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The National
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
The cost of silence amid Gaza genocide is measured in human lives
As a rebuke, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee calls on Ireland to apologise to Israel and has asked: 'Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness and propose something so stupid that it would be attributed to an act of diplomatic intoxication?' READ MORE: 12 countries agree concrete steps to halt Gaza genocide Significantly, Huckabee has also previously stated that 'there is no such thing as a Palestinian.' In contrast to these political responses, prominent Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. According to Goldberg, other genocide experts who have reached this determination include Martin Shaw, author of the book What is Genocide?; Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and Dirk Moses, senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research. When nations ignore the clear assessments of these scholars, they abandon both moral responsibility and international law. The cost of this silence is measured in human lives. Terry Hansen Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA SURELY there is a fairly simple solution to all the brouhaha about Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone? If, as Ron Lumiere says, 'the boy's narration was scripted, ie he was a voice actor, not an editorial contribution,' why not re-present the film with another neutral voice? Yes, films are expensive to make, but most of the cost must have gone on what would still be usable, with now only a slight expense more to re-dub. We've heard so much about this film, that I doubt if anyone would object to an impartial voice, for all it wouldn't be quite as dramatic as the original intended. Catriona de Voil Arbroath THE value of land or property is purely notional. It's what one person is prepared to pay for it, IF it were offered for sale and someone wanted it and agreed to buy it. All properties are unique, in terms of precise location and condition, even if design is shared. Even the unique view out of the window can affect a sale and price. But at any point in time, most properties and land holdings are NOT for sale – so their value has to be estimated based on similar nearby property exchanges. Doing that constantly by the state for millions of holdings is a complex logistical exercise. When the original Council Tax bandings were determined in the early 1990s, it was done a street at a time. Rough justice and anomalies result. People have to be able to appeal the notional valuation. That's not to say it cannot be done, but its a huge logistical exercise for comparatively little of the total tax base in return. READ MORE: Craig Dalzell: No need to wait for UK. Scotland can launch own form of wealth tax Contrast that with income. The vast majority of the population have only one source of income, a wage paid by a single employer. Of course some people have multiple or complex income arrangements, but they are the minority. So an income-based tax to fund local services is vastly simpler to administer. I'm not against broad-based property taxes – property and land cannot be moved as easily as other forms of wealth, and holding of large amounts CAN be directly associated with wealth. But to rely on it as a newer form of major taxation for municipal government functions, when we already have an established apparatus for calculating national income tax, needs to be thought through carefully. Likewise the fact that the current Council Tax doesn't actually fund local government – it funds only about 20% of it, the vast majority being paid by central government grants based on income tax and other national taxes take. So this creates a problematic 'democratic deficit' caused by the 'gearing ratio' between local and national taxes – in order to raise the overall income of a council by 1%, the locally elected councillors need to raise the local tax rate by five times that increase, ie 5%. Understandably local voters are then confused at why their bills have been increased by 5% when services are only improving by 1%. While it is tempting to transfer local government funding of services entirely to central government (as in the Scottish Socialist Party's 2005 proposals), there is a stronger democratic argument to move the tax base for local government services more to local democratic control, as was the case with the old property rating system. Having a new dual local system based on both broad property value and income tax rates might be a good combination. But as wealth varies significantly by area, central government also needs to pay a fairly substantial 'equalisation' grant that ensures areas with poorer incomes and lower land/property values are not disadvantaged. The proposals set out by Craig Dalzell (Could Scotland launch its own form of wealth tax?, Jul 14) may be PART of the solution, but they are NOT the total answer. Michael Picken via
Irish Independent
7 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Letters: It's time for Israel to listen to their own Holocaust scholars on what constitutes genocide
