The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon / credit: U.S. Department of Energy
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s opinion.
“This a critical moment for nuclear disarmament, and for our collective survival,” wrote Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will, commenting on the 10th Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference taking place since August 1 and ending August 26 at the United Nations.
I attended the conference for several days last week as an NGO delegate from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and have been closely watching the negotiations going on for the entire month over an outcome statement for the conference.
After two weeks, a draft preamble was submitted that reaffirms, among other things, “…that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and commits to ensuring that nuclear weapons will never be used again under any circumstances.”
This could be an extraordinary breakthrough toward global nuclear disarmament. Right now, 191 countries are represented in this treaty and are seated in the General Assembly hall listening to each other. In the first week, we heard urgent warning statements from the nations without nuclear weapons, such as, “The clouds that parted following the end of the Cold War are gathering once more.” Meanwhile, a representative from Costa Rica scolded, “The lack of firm deadlines has provided the nuclear-armed states with a pathway to disregard their disarmament commitments as flagrantly as they have since the last Review Conference.”
In a hopeful step, 89 non-nuclear states in the last year have either signed or ratified a binding disarmament agreement called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which requires disarmament commitments. These states no longer tolerate the double talk from the nine-nation nuclear mafia made up of UN Security Council member states China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), India, Israel and Pakistan.
How can the United States consider signing the draft preamble while the House and Senate are finalizing the National Defense Authorization Act, which calls for the modernization of its nuclear arsenal? How can the U.S. government even take part in this conference while it is seeking funding for a renewed nuclear edifice of destruction, including Modernized Strategic Delivery Systems and refurbished nuclear warheads? Over the next decade, the United States plans to spend $494 billion on its nuclear forces, or about $50 billion a year, according to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report. Trillions of dollars for submarines, bombers and buried nuclear missiles. Things they are committing to not use. Please, does this make sense?
At one of the NGO meetings I attended in the basement of the UN, I blurted out, “This conference IS A FRAUD.” The nuclear mafia have no serious plans to disarm, as required by Section 6 of the NPT Treaty. Their duplicity could be rebuked to the world by a walkout in the final days of the conference by the countries that have signed and ratified the agreement, as well as by their supporters.
For the NPT Treaty to collapse would be tragic. But for it to continue when everyone knows it is a lie is a moral and mortal affront to the people of the world.
Robin Lloyd is secretary of the Toward Freedom Board of Directors. She is a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the United States.
Nicaragua received the first 200,000 doses of a donation of 1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines on December 12. The batch arrived from China with a Nicaraguan delegation headed by Laureano Ortega, who advises President Daniel Ortega on foreign investments, Nicaraguan Minister of Finance Ivan Acosta, and Chinese Foreign Affairs Representative Yu Bo / credit: Kawsachun News
Nicaragua leapt forward to defend its national self-determination against U.S. global hegemony when it announced earlier this month it had discontinued diplomatic relations with Taiwan and was ready to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This move opens up the small Central American country’s economy to the People’s Republic of China, a country of 1.4 billion people that is rapidly edging toward surpassing the United States and becoming the biggest economy in the world.
Taiwan: Washington’s Beachhead In China
Nicaragua’s move to recognize China is no different than what the United States, Japan and Canada voted in favor of in 1971 at the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 2758 stipulated the United Nations “expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (the leader of the Chinese nationalists, whom the communists struggled against) and change China’s name as a member of the UN Security Council from the “Republic of China” to the “People’s Republic of China.”
Nicaragua first established relations with Taiwan in the 1990s, after U.S.-backed President Violeta Chamorro took power in 1989 in a surprise defeat for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Taiwan is an island off the Chinese coast that Chinese right-wingers fled to upon the 1949 communist victory.
The United States replied to the move using the language of humanitarian interventionism it has deployed to exploit and destroy countries around the world.
“The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan,” tweeted Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. State Department. “We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.”
The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan. We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.
Relations between the Biden administration and the Ortega government have recently taken a plunge. First, the United States intervened in Nicaragua’s elections by calling them a “sham” prior to Election Day and despite the presence of “232 international election observers,” said Michael Campbell, Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs. After the FSLN won the election with 75.92 percent of the votes, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” also known as the RENACER Act. This law calls for the United States to monitor Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia as well as U.S. sanctions that would disrupt multilateral financing from institutions like the World Bank. Later, the Biden administration banned all Nicaraguan government officials, along with their spouses and children, from entering the United States.
