Re: *DHR* Sudan:al Bachir set to address UN despite ICC indictments

If Kagame can attend the UN General Assembly, why not Sudanese President Omar Bashir ?

---

From: "agnesmurebwayire@yahoo.fr" <agnesmurebwayire@yahoo.fr>
To: "Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr" <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr>
Sent: Monday, 23 September 2013, 7:23
Subject: *DHR* Sudan:al Bachir set to address UN despite ICC indictments

 

 

 

 

Associated Press - arabnews.com, September 23, 2013

 

 

http://www.arabnews.com/news/465538

 

 

If he shows up as scheduled, Sudanese President Omar Bashir will set an uncomfortable precedent when he speaks before the UN General Assembly.

 

 

He would be the first head of state to address the annual UN gathering of world leaders while facing international war crimes and genocide charges.

 

Bashir is facing two International Criminal Court indictments for crimes linked to the conflict in the western Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated 300,000 people have died since 2003. He has applied for a US visa to come to the UN General Assembly, and is scheduled to speak next Thursday afternoon.

 

 

The US government has made it clear it does not want Bashir to show up in New York.

 

 

"Such a trip would be deplorable, cynical and hugely inappropriate," said Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations.
But under a US treaty with the United Nations dating to 1947, Washington is obligated to issue the visa as the world body's host country. The United States has never banned a visiting head of state who wants to speak to the United Nations.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf sidestepped a question about whether Bashir could be arrested if he comes to the US.

 

 

"There are a variety of considerations in play with respect to President Bashir's visa request, including the outstanding warrant for his arrest," Harf said Friday. "But we're not going to sort through these considerations publicly.  We're going to continue to do so privately and deliberately."

 

 

Sudan's Foreign Ministry has said the United States is "not qualified ... to offer sermons and advice" on international law and human rights and called on Washington to swiftly grant Bashir's visa.

 

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined the United States in reiterating that Bashir is wanted for genocide and war crimes and should cooperate with the International Criminal Court.

 

 

Elise Keppler, a Sudan expert with Human Rights Watch, said Friday Bashir would be met in New York with angry protests from demonstrators, and could be putting himself in legal jeopardy.

 

 

"The key here is that this is an unprecedented situation," she said. "There hasn't been clear legal ruling on this set of circumstances."

The United States has declined to sign onto the Rome Statute treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, fearing that US citizens — particularly members of the military involved in global conflicts — could be indicted by other countries for war crimes.

 

 

But "other commitments that the US has signed for justice for these kinds of crimes are important," Keppler said.

 

 

"You also have the Genocide Convention that talks about the need to punish those who commit genocide," she said. The United States has ratified that treaty, with the restriction that it will not allow the trial of US citizens for genocide without its consent.

 

 

If Bashir arrives in New York, Keppler said various civil rights and human rights groups could seek to charge him with torture or genocide under US domestic law. Human Rights lawyers have over the past 20 years uses the Alien Tort Act to file civil suits by Americans or foreigners against foreign nationals who come to the United States after committing human rights abuses abroad.

 

 

Bashir's motives for coming to the General Assembly, where he will be shunned by most other world leaders, are unclear. But he has tested the limits of travel under the ICC indictment before, attending an African Union summit in Nigeria in July. He swiftly returned home after protests against his visit broke out and lawsuits were filed.

__._,_.___

Jewish Neocons Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/09/21/jewish-neocons-adopt-rwandan-dictator-kagame/

Jewish Neocons Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame

Sep 21st, 2013 @ 06:47 pm › Richard Silverstein
↓ Skip to comments

Reading the NY Times, I was shocked to find a full-page ad entitled Genocide: Do the Strong Have an Obligation to Protect the Weak?  It was an ad for a event in New York devoted to the Rwandan genocide.

What struck me especially about the ad was that the pictures of the speakers were even larger than the headline and meant to promote them as much or more than the topic.  The speakers featured were Paul Kagame, president of Rwandan and accused murderer of numerous political foes; Elie Wiesel, once a Nobel laureate and now a neocon mouthpiece and beneficiary of the largesse for John Hagee, Sheldon Adelson (whose title in the ad is "Global Holocaust Memory Philanthropist, whatever that means); Michael Steinhardt, hedge fund manager, GOP neocon, and co-founder of Birthright; and Shmuley Boteach ("America's Rabbi"), most recently failed GOP candidate for a NJ Congressional seat.

