Ireland Passes Bill Banning Goods From Israeli Settlements in Occupied Palestine

End the suffering, relocate Israel to Florida!

The upper chamber of Ireland’s parliament passed a landmark bill that would effectively impose a nationwide ban on the purchase of goods and services originating in illegal Israeli settlements.

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http://www.mintpressnews.com

by Whitney Webb

July 12, 2018

DUBLIN – On Wednesday, the upper chamber of Ireland’s parliament – the Seanad – passed a landmark bill banning the purchase of goods and services originating in illegal Israeli settlements. Passed with 25 senators voting in favor and 20 against, the bill still needs to go the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, Dáil Éireann, for a debate and a vote and then pass through additional stages of review before being signed into law.

The bill’s recent passage by the Seanad as well as its backing by Irish parliament’s second-largest party, Fianna Fail, suggests that Ireland could soon be the first nation in the world to ban the importation of goods and services originating from illegal Jewish-only settlements in Palestine’s West Bank.

The fact that the bill was even brought to a vote suggests that the law is likely to withstand unprecedented pressure from the Israeli government and its supporters as it now moves to Dáil Éireann for consideration. Indeed, the bill – officially titled the “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018” – was originally introduced earlier this year on January 24th but, soon after, the Seanad voted to delay the debate on the measure after it was protested by the Israeli government.

At the end of January, less than a week after the bill was introduced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Ireland’s ambassador to Israel, Alison Kelly. Kelly seemed to acquiesce to Netanyahu, assuring him that the Irish government would not support the measure. Netanyahu and other Israel politicians had asserted that the bill would “harm the state of Israel” and was an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Despite the strong protest from Israel’s government and following several months of relative silence, independent Irish Senator Frances Black – who introduced the bill in the Seanad – announced on June 27th via Twitter that the bill was back on the legislature’s debate schedule.

Unsurprisingly, after the bill’s recent passage in the Seanad, Israeli lawmakers vowed a diplomatic response, though the details of that response have not been made public at this time. However, the Irish envoy to the country has been summoned to Israel’s Foreign Ministry for a meeting on Thursday regarding the bill’s advancement.

Israeli settlers have strongly attacked the bill’s passage. Shai Alaon, mayor of the illegal settlement Beit El, claimed “the European attempt to curtail settlement in Judea and Samaria will not succeed” and called the Irish senators who voted in favor of the measure “a group of anti-Semites.”

Palestinians welcomed the measure, with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat calling the bill’s passage in the Seanad a “courageous step” that challenges “Israel’s culture of impunity.”

If the measure is ultimately signed into law, the ban would send a dramatic message to Israel given that Ireland currently imports a wide variety of products from illegal West Bank settlements, including fruit, vegetables, wine, plastics, and cosmetics. Thanks to EU labeling regulations that went into effect in 2015, these products are clearly marked as originating in illegal settlements and can longer be misleadingly marketed as products “made in Israel.” Though such labeling allows consumers to make informed choices while shopping, the ban would remove those goods from stores in Ireland entirely.

Though supporters of Israel and Israeli politicians have slammed the ban as “radical”, “anti-semitic” and “extreme,” such arguments do little to change the reality of the illegal nature of settlements, which are not only internationally considered illegal but are also considered war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as well as International Humanitarian Law. Those measures explicitly prohibit occupying powers from placing their own civilian population into occupied territories with the intent of annexing that territory.

Thus, instead of being “radical” legislation, this bill would enforce compliance with both Irish and international law.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

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An Irish bill on Israeli settlement goods could make history

Ireland may be on its way to make the purchase of goods and services from Israeli settlements illegal.

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http://www.aljazeera.com

by Yara Hawari

July 8, 2018

The ‘Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018’ seeks to ban the sale of goods originating in Israeli settlements in Ireland [AP Photo]

 

On July 11, the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Seanad, will vote on a landmark bill that, if passed, would ban the purchase of goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. The “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018” was put forward by  Irish independent Senator Frances Black and co-signed by Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Colette Kelleher, John G Dolan, Grace O’Sullivan and David Norrison on January 24 this year.

