افتتحت مساء الخميس ندوة “بناء رابطة المصير المشترك بين الصين والدول العربية ودور وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الفكر” في العاصمة الصينية بكين برعاية مجموعة الصين للإعلام الدولي وتنظيم مشترك لمركز إعلام أوروبا الغربية وأفريقيا (دار مجلة الصين اليوم) ومؤسسة “شبكة الصين” الإخبارية ( china.org.cn )، ومؤسسة بيت الحكمة للثقافة والإعلام.
وحضر الندوة كل من قاو آن مينغ نائب رئيس مجموعة الصين للإعلام الدولي ورئيس تحريرها، وأحمد السعيد المدير العام لمؤسسة بيت الحكمة للثقافة والإعلام، ووو سي كه المبعوث الخاص الأسبق للحكومة الصينية لقضايا الشرق الأوسط، وألقوا كلمات. كما شارك أكثر من 50 خبيرا وباحثا من وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الفكر في الصين ومصر والسعودية وقطر والإمارات والمغرب ولبنان، ناقشوا بشكل متعمق نتائج القمة الصينية العربية الأولى المثمرة، وكيفية مساهمة وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الفكر في بناء مجتمع مصير مشترك صيني – عربي نحو العصر الجديد.
وفي جلسة المناقشة الموضوعية، شارك وانغ شياو هوي رئيس تحرير شبكة الصين، وشريف قنديل رئيس تحرير جريدة المدينة السعودية، ويوي يون تشيوان عميد معهد الصين والعالم المعاصر، وأحمد سلام الرئيس السابق للإدارة المركزية لشؤون مكتب رئيس الهيئة العامة للاستعلامات، وجياو شيانغ رئيس تحرير مكتب تحرير الأخبار الدولية لصحيفة الشعب اليومية، وبشار شبارو المدير التنفيذي لدار جامعة حمد بن خليفة للنشر، ودينغ جيون مدير معهد الشرق الأوسط بجامعة شانغهاي للدراسات الأجنبية، وأحمد سعيد العلوي رئيس تحرير بوابة العين الإخبارية بالإمارات، وهو يوي شيانغ عميد كلية الشرق الأوسط بجامعة بكين للدراسات الدولية، وفؤاد الغـزير الأستاذ في جامعة الحسن الأول المغربية، وحسين إسماعيل المدير التنفيذي لفرع الشرق الأوسط لدار مجلة الصين اليوم، وتمارا برّو الباحثة في السياسة الدولية بجامعة لبنان، ولفيف من الخبراء والباحثين شاركوا في تبادل الأفكار بنشاط حول موضوع الندوة.
وفي خطابه الختامي، لخص هو باو مين، مدير مركز إعلام أوروبا الغربية وأفريقيا التابع لمجموعة الصين للإعلام الدولي، التوافق الذي تم التوصل إليه في الندوة، معربا عن أمله في أن تنتهز وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الفكر الصينية والعربية الإنجازات الكبرى للقمة الصينية العربية الأولى كفرصة ذهبية وتنطلق من هذه الندوة كنقطة انطلاق جديدة للعمل المشترك لتعزيز التعاون والتبادل الشعبي والثقافي الصيني العربي الشامل ومتعدد المستويات وواسع النطاق، وتعزيز التفاهم والترابط والتواصل المتبادل بين الشعبين الصيني والعربي، وتقديم وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الفكر مساهمات في بناء مجتمع مصير مشترك صيني – عربي نحو العصر الجديد، من أجل خلق آفاق مشرقة لتنمية الصين والدول العربية، وللحياة السعيدة المشتركة للشعبين الصيني والعربي
بخلاف علاقتها القوية والإستراتيجية مع الهند، تنظر واشنطن إلى باكستان على أنها “صديق عدو” وتخشى من تحالفها مع الخصمين الصيني والروسي، خاصة في ظل الحرب الجارية في أوكرانيا.
