization called Friends of the European Leadership Network. He commands an annual salary exceeding $350k. Over the past few days, Siegel has been thanking those Western politicians who are willing to criticize the International Criminal Court after its chief prosecutor sought warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, as well as leading players in Hamas. Outrage at the ICC’s move is proof of “moral clarity,” Siegel has contended.
Siegel has spent most of his career working for the Israeli government and the lobby which backs it up. Before taking up his current position, he was Israel’s top representative in the southwestern US (a region that includes California, Arizona, Colorado and Hawaii). Friends of the European Leadership Network, based in Skokie, a Chicago suburb, helps marshal elite support for Israel. According to a “transparency register” run by the Brussels bureaucracy, It finances almost the entire budget of the European Leadership Network (Elnet), a key pro-Israel group.
It is no accident that Elnet is funded primarily from the US. For years, it has copied the modus operandi of the Israeli lobby across the Atlantic. A core activity has been buying influence from lawmakers and other establishment figures by bringing them on expenses-paid propaganda trips. More than 20 such visits to the Middle East have been organized by Elnet since Israel began its genocidal war against Gaza in October. In the past week, Elnet has arranged for an all-women delegation from Europe to visit Israel’s Knesset.
Predictably, the exercise tried to present Israel as waging a feminist war. Fabricated claims of Hamas committing sexual violence were repeated in an attempt to justify Israel’s barbaric conduct in Gaza, where most Palestinian victims are women and children. Elnet is especially active in the European Parliament. Elections to that assembly will take place in June and some of the coverage before the vote has involved fear-mongering. Such coverage has involved speculation that the Kremlin is plotting to fill the parliament with its cronies. While the allegations of Russian meddling are exaggerated, clear evidence that Israel and its lobbying network are corrupting politicians is ignored. There has hardly been any scrutiny of how the positions taken by the European Parliament lately have copied and pasted talking points prepared by the pro-Israel lobby. Nor are there any calls for investigations into how Elnet and similar outfits court lawmakers with free propaganda trips. By contrast, it was mandatory to appear horrified when it emerged that Qatar was engaged in similar behavior. As the European Union’s only directly elected institution, the European Parliament serves as democratic figleaf to a system which is generally opaque and unaccountable. Remove the figleaf and you will see that many lawmakers are beholden to pressure groups.
ICC has no evidence for Oct 7 rapes, documents indicate
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, May 21 2024
There are many vexing aspects to Monday’s announcement by International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan that he is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and three leaders of Hamas. That he should charge the leaders of a legitimate resistance against military occupation and equate them with the leaders of a criminal regime that is perpetrating genocide is questionable enough, one theme explored in an excellent commentary on the indictments by Justin Podur on his YouTube channel The Anti-Empire Project.
It is particularly bizarre that Khan would charge Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas politburo chief and a civilian political leader who almost certainly had no role whatsoever in planning the Oct 7 resistance operation. That can only be aimed at delegitimizing Hamas in line with Western political imperatives. It may well hamper Haniyeh’s constructive role as an interlocutor and mediator in efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, something Hamas has been trying to do in the face of consistent US-backed Israeli rejectionism. But that Khan has charged Haniyeh, along with Hamas’ Gaza leader Yayha Sinwar and its military commander Muhammad Deif with sexual violence and rape is absurd.
Although it is only an accusation, the fact that the ICC prosecutor seeks formal charges adds weight and credibility to the claims, and will thus feed the notion that there is some factual basis to Israel’s entirely debunked atrocity propaganda about Hamas using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war. In fact, both Khan’s announcement and a report by an advisory panel of international law experts convened by the chief prosecutor indicate that Khan found no evidence of such attacks on Oct 7 that he could base any charges on. Khan’s charges against Hamas leaders include:
Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity.
Pay close attention to the words I’ve emphasized throughout the texts I’m quoting. Later in his announcement, Khan asserts:
There are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity. We have reached that conclusion based on medical records, contemporaneous video and documentary evidence, and interviews with victims and survivors. My Office also continues to investigate reports of sexual violence committed on Oct 7.
That is all he says about rape and sexual violence. The ICC expert panel report contains one paragraph mentioning rape and sexual violence that contains very similar language. The report comments:
The chief prosecutor seeks to charge the three Hamas leaders with the war crimes of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity and the crimes against humanity of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, and other inhumane acts for acts committed against Israeli hostages while they were in captivity. The Panel notes the Prosecutor’s statement that his investigations continue, including in relation to evidence of sexual violence on Oct 7 itself.
