Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Isaac and Alfonso

Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been raging on arguably almost nonstop since the establishment of Israel after WWII, the conflict has recently taken a new turn. As of Monday, October 17^th, a total of 52 deaths have occurred between the two groups over the past two weeks. The attacks are taking place in public locations, including on a bus that had been boarded by the assailants and at a bus station where the attacker crashed into the bus stop and got out to hurt the people there. It does not seem like this violence is in any way organized or pre-orchestrated, and the offensive action taken by the Palestinians does not seem to be supported by any particular group. The attacks could potentially be out of frustration that the West Bank conflict has been raging on for what seems like forever and it does not look like a solution or agreement on this issue is in sight. Alternatively, they could be because the initial attacks caused the searching of Palestinian homes and towns which caused anger and more attacks (a kind of spiral effect).  The Atlantic even goes as far as to ponder whether or not a “Third Palestinian uprising may already be underway”( The Atlantic Oct 13). Palestinian uprisings, which also occurred in the 1990s and 200s, are also known as “Intifadas.”   Although Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, wanted the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem to be closed due to the issue, the government is not currently trying to fix the problem by taking extreme measures such as these but rather has placed “hundreds more security personnel in Jerusalem and other cities”( The Economist, Oct 17 ). The attacks supposedly came from East Jerusalem, which is one of the most (if not the most) important part of the city to both groups.

This seemingly eternal conflict could be said to be related to the ideas of cultural relativism in some ways. In this conflict it is evident that the two groups of people have very different views on Israel. Cultural relativism is the system of beliefs that hold that one’s ideas are formed based on how they are brought up and their environment. Many Middle Eastern countries have been shown to reject Israel as a state because they disagree with the idea that Israel should be a Jewish state; in fact, these people believe that their rights are being violated by the presence of the state of Israel. The heart of the conflict is based on the idea that the Palestinian people were kicked out of their homeland in order to make room for the establishment of Israel, so in their minds a great wrong has been committed against them.  On the other hand, many countries around the world recognize Israel as a legitimate independent state that was fairly established. Although the presently living Palestinians that currently take part in this conflict were, for the most part, not alive during the establishment of Israel, they were educated to believe that an injustice occurred at the founding of the Israeli state. On the other hand, the people of Israel (needless to say) do not hold this belief and rather believe that the aggression and wrongdoing is actually coming from the Palestinian side. Therefore, cultural relativism exists in the sense that one side believes that the injustice was in ousting them from their homes, whereas the other side believes that the true crimes are the acts of violence that are being committed against them (not to say that Israel does not also take violent action).  This conflict is also related to the idea of state sovereignty and territorial integrity.  People of the Palestinian region are against Israel and do not want it to exist, like many other Arab states. This leads to Israel’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity to be violated since there are some who do not want to recognize it as a state.

Additionally, there are clear violations of human rights from both parties in the recent events of violence happening in Jerusalem and across Israel. The basic right to life is clearly being violated in this situation, as well as the right to safety and a feeling of safety. The idea that the lone wolves that are committing these crimes against both sides are not backed by a governmental or overarching organization does not mean that human rights are not being violated; in this case, individual people are actually violating the rights of others in a significant way.

Directly Cited:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21673611-palestinian-unrest-probably-will-not-escalate-full-blown-uprising-it-also-hard

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/jerusalem-israel-palestinian-day-of-rage/410290/

Other sources (some used for info gathering, others just links to information for readers) 

http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21674828-politics-week

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/palestinian-killed-alleged-stabbing-hebron-151020091641052.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4706354,00.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/voices-palestinian-uprising-israel-151019105919588.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/10/palestine-intifada-powerful-151016094419464.html

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Defense

The Modern Day Gulag-North Korean Concentration Camps

The Modern Day Gulag-North Korean Concentration Camps

Josh Roselli and Alex Friedman

On the topic of human rights, North Korea has been long cast in the shadows by the global community due to concerns over national security. In the modern age, world leaders and Western civilization primarily concern themselves over the potential imminent nuclear threat that North Korea creates, as its brutally totalitarian ruler, Kim Jong Un, continues his publicized critique on Western nations, specifically the United States. Human rights violations, crimes against humanity that spawned early in the 1900’s and to this day vigorously continue, are not illustrated or argued. North Korea contains numerous concentration camps, camps filled by people in the lowest tier in their created “caste” system. These prisoners, who are usually family members of those who have “opposed the government”, are forced into a brutal labor system, where death is considered as a release from the starvation, harsh living conditions, and endless beatings that these people encounter day by day.

A global estimation of the total amount of North Korean civilians that actually call these camps “home” range from 90,000 to 120,000 people, with upwards of 400,000 people since the camps’ foundation losing their lives to starvation, torture, and execution. The purpose of these camps is to “enforce obedience and suppress crime by threatening not just the life of the dissenter, but also the lives of his loved ones.” As stated before, these “dissenters” are those who have either shown opposition to the Kim family’s rule, or who are related to Korean civilians who have defected to the South, or north to China. Usually, these camps are a life sentence; either you escape through execution, or hunger and disease will eliminate you first. Those who are born in the camps are given a preliminary education, which consists of basic arithmetic, reading, and writing, and then are placed in different aspects of manual labor as they grow older. In most cases, sex is harshly punished, and the impregnation of a women can lead to either immediate execution, or the birth of the child only to be executed in front of the parents. For example, a camp survivor (who remains unnamed due to security concerns) states that he heard of an execution where, “With shaking hands, the mother was forced to pick up her newborn and put the baby face down in water until the cries stopped and a water bubble formed from the newborn's mouth.” The brutal conditions in these camps draw clear comparisons to Nazi concentration camps, even a method of mass execution similar to Holocaust gas chambers has been reported, but not confirmed. The North Korean government vehemently denies the existence of these camps, yet they have been clearly documented though satellite photography.

As the global community looks to world powers, such as the United States, to place sanctions on North Korea that would abolish these camps, or at least thrust them into the spotlight of the media, significant obstacles present themselves that directly tie into the work we have studied in this course. A huge aspect of the global human rights community that we focus on in class is the United Nations, as these camps clearly violate almost every aspect of the UDHR, ICCPR, and ICESCR. North Korea has never ratified any of these covenants, but the topic of their human rights violations been frequently brought to the table. These prisoners are placed in impossible living conditions, denied the right to live, never given ample means of nutrition, and are forced into a modern day scenario of enslaved, forced, labor. The biggest obstacle to abolition of these camps, outside of the Korean nuclear threat if the West becomes too involved in the inner workings of their nation, is that two members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China, are allies of North Korea, and will readily veto any movement by the Council to bring North Korea in front of the ICC for fear of lost economic relation, and potential nuclear threat.

Questions for Discussion:

-        Given the current situation in relation to escalated United States relations with North Korea, how can we as a nation best combat these grotesque violations of human rights while avoiding war and ensuring the safety of our nation?

-        Will military involvement be the only true solution to the abolition of these camps? If so, why, and if not, how can the global community combat these camps in an effective way that does not involve a declaration of war? 

Links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/20/torture-kidnapping-and-gulags-north-koreas-alleged-crimes-against-humanity/

http://freekorea.us/camps/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26223180