Israel's Gaza siege: a crime against humanity

Dear friends,
Here are some of the recent articles I have written, which appeared in Direct Action.

in solidarity, Kim Home » Issue 24: July 2010

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Israel's Gaza siege: a crime against humanity

By Kim Bullimore

Israel announced on June 17 that it would “liberalise” its three-year siege of Gaza, allowing more categories of goods to enter the blockaded territory. Non-essential items such as tomato sauce, snacks, mayonnaise and cosmetics will now be allowed in. However, building materials such as cement, pipes and iron — essential for the reconstruction of housing, much of which was destroyed by Israel’s 22-day bombing campaign in 2008-09 — will remain prohibited.

According to the June 21 Tel Aviv Haaretz newspaper, Israel will retain the “right” to ban “dual-use” construction materials that it claims could be used by the Palestinian resistance to rebuild military facilities and manufacture weapons. Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation that deals specifically with legal issues related to freedom of movement within the Occupied Palestinian Territories, noted in a statement on June 17 that the “liberalisation” advocated by the Israeli Security Cabinet enacted little more than “cosmetic changes” and did little to change the situation for the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

Gisha said that Israel’s siege of Gaza has little to do with security and instead is part of a policy of “economic warfare” designed supposedly to weaken support for Hamas. Gisha went on to state: “In the context of that policy, Israel deliberately prevents Gaza residents from receiving raw materials, exporting finished products and travelling into and out of Gaza”. Rather than introducing cosmetic changes to the blockade, Gisha called on Israel to adopt “a policy that recognises the rights of Palestinian residents of Gaza not just to consume but also to produce [goods] and to travel”.
Planned murder

The announcement of the “liberalisation” of the siege came in the wake of international outrage at Israel’s murder of nine human rights activists and wounding of up to 30 others, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31. The nine-boat flotilla, carrying more than 650 human rights activists, doctors, parliamentarians and journalists, was organised jointly by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish human rights organisation Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). The flotilla sought to break Israel’s illegal three-year siege of the Gaza Strip and deliver more than 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid. The nine were killed when Israeli commandos boarded and attacked with live ammunition the largest of the boats, the Turkish passenger ship Mavi Marmara.

The Israeli government, along with the Israeli and international media, has attempted to portray the deadly commando attack as a “bungled raid”. However, before the attack, Israeli media carried a number of stories in both English and Hebrew outlining the Israeli government’s intention to use violence against the flotilla and its unarmed passengers. Awarding-winning US Jewish freelance journalist Max Blumenthal wrote in a June 6 article on his blog that statements by senior Israeli military commanders prior to the departure of the flotilla towards Gaza revealed that “the raid was planned over a week in advance by the Israeli military and was personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak”. On May 28, three days before the attack on the boats, Israel’s Maariv newspaper carried an article in Hebrew entitled, “Head to Head in the Heart of the Sea”, which outlined the intention of the Israeli military to use brutal force.


Footage shoot by Iara Lee on the Mavi Marmara. Lee was able to retain the footage despite the IOF trying to confiscate all footage shot by activists.


According to Blumenthal’s English translation of the Maariv article, the Israeli operation against the boats would be led by Lieutenant Colonel Eliezer Maron, who told Maariv, “If the people aboard the boats will not agree to turn around, the operation will transfer to the stage of force”. According to Maron, the operational plan included approval for using “live fire” if the commandos deemed it necessary. The article also outlined that, once the commandos boarded the boats, they would “inspect them looking for sabotage materials and fighting tools”. As Blumenthal notes, “The plan to search for ‘sabotage materials’ also foreshadowed the [Israeli military’s] post-raid propaganda campaign”.

Despite Israeli military illegally attempting to confiscate all photographic and film footage from the activists in an attempt ensure that Israel’s version of events dominated media coverage of the attack, the Israeli government’s torrent of justification was repeatedly challenged by a range of independent journalists, both inside Israel and internationally. As a result, the Israeli government and military were forced to retreat from a number of claims they had made, including that 40 flotilla participants were “al Qaeda mercenaries”. The Israeli military was also forced to admit that it had doctored the audio on footage it released of the assault on the Mavi Marmara.

With the release of the hundreds of human rights activists from Israeli detention, photographs and video footage that activists were able to retain were released. They revealed that far from attempting to “lynch” the attacking commandos, as Israel claimed, the activists were attacked and attempted to defend themselves. The footage also revealed that activists had sought to give medical aid to injured soldiers.
BDS campaign strengthened

The outrage at the murder of the nine activists has put Israel under increased international pressure to end its illegal siege and has increased support for the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. On June 2, the UN Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly (32 to 2) to strongly condemn Israel’s actions against the humanitarian flotilla and call for an end to the siege of Gaza. On May 31, the day of the massacre, Professor Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, told Dubai’s Gulf News: “It is essential that those Israelis responsible for this lawless and murderous behaviour, including political leaders who issued the orders, be held criminally accountable for their wrongful acts … The worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere”.

Turkey, South Africa and Nicaragua recalled their ambassadors from Israel and/or suspended diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv. The Turkish parliament, in reaction to nine of its nationals being murdered, voted unanimously to “revise the political, military and economic relations with Israel” and to “seek justice against Israel through national and international legal authorities”. On June 14, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) demanded Israel immediately lift its Gaza blockade. “The whole of Gaza’s civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law”, the ICRC stated. Under such law, collective punishment of a whole population is a crime against humanity.



On June 1, the Palestinian BDS National Committee issued a statement condemning the murders and calling on the international community to intensify its support for BDS. In reaction to its call for transport and dock workers and unions around the world to refuse to load or offload Israeli ships and airplanes, the Swedish Port Workers Union voted to implement a blockade of Israeli ships and cargo to and from Israel from June 15 to 29. The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, which pioneered the boycott against Israeli maritime trade in February 2009 by refusing to offload a ship in Durban, also heeded the Palestinian appeal, advocating “an escalation of the boycott of Israeli goods”, calling upon its members “not to allow any Israeli ship to dock or unload” and calling upon fellow trade unionists not to handle them. On June 20, more than 700 protesters were able to stop the unloading of an Israeli cargo ship at the port of Oakland in San Francisco Bay.

In Australia, 11 unions and state labour councils have now publicly announced support for the BDS campaign. The Western Australia branch of the Maritime Union of Australia was the first to support the campaign, joining in January 2009. It was joined just prior to the attack on the flotilla by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Queensland branch of the Electrical Trades Union.

In the wake of the attack, the Australian Services Union NSW and ACT branches, the Health and Community Services Union Victoria, Australian Education Union, Geelong Trades Hall Council, South Coast Labour Council (NSW) and Newcastle Trades Hall Council all announced support for BDS and called for the lifting of the siege of Gaza. The national secretary of the MUA, along with the Australian Nurses Federation, NSW Teachers Federation and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), while not announcing support for the BDS campaign, issued statements condemning Israel’s attack on the flotilla and calling for the end of the siege.