As a rebuke, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, calls on Ireland to apologise to Israel, writing online: 'Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness & propose something so stupid that it would be attributed to an act of diplomatic intoxication?' Significantly, Huckabee has also stated that 'there is no such thing as a Palestinian'. In contrast to these political responses, prominent Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. According to Dr Goldberg: 'Other genocide experts who have reached this determination include Martin Shaw, author of the book What is Genocide?; Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and Dirk Moses, senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research.' When nations ignore the clear assessments of these scholars, they abandon both moral responsibility and international law. The cost of this silence is measured in human lives. Terry Hansen, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Dark times when a US ambassador is so bereft of tact on a nation's affairs The diplomatic service of the US was once renowned and admired globally, mainly staffed by professional, patriotic men and women with enormous pride in representing their nation internationally. Alas, the imbecilic statement by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee ('Taoiseach hits back after US ambassador to Israel says Irish have 'fallen into a vat of Guinness' over Occupied Territories Bill', Irish Independent, July 17) shows clearly how absolutely bereft of tact he is. His remarks on Irish legislation might suggest he is not a fit person to serve in any capacity representing the US. As the late theologian Professor Barbara Holmes wrote: 'There are many types of darkness. There is the darkness of determined ignorance and hatred, impenetrable and smothering.' ADVERTISEMENT Declan Foley, Melbourne, Australia Catherine Connolly – a fine, honest parliamentarian – would be wasted in the Áras Now that Catherine Connolly TD has launched her bid for the presidency, political commentators are beside themselves with excitement. But given that it has been often said that 'a government is as good as its opposition', we must ask ourselves if it is politically wise to consign this standout parliamentarian to the Park. The presidency is largely a ceremonial role with minimal impact upon public policy, where the most important function is to sign whatever act of parliament is presented to them, and where they cannot address the nation or leave the country without government approval. In the Dáil as an Independent TD free from the constraints of party strategies and agendas, she has held the Government to account on many issues, from the provision of local health centres to the outrages currently being perpetrated upon Palestinians. Almost alone she called out the national antipathy generated by our government towards those who, having assessed the available evidence together with their GP, concluded that taking the Covid jab was not for them. She is admired for admitting in the Dáil that she was wrong in adopting left-wing party policy which insisted on zero-Covid before reopening society and the economy. Incidentally these are the same parties that she now needs to ensure her nomination. Perhaps most memorably before the two failed referendums last year, she was one of very few public figures to call out the absence of legislative scrutiny, disingenuous claims, and the ambiguous language associated with them. We badly need Catherine Connolly's talent and skill set in the Dáil. She is too important to be confined in the Áras enclosure. Gearoid Duffy, Lee Road, Cork Planning pitfalls revealed in report, but can a better turnaround be achieved? I note that recommendations of a report published on Wednesday afternoon last by the new Oireachtas Committee on Infrastructure have called for quicker decision-making as well as a less cumbersome planning process, and more trained construction workers. The committee will also oversee delivery of the revised National Development Plan, which is due to be revealed next week. There have been repeated complaints from industry and from utility companies about the lack of investment in areas – from transport to waste and to water treatment. In last week's report, the committee said projects of national import shouldn't depend on windfall taxes like the Apple billions. If that's the case, it leaves me wondering where they believe this money will be found. John O'Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary Thousands of schoolbooks are dumped each year, so free scheme seems a waste The free schoolbooks scheme needs to be examined. I've just returned from the recycling centre where I deposited a large number of Junior Cert books, most of which were in excellent condition, as pupils do so much work online now. This is such a waste. Thousands of good books are sent to the bin every year. Surely this could be managed better and books could be re-used. Such a waste of taxpayers' money. Donough McGuinness, Bray, Co Wicklow EuroMillions family can toast their win with a very different kind of bread In common with the €250m EuroMillions winners, I enjoy a ham and cheese sandwich. Mind you, the big difference is now is, the 'bread' involved in our different households. Tom Gilsenan, Beaumont, Dublin Kingdom will rule and the 'Donegal boys' will be left sobbing after football final With the greatest respect to Brian McDevitt, ('Donegal boys look to be unstoppable and brought tears to my eyes on Sunday, Irish Independent, Letters, July 16), the only tears he will have at the end of the All-Ireland football final will be tears of sorrow. An Ríocht abú.
