{"id":100906,"date":"2017-10-30T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=100906"},"modified":"2017-11-06T10:03:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T10:03:40","slug":"israel-maintains-robust-arms-trade-with-rogue-regimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/israel-maintains-robust-arms-trade-with-rogue-regimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Maintains Robust Arms Trade with Rogue Regimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Israel has not divulged details of its ties to Myanmar’s military government, but public records show that it has sold the military there armed patrol boats, guns and surveillance equipment. [File: Soe Zeya Tun\/Reuters]<\/p><\/div>\n

23 Oct 2017- <\/em>Human rights activists are stepping up efforts to expose Israel\u2019s long and covert history of supplying weapons and military training to regimes while they actively commit massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide.<\/p>\n

The issue of Israel\u2019s trade with rogue regimes has been thrust into the spotlight again after revelations that it is sending weapons to Myanmar, in defiance of a US and European arms embargo.<\/p>\n

Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar was condemned last month by the United Nations for conducting<\/a> what it called a \u201ctextbook ethnic cleansing\u201d of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are reported to have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in recent weeks, after evidence of the torching of entire villages, massacres and systematic rapes.<\/p>\n

Israel has not divulged details of its ties to Myanmar\u2019s military government, but public records show that it has sold the military there armed patrol boats, guns and surveillance equipment. Myanmar\u2019s special forces have also been trained by Israelis.<\/p>\n

Protest outside parliament<\/strong><\/p>\n

Human rights groups are set to stage a protest outside Israel\u2019s parliament on October 30, calling for an immediate halt to the weapons sales to Myanmar.<\/p>\n

Israeli firms have also broken with the United States and Europe by supplying weapons and surveillance equipment to militias in South Sudan, where a civil war has raged since late 2013. Some 300,000 Sudanese are believed to have been killed in the fighting.<\/p>\n

Eitay Mack, a human rights lawyer, has submitted a spate of petitions to the Israeli courts in an attempt to bring to light details of Israel\u2019s trade with such regimes. He said the cases were designed to hasten war crimes investigations of the officials and contractors involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany Western states sell arms, but what\u2019s unique about Israel is that, wherever war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed, you find Israel is present,\u201d Mack told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe companies selling the weapons, and the officials who quietly approve the trade, must be held accountable. Otherwise, why would this ever stop?\u201d<\/p>\n

Clandestine practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mack said that Israel\u2019s collusion with Myanmar\u2019s military was part of a pattern of aiding rogue regimes that went back decades and reflected the importance of the arms trade to Israel\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Over the summer, it was revealed<\/a> that Israeli defence officials approve 99.8 percent of all requests for arms export licences.<\/p>\n

As well as fuelling the current violence in Myanmar and South Sudan, Israel has been accused of clandestinely providing arms used in notorious past episodes of genocide and ethnic cleansing in places such as Rwanda, the Balkans, Chile, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Haiti, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Israel also cultivated close ties to apartheid South Africa, Mack noted.<\/p>\n

Yair Auron, a genocide researcher at Israel\u2019s Open University, said that Israel\u2019s supply of weapons to regimes such as Myanmar should be compared to the sending of arms to Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese sales turn me and all Israelis into criminals, because they are sent in our name,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. \u201cWe are abetting genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defence minister \u2018lied\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Efforts by human rights groups to shed light on Israel\u2019s collusion with Myanmar have so far been frustrated by Israeli authorities and the courts.<\/p>\n

The Haaretz daily accused<\/a> Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman of \u201clying\u201d when he claimed in parliament last month that Israel\u2019s policy in Myanmar accorded with that of the \u201cenlightened world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Officials refused to disclose information of arms exports to the military government during a hearing at Israel\u2019s Supreme Court last month on a petition to halt the sales. Lawyers for the state insisted on closed-door sessions when discussing relations with Myanmar.<\/p>\n

The three judges hearing the case issued a gag order<\/a> to prevent publication of their decision, widely assumed to have approved the continuation of arms sales. They justified the blackout on the grounds that publicity risked damaging Israel\u2019s foreign relations.<\/p>\n

Late last year, the same court rejected a petition<\/a> demanding that officials release documents showing Israel\u2019s role in arming Serbian forces that carried out massacres of Bosnians in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Campaigners are waiting on hearings in a host of other cases concerning South Sudan, Rwanda, Chile, Haiti and Argentina.<\/p>\n

In August, Israeli officials argued<\/a> before the Supreme Court that its exports to militias in South Sudan were \u201clawful\u201d.<\/p>\n

