GAZA ONE YEAR LATER: Who Cares About Gaza?

Gaza?  Where’s that?  Have you heard about it recently?  It doesn’t figure on the list of important matters for consideration by the world’s presidents and prime ministers.  It has vanished from the media.  Most people couldn’t care less about a generation of Palestinians who are subjected to viciously inflicted privation by an imperialist nation that has lost touch with humanity.

Most countries, most human beings, with predictable exceptions, condemned Israel for indulging in frenzied savagery during its blitzkrieg on Gaza last December and January. There is no doubt that many of its actions were criminal. For example, there are well-documented instances of use of white phosphorus artillery shells against civilians. Poison gas, in other words – if a bit more hi-tech than the venomous vapors that exterminated so many millions of innocent Jewish men, women and children in Nazi concentration camps.

But Israel, propped up as a strutting jackbooted puppet on the global stage by the well-muscled fingers of Washington and some other capitals whose endorsement of violence seems boundless, can get away, quite literally, with murder.  Innocent men, women and children can be exterminated by armed forces that have no reason to fear justice or even criticism from the world’s juridical system.

A highly respected international jurist, Mr Richard Goldstone (a South African Jew), produced a report for the UN about Israel’s attempted genocide and Hamas atrocities and was impartial and objective about assessing facts and apportioning responsibility, as would be expected of such a distinguished judge.

His terms of reference were “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”

He investigated thoroughly (although the Israelis refused to cooperate in any way) and reported fairly. His finding was that Palestinian terror groups were culpable of atrocities, as were Israeli armed forces, and for the latter ruling he was promptly attacked by Israel, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and the Financial Times.

And by President Barack Obama.

The Obama administration pronounced the report to be “flawed,” without giving any indication of what the flaws might be. Mr Goldstone, courteous and balanced as ever – if a trifle taken aback at such a reaction – observed gently that “I have yet to hear from the Obama administration what the flaws in the report that they have identified are . . .  I would be happy to respond to them, if and when I know what they are . . . Of course I’m concerned and would like to engage with the Obama administration, at least informally.”

Fat chance of that happening, unless Mr Obama is prepared to risk the wrath of Israel.

But Mr Obama, like his predecessors, isn’t in favor of anything that is critical of Israel.  He wants a second presidential term, after all, and must not offend the rich and dominant Israel Lobby.  And his country’s legislators, who are equally beholden to that Lobby and have to follow the Tel Aviv line, “overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning a report by a United Nations fact-finding panel that criticized Israel as part of an assessment of the conflict in Gaza in 2008 between Israel and Hamas.”  They voted against the report by 344 to 36, thereby showing, like the White House, their contempt for impartial analysis, the UN, the eminent Justice Goldstone, international law, and almost everything that remains civilized in this horrible world.  (And you wonder how many of them read the report before voting.)

Hundreds of legislators in the US and Britain have sold their souls to Israel and will support Tel Aviv in any circumstances.

Britain’s governing Labor Party is right behind Israel, and it is recorded that “The Labor Friends of Israel (LFI), ‘a Westminster based lobby group working within the British Labor Party to promote the State of Israel’ fostered close ties with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined the society upon his premiership.”

After his catastrophic decade as prime minister, Blair,  a squalid, greedy and unprincipled man, and a proven liar, was appointed “Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU,” as which he achieved precisely nothing.  The selection of Blair as a representative to the Middle East was absurd. Nobody could imagine for an instant that his activities would be regarded as impartial – unlike Mr Goldstone – but this didn’t matter, because he had the seal of Israeli approval.

Just as in the US, Israel knows no political borders in Britain, whose present prime minister, an uninspiring and petulant dullard called Brown, declared that :

“it is one of the great privileges I have to be able to address the Labour Friends of Israel, to be able to thank you for everything that you do to promote the cause of justice . . .  I count myself not only a friend of Israel but someone who wants to support the future of Israel.”

“The cause of justice”?

As Judge Goldstone recorded, Israel “committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity” by intentionally killing civilians during its Gaza blitzkrieg.

But Britain’s prime minister imagines that Israel’s slaughter of over 300 children will “promote the cause of justice.”

And the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party was equally toadying in June when he told the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) fundraising dinner at the Dorchester Hotel that he supported Israel unequivocally, “Not simply because of my party’s unstinting support for Israel through the decades, but also because it’s something I feel very deep inside of me.”

