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the netherlands
Dutch Court Blocks Weapons Parts for Israel Over 'Undeniable' Risk to Gaza
While the Dutch government plans to appeal, one campaigner expressed hope that the verdict "can encourage other countries to follow suit, so that civilians in Gaza are protected by international law."
Feb 12, 2024
With over 28,000 Palestinians killed by Israel so far in the Gaza Strip, a Dutch appeals court ruled Monday that the Netherlands must stop exporting parts for Israeli forces' aircraft due to the "clear risk that Israel's F-35 fighter jets might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law."
Oxfam Novib executive director Michiel Servaes, whose group filed the lawsuit against the Dutch government in December with PAX and the Rights Forum,
declared that "this positive ruling by the judge is very good news, especially for civilians in Gaza."
"It is an important step to force the Dutch government to adhere to international law, which the Netherlands has strongly advocated for in the past," he added. "Israel has just launched an attack against the city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population are sheltering, the Netherlands must take immediate steps."
Monday's decision on the U.S.-made jet parts stored in a Dutch warehouse followed a lower court declining to intervene in December.
The new ruling came as Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was in Jerusalem to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is waging war in retaliation for the October 7 attack led by Hamas, which has governed Gaza for nearly two decades.
"It is a pity that this legal action was necessary and, unfortunately, has taken four months to come to this conclusion," said Servaes. "The judge had ruled that the Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation was obliged to reexamine the arms export license to Israel, and that his decision was taken incorrectly."
While the appeals court ordered compliance within a week, the Dutch government plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. According to Reuters:
"The delivery of U.S. F-35 parts to Israel in our view is not unjustified," Trade Minister Geoffrey van Leeuwen said.
He said the F-35s were crucial for Israel's security and its ability to protect itself from threats in the region, "for example from Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon".
Van Leeuwen said it was too early to say what effect the verdict would have on Israel.
"We are part of a big consortium of countries that are also working together with Israel, we will talk to partners how to deal with this."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir called out the Netherlands for "shamefully" seeking to continue its military support for Israeli forces.
Supporters of the Dutch ruling also highlighted that other countries, particularly the United States, have enabled the Netanyahu government, which claims to be targeting Hamas but has slaughtered thousands of civilians—including more than 12,300 children—leading to accusations of genocide from around the world.
Kenneth Roth, former HRW who is now a visiting professor at Princeton University, said on social media that it was "about time" for the Dutch decision. He added that the "undeniable" risk of exports being used for war crimes determined by the Dutch court "is equally true for parts sent by other nations."
Explaining the potential limitations of the Dutch ruling, Gareth Jennings, aviation editor at the defense intelligence firm Janes, told The New York Times that "if one supplier isn't able to deliver for any reason, the parts can be sourced from another."
Therefore, the decision seems to be "a symbolic act rather than one having any meaningful effect on Israel’s F-35 fleet," he said.
However, Oxfam's Servaes stressed that "we hope that this verdict can encourage other countries to follow suit, so that civilians in Gaza are protected by international law."
Appearing on Democracy Now! Monday, Palestinian American human rights attorney and Rutgers University associate professor Noura Erakat noted that both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a U.S. federal judge have found that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza.
Although the U.S. judge also found that the case about the Biden administration's complicity falls "outside the court's limited jurisdiction," the ICJ case is proceeding and the court last month ordered Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza.
"We see Israel directly violating those provisional orders," Erakat said, pointing to the rising death toll, blocked humanitarian aid, and continued commentary from Israeli leaders.
"This is a warning to the world," she added. "Israel must stop its genocidal campaign now."
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800+ US, European Civil Servants Condemn Governments for Fueling Israeli War Crimes
"We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century."
Feb 02, 2024
More than 800 government officials in the United States and Europe released a letter Friday criticizing their countries' leaders for providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to Israel as it inflicts disaster on Gaza's population.
The civil servants, who signed the letter anonymously due to fear of reprisal, wrote that their attempts to voice concerns internally about their governments' support for Israel's assault on Gaza "were overruled by political and ideological considerations."
"We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century," the letter reads. "We are obliged to warn the publics of our countries, whom we serve, and to act in concert with transnational colleagues."
"Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza, which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths," the letter continues. "There is a plausible risk that our governments' policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide."
The letter was coordinated by government officials in The Netherlands, the U.S., and European Union bodies and endorsed by civil servants in 10 countries, including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
"When the system produces perverse decisions or actions, we have a responsibility to stop it. It's not as simple as 'shut up and do what you're told'; we're also paid to think."
Josh Paul, a former U.S. State Department official who resigned in October over the Biden administration's decision to continue arming Israel as it pummeled Gaza, called the new letter "a remarkable statement from hundreds of individuals who have devoted their lives to building a better world."