However, just six days later, the Seanad voted to delay the debate on it indefinitely after Israel protested. On January 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the Irish ambassador to Israel, Alison Kelly, who explained that the Irish government did not support the bill. Netanyahu had claimed the bill sought to “harm the state of Israel” and was an attempt to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Six months later, on June 27, Black announced that on Twitter that the proposed law is back on the schedule for a debate in the Seanad. And just a week later, Fianna Fail (Warriors of Fal), the second-largest party in the Irish parliament, declared that it was going to back the bill, raising hopes among Palestine supporters in Ireland that it would indeed pass.

If the Seanad approves it, it would then be passed to the lower house of the parliament for a debate and vote. If passed, the bill will have to go through several more stages of review and amendment before it is signed into a law.

Although its opponents have labelled it as “radical” and claimed that it harms free trade, the bill actually enforces compliance with both international and Irish law.

Israeli settlements in both the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights are illegal and constitute a war crime under both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which prohibit occupying states from transferring their own civilian population into occupied territory.

Passing the bill would simply mean that Ireland is moving to modify its domestic legislation to comply with its third-state obligations under IHL.

Currently, the country is importing a variety of products from illegal Israeli settlements, including fruit and vegetables, wine, plastics, big brand beauty products such as “Ahava”, and others.

All of these are already clearly labelled as products from illegal Israeli settlements under the new EU labelling regulations issued in 2015 – ie, they cannot be labelled “Made in Israel”. This allows Irish – and EU consumers in general – to make an informed choice when shopping.

The EU imposed these labelling rules based on the notion of “differentiation” between Israel and the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967. But Black’s bill takes this a step further. It suggests that simple labelling is not enough and proposes to enforce international law by banning goods produced within illegal settlements.

This is not an “extreme” or “radical” measure, as some have claimed. It simply identifies settler-made products for what they are: illegal. These products are made on stolen land with stolen resources, under the protection of a criminal regime. Their presentation and sale as legal products helps to normalise Israel’s crimes – the continuous annexation and colonisation of Palestinian land.

This bill comes at a time when the international community continues to be complicit in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes and violations of Palestinian rights. Even the EU continues to maintain strong economic, cultural and political ties with Israel that on occasion violate its own commitment to IHL.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yara Hawari

Yara Hawari is the Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

The Real Irish-American History Not Taught in Schools

Common Dreams

by Bill Bigelow

March 16, 2018

Sadly, today’s corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about the poverty and inequality that drove the famine than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants

A painting depicting the Irish potato famine. “Sadly,” writes Bigelow, “today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history.” (Source: Ancient-Origins.net)

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

To support the famine relief effort, British tax policy required landlords to pay the local taxes of their poorest tenant farmers, leading many landlords to forcibly evict struggling farmers and destroy their cottages in order to save money. From Hunger on Trial Teaching Activity.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O’Connor’s haunting rendition of “Skibbereen,” which includes the verse:

… Oh it’s well I do remember, that bleak
            December day,
The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive
            Us all away
They set my roof on fire, with their cursed
            English spleen
And that’s another reason why I left old
            Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougal’s U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to “The Great Potato Famine.” Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a “horrible disaster,” as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin’s The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the “ravages of famine” simply on “a blight,” and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as “famished and ghastly skeletons.” Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with today’s curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books’ dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today’s textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone’s life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, it’s important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato — during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, “Ireland’s was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly.” But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

“Paddy’s Lament” recounts the famine and the Irish diaspora to America.

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy’s Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry — food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System: “Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.”

“Stuffed and Starved”: Raj Patel’s comprehensive investigation into the global food network is useful for students to reflect on patterns of poverty that persist today. Patel’s book sets out to account for “the rot at the core of the modern food system.” This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on — reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19^th century Ireland to 21^st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But today’s corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that “we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital.” The Pearson empire had 2017 worldwide profits of $801 million. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, “Hunger on Trial,” that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregon — included at the Zinn Education Project website — students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? The economic system, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let’s honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let’s make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish — and that are starving and uprooting people today.

Note: This piece, which originally appeared on the Zinn Education Project website here, is an updated version of a piece that ZEP and Common Dreams have run in years past.