The event is Boteach's "baby."  His website hosts the publicity about the event and his organization, This World, is the sponsor.  The event is pitched as a program hosted during UN Week (during which the General Assembly meets) and the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

The entire enterprise appears to be an unseemly alliance between a dictator looking to cleanse his reputation and a bunch of grasping neo-con Jews who are desperate to change the subject from Israel's horrible PR in the world press.  Besides killing political opponents, Kagame is playing an instrumental role in another regional genocide: Congo.  Over 4-million have been killed by the various rebel armies operating on its territory.  Uganda and Rwanda are among the most prominent supporters and suppliers of these rebels.  Such an event offers Kagame a wonderful PR opportunity.

Israel's Role in Rwandan Genocide

Israel, as a seminal article in Maariv pointed out, played both sides against the middle in the Rwanda civil war.  Even before the slaughter commenced in 1994, Israel was supplying weapons officially to the Hutu-led government, which used them to fight against rebel forces under Kagame's command.  Israeli arms suppliers continued covertly selling to the genocidal militias who murdered 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis.    This from the book The Arms Fixers:

"Seven large cargoes of small arms worth $6.5 million were flown from Tirana [Albania] and Tel Aviv between mid-April and mid-July 1994 to the [Interahamwe] forces as they carried out the genocide, even during the time when the mass killings were being reported daily by the international news media."

Leibowitch-Dar's article exposes the key role that one of these Israeli black-market weapons dealers played in the genocide.  Separately, in the midst of the killing, Israel's environment minister (!), the redoubtable progressive, Yossi Sarid stood on the Zairean border with Rwanda telling Maariv in an interview:

We [Israel] have no control over where these weapons end up.

The Maariv reporter also says that Israeli personnel also were inside the country training the militias.  Though of course there were other countries as well more than happy to supply the genocidaires.

Israel doesn't let ideology or friendships get in the way of doing business though.  Israel supplied Kagame's forces as well. This from Maariv:

[Despite official Israeli denials,] Israelis were however involved with arms shipments to the Rwandan government and the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front based in [then] Zaire, at whose head stood Paul Kagame.  Despite the fact that Kagame was a member of the victimized Tutsi tribe, his movement too was involved in many acts of murder.  During the genocide Kagame's troops also killed thousands as they extended their control throughout the country.

After the slaughter, Israel officially expressed outrage at what had happened and likened it to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.  Israel sent humanitarian aid and medical units to establish a hospital to treat the victims.  It never once acknowledged either its official or unofficial role in the genocide.  Once Kagame came out on top, all was forgiven and relations have been close ever since.

Apparently, Kagame takes a view of Israel akin to that of David Ben Gurion during the Holocaust.  He didn't care who he did business with if it strengthened Israel.  So Israel and Kagame have become good pals, as Boteach's event attests.  Most recently, Kagame visited Israel last June for meetings with Pres. Peres and PM Netanyahu.

Smuley Boteach, Humanitarian

Note the mission listed for This World is:

This World: the Jewish Values Network is Committed to Advancing Universal Jewish Values in the Media and Culture and to Affirming the Jewish People as a Light Unto the Nations.

This time last year and in years past these individuals were busy during UN Week attending anti-Iran events hosted by the Israeli Mission or various far-right pro-Israel organizations.  Of course, they may still do that this week.  But their newfound enthusiasm for African dictators seems a deliberate attempt to change the subject.  American Jews have grown increasingly tired of Bibi's Iranian "the sky is falling" routine.  The news from the Occupation is equally bleak.  BDS is taking on a momentum of its own despite Israel's best efforts to promote the new counter-concept of delegitimization.

Curiously, the ad doesn't contain a single reference to the country which is an idee fixefor all of these men: Israel.  Adopting Rwandan genocide seems like a slightly bizarre attempt to change the channel when the news looks bad.  Aside from Wiesel, you'd be hard-pressed to find any world hotspot any of these gentlemen has expressed any concern over unless it involved Jewish victims.