Rakyat Post
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Rakyat Post
Knowing The History Of Israel-Palestine: Injustice From The start
Subscribe to our FREE This article first appeared in 'Europeans needed land, the indigenous population resisted its seizure, and so they were exterminated.' 'Settler colonialism destroys to replace.' These quotes put in a nutshell what has been going on in Palestine for almost a century, driven by Zionism, the founding ideology of the state of Israel, which is now committing a genocide in Gaza. The first quote is from Kehinde Andrews' The New Age of Empire. The second is from Patrick Wolfe's article 'Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native' in the Journal of Genocide Research. Wolfe also quotes Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism: 'If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.' We need to face the issue in front of us – a genocide of a people is taking place in Gaza against the background of settler-colonialism and racism. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) refers to it as 'plausible genocide'. The ICJ is a court of law and, yes, we can imagine how the judges have to wring their legal hands to determine if it is indeed genocide. But while the wringing goes on children, women, civilians are dying, starving and malnourished from indiscriminate bombing and forced blockades of food and supplies. We have to go beyond the wringing. There was no court to wring its hands while 99% of the natives died in what ended up as the genocide of the Americas. There was no court to wring its hands when only about 75,000 Aborigines were left in 1900 out of about one million in 1788, when the British first arrived, leading to the genocide of the natives of Australia. Surely, we cannot repeat such wringing only to then have history catch up and then find that – oh, umm, in the end the Palestinian population did suffer a genocide at the hands of the Israelis. As the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says, 'While States debate terminology – is it or is it not genocide? – Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity.' (End unfolding genocide or watch it end life in Gaza: UN experts say States face defining choice | OHCHR). It is instructive that the concept of a genocide was not conceived of in the West until it happened to white Europeans in Europe itself (ie the Nazi Holocaust). As Kehinde Andrews points out: 'The fact that the term genocide only came to exist in the West during the [Nazi] Holocaust is testament enough to the problem. Systematic killing of hundreds of millions of 'savages' in the colonies did not merit the creation of a new concept.' Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a penchant for describing Israel's so-called 'war' against Hamas as being one between civilisation and barbarism, seeing Israel at the front line of that battle. The message is that Israel is fighting that civilisational war as the representative of the modern civilised (read Western) world in a region that is inherently lacking in civilisation. But given the unfettered prolonged bombings, given the wilful starvation of a whole population as a weapon of war, who really are the barbarians? It is easy to say that the issue is complicated, or to wave things off because the Middle East is always fighting anyway, or to say we cannot do anything. There are actually things we can do – boycott Israel-complicit products and services, talk about the injustice, write to the US embassy, protest, march… But one fundamental thing we should also do is to know the history of the problem. This is important so that we do not just see each episode of violence as just another episode but as part of a long train of ongoing historical injustice. We too were colonised and have been subject to racism. We should thus be better able to empathise with the Palestinians who, to this day, still face the violent end of it all and are fighting for their survival, dignity, freedom and self-determination. Injustice from the start The state of Israel was formed on the basis of a UN partition plan adopted by a resolution of the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947. At that time, the indigenous Palestinians made up a two-thirds' majority of the population while a third were Jewish newcomers who owned less than 6% of the total land area. Yet, Resolution 181 of November 1947 granted 56% of the land to the minority Jewish settlers and just 42% to the majority native Palestinians. On that basis, the state of Israel was established on 15 May 1948. The division of the land was completely disproportionate to the demographic realities on the ground. This was driven partly by a desire to compensate the Jews for the Nazi Holocaust in Europe. We can see how fundamentally unjust this was, especially from the perspective of the Palestinian natives of the land. Your land is partitioned without your consent with a disproportionate majority portion given to newly arrived settlers, to compensate them for a genocide they suffered in Europe that had nothing to do with you. It is no wonder that such an unjust and ill-conceived plan sparked protest actions leading to what became known as the first Arab-Israeli war. The dispossession of the Palestinians had begun. Just one day after UN Resolution 181, organised fear, militia violence and expulsions started to be employed against the Palestinians. This was carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups with a series of attacks on Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods. These initial Zionist assaults were severe enough to cause the displacement of almost 75,000 people. This was the start of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine – well before the Zionist state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948. On 10 March 1948 the infamous 'Plan Dalet' was adopted by the Zionist leadership. This was a plan to ethnically cleanse the country to make it as fully Jewish as possible, with as few Palestinians as possible. It led to the uprooting of Palestinians from urban centres accompanied by massacres (most notably, at Deir Yassin). This was the unfolding of the Nakba of 1948, described by Rashid Khalidi in his highly accessible book The Hundred Years' War on Palestineas a 'seemingly endless train wreck'. By the end of the first phase of the Nakba – before Israel's founding on 15 May 1948 – about 300,000 Palestinians had been displaced and key economic, civic and cultural centres had been devastated. The second phase, following 15 May, saw the defeat of weak Arab armies and further expulsions and massacres resulting in the displacement of another 400,000 people – a total of about 700,000 native Palestinian inhabitants. (The Nakba has never ended and continues with the ongoing displacement of Palestinians over the whole of the occupied territory of Palestine with its worst manifestation in Gaza today.) Through the use of armed force, the original 56% allocated to Israel under the UN partition plan was increased to 78% and was never reversed. The series of events that has led to the historical injustice of the case of Palestine was spearheaded by premeditated ethnic cleansing. Ilan Pappe's authoritative work The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine draws on the Israeli military archives, Zionist leaders' diaries, their minutes of meetings and Palestinian historical sources. It establishes a 'clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation … regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity'. It is revealing that David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, wrote to his son in 1937: 'The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war.' As we have seen above, war he did make with the establishment of the state of Israel 11 years later in 1948. The underlying idea that 'the Arabs will have to go' has remained part of Israel's existence, with the right-wing government today being explicit about it. -By Tong Veng Wye, Aliran member. Share your thoughts with us via TRP's . Get more stories like this to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.
