Indict This Jewish War Criminal

Binjamin Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza

Palestine is the great humanitarian question that never seems to be taken seriously enough and thus goes on and on. The incredibly cruel suffering of the Palestinian people goes far beyond any other suffering in recent modern human history.

Dare I say, far worse than the Jewish Holocaust of the 20th century, eventually brought to a finality in 1945. The suffering of the Palestinian people which began in 1948 at the time of the Catastrophe, Al Nakba in Arabic, has gone on for nearly 65 years, for as long as I have lived, in fact.

It is the time scale of suffering that exceeds that of the Jewish tragedy that compels me to describe the persecution of the Palestinians as of greater significance and importance than the Jewish Holocaust, even with the iconic gas chambers left out of the equation.

There is a connection, however. It concerns the way the state of Israel was founded and planted upon an indigenous people, that of historic Palestine. Zionism as a political philosophy is an idea first hatched in the 19th century. It was based on a complete rejection of European society which these secular Jews decided was afflicted with an incurable disease called “anti-Semitism”, a disease being regarded as a pathological condition of the Gentiles. Of course, anti-Semitism is a modern false construct, a misnomer, since the term ‘Semitic’ refers to a family of languages and has nothing to do with either race or religion.

Thus was born the idea of a homeland for the Jews. But where and how? These early Zionists were largely secular Jews and were essentially political, not religious. However, they were not above exploiting religious myth for their own secular ends and the Book provided all that. Biblical prophesy became a weapon in their secular arsenal. They would say, “I may not believe in God but, nevertheless, He gave us the Promised Land”. Such chicanery and double-speak has characterised Zionism up to the present day. Remember, it was God that cast the Jews out of Israel for their transgressions against it and the Western governments put them back!

The Balfour Declaration offered the Jews a homeland in Palestine with the proviso that the rights of the Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, be given due consideration and their rights preserved. The sites of the three Abrahamic religions were to be respected. But the Jewish Holocaust in Central Europe was to hand the Zionists the greatest gift in terms of an awful alibi in the theft of Palestinian land and the dreadful treatment of the occupants.

Zionist terror was absolute as a consequence of the emotional blackmail associated with the Jewish Holocaust. The Zionists believed they could act with impunity. They still do.

Under the British mandate, Zionist terror gangs waged war on the British soldiers not long after the war against Germany. Our soldiers were ironically labelled “Nazis”, to die at the hands of Jewish terrorist gangs. Some of our soldiers were kidnapped, tortured and then their bodies left hanging, booby-trapped with high explosives for their unwitting comrades.

Menachem Begin, a leader of the Stern Gang and, later, an Israeli Prime Minister, wrote in his autobiography, “The blowing up of the King David Hotel was the highlight of my career”.

The King David Hotel was the headquarters of the British Army at the time. Casualties included many innocent civilians.

This was how the State of Israel came into being, with the massacres in Arab villages and the torture of young British soldiers carrying out their duties under the British mandate. Behind it, of course, was a powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, the same lobby that pressurised President Truman to tell the British to get out at a time of uncertainty and turmoil. Then the Haganah (the Jewish paramilitary organisation that was the embryonic Israeli Defence Force) and the various Jewish terrorist groups had full rein to commit the vilest of atrocities resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral homes.

The Israelis could not have succeeded without two factors. The first was the support from the powerful and wealthy Jewish lobby in the United States, virtually pulling the strings of successive American presidents, as much as they do today. Secondly, the memory of the Jewish Holocaust, perhaps one of the most potent of modern-day episodes in human history that has become an icon of human suffering. If it were that alone, there would be much to be said for it. If it were recognised as one among many human tragedies then it would have its rightful place in our hearts.

This was not the case with Israel and world Zionism. The Zionists claimed it was unique in world history and, thus, other tragedies were not worth a glance over the shoulder. The plight of the Palestinians was a consequence of this mindset, giving the Israelis an impunity with the Holocaust as the backdrop to all its actions ... “Anyone who criticises us is an anti-Semite and a Nazi”. The Holocaust was to be used as a playing card in the game of international power politics and it served their purposes very effectively for many decades, now wearing a bit thin with its gloss considerably tarnished. It no longer serves as an alibi for so many human rights violations.

The irony is that it was the Zionists who, not only behaved like Nazis, but based their own world view on that of Jewish supremacism. The kind of supremacism that made the German Herrenvolk beliefs seem almost modest in terms of a national or racial pride.