A reader pointed out in the comment threads another country whose name goes unmentioned in the ad: Syria.  Boteach, who writes regularly for the Likudist Jerusalem Post wrote, Will Syria be Obama's Rwanda.  In his column, he decried the chemical weapons attack in Syria as an act of genocide.  His goal was to excoriate the Obama administration for not having the courage of its convictions to bomb Assad, as the president had promised.  So these speakers, representing the heart of the GOP Jewish caucus see Syria as a "Jewish issue" and a wedge to move American Jews away from the Democrats.  All I can say is that hope springs eternal.  These fatcats (Adelson, Steinhardt, etc.) have been trying to do this for the past three or four election cycles and it just plain hasn't worked.  They've even invested millions on behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition and other such efforts.  Adelson plowed $150-million into Romney's failed presidential campaign.  It's gone nowhere.  The reason is that American Jews aren't much different than most Americans on these issues.  Just as Americans don't want a war in Syria, Jews don't either.

Why else might they have chosen Rwanda?  My guess is that there's money involved.  I'm virtually certain that Wiesel, whom I've earlier called here a "moral mercenary")  is being paid for his appearance.  Either he's being paid directly or his foundation is receiving a donation (à la John Hagee, who couldn't persuade Wiesel to address Christians United for Israel until he made a $50,000 donation to Wiesel's foundation).  Steinhardt and Adelson can easily afford to pay Wiesel's way.  But I'm betting that Rwanda itself is playing some remunerary role here.  Either Boteach is on its payroll as a paid lobbyist or consultant; or Rwanda is paying others of these players.

Another possibility is that Rwanda has become involved as an Israeli ally on some issue or project or other.  I wouldn't be surprised if Israel has been selling advanced weaponry to Rwanda; or Israeli companies are playing a role in running the country's elections as they have in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.  There is some crucial nexus here that remains to be exposed.

• More
  
  

Jewish Neocons Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/09/21/jewish-neocons-adopt-rwandan-dictator-kagame/

Jewish Neocons Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame

Sep 21st, 2013 @ 06:47 pm › Richard Silverstein
↓ Skip to comments

Reading the NY Times, I was shocked to find a full-page ad entitled Genocide: Do the Strong Have an Obligation to Protect the Weak?  It was an ad for a event in New York devoted to the Rwandan genocide.

What struck me especially about the ad was that the pictures of the speakers were even larger than the headline and meant to promote them as much or more than the topic.  The speakers featured were Paul Kagame, president of Rwandan and accused murderer of numerous political foes; Elie Wiesel, once a Nobel laureate and now a neocon mouthpiece and beneficiary of the largesse for John Hagee, Sheldon Adelson (whose title in the ad is "Global Holocaust Memory Philanthropist, whatever that means); Michael Steinhardt, hedge fund manager, GOP neocon, and co-founder of Birthright; and Shmuley Boteach ("America's Rabbi"), most recently failed GOP candidate for a NJ Congressional seat.

The event is Boteach's "baby."  His website hosts the publicity about the event and his organization, This World, is the sponsor.  The event is pitched as a program hosted during UN Week (during which the General Assembly meets) and the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

The entire enterprise appears to be an unseemly alliance between a dictator looking to cleanse his reputation and a bunch of grasping neo-con Jews who are desperate to change the subject from Israel's horrible PR in the world press.  Besides killing political opponents, Kagame is playing an instrumental role in another regional genocide: Congo.  Over 4-million have been killed by the various rebel armies operating on its territory.  Uganda and Rwanda are among the most prominent supporters and suppliers of these rebels.  Such an event offers Kagame a wonderful PR opportunity.

Israel's Role in Rwandan Genocide

Israel, as a seminal article in Maariv pointed out, played both sides against the middle in the Rwanda civil war.  Even before the slaughter commenced in 1994, Israel was supplying weapons officially to the Hutu-led government, which used them to fight against rebel forces under Kagame's command.  Israeli arms suppliers continued covertly selling to the genocidal militias who murdered 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis.    This from the book The Arms Fixers:

"Seven large cargoes of small arms worth $6.5 million were flown from Tirana [Albania] and Tel Aviv between mid-April and mid-July 1994 to the [Interahamwe] forces as they carried out the genocide, even during the time when the mass killings were being reported daily by the international news media."

Leibowitch-Dar's article exposes the key role that one of these Israeli black-market weapons dealers played in the genocide.  Separately, in the midst of the killing, Israel's environment minister (!), the redoubtable progressive, Yossi Sarid stood on the Zairean border with Rwanda telling Maariv in an interview:

We [Israel] have no control over where these weapons end up.

The Maariv reporter also says that Israeli personnel also were inside the country training the militias.  Though of course there were other countries as well more than happy to supply the genocidaires.

