This issue of GPN is being published as a blog until construction of our website is completed. The website will include a much stronger search capacity, as well as other features. When it is completed, we will also publish this issue on it so that all contents of GPN are included in future searches.

Remember to click on Older Posts at bottom of each page to see the rest of the issue.


Friday, April 30, 2010

Welcome to the Second Issue of GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW


Thank you for your warm responses (see below) to the First Pilot Issue of GPN!

We are, of course, trying to learn from our mistakes and make corrections and improvements. Your detailed critiques are very welcome.

Sadly, there is no dearth of material from our contemporary world about genocidal massacres and threats of new eruptions of mass murder, let alone new material from the study of past genocides.

This second Issue is published in April, a month that is marked by Holocaust Day in Israel, and by the (95th) Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The issue presents an important essay review of the evidence of Auschwitz by architectural expert, Robert Jan Van Pelt, who appeared as an expert witness at the infamous David Irving-Deborah Lipstadt trial in London. It also presents a nomination for the ‘ten most absurd statements on the Holocaust.' We also present a story of a heated exchange on Russian TV (English language edition) between arch Holocaust degrader-denier, Norman Finkelstein, and GPN Editor-in-Chief, Israel Charny, accompanied by a video of the program.

The issue also reports a good deal on recognition of the Armenian Genocide (and also Assyrian and Greek victims): the status of the Protocols between Armenia and Turkey; denials of the Armenian Genocide—including by Israel; an Open Letter to the Presidents of Turkey and Israel; and an overview of a remarkable conference on Armenia and Turkey that took place in Istanbul, including the text of a courageous affirmation of the Armenian Genocide presented by Yair Auron.

The issue also presents stories and articles about Iran and its serious threats of future nuclear destruction; on Darfur; Cambodia; a new law against Holocaust denial in Hungary; Liberia; and the apology of Serbia after also continuing denial of the genocidal massacre at Srebrenica;

Further, this second issue of GPN contains stories and articles about incitement to genocide; prediction and prevention; education about genocide in the USA; digital terrorism and hate; hunger as a form of genocide with millions dying every year; and about a fatwa issued by a distinguished Muslim scholar against violence, for human life is holy!

We also introduce in this issue two new sections entitled THREAT and NEWSPEAK with brief reports on threats to human life in our world today, and on the gobbledygook of ‘1984-type’ disinformation and suppression of truth.

Finally, we continue our beginning assembly of Holocaust and Genocide Information Resources, including a feature story by Deborah Dwork in the section on Programs and Courses on the first PhD Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, and a feature article in the Bibliography section on the book Ghosts of Halabja by Michael Kelly.

We are a website-magazine. Our immediate goal is ‘a good read.’ Our long range goal is to contribute meaningfully to the development of genocide studies and taking real steps towards prevention.

Best wishes,

Israel
Israel W. Charny, Ph.D., Executive Director of GPN and Editor-in-Chief

Elihu
Elihu D. Richter, M.D., M.P.H., Editor and Director of GPN WORLD GENOCIDE SITUATION ROOM

Marc
Marc I Sherman, M.L.S., Editor and Director of GPN HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE REVIEW

David
David Lisbona, MBA, GPN Director of Development

P.S.
See the Table of Contents for the February issue. You still have easy access to stories and articles that are important to you.

Remember, we welcome regular submissions of information for our various information databases –including the calendar, announcement of conferences and seminars, information about projects and calls for collaboration, news of completed work, organizations devoted to genocide study and prevention, university and college and other programs and courses, and the bibliography of publications about genocide. Slowly but surely, we present new information and alsoin some cases cumulative lists of past and new information combined.

We also welcome your becoming an Affiliate of GPN. Please click here to see the sign-up form.

Registered Affiliates of GPN will enjoy:

● Active identification with the purposes of GPN Genocide Prevention Now and official membership in its network
● Preliminary e-mail announcements of forthcoming new issues of GPN and their contents
● Priority review of submitted manuscripts for possible publication in GPN
● Authorization to participate in interactive Talkback features of GPN as they are introduced.

Responses to the First Issue of GPN:

Responses to the pilot issue of GPN have been overwhelmingly positive.

"Congratulations on the first issue which I read today. It contains excellent articles by first rate scholars on pertinent issues. It is a splendid contribution to genocide studies." - Helen Fein, Director of the Institute of the Study of Genocide, New York; Co-Founder and First President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars

"I do not have the words to tell you how glad I am to see the foundation of Genocide Prevention Now. This is especially so since I see it as an important way of conveying the solution to much government murder which is democratic freedom, as my website (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/) and books show empirically and theoretically." - Rudy Rummel, Professor Emeritus Political Science, University Hawaii

"Have had the opportunity to go through the first issue of this phenomenal web magazine. Congratulations to all of you! It is most impressive; and I particularly am most appreciative of document opportunity in both HTML & PDF" - Steven Leonard Jacobs, Associate Professor, University of Alabama, Department of Religious Studies

"Great what you have done! Excellent!"
Prof, Dr. Jutta Lindert, MPH, Department of Public Health, Protestant University of Applied Sciences - Ludwigsburg,Germany
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Table of Contents Issue 2 April 2010

GPN tracks the grave danger of Iran
Elihu D Richter, with Alex Barnea, and Yael Stein
Iran Follow Up Tracking: Incitement to Genocide, Support for Terror, Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons, and Suppression of Human Rights



More nuclear plants being hidden in mountains
Iran Expanding Nuclear Construction Dramatically


Muslim prohibitions against killing human beings, Muslims or Non-Muslims
Distinguished Muslim Scholar Issues Fatwa Against Terrorism and Suicide Bombing


March 2010 Jos Nigeria: 150-500 massacred
GPN World Genocide Situation Room Staff
Genocidal Massacres in Central Nigeria, including direct reports and a Nigeria Timeline



Incitement prepares, excites, and predicts genocide
Elihu D Richter, Yael Stein, Alex Barnea
Incitement to Genocide in the Year in Review 2009 with Special Emphasis on Jihadist Antisemitism and Iran's Threats to Destroy Israel
  

Portraying a catastrophe as non-genocidal to avoid action
Eric Reeves
Genocide Year in Review 2008 into 2009: On the Re-writing of the Darfur Narrative  

Calm in Northern Sudan, violence in the South
Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur after Years of Death

A precarious time in genocide education
Sara Cohan and Marty Sleeper
Teaching Genocide in United States Secondary Education


An Internet subculture that normalizes hate and violence
Abraham Cooper with Rick Eaton and Mark Weitzman
Digital Terrorism and Hate: The First Decade and Beyond


Jan Van Pelt, expert witness at the Irving-Lipstadt trial, describes the Auschwitz evidence
Jan Van Pelt
Auschwitz The Evidence


Another country in Europe legislates punishment for Holocaust denial
Hungary Passes Law Punishing Denial of Holocaust


The most absurd Holocaust statements
Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Press Release
Apologists for U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Head List of "Ten Most Absurd Holocaust Statements" for 2009


What began as commemorating International Holocaust Day becomes a battle with a degrader of the Holocaust
A Heated TV Debate between Norman Finkelstein and Israel Charny on the Holocaust (Video on Youtube)

An apology -- for what??
Serbia Apologizes for Srebrenica but Refuses to Label it Genocide


They will be reborn as cockroaches
Khmer Rouge Tribunal vs. Karmic Justice

Affirming the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul amidst a sea of deniers
An Intriguing Conference in Turkey on Turkish-Armenian Relations is Followed by Publication of a Conference Book
Israel Charny: "Istanbul Report"

