The American/Israeli Narrative: The Axis of Evil or Resistance
In 2002, after the invasion of Afghanistan, George Bush introduced the term "Axis of Evil." At that time, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were included in this axis. George Bush announced that this axis was the source and main supporter of terrorism and intended to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It didn't take long before they attacked Iraq under the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction. The bombs they dropped on the Iraqi people, based on a historical lie, killed one million and displaced several million. Iraq fell into constant chaos and unrest. The Iraqi people have been entrapped by two terrorist forces: state and Islamic terrorism. Still 23 years after the second war the society is in a complete state of chaos and terror. (US and its allies attacked Iraq in 1991 and then enforced a severe sanction on Iraq which led to a million deaths of the especially most vulnerable section: children and the elderly.)
Iran was then declared another military target. In reality, the US and NATO cannot attack North Korea because it has nuclear weapons. Such an attack will only take place when either military technology has developed to the point where it can disable nuclear weapons before the attack or when conditions have reached a point where nuclear war has become inevitable. It should be noted that Israel and the US are now threatening Iran with nuclear weapons.
The face of the Middle East has completely changed since 2001, when the US and its allies attacked Afghanistan and then Iraq. In fact, its existence as a geopolitical entity is under question. Now talks are about the next destructive aims of the US and the West, spearheaded by Israel, to occupy and destroy a wider region; Turkey and Pakistan are being talked about as the next targets.
The Middle East has been completely destroyed and almost any sign of civility and the ancient civilization in the region has been razed to the ground. (Now they are busy destroying Iran.) They are even destroying the nature of the region through bombing, aerial chemical spraying and uprooting olive trees in Palestine. The scenario is that in fifty years no one will remember the Middle East, its people, its culture and its civilisation. In early 2026 former CIA Director U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that history should focus on Israel as the victim rather than Palestinians in Gaza, saying:
We need to make sure that the story is told properly, so that when the history books write this, they don't write about the victims of Gaza.
This destruction is paving the way for the new Middle East and Greater Israel. (Their plan for Gaza, the “Middle East Riviera” with Trump’s hand-crafted Board of Peace presents the future of the region before our eyes.) In his speech to the US Congress several months after the genocide in Gaza began, Netanyahu spoke of the axis of evil versus the axis of civilization. He declared that the axis of evil must be destroyed. Iran was introduced as the head of this axis and the main threat to Western civilization. The other members of this axis are a number of Islamic terrorist organisations in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen.
The term “Islamic terrorism” was coined by the so-called Zionist intellectuals and it was first publicly mentioned in a conference in DC in 1984 by Netanyahu. Since the 1990s when the “Clash of Civilisations” was introduced as the dominant discourse and order of the time the term became widely used. And the rest is history: the destruction of the region under the pretext of fighting Islamic terrorism. Israel and the US have been using the term Islamic terrorism for four decades now to justify genocide, killing, destruction and cleansing of the people of the region; they created all Islamic terrorist organisations and provided them with full financial, political and logistical support. The Mujahideen organisation in Afghanistan, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS were all created and paid for by the CIA, Mossad and MI6. There are dozens of videos in which Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, senior American and Israeli politicians, CIA personnel, journalists and reputable researchers have documented this history by presenting the facts. In addition, America, with the support of the West, brought the Islamic regime to power in Iran in 1979 and aborted the people's revolution. This is also a proven historical fact.
America, Israel and the West fed the people a fabricated narrative, created their own actors and unleashed them onto people. Like a Hollywood movie that was not made for the cinema screen but for the purpose of killing people and destroying a region. With this self-made monster of Islamic terrorism, they justified killing millions of people and causing a complete destruction in the entire region.
The whole world believed this story. The world fell into the trap of this false narrative and was mainly divided into two parts. Opponents of Islamic terrorism mainly sided with US and the West or imperialism, and on the other hand, opponents of American imperialism, people who had experienced the crimes of America, the West and Israel for decades, mainly tended towards the other pole.
In 2001, after the September 11th incident and the US and its allies' attack on Afghanistan, Mansour Hekmat in order to build a barrier against this trap, rightfully, identified American imperialism as State terrorism. He declared that two poles of terrorism, State and Islamic are threatening the world and they must be confronted by the third pole, the pole of freedom-loving and egalitarian humanity.
Now, twenty-five years later, after reaching the final stage of the new Middle East project, after all the historical facts that were previously called conspiracy theories in the mainstream media have been leaked, and recently parts of this project have been revealed in Epstein's emails, there should no longer be any doubt for any intelligent and truth-seeking person to see the true narrative and history of Islamic terrorism.
But among a large section of the Iranian left, this false narrative still plays a role. What Netanyahu calls the axis of evil is called the “axis of resistance” by the Islamic Republic and opponents of the United States and Israel. And this mouthful of a term has trapped the Iranian left movement. The section that calls itself a left movement but considers the United States to be the greater enemy is known as the supporters of the axis of resistance. This section is more active in Iran.
The other section of the left has allowed its rightful deep hatred of the Islamic Republic to blind its critical mind and practically swallow the entire American and Israeli narrative about the role, position, and power of this so-called axis of resistance. We have seen the destructive effect of this approach and vision, especially in the past two and a half years, since the beginning of the recent Israeli genocide in Gaza. Amidst the astonishment and criticism of the international left, the Iranian left has played a largely passive role in relation to the genocide in Gaza, in support of and solidarity with the people of Gaza and the region, and in condemnation of Israel, the United States, and the West. In relation to Palestine, the presence of Hamas and the fake support of the Islamic Republic were cited as an excuse and justification for this inaction.
This section of the Iranian left accepted Israel’s October 7 narrative: a narrative that has been exposed to be false by Israel’s own media. Sometimes, even after two years of genocide and brutal crimes, every time they condemned Israel, they also felt obliged to condemn Hamas. This tactic has, incidentally, ended up harming the leftist movement and benefiting the Islamic Republic and Hamas. In the eyes of justice-seeking, conscientious, humanitarian, and freedom-loving people, the Islamic Republic has acquired a positive image, and its false position as the axis of resistance is receiving wider acceptance in the region and the world. People, fed up with the killing, suppression, exploitation, occupation, and bullying of American imperialism, with the complicity of the West and the spearheading of Israel, automatically consider the force that fights this pole of violence and oppression to be their friend and ally. This is common logic and reasoning. The psychology and mentality of a large part of the people act in this way. Therefore, conscious, radical and communist forces must explain the situation and spread awareness.
However, majority of the Iranian left movement has adopted a more or less passive approach towards the movements seeking justice and the resistance of the oppressed against violence and killing from Palestine to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. It can be said that the Iranian left suffers from a degree of nationalism. It reacts immediately and with passion in regards to issues related to Iran and Kurdistan, but a kind of inertia prevails over the rest of the world. In addition, where the Islamic Republic, Hamas or the axis of resistance are involved, this passivity leads to complete boycott. This policy of passivity and boycott has severely damaged the image of the left movement and has made the Islamic Republic more popular.
Now a similar method has been adopted regarding the war of the US and Israel on the people and society of Iran. Accepting the narrative of the US and Israel, that the main cause of chaos and destruction in the region is the axis of resistance and at its head the Islamic Republic, has led the majority of the left to a wrong analysis of the war, in such a way that they call the Islamic Republic the main cause of this war and define the war between the Islamic Republic and the US and Israel.
This war is first and foremost a war against the people and society of Iran; a war of US imperialism spearheaded by Israel to destroy the society and the lives of the people. They intend to raze Iran to the ground like Syria, Libya and Iraq and destroy any kind of civilization in society. Creating a dark scenario is their primary goal. Eliminating or reshaping the Islamic Republic is also their other goal. As we have previously mentioned on various occasions, in the “New Middle East”, Islam’s position and role must change. Their project is to completely marginalise Islamic terrorism and bring modern Islam to the forefront. The sheikhdoms, in particular, have displayed some aspects of this new Islam on various occasions over the past few years.
It is clear that the Islamic Republic is in war to preserve its existence. And it is also clear that it is a repressive and reactionary state. But just because the Islamic regime is launching missiles in response to the bombings and killing of its leader does not make this war a “war between two reactionary states.” US and Israel attacked Iran - according to Pentagon they began military actions in the middle of the negotiation. This war has killed many, ruined many densely populated residential areas, hospitals and schools, ruined many important infrastructure of the country; it has created an environmental disaster which would take victims for decades. This is first and foremost a full force attack on the society and the people.