Nicaragua is now the fourth country in the region to recognize China. Panama took the step in 2017, then came El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, and Honduras, which may make the same move after left-wing presidential candidate Xiomara Castro’s recent victory.
Recognizing one China comes on the heels of the Nicaraguan government’s decision to withdraw from the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 19.
“We have seen what the U.S. and the European Union are capable of doing and have to prepare accordingly,” Campbell said. “But it’s the FSLN government’s job to lead the Nicaraguan people toward development.”
Countries in blue have signed onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative / Wikipedia/Owennson
Nicaragua and the Belt and Road Initiative
The third China-CELAC Forum involved approximately 117 political parties and organizations from 30 Latin American and Caribbean countries. CELAC stands for Community of Caribbean and Latin American States. At the forum, they proposed strengthening their relationship and solidarity with China.
“Nicaragua actively supports and is ready to consult on Belt and Road cooperation documents, with a view to signing them as soon as possible,” Moncada said. In 2020, trade agreements between Taiwan and Nicaragua reached $168 million, while trade with China accounted for less than $50 million. A potential trade ceiling exists with the much-smaller Taiwan, with its population of 23 million.
In addition, the new initiative opens up markets for Nicaragua’s agricultural business.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm because communication channels have already opened up for the structuring of cooperation projects, commercial exchange and investment projects,” said Fausto Torrez. He leads international relations for the Rural Workers’ Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo [ATC]).
The FSLN government has a record of working to ensure the rights of farmers, as well as of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast. That includes bringing electricity and paved roads to these once-underdeveloped areas. The Red Nacional Vial, a 24,763-kilometer (15,387-mile) paved road, connects the Pacific Ocean coast with the Caribbean Sea coast. It has been touted as the key to connecting Nicaraguan farmers with international markets. The World Bank also praised the project for uplifting Afro-descendant people. “This region, before the road construction, could only be reached by air during most of the year owing to heavy rains and impassable infrastructure (the rainy season lasts nine months in that region),” a 2020 World Bank report stated.
Nicaragua belongs to the Central American Common Market (CACM), which includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The United States is CACM’s largest trade partner, while China is the second-largest.
“These agreements come in the framework of [defending] food sovereignty,” Torrez said. “Therefore, China arrives with many possibilities to improve the country’s situation.”
As some see it, China is repairing holes U.S. imperialism has left in the region.
“Latin Americans know only too well what imperialism looks like, in both its colonial and modern forms,” activist Carlos Martinez recently wrote. “They have witnessed CIA-sponsored coups from Guatemala to Chile, from Brazil to the Dominican Republic.”
The new wave of governments working with China are doing so based on mutual respect. In 2020, $315 billion in agreements between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and China had been recorded.
“With projects such as the sea port on the Caribbean, improvements to our airports, roads, irrigation system and energy infrastructure, we will produce more and more efficiently,” Campbell said.
Nicaragua receives the first 200,000 doses of a donation of 1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines. The batch arrived from China with a Nicaraguan delegation headed by @LaureanoOrtegaM, Minister of Finance Ivan Acosta, and Chinese Foreign Affairs Representative Yu Bo. pic.twitter.com/QF3thXADW5
China also has been at the forefront of providing the Global South with aid since the start of the pandemic. For example, between mid-February 2020 and June 2020, China donated $128 million worth of ventilators, test kits, masks, protective suits and many more life-saving items to Latin America and the Caribbean.
“This strengthens Nicaragua’s international relations in all fields,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said in his first public statement after the FSLN signed the agreement with the Communist Party of China (CPC). For example, the country’s National Human Development Plan will continue to prioritize poor and vulnerable sections of society, which includes rural producers. Campbell said this new relationship represents an opportunity to diversify exports in a large new market.
Two Revolutions
Ortega made clear the historic significance of acknowledging one China.
“It hurts (the United States) more when it comes to Nicaragua, which is a revolution meeting again with another revolution,” he said.
Both the FSLN and the CPC are products of national liberation movements against a colonial power. They agreed to develop friendly relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence,” stated the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ortega also pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States demonizing countries that establish diplomatic relations with China while the United States continues to trade with China.
Yet, sanctioned and blockaded countries that establish ties with China weaken the U.S. stranglehold.
“Now is the time to improve and strengthen A.L.B.A.,” Torrez said of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a political, economic and social alliance in defense of independence and self-determination in the Americas.
