Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation , livre ebook

Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 1 08/09/2011 14:34Winstanley T02435 00 pre 2 08/09/2011 14:34COrpOrate COmplICIty
In Israel’s OCCupatIOn
evidence from the london session
of the russell t ribunal on palestine
Edited by Asa Winstanley and Frank Barat
Foreword by Alice Walker
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 3 08/09/2011 14:34First published 2011 by pluto press
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Copyright © asa Winstanley and Frank Barat 2011
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work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and patents a ct 1988.
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Winstanley T02435 00 pre 4 08/09/2011 14:34For Inas and Leo
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 5 08/09/2011 14:34Winstanley T02435 00 pre 6 08/09/2011 14:34Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgementsx
Foreword by Alice Walkerxi
Introduction1
1 The Legal Framework Relevant to Corporate Conduct 5
International Law and the Complicity of Business in
Human Rights Abuses – Hocine Ouazraf 5
Redress For Palestinian Victims of Human Rights
Abuses in the Courts of England and Wales
– Richard Hermer QC 13
Principles and Mechanisms to Hold Business
Accountable in US Courts – Yasmine Gado 37
The French Courts – William Bourdon 46
2 Corporate Activities in and Around Israeli Settlements 53
The Settlement Industry and Corporate Involvement
in the Occupation – Dalit Baum 53
Business Practices in Relation to Settlements and
the Settlement Industry – Hugh Lanning 59
The Reality of Israeli Settlements in Palestine
– Fayez al-Taneeb 70
The Situation in the Jordan Valley – Wael Natheef 74
Veolia Environnement SA – Adri Nieuwhof 78
The Actions of Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH)
in Israel/Palestine – John Dorman 85
3 Trade and Labelling of Israeli Settlement Goods 95
Production and Trade of Settlement Produce:
Unlawful Exploitation of Natural Resources in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories
– Salma Karmi-Ayyoub 95
Agrexco Agricultural Export Ltd – Christophe Perrin 103
Ahava Dead Sea Products in Israel/Palestine
– Nancy Kricorian and Rae Abileah 107
Trade and Labelling of Settlement Goods – Phon Van
Den Biesen 111
SodaStream – Geneviève Coudrais 113
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 7 08/09/2011 14:34viii COrpOrate COmplICIty In Israel’s OCCupatIOn
4 The Financial Services Sector 116
The Israeli Financial Sector and the Occupation
– Merav Amir116
The Financing of Israeli Settlements in the Occupied
Territories by the Belgian-French Financial
Group Dexia – Mario Franssen 120
PFZW – The Case of a Pension Fund Complicit in
International Law Violations – Saskia Müller 123
War-Profteering and SWIFT Sanctions: A Civil Society
Imperative – Terry Crawford-Browne 127
5 The Security Industry and the War Industry 133
The Israeli Arms Trade and the Apparatus of Repression
– John Hilary 133
Caterpillar’s Involvement in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories – Maria LaHood 136
US Government Complicity in the Supply of Caterpillar
Bulldozers to Israel – Josh Ruebner 139
G4S and the Occupation – Merav Amir and Dalit Baum 142
Elbit Systems – Shir Hever 148
The Cases of EDO/ITT and Raytheon – Paul Troop 155
The Campaign Against EDO/ITT – Chris Osmond 161
European Union R&D Subsidises For Israeli Security
Actors – Ben Hayes 165
6 Witness Recall 170
7 The Jury’s Findings179
Afterword184
Appendix I – Israeli Participation in the ESRP 186
Appendix II – Formal Responses from Companies188
Notes 198
Index 209
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 8 08/09/2011 14:34list of Figures
2.1 Thousands of Palestinian workers queue from 3 a.m.
onwards to get to work in Jerusalem 60
2.2 Connex, an Israeli subsidiary of Veolia, operates bus
routes to illegal West Bank settlements 81
2.3 Nesher (CRH’s subsidiary) cement being used to build
an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank 87
3.1 Ahava’s main factory and visitors’ centre are located
in the Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem in the
occupied West Bank 107
4.1 Advertisement for a project called Yair Heights in the
West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, 2004 117
5.1 Outside Israel’s Ofer Military Prison, East Jerusalem 144
ix
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 9 08/09/2011 14:34a cknowledgements
Thanks to Alice Walker for very kindly writing an inspirational
foreword. Thanks to Roger van Zwanenberg and everyone at Pluto.
