From Marxism to Neoliberalism: Ronnie Kasrils on How Mandela & ANC Shifted Economic Views

Democracy Now!

"Speaking from Johannesburg, leading anti-apartheid activist and former South African intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils discusses the evolution of the African National Congress’ economic views from its time as a liberation movement to leading South Africa after the fall of apartheid. Kasrils says the ANC was forced to make a "Faustian Pact" with neoliberalism in order to bring apartheid to an end and avoid civil war. He also discusses recent reports that Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party. Kasrils was on the National Executive Committee of the ANC for 20 years, serving as minister for intelligence services from 2004 to 2008....."

US switches military aid from rebels in the north to new pro-US security zone against Al Qaeda

DEBKAfile

"The US and UK announced Wednesday the suspension of non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition in the northern part of the country after Free Syrian Army bases near the Turkish border were seized by a new Islamist front. DEBKAfilereports that that was only part of the rationale for pulling the last rug from under the feet of the moderate Syrian rebel wing holding the border with Turkey. 

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report exclusively that Washington decided to switch its military support, such as it is, from the North to a pro-American security sector which is being carved out in the South by the US and Britain. The aid will be transferred to the Syrian rebels they trained in Jordan to man the sector, under the supervision of two US war rooms established in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid.
The two war rooms fall under the head of the US Special Operations Command, Adm.  William Harry “Bill” McRaven, who is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

An American general, whose identity is kept secret, is posted on the spot. His job, supported by a team of US officers, is to operate the two war rooms and assign their tasks to the 11,000 American special forces and air force troops personnel posted in the Hashemite Kingdom.

Their primary mission, as laid down by the White House in Washington in a directive to the Pentagon, is to run the rebel units charged with taking control of the security zone, which runs south of Damascus, west to the Syrian border with Lebanon, southwest to its border with Israel including the Syrian Golan, south to its border with Jordan and east to its border with Iraq. This wedge of land covers about one-tenth of Syrian territory.

Washington has designed this zone to distance Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham) from Syria’s borderlands with Jordan, Israel and Lebanon – and prevent them coming close to Damascus.
By this security enclave, the US also contributes to shoring up Syrian central government in the capital, including that of Bashar Assad, against Al Qaeda encroachments from the east."

'Come and kill us': Constitutions and necropolitics from Egypt to Bahrain

The recently drafted constitutions in Egypt and Bahrain are not worth the paper they've been printed on.

By Mark LeVine
Al-Jazzera

The protesters at the Pearl roundabout in Manama had high hopes for change [AP]

The hand-written sign held up in a Facebook photo summed it up perfectly: "Free Nabeel Rajab and Alaa Abdel Fattah." "Rajab is the founder of the Bahrain Center For Human Rights, and is in the middle of serving a multi-year prison sentence (the exact term has fluctuated as the government has added and then subtracted extra time) because of his unsparing and apparently impolitic advocacy for democracy and human rights in his country. Abdel Fattah is the son and sibling of well-known human rights activists. His father helped found the Hisham Mubarak Law Center [Ar], and his sister, Mona Seif, is a founder of the No to Military Trials [Ar] movement. He and his wife Manal, who was beaten by security forces when they arrested Alaa in their home, are among the most well-known bloggers and revolutionary political activists in Egypt. Alaa has the distinction of having been harassed and even jailed by Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Mohamed Morsi and now SCAF again. A Facebook friend and No to Military Trials activist put up the photo because Rajab's sentence wasextended yet again, the same day that Abdel Fattah was arrested. The timing might have been coincidental, but the connection between the arrests and detention of both men - and countless others, including activists, doctors, journalists and ordinary citizens whose names are not well known, but who have suffered even worse abuse, from torture to loss of nationality and murder - cannot be denied. Indeed, if February 11, 2011 in Tahrir Square marked the height of the Arab Spring's promise, March 14 in the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, marked the beginning of its long and bloody unravelling. Gross miscalculation I was in Bahrain when the Saudis, under the guise of the Gulf Cooperation Council's "Peninsula Shield Force", rolled across the King Fahd Causeway linking Saudi Arabia to the tiny island kingdom. The political high from Tahrir was less than a month old. And despite the violence in the weeks leading up to this day in Bahrain, and the rumours swirling through Manama, protesters felt that the justice of their cause, like that of their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts, would win out over the violence and brutality of their own government and its foreign allies and patrons. They were disastrously wrong in their assessment. What's most interesting looking back on it, however, is how so many "liberal" middle and upper class Bahraini Sunnis either supported, or would not condemn, the government repression against the majority Shia population either during or after the crackdown and the involvement of GCC forces. For anyone who was in Bahrain then and in Egypt at the time of Morsi's removal, the similarity is striking between the language used by the Bahraini government against the opposition - it was foreign supported and financed, was working against the interests of the country, was a security and even terrorist threat - and that of the Egyptian government and media in the lead-up to and after the attack on and mass killing of Brotherhood supporters. In fact, this discourse against both oppositional groupings long predates the Arab uprisings, as this 2009 talk by Rajab highlights, as well as the long history of persecution against the Brotherhood by the Egyptian state. To be sure, the Bahraini conflict has been defined as primarily a sectarian conflict, while in Egypt the vast majority of citizens share the same Sunni Muslim heritage. But however important such primordial identities as religion, sect or ethnicity, are, in the end, the conflicts in both countries, and across the Arab world - globally, in fact - are about power and the on-going ability of small minorities who have controlled the economies and politics of their societies for generations to create "others" and enemies out of neighbours, friends and even relatives. Crucially, in separating them off from the legitimate body politic, elites make the majority of the people, on whose behalf such actions are ostensibly taken, consciously complicit in the repression of their fellow citizens. [The protesters] might well serve as a beacon for the broader transformations in the protest cultures across the region that will be the sine qua non for a truly decolonised process of mass education and political development. Fruitless discussions And this is where the problem of the newest iteration of the Egyptian constitution comes into play. Almost exactly one year ago reasonable people were debating the merits of the constitution that this new one is now replacing. Experts on various aspects of Egyptian, Islamic and international law engaged in intense and sometimes acrimonious discussions over the merits of its various proposals - how powerful a force Islam would be in shaping a new legal system, whether women's and minorities' rights would be sufficiently protected, the balance of power between the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government, etc. Whatever one's political persuasion or cultural views, what was clear was that the constitution, however much it was influenced by the then hegemonic Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party, was a "long and complex document" whose myriad provisions, depending on the laws subsequently passed and the legal and political cultures that emerged as the transitional era became solidified, could have served either as the foundation for greater freedom and justice or a mask for on-going oppression. But what was also clear to anyone was that if the new order was administered through the same routine use of repression and violence against citizens that characterised the old order, the constitution wasn't worth the proverbial paper it was printed on. This dynamic in fact made the 1971 constitution, which compares favourably both with the 2012 constitution and the one just drafted, a largely empty document. Similarly, Bahrain's 1973 constitution and reforms initiated in the 2000s have proved meaningless in the end, as the ruling elite has displayed no intention of actually sharing wealth or power with the broad population. Empty rhetoric Today things stand pretty much as they were a year ago in Egypt. We can accept the sincerity and sophistication of the majority of constitutional panel members that drafted the new document. But these don't mean anything as long as the system continues to function primarily through violence and repression; as long as the security and military systems operate largely outside of the law; and the vast majority of those in whose name the constitution was created - the "good" and "true" Egyptians or Bahrainis - look on silently or even support such actions, then democracy is a sham, a box no bigger than the "free protest zone"proposed by Giza's governor, who like other senior regime figures, routinely points out, correctly, that Egypt's protest laws are copying the best practices of the advanced democracies of North America and Europe. It is against this boxing in of democracy, of freedom, dignity and social justice, that the protesters in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, and activists fighting against the Bahraini government from their ghettoised Shia villages surrounding Manama, continue their struggles. As one of the chants from last week Cairo protests puts it, “They want to shut us up, but we will not be silent... Come and kill us, we are not better than the martyrs. Let our comrades go.” Far more than Alaa Abdel Fattah, Ahmed Maher, Nabeel Rajab or the other "celebrity" revolutionaries who at least till now have enjoyed some level of protection from Egypt's and Bahrain's Western sponsors, it is the nameless protesters who risked so much and lost even more, who are setting the agenda for the coming generation of struggle. However much the military-led transition may try, it's highly unlikely they will in fact shut up. Instead, they might well serve as a beacon for the broader transformations in the protest cultures across the region that will be the sine qua non for a truly decolonised process of mass education and political development. And that is a development of which the elites should be very afraid indeed. "