Yair Auron: Jewish Evidences and Eyewitness Accounts: About the Genocide of the Armenians during the First World War


A meeting in respect of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey -- in memory of Hrant Dink
Symposium on Armenian Genocide Will Be Held in Ankara on April 24



A touching commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem -- notwithstanding government non-recognition
James Russell
The Armenian Holocaust: Memory and Moral Responsibility


Forecasting a failure of the Armenian-Turkey Protocols
Turkish Parliament Will Not Discuss Armenia Protocols, Turkish MP Says

"My soul wanted to throw up," writes Israel's former Minister of Education about those who opposed recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but now want to punish Turkey for other reasons of self-interest
Yossi Sarid
Now You Remembered


The agreement between Turkey and Armenia is failing to materialize
Harut Sassounian’s Column
The Show is Over ... The Protocols are Dead
Armenia-Diaspora Unity Must be Preserved at All Cost



A proposal for Turkey and Israel to advance core values of life - natural emergencies and water needs
An Open Letter to the President of Turkey and Israel

Pundits quip that Turkey may soon run out of ambassadors
Sweden Recognizes Assyrian, Greek and Armenian Genocide, and Turkey of course Recalls its Ambassador to Sweden

Legal initiatives for responsibility for the Armenian Genocide
Zoryan Institute Press Release
Attorneys from England, Ireland, Turkey and US Discuss Armenian Genocide and International Law


Is anyone but the Khmer Rouge responsible for the genocide in Cambodia?
Did the U.S. "Cause" the Cambodian Genocide?

During any year millions of children starve to death
George Kent
The Hunger Holocaust



A strutting former president on trial
Charles Taylor, Former Liberia President on Trial at the Hague


HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE REVIEW INFORMATION RESOURCES


THREAT

NEWSPEAK


Quotable:
Peace Speeches by Ahmadinejad, Hitler, and Chamberlain; Winston Churchill's Response to Munich
Ahmadinejad's letter to Ban Ki-moon, 2010 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ahead of a nuclear summit in Washington and asked him to condemn the United States and NATO for supporting anti-Iranian terrorists.

Excerpt: His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, New York: “I hope this initiative will lay a solid foundation for the spread of Nowruz* culture that stands for peace, amity, dynamism, constructive cooperation and sustainable security across the world....It is all the more regrettable that terrorism has turned into a tool to subdue nations....May God the Almighty bless the entire world with peace and justice.” --Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

*Nowuz (Persian "New Day", originally "New Light") is a traditional ancient Iranian festival which celebrates the start of the Iranian new year. Nowruz is also widely referred to as the Persian New Year and also marks the first day of spring. The UN's General Assembly in 2010 recognized the International Day of Nowruz, describing it a spring festival of Persian origin. Retrieved April 12, 2010 from foreign policy.com http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/12/ahmadinejads_letter_to_ban_ki_moon

Adolf Hitler 1935 "National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions....The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of the nation... Germany needs peace and desires peace!"

Adolf Hitler - speech at Wurzburg, 27 June 1937 “In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger... I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.”

Neville Chamberlain, celebrating a peace agreement with Hitler on his return to England, 1938
The Munich agreement that permitted Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September).
"The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine (waves paper to the crowd - receiving loud cheers and 'Hear Hears'). "My good friends, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time."

Winston Churchill denouncing the Agreement in the House of Commons "We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat...you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude...we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road...we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting". And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."
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Aims of GPN

About the New GPN Genocide Prevention Now Website

Our Aim:

We aim to reach decision makers, scholars concerned about genocide and genocidal terror and the general public.

This and future issues will address the Who, Where, Which, and What, and the Tipping Points, What-If's and So-What's of current "hot" genocidal scenarios worldwide. We and invited guest writers will present the case not only for what could have been done, but also recommend what should be done. We will start with incitement to genocide and genocidal terror from Iran and its terror proxies, the world wide spread of jihadi incitement and hate language, and move on to Darfur, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. We will present frequently graphic timelines, early warning indicators, and world responses to mass deaths and other adverse outcomes. We will report and critique successes as well as failures.

We are especially proud that our first posting (Issue 1, February 15, 2010) was the landmark Responsibility to Prevent Petition of Professor Irwin Cotler calling for indictment of the President of Iran for incitement to genocide, support for genocidal terror, defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions against Iran's pursuit of nuclear enrichment, and brutal suppression of human rights inside its own country.

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How is GPN Different from Other Websites?

How is GPN different from other websites on genocide and genocidal violence?

We bring vital information about genocide in the world together with information about genocide scholars, studies and prevention and assemble the latter in a database for easy access and long-term use.

We publish a mix of news stories, feature articles and professional publications, many of them cutting edge, original pieces.

We add depth interpretive tools to some reports including interpretive analysis and timelines - many of them original - and full resource documents such as legal briefs or government reports.

We publish GPN on three levels:
1) a detailed Table of Contents
2) click easily to the full text, without the reference notes
3) click easily to a PDF of the full text with all references and reference notes
We try to write all of our material (including professional articles) in readable and even interesting language for an intelligent reader, and we avoid academic excesses.


Become an Affiliate of GPN. One easy email form to us will sign you in.

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Iran Follow Up Tracking: Incitement to Genocide, Support for Terror, Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons, and Suppression of Human Rights



From Prediction, Precaution, and Prevention to … Preemption?
Elihu D Richter with Alex Barnea and Yael Stein
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, its leaders, starting with Ayatollah Khomeini, have been explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel, to incite followers and sensitize bystanders. Since October 2005 and the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, its leaders have ratcheted up the frequency and intensity of their incitement and hate language.

Iran’s genocidal policy and posture has four prongs. These are:
(1) Use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement of Mein Kampf directed against “Israel”, “Zionism”;

(2) Secret and illegal program to develop nuclear capacity and long distance missile delivery systems capable of delivering nuclear warheads;

(3) Direction support, supplying, and training of terror proxies, notably Hezbollah and Hamas, themselves explicitly committed to Israel’s destruction;

(4) Increasingly brutal persecution and suppression of dissidents, religious minorities, and so called sexual offenders, notably since the apparently fraudulent election which returned Ahmadinejad to power in June 2009.

Since 1979, Iran has become the epicenter of a world-wide axis of genocidal Islamist antisemitic terror and incitement to terror. Iran’s allies comprise an Axis for Genocide which includes its suppliers, North Korea and Russian terror proxies and allies-- Syria, Sudan, Hezbollah and Hamas, and elements in the Palestinian Authority, Its sympathizers include millions in the Islamic world, and its enablers, suppliers and protectors include the leaders of China and Russia.

The power of Iran’s leadership derives from the world’s extreme dependence on its massive oil reserves, its ability to play off world power blocs against each other, and its manipulation and exploitation of endemic genocidal antisemitism in the Islamic world.

So far, three UN resolutions through 2006-2008 condemning Iran and calling for sanctions against its secret pursuit of nuclear enrichment do not appear to have deterred Iran. There also has been a US Congressional Resolution (HConRes21) calling for indictment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide, and most recently, a US Senate Resolution condemning Iran for its human rights abuses. But Iran, backed by China, has been more or less successful in defying these resolutions. So far the outside world does not appear to have been able or willing to stop Iran’s leadership in progressing towards nuclear capacity and developing missile delivery systems, as Iran continues to exploit Great Power rivalries and Third World resentments against the West, Capitalism, and the US. Ahmadinejad in his travels around the world has attempted to position himself as a leader of the downtrodden and an opponent of capitalism. His recent visits have included India and Brazil, two large powerful democracies where he was greeted with expressions of warmth.

