It’s
Time To End The "Last Taboo"
And Hold Israel Accountable
For Its Actions
By Stephen Lendman
10 July 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
"Last Taboo" was the title of eminent Palestinian-born writer,
scholar and activist Edward Said’s essay written shortly before
his death in September, 2003. It was also the title of distinguished
author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger’s chapter about Palestine
in his important new book Freedom Next Time that’s reviewed and
can be read at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Said explained his title in what he wrote: "The extermination of
the Native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked,
the national flag (of the US) publicly committed to flames. But the
systematic continuity of Israel’s 52-year oppression and maltreatment
of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has
no permission to appear." It appeared boldly and courageously in
Pilger’s book, and it’s long past time for it be prominent
in the mainstream as well to finally expose Israeli crimes and demand
they end. It’s especially important now as Israel just began an
intensive military assault against the defenseless people of Gaza, which,
before it ends, may result in many deaths, great destruction of property
and an overwhelming humanitarian disaster even beyond the one already
existing in The Occupied Territories.
Few people anywhere have
suffered more or longer than the beleaguered Palestinians. For nearly
four decades they’ve lived under a harsh and unending Israeli
occupation of their land. They’ve endured a continued assault
to seize it, a loss of their personal and economic rights and a denial
of any chance for justice or their very humanity. These courageous people
remain isolated in their own land with little support from the outside.
Yet it’s never broken their spirit as they continue their heroic
efforts to survive and struggle to gain their freedom.
The Israeli Assault
on Gaza
This article documents events
in besieged and now reoccupied Gaza since the Palestinians responded
to continued Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) attacks against them
by striking at an Israeli military post near Kerem Shalom crossing,
southeast of Rafah, on June 25 killing two IDF soldiers, injuring several
others and capturing a third. The Israeli response was swift and deadly
but has not yet been unleashed fully as the IDF decides when to enter
Gaza full force to launch an assault against the defenseless people
there already under seige. The Palestinian strike followed a series
of bloody June Israeli attacks on Gaza including the widely reported
beach shelling that killed 8 Palestinians and injured 32 others including
13 children. The Israelis admitted shelling the beach but denied responsibility
for the deaths. They falsely claimed a Palestinian planted mine killed
the civilians there despite the forensic evidence clearly proving otherwise.
The corporate media reported the Israeli version of events but ignored
the evidence refuting it preventing the public from knowing the truth.
It also never reported that the so-called Israeli Gaza withdrawal of
its 8,500 settlers in 21 settlements last August wasn’t that at
all. That staged media event was little more than the resettlement of
Gaza’s Jewish residents to new homes in Israel proper and the
West Bank on other seized Palestinian land. Furthermore, the IDF didn’t
withdraw. It merely redeployed away from the settlements it was guarding
to new positions on the border. Gaza continued to be under de facto
occupation and sealed off whenever the IDF wished, as it’s now
done, and along with the West Bank remains one of the world’s
two largest open air prisons.
The Palestinian June 25 raid
was its response to continued IDF daily attacks against Gaza throughout
June that killed about 30 people, injured many more and caused much
destruction of property. Following the incident, the IDF launched "Operation
Summer Rain" that included closing all border crossings, sealing
off the territory to restrict movement in and out including humanitarian
supplies such as food and medicine, and surrounding the territory awaiting
orders to launch a major assault which it’s now begun. The IDF
has also stepped up its artillery shelling that has gone on continually
for months. It’s been firing 200 - 300 or more shells per day
into northern Gaza, many close to civilian homes. It’s also launched
round the clock air attacks with F16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships
firing air-to-surface missiles and dropping one-ton bombs on civilian
facilities; it’s conducting mock air raids; and it’s aircraft
are breaking the sound barrier over Gaza at low altitudes deliberately
inflicting eardrum shattering and terrifying sonic booms against the
helpless people.
In addition, air strikes
destroyed the three main bridges in the Gaza Valley cutting off the
northern part of the Strip from its center and southern parts, preventing
vital transportation from moving normally to provide essential needs
to the people. The bombardment also destroyed the main pipe providing
water for the Nusairat and al-Boreij refugee camps and knocked out the
Strip’s only electricity generation plant cutting off power for
80% of the population and preventing water pumps and sanitation facilities
from operating. These actions increase the likelihood of a growing humanitarian
crisis becoming worse with food shipments, medical supplies and other
essentials cut off which may lead to starvation and a major health disaster.