Abraham Marquez is a freelance journalist from Inglewood, California. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and a 2021 University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Fellow.
On July 9, security guards shot a 24-year-old man on the premises of forestry company Forestal Mininco in the city of Carahue in Chile’s Araucanía region in what the Chilean media described at the time as an “armed confrontation.”
Pablo Marchant Gutiérrez, a Chilean anthropology student who had joined the indigenous Mapuche people’s struggle for autonomy and recuperation of ancestral lands, was found dead after what appeared to be an execution.
Marchant’s killing is the latest incident in the conflict between Mapuche communities and Forestal Mininco, which has been accused of human-rights abuses during violent land evictions in Wallmapu. That is the Indigenous name of the Mapuche people’s ancestral home, which encompasses the southern cone of South America that is divided between the modern states of Chile and Argentina. Because Mapuche culture is tied to the land, its medicinal plants, as well as geographical elements such as lakes, rivers and forests, denying the Mapuche people the right to live there is tantamount to genocide, per the United Nations’ definition.
However, between former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet’s terror laws being used to criminalize Mapuche elders and activists, the United States and the United Kingdom arming Chile’s security forces, and the failure of international agencies to treat the Mapuche conflict with urgency, the West appears complicit in the genocide of the Mapuche people.
Questioning Authorities
Not satisfied with the official accounts of events, Marchant’s family requested forensic investigations, from which a sinister picture emerged of what had happened on Forestal Mininco’s premises.
Pablo Marchant Gutiérrez with his mother, Myriam Gutiérrez / credit: Myriam Gutiérrez
The investigation found Marchant was shot in the back, contradicting the police’s account that Marchant had threatened officers with a M16 assault rifle. The report stated he was killed “on his knees” with his head inclined towards the floor, and that his injuries were consistent with that of an execution.
Neither the police nor prosecution services informed Myriam Gutiérrez, Marchant’s mother, of her son’s death. Instead, the Mapuche community relayed the news. Afterward, Legal Services of Temuco—another city in the Araucanía region—called Gutiérrez, saying she needed to be present at the autopsy. However, when Gutiérrez arrived, she wasn’t allowed in the facility.
“To this day, five months on, there has been no form of justice against those who have protected my son’s murderers,” Gutiérrez told Toward Freedom. “I must also point out that these cases are never resolved because the state does not recognize these [recuperation] acts as legitimate—instead, they qualify them as ‘terrorist actions.’”
Toward Freedom contacted Forestal Mininco, the Chilean consulate in London, and Chile’s Interior and Security Ministry, but they did not respond as of press time.
Not long after Marchant’s death, President Sebastian Piñera announced on October 12 a state of emergency in response to escalating tension in the southern regions of the Andean country. Over 1,000 troops are deployed in the Araucanía region, armed with drones, tanks and anti-riot weaponry. The central Chilean region is known for its virgin forests.
Less than a month into the military occupation, security forces opened fire at a roadblock, killing one Indigenous man and injuring several others, including a 9-year-old girl.
Despite the frequency and severity of the violence, political persecution and racism Mapuche communities face have failed to prompt an appropriate response from international agencies. Free from international intervention, Chilean security forces have been able to kill, evict and arrest Mapuche people with complete impunity, all with an eye to protect the interests of industries operating out of contested Indigenous land. This comes despite Chile being a signatory to the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of the International Labour Organization (ILO Convention 169) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Chile is the only Latin American country that does not recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples in its constitution.
“What the state is doing is colonial domination against the Mapuche people via a repressive genocidal political agenda, in turn denying their right to exist as an autonomous Mapuche nation,” Gutiérrez said. “Pablo knew and understood that people were being repressed and that they had been banished from their land in a brutal and repressive manner.”
Subsidizing Corporations
Chile currently holds the largest planted area of Pinus radiata, or Monterey pine trees, in the world. These fast-growing, medium-density softwood trees are known for their versatile uses, ranging from constructing homes, cabinets, boats and furniture to acting as a noise buffer in residential areas.
The Mininco and Arauco forestry companies own over 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) of forest and supply 400 different products in approximately 80 countries, including wood chips for paper pulp production.
The forestry sector’s success can be attributed to state subsidies and land grabs facilitated during Augusto Pinochet’s time as the U.S.-backed dictator following the 1973 coup. Pinochet’s extractivist policies ensured more than $800 million in Chilean tax money funded the sector. Large swathes of land previously belonging to the Mapuche people, peasant farmers and state-owned agencies, such as CORFO (Chile’s economic development agency), were seized and handed to Pinochet’s inner circle, including Julio Ponce Lerou, his son-in-law.
