Month: February 2021

Free Mohammed El-Halabi!

#Justice4ElHalabi
Twitter Storm and Social Media Campaign
Sunday, February 28
10 am Pacific – 1 pm Eastern – 7 pm central Europe – 8 pm Palestine

Use the hashtag: #Justice4ElHalabi
Suggested Tweets and Images: https://bit.ly/justice4elhalabi

Mohammed El-Halabi is the former director of World Vision in Gaza. A Palestinian “humanitarian hero,” Mohammed El-Halabi, 42, was detained by Israel in 2016. In a widely promoted press campaign, El-Halabi was accused by Israeli officials of financing Hamas using funds from the charity. However, audits by World Vision and the Australian government found not only that there was no misuse of funds but that, further, the Israeli charges were fundamentally impossible — World Vision’s budget over multiple years never reached the sums of money cited by Israeli officials. 

Join Just Peace Advocates, Canada Palestine Association, Palestine House and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in a social media storm on Sunday, February 28.

On March 3, 2021, Mohammed El-Halabi will face his 156th court hearing. All of his hearings have taken place behind closed doors, and UN experts noted that el-Halabi’s “arrest, interrogation and trial is not worthy of a democratic state.” He refused a plea bargain after being warned by the judge in his case that he will likely be convicted and that, “You’ve read the numbers and the statistics,” the judge told el-Halabi, according to ABC. “You know how these issues are handled.” The plea bargain offer would have seen him imprisoned for three years. He has now been imprisoned without conviction for four and one-half years. 

Mohammed El-Halabi is a protected person under international humanitarian law, yet he has been subjected to gross violations of his fundamental rights. Mohammed El-Halabi’s case has been used to intimidate international NGOs away from working in Gaza, further tightening the siege on over 2 million people living under daily Israeli siege, occupation and ongoing bombing raids — most of them refugees denied their right to return to their original homes and lands in Palestine. On February 28, join us to demand #Justice4ElHalabi.

Canadian complicity: Is ICC serving justice or Western interests?

New article in Mondoweiss on how Canada is helping to shield Israel from war crimes investigations.

Further Updates: This past week the International Criminal Court – ICC elected new top officials.

  1. Canadian UN ambassador Bob Rae was elected as a vice-president. Bob Rae is a well-known supporter of Israeli war crimes, he was the keynote speaker at the JNF Toronto Negev Dinner in 2019. The JNF recently admitted that it has been violating the Fourth Geneva Convention all along: “Throughout the years and till this very day, KKL-JNF has been operating in all parts of the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria,”. It also acknowledged it plans to steal more Palestinian land.
    As for Bob Rae, we pose this question: Can a supporter of war crimes investigate war crimes??
  2. Parties to the International Criminal Court elected Britain’s Karim Khan as the new prosecutor for a nine-year term starting June 16. The Times of Israel reported that “Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported that Israeli officials supported Khan’s candidacy behind the scenes, and consider him a pragmatist who shies away from politicization.” 

There was considerable euphoria on February 5th when the ICC decided favourably on “the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine”. People felt that finally justice might take its course, now those hopes seemed premature.

Justice delayed yet again is Justice denied.
Justice is now in mourning.

Canada’s Hypocrisy on the ICC and Palestine

Canada’s convoluted double-talk on Palestinian rights and the International Criminal Court is a true masterclass in diplomatic hypocrisy. It flows from a biased and erroneous foundation, that is both inherently anti-Palestinian and allows for sweeping Israeli impunity.

The Trudeau government claims it supports a rules-based order and the ICC, but just not when it comes to Israeli war crimes. According to the recent statement by Marc Garneau, Foreign Affairs Minister, this is because Canada does not acknowledge the ICC’s jurisdiction to launch such an investigation. And that position is based on another piece of flawed reasoning, that Canada does not recognize a Palestinian state. And will only do so if and when such a state is “achieved through direct negotiations between the parties.”

So, lets follow this argument to its conclusion. Canada doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state (except maybe when it comes to vaccines?). Therefore, they are not allowed international protection or access to forums like the ICC; and are at the mercy of the prevailing status quo, which has much of the international community either turning a blind eye to, or actively promoting, Israeli aggression and ethnic cleansing.

And if Palestinians want that to change, they must commit to another 25, or even 50, more years of endless negotiations towards a mythical two-state solution. (Never mind that they went down this road already with Oslo which promised them a state by 1998.) A solution that so far has achieved nothing for Palestinians and has in fact, entrenched even more loss of land and loss of rights. Negotiations that basically give Israel, as the occupying and militarily superior force, veto power over what will be allowed. Ghassan Kanafani, the late Palestinian writer and thinker, aptly summed it up as a “conversation between the sword and the neck”.

Still, Canada repeatedly claims it is “firmly committed to a two-state solution”, a claim that rings hollow. Many Security Council resolutions have been passed, calling on Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian and Arab territories including UNSC resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967 and resolution 338 of Oct. 22, 1973 (that reaffirmed resolution 242). If the Canadian government were genuinely concerned about this brutal occupation that has inflicted untold suffering and atrocities against the Palestinian people, they could have taken any number of concrete actions, such as sanctions or honouring Article One of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But in a clear sign that they are willing to allow Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law and Israel’s flouting of UN resolutions, successive Canadian governments have done nothing but sustain and provide cover for Israeli war crimes.

But not to fear, every once in a while, Canada will make some shallow gesture or nice photo-op, to show that they really do care about Palestinians and their rights. Some funding for UNRWA, but only if we can control the books in their schools and every action from their senior managers. Or a Canadian diplomat shows up in a photo at a West Bank location with EU reps to demonstrate their opposition to yet another Israeli demolition of a school or a village. But don’t expect any further meaningful action once that school is actually demolished, because that type of serious challenge to the Israeli government’s trampling of Palestinian rights is not on the agenda of the Canadian government.

Canada Palestine Association, Feb. 9, 2021