وفي مقابلة حصرية مع الجزيرة ضمن برنامج “من واشنطن” خلال زيارته إلى الولايات المتحدة الأميركية، قال وزير خارجية باكستان، بيلاوال بوتو زرداري إن الولايات المتحدة هي الزبون الأكبر لباكستان وتجمعهما علاقات تاريخية وثيقة، معربا عن أمله في ألا يكون لسياسة الكذب والتضليل أثر على علاقات بلاده مع الولايات المتحدة، في إشارة منه إلى رئيس الوزراء الباكستاني السابق عمران خان الذي اتهم الأميركيين بالإطاحة به.
وعن علاقات باكستان مع الصين التي تعتبر خصما للولايات المتحدة، قال إن بلاده لديها علاقات جيدة مع البلدين، وقد قامت بدور بارز في إقامة علاقات دبلوماسية بين واشنطن وبكين، مشددا على أهمية التعاون لضمان الأمن الإقليمي والدولي.
ودعا بوتو زرداري أيضا الحكومة الانتقالية في أفغانستان إلى الالتزام بوعودها للمجتمع الدولي من أجل تحقيق السلام في المنطقة. وفي المقابل طالب المجتمع الدولي بعدم التخلي عن كابل التي يوجد بها 97% من الناس تحت خط الفقر، مشددا على أهمية فتح مزيد من الحوار مع الحكومة الأفغانية، والإفراج عن الأرصدة الأفغانية المجمدة في الخارج.
وقال عبد الرحمن مطر مراسل الجزيرة في إسلام آباد إن باكستان هي حليف رئيسي للولايات المتحدة منذ نحو 70 عاما وتجدد هذا التحالف منذ عام 2001 في إطار محاربة ما يسمى الإرهاب، وبدأت العلاقة بين البلدين تتوتر في عهد الرئيس الأميركي الأسبق باراك أوباما الذي كان يتهم باكستان بأنها تمارس دورا مزدوجا في عملية مكافحة ما يسمى الإرهاب، مؤكدا أن الحكومة الباكستانية الحالية تسعى إلى تجديد التحالف مع الأميركيين.
تباين مواقف الهند وباكستان بشأن ملف أوكرانيا
وعن موقف واشنطن من علاقة باكستان بالهند، رأت أبارنا باندي، وهي باحثة وزميلة في معهد هدسون أن الولايات المتحدة تريد علاقات متوازنة بين الطرفين ولا ترغب في اندلاع صراع بينهما، لكنها تجد دوما صعوبة في تحسين علاقاتهما مع بعض، ووصفت وضعهما الحالي بأنه حالة من السلام البارد.
واعتبرت باندي -في حديثها لبرنامج “من واشنطن”- أن الهند هي حليف إستراتيجي للولايات المتحدة، في حين أن الأميركيين لديهم استياء من باكستان ولديهم تصور بأنها “صديق عدو” بسبب دعمها لمجموعة حاربت أميركا خلال الوجود الأميركي في أفغانستان.
وبالنسبة لملف أوكرانيا، قالت الباحثة إن لدى نيودلهي وإسلام آباد وجهتي نظر مختلفتين بسبب طبيعة علاقاتهما مع روسيا، فالهند لها علاقات إستراتيجية مع موسكو ذات طبيعة دفاعية واشترت منها مصادر طاقة وغيرها، في حين لا توجد علاقات عسكرية وإستراتيجية بين روسيا وباكستان، مؤكدة أن واشنطن لا تريد أي تقارب بين البلدين مع الصين وروسيا.
ومن جهته، أكد سفير الولايات المتحدة السابق في الهند، توماس بيكرينغ، أن واشنطن تجد صعوبة في تحقيق حالة من التوازن بين الهند وباكستان، وأنها كانت خلال فترة الحرب الباردة تميل إلى إسلام آباد، لكن الموقف تغير في أواخر الثمانينيات والتسعينيات، حيث صارت تميل إلى نيودلهي.
