What the British Government Welcomes in Inauguration of African Union

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What the British Government Welcomes in Inauguration of African Union

Picket in Protest against British Government's Complicity with Israeli War Crimes

If You Got Your News Only From The Television ...

A Textbook Case of Israeli Propaganda

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, today welcomed the inauguration of the African Union, which took place on Tuesday in Durban, South Africa.

In a statement released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office he said: "Africa’s leaders are taking an historic step. The United Kingdom shares the wish of Africa’s people to see peace and security, good governance and economic and social development spread throughout the continent. I trust that the African Union will dedicate itself to this task, and that its establishment today will mark a strengthening of the African voice in international affairs. We recognise that significant challenges lie ahead. We offer our full support to the African Union as it seeks to meet these."

The African Union, which will ultimately have its own executive council, parliament, court of justice and central bank, replaces the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was first formed in 1963. The proposal for an African Union was first put forward at the Extraordinary Summit of the OAU in 1999, in which the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi played a key role, and was endorsed at the 37th OAU Summit meeting, held last year in Sirte, Libya. The African Union was originally designed to create the conditions for closer economic ties between African countries and for a common African defence and foreign policy. Already there have been calls at the inaugural summit for the creation of an African army. Colonel Gadaffi and others saw the African Union as a means to combat the consequences of globalisation and Africa’s marginalisation in world affairs and as playing a role in gaining for Africa a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

However, the main basis of the new African Union has now become the adoption of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NePAD) by all African countries. NePAD is an economic recovery plan developed by some of Africa’s leaders in such a way as to perpetuate the unequal relationship between Africa and the most highly developed countries such as Britain, and therefore to perpetuate the adverse consequences of globalisation rather than to combat them. NePAD is based on the Eurocentric principles enshrined in the Paris Charter, which Britain and the other big powers are now presenting as "universal values". Such values will be enforced by a "peer review mechanism" which will allow African governments to directly intervene in the affairs of those countries that are deemed to be guilty of non-compliance. Although presented as an African initiative, NePAD has been developed in close consultation with Britain and the other G8 countries. At the close of the first summit of the African Union, its chairman, the South African president Thabo Mbeki, announced that the UN Human Rights Commission had offered to intervene in African countries deemed to have "poor human rights records".

At the final meeting of the OAU, held in Durban the day before the African Union was inaugurated, Colonel Gadaffi welcomed the launch of the AU as an historic landmark on the road to unite the African continent. However, he is already reported to have expressed reservations about NePAD, and warned the big powers not to try to impose their will on African countries. "We are not pupils who need someone to teach us," he told the meeting of African leaders and he added, "We accept assistance but we refuse conditions". "Africa for the Africans," Muammar Gadaffi declared to the crowd at the ceremony marking the AU inauguration. "The land is ours! You are the masters of your continent! You are marching to glory!"

WDIE is sure that the struggle over the future direction of the African continent, and whether the African peoples will be empowered to decide their own fate, is not yet over. If the British government thinks it has won the battle over whether the African states and nations have accepted the agenda of neo-liberal globalisation and become integrated into the global economic market dominated by the big capitalist powers and the international financiers, it must think again. The call for these capitalist blocs and international financial institutions to support the African Union becoming competitive in the global market does not represent the best interests of the African peoples. In strengthening their unity, the African nations and peoples will continue to oppose the dictate of those powerful interests whose aim is nothing but to exploit Africa and its peoples to the hilt, and strive to build an Africa in which the people are the masters of their own destiny and not subject to a 21st century form of enslavement.

A picket in Whitehall is being organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, opposite Downing Street this Friday, July 12, 5 - 7 pm.

The protest is against the British government's complicity with Israeli war crimes, through the immoral, unethical sale of components for F-16 fighter planes used against the Palestinians.

The PSC is raising the slogan: Arms to Israel - no way! direct or via USA!

The Foreign Secretary has announced that F16 fighter parts will be sold to the US even though completed planes will be sold on. The government currently refuses export licences for equipment destined for Israel if it could be used in the conflict with the Palestinians.

Jack Straw said that refusing to export the Head Up Display units would have had "serious implications" for defence relations with the US. He said the end of the Cold War and subsequent reduction in defence budgets world-wide had meant a massive rationalisation of the defence industry, which presented "new challenges" for the government's approach. He added: "One consequence of this change is that increasingly defence goods are manufactured from components sourced in several different countries."

Existing EU guidelines state that licence applications would be judged on a case-by-case basis but do not provide guidance on "incorporation" cases, Jack Straw said. The government would assess such applications on a case-by-case basis but take into account a number of factors, including the importance of Britain's defence and security relationship with the "incorporating country".