© 2018  Zinn Education Project (Coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change)

Russia and China dumping US treasuries

Silly Irish people, you do realize you are hitching your wagon to a lame horse, do you?

RT.com

16 Mar, 2018

© Jo Yong-Hak / Reuters

Moscow and Beijing have cut their holdings in US Treasury securities. Russia sold $5.3 billion in January and has sunk to 16th place of the largest holders of American debt.

It is the lowest level for the country since February last year.

“We absolutely do not hold American securities exclusively. The main thing is that these securities should be liquid. So should be the state that issued them,” said Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov in an interview with NTV this week.

Read more

Imminent collapse of US dollar & other major currencies will push gold to $10,000 – bullion analyst

Russia also invests in the securities of European countries.

“We are ready to invest in the securities issued by other sovereign states, the main thing is that they should be low-risk and accordingly bring income,” Siluanov said.

China also got rid of American debt by selling nearly $17 billion in January. Although China is still the largest holder of US Treasuries, the total amount of Treasuries in its reserves has dropped to a minimum since July last year.

One of the largest investors in US government bonds remains the Cayman Islands. The small tax-friendly country has invested almost $242 billion in the American debt, on par with a holder as large as the United Kingdom.

The third-largest buyer of American debt is Ireland, investing $327.5 billion in US debt securities. Ireland is also considered a tax haven for American companies, and was involved in the Apple Inc. tax scandal.

Ireland to discuss new bill criminalising trade with Israeli settlements

Boycott Apartheid Israel! If the Americans love Israel so much, let them relocate it to Florida!

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com

January 24, 2018

Illegal construction work of settlements in the West Bank on 22 February 2017 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

Ireland is set to discuss a new bill that seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods originating in illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian Territory.

Independent Senator Frances Black, yesterday, launched the “Control of Economic Activities (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018”, which is scheduled for debate in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday 31 January 2018.

According to a press release announcing its launch the bill “seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories”.  “Such settlements,” said the statement, “are illegal under both international humanitarian law and domestic Irish law, and result in human rights violations on the ground”.  Despite the illegality of the import and sale of goods from Israeli settlements, the statement points out that Ireland is still providing “continued economic support through trade in settlement goods”.

Read: Israel to close embassy in Ireland

Drafters of the bill revealed that the legislation had been “prepared with the support of Trócaire, Christian-Aid and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), and applies to settlements in occupied territories where there is clear international legal consensus that they violate international law”. They insisted that the “clearest current example of these violations were the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, which have been repeatedly condemned as illegal by the UN, EU, the International Court of Justice and the Irish Government”.

Speaking in advance of the bill’s introduction, Senator Black said:

“This is a chance for Ireland to stand up for the rights of vulnerable people – it is about respecting international law and refusing to support illegal activity and human suffering.”

Black said he is “passionate about the struggle of the Palestinian people”. He insisted that “trade in settlement goods sustains injustice” and explained that “in the occupied territories, people are forcibly kicked out of their homes, fertile farming land is seized, and the fruit and vegetables produced are then sold on Irish shelves to pay for it all”.

Read: Dubliners flag up Israel’s problems with their gesture of Palestine solidarity

The bill is seeking more than mere denunciation of Israeli settlements and is trying to get governments around the world to treat settlements as illegal. Black pointed out that six years ago the Irish Government criticised the relentless progress of Israeli settlements, but they have failed to do anything about it since.

“In years since then it has only gone one way, with settlements expanding, more Palestinian homes being demolished and land being confiscated. It’s clear that empty promises have not worked but nothing has been done. Ireland needs to show leadership and act” Black protested.

The Occupied Territories Bill 2018 will be debated at Second Stage in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday and will be streamed live on Oireachtas TV. It has been co-signed by Seanad Civil Engagement Group Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Grace O’Sullivan, Colette Kelleher and John Dolan, as well as Senator David Norris.

Israel to close embassy in Ireland

“Ireland remains one of the most pro-Palestinian countries in the EU. Israeli officials have been expelled from the country and its policies are regularly denounced by Irish politicians.”

Full story

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com

January 22, 2018

People come together to support Palestine as they walk to the Israeli embassy in Dublin, Ireland [Tommy Morrin/Facebook]

Israel’s frosty relations with Ireland may get worse after news that it was considering closing its embassy in Dublin.