"One-sided support for Israel's atrocities in Gaza, and a blindness to Palestinian humanity, is both a moral failure, and, for the harm it does to Western interests around the globe, a policy failure," Paul told HuffPost.
"At a time where our politicians seem to have forgotten them," Paul added, the letter "is a much-needed reminder of the core values that bind the transatlantic relationship, and a proof that they endure."
Paul told The New York Times that he knew the organizers of the letter, which marks the latest sign of mounting dissent inside Western governments over their support for Israel's war on Gaza as famine and disease spread across the enclave. United Nations experts warned earlier this week that Gazans are "enduring apocalyptic humanitarian conditions, destruction, mass killing, wounding, and irreparable trauma."
Berber van der Woude, a former Dutch diplomat who resigned in 2022 over her government's support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians, also spoke out in support of the new letter from U.S. and European civil servants. Rights groups have accused the Dutch government of complicity in Israeli war crimes, pointing to the export of military supplies.
"Being a civil servant doesn't absolve you from your responsibility to keep on thinking," van der Woude told the Times on Friday. "When the system produces perverse decisions or actions, we have a responsibility to stop it. It's not as simple as 'shut up and do what you're told'; we're also paid to think."
The unnamed officials implored their governments to stop telling the public that "there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation and that supporting it is in our countries' interests."
Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, but one human rights monitor estimates that upwards of 90% of those killed by Israeli forces in Gaza were civilians. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that U.S. and Israeli officials believe that up to 80% of Hamas' tunnels are still intact after nearly four months of incessant bombing, which has killed more than 27,000 Gazans.
To end the bloodshed, the civil servants demanded that their governments "use all leverage available—including a halt to military support—to secure a lasting cease-fire and full humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages."
They also urged world leaders to "develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel's security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again."
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'Incredibly Disturbing' Docs Reveal Oil Giant Shell Knew About Climate Impacts Even Earlier
"Despite internal awareness, the company systematically downplayed the problem to the public, instead promoting more and more fossil fuel use despite the dangers," said one expert. "Now, five decades later, Shell continues to dawdle and delay."
Apr 03, 2023
Reporting on a cache of documents published over the weekend shows Shell knew about the impact of fossil fuels even earlier than previously revealed, potentially bolstering legal efforts to hold Big Oil accountable for the global climate emergency.
The reporting from DeSmog and Follow the Money is based on Dirty Pearls: Exposing Shell's hidden legacy of climate change accountability, 1970-1990, a project for which researcher Vatan Hüzeir compiled 201 books, correspondence, documents, scholarship, and other materials.
Hüzeir—a climate activist, Erasmus University Rotterdam Ph.D. candidate, and founder and director of the Dutch think tank Changerism—collected the documents from former Shell staff, people close to the company, and private and public archives from January 2017 and October 2022.
Following explosive revelations about what ExxonMobil knew about fossil fuels driving global heating, investigations in 2017 and 2018 uncovered that Shell's scientists privately warned about the impact of its products in the 1980s.
"These findings add fuel to the flames of efforts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their decades of climate damages and denial."
However, as Follow the Money detailed, the newly unveiled records show that "Shell already began collecting knowledge about climate change in the 1960s. The company not only kept well abreast of climate science, but also funded research. As a result, Shell already knew in the 1970s that burning fossil fuels could lead to alarming climate change."
Faced with a global oil crisis, rather than using its climate information to publicly sound the alarm and shift to cleaner practices, the company "focused instead on a nonsustainable profit model," launching Shell Coal International in 1974.
The following year, a study Shell was involved with warned that "increases in the CO2 content of the atmosphere could lead to the so-called greenhouse effect... which would be enough to induce major climatic changes." Three years later, another report warned that "the continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to a manifold increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration."
A confidential study from 1989 states that if the global temperature rises more than 1.5°C—the target of the Paris climate agreement that came decades later—then "the potential refugee problem... could be unprecedented. Africans would push into Europe, Chinese into the Soviet Union, Latins into the United States, Indonesians into Australia. Boundaries would count for little—overwhelmed by the numbers. Conflicts would abound. Civilization could prove a fragile thing."
Duncan Meisel, executive director of the campaign Clean Creatives, which targets advertising and public relations firms that work for fossil fuel companies, declared Monday that "what these new documents show is incredibly disturbing."
"In the 1980s, Shell scientists laid out two pathways for the planet: one where energy companies undertook a smooth transition to clean energy and one where fossil fuel demand continued to rise, creating 'more storms, more droughts, more deluges,'" he summarized. "Since the publication of that forecast, Shell has pushed at every turn to create more fossil fuel demand, creating exactly the devastating outcomes they predicted."
