Khalid Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

In a dramatic though not entirely unexpected step, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Israeli Labour Party, decided this week to leave the party, along with three others of his colleagues, effectively condemning the party to irrelevance.

The socialist-Zionist party that ruled Israel, especially during its formative years up until 1977, had been in a state of disarray for a long time, with several key party leaders accusing Barak of destroying the party by succumbing to the rightwing agenda of the current Israeli government.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seemed quite pleased with the rupture, saying it ensured that his government would live for a long time to come.

Barak's decision to leave the Labour Party and set up his own faction leaves the embattled party with only eight seats in the Knesset. Three cabinet ministers affiliated with Labour quit their portfolios, saying they will devote themselves "to rebuilding the party and restoring its former glory".

Barak had been facing significant challenges from members demanding his ouster, citing "his absolute humiliating subservience" to the rightwing government. Hence Barak's departure can be viewed as a sort of pre-emptive action against his critics -- an action that critics say contains clear elements of conspiracy and vindictiveness.

His former colleagues in the party accused Barak of betraying the Labour movement, of self-centeredness, and spitefulness. "Barak brought tragedy to the Labour Party, sullied it and broke it apart," said Labour MK Shelly Yachimovich, lambasting Barak for the "corrupt and opportunist" way in which he chose to split from the party.

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David Halpin
Gloabal Resesarch

Introduction

The deliberate injury of the limbs of 23 boys by high velocity weapons has been logged and described by Defence for Children International – Palestine Branch (DCI-P) since March 2010. (1) Some of the facts have been published in national newspapers. These barbarous acts contravene international and national law but there are no judicial responses. The caring professions see the physical and mental pain of those who suffer and they should be in the vanguard in calling for this great cruelty to cease forthwith. Political leaders have failed to act. The Geneva Conventions Act 1957, which is of central importance in holding war criminals to account in the jurisdiction of the UK, is being emasculated.

Context

Most of the 1.5 million population of the Gaza strip is impoverished. Half are refugees from Mandate Palestine or their stock. About 50% of the male population is without work. It has been isolated and occupied for decades. A commercial port was being built in 2000 but that was bombed by Israel. The isolation and the hobbling of its commerce was increased by a siege which was started in March 2006 in response to the election of a majority of Hamas members to the legislature. It was further tightened in June 2007 after the Hamas government pre-empted a coup by the Fatah faction that was led in Gaza by Mohammad Dahlan.

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Stephen Lendman

During Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit, a US - China Joint Statement said:

"The United States stressed that the promotion of human rights and democracy is an important part of its foreign policy. China stressed that there should be no interference in any country's internal affairs."

Washington often chides other nations about their abuses and injustices at home and abroad. In fact, no other nation matches America's disdain for human and civil rights, yet as Washington Post writers John Pomfret and Scott Wilson said in their January 20 article headlined, "Obama hosts Hu Jintao on state visit, presses China on human rights:"

"President Obama used his summit Wednesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao to place human rights front and center in the US relationship with the world's preeminent ascending power."

New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler stressed the same theme in their January 19 article headlined, "Obama Pushes Hu on Rights but Stresses Ties to China," stating:

Obama "prodded China to make progress on human rights,' quoting him saying they're a:

of tension between our two governments. (Americans) have some core views....about the universality of certain rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly....(T)he world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being," ones Washington flaunts globally while pointing fingers at others.

A previous article addressed China's documentation of US human rights abuses, accessed through this link.

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Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Vera Macht Reporting From Gaza

It took eight days. Eight days since the last innocent was killed. You watch people die here one after another, getting killed one by one, without consequences, without justice, without an outcry in the media. Innocent people who have never done anything wrong in their lives other than try to make a living from something amidst the stifling four year siege. Civilians. Palestinian civilians, whose life doesn’t seem to be worth more than an entry in the statistics. And you feel like your hands are tied. “So that’s what I can do: register it in my notebook. It is registered, and there is an empty line after Shaban’s name. That is for those who they kill tomorrow”, wrote the American writer Max Ajl after the farmer Shaban Karmout was killed. It took eight days, and the place was filled. Amjad ElZaaneen, was 17 years when he was killed today. Too young, too early, too meaningless, too many names in all of our laptops.

Amjad collected stones that morning, on the 01/18/2011, as on every morning, with his three cousins and his brother, the youngest of whom was eleven. Five boys, children, with a horse and a cart full of stones, about 300m from the border with Israel, and near to the village of Bait Hanoun. They had just loaded their cart full as they saw Israeli tanks and bulldozers coming to invade the land, why, who knows. A group of resistance fighters approached the area, including fighters from PFLP, the Communist Party, to fight them out again, to prevent them from again uprooting the land. A more symbolic act, the country was destroyed hundreds of times before, by tanks and bulldozers, one more time, what difference does it make. Amjad and the others ran for their lives, successfully, they arrived safely at home.

But the horse was still there, after all, and all the stones they had collected with difficulty, for which they had risked their lives to have some income that day, and for the next one maybe, who knows whether the situation then wouldn’t be even more dangerous. So they returned, as they thought the situation had calmed down, and the tanks and bulldozers had withdrawn from Gaza's land, after they had flattened it one more time, why, who knows. But when they arrived at their horse, and just wanted to take it back home, Israeli soldiers fired a shell at them, and Sharaf Raafat Shada, 19, was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the chest. Amjad, the oldest, tried to pull him away, to lay him on the cart to somehow take him to the hospital, but Sharaf was too heavy for him. So Amjad made the decision to try to reach Bait Hanoun in order to get help. He hadn’t gone far when a shell directly hit him into his belly, leaving a wound so large that he bled to death within minutes.

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Stephen Lendman

Don't bet on it, or at most expect prosecutorial pretense, theater, with Baby Doc Duvalier free to return to his luxury French villa, though perhaps later than planned. A previous article discussed his arrival and 15 dictatorial years of rule (plus his father's), accessed through this link.

On January 18, New York Times writer Ginger Thompson headlined, "Former Haitian Dictator to Face Charges," saying:

"Haitian prosecutors presented formal charges of corruption and embezzlement against the former dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier on Tuesday, raising the level of uncertainty surrounding his abrupt emergence from exile this week."

Haiti's Chief Magistrate, Marycidas Auguste, announced charges of "government corruption, embezzlement of funds, money laundering, and assassination."

Calling the day's events a "political show," his lawyer, Gervais Charles, said only corruption and embezzlement were involved, adding that "Jean-Claude came into this country at the wrong time. That's what this is about, not the law."

A judge will decide if enough evidence warrants trial, he explained, adding that most charges stem from $4.6 million in Swiss accounts, a small fraction of what he stole, believed to be hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Haitian lawyer Salim Succar, involved in negotiations with Switzerland.

Statute of limitations also matter, having expired in 2006. Duvalier was never prosecuted despite past charges brought, including a 1988 US District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruling (in Jean-Juste v. Duvalier) that he was liable for $500 million in misappropriated public funds, taken for personal use.

His traveling companion, Veronique Roy, was asked if he was arrested. By phone inside court she said, "Absolutely not. We are very relaxed, drinking coffee and water."

Besides stealing millions as dictator, his Tonton Macoute (praetorian guard) killers abducted and murdered tens of thousands of Haitians, many tortured to death in prison.

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