Dr.Haytham Manna’s Inaugural Speech,
Conference on the Global Tribunal for Palestine (GTP)
,Geneva, Switzerland, 6-8 June 2024
The tribunal birth was difficult. And the fundamental question was how we could live up to the tens of thousands of children killed, injured, or displaced in the “genocide” that senior Israeli officials did not hide their intention and determination to carry out in Gaza. Furthermore, the Biden-Blinken and the U.S. Congress also did not conceal their intention and action by providing weaponries, military hardware and funds in order to demolish, kill, and displace an entire population under the cover of the most dreadful twenty-one century falsehood: “war on terror.”
A number of fellows present with us today, participated in fact-findings missions to Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine that monitored and reported on atrocities committed in the name of splitting the world into two axes: a world of the good and another world for the wicked. Our world is divided into countries permitted to invade, violate international laws, disapprove and even hold international justice institutions and other countries and peoples accountable, punished and besieged because they refuse to submit to an unjust international order. Many of you have also stood up and continue to stand in protest to hold the perpetrators accountable.
For more than 15 years, many of you have been collecting evidences, filing pleadings before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and from early days obstacles have been erected to keep Israel’s apartheid system above accountability. How many times has a US ambassador in this or that country, and even the US President himself, turned into a defence lawyer for Israeli criminals…
Every objective observer of what is happening, concludes with James Paul, the most important observer of the United Nations Security Council, said: “As I carried on with my anthropology and watched one crisis roll in after another, I realized how violently the US-led Council was managing the world and how negligent it was in fulfilling its responsibility for peace and security. Crises have complex causes and often far-reaching and unexpected results, but the Council rarely meets the challenge. The thinking behind the resolutions is shallow, neglectful of the big picture and driven by powerful members’ geo-strategy and commercial interests..” was the original sin in the installation by the Security Council as a master of the legislative, judicial and executive powers of the United Nations, that is, making it the only dictatorship that no one has the right to criticize or discuss its enormous powers.
What the citizen of the free world and the global civil society discovered, is that they are a counter-power and an effective energy that is difficult to control. Billions of dollars were/are disbursed to buy or contain number of non-governmental organizations have failed to undermine them. Hence, we are not surprised, at all, that they are classified by racist war criminals on the lists of terrorism, and even accused them of being antisemitic but they are the ones who met high, from all continents, to carry the banner of justice and peace in the face of brutality.
We are proud of your presence and participation in this great project. You are the next generation who will hold the banner of justice. The preparatory committee rose at the peak of contentment when computing the age average of participants, their intellectual and human rights capabilities. We are confident that the seat of Edgar Morin, Noam Schomsky, Richard Folk, James Paul and Mohamed Hafez Yacoub – and the list goes on – will not be vacant tomorrow.
The tasks entrusted to all of us are great, but we are certain that the convergence of all promising energies, under the banner of reason and justice, in support for the highest issue in the record of humanity today: the Palestinian Cause shall be fruitful to humanity, in these difficult stages of its history…
We thank you for bearing the burdens of travel and providing nearly thirty reports, studies and testimonies to the work of the tribunal. We thank the Istiklal University in Jericho and the Institute of Social Sciences in Beirut for their constructive interactions. We also thank everyone who will not sleep well in the next two days because of the time difference with the Americas, Australia and East Asia.
Today, we are facing a historic juncture: either the continuation of injustices and crimes of a dilapidated global system, or the triumph of justice in the face of brutality.
As the Greek once said: This is Rhodes… Jump here