A Christmas card come to life: Jerusalem hit by worst snowstorm for TWENTY YEARS as eight inches fall across Holy City

MailOnline

Real News Video: Syria's Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe - Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt3

On RAI with Paul Jay, Phyllis Bennis examines the coming Geneva conference on Syria and the unwillingness of the West to deal with the humanitarian crisis

Mandela leaves behind a troubling legacy

By John Pilger
Asia Times

"Nelson Mandela's place in history, thanks to his role in helping to end apartheid, looks assured, and his passing is genuinely mourned by millions of South Africans. His legacy, however, is another matter, with economic apartheid still a harsh reality, disparities between black and black widening even as those between white and black have narrowed......

Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation". Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people's enemy......." 

From the Middle East to Lausanne

Arabic Thoughts amidst the Alps

By Ramzy Baroud
CounterPunch

"Here in Switzerland, the train chugs along nicely between Geneva and Lausanne. The Alpine mountain range desperately fights to make its presence known despite the irritating persistence of low- hanging clouds. A friend had just introduced me to the music of J.J. Cale, but my thoughts were moving faster than the speed of the train. Time is too short to sleep, but never long enough to think.

It has been nearly a week since I embarked on a speaking tour in French-speaking countries of Europe. The trip was more difficult than I thought it would be, but also successful. I am here to talk about Gaza, to explain Arab revolutions and to remind many of their moral responsibility towards Palestine and Arab nations. For six months prior to that date, I lived and worked in the Middle East. Soon after I had arrived, Egypt entered into a most disheartening new phase of violence and chaos. Despite the suffering and bloodletting, the fresh turmoil seemed to correspond more accurately to the greatness of the fight at hand. The Jan 25 revolution was declared victorious too soon.

For me, the turmoil in Egypt was more than a political topic to be analyzed or a human rights issue to be considered. It was very personal. Now, my access to Gaza is no longer guaranteed. Gaza, despite its impossible reality and overwhelming hardship, was the last space in Palestine in which I was allowed to visit after 18 years of being denied such access. It was the closest place to what I would call home.

My travel companion informs me that we have ten minutes to Lausanne. I wish it was much longer. There is so much to consider. My sorrow for Gaza and its suffocating siege, for Palestine and its denied freedom is now part of a much larger blend of heartbreaks over Arab peoples as they struggle for self-definition, equality, rights and freedom. No, hope will never be lost, for the battle for freedom is eternal. But the images in my head of the numerous victims in this war – especially children who barely knew what war is even about in the first place – are haunting.

I went back in the Middle East hoping to achieve some clarity. But at numerous occasions I felt more confused. I don’t know why I get bewildered feelings every time I am back in the Middle East. I only refer to the Middle East when I write in English. In Arabic, it is ‘al-watan al-Arabi’, the Arab homeland. We were taught this as children, and knew of no other reference but that. Among Arab friends, I sound juvenile when I say the ‘Arab homeland’. No one there makes that reference anymore.

My generation was taught by a generation that experienced the rise of Arab nationalism. They were exposed to a unique discourse of terminology that was meant as an Arab retort to imperialism. Some of my Gaza neighbors fought alongside the Egyptian army. My father fell wounded alongside his Egyptian comrades. In 1967, he crossed Sinai, defeated, in the back of a haggard army truck carrying dead and wounded Egyptians and Palestinians. Back then there was little distinction between them and there was no need to emphasize that they were brothers in arms, or anything of that sort. They were Arabs, who fought Zionism and imperialism until the last breath.

But then things changed.

I always dreaded crossing through the Egyptian border when I was young, but I had no other option. Gaza was entrapped, as it is today, and Egypt has historically been a lifeline that was often severed for one reason or another. My last visit following the Egyptian revolution was meant to be different. I thought the revolution would correct the aberration that has afflicted inner Arab relations. I thought that it would once again remold a distraught Arab discourse, and that it would bring Egypt back to the Arabs after decades of political loss and cultural dissolution. Nearly three years have passed since the revolutions started, and the discourse is as fragmented as ever, if not even more muddled.

The Alps grow giant as we almost enter Lausanne, but they are still not fully visible. In my travels in Europe, I am treated with respect at every border crossing. At times there have been a couple of inquiring questions; at others, none. But Arab border police are hardly obliging. Those of us ‘lucky’ enough to have western passports can tell many stories of how respect in Arab countries, in our own homelands, often hinges on the color of that small document.

My ‘Arab homeland’ unfortunately seemed to have sunk even deeper into political despair, unprecedented disunity, and an unmatched sense of cultural loss after a few years of revolutions and civil wars. What worries me about Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and all the rest, is that their revolutionaries don’t seem to be at odds with the very entities that have contributed to Arab defeat. They appeal to the very America that destroyed Iraq, and seek French guidance and British handouts, although neither of these parties has shown any signs of departure from their old colonial legacies. The cultural invasion that I witnessed there is all but complete. Western globalization is wreaking havoc on fragile cultures that are not putting up much of a fight.

