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THE US GOVERNMENT should stop its fuel shipments to Israel, Amnesty International says.
The organisation – which has repeatedly called for a comprehensive arms embargo on all parties to the conflict – said that a US fuel shipment is currently on its way for use by the Israeli military.
It said that the US government has continued to supply hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, including fuel for fighter jets and military vehicles, to Israel’s armed forces despite a soaring civilian death toll.
Fuel shipments
Under the US Foreign Assistance Act no security assistance may be provided to “any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognised human rights”, said Amnesty.
However, successive US administrations have used a clause in the Act that allows the President to continue its supplies to Israel in “extraordinary circumstances”.
The last US jet fuel delivery arrived in Israel on 14 July, a week after the conflict began.
Nine previous shipments were made from the US to Israel during 2013 and 2014.
A fuel tanker with the latest US fuel shipment is now sailing past the Azores and is due to arrive in Israel on 12 August.
Brian Wood, Head of Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International, said that the USA should “immediately suspend all such transfers and back an international investigation into the atrocities being carried out by both sides”.
The shipments
According to documents provided to Amnesty International by TransArms in Chicago and the International Peace Information Service in Antwerp, on 23 July 2014 the US-flagged oil tanker, the Overseas Mykonos, left the port of Corpus Christi, Texas, after departing from Houston for its declared destination of Ashkelon, where there is a major oil terminal just north of the Gaza Strip.
So far more than 1,800 Palestinians have died, the vast majority of them civilians, including more than 440 children. At least 64 Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and one Thai national have also been killed in the conflict.
Amnesty International is calling on all other states to immediately impose a comprehensive arms embargo on all the parties to the conflict in Gaza.
It also wants the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to be referred to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
US fuel shipments to Israel
Transport documents provided to Amnesty International show:
The US Defense Logistics Agency Energy (DLA Energy) shipped nine of the 10 jet fuel voyages to Israel during 2013 and 2014. The other voyage was overseen by the Government of Israel via its Consulate in New York, said Amnesty
On 16 April 2013 the US Congress was notified that the Israeli government had requested 864 million gallons of JP-8 (jet propulsion) aviation fuel to the value of $2.7 million stating that: “the United States is committed to the security of Israel.”
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I don’t get from the article what the benefits of being a data hosting hub country are? Other than perhaps prestige and increased regulatory role.
Benefits of pharma and software tech multinationals are proven, with large numbers of high paying jobs.
Data centers aren’t big scale employers, additionally they are energy hungry industries that will not help our push to meet energy reduction targets.
The associated data science careers referred to in the article, arent typically located at the data centres, we could strive to excell in these disciplins without the data centres.
As a country we need to be discerning about the type of industry that we court. If it is to be huge banks of servers, we need to insist on zero emission environmentaly friendly facilities.
To be a global data hub we need data centers! Was it 2yrs later Apple finally gave up on planning for a 1billion investment in a data center in Galway a few years ago ? In the mean time a similar project started In Denmark was complete and operational. They are now proposing to build another in Denmark where they propose to provide unwanted heat to the local community.
Is this just a backup plan ?
The real challenge is hiring academics only, the US have a growing pool of criminals to cut deals with, good hackers either go to jail or work for the state. We don’t have criminals at that level here. Couple of good professionals in Cork but I am unsure where we can get the talent to really enforce the team behind these new task forces. We need people who can reverse engineer malware, are constantly updated on backdoors in circulation, along with 0day flaws and dissect packets, that’s before we even look at the problems with hardware from certain regions.
@Padraig Carey: *”enforce the team” = “harden the team”
It’s almost embarrassing to think the best in Irish tech management and government believe the data management companies like Amazon etc are here for anything other than cold weather cheap power and tax breaks
Perfect place for Data Hubs. Not to extreme weather patterns so cosy of electricity is not so high with cooling units and not really a chance of a earthquake or some other natural disaster.
Downside not great for climate change targets and don’t really employ many.
have your say