Evidence suggests that Israel sold rifles and surveillance equipment to militias and the army in South Sudan. A UN report found<\/a> that the Israeli-made Ace and Galil rifles were in widespread use there.<\/p>\n

No oversight of permits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next week, the Supreme Court is due to hear a petition on Israel\u2019s involvement in Rwanda, where it reportedly armed Hutus who carried out genocidal attacks against Tutsis.<\/p>\n

Mack noted that there were a handful of officials in the Israeli Defence Ministry overseeing some 400,000 annual permits issued for weapons sales. \u201cThat means in practice, there is no oversight at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Israeli companies, meanwhile, are authorised to sell arms to some 130 countries, though activists say there are other states with which Israel deals covertly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf countries want the best arms, then they probably go to the US and Europe. But when no one else will sell to you, then you turn to Israel.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\n— John Brown, investigative journalist <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Israel is the only major weapons exporter that has consistently bucked the global trend of a downturn in arms sales. In March, it was reported that Israel\u2019s weapons trade in 2016 was worth some $6.5bn, up from $5.7bn the year before. That included<\/a> a 70 percent jump in sales to Africa.<\/p>\n

African states accused of widespread human rights abuses were among more than 100 countries that attended<\/a> the annual Israel Defence Exhibition, a weapons trade fair, in June.<\/p>\n

Biggest exporter per capita<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite its tiny size, Israel is believed to be the sixth biggest arms exporter in the world \u2013 and the largest one per capita.<\/p>\n

That has made arms sales integral to the Israeli economy, accounting for possibly as much as 8 percent of gross domestic product. As many as 100,000 Israeli households are reported to be dependent on the arms industry.<\/p>\n

John Brown, an investigative journalist with the Haaretz newspaper who writes under a pseudonym, said there was a long history of what he called \u201cUzi diplomacy\u201d \u2013 referring to the Israeli sub-machine gun that became a favourite with security forces around the world from the 1960s onwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf countries want the best arms, then they probably go to the US and Europe. But when no one else will sell to you, then you turn to Israel,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits for Israel are not just measured in money. Often even more important are the diplomatic and strategic alliances Israel can gain from this arms trade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebuke from US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mack said that mounting international outrage over the plight of Myanmar\u2019s Muslim minority provided an opportunity to shine a light on Israel\u2019s long role in supporting regimes in the midst of ethnic cleansing and genocide.<\/p>\n

In what sounded like a rare rebuke to Israel, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said<\/a> last month: \u201cAny country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the Israeli courts have blocked access to documents that could shed light on what arms have gone to Myanmar, activists have been able to identify some dealings from open sources.<\/p>\n

In September 2015, Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of Myanmar\u2019s army, posted on social media details of a \u201cshopping trip<\/a>\u201d to Israel that included visits to leading Israeli weapons manufacturers and a meeting with the Israeli military\u2019s chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkott.<\/p>\n

A year later, Michael Ben Baruch, an Israeli defence ministry official in charge of exports, visited Myanmar to meet its army\u2019s top brass to sign a deal for patrol boats.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards, the website of TAR Ideal Concepts, an Israeli company, posted images of its staff training Myanmar special forces and teaching them how to handle Israeli-made Corner-Shot guns.<\/p>\n

A conduit for drones<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other analysts have suggested<\/a> that Israel has also been acting as a conduit for Chinese weapons, including drones, to Myanmar, allowing Beijing to bypass the embargo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, so we will keep putting Israeli officials under pressure till the trade stops,\u201d Mack said. \u201cThey will have to endure a regular \u2018walk of shame\u2019 in the courts, forcing them to explain their policies and why the documents remain secret.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that Israel\u2019s success in arms dealing was intimately tied to five decades of its control over the occupied Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli companies exploit Israel\u2019s long experience there to sell arms, arguing that the weapons and training have been tested in real-world conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said that Israel appeared to be indifferent towards the victims of the violence it helped to stoke. This was especially evident during the so-called \u201cDirty War\u201d in Argentina, through much of the 1970s, when 30,000 left-wing activists were \u201cdisappeared\u201d, he said. Israel is believed<\/a> to have supplied the military government there with some $700m in weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf those killed, probably some 2,000 were Argentinian Jews,\u201d he said. \u201cIsrael knew that the weapons it was selling were being turned on Jews, but that did not stop it selling arms. It simply didn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Oct 2017- Human rights activists are stepping up efforts to expose Israel\u2019s long and covert history of supplying weapons and military training to regimes while they actively commit massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The issue of Israel\u2019s trade with rogue regimes has been thrust into the spotlight again after revelations that it is sending weapons to Myanmar, in defiance of a US and European arms embargo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,56,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism","category-asia-pacific","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}