But why does it matter how we formulate the war? If you define a war as an attack by an aggressor against a people and a country the reaction of the people across the world will be different compared to when it is defined as a war between two reactionary states. In the first case people’s solidarity will be stronger and more active. If the two poles of reaction are fighting each other, the role of resistance and protest against that war will be diminished. In addition, the criminal and oppressive role of the United States and Israel will be largely whitewashed. Islamic Regime is a brutal and repressive dictatorship. All Iranian people and many people in the world are aware of this truth. We don’t need to add more crimes to its case. We have enough evidence to convict all its top echelon figures of crimes against humanity. Balance and coherence of analysis and a principled political stance dictate that we open our eyes to the truth, and look more sharply and critically at the world and its political institutions and equations.
In analysing the US/Israel’s war against Iran, we must also take the international reactions into consideration. One must see and understand how millions around the world who have been suffering in the hands of US imperialism and Israeli aggression, killings and ethnic cleansing of the region are actually jubilant in the way Islamic Regime is defending itself, attacking Israel and American bases in the region. It is decades that all the states in the region, the so-called “Arab” or “Muslim,” have tolerated Israeli crimes and genocide. This is automatic human reaction to rejoice when their enemy is being attacked. Therefore, as the Iranian progressive, left or Communist movement we need to voice our hatred against the war and the Islamic regime and bring awareness in the international anti-imperialist movement or among ordinary people who are daily repressed and oppressed by US/Israel.
By boycotting the anti-war, anti-US/Israel war against Iran because there are some Islamic regime’s flags in the protest, the left is shooting itself in the foot, as it only leaves the scene for the regime and the soc-called Axis of Resistance. A very vivid example of how Islamic Regime is becoming popular can be seen in Sudan. Following the Islamic regime's missile attacks, the United Arab Emirates has suffered blows that have forced it to withdraw its support for the RSF terrorist group in Sudan. This terrorist group has been responsible for widespread killing, rape, starvation, and displacement of the Sudanese people. The United Arab Emirates is plundering Sudan's gold and diamonds. The recent withdrawal has reduced the atmosphere of death and killing in Sudan, and people are taking a breather. It is reported that celebrations and joy have begun in Sudan. It should be easy for a communist and Marxist to understand these conditions, but a significant part of the left in Iran has turned its back on this reality and has condemned, rejected and branded anyone who rejoices in the attacks by the Islamic Republic with the axis of resistance.
This part of the left has fallen between two stools! Soon it will be completely irrelevant in the Iranian and regional politics. We must understand these conditions; try to reveal the true and criminal nature of the Islamic Republic to the widest possible section of the people of the world. We must try to show that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. We must try to join the world justice-seeking, freedom-seeking and humanitarian movement. We must try to expose and discredit the Islamic Republic. By confronting the war and bullying of America and Israel, as well as by organising the people to confront the dangers of war and maintain hope and solidarity within the country and help organise a broad anti-war movement abroad, we can protect society from complete collapse and destitute, and in appropriate circumstances, use our organised power against the regime and for its revolutionary overthrow.
No to war,
No to Islamic Republic!
No to foreign intervention!
Power in the hands of the people!
⏩ Asar Majed is the Chairperson of Organisation for Women’s Liberation.
In this week’s bulletin
⬤ Ukraine defence update.
⬤ Ukraine and Palestine.
⬤ Russia “Spring” trial/.
⬤ Try Me For Treason: the film.
⬤ Russia fails to silence Crimean Tatars.
⬤ Could Belarus join war?
⬤ Kherson torture diary.
News from the territories occupied by Russia
Russia banned the voice of the Crimean Tatars — the Mejlis — 10 years ago, but failed to silence it (Crimea Platform, April 26th)
Russian FSB tortured Kherson men and fabricated “terrorism” case against them (Meduza, 24 April)
26-year-old Ukrainian sentenced to 22 years for alleged ‘plan to kill’ a Russian occupation prison chief (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24th)
Russian occupation court sentences 66-year-old doctor to 14 years for supporting Ukraine through war bonds (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24th)
Mission Discusses the Situation of Women’s Rights in Temporarily Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
EU Imposes Sanctions on Individuals Involved in Illegal Excavations in Crimea and the Militarisation of Ukrainian Children (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Seyran Murtaza (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
From hell: the secret diary of a Ukrainian imprisoned and tortured by the FSB in Kherson (Mediazona, 23 April)
Russia stages fourth ‘trial’ of 67-year-old Crimean political prisoner to ensure he dies in captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 23rd)
Russia abducts Crimean Tatar trying to see dying aunt and accuses her of ‘treason’ for donations to Ukrainian Army (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 22nd)
Birthday of illegally imprisoned Andrii Kuliievych (Crimea Platform, April 22nd)
Weekly Update On The Situation In Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 21st)
Ukrainian ex-military man sentenced to 18 years in Russian-occupied Crimea on surreal ‘treason’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 21st)
Russia’s war for demographic control (Engelsberg Ideas, April 14th)
News from Ukraine
How Ukraine solved the hardest problem in defence (Exponential View, April 24th)
Miners’ union new organisation near the front line (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, 8 April)
War-related news from Russia
Required Reading: Russia’s new mandatory history textbook offers a glimpse of the present (The Insider, April 28th)
Russian losses in the war updated (Mediazona, 24 April)
Toxic smoke and ‘oil’ pours from fire at Russian oil terminal (Meduza, 24 April)
Censorship is reshaping Russia’s publishing industry (The Insider, 24 April)
Putin restores Soviet secret police founder Dzerzhinsky's name to FSB Academy (Ukrainska Pravda, April 22nd)
The Verdict on Spring: The Vesna Case (Russian Reader, April 21st)
Security forces raid Russia's largest publisher and detain its CEO in ‘LGBT propaganda’ case (Novaya Gazeta, April 21st)
Analysis and comment
Russian ministry spokeswoman in lying attack on Latvian “Nazism” (The Insider, 25 April)
Zelensky claims danger: Might Belarus join Russia in the war? (iStories, 22 April)
Some facts: Ukraine, Russia, Palestine and Israel (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 21 April)
Research of human rights abuses
Growing up waiting for their fathers: photo exhibition on children of Crimean Tatar political prisoners opens in Berlin (Zmina, April 20th)
How to prevent torture in places of detention: ZMINA held a specialised training (Zmina, April 21st)
ZMINA joined the presentation of the Crimea Global outcomes and the discussion of plans for 2026 (Zmina, April 17th)
Upcoming events
Sunday 17 May: premiere of Try Me For Treason, the film. In-person premiere in London: 6.30pm, Upstairs room, the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QY (arrive for drinks from 6.0pm). Youtube premiere at 8.0pm. Information at trymefortreason.org.