Iranian leaders’ repeated incitement to genocide against Israel’s Jewish population includes the use of crude antisemitic motifs of dehumanization, demonization, delegitimization, disinformation and Holocaust denial. This incitement dates back to 1979, but it sharply escalated in 2005, when Ahmadinejad was elected. During 2008 and 2009, Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as a “terrorist and criminal state” (June 13 2008), and called for “annihilate[ing] this false regime" (June 14 2008). He has used the language of Nazi propaganda since Hitler’s Mein Kampf to engage in dehumanization, e.g. “vermin”, “a cancerous growth” (22 Aug 2003), “black and filthy microbe” (Feb 23 2008), “stinking corpse” (June 13 2008), “germ of corruption” (Sept 23 2008), to demonize “Zionists [as] few in number but dominating financial and monetary positions”, “caught in the clutches of Jewish power, “acquisitive and invasive minority” (Dec 2006) that “Zionism is root cause of insecurity and wars”(Sept 25 2008), and to incite—e.g. “Iran will support Hamas until the destruction of Israel” (Nov 26 2008).

Genocide scholars (Charny, Stanton, and Gordon) have demonstrated that state-sanctioned hate language and incitement are early warning signs of genocidal intentions.

Our published timeline suggests that incitement and hate language of Iranian leaders decreased following international outrage in response to Ahmadinejad’s first statements, but then increased following the US National Intelligence Estimate’s erroneous claim that Iran abandoned its activities in enrichment (Nov 2007). In late 2007-early 2008, after Ahmadinejad was welcomed by journalists, diplomats, universities, and TV talk shows and the outrage subsided, Iran’s leaders sharply increased the frequency and intensity of their hate language. Ahmadinejad prompted a rare walk-out at the United Nations racism summit in April 2009, when he called Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime" and told the conference on the same day that Jewish communities commemorate the Holocaust that "Following WWII they [the Jews] resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering". Washington decried Ahmadinejad's speech as "vile and hateful," while the Vatican called it "extremist and unacceptable." Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the address both "unsavory" and "obnoxious". Following the massive public uprisings and brutal crackdowns of all opposition inside Iran in June 2009, and a less welcoming atmosphere in the West, the frequency and intensity of Iranian incitement and hate language broadcast to the outside world appeared to have fallen off.

However, in early 2010 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad resumed his threats against Israel and the Western world. Ahmadinejad promised that his nation will deliver a harsh blow to the "global arrogance" to mark the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. At a press conference with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus on February 25, 2010, Ahmadinejad said: "A Middle East without Zionism is a divine promise. Time is on the side of the peoples of the region. The Zionist entity is nearing the threshold of nonexistence. On February 27, 2010 he delivered a speech at a Tehran conference in support of the Palestinians saying that, "With God's grace and thanks to the Palestinian resistance the occupying Zionist regime has lost its raison d'Ăªtre", summing up "This microbe of corruption is no longer feasible for its masters to keep. The European and American people are opposed to Zionism and want an end to the Zionist thoughts".

Public interest in Iran’s nuclear programs and missile delivery systems should not divert attention away from its arming Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria with advanced weaponry, long range rockets, and missile silos for use against Israel’s population centers.

Iran’s Genocidal Agenda: Comparisons with Nazi Germany

The evidence suggests that by 2005, and certainly thereafter, Iran has already gone far beyond Nazi Germany in the 1930’s in advancing its genocidal agenda against Israel with its explicit calls for its destruction and a program of Holocaust denial. This alarming and ominous fact holds, even if its own Jewish community of 25,000 whose origins date back to the exile following the destruction of the First Temple, lives in a status of protected dhimmitude so far appearing to be less endangered than German Jews during the late 1930’s. Most researchers agree that evidence is not available to indicate that Nazi Germany ever publicly declared its genocidal intentions explicitly, and after the world protest and outrage which followed Kristalnacht, went to great extremes to conceal its concentration camps by locating them in Eastern Europe which was far away from Western eyes and whose local populations were largely hostile to Jews. Its use of euphemisms (e.g. “Final Solution”, and "Aktions") and code words ["Operation Reinhard"] were central to this policy of concealment of its intentions in period before and during World War II. Concealment greatly delayed discovery and recognition of the “Final Solution,” even as Nazi genocidal rhetoric fed the crazed mindsets of the architects, supervisors and perpetrators of the crematoria.

Iran’s leaders and its terror proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah do not appear to be inhibited by the need for concealment. Iran’s leaders are able to tap into a huge hinterland of endemic hate fomented by Islamists in the Muslim world (current population: 1.2 billion), even if the leaders of many of the countries in this world fear and distrust Iran. It is quite probable that the breadth and depth of this hatred is similar to or perhaps exceeds that of antisemitism in the western world in the run up to World War II. Nazi Germany’s allies were Austria, which it annexed, and the puppet leaders of nations it conquered, e.g. Quisling of Norway. Its major ally, Japan, opposed the Nuremburg laws and allowed Jews to survive in Shanghai. We have already noted Iran's allies, enablers, and protectors.

Nazi Germany was an industrial superpower with enormous human resources and technological capacity and know-how. Iran is rich in oil and gas reserves and also has a well-educated determined elite of scientists and technologists who have, with outside help, made enormous strides in building its military capacity. Even so, Iran’s population and health indices remain relatively poor.

Most importantly, Iran’s regime, like all the authoritarian dictatorships of the Mideast, has shown remarkable resilience. So far, it has ruled 30 years, as compared with the 12 year life span of Nazi Germany. Note that had the US not been forced to go war, it is not certain that Nazi Germany would have been destroyed.

Tipping Points and "What ifs":

In retrospect, there have been many critical tipping points in the story of Iran’s pursuit of its genocidal agenda. Under President Jimmy Carter, the US did nothing to back the Shah of Iran against the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini. The US’s bungled attempt to rescue its Embassy personnel was another tipping point, as was its failure to use force in response to Iranian proxies' bombing the US base in Beirut [Oct 1983] and other terror activities, notably the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires [March 1992] and the Amia Jewish community Center [July 1994]. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s the world ignored repeated Iranian incitement and hate language by powerful clerics and Revolutionary Guard Leaders, considering it part of normal “background noise” of Muslim extremist political rhetoric.

During the US invasion of Iraq, Iran’s leadership temporarily suspended its secret enrichment program, and moderated its public inflammatory rhetoric. As noted, in 2007, the NIE estimate which erroneously stated that Iran did not renew its enrichment was an especially critical tipping point, following which Iran’s leaders renewed and stepped up their genocidal incitement and hate language, nuclear enrichment, and their support for terror groups, not only in the Mideast, and became ever more brazen.

As the year 2010 progresses, the world community has yet not taken effective action to deter Iran’s leaders and stop their explicit calls for Israel’s destruction, their incitement to genocide, their support for terror groups, their nuclear program, and their brutal suppression of political opposition. Such inaction bespeaks the sad fact that much of the world now appears to have developed a degree of tolerance for such explicit incitement and direct support for genocidal terror, not only from Iran, but from other sources as well, notably Saudi Arabia and Palestinian terror groups. Deterrence has been weak and so far appears to have been ineffective.