Israel moves to ban Israeli human rights organisations that expose Israeli war crimes

Dear friends,
on the back of the poll that reveals that a majority of Israelis are willing to see the banning of Israeli human rights organisation, 20 Israeli parlimentarians have tabled a bill to outlaw Israeli human rights organisations which expose Israeli warcrimes and wrong doings by the Israeli military. (Most of this has been reported in the Hebrew press language rather than English language press - the second article includes a translation of the article from Maariv)

Two articles/blogs below on the newly proposed law, as well as a statement issued by Israeli Human Rights organisations in response.

in solidarity, Kim

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From The Promised Land Blog: http://www.promisedlandblog.com/?p=2534

Knesset moves to outlaw human rights organizations in Israel
Posted: April 29th, 2010 | Author: noam | Filed under: In the News, The Left, media | Tags: adalah, avi dichter, human rigths, im tirzu, meni mazoz, new israel fund, shin beit, the only democracy in the middle east | No Comments »

Something very troubling is happening to “the only democracy in the Middle East”
More than 20 MKs, including members of opposition party Kadima, proposed a new bill which will make it possible to outlaw the important human rights groups in Israel. Among the organizations mentioned in the proposed bill are Doctors for Human rights, The Coalition of Woman for Peace, The Public Committee against Torture in Israel, and Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights. All these organizations receive funds from the New Israeli fund.

According to a report in Maariv, the new bill will outlaw any organization “which is involved in activity intended to lead to the prosecution or arrest of IDF officers and government officials for war crimes.” the word “involved” makes it a very broad definition.


Palestinian child tied to a Israeli jeep and used as a human shield by Israeli Occupation Forces - a war crime under international law.

Two weeks ago, an article by Maariv’s Ben Caspit suggested that NIF sponsored organizations that are linked to an international effort to investigate and prosecute senior IDF officers for war crimes.

The introduction to the new bill declares that:

“… “Those organizations help foreign organizations that seek to issue arrest warrants and indictments against senior Israeli officials, either by means of providing information—the preponderance of which is erroneous and even mendacious—to foreign groups, or by publicly agreeing and lending credence to the accusation that Israel is guilty of war crimes.”

More than 20 MK’s signed the offer. Among them are known parliament members from Tzipi Livni’s opposition party Kadima, former head of Shin Beit Avi Dichter and members from Likud and NRP.

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From all the anti-democratic measures I’ve been writing about here, this is by far the most extreme. Even if a mild version of this law passes, defending human rights in Israel – a difficult tusk as is – will become practically impossible. Merely proposing this bill will harm grassroots efforts and freedom of speech, as both the media and the public are becoming more and more hostile to people and groups who are portrayed as unpatriotic or anti-Israeli.

Much of “the case for Israel” is based on the notion that this is a democracy – the only one in a hostile environment. But Israel is changing. This is not something that you notice on a one week vacation in Jerusalem or from on the Tel Aviv beach, but if you pay close attention to the news, you can easily notice it.

People are harassed and delegitimized for the things they say and because of their views. Foreign activists are arrested and deported. The Shin Beit, Israel’s security agency, stated recently before the court that it sees its job as to supervise and follow the actions of Israeli left-wing organizations even when they are not suspected in breaking the law. This statement was approved by the former Government’s attorney, Meni Mazoz, who also heads the prosecution in Israel.

As a poll published this week on Haaretz shows, the Jewish public is supportive of such measures:

57.6 percent of the respondents agreed that human rights organizations that expose immoral conduct by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely.

Slightly more than half agreed that “there is too much freedom of expression” in Israel. The poll also found that most of the respondents favor punishing Israeli citizens who support sanctioning or boycotting the country, and support punishing journalists who report news that reflects badly on the actions of the defense establishment.

Politicians and Journalists, always sensitive to public opinion, follow such trends with calls for actions. Violence against activists in the West bank becomes common. Police arrests organizers of legal protests, even if there is nothing to charge them with.

As most of the country carries own with its daily life, and the world is busy with efforts to re-ignite the peace process and doesn’t pay much importance to such details, it is easy to miss the big picture. But something very major is happening here right now. I don’t have any idea where will it end up leading us, but I suspect it’s not such a good place.

UPDATE: here is a full translation of today’s article in Maariv, courtesy of Coteret blog.

MKs Propose Outlawing Adalah

Ma’ariv (p. 12) by Arik Bender — More than 20 MKs from the coalition and the opposition yesterday introduced a bill that is geared to outlaw non-profit organizations that are involved in activity that is geared to bring about the arrest of IDF officers and senior government officials overseas for war crimes. The bill did not specify the names of the non-profit organizations in question, but the law-makers did cite NPOs such as Adalah, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights and the Coalition of Women for Peace—all of which receive funding from the New Israel Fund.

“It is very saddening that in an era such as this one, when we ought to be united against those very same baseless accusations, we witness Israeli NPOs and organizations operating beneath the surface against Israel,” read the printed explanation to the bill. “Those same organizations help foreign organizations that seek to issue arrest warrants and indictments against senior Israeli officials, either by means of providing information—the preponderance of which is erroneous and even mendacious—to foreign groups, or by publicly agreeing and lending credence to the accusation that Israel is guilty of war crimes. Sometimes they even extend palpable legal assistance in drafting the arguments.”

The bill was submitted yesterday at the end of a tempestuous debate in the plenum about Ma’ariv’s expose about the involvement of the New Israel Fund in lawsuits against the IDF and top state officials. Among the signatories of the new bill are the former director of the GSS, MK Avi Dichter, former deputy GSS director MK Gidon Ezra, Chairman of the State Audit Committee MK Yoel Hasson, MK Ronit Tirosh, MK Otniel Schneller, MK Yaakov Edri, MK Moshe Matlon, MK Ophir Akunis, MK Tzippi Hotovely, MK Uri Orbach, MK Zvulun Orlev and others.

“The bill will put an end to the rampage by NPOs who are trying to subvert the state under the guise of human rights,” said yesterday Ronit Tirosh, one of the sponsors of the bill.


Im Tirtzu smear campaign poster against Noami Chazan and the New Israel Fund.

Upon the introduction of the bill, the Im Tirtzu movement announced that it was ending its campaign against the New Israel Fund. Ronen Shoval, the director of Im Tirtzu, said that he was pleased that his movement’s message had been heard in the Knesset. “We congratulate the MKs who picked up the gauntlet and intend to defend the IDF from the NPOs that are supported by the New Israel Fund,” said Shoval.

The forum of directors general of the human rights organizations in Israel, which includes Adalah—the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel— issued the following statement in response: “Instead of defending the values of democracy, the sponsors of the bill opt to trample it to dust. The bill—which seeks in practice to conceal information or suspected crimes—contravenes international conventions and the universal declaration about human rights that were signed after World War II and constitutes an unprecedented moral nadir in the Israeli legislature.

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Israeli law proposal: Outlaw organisations reporting on violations
Foreboding in the Israeli human rights community as a new proposed law targets organizations reporting on breaches of international law
By JNews Thursday, 29 April, 2010 - 13:44 London, UK
Source: Knesset minutes, nrg, Maariv, Israeli human rights groups

http://www.jnews.org.uk/news/israeli-law-proposal-outlaw-organisations-reporting-on-violations

A new law tabled on Wednesday in the Israeli Knesset, seeks to forbid registration of Israeli organizations (NGOs) that are suspected of provision of information or involvement in law suits against Israeli officials or commanders for breaches of International Humanitarian Law, or war crimes. It would also require the Registrar of Association to close down existing organizations engaged in such activities.

The proposed Associations Law (Amendment – Exceptions to the Registration and Activity of an Association), 2010, comes in the wake of an incitement campaign against the human-rights community in Israel and is the second law to be proposed against their activities this year.