Is there a rationale that could explain what happened in the last few decades? How did we go from relative clarity by having a defined, collective sense of purpose, identity, and common aspirations – despite the many failures and defeats – to this overwhelming sense of loss?

‘Where are you from?” asked an Egyptian taxi driver on my recent visit to Saudi Arabia. “I am a Palestinian.” “But your accent?” he inquired. “I live in Washington. “Do you have an American passport?” he asked. “Yes.” “Alhamdulilah“(Thank God), he commented with a sense of relief and a smile. He genuinely felt happy for me.

But I keep going back. Many of us do. It is an unresolvable conflict, the same identity schizophrenia that many Arabs have. My father, who died under siege in Gaza in 2008, tried to figure things out despite his cynicism. He explained the world to me in lucid and plain terms. He read Iraqi poetry, listened to Egyptian music and related to the many aspects of Arab life. He ‘hated’ the Arabs, yet prided himself on being one. I inherited his skepticism and confusion. This is why I keep coming back.

We arrive in Lausanne. Most of the clouds have vanished. The fog has dispersed. The Alps appear again, commanding and eternal. J.J. Cale’s melodies are ahead of their time. They are meant for the future, not the past. I insist on staying hopeful."

Syria chemical attacks: a question of sources

Media openness versus anonymity
 By Brian Whitaker 

           

 "My blog post yesterday about re-ignited debate over the chemical attacks in Syria last August has brought a surprising response from some regular critics of the mainstream media. 

On one side of the chemical weapons debate is Seymour Hersh, the veteran investigative journalist, who suggested in an article for the London Review of Books that rebel fighters, rather than the Syrian regime, were to blame for the Damascus attacks. 

On the other side is Eliot Higgins, better known as Brown Moses, whose dissection/demolition of Hersh's article appeared on the Foreign Policy website.

Behind this dispute about who caused the sarin deaths there is also a conflict between two different approaches to investigative journalism and the sources that they use.

Unlike Hersh, Higgins is not a traditional journalist. He spends much of his time researching the Syrian conflict via the internet, blogging and tweeting about it. 

Unlike Higgins, Hersh has little time for the internet, relying instead on mysterious but apparently well-placed sources to construct his case.

Following my blog post yesterday, Media Lens entered the fray on Twitter, siding with Hersh (here and here). Media Lens is a British website that specialises in critiquing the mainstream media, which it regards as "a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society". 

Its position, if I've understood it correctly, is that journalists working in the mainstream media gradually acquire a "corporate" mindset which makes them less willing to challenge authority.

Given that Hersh has spent decades working for mainstream media, that Media Lens disapproves of anonymous sources, and that it encourages "the creation of non-corporate media", logic might suggest that it would have sided with Higgins. But no.

Although Hersh writes for the mainstream media he's also a dissenting voice within it. He exposed the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam back in 1969 and, more recently, the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Some of his other exposes have misfired, though, and he has often been criticised for his use of shadowy sources. In the words of one Pentagon spokesman, he has "a solid and well-earned reputation for making dramatic assertions based on thinly sourced, unverifiable anonymous sources".

Higgins, meanwhile, is the antithesis of a "corporate" journalist but the problem seems to be that he is not challenging western governments' views of the chemical attacks in Syria. His assessment of the evidence is that it points strongly to the Assad regime being responsible and, as far as some are concerned, that's enough to place him in the "corporate media" camp.

The real issue, though, is not Hersh versus Higgins or corporate versus non-corporate. It's about methodology. Hersh represents the old methodology – closed, elitist and opaque – while Higgins reflects the new – open, egalitarian and transparent.

A rather telling illustration of this is that while Higgins's Foreign Policy article invites comments from readers, Hersh's article for the LRB does not.

Higgins relies on open sources (mainly YouTube videos of the Syrian conflict) and draws conclusions from them. Anyone who disputes his interpretation is able to challenge it and, based on the ensuing arguments and available evidence, people can form their own view as to where the truth lies. It's a collective process that often takes twists and turns, but it's thoroughly transparent: the evidence is there for everyone to see and contribute to if they wish.

One example of how this operates in practice came when UN weapons inspectors determined the trajectory of two of the rockets implicated in the August attacks. Tracing their flight path on a map, Human Rights Watch found that they intersected in the compound of the Republican Guard's 104th Brigade.

That suggested the Republican Guard could be responsible if both rockets had been fired from the same position (though it's not clear that they were).

Further discussion on the internet established that the rockets had probably not come from the Republican Guard's compound because their range was too short. Some interpreted this as exonerating the regime, though subsequent video analysis by Higgins seems to show there were other places, within range, that the Syrian military could have used to fire them.

In contrast to that, the Hersh approach is a display of journalistic virtuosity. It relies on developing special contacts – seemingly well-placed figures who are willing to spill the beans, usually anonymously.

Anonymous sources can be valuable at times (without them the Watergate scandal would never have emerged) but they have to be treated with care and a lot hinges on the credibility of the journalist reporting them.

With anonymous sources it's hard for readers to know why they agreed to talk and whether they have any axes to grind or scores to settle. That's a judgment the reporter should make, though when presented with a juicy quote it can be tempting not to probe too deeply.

One of the key reasons for blaming the Syrian regime for the August attacks is that it is known to possess sarin and also the munitions that were used to deliver it, while the rebels are not known to possess either.

Hersh disputes this in his article, asserting that "the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin", and that "American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports ... citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity".

"Citing evidence that ..." is a tricky phrase that doesn't actually tell us much. It may simply mean that somewhere in a plethora of intelligence material someone was quoted as saying that al-Nusra knew how to make sarin. The fact that claims to this effect may be been cited in intelligence reports does not necessarily mean they were assessed as credible.

Indeed, Hersh later quotes a named spokesman for the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence as saying that no American intelligence agency "assesses that the al-Nusra Front has succeeded in developing a capacity to manufacture sarin".

Hersh's source on the supposed sarin-manufacturing capabilities is an unnamed "senior intelligence consultant":

"Already by late May, the senior intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood the science of producing sarin ...

"An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. 

"The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified 'as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin'."

Manufacturing sarin is a difficult and dangerous business, as chemical weapons expert Dan Kaszeta has frequently pointed out. No one has yet come up with a sensible explanation, or even a plausible theory, as to how al-Nusra could have produced it in the quantities required for the August attacks. Undeterred by that, Hersh clearly wants readers to accept the word of his "senior intelligence consultant". But how are readers to judge? Presumably by being assured that the source is not just any intelligence consultant but a "senior" one.

Interestingly, though, EAWorldView has an idea who this consultant might be. It notes that Michael Maloof, who formerly worked in the US Defense Department, has made very similar claims in an article for the right-wing World Net Daily, and also on the Russian propaganda channel, RT.