Israel doesn't let ideology or friendships get in the way of doing business though.  Israel supplied Kagame's forces as well. This from Maariv:

[Despite official Israeli denials,] Israelis were however involved with arms shipments to the Rwandan government and the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front based in [then] Zaire, at whose head stood Paul Kagame.  Despite the fact that Kagame was a member of the victimized Tutsi tribe, his movement too was involved in many acts of murder.  During the genocide Kagame's troops also killed thousands as they extended their control throughout the country.

After the slaughter, Israel officially expressed outrage at what had happened and likened it to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.  Israel sent humanitarian aid and medical units to establish a hospital to treat the victims.  It never once acknowledged either its official or unofficial role in the genocide.  Once Kagame came out on top, all was forgiven and relations have been close ever since.

Apparently, Kagame takes a view of Israel akin to that of David Ben Gurion during the Holocaust.  He didn't care who he did business with if it strengthened Israel.  So Israel and Kagame have become good pals, as Boteach's event attests.  Most recently, Kagame visited Israel last June for meetings with Pres. Peres and PM Netanyahu.

Smuley Boteach, Humanitarian

Note the mission listed for This World is:

This World: the Jewish Values Network is Committed to Advancing Universal Jewish Values in the Media and Culture and to Affirming the Jewish People as a Light Unto the Nations.

This time last year and in years past these individuals were busy during UN Week attending anti-Iran events hosted by the Israeli Mission or various far-right pro-Israel organizations.  Of course, they may still do that this week.  But their newfound enthusiasm for African dictators seems a deliberate attempt to change the subject.  American Jews have grown increasingly tired of Bibi's Iranian "the sky is falling" routine.  The news from the Occupation is equally bleak.  BDS is taking on a momentum of its own despite Israel's best efforts to promote the new counter-concept of delegitimization.

Curiously, the ad doesn't contain a single reference to the country which is an idee fixefor all of these men: Israel.  Adopting Rwandan genocide seems like a slightly bizarre attempt to change the channel when the news looks bad.  Aside from Wiesel, you'd be hard-pressed to find any world hotspot any of these gentlemen has expressed any concern over unless it involved Jewish victims.

A reader pointed out in the comment threads another country whose name goes unmentioned in the ad: Syria.  Boteach, who writes regularly for the Likudist Jerusalem Post wrote, Will Syria be Obama's Rwanda.  In his column, he decried the chemical weapons attack in Syria as an act of genocide.  His goal was to excoriate the Obama administration for not having the courage of its convictions to bomb Assad, as the president had promised.  So these speakers, representing the heart of the GOP Jewish caucus see Syria as a "Jewish issue" and a wedge to move American Jews away from the Democrats.  All I can say is that hope springs eternal.  These fatcats (Adelson, Steinhardt, etc.) have been trying to do this for the past three or four election cycles and it just plain hasn't worked.  They've even invested millions on behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition and other such efforts.  Adelson plowed $150-million into Romney's failed presidential campaign.  It's gone nowhere.  The reason is that American Jews aren't much different than most Americans on these issues.  Just as Americans don't want a war in Syria, Jews don't either.

Why else might they have chosen Rwanda?  My guess is that there's money involved.  I'm virtually certain that Wiesel, whom I've earlier called here a "moral mercenary")  is being paid for his appearance.  Either he's being paid directly or his foundation is receiving a donation (à la John Hagee, who couldn't persuade Wiesel to address Christians United for Israel until he made a $50,000 donation to Wiesel's foundation).  Steinhardt and Adelson can easily afford to pay Wiesel's way.  But I'm betting that Rwanda itself is playing some remunerary role here.  Either Boteach is on its payroll as a paid lobbyist or consultant; or Rwanda is paying others of these players.

Another possibility is that Rwanda has become involved as an Israeli ally on some issue or project or other.  I wouldn't be surprised if Israel has been selling advanced weaponry to Rwanda; or Israeli companies are playing a role in running the country's elections as they have in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.  There is some crucial nexus here that remains to be exposed.