For invaluable help with transcripts, many thanks to the following
people: Hilary Aked, Florent Barat, Andrea Becker, Roger Briottet,
Hilda Dunn, Eleanor Kilroy, Herve Landecker and Dena Qaddumi.
Hilda Dunn kindly translated the parts of the closing session that
were originally spoken in French.
For organisation of the London session of the Russell Tribunal
itself thanks go to: Joanne Crouch, Jeanne Mortreux, Harry Fear,
Ewa Jasiewicz, Stuart Platt, Susan Worsfold, Leah Borromeo, Kasia
Lemanska, Kristian Buus, Hocine Ouazraf, Bea Martinez, Eva
Ortigosa, Camino Simarro, Nicole Ochando, Paul Collins, Andrew
Sanger, Shubhaa Srinivasan, Nathanael Corre and all the fantastic
volunteers that helped during the three days.
For their overall contribution to the tribunal, thanks to: Pierre
Galand, Stéphane and Christiane Hessel, Virginie Vanhaeverbeke,
Daniel Machover and Eric David. Thanks to the International
Organising Committee and all the jury members, experts and
witnesses that made the tribunal an event to remember.
x
Winstanley T02435 00 pre 10 08/09/2011 14:34Foreword
Alice Walker
‘nothing is stronger than a Circle Which is Why, as Black elk teaches us, everything
tries to Be r ound’
Thoughts on the Russell Tribunal by Alice Walker
In many of my talks to young people, to women, to peace activists,
I advocate that in these times of planetary disasters and instability
people everywhere should gather together in circles of friends, in
each other’s homes, on a regular basis, to talk through the fears and
challenges with which we, as a world, are faced: more frightening
events at this time than at any period in human history. It is time
to circle, I advise, with the hope that eventually our diverse circles
will engage each other, merge and organically transform the earth.
I think of the Russell Tribunal as one of these circles, perhaps
the most important, though its members may consider themselves
strangers to each other. That they are not strangers is evident by
their appearance, as a group, to take on the tribunal’s exacting
and highly essential work: to cast the light of conscience on the
behaviours of powerful interests and destructive players in the world
community. This is a duty that calls out to those who understand
how important it is to end our common silence about abuse and
atrocities committed in our names, and who also realize that we
must be determined in our efforts to care for the maligned and
traumatized and oppressed of the earth. That this caring signifes
our awareness of membership in the same clan, the same family. The
family of humankind of which any oppressed person is the brother
or sister, the mother or father, the child or grandparent that is, at
one point or another of our lives, also our own self.
It has been an honour to be invited to join the present session as
part of a jury hearing testimony on international corporate complicity
in the destruction of the Palestinian people, who, since I visited Gaza
a year and a half ago, have become part of the earth’s peoples to
whom I have felt duty bound to show up for. What has happened
to them has happened to countless others. Including my own tribes:
African, Native American, poor European immigrant. It is because I
recognize the brutality with which my own multi-branched ancestors
xi
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have been treated that I can identify the despicable, lawless, cruel and
sadistic behaviour that has characterized Israel’s attempts to erase a
people, the Palestinians, from their own land. For isn’t this what the
US military was ordered to do to the ‘Indians’ of America? Did not
the British burn out communities of Scots and horrifcally oppress
the Irish? Did not wealthy and powerful Whites, generally, for a
time, rape, kill, capture and/or enslave Africans? And are not some
of their descendants, at this very moment, stealing and confscating
African and Indian and poor White land, and harming people, using
many of their ancestors’ ancient tools of brute force and deceit?
It grieves me that I am unable to be in this circle of brave and
compassionate people on this occasion because of a mundane yet
tenacious visitor: the fu. Which condition, as I recover, I can almost
consider absurd. Since college I have admired the pacifst Bertrand
Russell, the founder of the tribunal and also Jean-Paul Sartre and
Simone De Beauvoir, early members. James Baldwin, as well, a
person of such laser-like intelligence and moral integrity, that it
would have been a joy