The Center for Climate Integrity said the records provide the world "more damning evidence" that the company knew its business model was having disastrous impacts on the world and its people. As the group put it: "They knew. They lied. They need to pay."
Along with the two initial media reports, some of the Shell materials have been published by the Climate Files database.
"Although these first articles refer to only 38 of the many more documents amassed for Dirty Pearls, they tell the story of Shell having engaged in what I call 'climate change uncertaintism' and 'climate change negligence,'" Hüzeir said in a statement. "The former points to Shell's keen willingness to emphasize scientific uncertainty about the potential of global warming in its public reporting, even though scholarly consensus on the future reality of a warmer world was already forming at the time."
"The latter points to Shell's negligence of its own in-house knowledge of potential global warming in public reporting, although express consideration of that knowledge was to be reasonably expected," he added. "Both treatments were political in the sense that they served to push for fossil fuels and especially coal, over renewables, as the culturally preferred sources of energy for the foreseeable future. This is despite Shell's awareness of possibly dangerous climate change associated with unabated fossil fuel combustion. Both treatments were strategic because, by extension, they protected Shell's hydrocarbon-based business model."
\u201c@shellslies @ScientistsX @ScientistRebel1 @SR_Netherlands @xrBmthXchPoole @ScotlandXr @XR_Belgium @XR_NYC @XRebellionUK @ExtinctionR @XRLeipzig Brilliant research by @VatanHuzeir @Changerism, who compiled 201 company documents, official correspondence, reports, academic studies & other material showing #ShellKnew about #ClimateChange, systematically downplayed problems & pushed use of #FossilFuels\nhttps://t.co/xrtaFLOmC5\u201d— @ShellsLies (@@ShellsLies) 1680426494
Hüzeir stressed that "the exposure of these two early distinct corporate political treatments of climate change repositions Shell's later markedly aggressive response to global warming in the 1990s and 2000s as a second phase in Shell's developing relationship with global warming. First came climate change negligence and uncertaintism, and then, as global warming was entering public consciousness and significant uncertainties about its reality became insignificant in the 1970s and 1980s, then came climate change denialism and doubtism."
A spokesperson for Shell said:
The Shell Group did not have unique knowledge about climate change. The issue of climate change and how to tackle it has long been part of public discussion and scientific research that has evolved over many decades. It has been widely discussed and debated, in public view, among scientists, media, governments, business, and society as a whole. Our position on the issue has been publicly documented for more than 30 years, including in publications such as our Annual Report and Sustainability Report.
Meanwhile, researchers suggested to DeSmog that the documents could help with climate-related litigation against Shell.
"This impressive history shows for just how long climate issues were known by Shell personnel," said Ben Franta, senior research fellow in climate litigation at the University of Oxford. "Despite internal awareness, the company systematically downplayed the problem to the public, instead promoting more and more fossil fuel use despite the dangers. Now, five decades later, Shell continues to dawdle and delay."
\u201cread this whole thread. it shows why it's accurate to call fossil energy executives sociopaths.\u201d— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@Dr. Genevieve Guenther) 1680537552
University of Miami professor Geoffrey Supran, known for his research into ExxonMobil, similarly said that "this report winds back the clock even further on Shell's long history of climate knowledge and deception."
"It reveals that Shell was ahead of the curve both in terms of its growing understanding, in private and academic circles, of the threat of climate change and unburnable fossil fuels, yet also in terms of its public dismissal of those realities," he added. "These findings add fuel to the flames of efforts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their decades of climate damages and denial."
During Russia's war in Ukraine, Shell has joined Big Oil peers including Chevron and ExxonMobil in making massive profits. After recording a record $40 billion profit in 2022, Shell announced that its former CEO, Ben van Beurden, took home $11.7 million last year, up from $7.9 million the previous year.
As Bloomberg highlighted in February, "The company's record profits won't significantly accelerate its low-carbon ambitions." After putting about $3.5 billion into renewables along with projects that many climate groups call "false solutions," accounting for about 14% of total capital expenditures in 2022, Shell decided to keep its spending in such areas the same for this year—which, as Vox pointed out, is "less than half of what the company invests in oil and gas exploration and extraction."
The company has chosen not to ramp up clean energy investments despite increasingly urgent warnings from climate scientists and energy experts that humanity must keep fossil fuels in the ground and shift to renewables to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global heating. As Meisel said Monday, "Shell is still pursuing the exact scenario that they knew would cause global disaster."
Shell is also compelled to act by a May 2021 Dutch court
order to cut carbon emissions 45% by 2030, compared with 2019 levels. Later that year, the company announced plans to move its tax residence from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom, and last year, it appealed the historic decision. Follow the Money noted that "in the meantime, Shell must carry out the court's ruling."
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