By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

After maintaining a deafening silence about Israel's atrocities against civilians, Britain suddenly wants a "day of reckoning" for war criminals – as long as they are Libyan.

While protestors' attempts to oust Gaddafi and his scum continued, the UK's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, called on the UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Libya to take whatever steps were necessary "to ensure that those responsible for the awful human rights violations that are currently occurring in Libya are held to account".

He said the Libyan government was trying to stop the world seeing what was happening, adding:

We are appalled by the levels of violence... The use of military force against civilians and the attacks on funeral processions have caused deep anger throughout the country and across the world... We join the High Commissioner in calling for an international inquiry into the violence... The United Kingdom will do everything we can to make sure those responsible in the Libyan regime are held accountable for their actions...

Foreign secretary William Hague announced he had signed a directive revoking Gaddafi's diplomatic immunity in the United Kingdom and also the diplomatic immunity of his sons, his family and his household. He spoke of Britain's readiness to provide humanitarian help. "Our Department for International Development now has teams on both borders, on the Tunisian and Egyptian borders of Libya, looking at how we can deliver such assistance if necessary."

He bragged about how the UK "drove" through a Security Council resolution referring what was happening in Libya to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. "That sends a clear message to all involved, in the regime and any other groups that if they commit crimes and atrocities there will be a day of reckoning for them."

Bravo. What a splendidly high-principled chap that Mr Hague suddenly seems to be. And how swiftly he managed to get the International Criminal Court's attention when he wanted to.

But we didn't hear Hague and his colleagues call for a reckoning with the psychopaths of the Israeli regime when they committed mega-atrocities against Gaza's civilians just two years ago. We haven't heard them driving anything constructive through the UN to halt those endless crimes. On the contrary, they're busy tinkering with our laws of universal jurisdiction to enable Zionist thugs to come and go without fear of arrest.

Gaddafi may not be welcome in London but the Foreign Office will happily roll out the red carpet for Tzipi Livni, Avigdor Lieberman, Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, while Hague conducts the brass band.

And nobody saw the Department for International Development waiting on Gaza's borders with humanitarian help.

Where was HMS Cumberland when British nationals on the Mavi Maramra and the Dignity and other vessels were being assaulted and terrorized in international waters by Israeli pirates, abducted and thrown in their stinking jails?

Our warships HMS Cumberland and HMS York magically appear in the Mediterranean when Hague or Prime Minister David Cameron snaps his fingers. The ships have been protecting victims of the lunatic Gaddafi, and HMS York unloaded tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for the Benghazi Medical Centre, donated by the Swedish government.

Funny how these two vessels couldn't be deployed to bring life-saving aid to innocent Palestinians after Israel's indiscriminate Operation Cast Lead blitzkrieg. Those same Palestinians civilians are still being bombed and strafed with impunity on a daily basis, so when the Libyan crisis dies down shouldn't HMS York be loaded up with more supplies and sail for Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis continues unabated?

On the Libya situation Hague has been sounding off with loud threats of retribution. "Crimes will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten; there will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice is long," he says.

He also talks of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya to protect its people. One option would involve RAF patrols from Cyprus. Hague told Sky News: "One thing we have to plan for and work out how we would do it with allies and partners if it became necessary and if it had the necessary international support."

The BBC reported that, according to Hague, a no-fly zone over Libya would not necessarily need a green light from the UN. "There have been occasions in the past when such a no-fly zone has had clear, legal, international justification even without a Security Council resolution. It depends on the situation on the ground."

Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that he had asked the head of Britain's armed forces to work with allies to see if a military no-fly zone was possible.

So if the answer is "yes", there's no reason not to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza, is there? Oops, I forgot. The maniacs doing the murdering there are Whitehall's "friends", right? And Hague and Cameron have publicly pledged undying support for them, right? So, their balls are in a vice, right?

Even 1,400 dead, the vast majority civilians including 350 children, is not slaughter enough to wrench them free – the thousands maimed and the tens of thousands homeless not enough cruelty.