What drivel.  This little man, whose name escapes me, has jumped on the Israeli bandwagon because it means money. 80 per cent of Conservative legislators are members of the CFI, and subsidies for political campaigns from Israel-supporting business organizations are discreetly disguised and happily grasped.

There is hardly a word of criticism of Israel by politicians in the US and the UK, and it’s not at all surprising that this is so, because so many of them couldn’t exist without cash from the Israel Lobby, passed on in one way or another. All the lavish expenses-paid holiday trips to the land of “the cause of justice” are simply confirmation that legislators are out to get whatever they can for free.

And Peace Prize-winning Mr Obama, of whom so many of us had high hopes of even-handedness, has a Secretary of State who told the Israel Lobby “It is wonderful being here with all of you among so many friends and I feel like this is a giant family reunion . . . and I feel like I am among family . . .  I have a bedrock commitment to Israel’s security . . .  God bless Israel . . .”

With servile, bootlicking friends like these, Israel can continue to defy UN Security Council resolutions, it can build scores of illegal settlements on land stolen from Palestinians, it can condemn the people of Gaza – and especially countless thousands of children – to indefinite and hideous hardship.  The state of Israel exists in a wicked and vicious parallel world, bolstered by smug and sleazy western politicians.

Ten years ago Justice Goldstone declared that “bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust.”

Indeed it does.

But when so many politicians and so much of the media in the US and Britain are intent on supporting Zion and ignoring Israel’s repulsive human rights violations, you wonder if the lessons of the Holocaust are perhaps a bit one-sided. The people of Gaza are suffering from the effects of an illegal and malevolent Israeli blockade.  Its people are enduring horrible privation. The crimes against them go unpunished.

And nobody cares.  For it would be very difficult to admit that war crimes have been committed by people who come to your giant family reunions, promoting “the cause of justice.”

Ref: Counterpunch

Brian Cloughley’s book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, is to be published in the US by Skyhorse next month. His website is http://www.beecluff.com.

Meanwhile, the israeli genocide project continues…

Israel’s justice ministry has dropped charges against a settler caught on camera shooting two Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The incident happened last December and followed the eviction of Jewish settlers who were occupying a disputed house.

Al Jazeera’s Dan Nolan reports on how the gunman, charged by police, is now a free man.

*This report contains some disturbing images.

FIGHT ISRAEL; FAX ISRAEL!!!!

After the successful email campaign, it’s time to move to the next level: calling some of the war criminals.

Objectives of this campaign are as follows:

1. Bombard their phone/mobile/fax lines with anti-war, anti-Zionist messages. This can be in the form of calls, faxes or even sms’s;
2. Waste the time of these war criminals as much as possible. Some of them are doing nothing else but jumping on the TV screens to spread lies and hatred. They justify killing Palestinian children and civilians;
3. Directly delivering to them the message that we are disgusted by what they are doing and they should stop now;
4. Show them the magnitude of support that Palestinians have after the world witnessed their war crimes in Gaza.

(For privacy reasons, we don’t want the IOF to record your email, IP address, ISP, country, etc and track you down and maybe hack your PC or something worse. Therefore, don’t use your original email account to contact them. To overcome this, you can send them ANONYMOUS emails. This way they can’t track you or find any info about the sender (you). USE THIS SERVICE)

Let’s start with war criminal, Mark Regev, International Media Adviser to the Prime Minister.

His MOBILE number is: +972-5-0620-3264 and his office number is +972-2670-5354
If you like to follow your call/sms with an email, use this one:
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il

Second war criminal, Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence.
His MOBILE number is +972-5-0629-8148, office number is +972-3697-5339, fax number is +972-2670-5602
As before, if you like to follow it up with an email, use this:
mediasar@mod.gov.il

Third war criminal is Major Liebovitz from the Israeli Navy
Her MOBILE number is +972-5-781-86248
(Sorry, I could not find his email. If you have it, please share it to update this post.)

If you know or come across any mobile number* of any Israeli war criminal, please send it to (haitham.sabbah@gmail.com) so that I can update the list here. Meanwhile, you can bombard the top war criminal, Olmert and his office assistance, managers, spokesperson, etc… Please visit the following page to select the name that you like to play with and pick his/her office number and/or fax number.
http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/PM+Office/Contacts/

Note: To call or fax any in the above list, remove the “zero” and add +972 (Israel Int’l code) before the number. (Example: Ehud Olmert’s phone number is 02-670-5555 will become +972-2-670-555, fax number is 02-670-5475 will become +972-2-670-5475)

I suggest that you put your feelings on paper either by drawing or as a letter (in any language, in fact using other than English language will keep them busier and waste more of their time, which we want) and fax it to the maximum fax numbers you find there, but phone calls are still very important if you can.