The continued unrest in Iran following its disputed election in June 2009 appears to have been the most critical tipping point to date, creating both dangers and opportunities for applying brakes on Iran’s rush to enrichment, its incitement and support for terror and its internal suppression of human rights. It is quite possible that the threats to the legitimacy of those now in power in Iran posed by the unrest can be expected to encourage its leaders to pursue “a go for broke” policy as they increase internal suppression and repression, support for terror proxies, and step up the race to nuclear capacity. On the other hand, there is some possibility that a combination of internal and external pressures may further weaken this leadership, thereby deterring it from further pursuit of its genocidal agenda

What Can Be Done?

Genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference. A pronged strategy of deterrence requires use of existing tools of international law (the UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court) to indict and prosecute Iran’s leaders for their incitement to genocide. Simultaneously, the case is compelling for urgent sanctions and economic pressures against the leadership of Iran’s nuclear program, its terror proxies, and their brutal suppression of human rights inside Iran. The International Criminal Tribunal- Rwanda’s prosecutions and convictions of Rwandan political leaders and journalists set a precedent for such indictments.

In the case of Iran, such prosecutions would advance the temporal locus of intervention to predict and prevent, from proof of intent after the event, in keeping with public health models based on the Precautionary Principle. The Cotler Responsibility to Prevent Petition enlists all the legal tools needed to pursue such directed action. World action against the Iranian leadership’s arbitrary and summary imprisonment, torturing and executions of dissidents, stoning of women, public hangings of persons accused of sexual crimes and other brutal acts of suppression state the case for forging an alliance for protection of human life and human dignity. Such action needs to be directed against the Iranian leadership and other members, enablers, proxies, and complicit bystanders in the world wide Axis of Genocide. In parallel, there is a need for an urgent energy policy which will prepare the free world for Iranian energy blackmail in the event of threats to carry it out. Paradoxically, the success of sanctions short of the use of armed force to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear capacity may rest on the credibility of threats to use such armed force should sanctions fail.

Failure to apply the foregoing policy may leave those endangered by Iran’s genocidal axis no choice but to adopt preemptive measures against an ever more aggressive and repressive regime. There has been no precedent for a regime threatening genocide to be on verge of acquiring nuclear capacity to implement it. Nazi Germany and Japan fell only because the world went to war to destroy them after the repeated failures of appeasement. Similarly, the Serbian and Rwandan genocidal regimes also fell in response to the use of armed force, but only after hundreds of thousand perished.

Will the failures of engagement lead to a war?

Will past failures in Prediction, Precaution and Prevention lead to the need for Preemption? The clock is ticking.

The authors wish to acknowledge the critical reviewing and comments by Joel Fishman PhD and assistance of Marc Sherman MLS in research and editing.


Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH is Editor of GPN, Director of the World Genocide Situation Room and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He is Head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published and lectured on the use of public health models for the prediction and prevention of genocide.

Alex Barnea, MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict is Research Assistant and Project Manager of the World Genocide Situation Room section of GPN, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He acted as project manager for UK relief work in Tsunami-affected Thailand and later as consultant to a Cambodian NGO - orphanage.

Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a ”goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment” in her work; “I focus on making a difference.”
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Iran Expanding Nuclear Construction Dramatically


A Senior Iranian official said that his country planned to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plants, 2 within the next year, and had identified nearly 20 sites for the facilities. The official, Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, also said the plants would use a new kind of centrifuge, but he did not provide details.

Sources:
New York Times, (February 23, 2010). Iran plans a large increase in enrichment facilities.
The Raw Story (February 22, 2010). Iran to 'hide nuclear plants inside mountains'.
Aljazeera News (November 30, 2009). Iran to build more uranium plants.
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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Distinguished Muslim Scholar Issues Fatwa Against Terrorism and Suicide Bombing



Pakistani-born Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, a widely recognized and respected authority on Islamic jurisprudence, issued a comprehensive fatwa prohibiting terrorism and suicide bombing at a press conference in London.

The Pakistani-born Dr. Qadri's unprecedented 600-page fatwa on why suicide bombings and terrorism are un-Islamic and scripturally forbidden is described by some as the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date. "Today's tragedy is that terrorists, murderers, mischief-mongers and rioters try to prove their criminal, rebellious, tyrannous, brutal and blasphemous activities as a right and justified reaction to foreign aggression under the garb of defense of Islam and national interests," Qadri said. "The one who does has no relation to Islam," Qadri emphasized further.

According to the Jakarta Post, Dr. Qadri's fatwa bans suicide bombing "without any excuses, any pretexts, or exceptions." The Jerusalem Post reported that "Dr. Qadri has used texts in the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that suicide and other terrorist attacks are absolutely against the teachings of Islam and that Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext. The fatwa condemns suicide bombers as destined for hell, refuting the claim used by Islamists that such terrorists will earn paradise after death." Qadri is the founder of Minhaj-ul-Quran, a worldwide movement that promotes a non-political, tolerant Islam. The group has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, most of them in Pakistan and Pakistanis living in other countries.

A commentary in the Pakistani Daily Mail entitled "Suicide bombing and Dr. Tairul Quadri's Fatwa" noted that Surah Al-Maeda, Ayah No. 32 says: "(1) 'He who kills a human being (whether Muslim or non-Muslim), he has killed the whole humanity. He who saves one life, it is but equal to saving the whole humanity.' (2) 'In Surah Al-Nisaa, Ayah 29, it is clearly said that suicide is Haraam: 'Don’t kill yourself, there is no doubt that Allah is Merciful to you.' Committing suicide is equal to interfering in the working of Allah. It is as equal to rejecting the blessings of Allah the man is bestowed with. (3) Man is not allowed to kill himself even in the heights of unbearable pains of disease, despondency and any other circumstances."

Sources:
Paul, Jonny (February 3, 2010). UK Muslim leader to issue fatwa against Jihad. Jerusalem Post.
Jakarta Post (March 2, 2010). Muslim leader issues anti-terror fatwa.
Alvi, Alya (Retrieved March 10, 2010 from http://dailymailnews.com/0310/09/Editorial_Column/DMEditorialMail.php). Pakistan Daily Mail Online Edition. Suicide bombing and Dr Tahirul Qadri’s Fatwa. Read full text......

Genocidal Massacres in Plateau State Central Nigeria, including Direct Reports from Nigeria, and a Nigeria Timeline


GPN World Genocide Situation Room staff is posting this report of what is best described as a genocidal massacre of between 150 and 500 in the predominately Christian villages surrounding the city of Jos in central Nigeria with the latest report in March 2010 - see http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=91029.

We define a genocidal massacre as an episode in which a group kills, rapes, or mutilates members of another group defined by its national, religious, ethnic, race or political identity or another criterion, destroys and plunders their property, and forces their expulsion.

Who: (Victims, Perpetrators, Inciters, Enablers, Witnesses, Investigators, and Key Civil Society Officials)

Perpetrators: Groups of a few hundred Muslim men speaking Hausa and Fulani, (some also spoke both in Fulani and in the local language of Berom), armed with guns, machetes, and knives. Many were wearing black, and covered their faces; some were wearing military or pseudo-military uniforms. Witnesses believed the men to be former neighbours, recognizing them by their voices, and said the men were former residents of the village who had left in January 2008 or earlier, in 2001. 98 people have reportedly been arrested by state police in connection with the attacks.

Victims: An estimated 200 (150-500) Berom Christian villagers (villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa), including scores of women, children and babies, and the elderly. Witnesses described “seeing bodies, including corpses of young children and babies, inside houses, strewn around the streets, and in the pathways leading out of the villages.” 375 people are counted as dead or missing.