Far-fetched as it sounds, this year’s winners are all connected to a CIA offshoot, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and parroted CIA / State Department / Pentagon talking points about Ukraine and Russia in their acceptance speeches
(CovertAction Magazine) : Source
The Nobel Prize Committee has five judges, appointed by the Norwegian parliament, who are tasked with choosing Nobel Prizewinners.
But people are starting to wonder if there is a 6th Nobel Prize judge, not appointed by the Norwegian parliament, but by the CIA, who is tasked with making sure that winners of the coveted Nobel Peace Prize advance the agenda of U.S. policy makers.
Although the idea may seem far-fetched, this year’s winners all have connections to a CIA offshoot, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Oleksandra Matviichuk, for example, who accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Ukraine Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) on December 10, had received the NED’s annual Democracy Award on behalf of the CCL six months earlier.[1]
The NED was founded in the 1980s to promote propaganda and regime-change operations in the service of U.S. imperial interests. Allen Weinstein, the director of the research study that led to creation of the NED remarked in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The two other recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Ales Bialiatski, a Belarusian dissident, and Memorial, a human rights organization expelled from Russia for violating its foreign agent law, have also received NED awards and probable financing.
While the Nobel Peace Prize has previously gone to warmongers like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama,[2] never before has it gone to organizations that were intricately associated with a foreign intelligence agency specializing in political skullduggery and psychological warfare.
The entire Nobel Peace Prize ceremony this year seemed to be part of a public relations spectacle whose purpose was to mobilize public opinion against Russia and to support a military escalation of the war in Ukraine.
In their victory speeches, all three Peace Prize recipients ritually denounced Russian war crimes and aggression and issued support for the war in Ukraine. Oleksandra Matviichuk also directly asked the Norwegian government for more air defense for Ukraineand other types of weapons.
Promoting a Fairy Tale Version of Reality
Matviichuk’s speech was notable for its overt Russophobia and Manichaean view of world affairs that showed a fundamental naiveté about the character of Western governments.
Matviichuk said that the West had turned a blind eye to Russia’s “destruction of its own civil society,” and “shook hands with the Russian leadership, built gas pipelines and conducted business as usual” when, for decades, “Russian troops had been committing crimes in different countries.”
In Matviichuk’s telling, the “innocent” West is complicit in appeasing Russia—though for the last few decades, it was U.S. troops and its proxies that rampaged across the Middle East and committed massive war crimes.
All while Russia has often intervened in self-defense against U.S.-NATO aggression—like in Georgia in 2008—or at the request of a besieged ally, like in Syria, where it saved the country from the fate of Libya which had been destroyed by the 2011 U.S.-NATO intervention.
Matviichuk claimed in her speech that the war in Ukraine is “not a war of two states—but of two systems—authoritarianism and democracy.”
If that is the case, it is not clear which side she is on as her president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has banned eleven opposition parties, including the communist party, which is legal in Russia, and mounted a Phoenix-style operation to silence dissidents.
Matviichuk suggested earlier in her speech that the world had not adequately responded to “the act of aggression and annexation of Crimea, which were the first such cases in post-war Europe.”
Crimea, however, had historically been part of Russia and was never invaded. Its people voted to rejoin Russia in a referendum after the U.S. and EU had backed a right-wing coup in Ukraine that represented a vital security threat to Russia on its border.
Matviichuk presented more false history when she claimed that “the Russian people were responsible for this disgraceful chapter in their history [the invasion of Ukraine] and their desire to forcefully restore their former empire.”
Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, however, was not an attempt to restore the Russian empire, but was carried out in response to genuine national security threats that Russia faced as a result of the right-wing coup in Ukraine and NATO advancement on its border.
Matviichuk further omits that Russia was carrying out a genuine humanitarian intervention by trying to save the people of eastern Ukraine who had been the target of an ethnic-cleansing operation by the Ukrainian military, which left 14,000 civilians dead.