News from the territories occupied by Russia
Russia banned the voice of the Crimean Tatars — the Mejlis — 10 years ago, but failed to silence it (Crimea Platform, April 26th)
Russian FSB tortured Kherson men and fabricated “terrorism” case against them (Meduza, 24 April)
26-year-old Ukrainian sentenced to 22 years for alleged ‘plan to kill’ a Russian occupation prison chief (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24th)
Russian occupation court sentences 66-year-old doctor to 14 years for supporting Ukraine through war bonds (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 24th)
Mission Discusses the Situation of Women’s Rights in Temporarily Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
EU Imposes Sanctions on Individuals Involved in Illegal Excavations in Crimea and the Militarisation of Ukrainian Children (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Seyran Murtaza (Crimea Platform, April 24th)
From hell: the secret diary of a Ukrainian imprisoned and tortured by the FSB in Kherson (Mediazona, 23 April)
Russia stages fourth ‘trial’ of 67-year-old Crimean political prisoner to ensure he dies in captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 23rd)
Russia abducts Crimean Tatar trying to see dying aunt and accuses her of ‘treason’ for donations to Ukrainian Army (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 22nd)
Birthday of illegally imprisoned Andrii Kuliievych (Crimea Platform, April 22nd)
Weekly Update On The Situation In Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, April 21st)
Ukrainian ex-military man sentenced to 18 years in Russian-occupied Crimea on surreal ‘treason’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 21st)
Russia’s war for demographic control (Engelsberg Ideas, April 14th)
News from Ukraine
How Ukraine solved the hardest problem in defence (Exponential View, April 24th)
Miners’ union new organisation near the front line (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, 8 April)
War-related news from Russia
Required Reading: Russia’s new mandatory history textbook offers a glimpse of the present (The Insider, April 28th)
Russian losses in the war updated (Mediazona, 24 April)
Toxic smoke and ‘oil’ pours from fire at Russian oil terminal (Meduza, 24 April)
Censorship is reshaping Russia’s publishing industry (The Insider, 24 April)
Putin restores Soviet secret police founder Dzerzhinsky's name to FSB Academy (Ukrainska Pravda, April 22nd)
The Verdict on Spring: The Vesna Case (Russian Reader, April 21st)
Security forces raid Russia's largest publisher and detain its CEO in ‘LGBT propaganda’ case (Novaya Gazeta, April 21st)
Analysis and comment
Russian ministry spokeswoman in lying attack on Latvian “Nazism” (The Insider, 25 April)
Zelensky claims danger: Might Belarus join Russia in the war? (iStories, 22 April)
Some facts: Ukraine, Russia, Palestine and Israel (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 21 April)
Research of human rights abuses
Growing up waiting for their fathers: photo exhibition on children of Crimean Tatar political prisoners opens in Berlin (Zmina, April 20th)
How to prevent torture in places of detention: ZMINA held a specialised training (Zmina, April 21st)
ZMINA joined the presentation of the Crimea Global outcomes and the discussion of plans for 2026 (Zmina, April 17th)
Upcoming events
Sunday 17 May: premiere of Try Me For Treason, the film. In-person premiere in London: 6.30pm, Upstairs room, the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QY (arrive for drinks from 6.0pm). Youtube premiere at 8.0pm. Information at trymefortreason.org.
🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.
We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.The bulletin is also stored on line here.
To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.
We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.
The bulletin is also stored on line here.
To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.
The founder of a prominent podcast critical of the Mormon Church is now being sued by the Church for trademark and copyright infringement… as if there’s any way listeners might be confused between the podcast and the subject of it.
John Dehlin began the Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005 when he was questioning whether or not to leave the LDS Church. It soon became a haven for other critics and former Mormons—and a landing space for listeners who harbored the same doubts but knew the Mormon Church wasn’t a safe place to get their questions answered in a meaningful way. (True story: I’ve met a lot of ex-Mormons over the years, and my first question to them is inevitably whether they’ve heard of Dehlin and his podcast. The answer is, almost without exception, yes. It’s the podcast you listen to when you’re walking away from the religion.)
In 2015, Dehlin was officially kicked out of the Church . . .
Continue @ Friendly Atheist.
Shane Vaughn Makes Up Details About Correspondents' Dinner Attack
There are few MAGA activists as blindly committed to President Donald Trump as admitted "cult follower" pastor Shane Vaughn, who insists that Trump was raised up by God to become king of America.
It was no surprise then that Vaughn was distraught over the attack at last weekend's White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in which a gunman attempted to break through security with the intention of assassinating Trump and other top government officials.
Vaughn was apparently so distraught that it seems he couldn't even bring himself to learn what actually happened and decided instead to just make up a story about God performing a "bona fide miracle" to save Trump.
"All of our leadership was sitting ducks in a closed-in room," Vaughn said during a recent broadcast.
After providing some details about the suspect, Cole Allen, Vaughn then marveled at the supposed "miracle" that saved Trump's life.
It was no surprise then that Vaughn was distraught over the attack at last weekend's White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in which a gunman attempted to break through security with the intention of assassinating Trump and other top government officials.
Vaughn was apparently so distraught that it seems he couldn't even bring himself to learn what actually happened and decided instead to just make up a story about God performing a "bona fide miracle" to save Trump.
"All of our leadership was sitting ducks in a closed-in room," Vaughn said during a recent broadcast.
All someone had to do was stand up, grab their rifle, and literally, pow, pow, pow, and the entire leadership of our nation would be killed in one sitting.
After providing some details about the suspect, Cole Allen, Vaughn then marveled at the supposed "miracle" that saved Trump's life.
Continue @ RWW.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
It came in the form of a simple text from his forever sidekick and good friend Gerard Gearon that said our chara has passed.
Even though we all knew Seán was very ill with cancer, he was one of those people that when the news finally comes it is still a shock. Because men and women as full of life, of courage, of love and of intelligence like Seán Clinton always strike us that they are invincible. Finding out our heroes are mere mortals is always a shock.
And that's what Seán was to Republicans of my generation, no matter the affiliation or particular strategy you adhere to now. He was someone we looked up to because unlike a lot of people Seán didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. And not just when it was the popular thing to do.
Whether it was in the Provisional IRA or in what came after it, Seán was to the forefront. He was a leader. He was a Volunteer's Volunteer. He wouldn't ask someone to do what he wouldn't do himself. In fact if he asked anyone to do anything, he would be with them making sure it was done right - not sitting somewhere safe waiting on word back.
As a teenager I knew who Seán Clinton was, and had heard the stories. These will no doubt be told over and over again in the coming days. The way he not only defended the communities of the Lower Ormeau, the Market and Short Strand from loyalists - but retaliated against them as well. How he had been an operator against the forces of the State. And of course, how he was "The Last Gunman" from the famous picture in 1997 of an IRA Volunteer in the Lower Ormeau that he was proud to hail from.
When Republicans in Belfast reorganised in the aftermath of treacherous decisions, most notably with regards to policing, Seán was the leader. He brought a common sense, no frills, no waffle, task based approach to leadership - qualities honed when in a leadership position previously within the Provisional IRA.
When Martin McGuinness infamously said that he didn't know where those opposed to Sinn Féin were "when the war was on", we only had to look at people like Seán that fought the war to know that McGuinness was a liar.
As I got to know Seán it was clear he had a very sharp and astute mind, naturally inquisitive and not afraid to ask difficult questions - of friend and foe. He was also proof that you can be a realist and an idealist.
Outside of politics he had an interest in GAA, Celtic and, like most of the Clintons, boxing. Boxing skills were something he needed on the odd night out too, and he wont mind me saying that. Especially on one infamous night in Ardoyne, but others can tell that story!!
Seán loved his family first and foremost and was a committed family man. His loss will be felt most keenly by them and my deepest condolences go to them. The last time I spoke to him was in the airport as they were heading over together to watch Celtic, despite the toll his illness was taking on him. It was clear that he was grateful for every minute he was getting to enjoy with them all after his diagnosis. Even then the first words out of his mouth were concern for others, "still getting tortured by them cunts?" and asking about another comrade who was having a hard time of it. My heart is broke for them all and hope they have the strength over the next while.
They say don't meet your heroes, for they'll disappoint you. Well they're liars. Because Seán Clinton was one of mine and I not only got to meet him, I got to know him and love him. He fought his illness like he fought the occupation of our country. With pride, dignity and thinking of those around him.
Unfortunately it was a battle he could not win. He will be a big loss to his friends, family and the Republicans he called his comrades. We were all the better for knowing him.
Slán Seán, another good guy gone 💚
Even though we all knew Seán was very ill with cancer, he was one of those people that when the news finally comes it is still a shock. Because men and women as full of life, of courage, of love and of intelligence like Seán Clinton always strike us that they are invincible. Finding out our heroes are mere mortals is always a shock.
And that's what Seán was to Republicans of my generation, no matter the affiliation or particular strategy you adhere to now. He was someone we looked up to because unlike a lot of people Seán didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. And not just when it was the popular thing to do.
Whether it was in the Provisional IRA or in what came after it, Seán was to the forefront. He was a leader. He was a Volunteer's Volunteer. He wouldn't ask someone to do what he wouldn't do himself. In fact if he asked anyone to do anything, he would be with them making sure it was done right - not sitting somewhere safe waiting on word back.
As a teenager I knew who Seán Clinton was, and had heard the stories. These will no doubt be told over and over again in the coming days. The way he not only defended the communities of the Lower Ormeau, the Market and Short Strand from loyalists - but retaliated against them as well. How he had been an operator against the forces of the State. And of course, how he was "The Last Gunman" from the famous picture in 1997 of an IRA Volunteer in the Lower Ormeau that he was proud to hail from.