They’re also a form of collective punishment against Gaza’s
civilian population which is a violation of international law according
to the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War. Israel now and in the past has routinely ignored
this Convention, including article 33 under it that prohibits reprisals
against protected persons and their property. The world community so
far has yet to take notice or speak out against what’s ongoing
other than weak-kneed and disingenuous calls by world leaders and UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan for both sides to show restraint. It’s
hard finding the right words to respond properly to such an outrageous
statement, what little else has been said, and most importantly to what
hasn’t been but should be.
Israeli warships also went
further committing a hostile act by entering Syrian airspace and buzzing
President Bashar al-Assad’s home in Latakia in a deliberately
provocative act before being intercepted and forced to turn back. This
illegal incursion reflects Israel’s continued hostility toward
Syria’s leadership which it accuses of harboring and supporting
Hamas leaders the IDF has targeted for assassination. It may signal
further Israeli action to come, with the Bush administration’s
full support, against a government both countries see as an enemy. An
ominous sign of such potential action came in a veiled threat Israel
just made against Syria vowing to strike against "those who sponsor"
the Palestinian resistance.
The West Bank hasn’t
been spared either as the IDF conducted nearly 50 incursions into Palestinian
communities, razing farmland, raiding homes, seizing five of them for
military sites and arresting dozens of civilians including children.
In addition, on June 29 the IDF arrested most of the Hamas leadership
including eight cabinet ministers, 25 PLC members from the Change and
Reform Party affiliated with Hamas, and other Hamas officials claiming
they were responsible for the assault against its military post. All
these actions are further illegal collective punishment reprisals against
Palestinian civilians as are Israeli threats to extra-judicially assassinate
Hamas leaders. Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov of The Australian,
in fact, reported on July 1 that in a letter to Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas Israel threatened to kill democratically elected Prime
Minister Ismael Haniyeh if the captured Israeli soldier isn’t
released. The Prime Minister now fears for his life and has gone into
hiding. What will it take to finally get world leaders to take note,
show a semblance of courage and rectitude, speak out forcefully against
this outrageous threat, and condemn Israel for what it’s now inflicting
on nearly four million defenseless civilians living under its oppressive
heel.
This is a particularly desperate
time in the lives of the 1.45 million Gazans who live in 140 square
miles of the most densely populated place on earth. Daily life for them
has been almost unbearable as they’ve had to endure continued
Israeli oppression without letup. With only their spirit to enable them
to resist and armed with little more than rocks, small arms and crude
homemade rockets, they’re pitted against the world’s fourth
most powerful military assaulting them at will. The toll has been devastating.
The IDF Assault on
Gaza Was Planned Well in Advance
What’s now unfolding
in Gaza was planned months ago by the Israelis. They’ve just been
waiting for a plausible excuse to unleash it. The capturing, not kidnapping,
of one of their soldiers as a POW provided it. So far the US, world
community and UN Secretary General support the Israeli action by their
near silence. And nothing is said in the major media to condemn a clear
crime or report anything about the 9,000 or more Palestinian civilians
forcibly arrested, now held in indefinite detention and grievously abused
or tortured by the only country in the world to effectively legalize
torture according to Amnesty International (the US, of course, now also
has). Many of those in custody are political prisoners held administratively
without charge, and Israeli human rights monitoring group B’Tselem
reports Israel’s use of torture is widespread and routine against
them.
It must be asked why world
leaders aren’t speaking out to condemn this practice. International
law on it is explicit and long-standing. It forbids the use of any form
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
Convention 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 international
law (as does its US ally), treats all Palestinians it holds in detention
with contempt, and feels free to abuse them at will. The dominant media
in the West pay no attention and have no interest. These are the ones
John Pilger calls "unworthy victims" in his new book Freedom
Next Time. The Israeli soldier, on the other hand, is a "worthy"
one, and reports or just hints of his mistreatment would be headline
news. He also deserves lengthy front page coverage in our newspaper
of record The New York Times which names him so we all know and displays
his picture. No Palestinian warrants any attention at all in the Times
or the rest of the corporate media. They all remain nameless and faceless.
What’s now unfolding
in Gaza and the West Bank has been in the works for months. Since the
staged summer, 2005 Gaza withdrawal, the IDF has been training for a
large-scale incursion and reoccupation of the territory. This was reported
earlier this year in Israel’s Maariv daily in an interview the
paper did with IDF Southern Command General Yoav Galant whose unit is
responsible for Gaza. He clearly stated the IDF would employ "more
aggressive military activity.......including (re)occupying the Gaza
Strip......as a result of increased (Palestinian) attacks." The
general may have forgotten to explain those "attacks" with
crude weapons were Palestinian responses to daily Israeli attacks on
them with the most sophisticated weapons the IDF has short of nuclear
ones. He also forgot to explain how Gazans have suffered as a result
of these attacks and near daily killings as well as from the effects
of a near forty-year brutal occupation of their territory. The general,
however, was very clear that "we (the IDF) have a plan to (re)occupy
the Strip" (and) "We are in advanced states of preparing forces
for readiness." Another IDF official added that "The only
way Israel can stop the rockets is by occupying Gaza. It is elementary.