• More
  
  

The Israel/Rwanda Pact » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/the-israelrwanda-pact/

"The Israel/Rwanda Pact" CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

WEEKEND EDITION SEPTEMBER 20-22, 2013

SHARE ON FACEBOOKSHARE ON TWITTERSHARE ON GOOGLEMORE SHARING SERVICES12

Syria, Palestine and DR Congo

The Israel/Rwanda Pact

by ANN GARRISON

The holocaust and genocide industries will converge midway through the UN General Assembly's general debate, at Cooper Union in New York City, when Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel teams up with Rwandan President Paul Kagame for "A UN Week Discussion in Prelude to the 20th Anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide and the International Response to the Syrian Chemical Slaughter."  "Kosher Sex" author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach will moderate and two Jewish billionaire moguls and philanthropists, Las Vegas Sands owner Sheldon Adelson, and hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, will join him to answer the question,  "Are the strong obliged to protect the weak?"  (So long as the weak are not in Palestine or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

The Rwandan Genocide joined the Holocaust, a justification for U.S. military interventions, Special Forces, and covert operations, in the 2010 White House press release, FACT SHEET: President Obama Directs New Steps to Prevent Mass Atrocities and Impose Consequences on Serious Human Rights Violators.

Organization Matters. The President notes that, "66 years since the Holocaust and 17 years after Rwanda, the United States still lacks a comprehensive policy framework and a corresponding interagency mechanism for preventing and responding to mass atrocities and genocide." The President orders the creation of an interagency Atrocity Prevention Board within 120 days from today so as to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to engaging "early, proactively, and decisively."

The FACT SHEET's companion volume, Mass Atrocities Response Operations, a Military Planning Handbook, is a joint publication of Harvard University and the Pentagon.

The institutional force behind all this has been in the works for a long time, no doubt longer than I can sketch out here. See Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for US Policymakers, Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF), Madeline Albright and William Cohen, co-chairs, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace, which published its plans in 2008.

And here's the bookjacket copy and Amazon promo of Phillip Gourevitch's We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, published in 1998:

"In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews."

Gourevitch's false equation of the Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocide presumes that the Rwandan Genocide began when Hutu extremists attempted to exterminate the Tutsi minority in Rwanda and ended 100 days later in 1994, and that that is the entire story.  It ignores the manipulation of ethnic tensions by the US/UK and France, to advance their own agendas, and the Tutsi massacres of Hutus in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which were part of the previous years history of Burundi, part of the Rwandan Civil War and Genocide, and part of the ensuing 18 years of war and conflict in Congo, after Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invaded in 1996.

Massacres of both ethnicities have been the worst outcomes of the longstanding competition between these two so-called ethnicities – "so-called" because Hutu and Tutsi speak the same language and share the same culture.  In "An Ordinary Man," the book whose simplest heroic elements became Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina explains that the Tutsis were a feudal aristocracy, the Hutus a feudal peasantry, whom European colonialists divided more harshly and rigidly, first with their "scientific" race theory, and then in "the year 1933, when all people in Rwanda received identity cards known as books that specified their ethnic class."

Rusesabagina also explains how 18th century explorer Jonathan Speke came up with a Biblical explanation of the Hutu-Tutsi class divide, which identified the Hutu peasants as descendants of Noah's accursed son Ham, condemned to a life of servitude, and the Tutsi aristocrats as noble descendants of a lost Christian tribe.  Other theorists, including East African Tutsis, have claimed that Tutsis are descended of Ethiopian Jews.

Whether these theories have had any influence on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach or not, he has been effusive on his Huffington Post blog, about the contemporary alliance between Israel and Rwanda:

"Rwanda might not be everyone's idea of a family trip, but it's one of my favorite places in the world and, after visiting last year to highlight the 1994 genocide and promote anti-genocide legislation during my run for Congress, I wanted my children and some notable Jewish personalities to experience it with me. Much has happened in that year, including Rwanda occupying the Africa seat on the United Nations Security Council and announcing that they will be opening an embassy in Israel imminently. . .That he [Rwandan President Paul Kagame] is a staunch friend and admirer of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is of great consequence, especially on the African continent . . ."

Rabbi Boteach and his friends' heroization of President Paul Kagame is breathtaking in its dismissal of Rwandans now suffering under Kagame's brutal dicatatorship, and of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where millions have died, millions more have become refugees or "internally displaced people (IDPs)," since 1996, when Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invaded Congo, beginning 18 years of war, conflict, and occupation.  For most of those years, Rwanda has been given victim's license in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, like Israel in Palestine.

