The Cooper Union is particularly proud that on 27th
February 1860 Abraham Lincoln delivered one of his most famous
speeches there, perhaps the one that resulted in his election as US
president. One sentence is singled out and printed on a plaque in the building’s
foyer: “Let us have faith that right
makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it.”
In the course of the
fourth session of the Russell Tribunal I reflected on this quotation
repeatedly, and came to the conclusion that its fine sentiments are as
dangerous as they are uplifting. For is it not the USA’s unshakeable conviction
that it is always right, that being right is in fact its manifest destiny,
that has led it so consistently to abuse its might? Aggressive
self-righteousness – George W. Bush’s “I know how good we are” – is one of the
factors that have placed the USA in the dock at the Cooper Union.
The US and Israeli
governments, incidentally, were invited to send representatives to the
Tribunal. Neither self-righteous power was righteous enough to respond.
*
The second day of the RToP
was so packed that I must confine my attentions to a few contributions. The
full proceeds can anyway be found on
the RToP’s website.
Once again, the session
began with a highlight. Although Palestinian-Canadian Diana Buttu, a former legal
advisor to the PLO, chose to jettison her prepared text and speak ad lib, her
speech came across as one of the most focussed and structured contributions of
the weekend, as well as being moving and passionate.
The goal of the “peace
process”, under American tutelage, has been to cement Zionist policy. From 1967
until the Reagan era, the colonial settlements were defined as “illegal”. Under
Clinton they ceased to be illegal and became “obstacles to peace”. Under Obama
they have ceased to be either illegal or obstacles to peace, whereas “continued
settlement activity” is defined as “illegitimate”. This transformation of
illegality into legality typifies US policy. She mocked the common trope that “we
all know what a solution looks like”, viz, a two-state arrangement with
territorial adjustments. “Do we?” she asked rhetorically, pointing out that the
incorporation if illegal colonial settlements into Israel “proper” would merely
constitute a further massive redrawing of borders in Israel’s favour.
Buttu concluded by
thanking the Russell Tribunal “for bringing Palestine to the USA”. Although bringing
Palestinians to the USA is just as fraught as difficulties, there are so many
brilliant Palestinian intellectuals based here (Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi,
Ali Abunimah are names that spring to mind) that it is difficult to understand
why, apart from Buttu and in the absence of Huwaida Arraf (unfortunately
prevented by illness from participating), there was only one other Palestinian
contributor to the Tribunal.
This was the historian Saleh
Hamayel, also known as Abd al-Jawad or Abdul-Jawad,
a confusion of nomenclature that he related to that between (jury member) “Dennis
Banks” and “Naawakamig”. Billed
to discuss the relevance to Palestine of the concept of sociocide, Hamayel, a fiery orator, suggested that it replace apartheid which he deemed inapplicable
to the Palestinian situation because it is not strictly comparable to apartheid
South Africa.
This gave rise to an
extraordinary moment in the ensuing question-and-answer session when jury
member Michael Mansfield QC demanded that Hamayel provide the official UN
definition of apartheid, repeatedly interrupting him when he attempted to
reply. Mansfield’s substantive point was correct – the Capetown
session of the RToP had gone to great lengths to establish that the relevance
of apartheid to Israel/Palestine consists not in analogies with South Africa
(although such analogies exist), but in the applicability to both regimes of the
Apartheid Convention. However, while it was shocking enough to see an expert
witness being attacked by a jury member, it was doubly shocking that the victim
was a Palestinian; cries of “shame” were audible from the audience. Fortunately
Hamayel, who had survived repeated imprisonment without trial by the Israelis,
did not seem particularly dismayed.
The legendary Norwegian
sociologist Johan Galtung, who first framed the
concept of sociocide, spoke to define it: “the killing of a society’s capacity
to survive and reproduce itself”. In subsequent discussion it was agreed
(although possibly not by the slightly cryptic Galtung) that while the concept
undoubtedly has descriptive power in relation to the destruction of Palestinian
society, the fact that it is currently not defined as a crime under
international law and is anyway subsumed under the definition of genocide limits
its relevance to the case at hand.
Russell Means, “the
most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse”, was to have spoken on The Sociocide of the Native
Americans, but at the last moment this former supporter of the
right-wing Nicaraguan Contras was replaced via skype by Ward Churchill, an equally controversial figure among native Americans. He appeared to be saying forceful things about the relationship between genocide and sociocide, but unfortunately a technological gremlin caused
his words to become increasingly incomprehensible.
Other gremlins interfered with the day’s most
eagerly anticipated speaker, Noam Chomsky.
Laryngitis prevented his turning up in the flesh, while his self-confessed technical
incompetence meant that, in contradiction to Means, we could hear him clearly
but see on-screen only a ghostly outline of his featureless head surmounted by
that enviable mop of white hair.