Civil Society Officials:
• Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis.

• Mohammed Lerama, Plateau State police spokesperson, interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

• Goodluck Jonathan, acting Nigerian president, who after the January 2010 violence committed to bring Nigerian perpetrators to justice, and is quoted as having said: “Those found to have engineered, encouraged, or fanned the embers of this crisis through their actions or pronouncements will be arrested and speedily brought to justice. We will not allow anyone to hide under the canopy of group action to evade justice. Crime, in all its gravity, is an individual responsibility, not a communal affair.”

• Umaru Yar’Adua, president of Nigeria, on medical leave, who in 2008 set up a panel to investigate the Jos violence.

• Jonah Jang, Plateau State governor, who formed a commission of inquiry holding public hearings into the Jos violence of 2008.

• Gregory Yenlong, a Plateau State spokesman, said officials would conduct mass burials for the victims. Yenlong also said that police were seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, because Bayari's comments incited the attack. However, the chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the attack.

Investigators and observers:
• Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
• Robin Waubo, a spokesman from the International Red Cross: Red Cross officials have reported that more than 600 people have fled to a makeshift camp that still held victims from January's violence. They expect more to come, putting an even bigger strain on the already limited humanitarian aid for those fleeing the violence.
What:
Death toll:
• State official claiming more than 500 had been killed.
• Christian aid worker said that 93 had been counted in one village alone.
• Police would confirm no more than 100 victims, but were still counting.
Human Rights Watch reports 375 people counted as dead or missing. Extremely well planned brutal attacks by mobs (reportedly hundreds) of men passed through two villages outside Jos shooting and hacking to death anyone they caught – women, the elderly, and even toddlers – with machetes; and then burned and destroyed homes, cars, and other property.

Where: The central Nigeria Plateau State, the border region between the Muslim North and the Christian South. The flashpoint is the state capitol of Jos and its surrounding villages.

When:
Please click here for NIGERIA TIMELINE.

Since the end of military rule in 1999, more than 13,500 people have died in religious or ethnic clashes.

In September 2001 in Jos, as many as 1000 were killed in violence. In May 2004: inter-communal clashes took place in the southern Plateau State town of Yelwa. On November 28 and 29, 2008, at least 700 people were killed in violence in Jos, including 133 documented (Human Rights Watch) cases of unlawful killings by members of the security forces responding to the situation. On January 19th, 2010, more than 150 Muslim residents were killed in an attack on the town of Kura Karama.

The latest violence took place on March 7, 2010 in the early morning hours beginning at around 3 am: 200 Christian villagers were massacred in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot, and Ratsat, 10 kilometres south of Jos, the capital of the Plateau State. The massacre ended with the arrival of the military at around 430 am. Police reportedly have arrested 98 people in connection with the attacks.

• Alleged causes include struggles for control of fertile lands

Context:

The immediate motivation for the March 7 attack, according to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, and numerous other observers is the retaliation for a previous attack by Christians against Muslim communities in the area (300 dead in January, 2010), and retaliation for theft of cattle from Fulani herdsmen.

The context is Muslim-Christian rivalries along the country's fertile and contested land, which parallel frictions between established Christian Berom ethnic group farming community (settlers) and incoming “non-indigenous” immigrants, mostly Muslim Fulani herders, who claim they have fewer economic and political rights and that they are discriminated against. The Christians claim there have been repeated periods of Muslim violence and tension in 2008, 2004, 2001 and before.

In addition, there is a a delicate North/South balance, the replacement of ailing absentee President Umaru Yar'Adua, by Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan has little support from the country's powerful state governors. The state governor of Plateau State blames poor coordination with central government for inhibiting military and security intervention. The end of military rule has also created vacuums in central authority in recent years. Critics say that a collapsed educational system, joblessness, extreme rich-poor differences between established “settlers” and newly arriving immigrants from North, and readily accessible weapons enable local unrest to develop into violence.

How (Incitement, Organization, Planning):
• Organized timed attack with numerous types of weapons
• Attackers arrived and left on foot by trails in darkness
• Attackers wore military uniforms or pseudo-military uniforms of black with covered faces to conceal identities
• No evidence (yet) uncovered) of incitement or coordination by text messaging or other media
• Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, has been accused of comments inciting the attack. However, the chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the attack
• There are reports of additional involvement of mercenaries from Chad

Tipping Points and What If’s

Nigeria now stands at a critical tipping point. It is clear that an emergency response requires firm government action to restore authority. The failure of the government to prevent this massacre during what was supposed to be a curfew begs investigation. The role model for such action comes from India, in the State of Gujarat. There, the government of India quickly carried out what it called a flag march and sent in troops and armor to ensure order and quiet in response to the threat of impending violence and a repeat massacre along religious lines between Hindus and Muslims. Since then, the State has been quiet.

What should be done?

There appears to be no choice but to separate the two populations. The responsibility is that of the Federal Government. Should the federal government fail to restore order and protect the populations, there would be a case for sending in international forces, observers and monitors. There is a need to track early warning signs of future repeat episodes, with emphasis on hate language and incitement, not only from the media, but now via text messaging, as occurred in Kenya. Other warning signs would be individual acts of terror carried out by extrajudicial groups. Following models in Kenya and elsewhere, political authorities, religious leaders and elders need to mobilize immediately to restore quiet and ensure personal safety.

The story in Jos also states the case for recognizing the need for intervention triggered by a genocidal massacre—a term not yet formally accepted in international genocide law.

Please click here for pictures of the situation in Jos.

Please click here for Appendix - Selected Witness Accounts.

Please click here for NIGERIA TIMELINE.

Sources:
This report is corroborated by information received from a senior church figure in Jerusalem who is in direct touch with Archbishop Ben Kwashi, and augmented by background information from African professionals now studying in Jerusalem.

Howden, Daniel (March 9, 2010). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nigeria-killings-spark-fears-of-wider-conflict-1918359.html

Human Rights Watch, Nigeria: Investigate Massacre, Step Up Patrols. Retrieved from Internet on March 12 2010 from http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/08/nigeria-investigate-massacre-step-patrols

Witness statements from Human Rights Watch: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8558246.stm

Harmon, Kendall. Muslims must rise up in Nigeria. http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/C494/ Read full text......

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Incitement to Genocide in the Year in Review 2009: With Special Empasis on Jihadist Antisemitism and Iran's Threats to Destroy Israel

  

Elihu D Richter, Yael Stein, Alex Barnea

Incitement and hate language, notably medical metaphors, especially originating from figures of power, official media, places of worship or school texts, are recognized predictors of genocide. In 2009, Jihadist propagation of antisemitic dehumanizing hate language drives a new world-wide axis of genocide. Leaders of Iran sharply increased their use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement, especially throughout the first half of 2008, but after the disputed election, there was a decline. Turkey was also teetering on the brink of propagating state-sanctioned antisemitism. In the Muslim world, Saudi preachers, Egyptian mass media and Palestinian Authority, Hamas in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, the leadership of Fatah in the West Bank in 2009 remain major producers of inflammatory hate language in media, mosques and school books, stigmatizing Jews and Christians. Currently European based antisemitic incitement is coming from an odd coalition of extreme left, extreme right, Islamist, and some human rights groups. The failure of the Goldstone Commission to relate explicitly and with sufficient force to Hamas' incitement to genocide, under Iran's support, was a fundamental error of omission. This legitimizes the use of law to divert attention away from incitement as a crime against humanity.