Among the signatories to the proposed bill are two former members of Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet or shabac: former director Avi Dichter and former deputy director Gideon Ezra.

The law proposal does not cite names of specific organizations, but the initiators of the bill, 19 Knesset members (MKs) from various parties of both the coalition and the opposition, cited Israeli groups Adalah, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Coalition of Women for Peace as examples, in the course of a debate held on the bill Wednesday.

Israeli daily Maariv focused specifically on Adalah, a human-rights organization led by Palestinian citizens of Israel. Its news item on the law proposal was headed “MKs propose: Outlaw Adalah

In a heated discussion in the Knesset yesterday, MK Nitsan Horovitz of the left-leaning Meretz party described the law proposal as a witchhunt.
“So long as activities are legal under Israeli law, they are [allowed] under freedom of expression, and the conflict is a political one,” said Horovitz. “Is anything illegal being done by an organization? – then go to the police,” he said.

He added that the Knesset should address the allegations made by the organizations under attack, instead of silencing them.

A group of ten Israeli human rights organizations has published a response to the bill, saying that it “violates international treaties and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was signed in the wake of the horrors of World War II,” and that it “seeks to conceal information or suspicions of a crime.”

The group added that “The Israeli government’s refusal to allow the domestic legal system to investigate allegations of war crimes is the very reason that war crimes may be investigated and prosecuted abroad,” and that “instead of defending democracy, the sponsors of this bill prefer to reduce it to ashes.”

Adalah’s Director Hassan Jabareen, added that “if the legislation is enacted, it would constitute an official admission by the State of Israel that it is committing war crimes, and is ordering human-rights organizations in Israel to keep silent about them, to refrain from passing on information about them, and to cease assisting both the victims and the international community in working to prevent their continuation. Only a state that commits prohibited acts would be interested in such legislation.”

This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source

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Human Rights Groups in Israel Respond to Proposed Bill to Suppress Information about Serious Breaches of International Law: A Danger to Democracy
http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=222&ItemID=662

Democratic values are important to the human rights community in Israel. A new bill proposes to trample these democratic values and undermine the ability to seek accountability for human rights violations. It is with great concern that we respond to the proposed bill: Associations (Amutot) Law (Amendment – Exceptions to the Registration and Activity of an Association), 2010.


Brochure: Adalah - Legal Centre for the Arab Minority in Israel

The bill, introduced yesterday, would prohibit the registration of any Non Governmental Organization (NGO) if "there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the association is providing information to foreign entities or is involved in legal proceedings abroad against senior Israeli government officials or IDF officers, for war crimes". An existing NGO would be shut down under the proposed law if it engaged in such activity.

Instead of defending democracy, the sponsors of this bill prefer to reduce it to ashes. This bill is the direct result of irresponsible leadership that is doing all it can to undermine democratic values and the institutions that are the backbone of a democracy: the Supreme Court, a free press, and human rights organizations. A public sphere without these institutions operating independently of the government is a public sphere that is crippled and anti-democratic at its core.


Logo of B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

The sponsors of this bill would do well to invest their energies in fulfilling their duty to oversee the actions of the executive branch, including the security forces. Where a suspicion arises that war crimes have been committed, legislators should act to bring about an independent, impartial investigation in Israel, according to the standards set by international law. The Israeli government's refusal to allow the domestic legal system to investigate allegations of war crimes is the very reason that war crimes may be investigated and prosecuted abroad. The bill – which essentially seeks to conceal information or suspicions of a crime – violates international treaties and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was signed in the wake of the horrors of World War II. It represents an unprecedented moral nadir within the Israeli house of parliament.

This response is issued by the Directors' Forum of the above-listed human rights organizations, all of whom are associations (amutot) registered in Israel.

For further information:
Keren Tamir, Spokesperson of Gisha, 052-891-9190, 03-6244120, keren@gisha.org; Sari Bashi, Director of Gisha, 054-8172103.
Louis Frankenthaler, International Outreach Director, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, 02-642-9825, 052-364-8822, louis@stoptorture.org.il.


ADALAH - THE LEGAL CENTER FOR ARAB MINORITY RIGHTS IN ISRAEL | ASSOCIATION FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN ISRAEL | BIMKOM – PLANNERS FOR PLANNING RIGHTS | B’TSELEM - THE ISRAELI INFORMATION CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES | GISHA - LEGAL CENTER FOR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT | HAMOKED - CENTER FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL | PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS - ISRAEL | PUBLIC COMMITTEE AGAINST TORTURE IN ISRAEL | RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS | YESH DIN - VOLUNTEERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Soliders confirm Israel's war crimes in Gaza

Dear friends,
the following article was printed in Issue 10 (April 2009) of Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au). It looks at the testimony of Israeli soliders about the war crimes that took place in Gaza.

The article also includes an exclusive interview with Australian human rights activist, Rachel Johnson, who recently spent 5 weeks in Gaza working with the International Solidarity Movement. Rachel gives a first hand account of the aftermath of Israel war in Gaza.

In solidarity, Kim

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Soldiers confirm Israel's war crimes in Gaza
Direct Action, Issue 10 (April 2009)

By Kim Bullimore

Testimony given by Israeli soldiers involved in Israel’s 22-day December-January assault on Gaza to a pre-military preparatory program at the Oranim Academic College in Israel on February 13, and which the March 18 Haaretz daily began printing daily excerpts of, revealed that they repeatedly committed crimes with impunity in Gaza.

One soldier, a squad commander, revealed that his unit was instructed to open fire in densely populated areas without warning. “We were supposed to go in with an armoured personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally meaning “cruel”] to burst through the lower door [of Palestinian houses], to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified — we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?” He said his commanding officers “said this was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled. I didn’t really understand: On the one hand they don’t really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they’re telling us they hadn’t fled so it’s their fault.”


Bombing of Gaza University by Israeli military forces during Israel's Dec-January war on Gaza.


The squad commander said that Palestinian civilians were suppose to be given five minutes’ warning to leave their houses. However, many soldiers under his command challenged this, one soldier saying, “Anyone who’s in there is a terrorist”. According to the squad commander, that sentiment was backed up by other soldiers under his command who said, “We need to murder any person who’s in there ... any person who’s in Gaza is a terrorist”.
‘Do anything you want’

According to the squad commander, the soldiers believed that “inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want”. He went on to say that commanding officers did little to counter this attitude and that it was permissible “to write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can”.


Palestinian children killed during Israel's bombing of Gaza in Dec-January 2009

The squad commander also related that soldiers under his command killed an old woman was who walking down the road. When asked why this happened, he responded, “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: you see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn’t see any weapon.” 

According to another soldier, the descriptions of the squad commander were accurate. A third soldier said that lax rules of conduct within the attacking Israeli army also resulted in the death of many Palestinian civilians. In one incident, Israeli troops occupied a Palestinian house for several days, detaining the family who owned the house. According to the soldier, after a few days an order came through to release the family. However, not all the soldiers were informed “and they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go”. As a result, a mother and her two children were shot dead.

According to Rachel Johnson, an Australian human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the testimony of the soldiers is just the tip of the iceberg. Johnson, who entered Gaza two days after the war concluded, visited dozens of Palestinian villages and cities, taking testimony and writing reports about the attacks on Palestinian civilians. Along with other international human rights activists, she also provided international accompaniment to Palestinian civilians who were still coming under Israeli fire, despite Israel’s supposed unilateral cease-fire.