That license is now at least verbally limited, with even the U.S. State Department calling on Rwanda to stop supporting the M23 militia in Congo.  However, the U.S. and the rest of the Security Council are still unwilling to say that Rwanda is "supporting" M23 out loud in session at the UN, much less to acknowledge that Rwanda's top military officers are commanding M23, as documented in the 2012 UN Group of Experts on Congo's report.

M23 chain of command in Kigali 

. . .

32. Rwandan officials exercise overall command and strategic planning for M23. Politicians, current and former M23 members, Congolese armed forces officers and former Rwandan armed forces officers all confirmed that Gen. Ntaganda and Col. Makenga received direct military orders from the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan armed forces, Gen. Kayonga, who in turn acted on instructions from the Minister of Defence of Rwanda, Gen. Kabarebe (see annex 22 to the present report). The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Gen. Jacques Nziza, provides strategic advice and oversees the provision of logistical support to M23. Gen. Kabarebe and Gen. Nziza have also played an instrumental role in sustaining the political activities of M23. According to former Rwandan armed forces officers, current M23 members and former M23 officers, Gen. Ruvusha manages the provision of military ground support to M23. 

33. Several current and former M23 officers also stated that senior Rwandan officials travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to hold meetings with M23 commanders. Gen. Kayonga has been at least three times to Runyoni to plan operations and reassure the rebels of the full support of the Government of Rwanda. 

Although this won't happen, except here in cyberspace, I like to imagine my Swiss Congolese friend BK Kumbi bursting in on Ellie Wiesel, Paul Kagame, Shmuley Boteach, et al, in New York at the end of September, as she burst in on Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon at a March 1st UN conference in Geneva, shouting:

"But what about people of the Congo, PLEASE? What about people of the CONGO? You don't say anything about that! There's been 8 million people killed and you're making fictitious peace, and you're telling us that this is peace, when AGGRESSORS ARE NOT NAMED. Rwanda has been known … has … is responsible of what is going wrong in the peace, in Congo, and nobody says something about that! Burundi! Uganda! You should say that! We are sick and tired of hearing every time people here just being so peaceful with AFRICA! You should let AFRICA in PEACE!"

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, and the Black Star News, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City.

The Israel/Rwanda Pact » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/the-israelrwanda-pact/

"The Israel/Rwanda Pact" CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

WEEKEND EDITION SEPTEMBER 20-22, 2013

SHARE ON FACEBOOKSHARE ON TWITTERSHARE ON GOOGLEMORE SHARING SERVICES12

Syria, Palestine and DR Congo

The Israel/Rwanda Pact

by ANN GARRISON

The holocaust and genocide industries will converge midway through the UN General Assembly's general debate, at Cooper Union in New York City, when Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel teams up with Rwandan President Paul Kagame for "A UN Week Discussion in Prelude to the 20th Anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide and the International Response to the Syrian Chemical Slaughter."  "Kosher Sex" author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach will moderate and two Jewish billionaire moguls and philanthropists, Las Vegas Sands owner Sheldon Adelson, and hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, will join him to answer the question,  "Are the strong obliged to protect the weak?"  (So long as the weak are not in Palestine or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

The Rwandan Genocide joined the Holocaust, a justification for U.S. military interventions, Special Forces, and covert operations, in the 2010 White House press release, FACT SHEET: President Obama Directs New Steps to Prevent Mass Atrocities and Impose Consequences on Serious Human Rights Violators.

Organization Matters. The President notes that, "66 years since the Holocaust and 17 years after Rwanda, the United States still lacks a comprehensive policy framework and a corresponding interagency mechanism for preventing and responding to mass atrocities and genocide." The President orders the creation of an interagency Atrocity Prevention Board within 120 days from today so as to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to engaging "early, proactively, and decisively."

The FACT SHEET's companion volume, Mass Atrocities Response Operations, a Military Planning Handbook, is a joint publication of Harvard University and the Pentagon.

The institutional force behind all this has been in the works for a long time, no doubt longer than I can sketch out here. See Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for US Policymakers, Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF), Madeline Albright and William Cohen, co-chairs, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace, which published its plans in 2008.

And here's the bookjacket copy and Amazon promo of Phillip Gourevitch's We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, published in 1998:

"In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews."

Gourevitch's false equation of the Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocide presumes that the Rwandan Genocide began when Hutu extremists attempted to exterminate the Tutsi minority in Rwanda and ended 100 days later in 1994, and that that is the entire story.  It ignores the manipulation of ethnic tensions by the US/UK and France, to advance their own agendas, and the Tutsi massacres of Hutus in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which were part of the previous years history of Burundi, part of the Rwandan Civil War and Genocide, and part of the ensuing 18 years of war and conflict in Congo, after Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invaded in 1996.

