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sanctions
EU's Top Diplomat Seeks Sanctions on Israeli Leaders for 'Incitement to Commit War Crimes'
While welcoming the move, one Amnesty International campaigner asserted that "the E.U.'s call for a cease-fire and curbing settler violence rings hollow until it takes concrete action."
Aug 29, 2024
European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Thursday that he has recommended sanctioning Israeli leaders for hate speech and inciting war crimes in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.
Borrell said during a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in Brussels that he has asked member states if they support imposing sanctions on some Israeli Cabinet ministers who have disseminated "unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians" and have proposed "things that clearly go against international law" and amount to "an incitement to war crimes."
Israeli ministers should be sanctioned by EU for inciting hate and war crimes against Palestinians, says @JosepBorrellF. #Gaza #WestBank #Israel pic.twitter.com/9N0oz0tdCX
— Georg von Harrach (@georgvh) August 29, 2024
At least one E.U. member said it supports Borrell's recommendation.
"This is a war against Palestinians, not just against Hamas. The level of civilian casualties and dead is unconscionable," Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said Thursday in Brussels. "It's a war on the population. No point in trying to fudge this."
"It cannot be business as usual," Martin added. "It is very clear to us that international humanitarian law has been broken."
Earlier this year, the Irish Senate voted to impose sanctions on Israel, prohibit the transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel via Ireland, and push for an international arms embargo against the country.
While E.U. nations such as Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Slovenia have been outspoken critics of Israel's Gaza onslaught and have responded with moves including recognizing Palestinian statehood, other members of the bloc—notably Germany and France—have been staunch supporters of Israel, even as its forces have killed and wounded more than 144,000 Gazans and displaced, starved, or sickened millions more.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has threatened "severe consequences" for European nations that recognize Palestinian statehood.
Like the United States—Israel's biggest international backer—the E.U. has imposed sanctions on a handful of far-right Israeli individuals and groups, including extremist settler colonists who incited deadly West Bank pogroms and an organization whose members have blocked humanitarian aid shipments from entering Gaza.
While Borrell did not publicly identify specific Israeli ministers he believes should be sanctioned, he has recently condemned the words and actions of far-right figures including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Ben-Gvir was widely condemned for defending Israeli soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian man detained at the notorious Sde Teiman prison and for taking part in a highly controversial visit to Islam's third-holiest site, the al-Aqsa mosque compound—which is located on what Jews call the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred site. Ben-Gvir infuriated Muslims and other critics by declaring he wanted to "put an Israeli flag" and build a synagogue there.
Smotrich, who has also defended the alleged Sde Teiman rapists as "heroic warriors," has drawn condemnation for promoting new and expanded Israeli settler colonies in the West Bank, a policy he attributed partly to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) recent ruling affirming that Israel's 57-year occupation is a form of apartheid and illegal.
Statements by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich—who recently asserted that it may be "justified and moral" to starve 2 million Palestinians to death—have been entered as evidence in the South African-led ICJ genocide case concerning Israel's war on Gaza.
Borrell has mentioned some of the ministers' words and actions in previous calls for accountability for those who incite hate and violence.
"While the world pushes for a cease-fire in Gaza, Minister Ben-Gvir calls for cutting fuel and aid to civilians," he said on social media earlier this month. "Like Minister Smotrich's sinister statements, this is an incitement to war crimes."
"Sanctions must be on our E.U. agenda," Borrell added.
While human rights defenders welcomed Borrell's sanctions recommendations, some groups urged him to go even further.
"The [ICJ's] findings clearly point to violations of international law committed by Israel and to the obligations of third states not to legitimize or provide any assistance to Israel's illegal conduct," Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office, said on Thursday.
Geddie continued:
E.U. members states' supply of arms and equipment as well as their trade and investment with illegal Israeli settlements are enabling Israel's violations of international law and are contrary to their obligations under international law. There can be no business as usual with a state maintaining a brutal, unlawful occupation and perpetrating serious violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, on a mass scale.
The relentless bombardment of Gaza amid a clear risk of genocide, the deadly spike in state-backed settler violence, and the latest military offensive in the West Bank are all byproducts of Israel's unlawful occupation and decades of impunity enabled by E.U. inaction.
"The E.U.'s call for a cease-fire and curbing settler violence rings hollow until it takes concrete actions—an immediate arms embargo, a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, and support for action at the U.N. to bring an end to Israel's unlawful occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory," Geddie added.