What is notable here? First, the charges of rape and sexual violence refer only to such alleged crimes occurring after Oct 7 against persons in captivity and not on Oct 7 as part of any systematic plan. Second, Khan’s assertion that his office “also continues to investigate reports of sexual violence committed on Oct 7” can be read as confirmation that such investigations have yet to yield any evidence he considers capable of supporting charges. But does that mean that Khan possesses enough evidence of rapes and sexual violence against Israelis in captivity to warrant charges against Hamas leaders? Obviously, we have not seen all the evidence that Khan claims to possess, but despite that we can fairly confidently assess that he does not.
For seven months Israel has engaged in a no-holds-barred propaganda campaign to push its Oct 7 rape claims. Not only has it failed to identify a single credible victim or eyewitness of Oct 7 rapes, but all of its atrocity claims about sexual violence on that day have collapsed under scrutiny. Even Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has had to repudiate the false claims it helped Israel disseminate, an attempt by a once-respected human rights group to salvage the credibility it has perhaps fatally damaged by indulging in atrocity propaganda. So with the Oct 7 rape claims in tatters, Israeli propagandists had to refocus on accusations that rapes and sexual violence have been taking place in captivity. For example, Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan recently lashed out at the world body, asserting:
The UNSC and the UN have done nothing to free the hostages who are subject to rape and torture.
And this became a central theme of the recent propaganda film Screams Before Silence that was narrated by billionaire former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg. We took a close look at the film and demonstrated how it is a fraud in a recent episode of The Electronic Intifada Livestream. In our segment we also addressed the only specific claim of sexual violence of someone in captivity, those made by former Israeli captive Amit Soussana. Her claims are featured heavily in the Sandberg film. In his Monday statement, ICC prosecutor Khan does not mention Soussana or any other victim by name, but since she is the only person who has been identified as a victim of any alleged sexual attack, it is reasonable to assume that her case forms part of his file.
Starting in late March, Soussana’s story was heavily promoted by the NYT and the Israeli government’s propaganda apparatus in what appears to have been a coordinated campaign to refocus and revive the discredited sexual violence narrative. In the Sandberg film, Soussana describes a harrowing experience, the one she told the NYT about in March. Soussana does not claim that she was sexually attacked on Oct 7. She claims that while she was held in Gaza, one of her guards, whose name she gives as Muhammad, forced her on one occasion to perform an unspecified sexual act. Soussana only publicly revealed this account months after her return from Gaza and in the context of a media campaign involving the Times, the Sandberg film and the Israeli government. When she first spoke to the media in January, Soussana made no mention of sexual violence. Nor has any other Israeli released from Gaza to date made claims that they were attacked in a similar manner.
Soussana does not claim that there are any witnesses to what she says she experienced in Gaza so it is impossible to verify or completely discount her claim, and nor is it not necessary to do so for the purpose of assessing Khan’s charges against Hamas leaders. The key point is that even if we take Soussana’s account to be entirely true, it does not support the thesis that Hamas leaders ordered or carried out “Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity” and “also as war crimes.” Soussana describes one individual taking advantage of his power over her in an isolated situation and on a single occasion. Nothing in her account, again, even if taken as completely true, sustains the accusation that there was a campaign of mass rape on Oct 7 or against Israelis held in captivity afterwards.
Of course, as noted, it is possible that Khan has other evidence, but if such evidence existed, Israel would undoubtedly have already aired it as part of its propaganda campaign. So far the Soussana story is its most compelling case and remains the only instance in which the identity of a victim is said to be known. Meanwhile, Khan has so far completely ignored the mounting evidence of systematic sexual violence against Palestinians by Israel, including first-hand victim accounts. All that goes to underscore the political nature of Khan’s charges against the Palestinian resistance leaders, charges that appear designed to lessen and dilute the effect of his necessary, but belated and far from adequate, charges against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Grief and relief on a Gaza beach
Rasha Abou Jalal, Electronic Intifada, May 21 2024
Since 2007, Israel has subjected Gaza to a medieval blockade and a series of major attacks. During that time, going to the seaside has provided Gaza’s residents with their only real outlet for psychological relief. My home in Gaza City was around 400 meters from the shore. I used to sit for long hours, looking at the sea. In the summer, every Friday was a day for family entertainment at the beach. I would go there with my husband and five children. My husband would rent a small holiday home. The children would swim and my husband and I would grill meat. On other occasions, I would go with my friends to resorts and cafés spread along the seashore. They had names like Bianco, Maldive Gaza and Sunset. I would take pictures and share them with my friends on social media.