Matviichuk concluded part of her speech by stating:
“People of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world. But peace cannot be reached by the country under attack laying down its arms. This would not be peace, but occupation. After the liberation of Bucha, we found a lot of civilians murdered in the streets and courtyards of their homes. These people were unarmed. We must stop pretending deferred military threats are ‘political compromises.’ The democratic world has grown accustomed to making concessions to dictatorships. And that is why the willingness of the Ukrainian people to resist Russian imperialism is so important. We will not leave people in the occupied territories to be killed and tortured. People’s lives cannot be a ‘political compromise.’ Fighting for peace does not not mean yielding to pressure of the aggressor, it means protecting people from its cruelty.”
It is astounding that someone would use the platform accorded to her by winning a major world peace prize to try to rationalize a war that her country had started—in 2014 when it attacked the people of eastern Ukraine who voted for more autonomy after a foreign-backed coup in Ukraine, and after the post-coup government imposed draconian language laws.[3]
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) has even disclosed that Ukraine had no intention of abiding by the Minsk peace agreements, which could have prevented a full-scale conflict with Russia. Instead, Ukraine signed those agreements as a stalling tactic to give it more time to build up its military power and accrue more weaponry and support from the U.S. so it could fight Russia from a position of strength.
Matviichuk promoted more disinformation by suggesting that the Russians had killed all the civilians in Bucha, as in-depth investigations have determined that many civilians were killed in Bucha by the Ukrainians after Russian forces were expelled.
Her true political colors were seen at the end of the speech when she praised the “people in Iran fighting in the streets for their freedom,” and people in China who were resisting its “digital dictatorship.” This is right out of the playbook of the NED, which sponsors organizations that denounce human rights abuses of independent countries targeted by the U.S. for regime change, while extolling the heroism of dissidents who would align their country with the U.S.
Shades of Obama 2009
Matviichuk’s use of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony as a forum to promote war drew on the precedent established by the drone king, Barack Obama, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Obama provided a tortured defense of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stating “we must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”
Obama continued:
“I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago—‘violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak—nothing passive—nothing naïve—in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
Honoring a Propaganda Agency That May Well Help Ignite World War III
While the Nobel Peace Prize has not always honored true peace activists, a truly ominous precedent has been set in giving it to a propaganda agency that may well help ignite World War III.
A key part of CCL’s current mission is to document Russian war crimes in Donbas—though Ukraine has been responsible for the majority of human rights crimes there since the war started after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014—when CCL started this work.[4]
Further, the CCL has mounted an international campaign to release the Kremlin’s political prisoners, and aims to raise awareness about political persecution in what it calls Russian-occupied Crimea—which is not “occupied” since its people voted to rejoin Russia in a referendum.
The CCL fashions itself as a particular champion of the Crimean Tatars, some of whom had collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II and who had long been used by outside powers to try to destabilize Russia and foment ethnic conflict as part of a strategy of divide and conquer.
Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev, who received an award from the NED in 2018, travelled to the NATO headquarters in Brussels after the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 agitating for an armed intervention by the UN to return Crimea to Ukrainian control, and has been a militant proponent of sanctions against Russia.
Matviichuk is co-author of the study, “The Fear Peninsula: Chronicles of Occupation and Violations of Human Rights in Crimea,” a one-sided propaganda pamphlet aimed at mobilizing public opinion in support of Ukraine’s efforts to reconquer Crimea—against the wishes of its people.
Belarusian Winner Also Has NED Connection
The politicized nature of this year’s Nobel Prize ceremony was apparent in the selection of a Belarusian dissident, Ales Bialiatski, as co-winner of the Peace Prize.
Lukashenko is a close ally of Vladimir Putin who has supported strengthening the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), an alliance of Eurasian countries promoting trade in national currencies instead of the U.S. dollar and regional economic integration as a means of presenting a strong united front against U.S. imperialism.
These latter words hold some truth, though leaders throughout the world would react the same way as Lukashenko in the face of a foreign backed uprising, whose main purpose was to destroy Belarus’s successful socialist experiment and transform the country into another proxy of the U.S. and NATO that could be used as a staging ground for destabilizing Russia.
