by Robert Edwards
(published in ESA No 54 November/December 2014)
Under International Law, every people under an occupation has the right to resist that occupation by any means.
Under International Law, every people under an occupation has the right to resist that occupation by any means.
This fact seems to elude the leaders of all governments in the West when it comes to Gaza. Hamas is morally superior on this issue of the armed struggle for Palestinian freedom and its defence of the people of Gaza has been truly heroic. They are freedom fighters while the Zionists are oppressors. It is as simple as that.
Israel, on the other hand, has shown itself to be criminally indifferent to the world’s condemnation (apart from America and its craven satellite states in the West) and has again attacked a population already crushed and without any decent means of dignified survival. The blockade of Gaza is illegal under international law but that is the least of the problems of Gaza. We have an occupying power in the form of Israel that not only denies the Palestinians the basic necessities for rebuilding their country but will continue to deny them statehood, while playing the stop/go game of “peace negotiations”.
The fact is, Israel has no intention of reaching a peace accord and will never accept Palestinian statehood ... the two-state solution or any other solution.
Like their partners in crime, the Americans, the Zionists prefer perpetual war as a matter of state policy. Like the Americans, the Israelis think of themselves as exceptional, above the rest of us, and therefore above international law.
Look at the Americans today, invading the air space of Syria and carrying on with their interference in world affairs. Let President Assad have full control of the situation and the psychopaths of Islamic State will be crushed. Stop supporting opposition to him.
In Israel we have elements within the coalition government who regard, not only Palestinians, but all Arabs as less than human. Is that surprising?
The late American performer, Joan Rivers, stated not long before her death that all Palestinians deserve to die. This was said during the terrible bombardment of Gaza. She advocated genocide, in fact.
A rabbi called for the killing of all Palestinian women so that they would no longer breed “snakes”, as their babies are dubbed.
The main photo on this front page may prove shocking to some and you may say it is in bad taste. Well, for the more sensitive among us, the bullet through the head of a foetus is a fact and reality of what goes on when the Israeli Defence Force “defends Israel” and goes on the rampage against innocent and defensive people in Gaza, their main target being women and children ... in this case, the unborn, too. What brutal, cowardly and savage “soldiers” brought up from the cradle to believe they are the Chosen People and all Gentiles deserve to die.
This was no accident but the result of a policy of extermination that began in 1948. Killing women and children goes even further back to the Books of Moses, in Deuteronomy, when the God of Israel commanded the Israelites to take whatever the God of Israel tells them to take and to slay everyone who was there previous to this land grab. Biblical prophesy used as a form of supremacist propaganda by a system founded on political secularism: Zionism.
The rabbis hold sway within this policy of terror. It is not unusual for rabbis to call for the complete extermination of the Arabs. This was the view of the late spiritual head of the Shas party in the Israeli government, recently accorded a state funeral with Netanyahu on his knees in grief. This rabbi repeatedly called for the liquidation of the Arabs while his party was part of a coalition in Israel.
A failure to condemn often implies approval.
America’s open support for Israel’s incursion into Gaza and the multiple atrocities committed there is simply the other side of the same coin.
The shooting of women was carried out under orders from the Israeli military, in turn given instructions from high ranking members of the government. Shooting pregnant women was an integral part of this policy, killing two living bodies in one go. Saves bullets.
Make no mistake, a large section of Israeli society supported all this. In Jerusalem, mobs of Jews ran through the streets shouting, “Death to Arabs!”.
While the Western media ignored most of the atrocities committed by the IDF, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine met in emergency session in Brussels quite recently to study the war crimes perpetrated by Israel and the IDF in particular. America, all along, backed Israel against accusations of war crimes. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine heard testimonies from eye witnesses, along with contributions from the professions ... physicians and legal experts. A jury of twelve good men and true completed this tribunal. This consisted of intellectuals of considerable repute. The tribunal’s raison d’être was very straightforward; it was to put Israel on trial for its crimes against the Palestinian people.
The list was long: war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and incitement to genocide. All of them extremely serious.
The journalist David Sheen produced evidence that incitement to genocide pervaded all of Israeli society including genocidal rhetoric from the highest echelons.
Another journalist, Max Blumenthal, produced evidence of “grisly executions” during a five day ceasefire in Gaza. IDF soldiers were under instructions to execute men in Gaza upon discovering they spoke Hebrew. There were also executions of civilians and paramedics.
The only Gaza-based journalist, Mohammed Omer, who managed to get out of Gaza for the tribunal hearings, gave evidence of daily life in Gaza whereby summary executions and kidnappings were a common occurrence, as well as using Palestinian children as human shields.
The Egyptian military dictatorship under Mr CC prevented others coming through the Rafah Crossing to testify, including the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Raji Sourani, obviously on the request of the Israelis.
Dr Mads Gilbert of Norway presented graphic evidence of the injuries received by the Palestinian population when he was volunteering in the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
There was no doubt intentional destruction of Gaza and the “deliberate systematic attack on the Palestinian civilian society” was at the forefront of the objectives of the IDF.
The atrocities were on such a scale that not only incitement to genocide occurred but indiscriminate murder was the main purpose and result.
In their final ruling, the judges gave this statement:
“In light of the clear escalation in the physical and rhetorical violence deployed in respect of Gaza in the summer of 2014, the tribunal emphasises the obligation of all states parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention ‘to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide’.
“It is recognised that in a situation where patterns of crimes against humanity are perpetrated with impunity, and where direct and public incitement to genocide is manifest throughout society, it is very conceivable that individuals or the state may choose to exploit the conditions in order to perpetrate the crime of genocide. We have a genuine fear that in an environment of impunity and an absence of sanction for serious and repeated criminality, the lessons from Rwanda and other mass atrocities may once again go unheeded”.
During the Israeli military assault upon Gaza in the summer of 2014, more than 2,000 Palestinians were murdered, including over 500 children. The aim of these periodic assaults is to change the demographics of that area so that a Jewish majority emerges. Not only was Gaza left desolate but entire farming communities were wiped out.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was the only serious attempt to bring Israel to book for its many crimes. The jury at the tribunal found Israel GUILTY of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
The evidence being overwhelming.
Israel continues to clamour for war against Iran. The Zionist state possesses hundreds of nuclear warheads, the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, yet Iran wishes to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. There is no evidence at all that Iran wishes to create nuclear weapons.
Isn’t this a case of double standards and rank hypocrisy? Iran is a peaceful and highly advanced society, demonised by the West as a threat to Western interests. Russia is also lined up for attack by the United States (under the guise of the “international community”) because America will not tolerate other larger nations standing up for themselves.
America wants complete global domination and this is at the core of the problem. It spends more on defence than most countries combined, although Russia has now in its possession more nuclear warheads than the United States ... for the first time. America’s nuclear arsenal is now in a very poor condition and has been depreciating at an alarming rate for that country. Yet the American tax payer still forks out billions in military hardware for Israel.
This military might is used for only one purpose at the moment ... to attack a defenceless population that had lived on that land for centuries, long before the Ashkenazi Jews had robbed the Palestinians of their birthright.
It is feared the Israelis will get away with more war crimes and incitement to genocide, all the while America shields them.
copyright©2014 Robert Edwards
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