Chomsky’s Retrospect
and Prospect concentrated mainly on the former, and on that level was
comprehensive and incisive. His final words, however, were “the prospects are
grim”, after which he lapsed into stubborn silence. The somewhat gothic nature
of Chomsky’s overall performance cast a pall of gloom over many audience
members, but two sprightly contributions helped to dispel it.
Theologian David Wildman displayed
a welcome and irrepressible sense of humour although his subject, Christian Zionism and the Israel Lobby,
was potentially one of the most depressing imaginable. Having usefully linked the
Israel Lobby (of which Christian Zionists are a major component) to Eisenhower’s
military-industrial
complex, he listed seven
nefarious traits characteristic of Christian Zionism: it is dualistic (good
versus evil – “I know how good we are”), provides a religious apology for
US/Israeli militarism as part of God's plan, sees truth as based on belief
rather than facts, provides a theological apology for US imperial/corporate
power, has an insatiable need for official enemies (czarists, communists, Muslims),
considers all pro-peace and pro-justice groups to be enemies, and advocates the
most extreme forms of right-wing populism. He was severely critical of
mainstream (“liberal”) Christianity for its failure to condemn Christian
Zionism unequivocally, and (prodded by jury member Mairead Corrigan) concluded
that when the Church allies itself with power, “just war theory” is an all too natural
consequence.
Phyllis
Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies delivered the most exhilarating
speech of the day, one involuntarily spiced by a Freudian slip of the tongue
when she described Kofi Annan as “former Secretary General of the United States”.
While she catalogued a woeful litany of US abuses of the UN, she also listed a
succession of hopeful developments such as the increased independence of Latin
American countries and their willingness to espouse the Palestinian cause, and
the unexpected (if vain) rebellion
of delegates at the recent Democratic Convention when called upon to
reinstate language describing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in violation
of international law. Asserting that international civil society campaigns
focussing on a single issue were more effective than a multiplicity of national
campaigns on separate issues, she recommended the multinational Veolia as an appropriate target.
*
On Monday morning, 8th October, at the Church
Center for the United Nations directly opposite the United Nations
building, a press conference was held at which Michael Mansfield read out the “Executive
Summary of the Findings of the Fourth Session of the Russell Tribunal”. Here
are the most relevant conclusions:
The Tribunal finds that Israel’s
ongoing colonial settlement expansion, its racial separatist policies, as well
as its violent militarism would not be possible without the US’s economic,
military, and diplomatic support…
It is the opinion of this
Tribunal that the US has committed the following violations of international
and US law:
By enabling and financing Israel’s
violations of international humanitarian and human rights norms, the US is
guilty of complicity in international wrongful acts…
By obstructing accountability for
violations of the Geneva Conventions, the US has failed to meet its obligations
as a High Contracting Party…
In continuing to provide economic
support for settlement expansion, the US is also in violation of the
International Court of Justice’s jurisprudence…
By stonewalling an international
resolution to the conflict by abusing its veto power within the Security
Council, the US is in violation of several provisions of the UN Charter…
By failing to condition military
aid to Israel… on its compliance with human rights norms and strict adherence
to the law of self-defence, the US is in violation of its own domestic law.
…[T]he UN’s failure to take
action proportionate to the duration and severity of Israel’s violations of
international law…, and by not exhausting all peaceful means of pressure
available to it, the UN does not comply with the obligations that States have
conferred on [it]. …[B]y its failure to act more strongly than it does, the UN
violates international law. The effect of these failures is to undermine the
rule of law and the integrity and legitimacy of the institutions of international
law.
The lack of concrete UN action
against Israel constitutes an internationally wrongful act… [T]he UN must stop
its wrongful omission and compensate for the damage suffered by Palestine.
In conclusion, the Tribunal proposed that change can
be achieved by
1. 1. The
mobilization of international public opinion… via the various manifestations of
civic society:
a. Networks,
movements with particular emphasis upon the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement, trade unions and other campaigns.
b. Social
media networks.
2. 2. Paying
attention to the vital role of criminal and civil litigation against the
perpetrators of the various violations before domestic courts.
3. 3. The
referral of crimes committed in Palestine to the
I[nternational]C[riminal]C[ourt] by the Security Council or by the acceptance
of the Declaration made by the Palestinian government in January 2009 accepting
the competence of the ICC.
4. 4. Reforming the UN itself, for example by the
abolition of the veto by the five permanent
members of the Security Council…
*
At this press conference 95-year-old Stephane Hessel,
last surviving co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, exhorted
the media to “BE BRAVE!” Over the
next few days it will be interesting to see whether they, and particularly the
mainstream media, are paying attention. The philosopher Bertrand
Russell wished his Tribunal to “prevent the crime of silence”, but this noble
aim can easily be subverted by the media which, more often than not, are
complicit in the propagandistic aims of power.
I shall return in my next blog to this issue, and to
the overall questions raised by the whole RToP project. Meanwhile, let superstar
Roger Waters have the last word:
“We need
this thing to go viral!”
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