END THE SIEGE OF PALESTINE: crime against humanity

Showing posts with label crime against humanity. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Congratulations to All Parties!

Now see how easy it is to not be a pirate! Hopefully this is a sign of new flexibility and a determination to allow free access to Gaza.

There were some Palestinians on the ships, weren't there? That is to say I hope this isn't just more of that racist Zionist crap about allowing for European and non-Palestinian rights then denying them to Palestinians.

Is it hope or just a wise avoidance of a propaganda disaster?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Israeli Hypocrisy About Right of Return Exposes Their Lack of Moral Backbone

A year or two ago an old college friend of mine died. He was Palestinian. He died in his fifties and I don't believe he was ever able to return to Palestine. Like most Palestinians he wanted a free Palestine. It didn't matter. He lived his life and died a homeless person. Just one of millions of Palestinians, you know the folks that every Zionist used to insist didn't even exist.

It was a period when the Palestinians struggled to be recognized with an armed struggle because decades of peaceful means of gaining their rights had failed. A pro Israeli lobby and U. S. Imperialism dismissed this struggle of the Palestinians as nothing but terrorism for many more decades, even until today.

Of course millions of affluent and privileged Jews travel to and from Israel without restriction. The overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews have no historic roots in Palestine during the last few centuries. Of course, some Zionists claim that God gave them this land millenia ago. So a religious myth justifies (in the minds of the true believer) a Jewish right of return while American weapons and money have guaranteed to the settlers "rights" that are denied the aboriginal population.

Palestinians are not allowed to live in most of Palestine and their lives are made a living hell if they live in the occupied territories. American protection and sponsorship of Israeli crimes makes this so easy. Israel retains the "right" to wipe out and expel the native Palestinians in order to deny the real natives of Palestine a right of return.

Where are rights for the Palestinians? Where is their "right of return"? Most indigenous Palestinians have historic roots in Palestine that go back centuries. The European invaders of the Jewish faith proclaim their "right to return" to the land they seized from the Palestinians only a few decades ago. The Rabbis and Israeli politicians all too often do not believe that Palestinians should have the same rights they reserve for Jews, the right to return to their homeland. Different rights for different folks based upon their race and bloodline, sounds like apartheid to me!

In short, we are supposed to believe that Jews from the Bronx or Europe have a right to return to Israel despite a lack of political, cultural or historical continuity in that area for thousands of years!

I don't have a right to steal your house because I have no house. The Israelis say Palestine is their house, because god told them so thousands of years ago, but everyone knows it is a stolen house. It is just using a little knowledge about the ancient past to justify modern day thievery.
After all their were many different Jewish states, not just an Israel. Prophetic arguments justifying the oppression of the Palestinians are simply expressions of personal or group prejudice masked as faith. This is not unique to the Jews.

Maybe the Israelis will get to keep the house they stole but can't they at least let the original owners come live there too? The Rabbis and rank and file Jews are not being confronted with these questions. They don't want to think about it, but we all might benefit if they did.

The European invaders summarized their colonization of Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land." Palestinians have had to wage a tireless struggle even to be recognized by the world community. The United States and Israel alone ignore Palestinians to this day.

Of course the Palestinians deserve our support and worldwide coordinated events could focus on the demand that Palestinians be guaranteed their human rights by their occupiers, the Israelis. The dates of these educational events and rallies could correspond to historic dates in the Palestinian struggle as well as historic events during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In a sense Gaza is a new Warsaw Ghetto. In fact, those who compare todays Zionist tyranny with that of the white supremacists in South Africa should also consider examining possible similarities between Israeli policies directed against the Palestinians and Nazi policies directed at the Jews, Gypsies, gays, etc..

Didn't the Nazis wall off the Ghetto? Isn't Israel walling off the West Bank and Gaza? Were not the Jews a captive population in the Ghetto? Are not the Palestinians a captive population in places like Gaza and bantustan-like patches of Palestinian territory on the West Bank?

Wasn't electricity and just about all goods and commerce into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto stopped by the Nazis? Isn't that what is happening in Gaza today? A handful of the Warsaw Ghetto prisoners fought the Nazis. Today a handful of Palestinians fight the Israelis. Didn't the glorious rebels of the Warsaw Ghetto seek revenge and justice at the point of a gun even though their struggle was a short one? Today the Israeli and American leaders tend to label similar efforts by the Palestinian prisoners of Gaza as despicable "terrorism".

Of course it may be objected that while the Nazis created the Ghetto to exterminate Jews that the Israelis have not created Palestinian ghettos to exterminate Palestinians, just to exterminate Palestine. I agree that this is an important difference, but it may not be as significant as we would like to believe. If Israel ever uses its vast arsenal of nuclear destruction millions could be killed within an hour's time. Peace with and justice for the Palestinians seems like a much more practical idea and a better moral choice. You don't have to be a special religious teacher to see that.