Johnson told Direct Action that while it was clear that Israeli soldiers were allowed to act with impunity in Gaza, this “was part of a broader sanctioned policy by the Israeli military that sought to deliberately target Palestinian civilian infrastructure and Palestinian civilians”. She noted that the Israeli military wantonly destroyed civilian houses during the three-week bombardment. “Of the thousands of houses that were destroyed during those three weeks of ceaseless bombardment, the vast majority were in villages that were close to the Green Line [the 1949 armistice line] … In these areas that were harshly targeted during the attacks, entire neighbourhoods were wiped out, with the devastation being total”. She recounted that “in Gaza city, locals often now struggle to orientate themselves”, because “buildings were not just bombed, but the area was then bulldozed, altering the landscape utterly”.
Bulldozers used against residents

According to Johnson, Palestinian civilians not only endured aerial bombardment, but many residential areas were either destroyed by military bulldozers or by the placing of “internal explosives by Israeli ground forces”. She told DA: “The huge civilian death toll is largely a result of the fact that houses were destroyed while the residents were still inside”. She said that in the village of Khoza’a, “Israeli bulldozers tried to bury more than 200 of the residents of the village alive, using debris from the bulldozed houses … When they tried to run, they were shot at ... Finally they were able to crawl away and most of them survived.” However, 15 people were killed in Khoza’a on that night. In addition, 150 houses were destroyed. 

Johnson told DA that “the bombing of houses created an intense level of fear and helplessness among the residents of Gaza”. She “often encountered the rhetorical cry ‘Where could we go? There is nowhere that was safe. We would think to go to the school, but they bomb the schools. We would go the mosque, but they bomb the mosques.’”

White phosphorous was used widely in Gaza, Johnson said. Use of munitions containing white phosphorus is illegal in populated areas under international law. It causes severe burns and death because it is easily absorbed into the skin and burns through soft tissue to the bone and vital body organs, resulting in multiple organ failure. Johnson said many Gazan children are suffering from severe white phosphorous burns. “Doctors in Gaza simply don’t know what to do with these burns, which are very common”.


White Phosophorous fired by the Israeli military reigning down on United Nations School in Jabalya, Gaza during Dec-January war.

Johnson noted that the Israeli military also repeatedly attacked medical personnel and hospitals during its war on the civilian population, recounting that a number of her colleagues who were in Gaza during the war were inside hospitals when they were being bombed by the Israel military. Johnson pointed out that the targeting of medical facilities or people seeking medical aid is a war crime under international law. Her testimony is corroborated by the Israeli-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel), which issued a report on March 23 noting that in Gaza the Israeli military repeatedly targeted medical facilities and medical teams in contravention of international law.

The report by PHR-Israel noted that in many cases the Israeli military refused to “give medical assistance to wounded human beings that were within several feet of soldiers” and refused to allow the evacuation of wounded or trapped civilians for days, leaving them in isolated areas with no food, water or medical treatment. PHR-Israel also noted that 16 medical personnel had been killed and another 25 wounded by Israeli fire while performing their duties. In addition, the report stated, “34 medical facilities were hit by the army, eight hospitals and 26 primary care clinics”. This was a “severe violation of directives of international law that forbid attacks on medical personnel and medical facilities”. PHR-Israel said that the actions of the military were “in violation of the army’s code of ethics, the medical code of ethics and basic human values”.


Fire in Gaza cause by Israeli bombing in Dec-Jan war.

Why Israel commits war crimes

From Direct Action: Issue 8: February 2009
http://directaction.org.au/issue8/palestine_why_israel_commits_war_crimes

On January 23, just days after the Israeli military finished its 22-day war against the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military censor banned both the Israeli and international media from publishing the names of, or information about, Israeli military officers who participated in the war. The ban came a result of growing calls for the Israeli government and military to be charged with war crimes.

According to the January 23 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, the Israeli government is fearful that the publication of names, as well as interviews given by Israeli military officers describing the destruction of Palestinian homes or harm inflicted on Palestinian civilians, would be used to prosecute them and the troops under their command.

Israel’s assault on Gaza, which began on December 27, resulted in the deaths of more than 1400 Palestinians. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 90% of those killed were civilians, with at least 400 children. In addition, more than 5300 Palestinians were wounded, many critically.


Israeli bombing of Gaza University


The initial attack by Israeli warplanes took place at 11am Gaza time on December 27, just as Palestinian children were breaking from school. The planes hit more than 40 target areas, killing more than 200 people in 15 minutes. Initial reports in the Israeli and international corporate media carried the Israeli government line that its military had targeted Hamas security compounds and sought to blame Hamas for the civilian deaths, saying that Hamas was using the civilian population as human shields by locating security compounds in civilian areas. The reality, however, is that many of the targets were Palestinian police stations and police training compounds, which like practically all police stations around the world, are located in civilian areas. Dozens of Palestinian police graduates were killed when their graduation ceremony was bombed by Israeli warplanes.

Over the next three weeks, Israeli war planes continued to bomb Gaza’s civilian population, targeting homes, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, government buildings, UN humanitarian facilities, shelters, schools and higher education institutions. At the beginning of third week of its war, Israel launched its ground offensive, sending in hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops.



Palestinian fire fighter reacting the bombing of buildings in Gaza by Israeli military


Palestinian youth fight Israeli military invasion with stones

International human rights observers on the scene reported that there was “no safe space in Gaza”. According to Caoimhe Butterly, a human rights observer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Israel deliberately targeted a UN Relief and Workers Agency school in Beit Lahiya, killing young children. Ewa Jasiewicz, another human rights activist with the ISM, described the attack as a war crime, reporting that despite there being no Palestinian resistance in the area, the UN school was repeatedly hit with white phosphorous.

Under the Geneva Convention on Conventional Weapons, both the targeting of civilian infrastructure, such as schools, and the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorous against humans is illegal. White phosphorus causes severe burns and death, because it is easily absorbed into the skin and burns through soft tissue (to the bone) and body organs such as the liver, kidney and heart, resulting in multiple organ failure.

This is not the first time Israel has used white phosphorous in war. On October 22, 2006, the Associated Press quoted Israeli cabinet minister, Jacob Edery, speaking on behalf of then Israeli defence minister Amir Peretz, as saying that during Israel’s 2006 war against Lebanon, which killed at least 1000 civilians, “the Israeli army made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground”.
Amnesty International report

On January 19, one day after the conclusion of Israel’s war on Gaza, Amnesty International issued a report stating that its fact-finding team, which included weapons experts, had found lumps of still smouldering white phosphorous in Gaza City. According to the report, the Israeli military had used the incendiary weapon “in densely populated civilian residential areas”, and “streets and alleyways [were] littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorous including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army”. The places worst affected by the use of the illegal weapon were the UN compound and the al Quds hospital in Gaza City. Donatella Rovera, a member of the four-person Amnesty team in Gaza, noted that the extensive use of white phosphorous by Israel was indiscriminate.

Throughout the three-week war UN officials, along with human rights agencies, repeatedly called for investigations into whether Israel was committing war crimes. On January 9, after Israel shelled a UN school, killing 40 children sheltering there, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that “incidents such as this must be investigated because they display elements of what could constitute war crimes”. In an interview with Reuters news agency, Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge from South Africa, noted there was an international obligation on the part of soldiers “to protect civilians, not to kill civilians indiscriminately” and to “make sure that they help the wounded”.

