Intl. activists warn against left-wing Zionism promotion, attacks on Palestinian resistance front

A group of dozens of international human rights activists has warned against the promotion of the left-wing Zionism, which seeks to colonize popular solidarity with the Palestinian people through presenting them as a helpless nation and attacking the resistance front against the Tel Aviv regime.

The campaigners, in an open letter addressed to the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), warned the non-governmental organization against the decision to opt former Australian journalist and television presenter Sophie McNeill as the keynote speaker during its upcoming event, scheduled for May 23.

The activists highlighted that McNeill has encouraged the “Palestinians as victims” line at the same time as she has ferociously been attacking the anti-Israel resistance front.

They went on to describe her as a Western apologist, who attacks the resistance bloc in order to defend Washington’s divide and rule strategy, US-led military invasions, and attempts to either destroy or balkanize Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Following the assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad airport in a terror drone strike authorized by former US president Donald Trump on January 3 last year, every Palestinian faction pointed to his enormous role and unswerving support to the Palestinian cause, the human rights activists said.

Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, similarly, underscored the prominent role of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement, in this regard.

Leila Khaled, long-time activist and Central Committee member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has also pointed to the regional character of the US-led militancy imposed on Syria.

The activists said McNeill now works as a researcher for the so-called Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose executive director is a prominent liberal Zionist and he frantically tries to conceal the apartheid nature of the Israeli regime by a humane mask.

Human Rights Watch regularly makes moral equivalence between Israeli massacres and resistance mounted by Palestinian groups in the face of the Tel Aviv regime’s acts of aggression, they argued.

They further noted that McNeill repeatedly made US-HRW-crafted allegations about the use of barrel bomb and chemical warfare in Syria in order to incriminate the Damascus government as well as Syrian government troops, and prolong the Syrian conflict.

The activists said the former Australian television presenter also ran the publicity stunt about young Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh, whose blood- and dust-covered face spread across the internet following an alleged airstrike in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in August 2016.

Her frenzied and scathing attacks on Syria also led American-Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah to ask her to explain her intentions which probably sought an Australian invasion on the conflict-plagued Arab country, they underlined.

The activists noted that McNeill was nominated for a Lowy Institute award back in 2017, stressing that the institute is known to be a staunch supporter of the Tel Aviv regime and said that Australia and Israel should be “partners in Asia.”

They finally urged the APAN to reconsider its decision regarding the main speaker of its forthcoming event, otherwise they will certainly not take part in it.

Israel refuses to work with ICC on war crimes probe

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel will tell the International Criminal Court that it will not cooperate with its investigation into possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel will respond to a notification letter from the ICC, and that it does not recognize the tribunal’s authority.

Last month, the ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced in a statement the launch of a war crimes investigation into the Palestinian territories, which have been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

She said her inquiry will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.”

The Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed the prosecutor’s announcement.

It is “a long-awaited step that serves Palestine’s tireless pursuit of justice and accountability, which are indispensable pillars of the peace the Palestinian people seek and deserve”, the PA foreign ministry said in a statement.

Hamas resistance movement also praised the ICC’s move.

“We welcome the ICC decision to investigate Israeli occupation war crimes against our people. It is a step forward on the path of achieving justice for the victims of our people,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman said.

“Our resistance is legitimate and it comes to defend our people. All international laws approve legitimate resistance,” Qassem noted.

Palestine was accepted as an ICC member in 2015, three years after signing the court’s founding Rome Statute, based on its “observer state” status at the United Nations.

Both Israel and the United States have refused to sign up to the ICC, which was set up in 2002 to be the only global tribunal trying the world’s worst crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.