More? Yes, you can do more. Call or fax the current Knesset members. Go to the following link, select any name and you will find their phone and fax numbers. Again, to call or fax any, remove the “zero” and add +972 before the number. (Example: Benjamin Netanyahu (a.k.a. Bibi the butcher!) phone: 02-6408456 will become +972-2-6408456 and his fax number is 02-6496659 which becomes +972-2-6496659)

Knesset members:
http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mkindex_current_eng.asp?view=0

Also Knesset Directory (add +9722 before the numbers you find here):
http://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/eng_directory.htm

To: The Israeli Ministry of Defense, Fax: +972-3-697-6717
To: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fax +972-2-5303367

Last but not least, share a copy of your fax with others. Please post your fax on this flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/fax-israel/

PS. Feel free to do the same with any and all pro-Israel war on Gaza. You can start with:

White House (although they are busy backing up there files, but we can only hope that Obama will get something to read and learn about on his first day in office):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

The Congress (which justed gave Israel new green light to kill kids and women of Gaza):
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Be creative! Search for the contacts of your government official’s website and contact them. Save Gaza!

Remember, Silence is Complicity!

* Israeli mobile numbers start with the following codes:
9725 Israel-Mobile
9726 Israel-Mobile
97251 Israel-Mobile
97253 Israel-Mobile
97255 Israel-Mobile
97256 Israel-Mobile
97258 Israel-Mobile
97252 Israel-Mobile-Cellcom
97257 Israel-Mobile-Mirs
97254 Israel-Mobile-Partner
97250 Israel-Mobile-Pelephone
Source: http://www.nstelcom.com/support/codes_il.htm

VIDEO: STOP THE GENOCIDE; Stop watching the genocide!!!

Click image to see video

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.” “It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel.

Ref: Stop watching

…
This is not amazing.
This is israeli banality and entertainment; genocide.

Welcome to Israhell…

a

Israel guilty of WAR CRIMES + illegal use of phosphorus

Inside Story asks: what are the chances of pursuing Israel legally? What, if any, recourse has the international community to punish those alleged to be accountable? Would senior Israeli political and military leaders bear personal liability for their offenses, and could they be prosecuted by an international tribunal? Maryam Nemazee discusses.

Allegations of the use of white phosphorus have been made against Israel in their attack on the Gaza Strip and firework-like explosions during the offensive like those made when using the chemical have been widely seen. Al Jazeeras Jacky Rowland spoke with Marc Garlasco, a weapons expert, on the border with Gaza about the viability of these claims.

Also read Israelis deny using phosphorus and Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorus shells and a note from their supplier

PICT: resisting in every way possible to Isareli genocide + enjoying “shoah entertainment”

A Palestinian woman protesting the Israeli military operation in Gaza signalled her defiance yesterday as she faced Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah. (Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images)

These young Israelis look with curiosity and humor bombing of the Israeli army.

Israel; Always the Victim – Not even close!

Israel has successfully portrayed itself as the victim with the duty to defend its people, but the reality is that everyone has the right to defend its people and to live in security. These are not luxuries to be enjoyed by Israelis alone in the Middle East.

The Israelis insist that the latest violence began when Hamas “ended” a six month truce. I didn’t know there was a truce.

During this six-month truce, the International Middle East Media Center (a collaboration of international and Palestinian journalists) reported that the Israeli army killed 23 Palestinians, wounded 62, and kidnapped 38 residents in the Gaza Strip.

Truce? What truce?

In terms of the daily life for Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has been blocking medical supplies, food, and fuel on a regular basis for the past two years. Prior to the latest attacks, many have died from treatable illnesses due to the blocking of medical supplies. A Reuters article (12/30/08), citing research from Save the Children (UK), noted that 70% of Palestinian children already had a vitamin A deficiency and almost half of children under age two were anemic due to the border blockade. Early last year, a Toronto Star article (2/11/08) featured Palestinians from Gaza who have been driving on cooking oil due to fuel shipments being blocked.

What would Israel’s response be if the situation were in reverse?

Sadly, our media has not covered these tactics. Instead, it has generally chosen to publicize the Israeli spin of victimhood.

Israel. Always the victim.