"Appropriate use of arms exported to Israel by the US is the subject of regular dialogue between the two countries, and when the US have concerns they make these known to the Israelis," the Foreign Secretary said. The US-UK defence relationship was "fundamental" to Britain's national security and its ability to play a strong and effective role in the world, particularly in the wake of September 11, Jack Straw added.

Downing Street earlier said the guidelines reflected the "new reality" of the multinational defence industry.

Labour MP Alice Mahon warned of "real growing unease" among fellow backbenchers at the "completely immoral" decision. She and fellow Labour MPs have now demanded that Jack Straw come before the Commons to defend his decision. Commons Speaker Michael Martin is deciding whether to allow the Private Notice Question - a Parliamentary device compelling ministers to answer criticism in Parliament.

Alice Mahon has said that the episode is further evidence of the government slavishly following the wishes of George W Bush. "There are only about half a dozen planes involved. They could have put it on hold," she said. "It is just another example of Bush saying, 'Do this'."...

Earlier, Labour MP Dr Brian Iddon, secretary of the Commons all-party Palestine group, said: "I am very disappointed that we are aiding and abetting the Americans to attack the Palestinians. I have been disappointed by the British Government's attitude towards Palestine. They keep mentioning in statements suicide bombers, terrorism, as if the Palestinians were the only ones creating terrorism in that area. I would submit that Ariel Sharon and particularly his defence force are equally terrorising the Palestinians."

The British working class and people must demand an all-out arms embargo on Israel, as well as a boycott of Israeli goods, and an end to diplomatic relations between Britain and Israel until the occupation of Palestinian territory is ended, and a just solution in favour of the Palestinian nation is brought about.

The following article by John Pilger, dated 27 Jun 2002, is taken from the website "The journalism and films of John Pilger" (www.johnpilger.com)

If you got your news only from the television, you would have no idea of the roots of the Middle East conflict, or that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation.

In May, the Glasgow University Media Group, distinguished for its pioneering media analysis, published a study of the reporting of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. It ought to be required reading in newsrooms and media schools. The research showed that the public's lack of understanding of the conflict and its origins was compounded by news reporting, especially on television.

Viewers, says the study, are rarely told that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation. The term "occupied territories" is almost never explained. Indeed, only 9 per cent of young people interviewed knew that the Israelis were the occupiers and the "settlers" were Israeli. The selective use of language is important. The study found that words such as "murder", "atrocity", "lynching" and "savage, cold-blooded killing" were used only to describe Israeli deaths. "The extent to which some journalism assumes the Israeli perspective," wrote Professor Greg Philo, "can be seen if the statements are 'reversed' and presented as Palestinian actions. [We] did not find any [news] reports stating that 'The Palestinian attacks were in retaliation for the murder of those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation'."

Given that the central truth of the conflict is routinely obscured, none of this is surprising. News and current affairs programmes seldom, if ever, remind viewers that Israel was established largely by force on 78 per cent of historic Palestine and, since 1967, has illegally occupied and imposed various forms of military rule on the remaining 22 per cent. The media "coverage" has long reversed the roles of oppressor and victim. Israelis are never called terrorists. Correspondents who break this taboo are often intimidated with slurs of anti-Semitism - a bleak irony, as Palestinians are Semites, too.

Having long ago recognised Israel's "right" to more than two-thirds of their country, the Palestinian leadership has contorted itself in order to accommodate a maze of mostly American plans designed to deny true independence and ensure Israel's enduring power and control. Until recently, this was reported uncritically as "the peace process". When ordinary Palestinians cried "enough!" and rose up in the second Intifada, armed mostly with slingshots, they were put down by snipers with high-velocity weapons and with tanks and Apache gunships, supplied by the United States.

And now, in their despair, as some are turning to suicide attacks, the Palestinians appear on the news only as bombers and rioters, which, as the Glasgow study points out, "is, of course, the view of the Israeli government". The latest euphemism, "incursion", is from the vocabulary of lies coined in Vietnam. It means assaulting human beings with tanks and planes. "Cycle of violence" is similar. It suggests, at best, two equal sides, never that the Palestinians are resisting violent oppression with violence. A Channel 4 Dispatches recently "balanced" the Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp with a Palestinian attack on a "settlement". There was no explanation that these are not settlements at all, but armed, illegal fortresses that are central to a policy of imposing strategic and military control.