When Republicans in Belfast reorganised in the aftermath of treacherous decisions, most notably with regards to policing, Seán was the leader. He brought a common sense, no frills, no waffle, task based approach to leadership - qualities honed when in a leadership position previously within the Provisional IRA.
When Martin McGuinness infamously said that he didn't know where those opposed to Sinn Féin were "when the war was on", we only had to look at people like Seán that fought the war to know that McGuinness was a liar.
As I got to know Seán it was clear he had a very sharp and astute mind, naturally inquisitive and not afraid to ask difficult questions - of friend and foe. He was also proof that you can be a realist and an idealist.
Outside of politics he had an interest in GAA, Celtic and, like most of the Clintons, boxing. Boxing skills were something he needed on the odd night out too, and he wont mind me saying that. Especially on one infamous night in Ardoyne, but others can tell that story!!
Seán loved his family first and foremost and was a committed family man. His loss will be felt most keenly by them and my deepest condolences go to them. The last time I spoke to him was in the airport as they were heading over together to watch Celtic, despite the toll his illness was taking on him. It was clear that he was grateful for every minute he was getting to enjoy with them all after his diagnosis. Even then the first words out of his mouth were concern for others, "still getting tortured by them cunts?" and asking about another comrade who was having a hard time of it. My heart is broke for them all and hope they have the strength over the next while.
They say don't meet your heroes, for they'll disappoint you. Well they're liars. Because Seán Clinton was one of mine and I not only got to meet him, I got to know him and love him. He fought his illness like he fought the occupation of our country. With pride, dignity and thinking of those around him.
Unfortunately it was a battle he could not win. He will be a big loss to his friends, family and the Republicans he called his comrades. We were all the better for knowing him.
Slán Seán, another good guy gone 💚
⏩Daimhin Ó Fionghail is a republican activist.
Anthony McIntyre ⚽On the previous two occasions that the Drogs fielded Dublin teams they managed a draw.
So the expectation on the way over to the game was a similar outcome, Jay feeling it would be 1-1. Myself and Paddy called into the Windmill Tavern before going into the match. I had a glass of wine, and as he was in the driver's seat he opted for something different. We had hardly taken our seats in the stadium, before our confidence in a draw evaporated in front of our eyes. Not even a minute in and Pat's were a goal to the good. A stunning finish in the 36th second, it didn't win our appreciation, coming at us more like an electric shock.
We came to the ground - knowing how hard the Dublin sides are to play against - expecting at least a fight. It soon got worse and by half time, the visitors were three up, the home side not having managed a shot on goal until the thirty second minute. That sinking felling that accompanies dark visions of rooting around in the relegation zone shuddered its way though my mind.
At the break, sucking on my mints, I commented to Paddy that I feared Pat's might do to Drogs what the Claret and Blue had done to Sligo two seasons back, when the Bit O 'Red were sent back to Connacht having taken a 7-0 pasting. To my surprise and relief it wasn't to be. Drogheda came out for the second half like a team possessed whatever Kevin Doherty had bawled at them in the dressing room. To boot he brought on three subs. With former captain Ryan Brennan on the pitch, a steel rod was inserted down the spine of the team. A side more known for its defensive posture suddenly went on all out attack.
At the break, sucking on my mints, I commented to Paddy that I feared Pat's might do to Drogs what the Claret and Blue had done to Sligo two seasons back, when the Bit O 'Red were sent back to Connacht having taken a 7-0 pasting. To my surprise and relief it wasn't to be. Drogheda came out for the second half like a team possessed whatever Kevin Doherty had bawled at them in the dressing room. To boot he brought on three subs. With former captain Ryan Brennan on the pitch, a steel rod was inserted down the spine of the team. A side more known for its defensive posture suddenly went on all out attack.
But for some fantastic goalkeeping Drogheda could have secured a draw. The solitary goal they did get came paradoxically from a keeper error which was seized upon by Brandon Kavanagh who converted his opportunity in a fashion reminiscent of Real Madrid's Arda Güler. So aggressive and dominant were the home side that Pat's were not allowed out of their own half despite the urgings of Stephen Kenny as he paced his technical area, concern etched on his face.
The second half performance was so good that leaving the stadium at the game's end, 1-3 losers, our spirits were much higher than they had been an hour earlier. The Drogs actually showed what they are capable of when they ditch the Drawda mindset and go for goal. What bounce we derived from the second half performance was to be tempered by a Sligo Rovers victory over bottom club Waterford the following day. That result left the Drogs in play off position, something nobody expected at the start of the season, but with nine matches on the trot and not a victory to show it was inevitable.
That ability to play attack minded soccer was evident the following week when away at Shelbourne, Drogheda recovered from a two goal deficit to emerge as 3-4 winners, a remarkable achievement. While I missed last night's home game against Sligo Rovers due to a stomach bug, the claret and blue secured another victory which lifted them out of the bottom two slots, a huge relief to the fans who have endured quite a lot of anguish in recent times, not just as a result of a constant slippage towards the drop but also down to the fallout caused by the way Joanna Byrne was pushed off the board on the insistence of the owners, the Trivela group.
Shamrock Rovers on Monday at Tallaght Stadium will be a big challenge which could easily see the Drogs rise out of the relegation zone halted. I will be in Dublin but for another event so while I will not get to see the game, I will most certainly keep an eye on the score. Despite the tedium of draws, this is one where 0-0 would be a satisfactory outcome.
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| 10-April-2026 |
In 1947, while describing the crimes of the judicial system of Nazi Germany, Telford Taylor, lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, opined, “[t]he dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”
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| Israel’s Death Penalty Law for Palestinians by Seth Tobocman. |
With these words, Taylor laid bare the historical context of where and how a state executed, not on the basis of equal application of law for the most serious of crimes, but adopted an institutional cover for mass slaughter of a concocted enemy, all dressed up in a courtroom pretext.
Long before the Nazi party filled its chambers of death with the ashes of many millions of those of different faith, politics, ethnicity and identity, in 1919, Hitler wrote, “the ultimate goal must definitely be the removal of the Jews altogether.”
To accomplish this end, on August 20, 1942, Hitler appointed Otto Thierack, a fervent Nazi, as Reich Minister of Justice. With this appointment, Hitler ensured the death of any independent fact and law-based judiciary in Germany. Substituting in its stead one that fled from an objective rules-based order to become a rubber stamp, finding verdicts of guilt and imposing sentences according to Nazi principles and ideology. In defining the rule of law and the role of jurists within it, Thierack announced an aim not all that different from the very one which echoes throughout the halls of the Israeli Knesset today:
Those in the administration of justice must recognize that it is their job to destroy traitors and saboteurs on the home front… The home front is responsible for maintaining peace, quiet, and order as support for the war front. This heavy responsibility falls especially to German judges. Every punishment is fundamentally more important in war than in peace.
In his treatise The War Path: Hitler’s Germany 1933-1939 David Irving describes with chilling contemporary familiarity, the construct of the Nazi justice system, one in which findings of guilt and imposition of sentence were determined beforehand not by established evidence or controlling law, but based upon what were considered to be “serious political offenses” seen as an affront to fundamental Nazi faith. Known as the “People’s Courts,”:
its judges were more likely to hand down death penalties to members of the most organised opposition groups, those involved in violent resistance against the state and defendants with characteristics repellent to core Nazi beliefs.
Finding Oswald Rothaug, a Nazi jurist, guilty of crimes against humanity among his many international law violations, the Tribunal cited a case where he imposed the death penalty on a member of a “deviant race” who was accused of “racial defilement”. In another similar case of persecution, Rothaug sentenced a slave laborer to death because “the inferiority of the defendant is clear as he is a part of Polish sub-humanity.”
Writing on the “Jewish Question” long before he became grand executioner of many tens of millions of “deviant” races, Hitler preached:
For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to–one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.