Incitement on the the Internet for recruiting candidates for genocidal terror is the most alarming trend in 2009. Terror groups now use the Internet to propagate their messages of hate, grievance, resentment and anger to recruit perpetrators from all over the world. They use powerful religious Jihadist motifs of sacrifice, faith and martyrdom to reach out and make contact with susceptible individuals, and create a climate of opinion which is sympathetic and supportive towards terror.


In Sudan, the situation in Darfur showed that genocide can occur without public incitement. Rape victims reported use of racial epithets by Janjaweed marauders. In Kenya, rival tribal factions used text messaging to incite to killing, which the government later countered with its own text messaging to stop the incitement.

The US Genocide Prevention Task Force decided against making recommendations to set up surveillance networks for tracking hate language and incitement on the grounds that they do not necessarily lead to genocide. The "Responsibility to-Prevent" Petition of Irwin Cotler [GPN Issue 1, February 2010], calling upon the world community to indict the Iranian government leaders for their incitement to genocide, promotion of genocidal terror, and illegal pursuit of nuclear enrichment and suppression of human rights, is the template case for the use of the existing tools of international law to prevent genocide.


Introduction:

Words kill. Use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement (HL&I) all too often predicts, initiates, promotes, and catalyzes genocide. HL&I are “out there,” definable and detectable. Since the Nuremberg trials and the UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide and its Punishment (UNGC), HL&I are punishable as Crimes against Humanity. The foregoing suggests the hypothesis that prevention of hate language and incitement can substantially contribute to the prevention of genocide.

We give a bird's eye review, admittedly selective and incomplete, of who was inciting to genocide and what was being done to stop it in 2009. We put particular emphasis on hate language and dehumanization.

Hate language refers to terms which are used to stigmatize, demonize or dehumanize groups defined by their national, ethnic, religious, racial, or political identity. Dehumanization in particular refers to hate language which includes metaphors-usually from public health and medicine-- which induce disgust, revulsion and hate for the other.

Since the Armenian genocide, perpetrators have used dehumanizing metaphors to prepare their followers to become killers, rapists, and plunderers or to silence bystanders.

Background

Hate language without incitement and direction is present everywhere—and by itself, is generally not subject to legal prosecution . Racist, religious epithets and expressions of bigotry directed towards the other are endemic the world round, at the kitchen table, in the barroom, the locker room, (i.e., Archie Bunker), the market place, and the board room. The messages may be explicit, euphemistic or coded. The past century has taught us that when leaders of movements or governments use explicit pseudo-medical and epidemiologic metaphors, such as microbes, filth, cancer, typhoid, and rats to dehumanize victim groups, it is prudent to regard such language as an urgent warning sign of imminent genocide—especially when it comes from figures of power, or appears in official media, places of worship or school texts. Because official use and spread of such language signals the speakers' intent, its use and spread is the case for action--- now.

Jihadist Antisemitic Genocidal Incitement

In 2009, there is a strong case for recognizing that the jihadist propagation of antisemitic dehumanizing hate language and incitement drives a new world-wide axis of genocide. Indeed, we can hypothesize that the term “jihad” is all too often a euphemism for inciting to genocidal campaigns of extermination, intimidation, conquest, conversion, and subjugation directed against vulnerable non-Muslim groups, cultures, states, religious, political and ethnic groups, both within and on the borders of the Muslim world.

Groups carrying out such incitement seek to undermine and destroy regimes within their own countries which they consider to be subordinate to the West, corrupt, and wavering in faith. Although its antisemitic terminology derives from Nazi propaganda,jihadist genocidal antisemitism and anti-Christian groups feed on religious notions of exclusivity rather than racist motifs.

Mein Kampf is a best-selling book in the Muslim world. Its 80 year run translates into a multi-generational inducting impact. The reach of jihadist genocidal incitement is now global, reaching out beyond the entire Muslim world as far east as the Philippines and Indonesia, south into Africa , and west into Europe, as well as into Latin America, and the university campuses of North America.

Iran

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has been the most aggressive state propagator of this genocidal jihadist incitement. Its leaders’ repeated calls for destruction of Israel using motifs straight from Mein Kampf, a copy of which in Persian has been reported to occupy center space in the display window of the bookstore at the entrance gate of the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Such incitement fuses motifs of martyrdom with dehumanization, demonization and delegitimization and ensures intergenerational perpetuation of hate through the decades. Israeli Jews --“Zionists,” Jews everywhere, Christians, Bahai, Zoroastrians, and Yezedis are the major non-Muslim groups subject to potential threat.

Iran’s state-sponsored hate language is particularly dangerous because it goes hand in hand with action directed towards achieving these means. Iran's progress towards nuclear enrichment and the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, two terror organizations explicitly committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and its suppression of human rights within its own borders, all imply a disrespect for basic human values and ethics, primarily respect for life and human dignity for all.

Leaders of Iran sharply increased their use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement in the wake of a very faulty new intelligence estimate in 2007 that Iran was not nearing nuclear weapons capacity and especially throughout the first half of 2008, but there was a slight falling off in the Spring of 2009 after the disputed June election. The publicity surrounding the release of the Cotler Responsibility to Prevent Petition which calls for indictment of the leaders of Iran for their incitement to genocide, illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for genocidal terror groups and suppression of human rights of dissidents and minorities—an exercise in naming and shaming in the court of public opinion, may also have helped.

But, as we write these words, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just declared, on 28th Feb 2010, at an "International Conference on National and Islamic Solidarity for Future of Palestine," that "the Zionist regime is the origin of all the wars, genocide, terrors and crimes against humanity and that they are the racist group not respecting the human principles." He declares that the state of Israel is an "insult to the entire humanity" and that, “World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and have unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region." In his speech, Ahmadinejad used all the motifs described above – incitement and hate language: threats, demonization, delegitimization, double standards and dehumanizing hate language.

Turkey: Teetering on the Edge

As 2009 ended, there were major concerns that Iran had drawn Turkey into the orbit of state-sanctioned antisemitism. Telecasts of recycled versions of ancient mythic stories about Israelis as baby snatchers and child killers were alarming warning signs of an extremely dangerous scenario. GPN’s directors GPN [Issue 2, April 2010] have put out an Open Letter to the Presidents of Turkey and Israel, warning that Turkey is "playing with fire" by recycling these inflammatory motifs.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli-Arab Conflict

In the Muslim world, in 2009 Saudi preachers and Egyptian mass media remain major producers of inflammatory hate language in media mosques, and school books in stigmatizing Jews and Christians. Many Saudi support Wahabi mosques around the world and are part of a global network for exporting these motifs to the faithful and converts.

Inside the Palestinian Authority, Hamas in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, the leadership of Fatah in the West Bank are major propagators of incitement and hate language, notably in their texts, television broadcasts, and mosques. According to Arnon Groiss of Impact, a project which monitors textbooks in the Middle East for incitement, Israel is portrayed as a power that harms its immediate environment, as enumerated in a list of more than twenty-five crimes, beginning with its very establishment, through the occupation of Palestine both in 1948 and 1967, expulsion of the Palestinian people, oppression of those under its control, aggression against neighboring Arab states, massacre of Palestinians, assassination of Palestinian leaders, destruction of the Palestinian economy, house demolition, stealing Palestinian land and water, breaking of Palestinian territorial unity, attempts at obliterating Palestinian national identity and heritage, usurpation or desecration of Palestinian Christian and Muslim holy places, and finally, Israel’s responsibility for social ills such as drug addiction in Palestinian society, the meager participation of Palestinian women in economic activity, family violence, and so forth. Both the PA and Hamas extol suicide terrorists as martyrs, the PA names streets and public places in their memory, and its Prime Minister visits and honors families of terrorists involved in killing Israelis. MEMRI The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education - IMPACT-SE and Palestinian Media Watch have documented this incitement to destroy Israel and, in the case of sources in the wider Arab world, all Jews. Such incitement undermines any prospects for a political settlement, because it ensures intergenerational transmission of the motifs of dehumanization, demonization, defamation and delegitimization. In response, Palestinians in turn charge that Israeli settlements are themselves incitement.