As for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, spare us the sermon. The British government has pissed on Palestinian democracy since 2006 and ganged up with other bullies to spitefully punish the people for making the "wrong" choice. Britain chose (as if it was any of our business to do the choosing) to prop up the treacherous and utterly discredited election losers and stand idly by while the decades of imprisonment and suffering continue.

The Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reports this week how David Cameron told Jewish dinner guests: "With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible... I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel."

He also said Israel has a right to search vessels entering Gaza. Oh? So Israeli piracy on the high seas or in Palestinian waters is OK? The blockade is OK? Does this mean vessels sailing for Israeli ports can be stopped and searched for weapons that might be used against Israel's neighbours?

Cameron also said: "Some people try to judge Israel's government by a higher code of conduct than they would apply to their own government."

And he said that when the Israeli authorities had revoked the Jerusalem residency permit of the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, a state of affairs that has dragged on for six months "without tangible results" despite efforts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British foreign secretary (Hague) and the British ambassador. The bishop will now have to resort to legal remedies to go about his duties.

What sort of buffoon is Cameron?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Arrogance diminishes wisdom" --Arabic proverb

Last month, Joseph A Klein wrote an article for the Canada Free Press criticising the Obama administration for joining the UN Human Rights Council.

The Council had met and found fault with a number of human rights violations by America. For this, Klein verbally bashed the Council. Klein is author of the book Global Deception: The UN's Stealth Assault on America's Freedom."

Having "studied the United Nations for many years" Klein says he "watched it degenerate into an anti-Western echo chamber that does more harm than good."

The point of Klein's writing is that the UN is wrong because of its criticism of the US and Israel.

The US and Israel share two shameful traits: both abhor criticism, and both divert attention from their own faults when criticised by levelling the same criticism at others.

"In my new book, Lethal Engagement," says Klein, "I focus on the perfect storm revolving around the increasing Islamicization of key UN bodies – particularly the ones that produce influential international norms."

In short, criticise Israel for any of its misdeeds--destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, starving and slaughtering Gazans--and Klein will shift to an unrelated issue.

Klein complains that "Obama wants to engage with our enemies like Iran and Syria while coming down hard on one of our closest allies, Israel."

Thus, Klein (and others) will criticize Obama, but to find fault with America or Israelis is to be dubbed unpatriotic, Islamic extremist, or anti-Semitic.

While most people's ire is aroused by criticism from outsiders (aliens, expats, foreigners) there are often good reasons for outsiders to be critical.

Attorney, commentator and author of How Would a Patriot Act, Glenn Greenwald pointed to several understandable reasons for external criticism in his books and articles.

"We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims..."

That being factually accurate, it's understandable why those who have suffered under our double standards denigrate their abusers.

Greenwald notes how our critics react predictably to our hypocrisy:

"We demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible 'crimes against humanity' by our allies;..."

If that weren't enough, Greenwald reminds us that

"we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks...."

Americans think that any criticism of America is unjustified, primarily because much of the evidence fails to make it to the media and because they rebel at criticism.

To resist criticism and denigrate honest critics is a sign of impending downfall from the pollution of conceit.

English actress Ellen Terry appropriately observed that "conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress."

To return to Joseph A. Klein's gripe, he bemoaned the members of the Human Rights Council including, "among its own proud roster of members, such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia."

Then, to shift the focus from American abuses, Klein groaned that "These serial human rights abusers exploit the UPR process to heap praise on each other and whitewash their own abysmal records, while scoring propaganda points against Western democracies for falling short of perfection."

In making that comment, he just did what he complained that members of the Human Rights Council do. Heaping praise on America, he attempts to score propaganda points by denigrating others.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Why conceal the fact that the Shin Bet has a "hit list" and gives license to its commando units to carry out field executions? Anat Kam is finding out the price of speaking truth to power.