Real progressives, real liberationists, real leftists, real liberals and real revolutionaries must stand with the oppressed and dispossessed regardless of their imperfections. Many Jews, of course, will agree with most if not all of what I am saying here. Certainly oppressors are more imperfect and more guilty of wrong conduct than the oppressed. This is particularly obvious as more than a million Palestinians desperately try to survive the Israeli strangulation of Gaza.

Whatever the liberation struggle, when it comes to personal and group sacrifice it is better to die for the people than to live for the oppressor and the oppressor classes, oppressor castes, oppressive groups and exploitative individuals.

I call this hierarchy of oppressions explooitation :).

When the oppressed struggle to be free who are we to do anything but do our best to stand with their just demands such as the Palestinian right to return. Of course the human rights of the Palestinians and of all of us must be struggled for wherever they are not guaranteed. The struggle for human rights in Palestine is a just struggle, no? Oui!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

Remember all the press President Reagan got when he said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall referring to the t Berlin Wall way back in the eighties? Well, I guess the people tore that wall
down, not Gorbachev. The same thing is happening to the wall meant to imprison the Palestinean
people. In this case, Israel seeks to implement crimes against humanity using the justification that
only collective punishment can bring them the end to Palestinean armed resistance. As always there is a silly arguement but the genocide is obvious, the right to rebel clear. I have simply put
this little article from Al Jazeera with Norman Finkelstein saying something of the same thing.

NEWS MIDDLE EAST

Interview: Tear down the walls

By	Saeed Taji Al-Farouky

Jewish academic says Palestinians must
tear down separation wall

Norman Finkelstein is one of Israel's fiercest academic critics and a vocal supporter of the Palestinians.

He is urging the Palestinians to break down the "segregation" wall built across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein was an assistant professor of Political Science at Chicago's De Paul University for six years until he was denied tenure there in June 2007.

Known for his critical investigations of other scholarly works on Israel - notably his ongoing feud with Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Israel supporter - he has published six books on the occupation and the issue of Palestine.

Finkelstein's works have earned him both praise and condemnation.

Finkelstein is working on his seventh book - A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-up of American Zionism - postulating that American Jewish support for Israel is beginning to wane.

Currently on an international speaking tour of Venezuela, The Netherlands, Turkey, Lebanon, Japan, the UK, Canada and the US, Finkelstein spoke with Al Jazeera about the siege on Gaza and what options Palestinians there faced.

Al Jazeera: Has there been much controversy so far on your speaking tour?

Finkelstein: There are some die-hards occasionally in the US but that has pretty much ended.

Israel's case [for occupation] has collapsed, it's not just weak, it has collapsed. You could see in the audience [at Manchester University] there was a row of hostile people who were anxious to hear me finally come to the end, but when I was done they had no objections because you can't argue the case any more.

I think people know too much.

So where does that leave the Palestinians?

The suggestion has to be, as I said earlier, God helps those who help themselves. The Palestinians have to find a way to act on their own, and I think what happened in late January [the destruction of part of the wall separating Gaza from Egypt] is a good sign.

That is exactly what they should be doing in the West Bank. One million Palestinians armed with picks and hammers should go to that wall and say "The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said this wall has to be dismantled. We are implementing the ICJ decision. We are knocking down the wall."

Does that mean you encourage violence?

What happened in Gaza last month was not violence. I advocate what international law allows - that people under occupation can resist occupation using means which are legal under that law. This includes violence so long as you are targeting combatants and not civilians.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy in 2007 that Israel has a huge amount of influence over Washington policy. Does the Israel lobby control Washington, or is it the other way around?

I don't really agree with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. On broad regional issues, such as Iran, Iraq and so forth, America is calling the shots because they are fundamental American interests.

These are tough people – Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense and Dick Cheny, the vice-president - and no Israel lobby is going to tell them what to do. But when it is Israeli issues like the occupation and settlements, in that regard I think it is the lobby.

George Bush, the US president, has called Iran and North Korea "rogue states". Do you consider Israel a "rogue state"?

It is more than a rogue state. It is a lunatic state. The only country in the world where the population overwhelmingly supports an attack on Iran is Israel - 78 per cent want to attack Iran. The state has gone berserk. The whole world is yearning for peace, and Israel is constantly yearning for war.

You have been called an extremist, a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier.

What I have to say is not particularly radical. I have said pretty much what the whole international community has said for the past 30 years. When people actually hear what I say, it's not particularly extreme.

One of the most serious claims against you mentions your invitation to Tehran's Review of the Holocaust conference in December 2006.

I said I would appear under three conditions. Number one, you have to provide me with a list of who the invitees are because I want to be able to judge if this is a serious conference or if it is a circus. Number two, you have to give me serious time to present my point if view, and number three, you have to let me speak at the universities to the students.