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Report Details Best Path Forward to End Political Crisis in Venezuela
The Center for Economic and Policy Research warned the U.S. against piling on economic sanctions that have "taken the lives of tens of thousands of Venezuelans" and "helped create the current crisis."
Aug 14, 2024
A report released Tuesday by a U.S.-based think tank calls on the Biden administration to support a regional effort to reach a negotiated solution to Venezuela's dangerous political crisis as the country's president and right-wing opposition continue to declare themselves the rightful winners of last month's election.
The new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) argues that Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia's attempt at mediation and dialogue—not additional economy-crushing sanctions by the U.S. and other Western nations—represents "the best opportunity for bringing about a peaceful resolution of the current crisis."
U.S. sanctions, the report notes, "have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Venezuelans and fueled the migration of millions more." Other "failed policies" include "military coup attempts, such as those that U.S. administrations supported in 2002 and 2019," the report adds.
"Recognizing a parallel government, or imposing more sanctions on Venezuela, will only make the crisis much more difficult to resolve; in fact, these policies helped create the current crisis," CEPR said.
The report comes less than two weeks after the U.S. State Department formally recognized Edmundo González, Venezuela's opposition candidate, as the winner of last month's presidential election over incumbent President Nicolás Maduro, who says he prevailed in the contest that has attracted close scrutiny and calls for transparency from the international community and independent watchdogs.
A four-member team of United Nations experts that was in Venezuela's capital for more than a month ahead of the presidential election—at the invitation of Venezuela's Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE)—issued an interim report Tuesday that criticizes the CNE's management of the July 28 contest, arguing that it "fell short of the basic transparency and integrity measures that are essential to holding credible elections."
While turnout was significantly higher than in 2018 and the election "took place in a largely peaceful environment and was logistically well-organized," the U.N. experts said, the CNE's "announcement of an election outcome without the publication of its details or the release of tabulated results to candidates has no precedent in contemporary democratic elections."
"This had a negative impact on confidence in the outcome announced by the CNE among a large part of the Venezuelan electorate," the experts added. The CNE said Maduro won the election with just under 52% of the vote.
"The new presidential term in Venezuela does not begin until January 2025, providing more than four months for all sides to reach a negotiated agreement."
CEPR's assessment of the contest and its aftermath resembled that of the U.N. experts. The watchdog group criticized the CNE's failure to "release a breakdown of the results at the voting table (mesa de votación) level" and urged it to make the information public "as promptly as possible."
"The government has rejected the authenticity of the tally sheets published by the opposition," CEPR's report notes. "But the case it has made so far has been unconvincing, presenting about three dozen purported tally sheets (out of about 25,000) where there are allegedly missing signatures and similar issues which are common in most electoral processes."
CEPR also criticized the opposition for backing "what amounts to a military coup," threatening a repeat of "the errors that many opposition politicians made in 2019 when they called on the armed forces to turn against the government and support the installation in the presidency of Juan Guaído, a member of the National Assembly who was never elected president."
"Extra-constitutional efforts of this sort should be vigorously opposed internationally," CEPR said. "Likewise, the government needs to ensure that security forces adhere to international human rights standards when responding to protests and disturbances; they should also refrain from carrying out arbitrary detentions."
Amid calls to release detailed election results, Maduro has taken his case to Venezuela's Supreme Court, which is conducting a review of the election.
While the Biden administration is reportedly considering fresh sanctions against Venezuela, Reutersnoted Tuesday that U.S. officials have "so far held off on new punitive measures."
"The presidents of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia are coordinating action while calling for full access to voting records, while a coalition including the U.S., Canada, Panama, and others are holding separate talks among each other and with Venezuela's opposition," Reuters added.
CEPR stressed in its report that "the new presidential term in Venezuela does not begin until January 2025, providing more than four months for all sides to reach a negotiated agreement and allow for diplomatic efforts to take shape."
"In that regard, it seems like the most promising efforts are led by the group formed by Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, who are 'holding conversations with both sides,'" CEPR added, citing Associated Pressreporting. "The likely alternative is not promising: If these governments were to be sidelined, the United States would likely play a bigger role together with right-wing regional governments who are allied with Washington. Given the history described above, it is highly unlikely that this would result in a positive outcome for Venezuela."
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Hundreds of Legal Experts Push Biden to Drop 'Punitive and Deadly' Sanctions
"Hundreds of millions of civilians around the world suffer—and hundreds of thousands have died—even in times of ostensible peace under the broad economic sanctions imposed unilaterally and illegally by the United States."