Incitement Upscale: Upscale versions of this incitement of delegitimization, often in the form of mis- or dis-information---notably following Operation Cast Lead, have penetrated mainstream organizations, most notably the UN Human Rights Councils, many European based NGOs . 27 (89%) out of 33 resolutions of the UN Human Rights Council are condemnations of Israel. The statements of the Goldstone Commission and various human rights organizations that Israel’s policy in Cast Lead were intentionally to kill, destroy, starve or punish or deny access to medical care to the Gazan Population has been intensively analyzed and refuted. However, there is intense debate, inside Israel itself and in the world at large, where many are calling for a high-level commission by Israel to investigate excesses and possible war crimes within the overall military operation.

European Based Incitement
Currently European based antisemitic incitement is coming from an odd coalition of extreme left, extreme right, Islamist, and upscale human rights groups. The images and casualty reports on Israel’s Cast Lead attack after 8 years of rocket attacks by Hamas and other terror groups on civilian populations resulted in an unprecedented upsurge of soft upscale versions of incitement, characterized by motifs of demonization, disinformation, delegitimization and double standards. A case in point is Mads Gilbert, a physician whose visit to Gaza was funded by Norway, who disseminated massive amounts of false information to support his claims that Israel intentionally sought to commit kill non–combatants in Gaza. Major political figures including the Foreign Ministry of Norway and Scandinavian journalists were at the forefront of these attacks. Israeli based NGOs –Physicians for Human Rights Israel and B'tzelem, in concert with international NGO’s, notably Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International also contributed to an atmosphere of delegitimization. These groups, using the terminology of human rights, also issued critiques of several actions by Israel but in the process promote misinformation and condemnation of Israel’s basic right to defend itself. Observers have noted these campaigns represent an extension of the Durban I strategy, of a coalition of human rights groups, who mapped out a long-term strategy of lawfare to delegitimize ”Zionism” and “Israel”.

At the same time, extreme neo-Nazi groups continue to incite against Muslims as a group, as well as other “outside” groups, especially in Europe.

The explosion of jihadist Islamist incitement on the Internet for recruiting candidates for genocidal massacres, genocidal terror and hate crimes is the most alarming trend in 2009. According to Steven Emerson, there are tens of thousands of such sites on the web, as compared with only tens which promote moderation and tolerance for others. Self-Radicalization, the term used by Secretary Thomas Gates, does not convey sufficient attention to the importance of massive external environmental exposures producing endemic rises in the background level of hate and alienation. Are the recent episodes involving Major Nidal Hassan , the Underwear Bomber and “Jihad Jane” –all reportedly enticed by such websites-- the tip of a larger iceberg of endemic haters?

Another alarming development in the jihadist threat is the use of what some propose to call "lawfare" or using the language of human rights and anti-racism to legitimize perpetrators and promoters of genocidal terror as “resistance fighters,” and to delegitimize those who fight to protect themselves from the violence it produces. Interestingly, many times we see an inversion, when perpetrators accuse their victims of doing exactly the same wrongs they themselves have perpetrated. Failure of the Goldstone Commission to relate explicitly and with more force to Hamas' incitement to Genocide, which is a crime against humanity, and to Iran's massive support for such incitement, which was certainly "out there" during the commission's field visits to Gaza, was a fundamental error of omission. This omission has helped to legitimize the use of lawfare to divert attention from these crimes and is a misuse of the international legislative platform defending human rights.

Genocide Below the Radar Screen without Public Incitement:

Darfur: The fact that open public incitement increases risks for genocide should not blind us to the fact that genocide can occur without it. In Sudan, it is in the interest of the government to camouflage the genocidal intentions its President stands accused of in the ICJ. Even so in Darfur, in 2009, John Hagan called attention to the use of racial epithets by Janjaweed marauders, as reported by rape victims. Yet, the Sudanese regime invokes denial, itself a form of incitement, declaring that that the total victims of what it has designated a civil war exceeds 10,000 , and is careful to avoid any public state sponsored use of epithets.

Kenya: In Kenya, a tense situation remains in the aftermath of the 2008 election. In the wake of that election, rival tribal groups began carrying out massacres and plundering villages of their rivals. In the aftermath, attention was drawn to the fact that perpetrators on both sides were using text messaging before the election to incite followers, often in vernacular dialects and away from urban centers. Later the government itself used text messaging to counter the incitement. Mainstream news media based in urban centers, ignored such incitement because it was considered local news.

The Kenyan story tells us that surveillance networks for tracking incitement need to penetrate deeply into rural areas, especially in the run-up to election campaigns in countries with unstable political systems, traditional ethnic and tribal divides which parallel socio-economic divides, and winner-take-all outcomes.

Sri Lanka: Mass Killings without Blatant Incitement

The Sri Lanka Sinhalese government’s military campaign, crushing the rebellion by the Tamilese tigers resulted in 20,000 dead and the confinement of 200,000 refugees in detention camps who only now are given a measure of freedom of mobility. But, as in Darfur, at this time, evidence is not readily available on the use of open public incitement and hate language in the past year. Research is necessary to determine if there was incitement below the radar screen, what its content was, at what level it existed, and how pervasive it was.

World Responses to Hate Language and Incitement in 2009

Responses and Interventions. Many European countries have laws against incitement on their books and enforce them, although claims are made that while they are used to criminalize those challenging incitement, they do not sufficiently protect those at physical danger from exercising legitimate free speech attacking ideas and beliefs, as opposed to speech demonizing groups.

In 2009, The US Genocide Prevention Task Force decided against making recommendations to set up surveillance networks for tracking hate language and incitement on the grounds that they do not necessarily lead to genocide. This omission seems inexplicable given the history of the role of hate language in mobilizing perpetrators and desensitizing bystanders during the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide. Using the misplaced logic of the Task Force, one could recommend against legal and educational campaigns against smoking on the grounds that not all smokers get cancer and not all persons with cancer were smokers.

The US Government has so far not followed through on action to implement a 2007 House of Representatives Resolution (HCONRes21) calling for it to initiate action towards indicting President Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide. It still has not moved forward to recognize its region wide endemic scope and dangers. It has not addressed the enduring dangers posed by intergenerational transmission of motifs of dehumanization, demonization and delegitimization.

In the absence of legal and other countermeasures, will open and public incitement to genocidal jihadist antisemitism have a free pass? And if so, will there be more hate crimes and genocidal massacres involving the likes of Major Nidal Hassan, the underwear bomber and Jihad Jane?

Although the first version of the Road Map calls for an end to incitement in the Israeli-Arab conflict, neither the UN, the US or the EU have so far taken any measures to set up a surveillance network for defining and tracking state-sponsored public incitement in political statements, media, school texts or places of worship. At present, a US State Department funded committee has begun performing an examination of incitement in texts of Israel and Palestinian Authority. One of the GPN editors, Elihu Richter, has been invited to participate in its Scientific Advisory Panel. The methodological challenges in carrying out such an examination include the need for definitions, inclusion and exclusion criteria and selection and sampling strategies, and validation of the sensitivity and specificity of newly developed search engines. The challenge will be to determine not only if these texts are free of negative incitement, but also if they will promote core values of respect for life and human dignity.