According to Antony Dworkin, the executive director of the Crimes of War Project for the European Council on Foreign Relations, although Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court, it is still possible for Israeli officers, troops and officials to face charges of war crimes.
Genocide


Palestinian doctor interviewed on Israeli TV collapses after his three daughters were killed by the Israeli military bombing


Palestinian children killed as a result of Israel's bombardment

Dr Fouad Riad, former judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for War Crimes (ICTWC) and a professor of international law at Cairo University, in an interview on January 22 with the Egyptian weekly Al Ahram, noted that Israel can be held accountable for its actions in Gaza via the laws of “universal jurisdiction” relating to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Riad noted that such laws allow a state to try crimes committed outside its borders, regardless of the nationality or country of residence of the alleged criminal.

Riad, who ruled, along with other ICTWC judges, that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide, noted that genocide is the “crime of crimes”. According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This can include 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; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Riad stated that in his opinion Israel had “deliberately killed Palestinian children” and that this had been with the aim of exterminating Palestinians. Riad, however, noted that the acts of genocide and war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza were not something new and that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza should be viewed within the historical context of both Zionist ideology and the Zionist occupation of Palestine since 1948.


Ethnic cleansing

Zionism arose in reaction to the waves of anti-Jewish pogroms and anti-Semitism that spread through central Europe in the late 19th century. At the time, a small section of the European Jewish middle class began to subscribe to the idea that anti-Semitism was not a result of historical developments within capitalism but an inevitable occurrence as long as Jews lived among non-Jews, and that it was therefore necessary to establish an independent state for Jews.

However, in order to establish a Jewish state, it was necessary for the Zionists to ethnically cleanse the inhabitants of any land they wished to colonise, something that was noted by the founding father of Israel, Theodor Herzl, and other leaders of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionist movement attempted to buy up Palestinian land in the first part of the 20th century, it soon became clear that very few Palestinians were keen to sell their homeland. As a result, the Zionists began to plan the expulsion of the Palestinian population.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, prior to the establishment of the Zionist State of Israel in 1948, a series of plans had been developed by the Zionist leadership in preparation for a military offensive against the Palestinian civilian population. Pappe noted in his 2007 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine that one of the plans, known as Plan C, was to kill the Palestinian political leadership as well as Palestinian officials, to kill Palestinian “inciters” and their financial supporters, to damage Palestinian infrastructure including transportation, water wells, mills, meeting places and clubs, and to destroy Palestinian livelihoods. However, within a few months the Zionist leadership developed a new plan known as Plan D or Plan Dalet, which not only incorporated the aims of Plan C but also called for the “systematic and total expulsion [of Palestinians] from their homeland”.


Manshiyya district in Jaffa after Zionist terror gang, the Irgun, bombed the district in April 1948, three weeks before Israel was declared a state.


Grand Saraya district in Jaffa after Zionist terror gang, the Irgun, bombed the neighbourhood in April 1948, three weeks before Israel was declared a state.

In 1947, just months before the official partition of Palestine between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state by the UN General Assembly, the Zionist leaders began preparations to put Plan Dalet into practice and to go to war to “cleanse” Palestine of Palestinians. Under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, who was to become the first prime minister of Israel, Jewish paramilitary forces and militias, such as the Hagana, Irgun and Stern Gang, began systematic attacks on Palestinian villages and cities, terrorising and massacring hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinian civilians between December 1947 and April 1948. In the wake of these terror attacks, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, never to be allowed to return.

In an article published on January 2 on the Electronic Intifada website about Israel’s war on Gaza, Pappe drew the link between Zionist ideology, the massacres that took place in 1947-48, Israel’s wars of aggression against both Palestinians and other Arab nations over the last 60 years and the current massacres in Gaza. He wrote: “Zionism is an ideology that endorses ethnic cleansing, occupation and now massive massacres.”

Pappe went on to note that Zionism is similar to the “apartheid ideology” of South Africa and has allowed “all Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them”. Pappe noted “this may have altered from period to period and location to location”, but Zionism is responsible for “the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of the Palestinians in Israel during the days of the military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre of Gaza”.
US backing


Boycott Israeli apartheid demonstration


Boycott Israeli apartheid demonstration at Soccer match in England.


The Zionist regime’s ethnic cleansing, wars of aggression and the current massacre in Gaza have had the consistent backing of successive US administrations. Since World War II, the US imperialist rulers have sought to control the vast energy reserves (oil and natural gas) that exist in the Middle East. Israel has become US imperialism’s chief ally in the region, the US-Israel alliance being based on shared political interests — opposition to any form of Arab radicalism that would threaten imperialist economic domination of the region.

With the inauguration of Barak Obama as US president, many journalists, commentators and ordinary people have expressed hope Washington’s policy in relation to Israel and Palestine will be reassessed. However, statements by Obama during his election campaign and his initial actions as president reveal that he has no intention of changing US policy.

Obama not only supported the undermining of the Palestinian democratic elections (supporting the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections), but also supported Israel’s war in Lebanon in 2006, as well as Israel’s 18-month siege of Gaza. Obama has announced that Washington will continue to protect Israel’s “right” to carry out military aggression in the name of “security”.

The Obama administration will also continue to aid Israel’s war efforts to the tune of US$33 billion over the next 10 years. As Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, noted on November 18: “Obama has expressed no support for Palestinian ‘rights’ and has never publicly used the type of effusive emotional language identifying with Palestinian aspirations as he does regarding the Israelis. While repeatedly castigating Palestinians, he has been uncritical of Israel.” Abunimah went on to note that “Obama’s positions are remarkable only for their conformity with long-standing US policies”.

In order not to pressure or embarrass the new US president, Israel ceased its all-out offensive against Gaza two days before Obama was sworn in on January 20. Since taking office, Obama has appointed a former senator, George Mitchell, as the US “peace” envoy to the Middle East. However, US State Department officials have made it clear that Washington has no intention of holding Israel accountable for its war crimes in Gaza, which included not only mass murder but also the complete devastation of the region’s civilian infrastructure.

According to UN humanitarian workers, more than 100,000 Gaza residents have been displaced from their homes, Israeli bombing has destroyed more than 5000 buildings and partially destroyed 20,000. Hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid will be needed just to help the people of Gaza in the first stages of rebuilding.

In remarks made to State Department officials on January 22, Obama said: “I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who’ve faced suffocating poverty for far too long.”

However, the primary concern of the Obama administration is not to aid the occupied Palestinian people. It is to bolster Israel and, as Obama told State Department officials, to establish a “credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime” along the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent the re-arming of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters. While Obama and Mitchell have announced that they will seek to have Gaza’s borders reopened, this will be contingent on installation of the US-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority as Israel’s proxy in the Gaza. In his January 22 remarks, Obama said: “Gaza’s border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating. Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor’s conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.”

Despite the devastation caused by Israel’s war, its objectives were not achieved. In launching its war of aggression, Israeli leaders had stated that their primary aim was to crush Hamas, to stop Palestinian rocket fire into Israel and to revive Israel’s power of military deterrence. However, throughout the war and in response to Israel’s repeated violation of its unilaterally declared ceasefire, Palestinians have continued to wage armed resistance against the Zionist forces occupying their national homeland.