Bialiatski significantly was a panelist at a 2014 NED forum where he spoke alongside long-time NED Director and neo-conservative ideologue Carl Gershman. (See photo below.)
This indicates probable NED funding for the organization that Bialiatski established—Viasna—whose purpose has been to monitor human rights abuses committed by the Lukashenko government and to advocate for anti-regime dissidents.
In 2021, the NED provided more than $2.5 million in grants to civil society groups in Belarus, including those focused on human rights and documenting the alleged abuses of the Lukashenko government for political purposes.
By helping to paint Lukashenko as a monster in national and international media, Bialiatski’s organization and others of his kind serve U.S. imperial interests by helping to mobilize popular support for a regime-change operation directed against Europe’s last true socialist government.
Yet Another NED Connection
The third winner of this year’s Nobel Peaze Price is a banned Russian human rights organization, Memorial, whose work includes preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet gulags and Joseph Stalin’s reign, and documenting political repression and human rights violations in Russia.[6] In 2004, its director, Arseny Roginsky, was awarded the 2004 NED Democracy Award.
This latter award suggests that Memorial—founded by Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov during perestroika in the 1980s—received financing from the NED, which was very generous in Russia toward civil society groups whose agenda was to denigrate the Soviet system and undermine Putin, who helped take back national control of Russia’s economy following a period of looting and Western exploitation under Boris Yeltsin.
In 2014, Memorial was in fact placed on a list of foreign agents by the Russian government, which suspected it of receiving foreign funding.
Should It Be Renamed the Nobel War Prize?
The Nobel Peace Prize has tarnished its reputation through many of its past selections; but this year seems worse then ever with the Nobel ceremony providing a platform for anti-Russia war incitement.
In the future, all pretenses should be thrown aside and the prize finally renamed the Nobel War Prize.
Whereas at one time genuine peace activists—like Emily Greene Balch, Linus Pauling and Martin Luther King, Jr.—were awarded the prize, now it is being conferred on war propagandists and national traitors in the pay of foreign masters who are using them merely as pawns in a deadly game in which there are no winners.
The CCL also won the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security Hillary Rodham Clinton Award bestowed annually for exceptional leadership in women’s rights. ↑
For background, see Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018). ↑
Founded in 2007, the CCL documented human rights abuses by Ukraine’s legally elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych against protesters who launched a coup against him in February 2014, and provided legal support to those protesters. ↑
Bialiatski was earlier part of the Belarusian Popular Front, which helped to topple Soviet rule in Belarus in 1990-1991, and a founder of the Belarusian Union of Writers and the Martyrology of Belarus association, which investigated communist repression prior to World War II. On the success of Lukashenko’s socialist policies, see Stewart Parker, The Last Soviet Republic: Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus (London: Trafford Publishing, 2007). ↑
Jan Rachinsky of Memorial ritually denounced Russia and Vladimir Putin in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, stating that the “Kremlin’s attempts to denigrate the history, statehood and independence of Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations…became the ideological justification for the insane and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine.” Rachinsky went on to characterize the Russian invasion of Ukraine as unprovoked, when clearly it was not. ↑
On Thursday, the Royal College of Nursing went on strike for the first time in their 106-year history. Understaffed, underpaid, and overworked, tens of thousands of NHS nurses walked out after being denied decent, liveable pay rises. Hailed as heroes one year, forced to use foodbanks the next, nurses’ wages have fallen more than £3,000 in real terms since 2010; three in four now say they work overtime to meet rising energy bills.
2022 will be remembered as the year that the Conservative Party plunged this country into political turmoil. However, behind the melodrama is a cost of living crisis that has pushed desperate people into destitution and the so-called middle-classes to the brink. 2022 should be remembered as the year in which relative child poverty reached its highest levels since 2007 and real wage growth reached its lowest levels in half a century (average earnings have shrunk by £80 a month, and a staggering £180 a month for public sector workers). These are the real scandals.