Tragically, reality dictates a finding that when it comes to attacks on civilians of a different race, religion, culture or identity, Hitler’s deadly vitriol was by no means sui generis. Not even a century later when debating the “Palestinian question,” the words and goals of most Israeli lawmakers are very much a mirror image of those of their counterparts back in the day when they said heil Hitler to the grandparents of the very people who sit in the Knesset today or who carry out their hateful message while attired in black robes or military dress. Against the desperate crafted shout of antisemite, evidence shows that more than a decade ago, Israeli leaders … both political and religious … provided contemporary meaning to Mein Kampf’s deadly vision and voice. As noted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Israeli politicians and rabbis alike have spilt venomous verse thought by many, but spoken by few in public:
- “[A] Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he’s gay.”[1]
- “Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring.”[2]
- “[Most of the] Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”[3]
- “Goyim [non- Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel… Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”[4]
- “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”[5]
- “[Non-Jews are] murderers, thieves and senseless… Today they say there are eight billion people in the world. And what are they all? Murderers, thieves and senseless. Did God create the world for these murderers? The world was created for the righteous people who study Torah. That is the purpose of creation … The nations of the world have no redeeming qualities.”[6]
- “Arab culture is very cruel… Arabs use different codes and violent norms that amount to an ideology.”[7]
- “Racism originated in the Torah… The land of Israel is designated for the people of Israel.”[8]
- “Hurting small [non-Jewish] children makes sense if it’s clear that they’ll grow up to harm us, and in such a situation – the injury will be directed at them of all people.”[9]
- “If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it is appropriate for [Jews and Arabs] to live together.”[10]
The echo of national socialism surely smiles with perverse pride in seeing what it has passed on to the children and grandchildren of its own victims. Today, an honest look at the “nation state” of Israel, with its poisonous preaching and incessant deadly deeds, proves the venom of Hitler has so seeped its way into the very fabric of Israeli society, as to defy any hint of collective decency or the reality of justice. Given the voice of its leadership and the damning shared silence of its masses, Israel will only grow more toxic in the years ahead, absent a structural crash and a complete rewrite of its existence:
- “[B]eat them up not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until its unbearable.”[11]
- “[W]e must defend ourselves against the wild beasts”[12]
- “Palestinians are beasts they are not human.”[13]
- “Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done- we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head.”[14]
- “I am happy to be a fascist”[15]
- “They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise more little snakes will be raised there.”[16]
- “[T]he Palestinian like threat harbors cancer like attributes that have to be severed. There are all kinds of solutions to cancer. Some say it is necessary to amputate organs but at the moments I am applying chemotherapy.”[17]
- “[S]end Gaza back to the Middle Ages”[18]
- “We have crushed them. There are tens of thousands of dead … ‘The dogs and the cats ate them because no one collected them.”[19]
Like its convicted ancestor of the Third Reich, the Israeli justice system of today is by intent and process designed to protect, indeed further, the supremacy of the Jewish state and its Jewish citizenry. That Israel exalts a debauched home-grown screed of Judaism to the exclusion of all other faiths is no myth. To be sure, the messianic cloth of Israeli Judaism provides an additional demonic cover to the usual meaning of theocracy.
That there exist dozens of laws designed to protect and to benefit Israeli Jews to the exclusion of all other non-Jewish citizens is beyond debate; indeed it’s very much settled by the literal verse of its numerous supremacist statutes and regulations. To find tens of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners disappeared through a military “justice” system that detains them indefinitely … with children, the elderly and those in between sitting uncharged, unprosecuted, unconvicted, unsentenced, and battered and bruised, has long been the norm blinked by the Israeli civil society and its courts. Yet, with the Knesset’s most recent execution order, it cannot be denied that Israeli justice, when viewed against that of the Nazis, is not just a difference without distinction, but dispositive evidence that in Israel, once again, the dagger of the assassin is concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.
As almost another national holiday in the making, on the day the Israeli murder bill became law, many members showed up to vote wearing gold nooses to the Knesset session. Following its passage, as he popped open a bottle of champagne, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir summed up the sentiment of the state’s fascistic political and religious leadership … “[s]oon we will count them one by one … from today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the state of Israel will take their life.” That is, of course, unless they are Israeli Jews. On its face the plain wording of the statute and its intended reach necessarily excludes all Israeli Jews from the exposure to its penalty.
In the relevant part, the purpose of the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 5786–2026:
is to establish a death sentence for terrorists who have carried out murderous terrorist attacks, for the sake of the struggle against terrorism — inter alia, for the protection of the State of Israel, its citizens, and its residents.
Applicable almost exclusively to the Occupied West Bank (referred to in the law as “Judea and Samaria”) and its Palestinian population, the Act continues the double standard that sends Palestinians charged or even suspected of violation of Israeli laws in the West Bank to military tribunals while Israeli Jews accused of the identical conduct in the same venue find their way to civilian courts, with civilian judges and civilian justice.
By its requisite intent clause, Law 5786–2026 is limited to those who kill with the specific aim of negating the existence of the state of Israel. Thus, those Israeli settlers guilty of the recent murder of 19-year-old Palestinian American Nasrallah Abu Siyam in the occupied West Bank, if ever charged, are beyond the reach of the law. The same amnesty applies to the armed Jewish settlers who, earlier this year, murdered several other Palestinians during a raid on their village of Abu Falah in the occupied territory. Core to their ethnic cleansing agenda, settler murders of Palestinians in their local West Bank communities date back many decades.
For example, more than 40 years ago, a mob of settlers murdered an 11-year-old Palestinian girl from Nablus. As justification, the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community at the time apparently cited a Talmudic text justifying the murder of a child who “will grow up to become your enemy.” Under 5786–2026, those rampaging assassins could not be held accountable.
The same immunity from the reach of the law would have applied to the massacre carried out by Israeli-American physician Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Attired in an Israeli military uniform, Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians during the Jewish festival of Purim in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron. Anything but a challenge to the existence of Israel, before his rampage, Goldstein, quoting from Ecclesiastes, reportedly said “There is a time to kill and a time to heal”. Following the massacre, his supporters described Goldstein as a “saint” and his blood bath as an act of “martyrdom” or a “sanctification of God’s name.”
So, too, the new death penalty could not have been applied to those settlers who burned to death a toddler in his family home in the Nablus village of Duma in 2015. Nor would it today have application to Israeli medic Elor Azaria, who, some six years ago, executed twenty-one-year-old Abdul Fatah al-Sharif while he lay injured and motionless on the ground after stabbing, but not seriously injuring, an Israeli soldier in occupied Hebron. Approaching his semi-conscious victim, Azaria cocked his rifle and executed him with a single shot to his head. For his murder, Azaria served some nine months in prison.
These are but a few of the endless examples of Palestinians executed by settlers/soldiers in the occupied West Bank over the last 15 years alone for little more than their mere presence, or words. Numbering more than 1000 killed in the last several years alone, under the legislative intent of the law, NONE of these assassins (if ever charged) could face execution for their butchery.
Although lacking a dispositive definition under international law, there is a legal consensus that terrorism is criminal violence intended to intimidate a population (or a government) with the specific intention to advance a political, religious, or ideological cause. Although tailor-made to describe generations of West Bank settler terrorists, their statutory exemption from Israel’s latest assault on equal accountability is as palpable as are the massive number of Israeli Jews who find sheer pleasure in the execution of Palestinians in furtherance of their own political, religious, or ideological invective.
In the relevant part, Israel’s definition under its original Counterterrorism Law of 2016 defines a terrorist act as an act that constitutes an offense, or a threat to carry out such an act, which meets the following standards:
Tailor-made for charging the Israeli state as a whole with acts of terrorism in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, a plain read of this decade-old law with no statutory limit, shows that while thousands of Jewish settlers have been a veritable primer on terrorism, it’s been applied almost exclusively against Palestinians. Against this de facto selective distortion, stands the de jure reality that the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 5786–2026 is, on its face, stripped of all pretense. By design, it is intended to find application solely against Palestinians.
That there is a double standard in the application of Israeli law is neither new nor isolated to so-called acts of terrorism. At its core, there is a deliberate double standard of justice, in all things at all times, with Israelis obtaining privileged status in civilian courts decorated with black robes and a gavel and Palestinians guilty, or liable as charged, in all things at all times, in military courts decorated with nothing but battle dress and guns.