Letter from Gaza

Dear friends,

Two days ago, R, a close friend and a wonderful fellow international activist from Australia, who I worked with in 2007/2008 in the Occupied West Bank, managed to make it into Gaza. R spent several days waiting at the border waiting to get in before being allowed through.

With her permission, I am sending out an edited version of the email she send myself and her other friends to let us all know she was okay. In it, R, describes the devastation of Gaza and ongoing assaults taking place despite the “ceasefire” supposedly being in place.

In solidarity,
Kim

***
Letter from Gaza
From R

.... Since then, I've mostly been in Rafah and Khan Younis - following up on stories of devastation and violations of the ceasefire.

It has been a strange time to enter Gaza. There is so much devastation mixed with so much everyday life. Most people just trying to get on with their lives, whilst others sit on the piles of sand and rubble that were once their houses, with nowhere else to go. Re-arranging the rubble to make better seats. "Most days we just sit here in the sun", explained a woman from the Samouni family - who have received a lot of media attention since 29 members of the same family were killed as their houses were destroyed with people inside, but little material assistance. "We don't want to have to go to a neighbour's house. We want our own house".

And whilst many people seem to be coping in a way that is unfathomable to me, recounting their stories for all the journalists and human rights workers who come round, there is so much grief and anger, that, as a foreigner, I magnetise. Not that they are angry with me, but, as a representative of the outside world, which mostly stood by while the Israeli government dealt out their deadly "education" to the Palestnian civilians (educating them not to vote for Hamas; not to allow anyone in their community to resist Israel's occupation and siege), I am an easy outlet for them.

Also, I am witness, apparently, to a level of goods and services that haven't been seen in Gaza for a long time. There are fresh fruits in the markets - Israeli and expensive, but accessible. There is electricity a lot of the time in the places I have been. And water, whilst unsafe to drink from the taps, at least runs. Life seems strangely normal.



It was only last night that I realised this, when visiting the family of a young farm worker who was shot in the neck and killed by Israeli snipers from across the Green Line, whilst he was picking parsley and spinach for a meagre sum of 20 shekels ($6) a day. His mother was trying to explain to us the hardship of their lives. How his father is sick and paralysed. How he has two small children and a young wife left behind. How they have no source of income now. How the one year old baby doesn't crawl properly because they can't feed it well enough. How they had electricity that day, but before that, they were cooking on fires and using kerosene lamps.

This visit came straight after we had been in the village where Anwar was killed - Al Farahin. There it was explained that villagers are drowning economically, as they can't go to their lands near the Green Line. That they've been shot at everyday since the ceasefire. That their radishes are dying from lack of water; that their chickens and pigeons are already dead because it's been so long since they could go to feed them. And even this is not as bad as it was, explained one woman. "We were ready to start eating dirt, and then they stopped the bombing".



A lot of the precarity of the situation here only became real for me when we returned to Rafah last night, to the house that I have been staying in. There was no electricity - hadn't been since the afternoon. And then at 2am, there was a renewed airstrike by the border - about 1 km from here. It sounded much closer. It was only really then that I viscerally understood the oft-repeated cry of so many in Gaza: "Where could we go? There is nowhere that is safe. We would think to go to the school, but they bomb the schools. We would go to the mosque, but they bomb the mosques".

I know a lot of you have expressed worry over my well-being since the war on Gaza started, and were quite relieved to find out I was in the West Bank where there was a relative level of calm. I hope my coming here doesn't cause too much concern. My plan is to be here for ----, before heading to -----, a plan that involves me leaving here in one piece.

Many of you will (hopefully) be pleased to know that this plan also involves me coming home in ----- . I look forward to seeing everyone.

Love love love
R

500 Citizens of Sderot Contradict the Israeli Government

Dear friends,
please find below an very telling article, which contradicts the propaganda put out by the Israeli state as to the reason why they needed to go to war and kill almost 1500 Palestinians, 90% who were civilians, including almost 500 children and over 100 women.

in solidarity, Kim

500 Citzens of Sderot Contradict the Israeli Government
By Janine Roberts
www.palestinechronicle.com

Much has been made of Hamas' reported failure to honour last year's truce. But, an extraordinary correspondence between Jewish residents of the much-rocketed town of Sderot, nearby kibbutz, and the Palestinians living within sight in the Gaza strip paints a very different picture of that truce from that repeatedly given by the Israeli government.

Barrack Obama was taken to Sderot last year to show him the effects of rocketing. He remarked on how Israeli towns looked like American from the air and offered his full support to the town’s citizens, promising to invite its representatives to the White House soon after taking office. At the time in mid-July Sderot was safe to visit. There had been no casualties from rockets since the ceasefire started 4 weeks earlier.

On July 12th 2008, a Gaza resident, using the pseudonym of “Peaceman,” emailed friends in Sderot to say. “The situation is calm … and this make people happy a lot, because there are no dead and wounded [but] the border is still closed… I myself have been waiting two years to go to Europe to study.’ Nevertheless ‘we have now a golden opportunity to try to build a new world without violence.’

His friends replied to say how much better it was now the rockets had stopped. They told how they cycled along the Gaza borders and were greeted with waves by Gaza residents. They revelled in the freedom from danger. A joint children’s holiday was planned and greetings cards exchanged. (See samples at end)

One such message read “I live with my family in Kibbutz Beeri, close enough to Gaza to see the houses and the sea. On weekends I ride my bike with my husband through the fields along the border … I hope the violence will come to an end and the Palestinian State will be established with peace between our peoples and peace within each of our countries between the extremists on each side. ”

Sderot is built on the lands of Najd, a Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by Jewish militia in 1948. Its residents probably fled into the Gaza strip. Most of Gaza’s population is descended from such refugees. However, this history was not allowed to prevent this growing friendship – nor were the deaths of people from both towns in the months preceding the ceasefire.

The ceasefire was still intact months after Obama’s visit. In October 2008 an Israeli in Sderot, using the pseudonym “Hopeman,” emailed his friend in Gaza to say: “We have lived for almost 5 months in a ceasefire situation. On my side of the border, things returned to normal and we once again felt safe. Kids played freely outdoors, streets filled once again with people, and the constant fear of the rocket alerts disappeared. My kids went to sleep in their room again, instead of the safe room, and I could walk out to the fields surrounding the town without the fear of being out in the open with nowhere to hide.”

On October 9th an Israeli newspaper, the Star, headlined: ‘Israeli town celebrates end to daily rocket fire. It reported: “Besieged residents of Sderot were relieved by the quiet start to Yom Kippur, thanks to the ceasefire with Hamas …Young boys horsed around on their bicycles, families hurried to make last-minute purchases at the downtown supermarket, and food stands did a steady business in shawarma and beer.”

“Everything is different," exulted Jasmine Aboukrat, 25, sales clerk at the Cochovit Dress Shop near Hagofer St, "People go out more." “Now you see all the children outdoors, playing," said David Coyne, 38, who owns a candy shop in the centre of town. "It's secure.”

The paper explained: “For seven years, local residents barely went out at all. But, late last June, under Egyptian mediation, the Israeli government reached a ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Since then, with only a few violations, the rocket salvoes from Gaza have stopped.”

Sderot is “a rambling community of boxy bungalows and low-rise apartment blocks. interspersed by palm, cypress and eucalyptus trees” with a library with nearly as many books in Russian as Hebrew, reflecting its recent arrivals. Its people “say they are hugely pleased with the new air of tranquillity that now permeates their town.”