Sources in Israel reported that the Dublin embassy is the only western European mission on a list of seven embassies and consulates earmarked for closure by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of a cost-cutting plan.

The ministry is currently undergoing negotiations to decide on the embassies that will be closed.  A committee is due to submit recommendations by the end of the month.

It is widely suspected that the Netanyahu government is reassessing its priorities on the world stage. Africa is recognised as the continent with most potential for diplomatic inroads. Disappointment following Israel’s defeat at the UN also encouraged the right-wing Knesset to punish states that voted against Trump’s unilateral and illegal declaration to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The Israeli government moved to close down diplomatic missions in seven countries at the beginning of the year. The Jerusalem Post reported that under the new plan, the embassies will be closed over the next three years, with three closed the first year, and two during each of the next two years after that.

Continue:

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Western hypocrisy is a symptom of western selfishness

I am not Irish but I question what Britain is doing in Ireland. There is no Northern Ireland. Ireland is Ireland. Northern Ireland is under British occupation with help from Irish traitors. But what do I know? Get out of Ireland Britain and take your pathetic Irish Christian Jihadists with you.

Source: Western hypocrisy is a symptom of western selfishness

theduran.com

Adam Garrie

June 11, 2017

The western mainstream media once again ignore killing abroad in order to focus on non-issues at home.

Britain’s recent election makes for an insightful case study of western hypocrisy. Because Britain’s ruling neo-con Conservative party (in reality a neo-liberal party with a misleading name) did not win enough votes to form a government on its own. Instead, it will have to rely on the support of the openly sectarian Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from Northern Ireland. For the record, I would be equally opposed to a UK government relying on the support of openly sectarian Catholic parties from Northern Ireland.

But mainstream British opinion has reacted to the reality that the Conservative party will only be able to (barely) govern with DUP assistance in a manner that underlines a deep metaphysical crisis in the western psyche.

The Democratic Unionist Party is worrying as it was one of the only parties in the UK Parliament at the time whose entire Parliamentary membership voted in favour of the illegal war on Iraq.

The Democratic Unionist Party also enjoys close links with Zionist organisations who publish the most extreme variety of anti-Palestinian propaganda.

Northern Irish Protestant militants who at various times had associations with the party even smuggled Israeli arms into Britain for mane years.

Failing to learn their lessons, all DUP MPs voted for illegal strikes on Syria in 2015.

It is fair to say that the DUP is among the most pro-war parties in all of the United Kingdom. However, this fact has been totally ignored by the British mainstream media, many of whom are only now bothering to find out who the DUP are, although their homework has been incomplete at best.

The British mainstream media have been focusing on the DUP’s social policy which tends to be on the extreme side of social-conservatism and I speak as a social conservative myself, one who believes that liberal social values are a kind of deeply sick neurosis. But a party which takes a firm sectarian line on religion, seeks to politicise the private medical procedure of abortion and a party founded by a man who believes dancing is sinful, is too much even for me.

However, these issues are local matters that the Northern Irish voters have to contend with. If they want a party that enforces a ‘no dancing’ piece of legislation, they are welcome to it.

The problem is when such a party has a say in foreign policy, something which affects those far from the disputed province of Northern Ireland. But the liberals in Britain simply do not care how much the DUP votes in favour of slaughtering Iraqi and Syrian children. They do not care that they supported creating a jihadist failed state in Libya, they do not care that they believe that Palestinians are ungodly, they simply are worried that the DUP might turn dance halls, homosexual facilities and abortion clinics into Protestant churches, something that is incredibly unlikely.

The DUP is not in a position to implement its extreme Protestant agenda on Great Britain, but in a tight vote on going to yet another illegal war, their members of Parliament could push the vote over the edge in favour of more bombing, more killing, more instability and more illegality.

This is the real worry, but for the British mainstream media, they are focused on issues which will never come to pass and never effect anyone outside of some parts Northern Ireland. The issues that will effect the wider world and as a result cause ore terrorist blow-back in Britain, are totally ignored.

It is this selfish attitude that has doomed the west to failure at home and danger abroad.