If so, it's rather odd that Maloof is saying things to Hersh anonymously that he has already said publicly. Writing on the Air Force Amazons blog, Kellie Strøm comments: 

"Given his association with what are widely regarded as crude propaganda outlets, if Mr Maloof is Mr Hersh’s anonymous source then his anonymity would seem designed more to protect Mr Hersh’s reputation than Mr Maloof’s.""

  

Video: Bassem Youssef 2013 IPFA Acceptance Speech

Al-Jazeera Video: الاتجاه المعاكس.. أليس الحل السياسي ضربا من الأحلام بسو

"ناقشت الحلقة فرص الحل السياسي في سوريا، وتساءلت: أليس من المفترض أن يؤخذ الرئيس السوري إلى محكمة الجنايات الدولية؟ أليس من العبث التفاوض مع من ذبح مئات الألوف؟
تقديم: فيصل القاسم
الضيوف: كمال اللبواني، محمود مرعي"

Real News Video: Fmr. Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran - Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt2

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, Phyllis Bennis examines the Israeli debate about Iran and Palestine, the role of AIPAC and the complex changes taking place in Middle East politics

As Bedouin villages are destroyed, so too are hopes for Palestinian peace deal

By Jonathan Cook
The National

"As United States envoys shuttle back and forth in search of a peace formula to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a matter supposedly settled decades ago is smouldering back into life.

In what was billed as a “day of rage” last month, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to protest against a plan to uproot tens of thousands of Bedouin from their ancestral lands inside Israel, in the Negev.

The clashes were the worst between Israeli police and the country’s large Palestinian minority since the outbreak of the second intifada 13 years ago, with police using batons, stun grenades, water cannon and arrests to deter future protests.

Things are only likely to get more heated. The so-called Prawer Plan, being hurried through parliament, will authorise the destruction of more than 30 Bedouin villages, forcibly relocating the inhabitants to deprived, overcrowded townships. Built decades ago, these urban reservations languish at the bottom of every social and economic index.

Bedouin leaders, who were ignored in the plan’s drafting, say they will oppose it to the bitter end. The villages, though treated as illegal by the state, are the last places where the Bedouin cling to their land and a traditional pastoral life.

But the Israeli government is equally insistent that the Bedouin must be “concentrated” – a revealing term employed by Benny Begin, a former minister who helped to formulate the plan. In the place of the villages, a handful of Jewish towns will be erected.

The stakes are high, not least because Israel views this battle as a continuation of the 1948 war that established a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestine.

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, argued last week that the fight over the Negev proves “nothing has changed since the days of the tower and stockade” – a reference to heavily fortified outposts the Zionists aggressively built in the 1930s to evict Palestinians from the land they had farmed for centuries.

These outposts later became land-hungry farming communities that gave the Jewish state its territorial backbone.

Mr Lieberman’s view reflects that of the government: “We are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people, against those who intentionally try to rob and seize them.”

The labelling of the Bedouin as “squatters” and “trespassers” reveals much about the intractability of the wider conflict – and why the Americans have no hope of ending it as long as they seek solutions that address only the injustices caused by the occupation that began in 1967.

In truth, both Israel and the Palestinians understand that the war of 1948 never really finished.

Suhad Bishara, a lawyer specialising in Israeli land issues, has called the Prawer Plan a “second nakba”, in reference to the catastrophic events of 1948 that stripped the Palestinians of their homeland.

Israel, meanwhile, continues to conceive of its 1.5 million Palestinian citizens – however peaceable – as just as alien and threatening to its interests as the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The roots of the Prawer Plan can be traced to one of Zionism’s earliest principles: “Judaisation”. There are cities across Israel, including Upper Nazareth, Karmiel and Migdal Haemek, founded as Judaisation communities next to large Palestinian populations with the official goal of “making the land Jewish”.

Judaisation’s faulty premise, in the pre-state years, was the fantasy that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. Its sinister flip side was the cheery injunction to Zionism’s pioneers to “make the desert bloom”, chiefly by driving out Palestinians.

Nowadays, the term “Judaisation”, with its unpleasant overtones, has been discarded in favour of “development”.

There is even a minister for “developing the Negev and the Galilee” – Israel’s two areas with large concentrations of Palestinians. But officials are interested only in Jewish development.

Last week, in the wake of the clashes, the Israeli Haaretz daily published leaked documents showing that the World Zionist Organisation – an unofficial arm of the government – has been quietly reviving the Judaisation programme in the Galilee.

In an effort to bring another 100,000 Jews to the region, several new towns are to be built, for Jews only, dispersed as widely as possible in contravention of Israel’s own national master plan, which requires denser building inside existing communities to protect scarce land resources.

All this generosity towards Israel’s Jewish population is at the expense of the country’s Palestinian citizens. They have not been allowed a single new community since Israel’s founding more than six decades ago. And the new Jewish towns, as Arab mayors complained last week, are being built intentionally to box them in.

For officials, the renewed Judaisation drive is about asserting “Israeli sovereignty” and “strengthening our hold” over the Galilee, as if the current inhabitants – Israeli citizens who are Palestinian – were a group of hostile foreigners. Haaretz more honestly characterised the policy as “racism”.

Judaisation casts the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in zero-sum terms, and thereby makes it unresolvable. In considering its Palestinian citizens, Israel speaks not of integration, or even assimilation, but of their enduring status as a “fifth column” and the Jewish state’s “Achilles heel”.

That is because, were principles of justice and equality ever to be enforced, Palestinians in Israel could serve as a gateway by which millions of exiled Palestinians might find their way back home.

With the policy of Judaisation revoked, the Palestinian minority could end the conflict without violence simply by pulling down the scaffolding of racist laws that have blocked any return for the Palestinians since their expulsion 65 years ago.

This is why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands as part of the current peace negotiations that the Palestinians sanctify the Judaisation principle by recognising Israel as a Jewish state. It is also why the talks are doomed to failure."