Never mind the Menachem Begins or the Ariel Sharons (the butcher of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon), we have now become familiar with their worthy successor in the world of Israeli Jewish supremacism, Binjamin Netanyahu, perhaps one of the most hawkish and uncompromising exponents of Israeli expansionism ever to walk the stage of Israeli politics.

Netanyahu believes in the superiority of his people over all others. What you get today is not the wounded look of a Holocaust survivor who feigns victimhood in a seemingly friendless world full of “anti-Semitic”  perils. Oh, no. Netanyahu dispenses with all that tosh. What we see today is the final stage of Israeli Zionist evolution in political terms ... the totally self-confident Zionist expansionist who does not give a stuff what the rest of the world thinks of what he says or does.

The attacks upon Gaza with all the modern weaponry that the American tax dollar can buy are carried out ruthlessly. The blockade of Gaza serves no military objective with the only possible result that the poor people of Gaza, men, women and children, suffer hunger, the cold and bad health. It is inhuman and against international law.

Aid ships carrying nothing more than medical supplies and children’s books have been attacked by armed Israeli soldiers with the resultant deaths of unarmed civilians, with others arrested and imprisoned in Israeli gaols. Some have disappeared.

The man behind all of these actions is Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a coalition consisting of the most extreme elements in Israeli politics. The Shas Party, for example, has called for the liquidation of the Arabs.

There is an enormous differential in terms of the lethal military power between the Israelis and that of the Palestinians. The Palestinians have no army, navy or air force, for a start. They are completely under an occupation that does not hesitate to use the mailed fist in an indiscriminate way, attacking children, hospitals and schools. They commit these atrocities knowing they have the protection of the United States through the political clout of the Jewish lobby in the form of the powerful AIPAC.

Recently, during the last Israeli offensive in Gaza, the Zionists killed two Palestinian journalists, their target being a media station, the al-Aqsa television facility. A two-year old boy across the street also died. All in all, more than 170 Palestinians died during these acts of aggression ... with six Israelis losing their lives in responsive rocket attacks.

Responding to criticism of the illegal building of Jewish settler homes within Palestinian territory, Binjamin Netanyahu said, “We live in a Jewish state and Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Western Wall is not occupied territory. We will build in Jerusalem because this is our right. What the UN says doesn’t interest me”.

Fourteen members of the UN Security Council had condemned Israel for the construction of new settler homes while the United States, uncharacteristically, accused the Zionists of “engaging in a pattern of provocative action”.

The continued building of Jewish settler homes is, of course, provocative but, more than that, it is a strategy that puts up very clear obstacles to peace. Even though the United States has pronounced these illegal actions to be “provocative”, the US State Department, in the person of Victoria Nuland, explained that the US Administration “would not support a proposal for a Security Council resolution being discussed in preliminary talks in response to the plan for Israeli settlements”.

She said, “I don’t think we think that is a helpful step at this point”. Which is diplomat-speak for “We support Israel whatever Netanyahu says or does”.

The Palestinians, under the direction of Mahoud Abbas, responded through Nabil Abu Rudeina, with the words, “The Palestinian Authority is to take important and necessary measures against Israel’s settlement building, including recourse to the UN Security Council, to prevent implementation of these decisions”.

Now the Palestinians have UN observer status, they are able to draw on the support of the United Nations directly, along with most countries which recognise the Jewish settlements as illegal, to voice the fact that the territories were captured by Israel in the 1967 war and are therefore subject to the Geneva Conventions ... which forbid construction on occupied territories. As a breach of the Geneva Conventions, Israel is guilty of war crimes. Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. Under international law, every people under an occupation has a right to resist that occupation. Palestinian resistance is, therefore, perfectly legitimate and morally correct.

We have already revealed that Netanyahu is not interested in what the UN says and is ignoring opinion around the world. He is also in contravention of international law. The hundreds of Palestinian children in Israel’s jails are also cited as a war crime and the Palestinians are to take this to the UN.

Israel’s principal mentor, the United States, is equally contemptuous of international law, having attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, placing these two countries under occupation. Those who resist these illegal occupations are equally justified in their freedom struggle and are backed by international law up to the hilt. They are freedom fighters, as such. Under the Geneva Conventions, it is forbidden to construct on occupied territories, which makes war criminals of the Americans, too.      copyright©Robert Edwards 2013