An
Active Complicity In Israel’s Terror
By Ghali Hassan
22 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
On
June 5, 2007, the pro-Zionist U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution
152, endorsing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and Israel’s
illegal and violent “reunification of Jerusalem”. The passing
of the Resolution was a deliberate violation of UN Security Council
and in contempt of world peace. While the Resolution is designed to
commemorate Israel’s unprovoked and pre-emptive naked aggression
against the Arab nation, it is also an attack on Arabs and Muslims in
general, and an endorsement of Israel’s Zionist policy of expansion
and extermination of the Palestinian people.
In order to divert public
attention from the crimes of 1967, the U.S. and Israel are plotting
and fanning the flames of violence between Palestinian factions. The
current violence in Palestine is a U.S.-Israel engineered violence aimed
at covering-up Israel’s sixty years of Israel’s violence
and the systematic dispossession of 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction
of Palestine.
Meanwhile a deliberate disinformation
and distortion of facts campaign by Western mainstream media to mislead
the public to believe that HAMAS – the democratically-elected
government – has taken over in Gaza and created what is in effect
a miniature “Islamist” state. What are deliberately omitted
from the mainstream media coverage are Israel’s forty years of
fascist policy of dispossession and the slow genocide of the Palestinian
people. The one-way street anti-Palestinians/Arabs propaganda is designed
to demonise the Palestinian people and legitimises U.S.-Europe backing
for Israel’s terror and brutal policies.
The reality is that HAMAS
has removed (by force) a U.S.-Israel-sponsored coup d’etat against
a legitimate Palestinian government at the expense of Palestinian lives.
For several months, Israel and the U.S. have been training, arming and
financing Palestinian collaborators and militias ? led by the thug Mohammad
Dahlan ? to destabilise the HAMAS-led Palestinian government in contempt
of Palestinian lives. It is no secret that the American CIA and Israel
have chosen the time in deliberate efforts to destroy the recently formed
Palestinian national unity government, fuelling violence and inciting
insecurity and civil war. The plan failed miserably. (See also WND).
It is important to note that when Western leaders say that they are
encouraging the formation of a national unity government in Palestine,
they mean exactly the opposite; the disintegration of Palestine. In
a recent interview (19 June 2007) with the French daily, Le Figaro,
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Isma'il Haniyah said: “Following
the signing of the Mecca inter-Palestinian agreements, which permitted
the formation of a national unity government, a propaganda war was launched
against the HAMAS-led government”. Moreover, in addition to the
strangulation and starvation of the Palestinians, the U.S. and its European
allies have provided Israel with unconditional military, financial and
diplomatic support.
In his recent report, former
UN envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro De Soto admitted that the aim of
the “Quartet” ? U.S., EU, UN and Russia ? policy of sanctions
and starvation had been to “take all pressure off Israel. With
all focus on the failings of HAMAS, the [illegal] Israeli settlement
enterprise and barrier [Apartheid Wall] construction [on stolen Palestinian
land] has continued unabated”, and in gross violations of International
humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions. De Soto added that Israel’s
terror “perversely designed to encourage the continued action
by Palestinian [resistance]”. The Quartet imposed collective punishments
to punish Palestinians for practicing their democratic right, electing
a HAMAS-led government and for resisting Israel’s terror. These
collective punishments, including blockade and economic sanctions, are
devastating and starving the Palestinian population. It is revealed
recently that more than “half the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza
and the West Bank suffer malnutrition”.
In March 2003, the World
Bank’s Director for the West Bank and Gaza, Nigel Roberts, told
Peter Cave of the ABC: “Over half of the Palestinian workforce
is unemployed, nearly two-thirds of the population is now poor. In towns
like Raffa and Khan Yunis, four in five men are unemployed, each wage
earner is supporting up to 18 other people, and evidence of severe malnutrition
has come to light”. Back in 2000, Roberts lauded the Palestinians
for enduring these collective punishments and suggested that any Western
society would have collapsed under such inhumane conditions. The objective
is that the Palestinians must submit to Israel’s occupation and
terror, and recognise Israel as a purely “Jewish state”;
an impossible demand that should be rejected by any civilised society.