As B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, recently wrote of the military court system:
Several years earlier, the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights Office indicted the West Bank military justice system noting that “[s]ince the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli military has either taken part in or failed to protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, including, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, property damage, destruction and unlawful appropriation, discrimination, harassment, and threats.” Continuing on, it stated “[i]n the occupied West Bank, the functions of police, investigator, prosecutor, and judge are vested in the same hierarchical institution – the Israeli military” that ultimately sits as judge and jury over Palestinians suspects. This translates into a situation where military judges in military courts consistently provide legal and judicial cover for acts of torture, cruel and degrading treatment against Palestinian detainees carried out by their colleagues in the armed forces and intelligence agencies. It also makes legal defence impossible.”
Putting aside the uniform, bias and cover, from a practical standpoint, the military court system that has controlled “justice” in the occupied territories since 1967 and which will be tasked with likely all death penalty prosecutions, presents a procedural gamut far less protective of the rights of the accused than in civil courts… those set aside solely for cases involving Israeli citizens. Thus, because in civil courts there are higher due process standards arising from “basic laws” and criminal procedures, an accused is provided a stronger guarantee of rights compared to the rules handed down, at times, on a case-by-case basis by military orders. In civil court proceedings, those accused of crimes must be quickly charged and have largely unimpeded access to lawyers and family members. In contrast, those Palestinians swept up by the Military process can be held without charge for longer periods (up to 90 days) and typically face long periods of restricted access to legal counsel.
Civil proceedings are held in Hebrew and, at times Arabic, but, in any event, have available translation protocols. Military court proceedings are held entirely in Hebrew, often without translation support, with prosecutions driven by coerced confessions lacking legal counsel, with signed documents written exclusively in Hebrew, which most defendants do not understand. Under Israeli civil law, the age of majority is 18, while in the military system, 16-year-old Palestinians are treated as adults. In addition, civil law requires specially trained police for juvenile interrogations; no such requirement exists in military prosecutions.
Perhaps most telling of all is that, unlike the civil court system, almost all Palestinians accused of even the most minor breach of law, although “presumed innocent,” are routinely remanded by military judges to custody until the proceedings are concluded. These individuals are not serving a prison sentence, have not even been sentenced, and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet, other than in cases involving traffic violations, this practice is the rule rather than the exception in the military court system. By its very nature, this coercive linchpin of the military court system induces guilty pleas from even the innocent for no reason other than to gain their freedom.
Summing up the worth and rights of Palestinian children, Defense of Children International Palestine notes: “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections. Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year.”
In what is very much the mirror image of The Terrorism Act (No. 83 of 1967), a South African statute that allowed for indefinite, no-trial detention based on a very broad definition of terrorism, it is estimated that as many of 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under military orders, including some 13,000 children, without formal charges or trial. Under Israeli “security” provisions, a person, including a child, can be held without formal accusation on the grounds that they plan to break the law in the future. Like the apartheid system of South Africa, because this shackle is crafted as preventive, it has no time limits.
Do not misconstrue any preference for the due process “protections” of the Israeli civil court system over the physical and emotional torture process of the state’s military courts. After all, history is littered with the institutional failures of Israeli civil courts. These courts serve not by virtue of any constitutional edict or independence, for in Israel, there is no such document. Rather, they sit and perform by the whims of the Knesset, which can and does, with regularity, pass laws that convert these jurists into mere messengers of political winds.
Thus, the “necessity defense,” more aptly known as the “ticking time bomb exception,” announced in the case of Abu Ghosh v. Attorney-General, speaks volumes about the blind eye of the Israeli judiciary. In Abu Ghosh, the Israeli High Court approved the use of “exceptional interrogation methods” by state security upon suspicious Palestinians, which not only imposed a high evidentiary burden on those who sought judicial relief for torture, but required a light burden of proof on the state when claiming necessity. As defined by international law, this judicial test violated its prohibition against torture. So, too, once again in violation of settled international law, the Israeli civil courts have endorsed the use of collective punishment … long defined as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In case after case, the High Court has upheld or walked away from matters where the military seeks vengeance from families uninvolved in the acts of the few. As noted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur:
The list is endless. Whether it’s forcing Palestinians to pay the cost of the destruction of their own homes and businesses; ignoring the 2004 ICJ finding that the walls/barriers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory violate international law; laughing at Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits occupying powers from transferring its population into occupied territory; and a clear finding that the most recent onslaught in Gaza constitutes genocide, Israel and its civilian court system have been wittingly complicit in a steady stream of violations of international law not seen since the days of the Third Reich. And now, with another deadly sweeping mock at international law, Israel says we will execute Palestinians and Palestinians alone.
On its face, with appalling pride, the Knesset has now set the stage for the execution by noose of thousands of Palestinians who have never had a day in court, let alone one overseen by independent jurists who ruled not by a military faith and race-based presumption of guilt, but by due process. Like its predecessor, the ticking time bomb exemption, the murder Palestinian law provides absolute discretion to soldiers dressed up with a gavel not only to say guilty as charged, but to impose a sentence of death to be carried out within 90 days of conviction. This military procedure is akin to the administrative process employed by the Nazis in their People’s Court, which typically had jurisdiction over political offenses, including black marketeering, work slowdowns and “defeatism.” On one such occasion Judge Roland Freisler, who had sentenced more than 5000 people to death, went so far as to send the family of Joseph Muller, a Catholic priest, a bill for his execution by guillotine.
The recently enacted murder of Palestinians is illegal under international law. To be sure that this law oozes with targeted execution of Palestinians, cannot be debated. With its specific intent, it applies solely to those who cause the death of another “with the aim of negating the existence of the State of Israel.” As noted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
In other respects, the legislation offends settled international law through its palpable attack on essential procedural and substantive safeguards such as notice and specificity as to key elements of an offense, or what can constitute witting complicity in it. Thus, while the law places within its deadly reach co-conspirators who “assist” in lethal attacks, it fails to define with requisite specificity just what to assist means. Is mere proscribed speech, or writing in support of resistance in general a sufficient overt act under the law? Does providing a car, or a weapon or loaning some money to one involved in a lethal act constitute a sufficient overt act in furtherance of the crime to expose a donor to the stretch of the hangman’s noose? Not at all an abstract debate, Israel is, after all, a land where collective punishment of those uninvolved in a crime is very much the norm and not the exception.
Going further, upon conviction, a resident of the West Bank “who is not an Israeli citizen or Israeli resident … his [default] sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” By design, the law not only removes any and all settler assassins from its substantive reach, but illegally strips the presiding military panel of sentencing discretion other than in undefined “exceptional circumstances” and where limits are placed on evidence of mitigation to meet that vague burden.
And what of the military court itself? Where unanimity of finding was once required of three jurist panels often passing verdict and sentence in far less serious cases involving but a “nominal” penalty, here, where the noose is the mandated punishment, a mere majority consensus of the judges is required. Continuing on, even in the absence of a request from prosecutors (themselves dressed in military uniform), historically, this is a court system with a conviction rate of almost 100%, built largely of coerced admissions/confessions that were presented for signature to long-detained Palestinians entirely in Hebrew. Isolated, intimidated, sleepless, hungry and subjected to physical and mental abuse with regularity, these often child prisoners are told to sign here, and do so without the presence and advice of counsel.
In what is very much a race to the finality of the hangman’s noose, 5786–2026 impermissibly limits rights of appeal, denies the possibility of pardon and no matter how uncertain the evidence, or arbitrary the penalty, sets an execution mandate of no more than 90 days in violation of the 6-month requirement of Article 75 of the Fourth Geneva Convention with its intent to ensure a reasonable opportunity to pursue appeals.
Most alarming, while it appears, albeit in ambiguous wording, that the law prohibits a revisit to cases of those already convicted and sentenced for a lethal offense, given the supremacist drive of the Knesset, and the obedient silence of the Israeli High Court, the prospect for an amendment permitting post hoc execution looms large. Moreover, in the absence of any controlling wording to the contrary, there stands the real possibility of a retroactive application of the law to thousands of detained Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of children awaiting prosecution for allegations that occurred well before its passage. Known as a nunc pro tunc application of a new rule or law, and rejected by legal systems across the globe, historically, Israel has exhibited no hesitancy whatsoever in ignoring settled international norms or law. A more glaring example of a real-world, real-time, real-application by the Knesset of the talisman of blood libel would be hard to find.
Make no mistake about it. The Death Penalty for Terrorists Law is but another accelerated step in the Israeli drive to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine, through any available means. Unwilling to settle for its most recent criminal mass slaughter in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians were murdered in plain view in Gaza and the West Bank, it now seeks to recast its Reich-like assassin’s face through the pretext of a legislatively-approved military lynching.