The leadership knows it." The official explained further that in
recent weeks the IDF completed its training to reenter Gaza and informed
its soldiers to prepare and be ready for orders to move in.
It’s quite true that
the Palestinian resistance has fired about 250 crude homemade rockets
from Gaza into Israel in recent months. It’s also true these have
been in response to the many thousands of unprovoked IDF artillery shells
fired at them as well as frequent air attacks and other assaults against
them. Little of this is ever reported by the western corporate media,
especially in the US, and never with any context to explain the true
situation on the ground. It’s also not reported that the IDF trained
to be ready to react once it got an excuse to do it which the June 25
incident gave it. And it would never be reported or even considered
that if the Israeli leadership and IDF seriously wanted to end retaliatory
attacks against them including suicide bombings, an easy way to do it
would be to stop attacking defenseless Palestinians. The fact that it
hasn’t shows it won’t and doesn’t want to. Those "elementary"
considerations are never reported or suggested in the mainstream. Apparently
the dominant media never thought of it, but their mission isn’t
to think. It’s only to report what government officials say.
The Gaza Assault
Bears Similarity to Lebanon in 1982
The ongoing Israeli assault
against Gaza may be following the same pattern as the 1982 invasion
of Lebanon to destroy the PLO leadership that resulted in the deaths
of about 18,000 mostly Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Back then
Israel needed a pretext to invade to counter the growing respectability
the PLO was gaining by observing a cease-fire and preferring to pursue
negotiations instead of terror attacks. This was a catastrophe for the
Israeli government as it threatened to undermine its hardened position
to oppose any political settlement which it could only prevent by portraying
the PLO as terrorists. To do it Israel had to find a way to get the
Palestinians to reengage in terrorism or at least to defend itself to
make it look like terrorism.
Why would the Israeli government
then or any other one want to do this? It would seem logical to assume
they all would prefer peace and security to continued conflict. Sadly,
it didn’t then, never did earlier, hasn’t since, and clearly
doesn’t now. The reason why goes to the root of Zionists’
aims, especially the most extreme ones. Many Zionists want all the land
of "Eretz Israel," the biblical Jewish homeland many Jews
believe God gave to the 12 tribes of Israel. It includes much more than
present day Israel and the Occupied Territories - Lebanon, most of Syria,
part of Egypt and a large portion of Jordan.
Unlike other countries, Israel
has no fixed borders - deliberately. It’s been that way so Israeli
governments have lots of wiggle room to establish them one day as they
choose or are able to do. Most important is the plan to include as part
of Israel the ancient lands of "Judea" and "Summaria,"
the West Bank biblical parts of Israel the Palestinians call the Occupied
Territories and claim as their homeland. Israel has maintained the pretense
of being willing to allow the Palestinians an independent state. But
by refusing to negotiate seriously and continuing to encroach on Palestinian
land with new and expanded settlements as well as erecting its "separation"
wall, it’s clear Israel’s real intent is to seize all the
land it wants for its own use leaving the Palestinians only some isolated
bantustan-like less valuable parts.
Beginning with the negotiations
leading to the Oslo Accords and their so-called Declaration of Principles,
Israel never negotiated in good faith with the Palestinians. From Oslo,
Israel got what it wanted - a Palestinian surrender to recognize its
right to exist, end the armed struggle against it, and allow it to continue
colonizing the Occupied Territories. In return, the Palestinian leadership
got nothing more than the right to be Israeli enforcers to control its
restive population - in other words, to accept its subjugation in return
for no rights or benefits except for some special privileges the leadership
got as its reward for selling out its people. The Palestinian people
never got what they most wanted - a viable and independent state of
their own in the Occupied Territories, with established borders and
its capitol in East Jerusalem, and the right of their refugees to return
to their homeland, a right all Jews everywhere have and which UN Resolution
194 guarantees to all refugees as well as Article 13 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Various other Geneva Conventions also affirm
this right, clearly establishing in international law the absolute and
universal "right of return."