On 9 June, the Correspondent series on BBC Television broadcast a report about the recent siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This was an exemplar of the problems identified in the Glasgow research. It was, in effect, an Israeli occupation propaganda film put out by the BBC. It was made as a co-production with an American channel, and the credits listed the producer as Israel Goldvicht, who runs an Israeli production company.

That would have been fine had the film-makers made any attempt to challenge the Israeli military with whom they had ingratiated themselves. "The Israelis were determined not to damage the buildings," began the narrator. "The international press were cleared from Manger Square, but we were allowed to stay and observe the Israeli operation . . ." With this "unique access" unexplained to the viewers, the film presented one Colonel Lior as the star good guy, guaranteeing "medical treatment to anyone wounded", saying a cheery hello on a mobile phone to a friend in Oxford Street and, like any colonial officer, speaking about and on behalf of the Palestinians.

"Killers" were described by the colonel without challenge by the BBC/Israel Goldvicht team. They were "terrorists" and "gunmen", not those resisting the invasion of their homeland. Israel's right to "arrest" foreign peace protesters drew no query from the BBC. Not a single Palestinian was interviewed. As the sun set on his fine profile, the last word went to the good colonel. The issues between the Israelis and Palestinians, he said, "were personal points of view".

Well, no. The brutal subjugation of the Palestinians is, under any interpretation of the law, an epic injustice, a crime in which the colonel plays a leading part. The BBC has always provided the best, most sophisticated propaganda service in the world, because matters of justice and injustice, right and wrong are simply usurped either by "balance" or by liberal sophistry; one is either "pro- Israeli" or "pro-Palestinian". Fiona Murch, the executive producer of Correspondent, told me that Israel Goldvicht Productions would not have won the "trust" of the Israeli army had the producer asked real journalistic questions. That was the way of "fly on the wall": a candid admission. "It was breaking a stereotype," she said. "It was about a good, decent man" (the colonel). She said I ought to have seen an earlier Correspondent series, which had Palestinians in it.

I think she was trying to offer that as "balance" for The Siege of Bethlehem - a film that might be dismissed as cheap PR, were it not for its complicity with a regime that uses ethnic difference to deny human rights, imprisons people without charge or trial, and murders and tortures "systematically", says Amnesty.

Goebbels would have approved.

Written by Ali Abunimah, 8 July 2002, electronicIntifada.net

A new Israeli army "study" charges that Palestinian school textbooks contain "systematic education to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred and violent revenge to destroy the country" ("Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred," Haaretz, June 28, 2002).

Such claims, which have been made by Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States for years, are simply an attempt by Israel to find some alternative explanation to the understandable rage felt by Palestinians who have suffered through decades of continuing dispossession, occupation, disenfranchisement, violence, torture and humiliation at the hands of Israel.

An independent study of Palestinian textbooks by Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University in Washington, DC, notes that "virtually every discussion in English on Palestinian education repeats the charge that Palestinian textbooks incite students against Jews and Israel". Brown states that: "It may therefore come as a surprise to readers that the books authored under the PNA are largely innocent of these charges. What is more remarkable than any statements they make on the subject is their silence -- the PNA-authored books often stubbornly avoid treating anything controversial regarding Palestinian national identity, forcing them into awkward omissions and gaps."

Brown, while not uncritical of the Palestinian textbooks, concluded that "the Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence and anti-Semitism. It cannot be described as a peace curriculum either, but the charges against it are often wildly exaggerated or inaccurate." ("Democracy, History and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum," an independent report prepared for the Adam Institute, 2002 [http://www.nad-plo.org/textbooks/nathan_textbook.pdf]) Nationalism, whatever its drawbacks, underpins almost every country's school curriculum, not least in the United States and Israel.

How can we explain the glaring discrepancy between Brown's findings and those of the Israeli army propaganda unit?

According to Haaretz, the Israeli study claims that the Palestinian textbooks "express a lack of recognition of Israel, not even according to the 1967 borders, alongside adamant claims to Palestinian rule of all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea." Another complaint is that the books mention that Israel has "exploited" and "degraded" Palestinians "by changing the names of Arab villages and cities, and by defacing and stealing Arab manuscripts". The Israeli reviewers are outraged that in one book there is a story of a Palestinian girl visiting her family's original home in the city of Jaffa which is now in Israel. Their biggest complaint is perhaps that there are maps which show "Palestine" as it once was, covering land that is now in Israel. Hence, even an historically accurate map showing where major Palestinian population centres actually were prior to their destruction in 1948, constitutes for Israel "an adamant claim to rule" the whole country. Referring to Israel's systematic effort to erase Palestinian history in Israel prior to 1948 (something very well documented by Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti in his book `Sacred Landscape', 2000) is taken as a "desire for revenge". Anything short of total amnesia about Palestinian history and complete devotion to Zionism's official mythology constitutes "hatred". Only people who are in neurotic denial could indulge in such absurdities.