Even with the Israeli Army’s revelation in a January 4, 2009 Haaretz article that they overestimated Gaza’s rocket severity, Israel won’t give up its victimhood card. The bombing continues, as does the self-righteousness that comes with it.

Perhaps, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe put it best in his recent article, “Israel’s righteous fury and its victims in Gaza.” He wrote, “The self-righteousness is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. It explains why the Israeli Jewish society would not be moved by words of wisdom, logical persuasion or diplomatic dialogue.”

Israel. Always the victim.

Though we live in the 21st century, it seems that maybe our Western world (specifically the US) has been caught in a time warp. There are those who actually think that it can atone for the crimes of WWII by giving Israel the green light to commit more crimes against humanity. But ignoring Israel’s embargo of food, medicine, fuel, and the killings of Palestinians actually dishonors the memories of those who were murdered for who they were during WWII.

Just because there are no ovens or gassing in the current conflict doesn’t mean that it is less of a genocide or holocaust. And when Israel intentionally blocks humanitarian goods and aims to make life so miserable that Palestinians will want to leave all the while dehumanizing them in the process, Israel is committing genocide.

Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide does not make exceptions for motive. In other words, using Hamas as an excuse is unacceptable. The Convention discusses “Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.”

It is what it is and whitewashing it doesn’t change the reality, regardless of the Israeli spin.

In recent days, the inter-active forums on the internet have been filled with pro-Israel posts referring to Palestinians as vermin who should be exterminated. These Hitleresque statements, of course, are said within the context of self-righteousness and victimhood.

Israel. Always the victim.

At some point, I have to believe that even those who have abused this card will tire of it.

Someday.

For now, the words of respected journalist and media reform advocate, Bill Moyers, come to mind. “Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent at the same time that it enhances the power of the state and the privileged interests that the state protects.”

We need to think about that as our corporate media becomes more of a mouthpiece for the government and less interested in hard reporting and truth-telling.

Israel. Always the victim? Not even close.

Ref: PalestineChronicle.com.
– Sherri Muzher J.D. with emphasis in International Law. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

VIDEO of Israeli massacre on civillian – (WARNING! This not your american or israeli state propaganda images at display but reality!)

Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about (by “Peace loving” Israel)

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas’ security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.

This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.

The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.

On November 19, following dozens of Qassam rockets and mortar rounds which exploded on Israeli soil, the plan was brought for Barak’s final approval. Last Thursday, on December 18, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the defense minister met at IDF headquarters in central Tel Aviv to approve the operation.

However, they decided to put the mission on hold to see whether Hamas would hold its fire after the expiration of the ceasefire. They therefore put off bringing the plan for the cabinet’s approval, but they did inform Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the developments.

That night, in speaking to the media, sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that “if the shooting from Gaza continues, the showdown with Hamas would be inevitable.” On the weekend, several ministers in Olmert’s cabinet inveighed against him and against Barak for not retaliating for Hamas’ Qassam launches.

“This chatter would have made Entebe or the Six Day War impossible,” Barak said in responding to the accusations. The cabinet was eventually convened on Wednesday, but the Prime Minister’s Bureau misinformed the media in stating the discussion would revolve around global jihad. The ministers learned only that morning that the discussion would actually pertain to the operation in Gaza.

In its summary announcement for the discussion, the Prime Minister’s Bureau devoted one line to the situation in Gaza, compared to one whole page that concerned the outlawing of 35 Islamic organizations.

What actually went on at the cabinet meeting was a five-hour discussion about the operation in which ministers were briefed about the various blueprints and plans of action. “It was a very detailed review,” one minister said.

The minister added: “Everyone fully understood what sort of period we were heading into and what sort of scenarios this could lead to. No one could say that he or she did not know what they were voting on.” The minister also said that the discussion showed that the lessons of the Winograd Committee about the performance of decision-makers during the 2006 Second Lebanon War were “fully internalized.”

At the end of the discussion, the ministers unanimously voted in favor of the strike, leaving it for the prime minister, the defense minister and the foreign minister to work out the exact time.

While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas.

In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday – one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.

“Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday,” one defense official said, “but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday.”

The final decision was made on Friday morning, when Barak met with Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Shin Bet Security Service Yuval Diskin and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin. Barak sat down with Olmert and Livni several hours later for a final meeting, in which the trio gave the air force its orders.