In reality, an honest look says all that’s missing from Israeli law 5786–2026 are the prefatory words of an Alabama newspaper editor who, in harkening back to the days of the Ku Klux Klan, when referring to his goal of cleaning out Washington D.C. wrote… “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them”.
Notes
[1] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs in the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, member of the Jewish Home party (December 2013).
[2] Rabbi Dov Lior, Chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, head of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], and leading figure in the religious Zionist movement (January 2011).
[3] Eli Yishai, Then-Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (June 2012).
[4] Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the late influential spiritual leader of the Shas party, which was a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government from 2009-2012 (September 2010).
[5] Moshe Feiglin, former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party (2004).
[6] Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, Spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party, which was then part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (May 2012).
[7] Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief rabbi of the city of Safed (2011).
[8] Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, Head of the Ashdod Yeshiva (religious school) (2010).
[9] The King’s Torah, written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, from the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar (2010).
[10] Ariel Atlas, Then- Minister of Housing in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (July 2009).
[11] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[12] Id.
[13] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister.
[14] Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
[15] Miri Regev, Israeli Minister of Culture.
[16] Ayelet Shaked, Israeli Minister of Justice.
[17] Moshe Yaalon, Former Israeli defense Minister.
[18] Eli Yishai, Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister.
[19] Avraham Zarbiv, Rabbinical Judge who served as a bulldozer driver in Gaza.
By its requisite intent clause, Law 5786–2026 is limited to those who kill with the specific aim of negating the existence of the state of Israel. Thus, those Israeli settlers guilty of the recent murder of 19-year-old Palestinian American Nasrallah Abu Siyam in the occupied West Bank, if ever charged, are beyond the reach of the law. The same amnesty applies to the armed Jewish settlers who, earlier this year, murdered several other Palestinians during a raid on their village of Abu Falah in the occupied territory. Core to their ethnic cleansing agenda, settler murders of Palestinians in their local West Bank communities date back many decades.
For example, more than 40 years ago, a mob of settlers murdered an 11-year-old Palestinian girl from Nablus. As justification, the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community at the time apparently cited a Talmudic text justifying the murder of a child who “will grow up to become your enemy.” Under 5786–2026, those rampaging assassins could not be held accountable.
The same immunity from the reach of the law would have applied to the massacre carried out by Israeli-American physician Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Attired in an Israeli military uniform, Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians during the Jewish festival of Purim in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron. Anything but a challenge to the existence of Israel, before his rampage, Goldstein, quoting from Ecclesiastes, reportedly said “There is a time to kill and a time to heal”. Following the massacre, his supporters described Goldstein as a “saint” and his blood bath as an act of “martyrdom” or a “sanctification of God’s name.”
So, too, the new death penalty could not have been applied to those settlers who burned to death a toddler in his family home in the Nablus village of Duma in 2015. Nor would it today have application to Israeli medic Elor Azaria, who, some six years ago, executed twenty-one-year-old Abdul Fatah al-Sharif while he lay injured and motionless on the ground after stabbing, but not seriously injuring, an Israeli soldier in occupied Hebron. Approaching his semi-conscious victim, Azaria cocked his rifle and executed him with a single shot to his head. For his murder, Azaria served some nine months in prison.
These are but a few of the endless examples of Palestinians executed by settlers/soldiers in the occupied West Bank over the last 15 years alone for little more than their mere presence, or words. Numbering more than 1000 killed in the last several years alone, under the legislative intent of the law, NONE of these assassins (if ever charged) could face execution for their butchery.
Although lacking a dispositive definition under international law, there is a legal consensus that terrorism is criminal violence intended to intimidate a population (or a government) with the specific intention to advance a political, religious, or ideological cause. Although tailor-made to describe generations of West Bank settler terrorists, their statutory exemption from Israel’s latest assault on equal accountability is as palpable as are the massive number of Israeli Jews who find sheer pleasure in the execution of Palestinians in furtherance of their own political, religious, or ideological invective.
In the relevant part, Israel’s definition under its original Counterterrorism Law of 2016 defines a terrorist act as an act that constitutes an offense, or a threat to carry out such an act, which meets the following standards:
It was carried out with a political, religious, nationalistic or ideological motive… It was carried out with the intention of provoking fear or panic among the public or with the intention of compelling a government or other governmental authority, including a government or other governmental authority of a foreign country, or a public international organization, to do or to abstain from doing any act … and the act carried out or threatened to be carried out, involved one of the following, or posed an actual risk of … Serious harm to a person’s body or freedom; Serious harm to public health or safety; [or] Serious harm to property, when in the circumstances in which it was caused, there was an actual possibility that it would cause the serious harm … and that was carried out with the intention of causing such harm.
Tailor-made for charging the Israeli state as a whole with acts of terrorism in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, a plain read of this decade-old law with no statutory limit, shows that while thousands of Jewish settlers have been a veritable primer on terrorism, it’s been applied almost exclusively against Palestinians. Against this de facto selective distortion, stands the de jure reality that the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 5786–2026 is, on its face, stripped of all pretense. By design, it is intended to find application solely against Palestinians.
That there is a double standard in the application of Israeli law is neither new nor isolated to so-called acts of terrorism. At its core, there is a deliberate double standard of justice, in all things at all times, with Israelis obtaining privileged status in civilian courts decorated with black robes and a gavel and Palestinians guilty, or liable as charged, in all things at all times, in military courts decorated with nothing but battle dress and guns.
As B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, recently wrote of the military court system:
Israeli military courts have been trying Palestinians in the Territories since the occupation began. While the courts offer an illusion of proper judicial conduct, they mask one of the most injurious apparatuses of the occupation. In these courts, the judges and prosecutors are always Israeli soldiers in uniform. The Palestinians are always either suspects or defendants, and are almost always convicted for violating orders issued by the occupation regime. As such, these courts simply cannot be an impartial, neutral arbitrator. They are firmly entrenched on the Israeli side of the power imbalance, and serve as one of the central systems maintaining its control over the Palestinian people.
Several years earlier, the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights Office indicted the West Bank military justice system noting that “[s]ince the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli military has either taken part in or failed to protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, including, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, property damage, destruction and unlawful appropriation, discrimination, harassment, and threats.” Continuing on, it stated “[i]n the occupied West Bank, the functions of police, investigator, prosecutor, and judge are vested in the same hierarchical institution – the Israeli military” that ultimately sits as judge and jury over Palestinians suspects. This translates into a situation where military judges in military courts consistently provide legal and judicial cover for acts of torture, cruel and degrading treatment against Palestinian detainees carried out by their colleagues in the armed forces and intelligence agencies. It also makes legal defence impossible.”
Putting aside the uniform, bias and cover, from a practical standpoint, the military court system that has controlled “justice” in the occupied territories since 1967 and which will be tasked with likely all death penalty prosecutions, presents a procedural gamut far less protective of the rights of the accused than in civil courts… those set aside solely for cases involving Israeli citizens. Thus, because in civil courts there are higher due process standards arising from “basic laws” and criminal procedures, an accused is provided a stronger guarantee of rights compared to the rules handed down, at times, on a case-by-case basis by military orders. In civil court proceedings, those accused of crimes must be quickly charged and have largely unimpeded access to lawyers and family members. In contrast, those Palestinians swept up by the Military process can be held without charge for longer periods (up to 90 days) and typically face long periods of restricted access to legal counsel.
Civil proceedings are held in Hebrew and, at times Arabic, but, in any event, have available translation protocols. Military court proceedings are held entirely in Hebrew, often without translation support, with prosecutions driven by coerced confessions lacking legal counsel, with signed documents written exclusively in Hebrew, which most defendants do not understand. Under Israeli civil law, the age of majority is 18, while in the military system, 16-year-old Palestinians are treated as adults. In addition, civil law requires specially trained police for juvenile interrogations; no such requirement exists in military prosecutions.
Perhaps most telling of all is that, unlike the civil court system, almost all Palestinians accused of even the most minor breach of law, although “presumed innocent,” are routinely remanded by military judges to custody until the proceedings are concluded. These individuals are not serving a prison sentence, have not even been sentenced, and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet, other than in cases involving traffic violations, this practice is the rule rather than the exception in the military court system. By its very nature, this coercive linchpin of the military court system induces guilty pleas from even the innocent for no reason other than to gain their freedom.