American academics stand up for justice

 December 11, 2013 12:25 AM
By Rami G. Khouri

The Daily Star

"When the National Council of the American Studies Association last week passed a motion recommending to its members to endorse and honor the Palestinian drive to boycott Israeli academic institutions, the expected furor broke out. This included accusations of anti-Semitism and other such routine smears of any individual or institution in the United States criticizing Israel’s occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians. A battle is underway on an issue that pro-Israel zealots in the U.S. have tried at all costs to block from entering the public realm: a debate on holding Israel accountable for its behavior so that it respects the rule of international law in its treatment of Palestinians, whom it has expelled and treated as second-class citizens, and whose lands it occupies.
The American Studies Association is not one of the largest or most powerful groups in American academia, but its endorsement of the Palestinian academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions is significant for several reasons. That is why the pro- Israel extremists in American lobbies and institutes are working overtime to try to dampen the significance of what would otherwise be a marginal symbolic move by a small academic association.
The council recommendation that is now being voted on by the full membership reads simply: “The American Studies Association endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. It is also resolved that the ASA supports the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine and in support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] movement.”
The ASA boycott endorsement is significant first of all because this is a mainstream American institution, not a specialized Arab or Middle Eastern one with built-in biases. ASA’s endorsement of the academic boycott of Israeli institutions is similar to moves by the American Presbyterian and some other churches to debate whether they should divest from investments in Israeli companies that profit from or do business in the occupied Palestinian areas.
When mainstream American institutions like these assess Israel’s treatment of Palestinians on the basis of universal legal and ethical standards and provoke a public debate and even bring resolutions to a vote among their national memberships, then we have passed an important milestone on what had always been, in the United States, a closed road regarding the public discussion of Israeli colonial conduct in the occupied territories.
This ASA resolution mirrors the convergence of several other grass-roots dynamics that have all echoed the desire by more and more Americans to take action against what they see as illegal, unethical and unacceptable Israeli conduct.
To understand this better, I spoke this week with one of the organizers of the ASA resolution effort, Alex Lubin, director of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut and also a professor at the University of New Mexico. He first pointed to the growing momentum of the effort. Just 10 people attended a meeting of the ASA caucus on community and academic activism a few years ago, but 80 people attended the caucus meeting last year, and 750 participated in the general assembly gathering to discuss the issue this year, with a strong majority in favor of the action.
Lubin also noted the convergence of several other trends, including academics feeling the need to speak out about the role of universities; the impact of Students for Justice in Palestine groups across many campuses, where it has become easier to debate Israel- Palestine issues in public; the influence within ASA of Native American and indigenous studies and its theorizing of settler-colonialism; the impact of Occupy Wall Street movement activism and its related analysis of debt and the neoliberal university; the opening up of the debate on Israel- Palestine by American studies academic centers around the world; and, the growing realization that “academic freedom” cannot be isolated from other freedoms that most Palestinians are denied because of the Israeli occupation and colonial-settlement activities.
He explained that caucus members “felt that universities do not exist outside of imperial contexts, and that academic freedom is a privileged category achieved by very few scholars in Israel-Palestine. The boycott resolution affirms academic freedom in two important ways. It will help to open up debate in Israel and Palestine about uneven access to academic freedom, and it opens up space within the U.S. to finally have an open discussion about Israeli policy and the Palestine question.”
Lubin added the important point that the boycott did not discriminate against individuals because it targeted institutions. The voting ends on Dec. 15. Israelis should be worried, because increasingly their treatment of the Palestinians is being addressed in the same manner as was the apartheid regime’s treatment of blacks in South Africa, where boycotts and sanctions were applied as the last resort measures to push back, and ultimately reverse, colonial and racist policies."

حالوتس: إسرائيل تفضل الأسد

Arabs48.com

في كلمته في حفل لجمع التبرعات لمستشفى "تل هشومير" في موسكو، يوم أمس الأول الاثنين، قال رئيس أركان الجيش الإسرئيلي الأسبق دان حالوتس إن إسرائيل تفضل بقاء نظام بشار الأسد، خشية سيطرة جهات إسلامية متطرفة على الحكم في سورية.

ونقلت "معاريف" أقواله في موقعها على الشبكة، وكتبت أنه يتضح من تصريحات حالوتس أن لإسرائيل القدرة على إسقاط نظام الأسد. كما كتبت أن الحديث عن تصريحات غير عادية نسبيا لمسؤول كبير في جهاز الأمن، خاصة وأن إسرائيل دأبت على القول بأنها لا تتدخل في الشؤون الداخلية لسورية.

وقال حالوتس إن "النظام في سورية يقتل مواطنيه يوميا، ولكن يجب الاعتراف بأن المعارضة في سورية مركبة أساسا من مسلمين متطرفين جدا، مثل القاعدة". وقال إن السؤال المهم هو "ما هو الأفضل بالنسبة لإسرائيل؟"، مضيفا "يجب أن نسأل أنفسنا ما إذا كنا نريد استبدال النظام السيء الذي نعرفه بنظام أسوأ لا نعرفه. يجب دراسة ذلك بجدية". على حد تعبيره.

وتابع حالوتس أن العبوة الناسفة الجانبية التي انفجرت على الحدود للمرة الأولى منذ 40 عاما هي "مؤشر صغير على ما سيحصل في حال وصل هؤلاء المتطرفون إلى السلطة". وأضاف أنه حتى اللحظة يبدو أن أن العالم أيضا يدرك أنه لا يستطيع استبدال نظام الأسد طالما لا يعرف من يستبدله. وبحسبه فإن حتى اليوم يبدو أن البديل هو جهات تشكل خطرا على استقرار المنطقة.

إلى ذلك، تطرق حالوتس إلى المفاوضات الجارية بين إسرائيل والسلطة الفلسطينية، وعبر عن تشاؤمه من النتائج. وخلافا لقادة الأجهزة الأمنية السابقين، مثل رئيس الشاباك السابق يوفال ديسكين، فقد ألقى حالوتس بالمسؤولية على الفلسطينيين، وقال إنه من الصعب التوصل إلى اتفاق معهم.

وقال إنه بشكل عام فإن العالم يتهم إسرائيل بأنها لا تساوم بما يكفي. وأضاف أن المسألة ليست مساومة، وأن هناك أمرا مركزيا وهو ضمان أمن إسرائيل، وأنه في هذا السياق فإن الترتيبات الأمنية هي الأهم بالنسبة للحكومة الإسرائيلية، في حين يمكن المساومة في باقي القضايا، ولكن ليس في أمن الدولة. وقال إنه ليس متفائلا من إمكانية التوصل إلى اتفاق بادعاء أن له تجربة سابقة مع الفلسطينيين.

وانتقد حالوتس السياسة الأمريكية في مصر، وذلك على خلفية تأخير المساعدات الأمريكية لها في أعقاب عزل الرئيس المصري السابق محمد مرسي. وقال "يجب على العالم أن يدرك أن لا علاقة لذلك بالديمقراطية، فلن تكون هناك ديمقراطية في مصر في الأجيال القريبة"، مضيفا أنه يأمل أن تدرك الولايات المتحدة ذلك.

وأضافت "معاريف" أن حالوتس تحدث عن "التدخل الأمريكي العسكري في العراق" كمثال على سوء الفهم الأمريكي. وقال "سألت مسؤولا أمريكيا كبيرا في العام 2003 عن المهمة في العراق، فقال إن الهدف تغيير العراق إلى ديمقراطية خلال بضعة سنوات. وعندها قلت له إن ذلك يستغرق 2000 عام لتحويلها إلى ديمقراطية". كما يقول حالوتس. ويضيف إن "العراق تقتل أبناءها يوميا، ولكن لا أحد يتحدث عن ذلك".

