Israel lobbies foreign powers to cut ICC funding

(Reuters) - Israel is lobbying member-states of the International Criminal Court to cut funding for the tribunal in response to its launch of an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, the country's foreign minister said on Sunday.

The ICC did not immediately respond to the news, but experts thought it unlikely that the lobbying effort was likely to persuade the countries that contribute most to the court to reduce their funding.

Israel, which like the United States does not belong to the ICC, hopes to dent funding for the court that is drawn from the 122 member-states in accordance with the size of their economies, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

"We will demand of our friends in Canada, in Australia and inGermany simply to stop funding it," he told Israel Radio. Officials told Reuters the lobbying effort would also target Japan, whose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting Israel.

"This body represents no one. It is a political body," Lieberman said, adding that he would raise the matter with visiting Canadian counterpart John Baird on Sunday.

A loss of funding would exacerbate the court's already serious financing problems. Last week, Reuters reported that the unexpected arrival of an indicted defector from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda would put prosecutors under severe financial strain.

The overwhelming bulk of the court's funding comes from the advanced economies of Europe and North Asia. Japan is the largest contributor, giving 20.4 million euros in 2014, followed by Germany which gave 13.5 million.

France, Britain and Italy are also major contributors to the ICC's budget, which will rise 7 percent to 141 million euros in 2015. Canada contributed 5.6 million.

But even countries that were traditionally close to Israel were unlikely to renege on their treaty commitments to fund the ICC, said Kevin Jon Heller, professor of law at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

"Germany is probably the least likely country in the world to go against the ICC no matter how supportive of Israel it has traditionally been," he added. "It was one of the very leading states in the creation of the ICC."

ICC prosecutors said on Friday they would examine "in full independence and impartiality" crimes that may have occurred in the Palestinian territories since June 13 last year.

Spanish Foreign Minister arrives in Gaza

EXCLUSIVE IMAGES

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo arrived Tuesday in the Gaza Strip through Erez crossing with Israel on a few hours' visit to the embattled enclave, a Palestinian official said.

Garcia-Margallo "aims to get acquainted with the impact of the recent Israeli offensive in the coastal enclave and hold talks with chief of UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA Pierre Krahenbuhl," Maher Abu Sabha, head of the Palestinian border authority, told The Anadolu Agency.

The top diplomat arrived in Ramallah on Monday, where he met with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

The visit comes as part of a regional tour for the Spanish minister to get familiar with the "status quo" in the Middle East, a statement by the Spanish Foreign Ministry said earlier.

In November, the Spanish parliament called for recognizing Palestine as a state.

MEMO Photographer: Mohammad Asad

Source : https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/16311-spanish-fm-arrives-in-gaza

JEWISH SETTLERS STORMED SECONDARY SCHOOL IN OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Approximately ten Israeli settlers stormed Wednesday a secondary school in Tur neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem and fired tear gas and sound bombs into it under Israeli police protection.

Head of the follow-up committee in Tur neighborhood Mufid Abu Ghannam confirmed that ten Jewish settlers stormed the school Wednesday afternoon while the students were leaving their classes.

The students panicked at the attack and started shouting and screaming, forcing the settlers and soldiers to withdraw from the school amid heavy fire of tear gas bombs.

Israeli forces, in their turn, fired heavy volleys of live bullets into the air to scare the students, he added.

Beit Orot settlers have twice tried to break into the school on previous days; however the local residents confronted them and forced them to withdraw, Abu Ghannam pointed out. 

Meanwhile, Israeli forces stormed under heavy tear gas bombs the nearby girls' elementary school under the pretext of looking for a wanted person.

Source : http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=69650

Israel sexually abusing child prisoners frequently in closed prisons

Israel campaigns to block UN human rights findings on Gaza onslaught

Horror in Gaza

Press TV 14 Jan — Israel has launched a campaign to block a UN inquiry into Tel Aviv’s human rights violations during its 50-day bloody war on the blockaded Gaza Strip last summer. Israel is directing its diplomats to ensure that a majority of 47 countries on the UN Commission of Inquiry on Gaza do not support an investigation into the latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian land, the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. The campaign aims to get “as many countries as possible – with the hope that at least 24 will not approve the committee’s findings – to either vote against, abstain or not show up [for the vote],” the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs told the representatives abroad in a cable. Part of the campaign against the UN commission is to discredit its head, Canadian lawyer William Schabas, who has accused Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression against Palestinians. The UN body is due to present its findings on the Gaza war to the UN Human Rights Council in March. A vote on the findings will be held a few days after the report is submitted.

 See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/campaigns-findings-onslaught#sthash.YmlNda4u.7fVUzbFS.dpuf

The death of Tom Hurndall

The International Solidarity Movement today remember Tom Hurndall, ISM volunteer who 12 years ago on 11th April 2003 was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper.

The Israeli army were invading the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip when Tom and other ISM volunteers saw a group of children in a street where snipers were firing. Witnesses say that bullets were shot around the children, who were paralysed by fear and unable to move – Tom pulled one child to safety, but as he was returning for a second, he was shot in the head by a sniper.

He went into a coma and died nine months later on 13th January 2004. He was 22 years old. Today, on the day he was shot, we pay tribute to Tom’s bravery. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as we think Tom would have wished.

“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.” – Tom Hurndall.

Source : International Solidarity Movement

             

SHAMELESS !

Source : Ireland - Palestine Solidarity Campaign 

www.ipsc.ie