For some MPs, this was the year they kickstarted their reality TV career. For others, this was the year they told their children they couldn’t afford any Christmas presents. For energy companies, it was the year they laughed all the way to the bank; in the same amount of time it took for Rishi Sunak to both lose and then win a leadership contest, Shell returned £8.2 billion in profit. SSE, a multinational energy company headquartered in Scotland, saw their profits triple in just one year. Profits across the world’s seven biggest oil firms rose to almost £150 billion.
Tackling the cost of living crisis means offering an alternative to our existing economic model—a model that empowers unaccountable companies to profit off the misery of consumers and the destruction of our earth. And that means defending a value, a doctrine, and a tradition that unites us all: democracy.
Labour recently announced ‘the biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster to the British people.’ I welcomed the renewal of many of the policies from the manifesto in 2019: abolishing the House of Lords, and handing powers to devolved governments, local authorities, and mayors. These plans should work hand in hand, to ensure any second chamber reflects the geographical diversity of the country. If implemented, this would decentralise a Whitehall-centric model of governance that wastes so much of this country’s regional talent, energy, and creativity.
However, devolution, decentralisation, and democracy are not just matters for the constitution. They should characterise our economy too. Regional governments are demanding greater powers for the same reason an unelected second chamber is patently arcane: we want a say over the things that affect our everyday lives. This, surely, includes the way in which our basic resources are produced and distributed.
From energy to water and from rail to mail, a small number of companies monopolise the production of basic resources to the detriment of the workers they exploit and the customers they fleece. We rely on these services and workers keep them running, but it is remote Chief Executive Officers and unaccountable shareholders who decide how they are run, and profit off their provision. Would it not make more sense for workers and consumers to decide how to run the services they provide and consume?
As prices and profits soar, it’s time to put basic resources like energy, water, rail, and mail back where they belong: in public hands. Crucially, this mould of public ownership would not be a return to 1940s-style patronage appointed Boards, but a restoration of civic accountability. Water, for example, should be a regional entity controlled by consumers, workers, and local authorities, and work closely with environmental agencies on water conservation, sewage discharges, the preseveration of coastlines, and the protection of our natural world. This democratic body would be answerable to the public, and the public alone, rather than to the dividends of distant hedge funds.
Bringing energy, water, rail, and mail into democratic public ownership is about giving local people agency over the resources they use. It’s about making sure these resources are sustainably produced and universally distributed in the interests of workers, communities, and the planet.
Beyond key utilities, a whole host of services and resources require investment, investment that local communities should control. That’s why, in 2019, we pledged to establish Regional Investment Banks across the country, run by local stakeholders who can decide—collectively—how best to direct public investment. Those seeking this investment would not make their case with reference to how much profit they could make in private, but how much they could benefit the public as a whole.
To democratise our economy, we need to democratise workplaces too. We can end workplace hierarchies and wage inequalities by giving workers the right to decide, together, how their team operates and how their pay structures are organised. If we want to kickstart a mass transfer of power, we need to redistribute wealth from those who hoard it to those who create it.
Local people know the issues facing them, and they know how to meet them better than anyone else. If we want to practice what we preach, then the same principles of democracy, devolution, and decentralisation must apply to our own parties as well. Local party members, not party leaders, should choose their candidates, create policy, and decide what their movement stands for.
Only a democratic party can provide the necessary space for creative and transformative solutions to the crises facing us all. In a world where the division between rich and poor is greater than ever before, our aim should be to unite the country around a more hopeful alternative—an alternative that recognises how we all rely on each other to survive and thrive.
This alternative is not some abstract ideal to be imagined. It is an alternative that workers are fighting for on the picket line. Even before the nurses went on strike, 2022 was a record-breaking year for industrial action. Striking workers are not just fighting for pay, essential as these demands are. They are fighting for a society without poverty, hunger, and inequality. They are fighting for a future that puts the interests of the community ahead of the greed of energy companies. They are fighting for us all.