On Friday night and on Saturday morning, opposition leaders and prominent political figures were informed about the impending strike, including Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, Yisrael Beuiteinu’s Avigdor Liebermen, Haim Oron from Meretz and President Shimon Peres, along with Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

Ref: Haaretz

Israel’s siege fulfills at least three points in Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide ( a MUST MUST REEEAD!!!)

As Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed to super-add collective punishment upon collective punishment; men, women and children are still being sniped at and killed; children are deafened by continuing sonic booms, the vast majority of them suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many of that majority have no ambition other than becoming “martyrs,” Israel in mid-December denied entry to Richard Falk, UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories.

It is Dr. Falk’s responsibility to report to the UN on conditions in the occupied territories. Israel is blocking him from carrying out this job. In an article that reads as if it rolled off the computers in Israel’s Government Press Office (no quotes by anyone friendly to Falk’s point of view, for instance), The New York Times, tells us Dr. Falk “has long been criticized in Israel for what many Israelis say [emphasis mine] are unfair and unpalatable views.” The blind attribution is typical.

Unlike European Union ministers who recently condemned Israel’s acts in Gaza and the West Bank only to turn around and approve upgrading the EU’s relations with Israel, Falk will not compromise. He not only describes Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, but calls for immediate protective action “to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life.” He also calls for an International Criminal Court investigation to “determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Perhaps it’s his clarity of focus and refusal to back down that constitute his sins in Israel’s eyes? (The usual hasbarah about anti-Semitism, etc., is to be discounted, though being Jewish Falk may fall into the category, “self-hating Jew.”) Many others, Jewish and not Jewish (including Israeli Jews never quoted by The New York Times) have charged Israel with violations of international law and war crimes in Gaza. As Falk himself noted in his statement about Gaza to the UN (see “Gaza: Silence is not an Option” at The Heathlander and other Internet sites), the Secretary General of the UN, the President of the General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have all condemned Israel for its monstrous siege. “Karen AbyZayd,” stated Falk, “who heads the UN relief effort in Gaza, offered first-hand confirmation of the desperate urgency and unacceptable conditions facing the civilian population of Gaza. Although many leaders have commented on the cruelty and unlawfulness of the Gaza blockade imposed by Israel, such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious UN officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid.” Other denunciations have been made by B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that in June, 2006 called Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s electrical power plant “a war crime” (“Aiming attacks at civilian objects is forbidden under International Humanitarian Law and is considered a war crime. The power plant bombed by Israel is a purely civilian object and bombing it did nothing to impede the ability of Palestinian organizations to fire rockets into Israeli territory.”) Last month, Switzerland accused Israel of violating international law by destroying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and Ramallah. This denunciation, writes a reporter for The First Post, is “arguably the strongest condemnation of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians to come from any western European country since Charles de Gaulle famously attacked the ‘oppression, repression and expulsions’ of Palestinians by Israel over 40 years ago.”. (November 17, 2008.)

Christopher Hedges writes that Falk told him Israel’s siege has unleashed “an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million [population] Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive . . . This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 per cent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 per cent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders… Over 50 per cent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”

Gaza committed the ultimate sin. Its residents refused to be good little natives; it launched the first Intifada. It became legendary, together with Jenin in the West Bank, for its refusal to submit to Israel’s occupation. Gaza was also a region that, unlike the West Bank, was negligible in terms of fertile land and water resources. So Gaza must first be quarantined (Darryl Li has compared Gaza after Israel’s “pull-out” to an animal pen where – before the siege, at any rate – food and supplies were thrown in, Israel having divested itself of any responsibility for the population.) Israel’s aim was that Egypt take responsibility for Gaza, which has not happened. Gaza’s resistance has continued firing rockets into Israel. But Gaza’s final and unpardonable sin was, in a completely fair election, to elect a party that displeased Israel and the US. Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra infamy helped the reprisal along by engineering civil war between Hamas and Fatah (see Vanity Fair, April, 2008.)

Now, finally, Gaza is buckling. While the world watches, a people is being destroyed. The definitive essay is Sara Roy’s in this month’s London Review of Books. She details an excruciating decline in all means of life – food, fuel, medicine, water-purifiers, etc. Roy doesn’t say it, and neither does Falk, but Israel’s siege fulfills at least three points in Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide (killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.) Roy’s depressing conclusion is that if Gaza falls, the West Bank will follow.

REf: Counterpunch

Ellen Cantarow has written about the occupied West Bank and Israel for U.S. publications since 1979. She is also a Boston-based pianist, singer and teacher. She can be reached at ecantarow@comast.net