وعن علاقات إسرائيل بالولايات المتحدة، على خلفية التوصل إلى اتفاق مؤقت بين الدول العظمى الست وإيران، قال حالوتس إن الولايات المتحدة تضعف وتتعب، ويجب على إسرائيل أن تستعد بجدية لليوم الذي يتراجع فيه الحضور والتدخل الأمريكي في الشرق الأوسط بشكل كبير جدا، مضيفا أنه يجب عدم الإساءة للعلاقات مع الولايات المتحدة، ولكن يجب التنبه وإدراك أن الولايات المتحدة لا تستطيع أن تستمر بذلك لأن مصالحها قد تغيرت. على حد قوله.

Egyptian boy arrested after teacher finds stationery with pro-Morsi symbol

• Patrick Kingsley in Cairo
• The Guardian, Tuesday 10 December 2013 10.34 EST

Khaled Bakara, 15, raising his hand in the Rabaa four-fingered salute. Photograph supplied by Bakara's lawyer

Schoolboy detained after teacher discovers ruler and notebooks with Rabaa sign, a symbol of opposition to Morsi's overthrow

"Scissors and compasses are traditionally considered the most dangerous items in a student's pencil case. But for one Egyptian schoolboy it is a ruler that has allegedly led to his detention for 16 days in an adult jail without trial.

Khaled Bakara, 15, was arrested last month after his teacher spotted a ruler on his desk bearing a symbol indicating his opposition to the overthrow of Egypt's former president Mohamed Morsi, alleged Khaled's lawyer, Amr Abdel Maqsoud.

"There was no previous confrontation with the teacher," Maqsoud said. "The teacher was walking around the classroom and saw the ruler on his desk. Then he took Khaled's bag, started searching it, and found two notebooks with the sign on them too. He took the three things and went to the school director's office, who called the police."

According to Maqsoud, police then arrested Khaled on suspicion of incitement to violence, slandering Egypt's army, and belonging to a banned group. He was originally detained for 15 days in an adult facility, pending investigations, and on Sunday his detention was renewed for the same period. Egyptian legislation sets criminal penalties for officials who detain children with adult prisoners.

Egypt's interior ministry said they could not provide details of Khaled's case at the time of writing.

The foreign ministry – which acts as a conduit for queries left unanswered by other state institutions – would not comment on the details of the case but said Egypt's judicial system follows "due process and has full independence".

Known as the Rabaa sign, the symbol on Khaled's ruler consists of a four-fingered salute mounted on a yellow background. Named after the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp – where hundreds of Morsi supporters were killed by state forces in August – it has become a calling card for mainly Islamist opponents of Morsi's overthrow. The government and its supporters have attempted to stamp out its usage in case its proliferation disproves the claim that most Egyptians support Morsi's overthrow.

One of Egypt's leading footballers was banned and put up for sale by his club for flashing the sign during the final of the African champions league. The country's kung fu champion was also suspended for a similar gesture at a medals ceremony in Moscow. Twenty-one women and girls were sentenced to lengthy jail terms after being arrested carrying balloons bearing the symbol, though their sentences were suspended at the weekend.

According to his lawyer, Khaled is one of 262 citizens – and eight minors – from Kafr el-Sheikh, a northern province, currently jailed pending trial on protest-related charges. Maqsoud said the arrest was one of many intended to intimidate Morsi supporters into submission.

Student supporters of Morsi wave a flag bearing the Rabaa sign during a protest on 9 December at Cairo university. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

"It's a political case," argued Maqsoud. "They're trying to pressure [Khaled's] town – Baltim – because they have almost daily marches against the coup."

Nationally, thousands of other protesters arrested during a crackdown on dissent since July may remain in jail – many of them uncharged. In September, Amnesty International said 2,400 were still in detention – a figure that may have risen following subsequent rounds of arrests, despite the release of 155 protesters last week. Legally, detainees can remain in custody pending charges for up to two years in Egypt.

On Monday, the Guardian asked Egypt's justice minister, Adel Abdel Hamid, to comment on the detention without trial of protesters such as Khaled since July. Speaking at an anti-corruption conference co-organised by Transparency International, the minister replied that it was not an appropriate question to ask at the event, and refused to comment further.

The crackdown has extended even to high-profile non-Islamist activists who called for Morsi's removal in June. On Monday, 25 secular activists – including two famous for their role in Hosni Mubarak's 2011 overthrow, Ahmed Maher and Alaa Abdel Fatah – were sent for trial in a criminal court for organising protests rendered illegal by new legislation."

Al-Jazeera Video: انتشار الأغاني الشعبية الناقدة في غزة

Wise Pope

Steve Sack, Cagle Cartoons, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Egypt: No Acknowledgment or Justice for Mass Protester Killings

Set Up a Fact-Finding Committee as a First Step

"(Cairo) – Thirteen Egyptian and international human rights organizations called on the Egyptian authorities today, on international Human Rights Day, to acknowledge, and seriously and thoroughly investigate the killing of up to 1,000 people by security forces dispersing Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins on August 14, 2013.

The government has not established a public record of what occurred that day, and the Office of the Public Prosecutor has yet to investigate and hold members of security forces accountable for excessive and unjustified use of lethal force, the groups said. Egypt has a newly created Transitional Justice Ministry, but it has yet to take any meaningful steps toward truth-seeking and justice in relation to allegations of gross human rights violations by security forces over the past three years.

“There can be no hope for the rule of law and political stability in Egypt, much less some modicum of justice for victims, without accountability for what may be the single biggest incident of mass killing in Egypt's recent history on August 14,” said Gasser Abdel-Razek, associate director at the  Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “For almost three years now, successive Egyptian governments have ignored calls for justice, as police brutality and the accompanying death toll continue to mount with each incident.”

The 13 organizations include the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Warakom Beltaqrir, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, the Center for Egyptian Women Legal Assistance, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, the Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, Nazra for Feminist Studies, Alkarama Foundation, the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch. 

As a first step toward accountability, the government should establish an effective independent fact-finding committee to investigate responsibility throughout the chain of command for the unlawful killings, the organizations said. It should have the authority to summon officials and witnesses, and to issue a public report and recommendations, which can only be granted through a cabinet decree.

In September, Prime Minister Hazem Beblawy told the Egyptian daily Al Masry al-Youm that the death toll on August 14 was “close to 1,000.” On November 14, the Forensic Medical Authority said the number of bodies brought to the official morgue or hospitals was 726, but that the number excluded bodies buried directly by their families. The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights has compiled a list of 904 names of people killed in the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in.

The human rights organizations have documented the use of excessive force by security forces in breaking up the sit-ins and unlawful killings of unarmed protesters. At least 19 of those killed during the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in were women, as Nazra for Feminist Studies documented in their September 10 report.