Israel has turned all of these hangouts and many more into rubble and ash during the current genocidal war. The waterfront of Gaza City has been destroyed. After that destruction, Israel forced the residents of Gaza City, including my family, to move south. My home was destroyed by Israel. Israel has put me under enormous stress due to repeated displacement. I have spent much of the time in a tent which is about 11 km from the sea. Before Israel’s recent invasion of Rafah, I proposed a family trip to that city’s beach. I gathered a few cans of beans that we had received as food aid and placed them in a bag. We could eat the beans on the beach, I thought. Then memories flooded my mind. I recalled all the things I used to prepare when we would visit the beach in Gaza City. Pizza, cake and other delicious things. I was deep in thought when I heard my husband’s voice. He asked:
Are you ready?
I replied:
Yes.
And so we set out for the beach. From the side of the road, we spent half an hour looking for a car to take us. But we couldn’t find any. Finally, a donkey-drawn cart passed in front of us. We asked the driver to take us to the seaside. He agreed for a fee. Along the way, we saw many destroyed homes, as well as camps and other places where people had taken shelter. After 30 minutes on the road, the sea suddenly appeared in front of us. I started to cry. There were many cafés on the seashore, like old times. The difference now was that they were full of people who had been displaced in a genocidal war. I sat on the sand with my family. By pure coincidence I saw my close friend Aisha. She, too, was displaced from Gaza City and moved to Rafah. We hugged and wept. I went to school with Aisha. We sat down beside each other and Aisha told me some terrible news. She had lost both her eldest son Kamal, 11, and her father during this terrible war. They were both killed along with dozens of other Palestinians when Israel attacked the Nuseirat market in central Gaza on Oct 14. They were just buying vegetables. Following that horrific massacre, Aisha and her family moved to Rafah. Aisha said:
I used to love the sea. Now I feel like I want to drown in it.
Trying to comfort her, I said:
We will get through all this. Our beautiful days will return, though our beautiful martyrs have gone to heaven before us.
We said our goodbyes. Aisha went back to her family. And I went back to mine. I prepared a dish of fava beans for our lunch. My son Zein’al-Din asked me if I remembered how we used to grill chicken on the beach. I told him:
Yes. And we will return to our home soon and visit our beach and grill chicken again.
Like my other children, Zein al-Din does not know that our home was completely destroyed. I do not know where we will live when this war ends. My kids went swimming. I had never seen them so happy over the past seven months. There were some fishers in the sea. The Israelis opened fire toward their small boats. One of the fishers jumped into the water, trying to escape the gunfire. The strange thing was that none of the people on the beach ran when they heard the gunfire. It was as if they had become accustomed to it. Or did the way nobody moved reflect a general despair? Before sunset, we decided to head back to our tent east of Rafah. Once again, we couldn’t find a car to take us. Once again, we had to hire a donkey-drawn cart. On the journey back to the tent, I watched the sea gradually become more and more distant. I said:
Goodbye, sea!
Everyone around me heard me speak those words.
In Gaza, you can only dream of living
Rifqa Hijazi, Electronic Intifada, May 21 2024
My heart pains me greatly. The distressing scenes I’ve witnessed over the past seven months linger in my mind. They haunt me everywhere. I will share one painful memory with you. One among so many.
It was the beginning of the genocide, one of the frightening days in October, when I had already been displaced for a first time and was staying at my grandmother’s house near al-Shifa hospital. I went to the hospital one day to buy some personal items since I had left everything behind at home. But I couldn’t bear the sight or the smell. It was awful. There were thousands of people in the hospital corridors, spilling out of the entrances, sleeping on the ground under the sun. They thought they were finding safety.
In the hospital yard, there were markets, barbers, vendors and the smell of death. Next to the emergency entrance, there was a tent full of bodies. The sight was terrible and frightening, the bodies were piled up into a small hill. Suddenly, I noticed my cousins searching among the bodies, terrified. I froze, wondering who they were looking for. We had been displaced together. One said:
We’re looking for Hani and his family.