The newspaper also reported that there were no more “punitive Israeli military incursions into the neighbouring strip – attacks that had been a frequent and deadly feature of Palestinian existence prior to the laying down of arms in June.”

But Hopeman emailed from Sderok: “During this time I have been in touch with many friends of mine in Gaza, and from them I heard a very dark and troubling reality…The siege Israel had imposed on them continues. They have many power shortages and very little fuel and cooking gas.”

On the 4th November, the day when Americans were watching the results of the Presidential election, the Israeli army broke the ceasefire by raiding the strip. Six Palestinians were killed. Next day the Palestinians reacted as could be expected by sending a shower of rockets and Israel immediately slashed supplies of medicine, fuel, food, cooking gas for the 1.5 million people of Gaza. The number of truckloads fell from October’s daily average of 123 trucks to less than 5 trucks. Some families were reduced to easting bread made from animal feed. Others were reduced to eating grass.

An email was sent: “Peace Man and I talk every day. We support each other and worry for each other’s well being. I am in contact with others in Gaza and share my situation while hearing of theirs. Much fear and pain on both sides. Once again we should all call to end the violence, open the siege, start talking and bring back hope to us, civilians on both sides, pawns in the unbearable senseless political game.”

Then Hamas told Israel that a renewed ceasefire must be accompanied by an end to the increasingly cruel siege, but Israel refused to accept this.

The friends “realized that the situation was about to deteriorate into total chaos” said Arik Yalin, 43, of Sderot, the spokesman for this Israeli-Arab group. They put up a website that stated: “Up until now we have cried, called, demonstrated, and asked our leaders to do something about this insane reality in which we live. The leaders have tried every possible idea that involves violence and military force – with no success at all.

“We shoot at them and they shoot at us. We retaliate and they strike back.

“This is an endless and vicious cycle.

“Today we say: ENOUGH! It is our turn to take our destiny into our own hands and to ACT to stop the cycle of bloodshed.”

They sent a petition to the Israeli Government in the name of their group; ‘Kol Acher’ (The Other Voice). Five hundred citizens of Sderot signed it as well as another 1300 Israeli and Palestinian citizens. It read:

“Kol Acher from Sderot and the communities around Gaza calls on the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister to act urgently to restore calm in the area.

“The ceasefire changed the lives of the people of Sderot, Ashkelon and the region beyond recognition, allowing all of us to experience again a life that is more normal and sane. The continuation of this calm is essential and critical to the residents of the region from every possible aspect: physical, mental, spiritual and economic.

“Another round of escalation may break our already brittle spirit, and take us all to another round of self-destruction and pointless bloodshed. It is not certain that we will survive. And you must be aware of that, if you indeed care about the residents of this area. We’ve been through this movie too many years–and results speak for themselves: feeling trapped, abandonment, and hopelessness for our children and us!

“On the other side of the border live a million and a half Palestinians under unbearable conditions, and most of them want, like we do, calm and the opportunity of a future for themselves and their families.

“We live in the feeling that you have wasted that period of calm, instead of using it to advance understandings and begin negotiations, as well as for fortifying the houses of residents as promised.

“We call on the Prime Minister and the Defence minister not to listen to the voices of incitement and do everything they can to avoid another round of escalation, to secure the continuation of the calm and to work...towards direct or indirect negotiations with the Palestinian leadership in Gaza in order to reach long term understandings.

“We prefer a cold war without a single rocket to a hot war with dozens of victims and innocent fatalities on both sides.

“We ask you to offer us the possibility of political arrangement and hope and not an endless cycle of blood.”

Their petition had no effect. On December 27th, while politicians in the West were on holiday and the US had a lame duck President in his final weeks of office, Israel launched a savage assault.

That same day the Israeli Foreign Ministry changed its website, removing charts giving the numbers of rockets and mortars fired every month from the Gaza strip, perhaps because they revealed the near-total cessation of fire during the truce.


The removed Israeli government graph: 'Monthly distribution of rockets hits.'

These charts were based on statistics supplied by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center and provide striking evidence of Hamas’ good faith. Contrary to government statements made repeatedly since then, Israeli government statistics show Hamas kept the ceasefire.

Together with a similar graph for mortar fire, these reveal that the total number of rocket and mortar attacks launched from Gaza fell from over a hundred a month to just 12 in all from the start of July to the end of October. The Ministry has replaced these graphs with one that is harder to interpret. It claims ‘227 rockets were fired during the lull in the fighting’ but notes that 203 of these were fired after November 4th, the date when Israel broke the ceasefire. This is still on the Government website.

Credit for the 12 rockets fired during the ceasefire were reportedly claimed by Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad or the "Badr Forces.’ Hamas condemned them.

It is worth going back to what else Obama said in Sderot: “I will not wait until a few years into my term or my second term if I'm elected, in order to get the process moving. I think we have a window right now that needs to be taken advantage of. I think you've got a set of moderate Palestinian leaders who are interested. I think the Israeli people are interested in moving this process along. But I also think there's a population on both sides that is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. And where there's hopelessness and despair that can often turn in a bad direction.”

Obama on January 11th said he would be ready to do all he can to bring peace from the day he takes office. But – has Obama heard these voices of Sderot? I doubt he did when he went to their town, but, if he did, then he will know that the Israeli government is wrong to claim that the only way they can stop the rockets is by physically destroying Hamas with all the slaughter this entails.

Perhaps Obama should also take advice, not already doing so, from the former UK Ambassador to Israel, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. January 9, 2009 he unhesitatingly said during a BBC interview: “Hamas is not a terrorist organisation,” adding he knows from talking to them that they are focussed on ending the decades of military occupation. He also affirmed; “Israel broke the truce by its actions on 4th November.”'

Perhaps Obama should also listen to the Catholic priest, Fr. Latham, who preached in Bethlehem on Sunday 4th January, saying the Palestinians are being “crucified everyday.”

Note:

Find examples of the post cards sent from Sderot to Gaza Strip.
http://picasaweb.google.com/othervoice.org/EidUlFiterRoshHashanaGreetingsFromSderotRegionToGaza#

- Janine Roberts has written for many major Australian newspapers and both the Independent and Financial Times in the UK. Her investigative films have appeared on the PBS network in the USA and on the BBC and Australian television. She was invited to testify at a US Congressional Hearing on Human rights in Africa and the blood diamond trade. Her latest investigative books are “Glitter and Greed” and the “Fear of the Invisible.” She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact her at: jan@janineroberts.com, or visit her blog: www.speakingloudly.blogspot.com.

Israel's war on civilans

Video report from CBS



Video report from BBC



ISM report on first day of bombing, 27 December

War Crimes: From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza

16 September, 2007

Today marks 25 years. Twenty-five years since 3500 unarmed men, women and children were brutalised and massacred in cold blood in Lebanon in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The massacre was carried out over three days in 1982 from September 16 to September 18 by the rightwing Lebanese Christian milita, the Phlangists, under the direction of the Israeli Defence Force headed by Ariel Sharon.

In the wake of the Nakba (the catastrophe) - the 1948 partition of their homeland - and the subsequent invasion and occupation of what was left of it in 1967, Palestinian refugees fled in fear of their lives to safety in Lebanon. It was in the refugees camps that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) grew up, as the Palestinians - dispossessed, forgotten and abandoned by the world -no longer were content to remain silent. Instead, like so many other “un-people”, they began to fight back and demand not only the restoration of their homeland but justice and Al Awada (return).