The most important positive event of 2009 was the release of the Cotler Responsibility to Prevent Petition, signed by more than 60 major figures in international law and human rights, calling for indictment of the President of Iran for incitement to genocide, promotion of genocidal terror, pursuit of nuclear enrichment and human rights abuses. This document serves as the tipping point in a long campaign of naming and shaming to delegitimize state-sanctioned incitement to genocide before there is genocide. There is evidence to suggest that its release was followed by a reduction in the Iranian leadership’s use of dehumanizing hate language---although sadly, as 2010 progesses, this reduction appears to have been transient.
Now, the clock is ticking.

The authors thank Israel Charny, Marc Sherman, David Lisbona and Irwin Cotler for comments and encouragement.

In the next issues of GPN, the senior author will present extended writing on incitement to genocide including an essay entitled, "Can We Prevent Genocide by Preventing Incitement?"



Elihu D Richter MD MPH is Editor of GPN, Director of the World Genocide Situation Room and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He is Professor and Head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published and lectured on the use of public health models for the prediction and prevention of genocide.

Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a ”goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment” in her work; “I focus on making a difference.”

Alex Barnea, MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, is Research Assistant and Project Manager of the World Genocide Situation Room section of GPN, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He acted as project manager for UK relief work in Tsunami-affected Thailand, and later as consultant to a Cambodian NGO-orphanage.

Read full text......

Monday, April 26, 2010

Genocide Year in Review 2008 into 2009: On the Re-writing of the Darfur Narrative

by Eric Reeves
The historical narrative of the Darfur genocide is presently being re-written. Despite dozens of human rights reports that have established the basic realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur and Eastern Chad over the past seven years, an effort is being made to minimise the scale of that destruction, elide the role of ethnicity in the conflict and downplay the responsibility of the Khartoum regime.

This large-scale revision has been taken up by those - particularly on the left - with an ideological aversion to humanitarian intervention. If the catastrophe can be portrayed as non-genocidal and essentially local in character, then advocacy efforts - initially for humanitarian intervention and currently for robust support of a weak and ineffectual UN/African Union peace operation - are misguided and misplaced.

The most conspicuous effort at re-writing history is Mahmood Mamdani's "Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror." The book focuses on the purported misperceptions and distortions of the American-based Save Darfur Coalition, which Mamdani argues is an unwitting supporter of the "war on terror". "Darfur [has become] not just an illustration of the grand narrative of the War on Terror but also a part of its justification," Mamdani writes. He would have us believe that in turning the Darfur conflict into a moral rather than a political issue, Americans in SDC can "feel themselves to be what they are not in Iraq: powerful saviors." "Darfur is a place of refuge. It is a surrogate shelter. It is a cause about which they can feel good."

It is true that some advocacy efforts have been prone to oversimplification, and occasionally misguided policy initiatives. Some corrective is no doubt needed. But Mamdani's points are tendentious and overstated, and should not distract from the substantial consensus about events that has been authoritatively established by human rights reporting, UN investigations and some excellent on-the-ground news reporting. Perversely, human rights reporting on Darfur is invisible in Mamdani's text.

The most authoritative data for violent mortality in Darfur and Eastern Chad comes from a statistically rigorous study by the Coalition for International Justice in August/September 2004. Several studies using these and other data found that total mortality was approximately 400,000 people between February 2003 and mid-2006. This figure includes both violent mortality as well as mortality from conflict-related disease and malnutrition.

But Mamdani and others choose to rely on studies that exclude the CIJ data and underestimate the death toll. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, for example, estimated that just 118,142 people died from September 2003 through January 2005. This figure not only excludes many months of extreme violence and very substantial mortality, but has no adequate data for violent mortality in particular.

Current mortality is also understated. Relying on figures from the hapless UN/African Union force (UNAMID), the new narrative suggests monthly death tolls from violence in the scores. But UNAMID can't begin to lay claim to a comprehensive survey of violence involving either civilians or combatants. Indeed, it often cannot reach the sites of violence or survey violently displaced populations. It is deeply misleading to offer UNAMID mortality numbers as representative of current violence against civilians or total mortality from all causes.

The new Darfur narrative also minimises the role of ethnicity in an effort to deny that genocide has occurred. Such assertions conveniently ignore the many reports of Arab villages being spared by Khartoum's military and Janjaweed militia allies while neighbouring villages of the Fur, Massaleit, Zaghawa and other non-Arab (African) tribal groups are destroyed. The use of explicitly racial epithets during violent attacks and rapes also goes unremarked.

In turn, the role of Khartoum's National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime is consistently understated, despite overwhelming evidence from the world's most distinguished human rights organisations of a hand-in-glove relationship between the Janjaweed and the regime. This relationship includes Khartoum's supply, recruitment and military coordination with the Janjaweed in attacks on purely civilian targets. Such attacks have occurred on a large scale as recently as February of this year.

Nor is the regime itself scrutinised in the new narrative. The roles of key figures in orchestrating the Darfur genocide, such as Ali Osman Taha, Nafi'e Ali Nafi'e, and Saleh Gosh, are completely unexamined. Indeed, neither Nafi'e nor Gosh appears in Mamdani's index. And yet all that Mamdani and his fellow travellers proffer as a solution to the Darfur catastrophe is a glib urging of continued negotiations with these very men, despite their genocidal behaviour and demonstrated contempt for signed agreements and the diplomatic process generally. Mamdani suggests no meaningful solutions to the need for safe return by the millions of displaced persons, compensation for overwhelming losses, the rendering of justice for atrocity crimes, or disarming the Janjaweed. The assumption appears to be that re-writing the Darfur narrative, diminishing the nature and scale of human destruction is solution enough.

But the massive crisis is expanding, particularly with Khartoum's March expulsion of roughly half the humanitarian capacity in Darfur. Peace talks are going nowhere. Only concerted pressure on the regime, and those international actors supporting its brutal policies, will serve to augment humanitarian and protection capacity and produce meaningful negotiations. This was the case with the north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and remains as true today. Acquiescence, continuation of the status quo will yield only genocide by attrition among the targeted populations.

It should hardly be surprising that this new narrative is unrecognizable to Darfuri's themselves. It is not American advocacy efforts that distort the truths of recent history. Rather, betrayal of the truth comes most consequentially from those who have decided that the recent history of Darfur must be re-written if it is to comport with ideological fixations and pre-determined conclusions about humanitarian intervention in the face of genocide.

Eric Reeves is author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide."

Dr. Reeves is professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in Shakespeare, Milton, and the history of literary theory and the fact. He has spent many years working as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the United States and internationally. He has testified several times before the Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan. Working independently, even while undergoing treatment for leukemia, he has written on all aspects of Sudan's recent history. He has received a generous grant from the Humanity First Initiative of the Omidyar Network to support his research and travel. A collection of his essays on ongoing war and human destruction in Sudan has appeared as A Long Day's Dying (Key Publishing, 2007).


Sources:
Reprinted with permission of Eric Reeves
Published as "Whitewashing Darfur" in The Guardian (on-line), June 14, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/11/darfur-sudan-genocide-mamdani. Mounted on H-Net June 15 2009.
See further Eric Reeves on Sudan: www.sudanreeves.org.
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