The current Israel-U.S. policy
is to punish Palestinians in Gaza for they dared to democratically elected
HAMAS movement, while rewarding Palestinians in the Wes Bank who are
ruled by unelected Western-oriented clique of corrupt bourgeoisie ?
led by the moron Mahmoud Abbas ? serving Israel-U.S. interests and pliant
to Israel-U.S. dictates. Israel and the U.S. are banking on the suffering
and sorrow of brutalised civilians, hopping that the more the Palestinians
suffer the less likely to resist and the more likely reject the HAMAS-led
government. The elected HAMAS leaders are illegally imprisoned and possibly
tortured in Israeli prisons.
It must be acknowledge that
the HAMAS leadership has accepted all conditions imposed on them by
Israel and the U.S., including a long truce with Israel and “recognition”
of Israel within the 1967 borders. Countless peace proposals have been
rejected and each time Israel and the U.S. imposed new conditions and
creating new pretexts in order to continue the violence and bloodshed.
Furthermore, in November
2006, Khalid Meshaal, the political leader of HAMAS Movement told the
German daily Junge Welt: “I think the Western world has understood
by now that HAMAS will never recognise Israel Occupation. How can I
recognise the one who occupies my land? It is illogical that it is demanded
of HAMAS to recognise Israel. I am the victim. I am the man who is not
free. I am the man living in the Diaspora away from my land. Israel
has got a kind of a nation that was imposed as a fait accompli by the
United Nations. We don’t have a nation. More than half of the
Palestinian people are living in the Diaspora, mostly in [refugee] camps
and they can’t go home. Because of Israel they can’t go
home and we should recognise Israel? Who is actually in the wrong, Israel
or us?”
While a media campaign of
disinformation is in place to enforce the myth that Israel has withdrawn
its Army from Gaza; Israel has only removed few thousands illegal settlers
from Gaza to the West Bank. Gaza remains a besieged Concentration Camp.
It is largest Concentration Camp on the planet. The 1.5 million inhabitants
are mostly refugees from other parts of Palestine ethnically cleansed
by Israeli terror gangs in 1948 Nakba.
In addition to the imposed
blockade, the Israeli Army continues its daily and nightly invasions
across the Camp, bombing civilian neighbourhoods, destroying homes and
killing Palestinians indiscriminately. On Wednesday (June 20, 2007)
Israel bombed Gaza with missiles and sent tanks, killing at least four
innocent civilians.
According to the Egyptian
Al-Ahram Weekly, Palestinian medical sources reported that in October
2006, at least 23 Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, were killed
in the Gaza within 48 hours (an average of one Palestinian every two
hours). Most of the killings occurred as a result of air strikes by
F-16 fighter jets that bomb unprotected and undefended targets, particularly
residential homes where innocent civilians are asleep. No Israelis have
been killed by Palestinians in this period.
The peer-reviewed Journal
of Palestinian Studies counted Israel’s atrocities from 26 November
2006 up until 3 April 2007:
Israeli forces in the West
Bank killed 51 Palestinians, and three more Palestinians died from lack
of care while stopped at checkpoints. Israeli forces wounded 154 Palestinians,
and Israeli settlers wounded another eight. During their incursions,
which included 314 arrest raids and 312 house searches, Israeli forces
demolished 92 homes (other buildings were also partly or completely
destroyed).
Israeli forces in Gaza killed at least 13 Palestinians, wounded 56,
and arrested 22 in land and sea attacks.
Palestinian attacks, including rocket fire, killed 3 Israelis and injured
13.
Since June 2006, Israel’s “heroic” Army has murdered
more than 600 Palestinian, mostly women and children. No more than six
Israelis died in the same period of time. A report on June 04, 2007
by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) revealed that 3,235
Palestinian have been killed since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in
September 2000. The Report noted that: “141 women, 25 medics,
10 journalists, 6 of whom were foreigners, and 764 children, have been
killed. It is important to mention that the murder of Palestinian children
has become the Israeli soldiers’ trademark of cowardice.
The Report added that; “11,030
Palestinians were injured in the Gaza Strip and 13,100 in the West Bank.
11,000 Palestinians [including women and children] have been taken prisoners”.
They are tortured on a daily basis by Israel’s Internal Security
Service or Shabak. The Report revealed that: “The lands razed
by the Israeli forces amount to 36,200 dunams (36,200,000m²) in
the Gaza Strip and 58% of Palestinian land in the West Bank has been
seized for the construction of the separation wall. 2,914 houses were
completely and 2,838 partially demolished in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians
are living in the worst conditions ever with regards to internal chaos,
in which 160 Palestinians were killed and 835 injured in the first four
months of 2007”. In addition, Israel’s Gestapo death squads
are murdering Palestinian activists and politicians in daylight. However,
Western leaders are happy to shift the blame on the Palestinians in
order to absolve Europe of the atrocity that was committed in Europe
by Europeans, and inflaming the anti-Muslims propaganda campaign.
While Israel’s illegal
Apartheid Wall walls off the Palestinians, they are bombed and killed
at will. “Israel has reached an unprecedented degree of arrogance
when its army announced that they killed only three Palestinian civilians
in the raid on Gaza on Sunday. This implies that three innocent civilians
are not important, but this is by itself a recognition by the Israeli
army that they have committed the crime of killing the Palestinians",
said Palestinian information minister, Dr Mustafa Barghouthi (May 20,
2007) after the Israeli Army went on a rampage killing Palestinians
while Israeli Western backers praising its crimes.
Many Western journalists,
pundits and NGOs have unashamedly compared Palestinians living condition
in Gaza and the West Bank to a “human laboratory” and Palestinians
to “guinea pigs”. Isn’t time to ‘call a spade
a spade’ and compare the West bank and Gaza to Auschwitz and Treblinka?
Isn’t it time to stop this Judeofascism? Israel’s criminal
and racist policies endured by the Palestinian people since 1948 are
worse than those endured by people under Nazism. It is the longest and
most criminal occupation in the history of Western imperialism.
Pro-Israel Zionists and Jews
(with a few exceptions) around the world have consistently supported
Israel’s brutal and criminal policies against the Palestinians.
Influential Jewish leaders are consistently using and exploiting the
Holocaust (and “anti-Semitism”) to block any criticism of
Israel and allow it to get away with state terrorism and war crimes.
Zionists around the world are enforcing the Zionist myth that Israel
can do no wrong and that Palestinians can do no right.
The Holocaust and “anti-Semitism”
provided Israel with excuse to kill and immunity from condemnation.
According to the late Israeli academic Tanya Reinhart, the Holocaust
and “anti-Semitism” have been transformed into an instrument
for intimidating and blackmailing any criticism of Israel’ terror.
Further, for telling the
world part of the truth about Israel’s terror against the Palestinian
people, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is viciously attacked and
accused of “anti-Semitism” by pro-Israel Zionists and U.S.
Jews. Carter’s critiques allege that Jews suffering under European
fascism justify Israel’s Apartheid system and Israel’s terror
against the Palestinians.
As John Dugard, the UN’s
Special Rapporteur, a South African law professor in the Netherlands,
rightly noted that, while “Israel’s laws and practices certainly
resembles aspects of Apartheid … Many aspects of Israel's occupation
surpass those of the Apartheid regime. Israel's large-scale destruction
of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions
and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices
in Apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks
and whites”. He added: “It is difficult to resist the conclusion
that many of Israel’s laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention
on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination”. Indeed,
according to the Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions
as well as the Statute of the International Criminal Court considered
the “practices of apartheid” constitute war crimes. (See
Israel’s Human Rights Behaviour, U-MHRN).
In Hollow Land, Israel's
Architecture of Occupation (2007), the Israeli author Eyal Weitzman
quoted the Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, that the Israeli
army considers the war on the Palestinians as “irresolvable and
permanent”. The Army has “geared itself to operate within
an environment saturated with conflict and within a future of permanent
violence”. It acts “just under the threshold of international
sanctions ... keeping the conflict on a flame low enough for Israeli
society to be able to live and prosper within it”. Indeed, Zionism
was found on violence, and violence is Israel’s way of life. Israel
thrives on violence and war. After all, Israel is the most militarised,
racist and violent society today.
Since the 1967 Israel’s
unprovoked aggression against Arab nation, Israel continues a mentality
of aggression and a state of terror aimed at extermination of the Palestinian
people. Since 1967, Arab leaders have failed to build a military deterrence
capable of defeating Israel’s aggression. Unless the Arab nation
builds a military capability, Israel will continue with its expansionist
Zionist ideology in the Middle East.
Congratulating Israel for
its unprovoked naked aggression, ongoing war crimes and violations of
International Law is admitting an active complicity in Israel’s
war crimes and Israel’s Zionist policies against the Palestinians.
The complicity of the U.S. and in Israel’s crimes exposed the
myth of U.S. “neutrality” as “honest broker”.
The U.S. and its European allies should condemn Israel and work to advance
world peace and security.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
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