Israel never accepted this
right for Palestinians and needs to avoid a political solution to deny
it to them. That position was explained by its Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir in the 1980s when he admitted his nation went to war with Lebanon
because there was "a terrible danger....not so much a military
one as a political one." But Israel couldn’t attack without
good reason to do it. It found none so it manufactured one after the
terrorist Abu Nidal organization attempted to assassinate the Israeli
Ambassador to the UK in London. The Israelis blamed it on the PLO that
had nothing to do with it. It also went unnoticed or reported that the
PLO had been at war with the Nidal group for years. It didn’t
matter, and the western media, particularly in the US, reported that
the "Operation Peace for Galilee" Lebanon invasion was undertaken
to protect Israeli civilians from PLO attacks even though there were
none. Who would know the difference except the people living there,
and the western media don’t speak to them unless it’s to
affirm Israeli positions.
The situation today in Gaza
bears similarity to 1982. Israel was horrified when Hamas won a clear
majority of the seats in the January, 2006 elections for the Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC). Without the larger than life figure of Yasser
Arafat to lead it, the Palestinian people finally rejected his Fatah
party and its long record of corruption and subservience to Israeli
dominance. Since the election, the Olmert led government has clamped
down hard on Hamas, calling it a terrorist organization. It’s
refused to negotiate with it, withheld Palestinian tax revenues, and
succeeded in getting an international political boycott of the democratically
elected Hamas government as well as most outside aid to it cut off.
All this has created an unbearable hardship on the already desperate
Palestinian population.
It didn’t matter that
Hamas declared a unilateral cease-fire, wanted negotiations and was
willing to recognize Israel as a legitimate state provided Israel gave
the Palestinians equal recognition, was willing to return to the pre-1967
borders, released Palestinian prisoners and stopped killing and abusing
Palestinians without provocation. Israel refused and, in fact, was as
concerned about the Hamas cease-fire as it was about the one the PLO
observed in 1982 which Prime Minister Shamir explained was the reason
Israel invaded Lebanon. Back then, the provocation was the incident
in London against the Israeli Ambassador and today it’s the capturing
of an Israeli soldier. These are hardly reasons for going to war unless
the Israelis planned to wage one anyway and only needed a reason to
do it. The reasons for Israeli actions today are much the same as in
1982 - to destroy the Hamas-led government as it did the PLO then and
to reinstitute one again subservient to its wishes. Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) is that kind of leader, has always been
in his past dealings with Israel, and is the one Olmert wants to lead
a future Palestinian government or someone just like him.
The current situation in
Gaza also has echos of the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield in
the West Bank in 2002. It included Israel’s infamous assault against
the people of Jenin, a city of 35,000, retaliating against suicide bombings
that occurred during the Second Intifada that began after Knesset member
Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the holy Al Aqsa Mosque in
September, 2000. The suicide bombings, in turn, began in response to
extreme Israeli violence against the Palestinians which by March, 2002
Amnesty International reported had killed over 1,000 of them including
more than 200 children. During that Operation, Israeli forces invaded
and attacked all West Bank cities causing an unknown number of civilian
casualties and deaths. But the harshest assault occurred in April, 2002
against Jenin, including its refugee camp. The IDF cut the city off
from any outside help, destroyed hundreds of buildings (many with people
inside buried under the rubble), cut off power and water plus food and
other essential needs from the outside, refused to allow any help to
enter the city (including medical aid), and killed an unknown number
of mostly civilian Palestinian men, women and children. No Israeli was
ever held to account for these crimes.
Conditions in Jenin today
remain grave as they do throughout the Occupied Territories as Palestinians
now await the full impact of what an IDF reoccupation may inflict on
them. As mentioned above, the Lebanon invasion killed many thousands
of innocent Lebanese and Palestinians. It also resulted in what noted
British journalist and Middle East expert Robert Fisk called "one
of the most shocking war crimes of the 20th century." He referred
to what happened at the Sabra and Shatila camps when Israeli Defense
Minister at the time Ariel Sharon in command of the IDF sent a proxy
Lebanese Phalange militia force into the camps and allowed them to massacre
as many as 3,000 or more innocent mostly civilian men, women and children.
Beyond a brief and unconvincing censure for his actions, Sharon never
was held to account for his crime and, of course, later became Israeli
Prime Minister serving until Ehud Olmert succeeded him after his disabling
stroke.
It now remains to be seen
what the final result of the current Israeli assault against Gaza, the
West Bank and the Palestinian leadership will be. It may be some time
before we know as it’s just beginning. But if the Lebanon and
Jenin experiences are examples to go by, many innocent Palestinian lives
will be lost, and the state of the Palestinian people will only get
far worse before it ever has a chance to become better. Will the world
community finally take note and act to stop a likely impending slaughter.
The past record indicates it won’t. It’s the purpose of
this writing to demand it does so and quickly and to hold a criminal
Israeli leadership accountable for its war crimes and crimes against
humanity against the long-suffering Palestinian people who deserve the
same freedoms as all Israelis and everyone else.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com.