Summing up the worth and rights of Palestinian children, Defense of Children International Palestine notes: “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections. Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year.”
In what is very much the mirror image of The Terrorism Act (No. 83 of 1967), a South African statute that allowed for indefinite, no-trial detention based on a very broad definition of terrorism, it is estimated that as many of 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under military orders, including some 13,000 children, without formal charges or trial. Under Israeli “security” provisions, a person, including a child, can be held without formal accusation on the grounds that they plan to break the law in the future. Like the apartheid system of South Africa, because this shackle is crafted as preventive, it has no time limits.
Do not misconstrue any preference for the due process “protections” of the Israeli civil court system over the physical and emotional torture process of the state’s military courts. After all, history is littered with the institutional failures of Israeli civil courts. These courts serve not by virtue of any constitutional edict or independence, for in Israel, there is no such document. Rather, they sit and perform by the whims of the Knesset, which can and does, with regularity, pass laws that convert these jurists into mere messengers of political winds.
Thus, the “necessity defense,” more aptly known as the “ticking time bomb exception,” announced in the case of Abu Ghosh v. Attorney-General, speaks volumes about the blind eye of the Israeli judiciary. In Abu Ghosh, the Israeli High Court approved the use of “exceptional interrogation methods” by state security upon suspicious Palestinians, which not only imposed a high evidentiary burden on those who sought judicial relief for torture, but required a light burden of proof on the state when claiming necessity. As defined by international law, this judicial test violated its prohibition against torture. So, too, once again in violation of settled international law, the Israeli civil courts have endorsed the use of collective punishment … long defined as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In case after case, the High Court has upheld or walked away from matters where the military seeks vengeance from families uninvolved in the acts of the few. As noted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur:
Since 1967, Israel has destroyed more than 2,000 Palestinian homes, designed to punish Palestinian families for acts some of their members may have committed, but they themselves did not,” he said. “This practice is in clear violation of Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The list is endless. Whether it’s forcing Palestinians to pay the cost of the destruction of their own homes and businesses; ignoring the 2004 ICJ finding that the walls/barriers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory violate international law; laughing at Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits occupying powers from transferring its population into occupied territory; and a clear finding that the most recent onslaught in Gaza constitutes genocide, Israel and its civilian court system have been wittingly complicit in a steady stream of violations of international law not seen since the days of the Third Reich. And now, with another deadly sweeping mock at international law, Israel says we will execute Palestinians and Palestinians alone.
On its face, with appalling pride, the Knesset has now set the stage for the execution by noose of thousands of Palestinians who have never had a day in court, let alone one overseen by independent jurists who ruled not by a military faith and race-based presumption of guilt, but by due process. Like its predecessor, the ticking time bomb exemption, the murder Palestinian law provides absolute discretion to soldiers dressed up with a gavel not only to say guilty as charged, but to impose a sentence of death to be carried out within 90 days of conviction. This military procedure is akin to the administrative process employed by the Nazis in their People’s Court, which typically had jurisdiction over political offenses, including black marketeering, work slowdowns and “defeatism.” On one such occasion Judge Roland Freisler, who had sentenced more than 5000 people to death, went so far as to send the family of Joseph Muller, a Catholic priest, a bill for his execution by guillotine.
The recently enacted murder of Palestinians is illegal under international law. To be sure that this law oozes with targeted execution of Palestinians, cannot be debated. With its specific intent, it applies solely to those who cause the death of another “with the aim of negating the existence of the State of Israel.” As noted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
The selective application of capital punishment on ethnic or national grounds, or because of one’s political views, constitutes a particularly stark form of discriminatory harm … Any system that permits differential treatment in their justice system or by the imposition of the death penalty undermines the most basic guarantees of equality before the law.
In other respects, the legislation offends settled international law through its palpable attack on essential procedural and substantive safeguards such as notice and specificity as to key elements of an offense, or what can constitute witting complicity in it. Thus, while the law places within its deadly reach co-conspirators who “assist” in lethal attacks, it fails to define with requisite specificity just what to assist means. Is mere proscribed speech, or writing in support of resistance in general a sufficient overt act under the law? Does providing a car, or a weapon or loaning some money to one involved in a lethal act constitute a sufficient overt act in furtherance of the crime to expose a donor to the stretch of the hangman’s noose? Not at all an abstract debate, Israel is, after all, a land where collective punishment of those uninvolved in a crime is very much the norm and not the exception.
Going further, upon conviction, a resident of the West Bank “who is not an Israeli citizen or Israeli resident … his [default] sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” By design, the law not only removes any and all settler assassins from its substantive reach, but illegally strips the presiding military panel of sentencing discretion other than in undefined “exceptional circumstances” and where limits are placed on evidence of mitigation to meet that vague burden.
And what of the military court itself? Where unanimity of finding was once required of three jurist panels often passing verdict and sentence in far less serious cases involving but a “nominal” penalty, here, where the noose is the mandated punishment, a mere majority consensus of the judges is required. Continuing on, even in the absence of a request from prosecutors (themselves dressed in military uniform), historically, this is a court system with a conviction rate of almost 100%, built largely of coerced admissions/confessions that were presented for signature to long-detained Palestinians entirely in Hebrew. Isolated, intimidated, sleepless, hungry and subjected to physical and mental abuse with regularity, these often child prisoners are told to sign here, and do so without the presence and advice of counsel.
In what is very much a race to the finality of the hangman’s noose, 5786–2026 impermissibly limits rights of appeal, denies the possibility of pardon and no matter how uncertain the evidence, or arbitrary the penalty, sets an execution mandate of no more than 90 days in violation of the 6-month requirement of Article 75 of the Fourth Geneva Convention with its intent to ensure a reasonable opportunity to pursue appeals.
Most alarming, while it appears, albeit in ambiguous wording, that the law prohibits a revisit to cases of those already convicted and sentenced for a lethal offense, given the supremacist drive of the Knesset, and the obedient silence of the Israeli High Court, the prospect for an amendment permitting post hoc execution looms large. Moreover, in the absence of any controlling wording to the contrary, there stands the real possibility of a retroactive application of the law to thousands of detained Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of children awaiting prosecution for allegations that occurred well before its passage. Known as a nunc pro tunc application of a new rule or law, and rejected by legal systems across the globe, historically, Israel has exhibited no hesitancy whatsoever in ignoring settled international norms or law. A more glaring example of a real-world, real-time, real-application by the Knesset of the talisman of blood libel would be hard to find.
Make no mistake about it. The Death Penalty for Terrorists Law is but another accelerated step in the Israeli drive to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine, through any available means. Unwilling to settle for its most recent criminal mass slaughter in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians were murdered in plain view in Gaza and the West Bank, it now seeks to recast its Reich-like assassin’s face through the pretext of a legislatively-approved military lynching.
In reality, an honest look says all that’s missing from Israeli law 5786–2026 are the prefatory words of an Alabama newspaper editor who, in harkening back to the days of the Ku Klux Klan, when referring to his goal of cleaning out Washington D.C. wrote… “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them”.
Notes
[1] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs in the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, member of the Jewish Home party (December 2013).
[2] Rabbi Dov Lior, Chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, head of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], and leading figure in the religious Zionist movement (January 2011).
[3] Eli Yishai, Then-Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (June 2012).
[4] Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the late influential spiritual leader of the Shas party, which was a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government from 2009-2012 (September 2010).
[5] Moshe Feiglin, former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party (2004).
[6] Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, Spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party, which was then part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (May 2012).
[7] Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief rabbi of the city of Safed (2011).
[8] Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, Head of the Ashdod Yeshiva (religious school) (2010).
[9] The King’s Torah, written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, from the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar (2010).
[10] Ariel Atlas, Then- Minister of Housing in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (July 2009).
[11] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[12] Id.
[13] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister.
[14] Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
[15] Miri Regev, Israeli Minister of Culture.
[16] Ayelet Shaked, Israeli Minister of Justice.
[17] Moshe Yaalon, Former Israeli defense Minister.
[18] Eli Yishai, Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister.
[19] Avraham Zarbiv, Rabbinical Judge who served as a bulldozer driver in Gaza.
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| Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City. |
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