Massacres of both ethnicities have been the worst outcomes of the longstanding competition between these two so-called ethnicities – "so-called" because Hutu and Tutsi speak the same language and share the same culture.  In "An Ordinary Man," the book whose simplest heroic elements became Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina explains that the Tutsis were a feudal aristocracy, the Hutus a feudal peasantry, whom European colonialists divided more harshly and rigidly, first with their "scientific" race theory, and then in "the year 1933, when all people in Rwanda received identity cards known as books that specified their ethnic class."

Rusesabagina also explains how 18th century explorer Jonathan Speke came up with a Biblical explanation of the Hutu-Tutsi class divide, which identified the Hutu peasants as descendants of Noah's accursed son Ham, condemned to a life of servitude, and the Tutsi aristocrats as noble descendants of a lost Christian tribe.  Other theorists, including East African Tutsis, have claimed that Tutsis are descended of Ethiopian Jews.

Whether these theories have had any influence on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach or not, he has been effusive on his Huffington Post blog, about the contemporary alliance between Israel and Rwanda:

"Rwanda might not be everyone's idea of a family trip, but it's one of my favorite places in the world and, after visiting last year to highlight the 1994 genocide and promote anti-genocide legislation during my run for Congress, I wanted my children and some notable Jewish personalities to experience it with me. Much has happened in that year, including Rwanda occupying the Africa seat on the United Nations Security Council and announcing that they will be opening an embassy in Israel imminently. . .That he [Rwandan President Paul Kagame] is a staunch friend and admirer of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is of great consequence, especially on the African continent . . ."

Rabbi Boteach and his friends' heroization of President Paul Kagame is breathtaking in its dismissal of Rwandans now suffering under Kagame's brutal dicatatorship, and of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where millions have died, millions more have become refugees or "internally displaced people (IDPs)," since 1996, when Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi invaded Congo, beginning 18 years of war, conflict, and occupation.  For most of those years, Rwanda has been given victim's license in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, like Israel in Palestine.

That license is now at least verbally limited, with even the U.S. State Department calling on Rwanda to stop supporting the M23 militia in Congo.  However, the U.S. and the rest of the Security Council are still unwilling to say that Rwanda is "supporting" M23 out loud in session at the UN, much less to acknowledge that Rwanda's top military officers are commanding M23, as documented in the 2012 UN Group of Experts on Congo's report.

M23 chain of command in Kigali 

. . .

32. Rwandan officials exercise overall command and strategic planning for M23. Politicians, current and former M23 members, Congolese armed forces officers and former Rwandan armed forces officers all confirmed that Gen. Ntaganda and Col. Makenga received direct military orders from the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan armed forces, Gen. Kayonga, who in turn acted on instructions from the Minister of Defence of Rwanda, Gen. Kabarebe (see annex 22 to the present report). The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Gen. Jacques Nziza, provides strategic advice and oversees the provision of logistical support to M23. Gen. Kabarebe and Gen. Nziza have also played an instrumental role in sustaining the political activities of M23. According to former Rwandan armed forces officers, current M23 members and former M23 officers, Gen. Ruvusha manages the provision of military ground support to M23. 

33. Several current and former M23 officers also stated that senior Rwandan officials travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to hold meetings with M23 commanders. Gen. Kayonga has been at least three times to Runyoni to plan operations and reassure the rebels of the full support of the Government of Rwanda. 

Although this won't happen, except here in cyberspace, I like to imagine my Swiss Congolese friend BK Kumbi bursting in on Ellie Wiesel, Paul Kagame, Shmuley Boteach, et al, in New York at the end of September, as she burst in on Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon at a March 1st UN conference in Geneva, shouting:

"But what about people of the Congo, PLEASE? What about people of the CONGO? You don't say anything about that! There's been 8 million people killed and you're making fictitious peace, and you're telling us that this is peace, when AGGRESSORS ARE NOT NAMED. Rwanda has been known … has … is responsible of what is going wrong in the peace, in Congo, and nobody says something about that! Burundi! Uganda! You should say that! We are sick and tired of hearing every time people here just being so peaceful with AFRICA! You should let AFRICA in PEACE!"

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, and the Black Star News, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City.