A small minority of protesters used firearms that day, but the police responded excessively by shooting recklessly, going far beyond what is permitted under international law, which prescribes that resorting to lethal force may occur only when strictly unavoidable  to protect life. Security forces failed to carry out the operation in a way that minimized the risk to life, including by ensuring safe exits and giving clear orders not to use lethal force unless strictly unavoidable to protect lives and used in a discriminate manner.

“The killing of seven police officers during the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in does not justify  the kind of collective punishment of hundreds of protesters and disproportionate use of lethal force that we saw that day,” said Bahey el Din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Before the August 14 forcible dispersals, security forces also used excessive and unlawful lethal force outside the Republican Guard Club Headquarters in Nasr City on July 8, when 61 protesters and two members of the security forces died, and on Nasr Street near the Rabaa al-Adawaiya protest camp on July 27, when 95 protesters and one police officer died. Subsequently, they used reckless fire leading to the death of 120 people around Ramsis Square on August 16, and yet again used excessive and unwarranted lethal force to disperse pro-Morsi marches on October 6, leading to at least 57 deaths.

Over the past two and a half years, in spite of overwhelming evidence gathered by human rights groups, the Interior Ministry has denied any wrongdoing on the part of the police in any incident that led to deaths, just as it did under former President Hosni Mubarak. After the Nasr Street killings, Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said: “I can assure you, we have never, as police, pointed a firearm at the chest of any protester.” In a news conference on August 14, he also said that his ministry had successfully dispersed the two sit-ins in Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda “without losses,” and referred to a non-existent “international standard death rate of 10 percent in the dispersal of non-peaceful sit-ins.” Other members of the government have failed to distance themselves from these statements or to acknowledge any wrongdoing by security forces, the organizations said.

In all of these incidents, prosecutors have selectively investigated only protesters on charges of assault after clashes with security forces and ignored the steadily rising death toll among protesters, the organizations said. Prosecutors have detained over 1,104 protesters and bystanders in pretrial detention for the past three months, pending interrogation on charges of assaulting security officers and other acts of violence on August 14 and 16, but have failed to investigate or hold accountable any security officer on charges of killing protesters, the organizations said.

Prosecutors have referred to trial former president Mohamed Morsy and other Muslim Brotherhood members on charges relating to the killing of 3 and torture of 54 protesters near the Presidential Palace on December 5, 2012, yet failed to investigate or indict anyone for the killing of at least seven protesters on the Brotherhood side that same evening. 

Egypt’s obligation under international law to provide victims of human rights violations and crimes access to an effective remedy includes three elements: the establishment of a truth-seeking process, including publicizing the facts about crimes and violations of human rights; accountability for past crimes through criminal prosecutions;  and  the provision of full and effective reparation to the victims and their families, which should include effective guarantees that the violations will not be repeated.  

Interim President Adly Mansour promised to set up a fact-finding committee into the July 8 Republican Guard headquarters violence – the first major documented incident of excessive and unlawful use of force following Morsy’s overthrow. On September 17, the cabinet website announced that the latest cabinet meeting had agreed to establish a fact-finding committee to look into the “events that have occurred since June 30.” But the government has taken no further steps to establish the committee. 

The National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), Egypt’s government-appointed national human rights commission, announced on September 20 that it had appointed four fact-finding teams to produce reports about the events of August 14: the killings during the dispersal of the sit-ins, the attacks on police stations and killing of police officers in Cairo and in Minya, and the attacks on churches in at least eight governorates across Egypt. However, like any other human rights organization, the NCHR can only request information from the Interior Ministry and has no authority to access its documents or to summon security officers for questioning, and is therefore no replacement for an official fact-finding committee.

Prime Minister Beblawy should by decree establish a fact-finding committee that is independent of government and the military, the human rights organizations said. The committee should have the authority to compel witnesses to testify, including former and incumbent state officials, irrespective of their official capacity, and powers of subpoena, search and seizure, all subject to judicial review.

The committee should seek to collect information from a variety of sources, including public archives, medical and morgue records, reports by human rights organizations and previous fact-finding committees, including the Fact-Finding Committee established by deposed President Morsy in June 2012, whose results have yet to be made public officially. It should also gather testimony from victims, families and officials. The government decree should specify that the committee is to make its findings public and share them with judicial authorities, and share full details with victims, their relatives and any individual who suffered harm as the direct result of a human rights violation.

“Victims of human rights violations, as well as society at large, have a right to know the whole truth about past human rights violations,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa deputy director at Amnesty International. “After the unprecedented levels of violence and casualties seen since the ousting of Mohamed Morsy, investigations must provide real answers and cannot be another whitewash of the security forces record. Egypt’s authorities cannot deal with the carnage through PR in world’s capitals, rewriting events and locking up of Morsy’s supporters.”

The committee should explore the responsibility of senior-level officials in the chain of command for the instructions they issued, their knowledge and role in authorizing and controlling the use of force against protesters or their failure to prevent unlawful behavior by their subordinates.

The committee should also determine whether there is any evidence of any policy to kill protesters or commit other serious crimes. It should also look into the failure of senior-level officials to ensure safe exit for unarmed protesters, the injured, and children, as well as to ensure the lawfulness of the use of force by security forces. Authorities should make public the investigation’s findings and recommendations.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office should open an impartial and credible investigation into allegations of unlawful killings by security forces, while ensuring that sensitive information is not tampered with and that the officials suspected of wrongdoing are suspended from their duties for the duration of the investigation.

A series of sexual crimes took place in Tahrir Square and its vicinity from November 2012 onward, the groups said. Many women were sexually assaulted – some of them raped, with fingers and sharp objects. From June 28 to July 7, 2013 mobs of men sexually assaulted and in some cases raped at least 186 women. Nazra has submitted recommendations to the presidency and government on the need to integrate gender issues and perspective within transitional justice mechanisms by focusing on the structural causes for gender inequalities and addressing discriminatory practices that contribute to weakening and targeting women during periods of oppression and conflict.

“Any truth-seeking process must also include accountability for gender-based human rights violations committed since January 2011 which successive governments have thus far ignored,” said Mozn Hassan, executive director at Nazra for Feminist Studies. “For a start, the government needs to address unprecedented mass sexual violence that took place in Tahrir Square.”

In recent years, Egypt has made some failed efforts to investigate killings of protesters by security forces. In February 2011, Ahmad Shafik, then prime minister under  Mubarak,  set up a fact-finding committee and appointed independent commissioners to investigate the killing of protesters  in January 2011. The committee publicized a summary of its findings and its recommendations in April 2011, which found that police forces had killed protesters and called for security sector reforms, but did not release the complete report.

In July 2012, Morsy set up a fact-finding committee to investigate violence against protesters from January 2011 to June 2012. Morsy’s decree ordered all state agencies to comply with the committee’s request for information and gave the committee the authority  to review “measures taken by executive branches of government and the extent to which they cooperated with the judicial authorities and any shortcomings that may exist,” to require cooperation from security agencies that had previously blocked access to crucial information. The committee finalized its report and submitted it to Morsy at the end of December 2012, but he refused to make it public.  In April 2012, the Egyptian daily al Shorouk and the Guardianpublished leaked drafts of several chapters of the report on the unlawful use of live ammunition by the police and the torture of detained protesters by the military.