Aug 12, 2024
As human rights defenders marked the 75th anniversary of the Fourth Geneva Convention and its prohibition on collective punishment, hundreds of legal experts and groups on Monday urged the global community—and the United States government in particular—"to comply with international law by ending the use of broad, unilateral coercive measures that extensively harm civilian populations."
In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, the jurists and legal groups wrote that "75 years ago, in the aftermath of one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, nations of the world came together in Geneva, Switzerland to establish clear legal limits on the treatment of noncombatants in times of war."
"The legal community needs to push back against the narrative that sanctions are nonviolent alternatives to warfare."
"One key provision... is the prohibition of collective punishment, which is considered a war crime," the letter continues. "We consider the unilateral application of certain economic sanctions to constitute collective punishment."
Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild—one of the letter's signatories—said in a statement that "economic sanctions cause direct material harm not only to the people living on the receiving end of these policies, but to those who rely on trade and economic relations with sanctioned countries."
"The legal community needs to push back against the narrative that sanctions are nonviolent alternatives to warfare and hold the U.S. Government accountable for violating international law every time it wields these coercive measures," she added.
The new letter states:
Collective punishment is a standard practice of U.S. foreign policy today in the form of broad, unilateral economic and financial sanctions. While other countries apply sanctions in some form, the United States imposes more unilateral economic sanctions than any other country in the world, by far. Though this method of collective punishment may differ from that of conventional warfare, and is often applied outside of declared military conflict, its collective impact on civilians can be just as indiscriminate, punitive, and deadly.
"Hundreds of millions of people currently live under such broad U.S. economic sanctions in some form, including in notable cases such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela," the letter notes. "The evidence that these measures can cause severe, widespread civilian harm, including death, is overwhelming. Broad economic sanctions can spark and prolong economic crises, hinder access to essential goods like food, fuel, and medicine, and increase poverty, hunger, disease, and even death rates, especially among children. Such conditions in turn often drive mass migration, as in the recent cases of Cuba and Venezuela."
For more than 64 years, the U.S. has imposed a crippling economic embargo on Cuba that had adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island's economy and severely limited Cubans' access to basic necessities including food, fuel, and medicines. The Cuban government
claims the blockade cost the country's economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. For the past 32 years, United Nations member states have voted overwhelmingly against the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Last year's vote was 187-2, with the U.S. and Israel as the only dissenters.
According to a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., as many as 40,000 Venezuelans died from 2017-18 to U.S. sanctions, which have made it much more difficult for millions of people to obtain food, medicine, and other necessities.
"Civilian suffering is not merely an incidental cost of these policies, but often their very intent," the new letter asserts. "A 1960 State Department memo on the embargo of Cuba suggested 'denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.'"
"Civilian suffering is not merely an incidental cost of these policies, but often their very intent."
"Asked whether the Trump administration's sanctions on Iran were working as intended, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded that 'things are much worse for the Iranian people, and we're convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime,'" the signers added.
Experts have repeatedly noted that while sanctions harm everyday people in targeted countries, leaders of those nations use their positions as dictators to enrich themselves and members of their inner circles. Sanctions also fail to work as intended to topple targeted regimes. Cuba's revolutionary government has outlasted a dozen U.S. presidents. Iran has been under U.S. sanctions since the late 1970s, yet its Islamic regime remains entrenched and has forged closer relations with Russia and China. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is still in power despite two decades of U.S. sanctions. North Korea's dynastic dictatorship shows no signs of cracking after seven decades of sanctions.
Others have highlighted the hypocrisy of the United States sanctioning nations over ideological differences while supporting brutal dictatorships including Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and Equatorial Guinea, and other gross human rights violators like apartheid Israel, which is on trial for genocide at the World Court. Instead of punishing Israel, the U.S. House of Representatives—with the assent of dozens of Democratic lawmakers—passed legislation to sanction officials of the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor is seeking to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders.
"The Geneva Conventions, for all of their limitations and subsequent violations, were a triumph of international law in the protection of civilians during times of war," the new letter asserts. "Yet today, hundreds of millions of civilians around the world suffer—and hundreds of thousands have died—even in times of ostensible peace under the broad economic sanctions imposed unilaterally and illegally by the United States."
"As members of the legal community, we call on the United States to comply with existing international law by ending the use of broad unilateral coercive measures," the signers added. "Seventy-five years after the Geneva Conventions, collective punishment must end."
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