Their collective struggle teaches us that democracy exists—it thrives—outside of Westminster. The government is trying its best to turn dedicated postal workers and railway workers into enemies of the general public—a general public that apparently also excludes university staff, bus drivers, barristers, baggage handlers, civil servants, ambulance drivers, firefighters, and charity workers. As the enormous scale of industrial action shows, striking workers are the general public. 2022 will go down in history, not as the year the Tories took the public for fools, but as the year the public fought back. United in their thousands, they are sending a clear message: this is what democracy looks like.
Source: Tribune Magazine
About the Author
Jeremy Corbyn is the Labour member of parliament for Islington North.
A new report published by the German Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) that focuses on “prevention and intervention against Israel-related antisemitism” is pushing for further crackdowns on pro-Palestine solidarity, and even discusses moving toward the criminalization of this kind of speech and activism.
Authored by one of the IMK working groups, and adopted by the Conference earlier this month, the report consistently conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism by employing the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism. It includes specific suggestions, such as urging schools to show their students a more positive view of Israel in the classroom, and categorizes Amnesty International’s recent report on Israeli apartheid as “antisemitic.” The report even suggests prohibiting maps that “question Israel’s right to exist”; whether this includes maps of historic Palestine remains unclear.
The decisions of the IMK are not immediately legally binding, such that the report is not currently actionable. But the Conference, made up of interior ministers and senators from Germany’s 16 states, plays an important role in coordinating the activities of the country’s local governments, and its resolutions are intended to be implemented at the state level. Although this implementation is not the responsibility of the IMK, its resolutions are politically binding, as they must be passed unanimously according to the Conference’s rules.
IMK’s own informational document details that failure to abide by their resolutions would “shatter the foundations of collegial and trusting cooperation [between states] in the future.” As a rule, the state-level interior ministries proceed in accordance with IMK agreements, and they report to each other on the fates of agreements and measures taken.
In a statement to +972, Amnesty International said it “stands against antisemitism, which is antithetical to human rights. We oppose discrimination, racism and hate crime in all forms, including against Jews or people perceived as Jewish. All of Amnesty’s criticism of the Israeli government is based in international law, and on evidence of the great harm and suffering Israel’s policies cause to Palestinians. Amnesty criticizes the Israeli government, not the Israeli people or the Jewish people.”
The IMK’s spokesperson did not respond to the author’s request for comment.
‘A delusional view of the reality of occupation’
The report singles out the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, labeling it dangerous and antisemitic, and claiming that it consists of “foreign extremists, Islamist terrorist organizations and left-wing extremist groups” — a claim that has been heavily pushed by the Israeli government. It further accuses the BDS movement of “playing down Arab nationalist and Islamist antisemitism and terror in the Middle East” by justifying this rhetoric through academia. “Sympathizers of the BDS campaign can also be found in the art and culture scene as well as within the scientific community,” the report continues.
Germany’s crackdown on the BDS movement has been intensifying for years, accelerated by a 2019 Bundestag resolution that classifies it as inherently antisemitic, essentially barring organizations that support the boycott from accessing public funds and public spaces. The resolution has enabled universities, state governments, and public institutions to deny Palestinians the right to free speech and assembly.
That censorship has contributed to a swell of anti-Palestinian political sentiment and policy in Germany, the supporters of which believe it to be justified by Germany’s historical responsibility toward Israel due to the Holocaust. The result is that any criticism of Israeli oppression of Palestinians is often immediately deemed problematic.
“It is really a dangerous development in an authoritarian direction,” said Kerem Schamberger, a German communication scientist and political activist, of the new report. “The adoption of this political, instrumentalized definition of antisemitism by the state, its institutions, and its ruling politicians is a delusional view of the reality of the occupation, shielding any criticism of it.
“They are trying to criminalize and punish any pro-Palestinian act,” Schamberger continued. “They did so more generally with the anti-BDS resolution, but that was just the start. Now the states are trying to establish specific tools that they can use to target international solidarity and pro-Palestinian activists.”