They rejected all three conditions so I rejected the invitation.

What about the claim that you testified as an expert witness for Hamas in a 2006 US court trial?

In Chicago, there was a person who was indicted on some lunatic terrorism charge and I was called in as an expert witness on what Hamas' record was in Gaza. That's all I was called in for. I would certainly support them of course, what's wrong with Hamas? They're the elected government of Palestine. Who cares what they are considered, the people elected them.

Are you deliberately trying to provoke a reaction with your views?

No, I have no desire to provoke, I want to win this cause [for Palestine]. I think we can really win it; that's one of the reasons I'm on this tour.

I think public opinion about Israel is now in freefall. I think it is going to be even worse now because nobody is going to defend Israel when the Palestinians blow up the wall.

Source: Al Jazeera

Related:
	Election power of the Israel lobby (30 Dec 2007)
	Hamas unfazed by Israeli power cuts (09 Feb 2008)
	Gaza Diary: Not a life for children (07 Feb 2008)
	Israel launches deadly Gaza raids (07 Feb 2008)
	A harsh light on America's Israel lobby (13 Apr 2006)

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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Siegeof Gaza: Israel to cut off electrical power to Gaza

Look at the BBC Story below where we see that Israel really is instituting a siege against Gaza
which will now include cutting off the electric power to the area. This is, of course, collectively
punishing all the people in Gaza. Collective punishment is pretty much regarded as a crime against humanity just as siege ought to be seen as a war crime.

Israel approves Gaza power cuts

Israel's defence minister has approved sanctions against Gaza, including cuts in the supply of electricity and fuel to try to halt rocket attacks.

Ehud Barak authorised the cuts, which are expected to follow immediately after rocket attacks are launched.

Palestinian leaders say the measure amounts to collective punishment.

Israel supplies 60% of the electricity for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants - but last month Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity".

Exploiting human needs to blackmail our people will never weaken us
Sami Abu Zuhri
Hamas spokesman

By formally declaring Gaza "hostile", Israel argues it is no longer bound by international law governing the administration of occupied territory to supply utilities to the civilian population.

But the position accepted by the international community is that Israel remains legally responsible for the coastal strip, despite withdrawing two years ago, because it still controls Gaza's borders, airspace and territorial waters.

Israel imposed an economic embargo on Gaza after the Islamist militant group, Hamas, seized control from the rival Fatah group in June. It is also limiting the movement of people in and out of the territory.

But the top United Nations humanitarian official has now urged Israel to lift its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"I would appeal to Israel to relax these restrictions (and) to lift the economic blockade on Gaza," UN Deputy Secretary General John Holmes told journalists.

He said the number of humanitarian convoys entering the territory had halved to 1,500 in September from 3,000 in July.

"In term of famine, we are not there, but there is a serious humanitarian crisis," Mr Holmes said.

'No choice'

Mr Barak is authorised to implement the sanctions, but it is not clear when they will come into effect or whether he will seek the further approval of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the security cabinet.

We are left with no choice but to take these steps
Matan Vilnai
Israeli Deputy Defence Minister

Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, who led the team which formulated the plan, said Israel would "dramatically reduce" the power it supplied to Gaza over a period of several weeks.

"We are left with no choice but to take these steps. I assume they will have an effect, even if not immediately," he told Israeli Army Radio.

"The recommendation is to start disconnecting gradually, without causing anything that could create a humanitarian problem, like hospitals."

Officials said the electricity would be cut at first for 15 minutes after each rocket attack and then for longer and longer periods.

Gen Vilnai said he hoped the gradual disconnection would encourage Gazans to produce their own electricity and no longer be dependent on Israel.

It is unclear how big an effect the power cuts will have, since many buildings have back-up generators.

About 120 megawatts out of the 200 megawatts of electricity used annually in Gaza are bought from and supplied by Israel directly. A further 17 megawatts are supplied by Egypt, while 65 megawatts is produced by a power station in Gaza.

'Exploiting human needs'

A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza said it would be unbowed by any further sanctions.

"International law requires that occupation forces take care of the needs of the occupied peoples," Sami Abu Zuhri said.

"Exploiting human needs to blackmail our people will never weaken us."

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas also reacted angrily to the plan.

"This decision is a form of collective punishment against our people in Gaza," Cabinet Secretary Saadi al-Kronz said in a statement.

The UN has previously warned Israel that it must not inflict collective punishment on Gaza's civilian population by cutting vital supplies and services.

In other developments on Thursday, two Palestinian militants were killed in a clash with Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip. The armed wing of the Hamas, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said the two men were its members.

Another Palestinian militant was later shot dead by Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip while he attempted to plant an explosive device near the border with Israel, the Israeli military said.

Islamic Jihad said one of its members had been killed, but insisted he had been unarmed.

Siege of Gaza: Israel to cut of power to implement collective punishment