In 1982, supposedly in retaliation for the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, Israel invade Lebanon. The assassination attempt, however, was not carried out by Arafat’s PLO but by a rival militant group. Israel, who wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon, used the attempted assassination to launch an invasion supposedly in the name of destroying the PLO. On 6 June 1982, Israel began its invasion and occupation of Lebanon, sending in more than 60,000 troops.

On September 14, Bashir Gemayel, the President of Lebanon and leader of Kataeb - the right-wing Christian nationalist party, known as the Phalange - was assassinated. The assassination was carried out by a member of the Syrian Nationalist Party, however, Israel’s Defense Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, decided to use the assassination attempt to make a push to occupy West Beirut.

On September 15, the Israeli occupying force surrounded the twin refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) command stationing itself in a number of highrise buildings, allowing them a panoramic view of the two camps for the next three days. From September 15 through to September 16, Israel carried out non-stop shelling of the two camps, which was home to 20,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees. On the afternoon of September 16, 150 Christian Phalangists, trained by and under the direction and control of the Israeli forces, entered the camps. The Israeli military cordoned off the camps ensuring no-one could escape. For the next 40 hours, with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Israel military, the Phalangist forces tortured, brutalised, raped and massacred the unarmed inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila.

On September 18, the first western journalists were able enter the camps. They saw first hand the tortured and mutilated bodies of the refugees. Robert Fisk, one of the first foreign journalists to enter Sabra and Shatila wrote that what he and his fellow journalists found what could only described as “a war crime”

In his book, Pity the Nation, Fisk recalled that:

“Jenkins and Tveit [fellow journalists] were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was "Jesus Christ" over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. But there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey”.

Fisk went on to recounted how:

“Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines”.

“The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist a Swiss watch recorded the correct time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner”.

“On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead”.

“Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror”.

According to Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, in his investigative article, Sabra and Shatila: an inquiry into a massacre, in the days after the massacre, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Lebanese officials had counted and buried at 762 bodies in state graves and that 1200 other bodies were claimed by their families and buried in private graves. However, Kapeliouk noted that “there are three other categories of victims which must be added to the 2000 bodies recovered, buried and cremated after the massacre”.

These included (1) those who had been buried by the Phalangists in mass graves, which the Lebanese authorities prevented anyone from unearthing; (2) others who were buried in the ruins of 200 destroyed houses and whose bodies were unable to be recovered “because of the advance decomposition of the corpses” and; (3) up to 2000 other camp inhabitants had been taken alive to an unknown destination, many never to return (many of their bodies were later found on roadsides leading to the south of Lebanon). According to Kapeliouk, “if all these categories were added together, the number of victims reaches approximately 3000 people. Between 3,000-3,500 men, women and children were massacred within 48 hours between September 16 and 18, 1982”.

The massacre shocked the world. Israel’s Prime Minister Menachim Begin was forced to resign. In December 1982, the UN declared the massacre to be an act of genocide (despite the fact that all Western democracies abstained on the vote). An Israeli judicial commission found that the Israeli military had abandon its duty of care and that Ariel Sharon was “personally responsible” for the massacre. However, neither Sharon or any member of the Israeli military or the Christian Phalange were every punished for the war crimes they facilitated and carried out. In 2001, the Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon became the Prime Minister of Israel.

In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk asked in relation to Sabra and Shatila, “When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel’s friends rather than Israel's enemies?

In response to his own rhetorical questions, Fisk wrote that he suspected that the only reason that there was “debate” around whether or not Sabra and Shatila was a “massacre” was because “in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians”. Fisk noted that, however, “If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre”.

Twenty-five years after Sabra and Shatila, Fisk’s observation continues to ring true. The Palestinian people, in the eyes of the western media and many so-called “western democracies”, continue to remain what British historian Mark Curtis calls a “un-people”. According to Curtis, “un-people” are those whose lives are deemed worthless and/or expendable. They are “the modern day equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation”.

The concept of Un-people is central, notes Australian journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, to the way the Palestinians (and Arabs and Muslim) are viewed by the Western world and how their plight and the war crimes against them are ignored by a silent media and international community.

As an occupied people, the Palestinian people should be protected by 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention - a convention that Israel is a signatory too. However, since 1967, Israel has repeatedly violated every single one of these articles by indiscriminately shelling Palestinian civilian residential areas (using warplanes, tanks and machine guns), by using Palestinian civilians as human shields during military operations, by transferring sections of the Israeli civilian population into the occupied territories (ie. illegal settlers), by forcibly deporting and transferring sections of the Palestinian population - both in and out of the Palestinian occupied territories, by building illegal settlements, by carrying out arbitrary arrests and detention, by jailing Palestinians without trail, by refusing to allow Palestinian civilians to access medical and educational facilities, by carrying out extra-judicial executions, by restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinians via checkpoints, road blocks, curfews and closures.

In 2006 alone, Israel was accused repeatedly by international and Israeli human rights monitoring groups of violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and committing war crimes. In June 2006, Israel began– once again – bombarding the Gaza Strip as part of Operation Summer Rain. According to Amnesty International, deliberate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip violated international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes. On June 9, Israel’s bombing of civilian areas resulted in 7 members of the Ghalia family, including 5 children and their parents, being killed as they picnicked on the beach in Gaza. Over the next three months, Israel would continue to bombard the Gaza, killing more than 200 Palestinian civilians - a quarter of them children.

In November, after a brief lull, Israel began bombing the Gaza again as part of their Autumn Clouds military operation. In the first 48 hours, Israeli’s occupation forces killed 70 Palestinian civilians. On November 8, Israel shelled the Palestinian city of Beit Hanoun, killing 18 civilians, including 7 children - all from the Athamna family. Fifty other civilians were wounded. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories accused Israel of carrying out a war crime. By the end of November, as part of Autumn Clouds, Israel had killed more than 200 Palestinians; half of those killed were women and children.

In August 2007, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) noted that since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, more than 3354 unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza. According to the PCHR, of those killed, 23% or 788 were children. During the same period, PCHR noting that 24,350 Palestinian civilians were wounded by the IOF.

There has been little outcry or outrage, however, by the world media who salivate at every facet of Paris Hilton or Britney Spear’s inane lives. There was little outcry or condemnation from the leaders of the so-called “free world”, as the Israeli Zionist state systematically violated (and continues to violate) the Fourth Geneva Convention and uses state terrorism to kill thousands of unarmed civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Why? Because in Gaza, as in Beirut, the victims were Palestinian – a “un-people” whose lives are expendable and not as worthy as other human beings. From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza and the West Bank today, the Israeli state and its occupation forces have continued to violate the political, civil, economic, social, cultural and human rights of the Palestinian people with impunity. They have been encouraged in this by the leaders of the “free world” who have looked on in silence, turning a blind eye to the war crimes being carried out by the Israeli state.

Despite the odds, the repression and Israel’s state terror, however, the Palestinian people refuse to be a “un-people” or to give up their struggle. Why? Because in the words of the late Palestinian academic, Edward Said, “it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights”

On the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, we remember the dead. But we also remember the living and stand in solidarity with their struggle for justice and equality and to end the brutal Israeli occupation.


Sabra and Shatila: inquiry into a massacre by Amnon Kapeliouk can be read at: www.geocities.com/indictsharon/Kapeliouk.doc