His family? We are looking for more than one body? Hani, my cousin’s kind-hearted son, lived on the ground floor of their building with his mother, father, wife and young daughters, Fatima and Zainab, who were no older than 4. My brother told me they had searched all the hospitals and this was their last stop. Suddenly, amid the horror and fear, inside the tent of death, Hani’s brother recognized a piece of a body by its clothing. It was Abeer, Hani’s wife. She was wearing prayer clothes.
I’ll never forget the fear that ran down my spine at that moment, and I’ll never forget Hani’s brother’s face. I felt like the world was ending around me. They gathered pieces of bodies in one shroud! They found a part of Hani’s body they could identify because it contained his ID card. Of the children there was only one trace: a single foot. I remember Hani’s wife before the war, sitting with me at a table at a relative’s wedding. She was very beautiful and kind. Abeer didn’t deserve to die like this. No one deserves to die like this.
The hardest part was when we tried to inform Hani’s parents. We had collected what we could of the family in one shroud and buried them. Hani’s siblings then returned home. But none could break the news to their mother, afraid of her shock and grief. In the end, my mother volunteered to tell her sister. She went, and we followed, our steps heavy. It felt like a nightmare. Hani had been out of touch for three days, so when we gathered around his mother, she realized something was wrong. My mother broke the news:
Hani and Abeer have gone ahead to paradise.
I’ll never forget the look in Um Hani’s eyes. The shock was too much for her and she passed out. Abu Hani remained frozen in place. We tried to wake my aunt. Eventually, she came around, and sat on a chair and just cried. She cried a lot, and we all cried. Except Hani’s father, who remained frozen, eyes unblinking. These were the hardest moments I’ve ever experienced, moments of loss, sadness, anger and fear all in one. We cried, and the sounds of explosions were background music to our lament. My aunt said she wanted to see Hani before the burial, not knowing that we had already buried her son and his family. What do you want to see, my aunt? There is no body. Months have passed since you were lost, Hani, and my aunt cries every day, waiting for you to come home.
On the third day of November, my family and I were forced to leave northern Gaza. We fled south through what the occupation military claimed to be a passage to safety, but which was really a corridor of death. My journey along this road with my family, leaving a north that had become famine-stricken and extremely dangerous, was the hardest journey, one surrounded by corpses, burnt cars and bullets.
The occupation military had announced that this was the last chance for the northern residents to leave. We were allowed to travel only from 10 am until 2 pm. We took one bag per person. How could I fit my home, my room and my memories into one bag? I left almost everything behind, but brought a box of paints and a notebook, as I used to be a happy painter before this genocide. I also took biscuits and juice because I knew a long journey awaited.
We started walking from the Kuwait roundabout, which later would become the site of one of Israel’s many massacres. Thousands walked with us and terror never left my heart. The tanks and the sounds of explosions alone were a nightmare. We walked so much that my feet swelled. I saw burnt-out cars and bloated corpses. These were the bodies of people with families, dreams and goals. Everyone feared getting close to them. No one buried them.
When we reached about halfway, there were soldiers on either side of the road. They called out to a young woman wearing a hijab. They forced her to strip down to her underwear. They made her sit on the ground and mocked her. Her tears didn’t stop. After humiliating and ridiculing her, they shot her in the foot and forced her to crawl back onto the road. I can never forget her tears and cries.
An elderly man near us collapsed to the ground, dead from exhaustion and prolonged exposure to the sun. His children tried to collect his body, but the soldier didn’t allow it. They were forced to leave their father’s body on the ground. We walked and we walked. We reached the south. First we found a hostel and tried to secure one room for eight people. But the hostel owner found someone capable of paying more in rent. So we had to erect a tent instead for us all. After the long journey, I needed to use the bathroom. Of course, there was only a shared, filthy bathroom to use.
After several days, I suffered a very painful stomach ache. I couldn’t eat or drink anything and vomited seven times in one day. I was so weak I couldn’t even comb my hair and I slept all day. I managed to see a doctor who said I had contracted hepatitis A when I used the shared bathroom. It has become a common complaint in Gaza, spreading easily due to the lack of water and hygiene products. It was very, very painful.
I remained bedridden for several weeks. Hepatitis A is of no priority to doctors, who are overwhelmed with critical injuries in overflowing hospitals and emergency rooms. The pain and agony doesn’t end there. It hasn’t ended yet. I am filled with anguish. Will I live? Will I write another article? I write now, and the sounds of explosions never stop. I only dream of living.
Niqnaq 