Yet, let us accept, only for the sake of argument, that the Israeli claims are true and that they constitute some form of "incitement". Why should Israel complain that Palestinians do not respect the 1967 borders on their maps, when it has been Israeli policy since 1967 to erase those borders on the ground, using extreme violence to confiscate Palestinian land and implant Jewish-only colonies everywhere Palestinians live? You need only go to the "Israel Map", on Israeli Ministry of Tourism's official website, to see the Golan Heights and the West Bank depicted as part of Israel (the latter being labelled "Judean Desert" and "Shomron" [Samaria], while the Palestinian city of Nablus is given only the Hebrew name "Shechem").

Why should Palestinians express unconditional recognition of the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its historic claims when Israel has not recognised a Palestinian state, and its officials and many of its academics deny the undeniable -- that nearly three quarters of a million Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes so that Israel could rise on the ashes of Palestinian society? Of course, the fact that the Palestinian leadership has explicitly recognised Israel -- repeatedly and formally -- and that Palestinian policy is to seek a state within the 1967 borders does nothing to blunt the constant Israeli charges. This is because the purpose of the accusations is not to produce more friendly school curricula but to justify Israel's own refusal to recognise the 1967 borders, to provide cover for the continued colonisation of the occupied territories and to blame the Palestinians for all the violence resulting from this colonisation.

Even without Brown's commendable study it should be obvious that the constant Israeli refrain that textbooks are responsible for the violence is ridiculous on its face. Are we to believe that if Palestinian textbooks were written by the Israeli Ministry of Education, Palestinian children would be happy to live under the brutal foreign military dictatorship that is the Israeli occupation, to see their parents and friends killed and humiliated, their houses demolished and their land seized for Jewish-only settlement? If Palestinian youths were to read from Israeli textbooks, would they greet invading Israeli troops with showers of rose petals instead of stones? If Palestinian students could actually get past the roadblocks, curfews and gunfire to reach their schools in order to read Israeli-approved books, would they feel less hostility towards Israel?

And, perhaps Israel would be in a better position to lecture Palestinians about what they should do in their classrooms if Israel had not constantly shelled school buildings and used Palestinian schools as detention camps for thousands of men and boys rounded up during "Operation Defensive Shield", when they were forced to strip, and lie for hours and days on cold, concrete floors, sometimes with numbers written on their arms.

Indeed, for decades, Palestinian citizens of Israel ("Arab Israelis") have studied from textbooks written by the Israeli Ministry of Education, they stood to attention in front of the Israeli flag and sang the Israeli national anthem. And yet, despite their "good behaviour", their simmering and growing discontent is caused not by an insufficiently Zionist school curriculum but by the constant and increasing discrimination against them in every possible sphere of life by Israeli government and society. This discrimination reached the breaking point in October 2000 when thirteen Palestinian-Israeli youths protesting in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories were shot dead by Israeli police. Such casual brutality is entirely unheard of against Jewish citizens.

Israel is further marginalising its own Palestinian citizens by cutting payment of child benefits to Arab, but not Jewish, citizens. Arab Knesset members are being persecuted: Azmi Bishara is on trial for making a speech, and Ahmed Tibi's parliamentary freedom of movement was recently revoked by a vote of his own Knesset colleagues. This discrimination cannot but produce anger and resentment, and making the textbooks more Zionist is not going to assuage it.

So if this is the situation inside Israel, what can one expect in the occupied territories, where the repression is infinitely greater, and where hundreds of unarmed Palestinian children have been shot dead by the Israeli army since October 2000? The Israeli occupation clearly does not need any help from textbooks to incite against itself. With all this, one can easily find ugly expressions by Palestinians both about Israelis and Jews, but these are exactly mirrored by frequent statements from Israeli cabinet ministers, rabbis and others, calling for the ethnic cleansing or annihilation of all the Palestinians, and other all too frequent expressions of racial hatred. These expressions on both sides are symptoms and not causes of the conflict. When the gross and real injustices that fuel the conflict are removed, then they will begin to disappear and messages of hatred will not resonate as they do today.

Only those who want the conflict to continue will maintain the lie about Palestinian textbooks and find in them non-existent excuses to continue the oppression and dehumanisation of the Palestinian people while what little is left of their country is stolen from under their feet.