By Gila Svirsky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This story is a testament to the Internet. And to Anat Kam, the whistleblower, who is widely regarded in Israeli security circles as a traitor and will probably soon be charged with treason.

Anat (I'll use her first name, though I don't know her) is a 23-year old journalist who wrote for the popular Israeli portal Walla. Some months ago, Anat did the unthinkable: she passed on information that was decidedly newsworthy, but that the Shin Bet – Israel's security services – did not want outsiders to have. It was a"hit list" – the names of Palestinians living in the West Bank who were on the Shin Bet's "wanted" list. And it was a copy of the Shin Bet protocol stating that if these "wanted" figures are identified during the course of a military action, permission is granted to carry out "an interception". Nice language for execution without trial.

Reports are that Anat photocopied this classified information while serving in the IDF. She allegedly passed on this classified information to Uri Blau, a journalist, who published it months ago as a major scoop in Ha'aretz. Now Ha'aretz has whisked Uri away to London to protect him from the Israeli authorities, who would love to interrogate him about his informant. Meanwhile, Anat has been under house arrest and held incommunicado for at least three months.

This is a big story, but until today no Israeli newspapers could publish it because a judge issued a gag order at the Shin Bet's request. But go ask Henry Miller about banned books. Thanks to the ban and Israel's inability to control cyberspace, the story has taken on vastly greater proportions. Every news outlet in Israel – newspapers, radio, TV, news portals – has front-paged the story now that the gag order was lifted. It would never have received such widespread attention had the authorities not tried to hide it in the first place. And had the Internet not cloned the story through every webpage eager to expose state secrets.

This is not the first time the Israeli authorities have arrested suspects and held them incommunicado for extended periods. It happens to Palestinians all the time. The best known case of an Israeli is Mordechai Vanunu, who blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear warfare capabilities 24 years ago and was tried behind closed doors. More recently, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, an Israeli citizen now living in the U.S., was arrested on a visit to Israel in 2002, and a gag order placed on news of his month-long detention and interrogation. Yaakov, a key scientist in the development of Israel's nuclear weapons program, was suspected of divulging some of Israel's secrets, but eventually was released without charge.

So Israel has managed to draw widespread international attention to a story it wanted to hush up. But why conceal the fact that the Shin Bet has a "hit list" and gives license to its commando units to carry out field executions? After all, doesn't the U.S. do the same thing in its own so-called war against terror?

Israel, in my view, wanted to hide this information to avoid the legal and diplomatic ramifications of disclosures that its soldiers were once again breaking international law. Israel has been playing defense ever since the Gaza Campaign, trying to keep its senior politicians and officers out of European courts on charges of war crimes. Most recently (December 2009), opposition leader Zipi Livni cancelled a trip to London out of fear she would be arrested, thanks to universal jurisdiction of human rights violations. Similar arrest orders were deflected by other senior Israelis (Barak, Mofaz, and Almog). Publicity about a hit list and hit squads could only add fuel to the growing criticism of Israel and the fear among its leaders of being arrested on a visit to Europe. Not to mention the fact that Israel's own Supreme Court outlawed such unprovoked assassinations just months ago.

But really, isn't Israel still the "only democracy in the Middle East"? Concealing someone's arrest and the charges against her are clearly pages from the annals of dark regimes. And the broader context is the growing McCarthyite culture inside Israel – the silencing of its critics, the squirreling away of its whistleblowers. We see this in the hate campaign against Israeli human rights organizations, which has now reached a new peak – a bill before the Knesset that would severely hamper these organizations from receiving funds from foreign states, one of their only sources of support as the Israeli government is not about to fund human rights activity.

What's not to love about secrecy, lies, and human rights violations? Praise the whistleblowers and all those who turned on the Internet lights, making it impossible for the authorities to turn them off again.

* Gila Svirsky is a writer and an Israeli Jew peace and human rights activist.

US adds a new scandal to its endless record of human rights abuse:

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

Source: Guardian