Efforts to prosecute security forces and senior government officials for the unlawful killing of protesters, including holding accountable those in senior decision-making positions in the chain of command, have also overwhelmingly failed.

The Office of the Public Prosecutor investigated Mubarak and other senior officials for their role in ordering the killing of protesters. The North Cairo criminal court convicted Mubarak and his former interior minister for failing to protect protesters in January 2011 while it acquitted, for lack of evidence the four assistant ministers of interior in charge of ordering the police response to the January protests. The prosecution said that it had received little co-operation from the General Intelligence national security unit and the Interior Ministry, complicating the process of gathering evidence. The court said that it found no evidence to “establish that the perpetrators of the killings of protesters were officers and members of the police.” In January Egypt’s highest appeal court, the Court of Cassation, overturned Mubarak’s conviction on points of law. A retrial of his case opened on April 13. 

Since 2011, the courts have convicted and sentenced to prison only three low-level security officers. Almost three years after the overthrow of Mubarak, only two police officers are serving time for the killing of at least 846 protesters in January 2011. Only one police officer is in prison, serving a three-year sentence for shooting at protesters during the protest on Mohamed Mahmoud street in November 2011, when police killed 51 protesters over five days. The public prosecutor has not prosecuted any other police official for the death of the 451 protesters.

Three soldiers are serving two- and three-year sentences for the killing of 13 Christians during a demonstration at Maspero in Cairo in October 2011. There was no investigation into the armed forces’ shooting of 14 other protesters that night. There has been no investigation into the December 2011 violence, when military police beat and kicked women,  nor into military police torture of protesters inMarch 2011 at Lazoghli in downtown Cairo or in May 2012 at Abbasiyya.

Reports by previous fact-finding committees have contributed toward criminal investigations. In May, the public prosecutor submitted an additional evidence brief in the retrial of Mubarak and Habib el-Adly, a former interior minister, based on the supplementary investigations it conducted after it received the report of the Morsy-appointed fact-finding committee.

One of the National Community for Human Rights’ campaigns, Warakom Beltaqrir, (After You with the Report), which calls for the publication of this second fact-finding committee report and the implementation of its recommendations, obtained and published this additional brief. The brief identified evidence that the police used lethal force in January 2011 against peaceful protesters and that the Interior Ministry subsequently tampered with ammunition log books to conceal this.

The transitional justice minister should issue the complete fact-finding committee reports produced by fact-finding committees in February 2011 and July 2012, the groups said.

“The fight for accountability is a comprehensive one,” said Ahmad Ragheb of the Warakom Beltaqrircampaign. “The families of peaceful protesters killed over the past three years, whether in Tahrir, at Mohammed Mahmoud, at Ettihadia, Port Said, or in Rabaa, all have a right to know how their loved ones died and to see their killers held accountable.”

The organizations called for the fact-finding committee also to develop recommendations for legal and institutional reforms aimed at ensuring that the human rights violations of the past will not be repeated. The changes should include reforming security institutions and amending national legislation to bring it in line with international law and standards. For example, all crimes under international law should become distinct crimes under national law, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial executions.

Legislation regulating public gatherings currently proposed by the government explicitly authorizes security forces to use firearms to defend “property,” contrary to international law and standards, which require that firearms only be used to prevent deaths or serious injuries. Legislation regulating the use of force and firearms by the police should be amended and brought in line with international standards and national best practices, the human rights organizations said. The concepts of necessity and proportionality should be integrated into the Police Act and complementary decrees, and use of lethal force should be explicitly restricted to situations where there is a grave threat to life or a threat of serious injury.

The fact-finding committee should also recommend the establishment of a vetting mechanism to ensure that all those found to be responsible for gross human rights violations and crimes under international law are removed from their duties.

Finally, the Egyptian government should cooperate with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as it committed to doing during the September session of the Human Rights Council. The Egyptian government failed to grant visas requested in August to observers from the high commissioner’s office.

“It will be impossible for all of Egypt’s people to gain trust in their new government and justice system unless they see that those responsible, including those at the highest command levels, are held to account for the killings of protesters,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “That Egyptian authorities have failed in their promise to examine the facts of these killings, much less punish those responsible, does not inspire confidence in their commitment to justice and truth.”

List of incidents in which security forces have killed protesters since January 2011:

1. October 6, 2013, at least 57 protesters killed in dispersal of marches headed from Dokki and Ramsis towards Tahrir Square, police and armed forces deployed, no reported police deaths, no investigation of security forces wrongdoing;
2. August, 16, 2013, at least 120 people and two police killed in clashes at the epicenter of protests in Ramsis Square and in marches en route, police deployed, no investigation of police for wrongdoing;
3. August 14, 2013, Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins Nahda and Rabaa al-Adawiya, police deployed, up to 1000 protesters according to the prime minister and 9 police killed, no investigation of police for  wrongdoing;
4. July 27, 2013, on Nasr Street in Cairo, police deployed, 95 protesters and one policeman killed, no investigation of police for  wrongdoing;
5. July 8, 2013, outside the Republican Guard Club headquarters in Cairo, military deployed,61 protesters, one military and one police officer killed, no investigation of military for  wrongdoing;
6. July 5, 2013, outside the Republican Guard Club headquarters in Cairo, military shoots five protesters dead, no investigation of any military personnel.
7. January 2013, outside Port Said prison, police killed 46 people over three days, two policemen killed, investigation started but no one referred for trial. Police killed nine people in Suez. No prosecution of any officers.
8. January 2013, police kill two protesters during protests, one outside the presidential palace and one downtown. No prosecution of any officers.
9. November 2012, Tahrir square area, two killed during Mohamed Mahmoud anniversary;
10. December 2011, outside Cabinet in Cairo, military deployed, 17 killed, no investigation;
11. November 2011, Mohamed Mahmoud Street, police deployed, 51 protesters killed, one police officer serving three-year sentence after  captured on video shooting protesters in the eye, no other investigation of security forces;  
12. October 2011, Maspero, 27 Coptic Christian protesters killed, three soldiers sentenced by military tribunal to 2 and 3 year sentences for driving APCs that killed protesters, no investigation of shooting deaths of 13  protesters; and
13. January 2011, Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other cities, 846 protesters killed in squares and near police stations, according to the most conservative estimates, two policemen serving time.

Signatory organizations:

Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Alkarama Foundation
The Center for Egyptian Women Legal Assistance (CEWLA)
The Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture
The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
The Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE)
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
Nazra for Feminist Studies
Warkom Beltaqrir- The National Community for Human Rights and Law (NCHRL)
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights