Israel
Must Be Held Accountable
For Its International Law Violations
By Stephen Lendman
11 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
On
June 25, the Palestinians responded to continued, unrelenting and unjustifiable
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacks against them by striking at an
Israeli military post near Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah,
killing two IDF soldiers, injuring several others, and capturing (not
"kidnapping) a third. It set off a swift and deadly IDF response
of daily killings and mass destruction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
(OPT)against defenseless Palestinians helpless in the face of the relentless
IDF onslaught.
Events since escalated into
a mass conflagration when Hezbollah resistance fighters captured (again,
not "kidnapped") two IDF soldiers who apparently illegally
crossed the UN-monitored "blue line" into Lebanon as they've
routinely done almost daily after withdrawing from the country in May,
2000. Again the IDF responded with overwhelming force by air and with
a ground invasion in the south causing vast destruction over a wide
area throughout the country including in Beirut, Tyre and Sidon (Lebanon's
three largest cities) and now extending to the north in Christian areas
and up to the Syria-Lebanon border.
This scorched-earth blitzkrieg,
primarily and willfully aimed at civilian targets of all types devastated
Lebanon's major ports, the Beirut International Airport, much of the
country's essential infrastructure including over 70 bridges, dozens
of key roads, all the nation's radars, electrical power plants, 20 or
more gas and fuel stations and the Jiyyeh power utility plant south
of Beirut spilling about 14,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil (over
one-third the size of the Exxon-Valdez spill) along over 90 miles of
Lebanon's and Syria's Mediterranean Sea coast posing a serious threat
to biodiversity as well as a heightened risk of cancer because this
type fuel oil contains benzene which is categorized as a Class 1 carcinogen.
Israel also imposed a land, sea and air siege on the country resulting
in severe shortages of essential food, medical supplies, fuel and other
necessities, and the IDF has bombed factories (including for food),
warehouses, dams, civil defense centers, schools, radio and TV stations,
mosues, churches, hospitals, ambulances, humanitarian aid conveys, the
al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp at Sidon, an orphange and funeral
on August 8, and thousands of civilian homes - in total causing damage
exceeding $2 billion and rising daily. The outrageous stonewalling US-France
proposed UN Security Council resolution on the conflict is nothing more
than a mandate to "give war a chance" and let Israel finish
the slaughter and mass destruction it's now inflicting in violation
of international laws as will be explained below.
It remains to be seen what
final UN Security Council action will actually occur as strong Lebanese
government and Arab League opposition to the proposed resolution now
has made France decide to back down and support an alternate plan requiring
a full IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon. In reversing itself, France
has now split with the US which still supports the original and unacceptable
joint proposal supporting Israel's right to continue its assault.
That month-long assault also
deliberately targeted and killed many hundreds of innocent Lebanese
civilians (likely at least double the officially reported number that
now exceeds 1,000), injured thousands more (many seriously), displaced
as many as one million others (about one-fourth of the country's total
four million population) including over 300,000 children fleeing north
for their lives and being targeted and attacked in their cars as they
do, and created a vast humanitarian crisis in the country as well as
in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) still under attack and
occupation since June 25. Both assaults are so ferocious, it's clear
they're intended to destroy Lebanon as a nation to prevent it from ever
functioning again as it once did as well as forever ending the Palestinians'
dream of ever having a viable sovereign state of their own. As will
be discussed below, they also are intended to destroy the democratically
elected Hamas government in the OPT and legitimate Hezbollah resistance
hat now has the overwhelming support of over 85% of the Lebanese people
including most Maronite and other Christians, the majority Sunni and
Shia Muslims that together comprise about two-thirds of the population,
and Lebanon's once pro-Western Prime Minister Fuad Sinora. They all
are now united against their common enemies - Israel and their complicit
US ally.
The Assault on the
Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) Now Under the Radar
While world attention focuses
on Lebanon, the daily killings and destruction go on unabated and now
under the radar in the OPT. Since the unwarranted assault began against
the defenseless Palestinians on June 25, Israel, against two countries,
has deliberately and flagrantly violated international law stipulated
in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War including article 33 under it that prohibits
reprisals against protected persons and property. Below is an account
of what the IDF has done as of early August in the OPT in an undisguised
act of illegal collective punishment:
--The Palestinian Centre
for Human Rights reports 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including
about 44 children and at least 10 women have been killed through August
9. The Israeli human rights monitoring group B'Tselem reports the number
killed in July in Gaza alone to be 163, and the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society reports 210 Gaza and West Bank killings from July 1 through
August 7. At least 6 of those killed were executed extra-judicially.
The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights on the ground in the OPT also reports:
--The IDF wounded nearly
800 Palestinian civilians (many seriously), including 218 children and
24 women through August 9.
--It fires hundreds of artillery
shells and many dozens of air-to-surface missiles into the OPT daily
against civilian and so-called military targets that are usually just
ordinary buildings Israel without evidence claims are occupied by "militants."
--It conducts mock air raids,
and its aircraft (US made and supplied advanced F-16 fighter jets) routinely
break the sound barrier (often late at night) at low altitudes deliberately
inflicting eardrum shattering and terrifying sonic booms against helpless
people.
--It forced many families
to leave or evacuate their homes in Rafah, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and
elsewhere, some of them being warned in Gaza by phone their homes would
be attacked.
--It made dozens of incursions
into OPT areas killing civilians, destroying agricultural land, buildings,
homes and infrastructure and expropriating land Israel intends to keep.
-- It imposed a tightened
seige throughout the OPT including curfews, greatly restricting movement
and the Palestinians' access to food, fuel, medical attention and other
essential goods and services and thus created a humanitarian disaster
that's becoming worse.
--It destroyed the electricity
plant providing about 45% of the electricity needs of the Gaza Strip
and also repeatedly attacks electricity networks and transmitters in
Gaza.
--It destroyed the main pipe
providing water for the Nusairat and al-Boreij refugee camps.
--It destroyed 6 important
bridges linking Gaza City with central Gaza thus preventing transportation
from moving normally to provide essential goods and other needs to the
people.
--It destroyed a number of
key roads in Gaza.
--It destroyed the buildings
of the Palestinian Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs, National
economy and government compound in Nablus as well as the office of the
Palestinian Prime Minister.
--It uprooted many hundreds
of donums of vital agricultural land and destroyed many dozens of homes
used only as residences.
--Israel continued building
its annexation/separation wall throughout this period and razed and
expropriated Palestinian land in al-Sawhra as-Gharbiya village, east
of Jerusalem, to complete one section of it in that area. It also razed
other agricultural land in Jourat al-Shama village, south of Bethlehem,
to construct another section southeast of "Efrat" settlement.
--The IDF arrested hundreds
of Palestinian civilians and is holding them without charge. It also
arrested eight government ministers, 26 members of the Palestinian Legislative
Council (PLC) and now on August 6 besieged the home of Dr. Aziz Dweik,
PLC Speaker, forced him to surrender and placed him under detention
without charge. All this is part of an illegal attempt to undermine
and destroy the democratically elected Hamas government because Israel
can't control and co-opt it to serve its interests - meaning act as
its enforcer and not as a legitimate government. Also, on August 6,
unknown masked assassins shot and killed Major Mohammed Mousa al-Mousah,
chief of Palestinian Military Intelligence, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel's Assaults
on Lebanon and the OPT Were Planned Long Before They Began
It's now known that both
Israeli assaults were jointly planned many months earlier with their
US allies that aided the Israelis with their support, funding, supply
and replenishment of weapons as needed, and satellite tracking and intelligence
information from National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts. Retired
US General Wesley Clark also revealed in his book Winning Modern Wars
that in late 2001 (after 9/11 and the attack on Afghanistan began) the
Pentagon was planning to attack Lebanon as part of a five year campaign
targeting seven countries beginning with Iraq, then going on to Syria,
Lebanon, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.
It's all part of the US imperial
plan to redraw the map of the strategically important Middle East and
its vast oil and scarce water reserves, establish client states throughout
the region, remove independent leaders standing in the way, and replace
them with more receptive ones willing to sacrifice their nations' sovereignty
in service to the de facto ruler of the world. Israel is part of the
scheme as well and has its own imperial aims. It's the only country
in the world without declared borders because it's plan is to extend
them beyond where they are now to wherever it's able to lay claim and
get away with it.
Most important to the Israelis
is their plan to include as part of Israel the ancient lands of "Judea"
and "Summaria," the West Bank biblical parts of Israel comprising
the OPT the Palestinians justifiably claim as their homeland. In addition,
the most extreme Zionists in the country, who have great influence on
policy, want all the land of "Eretz Israel," the total biblical
Jewish homeland they believe God gave to the 12 tribes of Israel which
includes all of present-day Israel and the OPT, Lebanon, most of Syria,
part of Egypt and a large part of Jordon. Israel already controls the
choicest parts of the West Bank including 50% of its fresh water resources
and all of Gaza any time it chooses to enter and reoccupy it, the Syrian
Golan Heights that supply it with one-third of its total water, and
the 25 kilometer Shebaa Farms area of South Lebanon it never relinquished
after seizing it as well in the 1967 war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert and his Likudnik right-wing spin-off allies in his Kadima party
apparently want still more territory seized and under its control well
within the timetable they set to declare permanent Israeli borders in
2007. South Lebanon has long been one such area Israel covets. It seized
and occupied this land for 22 years but failed to keep it and was finally
driven out by a determined Hezbollah resistance that was born out of
the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the oppressive occupation
that followed.
Why Israel Attacked
Lebanon
Israel claims this area is
important to it for so-called security reasons, but its greatest value
is as a source of fresh water from the Litani River in South Lebanon
and also the Wazzani springs that feed directly into the Hasbani River
which is a tributary of the Jordan River. The Hisbani flows into Israel
two miles downstream from the Wazzani and runs into the Sea of Galilee
that's Israel's largest source of fresh water. Lebanon wants to pump
about 350,000 cubic feet of water daily from the Wazzini to supply its
villages in the south which it has every right to do, of course, but
Israel opposes that plan and now effectively stopped it since invading
the country.
The prime motive of Israel's
assault on Lebanon and invasion in the south is to seize, occupy and
then annex the 20 mile stretch of territory into the country up to the
Litani to be able to use for its own needs what now supplies a major
portion of Lebanon's fresh water. The Litani's annual flow is estimated
at about 920 million cubic meters. If Israel can incorporate and control
South Lebanon up to the Litani, it would augment its annual fresh water
supply by up to 800 million cubic meters or nearly 40% of its annual
consumption. That amount would be in addition to the one-third of its
supply now gotten from the Golan Heights Israel seized from Syria in
the 1967 war, never returned for obvious reasons, and never intends
to. And, as mentioned above, Israel also controls half the fresh water
resources of the West Bank it uses for its own needs and denies them
to the Palestinians for theirs.
There's no mystery about
what the US interest is in the Middle East. In the words of its high-level
officials in the 1940s, the energy resources there were seen as "a
stupendous source of strategic power (and) one of the greatest material
prizes in world history." But Israel also has an oil-related motive
driving its current policy of aggression it and the US may extend next
to Syria and Iran. Israel gets a large amount of its oil from the Caspian
Basin which will be made all the easier by the opening of a new pipeline
from that region to the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel needs the oil,
and the US needs a strong military ally it can depend on in the Middle
East to assure it maintains control of the oil there and from the Caspian
and that US and European Big Oil giants are guaranteed handsome profits
from it. It's all part of a new "Great Game" to dominate these
two vital energy-rich regions that instead of pitting the old British
Empire against Tsarist Russia that lasted nearly 100 years until the
earl 20th century (when the issue wasn't over oil) now finds the US
with Israel's help challenging Russia and China.
As part of its plan to make
it work, Israel (and the US) wants to depopulate South Lebanon to control
it and likely eventually build permanent settlements there just as it
did in Gaza and now continues to do illegally in the West Bank and the
Golan. To do it, it's now warning the civilian population there to "ethnically
cleanse" itself voluntarily or the IDF will terror-bomb it out
forcibly which it's doing daily. It's all part of Israel's long-standing
policy made clear by its leaders since its first prime minister David
Ben-Gurion first stated it - that all means will be used including war
to "redeem the land" occupied by the Palestinians and other
Arabs in the way for "the chosen people." Current Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert made that position very clear when he addressed the US Congress
joint session on May 24, 2006 saying "I believe and to this day
still believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire
land." Unstated by the prime minister was exactly what he claims
that "entire land to be. World leaders though understand Israel's
aims well enough and thus know what its assault against Lebanon and
Palestine is all about. It's why they haven't challenged it, aren't
likely to beyond the meaningless and customary pro forma disingenuous
calls for "restraint on both sides," and thus are aiding the
Jewish state accomplish its land-grab in the short run. Over time, however,
it's quite another matter.
Israel tried before and failed
in 1978 and again in 1982 to seize and permanently occupy South Lebanon
hoping eventually to annex the territory as it did the Golan and the
parts of the OPT it wanted. Now it's trying again in Lebanon and wants
to annex more land in the OPT. It's plan is to seize this land, destroy
the resistance in it, crush both nations politically and succeed this
time unlike before when Hezbollah forced it out of South Lebanon and
the Palestinian resistance in part prevented its annexation of all areas
of the OPT it wants for settler development.
It's using a new strategy
in Lebanon this time calling for a robust international military force,
likely a NATO one(under US control) to replace the ineffective United
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that's been there since 1978.
It wants this force to serve as so-called "peacekeepers" once
it's completed its land-grab, finished its assault on and destruction
of the country, and it allows it to come in. Israel's earlier failed
22 year occupation cost it dearly in lives lost, shekels spent, and
the reputation of its vaunted military machine with all its US supplied
modern weapons tarnished by a determined Hezbelloh guerilla resistance
that finally drove it it from the country.
Israel wants no repeat of
that this time and thinks it can have the land it wants and avoid being
expelled trying to hold on to it through a proxy force it can control
- this time a NATO-led one it's allied with militarily and which it
knows will serve its interests and not those of the Lebanese people.
It wants NATO there to act as its enforcers, engage Hezbollah or other
resistance that may challenge it, have it do its killing and dying for
it, and relieve Israel of the burden of funding a long and costly operation
or being humiliated again if it fails, which almost certainly will happen
in time.
Israel's Aim in the
OPT
So far in the OPT, Israel
is going it alone handling the dirty job of crushing a defenseless people,
so it hasn't asked for an international military force to come in as
its enforcers there. Once it ends its assault, Israel ideally wants
the Palestinians to be their own enforcers as was the arrangement agreed
to by Yasser Arafat under the 1993 Oslo Accords and later related agreements.
The Israelis know current Fatah party leader and Palestinian National
Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to take on the job
for them as he proved his Israel-friendly bona fides at Oslo and in
the 1990s. Will the Palestinian people and its Hamas leadership submit
to their subjugation any more this time than in the past when they eventually
resisted it? And will Hezbollah and the Lebanese people be any less
resistant? There's little chance of it in both countries and thus every
chance the carnage now ongoing may ebb and flow but will continue unending
until the people of both lands win the freedom they'reunlikely never
to stop fighting for.
Israel Must Finally
Be Held to Account For Its Criminal Acts
Israel's crimes so far have
gone unchallenged because most world leaders have supported them overtly
or tacitly. In so doing, these leaders and other officials are guilty
criminal accomplices under Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter that states:
"Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating
in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit
any of the....crimes (listed in Articles 6b or 6c of the Charter) are
responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such
plan." By this standard, the entire US Senate and all but eight
members of the US House are also criminal accomplices by result of their
votes during the week of July 17 to unconditionally support Israel's
"supreme international crime" of illegal aggression against
Lebanon and Palestine unjustifiably claiming Israel has the right of
self-defense guaranteed it under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
It's long past time that
Israel no longer be allowed to get away with its crimes and for its
officials responsible for them to be held to account for them. Since
world leaders on their own won't act (especially as they're guilty co-conspirators),
mass worldwide public protest and action must do it for them and demand
either the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague indict and
prosecute Israeli officials responsible for what they've inflicted on
Lebanon and the OPT or the UN General Assembly must act in its stead
to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel. It has the
authority to do it under Article 22 in the UN Charter and twice before
used it for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The ICC was established in
2002 in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court in 1998. It's authorized by its signatories to act as a permanent
tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity as defined by the 1945 Numerberg Charter drafted by
the US and its main WW II allies to try Nazi war criminals. The court
was established to adjudicate in the kinds of cases Israeli officials
should be brought to book for. However, while Israel signed the final
act of the Rome conference creating the ICC, it voted against the statute
to remain free of its authority. People demanding justice thus may have
no other recourse than to have the UN General Assembly act to establish
a special International Tribunal for Israel that will use its authority
to prosecute culpable Israeli officials in the Hague if they can be
brought there or in absentia if they're not.
Israel has a long history
of criminal and abusive acts. Long before the June 25 incident near
Kerem Shalom crossing that began the current conflict, the UN Human
Rights Commission held that Israel had violated nearly all 149 articles
under the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians
in war and under occupation and in so doing is guilty of war crimes
according to international law. The Commission also determined Israel
as an occupier in the OPT has committed "crimes against humanity"
as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. By its actions since June
25 against the Palestinians and especially after July 12 in Lebanon,
Israel has compounded its crimes by committing many more of them.
It remains for an international
court of law to name those individuals culpable for these crimes and
to state the specific charges. But the one accusation above all others
should be that Israel violated the most important of all binding international
laws under the UN Charter to which Israel is a signatory. The Charter
authorizes a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized
to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the
"right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack
occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures
to maintain international peace and security." In other words,
necessary self-defense is permitted.
Israel's extreme responses
following the capture of three of its soldiers, known in both cases
to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretext
to initiate them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated
illegal aggression and, as such, are what the Nuremberg Tribunal that
tried the Nazis called "the supreme international crime."
The Nazis found guilty of it were hanged and justice was served. Under
Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter, Israel also committed the flagrant
war crimes of "plunder of public (and) private property, wanton
destruction of cities, towns or villages, (and) devastation not justified
by military necessity." Under Article 6c, it's guilty of the "crimes
against humanity (of) murder..., deportation and other inhumane acts
committed against (the Lebanese and Palestinian) civilian population(s),
before (and) during the war."
The Nuremberg Tribunal set
a high standard which it followed based on the principles of the 1928
Kellogg-Briand Pact signed by 63 nations after WW I to renounce war
as an instrument of foreign policy. The Pact didn't prevent WW II, but
what it stipulated formed the basis for "crimes against peace."
The Nuremberg Charter described those crimes as "the planning,
preparation, initiation or waging of a premeditated war of aggression
or a war in violation of international treaties." It prosecuted
the Nazis for what they did including the ones charged with this supreme
crime. The UN is surely authorized to act to establish an international
criminal court just as the victorious US, UK and USSR allies acted on
their joint authority during and after WWII to establish the Nuremberg
Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals.
Israel also has a long and
disturbing record of flagrantly violating or ignoring international
laws and norms. In its past conflicts as well as the current ones, besides
committing "the supreme international crime" of illegal aggression,
it's using weapons banned under the Hague Convention of 1907, the 1925
Geneva Protocol and succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions that outlaw
the use in war of chemical, biological or any other "poison or
poisoned weapons. In the 1973 war and currently, Israel is using depleted
uranium (DU) weapons that are radioactive and chemically toxic and thus
clearly fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the 1907
Hague Convention.
It's also suspected of using
other illegal weapons including chemical agents, white phosphorous bombs
and shells against civilian targets that burn flesh to the bone and
can't be extinguished by water that only makes the burning worse when
used, cluster bombs, and a terror weapon called "flashettes"
which explode and shoot out 1000s of nails in all directions. In addition,
the IDF is reportedly testing in real time some new terror weapons (using
the helpless Lebanese and Palestinians as their lab rats) including
a thermobaric solid fuel-air explosive bomb able to penetrate buildings,
underground shelters and tunnels creating a blast pressure great enough
to suck all the oxygen out of spaces struck and the lungs of all those
in the vicinity. All these weapons are either questionable or illegal
under Hague and/or Geneva international law.
All the above actions clearly
warrant Israel's criminal prosecution by an international court. Yet
there are still others to be added to them. Israel ignored the World
Court in the Hague that ruled 14 - 1 in 2004 that the annexation/separation
wall it's building is "contrary to international law" because
it "destroyed and confiscated" property, greatly restricts
Palestinian movement, and "severely impedes the exercise by the
Palestinian people of (the) right to self-determination." As a
result, the Court ordered construction to end at once, the existing
portion of it built to be taken down, and Palestinians adversely affected
by its construction to be compensated for their losses. Israel ignored
the ruling, continues building the wall, and thus is violating international
law. In addition, over the last half century, Israel has been a serial
abuser of UN resolutions flagrantly and willfully ignoring over five
dozen of them that condemned or censured it for its actions against
the Palestinians or other Aab people, deplored it for committing them
or demanded the Jewish state end them.
Like its US ally, Israel
is also know to be a serial abuser of torture as a means of inflicting
punishment or trying to elicit information from the 10,000 or more Palestinian
and Lebanese prisoners it forcibly abducted and now holds in its prisons.
According to Amnesty International, Israel is the only country in the
world to effectively legalize torture (now, of course, the US has as
well). Many of those Israel holds in custody are political prisoners
held administratively without charge, and Israeli human rights monitoring
group B'Tselem reports Israel's use of torture is flagrant, widespread
and routinely used against them. Such practice is clearly a violation
of international law that bans the use of torture or degrading treatment
under any circumstances. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed
it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention then did it in 1949 banning
any form of "physical or mental coercion" and affirming detainees
must at all times be treated humanely. The European Conventin followed
in 1950. Then in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the
first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the
issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. Israel ignores
these and all other international laws and norms but has never yet been
held to account for its actions. It's way past time that injustice be
addressed and corrected. World public opinion overwhelmingly demands
it.
It now remains for an international
court to place Israeli officials on trial, have them answer for their
past and present crimes, and see to it they pay the price for them if
found guilty. That must happen if those harmed by them are ever able
to achieve the justice they seek and deserve. It's also crucial this
action be taken soon to send a clear message to Israeli officials that
world public opinion no longer will tolerate this behavior and that
it forced the UN to act in its behalf to demand justice in a world court
of law. Even if Israel doesn't accept the court's authority, as will
likely happen, its establishment alone may send a message to the Jewish
state strong enough to make it cease further aggression against its
current victims. It may also deter it and the US from committing further
acts of aggression against Syria and Iran now in their plans based on
credible reports quoting high-level officials in both countries. If
it happens, it's part of the US and Israeli grand plan to destroy Iran'
legal commercial nuclear capability, redraw the map of the Middle East,
remove the Iranian, Syrian and Hamas independent leaderships in it (as
well as destroy the legitimate Hezbollah resistance), and replace them
with new regimes henceforth acting as subservient and reliable client
states. Neither the US nor Israel must any longer be allowed to get
away with their current wars of aggression or have world leader's support
their right to extend them further in the region as they likely have
in mind to do.
Further Action Against
Israel Is Also Needed
In addition to halting Israel's
current aggression and prosecuting its officials responsible for it,
it's time to go still further and begin a concerted campaign calling
for divestment, economic and political sanctions and a boycott of Israeli-made
products. Throughout its history, Israel has been unresponsive to all
efforts aimed at getting it to abide by international laws and norms,
live peacefully with its neighbors and respect the fundamental human
rights of the Palestinian and Lebanese people whose lands it occupies
and is now in conflict with. Having no interest in voluntarily engaging
in serious negotiation to reach an equitable settlement, the only recourse
is for mass people-action to demand it through punitive measures. In
the 1980s, these actions proved successful in the struggle to abolish
the repugnant apartheid system in South Africa that began in 1948 (ironically
the year Israel became a state) and ended officially in 1994. During
its later years, it became clear this was a failed syste that had to
end, and the world community could no longer tolerate its existence.
Civil unrest and township violence began growing, and the P.W. Botha
government declared a state of emergency in 1985 that remained in place
until the F.W. de Klerk government lifted the 30 year ban on the anti-apartheid
and now ruling African National Congress and two other opposition parties
previously banned. In 1990 Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after
27 years of incarceration, and by 1991 the legal apparatus of apartheid
ended.
People of conscience and
mass civil society worldwide are a potent force in big numbers. It must
now coalesce and denounce Israel as a pariah state and begin a non-violent
campaign to demand governments, businesses, institutions and other organizations
impose economic and political initiatives with teeth including divestment,
sanctions, boycotts and embargoes. They should remain in place long
enough to isolate Israel, and, if necessary, bring it to its knees economically
and politically if that's what it takes to prove world public opinion
no longer will tolerate its actions.
As part of the campaign,
a clear set of demands must be made. They must include an immediate
cessation of Israel's current hostilities against the Palestinians and
people of Lebanon; Israel's full withdrawal from the OPT to the pre-1967
war borders and the dismantlement of all settlements therein; return
of the Golan and all occupied land in South Lebanon; abiding by all
UN resolutions so far ignored; dismantlement of its annexation/separation
wall along with full restitution to the Palestinian people affected
by it; agreeing to the Palestinians' right to a free, sovereign and
independent state and allowing the right of return of all Palestinian
refugees to their homeland as UN Resolution 194 affirmed and Article
13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees to all displaced
people; and agreeing to send its culpable officials to stand trial in
an international tribunal in the Hague to be held to account to answer
the charges levied against them. If Israel complies fully with these
minimum demnds and justice is served, the campaign of punitive action
against it can end and the Jewish state can take its rightful place
as a member of the world community of nations in good standing.
Might any of this happen?
With today's headlines in mind, it looks doubtful, but at one time the
South African apartheid government had the full support of the US and
the West. Nonetheless, in the end it fell because enough pressure was
brought to bear against it to make it happen. If it could happen to
that ugly regime, it can happen to Israel as well but only if enough
responsible people demand it and turn up the heat until it does.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.