“Though most political parties recognize that the conflict with Mapuche people is political and not military, they continue to ignore demands for restitution of their lands, autonomy and self-determination,” Mariqueo said.
Lago Conguillio in 2017 in Chile’s Araucanía region, known for its virgin forests / credit: Flickr/Sarah and Iain
Western Complicity
The military occupation of Araucanía would not be possible without the support of the international arms industry. Multiple human-rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, decrying human-rights abuses that took place during the 2019-20 social unrest dubbed “El Estallido.” Yet, countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have continued to supply arms to Chile, whose military expenditure is one of the highest in the world, making up around 1.9 per cent of GDP.
In February, the Biden administration’s first foreign arms sale was to Chile. The $85 million package included:
16 SM-2 block IIIA rail-launched missiles,
two MK 89 Mod 0 guidance section adapters,
one target-detection device kit,
Mod 14 naval guns systems, and
associated training and supplies.
The UK also has armed Chile’s repressive military forces. A Freedom of Information request by British newspaper Byline Times found 50 percent of the £164 million ($217 million USD) worth of arms licenses sold to Chile since 2008 had been granted during 2019-20. This included so-called “non-lethal” weapons, such as smoke canisters, tear gas and other riot-control agents. Those tools were turned on more than 500 Chilean people who lost sight in one or both eyes. A similar tactic had been deployed during the 2019-20 Yellow Vests uprisings in France.
Genocide for Profit
None of the Chilean government administrations since the 1989 transition to democracy have challenged the might of forestry companies in Araucanía.
Whether left-leaning like Michelle Bachelet or extreme-right like Sebastian Piñera, the conflict rages on to the detriment of Indigenous people. It was Bachelet who commissioned the FBI to investigate the existence among Mapuche activists of terror cells linked to guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA). And it was Bachelet who conceived special unit Comando Jungla, a special military force trained in the Colombian jungle to combat alleged terrorism and narcotics operations in Chile.
“The militarization of the region continues, giving carte blanche to commit all kinds of atrocities against those communities peacefully struggling for the right to live on ancestral land,” Mariqueo said.
Meanwhile, Gutiérrez said her son only sought to help defend Wallmapu.
“He wanted to be among, collaborate and live like a Mapuche.”
Carole Concha Bell is an Anglo-Chilean writer and Ph.D. student at King’s College London.
Israeli artillery firing into Gaza on May 18 / credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit
Editor’s Note: This analysis was produced by Globetrotter.
On January 27, 2022, the Hebrew-language news site Walla published part of the text from a telegram sent by Amir Weissbrod—who is part of the Israeli Foreign Ministry—to Israeli embassies around the world. The telegram warned the Israeli diplomats that in the upcoming 49th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which is expected to begin on February 28, a report will be tabled regarding Israel’s 2021 bombing of Gaza. This report will apparently use the word “apartheid” to refer to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, according to the telegram.
Weissbrod relayed Tel Aviv’s instructions regarding the report prepared by a UNHRC-appointed committee to the Israeli diplomats through this telegram: “The main goal [for Israel] is to delegitimize the committee, its members and products” and “To prevent or delay further decisions.”
After a four year investigation, on February 1, 2022, Amnesty International released a 280-page report with a sharp headline, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.” Amnesty “concluded that Israel has perpetrated the international wrong of apartheid, as a human rights violation and a violation of public international law wherever it imposes this system. It has assessed that almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities, as well as governmental and quasigovernmental institutions, are involved in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory] and against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory.” Amnesty further said that these acts “amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid under both the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute.” Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid retaliated by accusing Amnesty of quoting “lies shared by terrorist organizations.” As if on cue, Israel’s government accused Amnesty of anti-Semitism. The Amnesty report will provide key material for the UNHRC investigation.
One of the immediate issues that will be the focus of attention for the UNHRC session is Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls against the Palestinians in Gaza in May 2021. According to a July 2021 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which looked at three Israeli strikes that were part of the operation “that killed 62 Palestinians,” there were “no evident military targets in the vicinity.” In its report, HRW used the term “war crimes” to describe attacks by “Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.” When the firing stopped after 11 days, the UNHRC passed a resolution in late May 2021 to establish an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry” to investigate various crimes in the OPT, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel. Navi Pillay, the former UN high commissioner for human rights and a former South African judge, was appointed to chair the three-person commission, which also included Miloon Kothari, an Indian architect; and Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer. The commission is expected to present its first report to the UNHRC in June.