‘The same old baseless arguments’
In order to counter the BDS movement, the working group that drafted the recent report recommended developing “adequate educational media and educational formats for schools,” as well as training for educators, to “convey a realistic image of Israel.”
Earlier this month, +972 reported on the German education system’s aggressive push to adopt a pro-Israel narrative in classrooms. Not only has this led to a lack of critical conversation among students, it also discourages any embrace of pro-Palestinian dialogue, often resulting in a hostile learning environment for Palestinians. According to the report, however, the IMK believes that an even stronger pro-Israel agenda is needed in schools, as well as “intensif[ied]” exchange programs with Israel.
Yet the report doesn’t just push for more ways to combat any pro-Palestinian solidarity. It also advocates harsher punishments for Palestine activism, aiming for these to be “as universal as possible.” The working group seeks to develop a model national guideline that can be used by antisemitism commissioners at the federal and state level to monitor and track antisemitic acts across the country.
The IMK also suggests “creating a new legal basis” to be able to criminalize activities against Israel or “to criminally prosecute [pro-Palestine groups’] right to exist,” including legal regulations against pro-Palestine clubs and activities under the guise of “banning antisemitic gatherings.”
Germany is already committed to blocking pro-Palestinian gatherings. Earlier this year, Berlin police arrested and detained 170 people during Nakba Day demonstrations, some of whom had done nothing more than hold a Palestinian flag or wear a keffiyeh. Berlin police also banned a vigil for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh that had been planned by Jewish organizers – all in the name of fighting antisemitism.
“This delineates yet another new attempt, nevertheless deploying the same-old baseless arguments, to chill free expression of Palestinian rights advocacy and legitimate demands for accountability through non-binding policy guidance,” Alice Garcia, the advocacy and communication manager at the European Legal Support Center, told +972.
“Of course, such measures would be difficult to approve through legislative proposals given their lack of substance and their failure to respect the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly,” Garcia said. “This document is therefore one of the means by which the promoters of an anti-Palestinian discourse are attempting to impose a new category of acts that they would like to see become de facto illegal; thus it must be strongly condemned and challenged.”
Pushing back
Some groups have indeed been condemning and challenging rising German anti-Palestinianism. Ahmed Abed, a Palestinian-German lawyer, was recently involved in a case that exemplifies this effort. The Palestine Committee Stuttgart, a group that supports BDS, had their bank account terminated by Landesbank Baden-Württemburg (LBBW) because of the group’s anti-Zionist politics. Abed successfully helped the group get the account termination overturned – on April 26, the Stuttgart Regional Court ruled that LBBW’s actions were unjustified.
“[The court] declared that the BDS movement does not pose a threat to Jewish life in Germany,” Ahmed Abed told +972. Yet this seems to have had little impact on the authors of the report.
“The interior ministers are acting against their own constitution and against the Anti-Apartheid Convention to which Germany is committed,” Abed said of the report. “Human rights organizations are demanding sanctions because of Israeli apartheid, but peaceful forms of action like BDS are criminalized. Palestinians are to be prosecuted for statements such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ [for] the map of historic Palestine, or [over] BDS. The interior ministers simply ignore recent court decisions that do not allow this.”
Even Jewish scholars and artists from Israel are not happy with the direction things have been going in Germany over the past few years. In 2020, dozens of Jewish scholars and artists from Israel and elsewhere demanded the German government remove the Federal Antisemitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, from his position due to his “weaponization of antisemitism” against critics of Israel. “As an official representative of the German government, Mr. Klein is undermining the exercise of fundamental freedoms — this should deeply alarm your government, considering its commitment to democratic principles and the rule of law,” the letter read.
It is not yet clear what the implications of the IMK’s resolution will be, nor do we know how soon this language will become law in the states. Yet one thing is clear: it is becoming much harder to fight for Palestinian freedom in the supposedly democratic state of Germany.