Another totally typical day in Israel/Palestine

One (via the Guardian):

A belief that every Palestinian child is a potential terrorist may be leading to a “spiral of injustice” and breaches of international law in… Israel‘s treatment of child detainees in military custody, a delegation of eminent British lawyers has concluded in an independent report backed by the Foreign Office.

The nine-strong delegation, led by the former high court judge Sir Stephen Sedley and including the UK’s former attorney-general Lady Scotland, found that “undisputed facts” pointed to at least six violations of the UN convention on the rights of the child, to which Israel is a signatory. It was also in breach of the fourth Geneva convention in transferring child detainees from the West Bank to Israeli prisons, the delegation said.

Its report,… Children in Military Custody, released on Tuesday, was based on a visit to Israel and the West Bank last September funded and facilitated by the Foreign Office and the British consulate in Jerusalem.

… Two (via the Times of Israel):

A former top Foreign Ministry official has endorsed South Africa’s plan to ban “Made in Israel” labels for imported products from the West Bank, protesting what he calls Israeli complacency about the occupation.

Alon Liel, a former Foreign Ministry director-general and ex-ambassador to South Africa, told The Times of Israel that he also personally boycotts products from West Bank settlements and supports cultural boycotts of Israel to protest the lack of progress in the peace process.

Liel said his stance, which includes supporting author Alice Walker’s refusal to have her book “The Color Purple” translated into Hebrew, also aims to call attention to the urgent need for Jerusalem to ensure the near future brings “Palestinian independence, not an Israeli apartheid state.”

“I can understand the desire, by people of conscience, to reassert an agenda of justice, to remind Israelis that Palestinians exist,” Liel wrote inan article that appeared Sunday… in the South African BusinessDay newspaper. Similar versions of the article also appeared in various European newspapers, including the French Liberation.

“I can understand small but symbolic acts of protest that hold a mirror up to Israeli society. As such, I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as ”˜Made in Israel.’ I support the South African government’s insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation,” Liel wrote.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common