The commission chaired by Pillay is the ninth commission established by the UNHRC to investigate Israeli actions against the Palestinians. It has a very broad mandate that includes to study violations of international humanitarian law, according to the “four Geneva Conventions of 1949,” which both Israel and Palestine are party to, and to continue to investigate these crimes into the future. It is widely expected that Pillay’s report will use the word “apartheid” to define Israeli policy in the OPT. This would not be the first time that a United Nations report has used this term to define Israeli actions against the Palestinians. In 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) released a report prepared by Richard Falk, “a former United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” and Virginia Tilley, “a researcher and professor of political science at Southern Illinois University.” The report defined Israeli policy against the Palestinians as “apartheid” as understood under international law (in his 2014 report, Falk had already used the term “apartheid”). The release of that 2017 report led to the resignation of ESCWA head Rima Khalaf, a distinguished Jordanian diplomat, after she faced “pressure from the [UN] secretary-general to withdraw the report.”
Hasbara 2.0
In 2006, the Israeli government set up a Ministry of Strategic Affairs to essentially run two campaigns, one against Iran and the other against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This hasbara (explaining or, more specifically, propaganda) ministry operated an information war that sought to delegitimize BDS activists and to paint anyone who supported the movement as an anti-Semite. Largely due to criticisms of its heavy-handedness, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs was shut down in July 2021 and some of its functions were shifted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Amir Weissbrod’s telegram from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is essentially Hasbara 2.0.
On January 23, 2022, the Israeli government set up a new project—Concert—inside the Foreign Ministry. This well-funded project will carry forward the mission of Solomon’s Sling—“a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) but controlled by government representatives,”—to burnish Israel’s image around the world, particularly in the West. Concert will be the means through which the Israeli government plans to transfer millions of dollars to nongovernment organizations and media houses to ensure that the reporting about Israel is positive. “Delegitimization” of any critics of Israel is part of the agenda this project aims to achieve.
The telegram sent by Weissbrod is part and parcel of Hasbara 2.0. Weissbrod is an experienced hand, having served Israel at the United Nations in New York and as an ambassador in Jordan, besides working in various ministries in Tel Aviv. In 2011, he told Haaretz that the diplomats from most countries understand Israel’s position relating to the “Palestinian Authority” “behind closed doors” but they “are not willing to state publicly what they readily say in a private meeting with Israeli representatives, which is often infuriating.” What such duplicity reveals is that these foreign representatives, who agree with Israel “behind closed doors,” recognize that public opinion in their countries is against Israeli policy, but these representatives know that they must not annoy the Israelis or the U.S. diplomats, who would otherwise make life difficult for their countries. (A senior Indian diplomat told me plainly that India normalized relations with Israel in 1992 because the United States told New Delhi that the “road to Washington had to go through Tel Aviv.”)
Israel recognizes that few of the countries in the UNHRC will vote against the report that is expected to brand it as an “apartheid state.” It will try to do two things to prevent the report from coming out: delegitimize the commissioners, notably Pillay, and ask the United States to use its membership on the UNHRC to delay the release of the report.
War Crimes
In March 2021, Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), confirmed that her office had opened an investigation relating to “Rome Statute crimes” by Israel against the Palestinians. There are effectively four Rome Statute crimes: crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Each of these crimes is horrendous.
What Israel fears is that a negative report in the UNHRC might provide evidence for the ICC investigation. On January 3, 2022, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told Israeli journalists that his government fears that this year a set of international institutions will try to portray Israel as an “apartheid state.” These institutions include the UNHRC, the ICC, the International Court of Justice, and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
In the press conference, Lapid called the characterization of Israel as an apartheid state “a despicable lie.” Two years ago, in June 2020, however, one of Israel’s most respected human rights organizations—Yesh Din—published a report with a startling conclusion: “It is a difficult statement to make, but the conclusion of this opinion is that the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank. The perpetrators are Israelis, and the victims are Palestinians.” Such statements are anathema to Lapid and Weissbrod, but—according to Israeli human rights groups (including B’Tselem) and Palestinian human rights groups (including Al-Haq and Addameer) as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—are a reflection of the facts witnessed on the ground, and no amount of Hasbara 2.0 can erase these facts.
