As Israel continues its massive military aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has already cost the lives of more than 2,000 Palestinians, the international condemnation of the atrocities committed by the Tel Aviv regime and its cruel massacre of the unarmed citizens of the besieged Gaza grows steadily.

Just recently, a group of Jewish scholars, most of whom were born in the Occupied Territories and teaching at the Israeli universities, have signed a petition, calling on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to stop its deadly incursion into the coastal territory.

A prominent anti-Zionist Israeli historian and intellectual, who is best known for his outspoken criticism of the Israeli government and his opposition to the occupation of Palestinian territories, believes that the Western mainstream media are giving a lopsided and unfair coverage to the war on Gaza, which has many different reasons, including the influence of the Israeli lobby and the fear of these media outlets of being branded anti-Semitist.

In an exclusive interview with Tehran Times, Prof. Ilan Pappé said that Zionism has reduced Judaism “into a narrow minded ethno-nationalism that depended on the success of a colonialist project.”

Ilan Pappé is a political activist, historian and professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, Britain. He is also the director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. From 1984 to 2007, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. A former member of Israel’s Hadash Party, he was the party’s candidate for the parliament (Knesset) elections in 1996 and 1999. In 2012, he published the book “The Bureaucracy of Evil: The History of the Israeli Occupation” that was released by the Oneworld Publications.

Prof. Pappé responded to our questions on the recent Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip and the historical, legal aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The following is the text of the interview.

Q: It was reported that Israel launched its military incursion into the Gaza Strip after Hamas allegedly kidnapped and killed three young Israeli settlers. So far, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered in the month-long conflict. Do you consider this mass killing in such a broad extent, and the obliteration of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip a logical, proportionate and justifiable response to the kidnapping of three Israeli citizens, while there isn’t still reliable evidence showing that the abduction was done by Hamas?

A: No, of course not and the destruction of Gaza is not really a retaliation to the abduction and killing of the three settlers. The incident was a pretext for implementing a policy that was formulated long time ago towards the Gaza Strip; a geopolitical area of Palestine for which Israel has no clear policy. It manages, at least in its own eyes, quite successfully, the rest – 98 percent – of Palestine. It imposes harsh restrictions on the Palestinian minority inside Israel and colonial rule in the West Bank. These policies were also tried in the Gaza Strip but it was a risk to have settlers there and it was too full of refugees for to be seriously considered part of Israel. So it was ‘ghettoized’ with the hope that it would be domiciled in such a way. But Gaza resists and the only way Israel deems possible to react to this, is to use all its military might to crash that rebellion.

Q: Can we interpret the Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip as an effort to ruin the newly-formed unity government in Palestine? Is Israel trying to delegitimize Hamas in the eyes of the people of Gaza Strip who voted unanimously in the 2006 legislative election to bring it to power, and to pretend that Hamas is not capable of providing security and welfare for them?

A: Indeed, there is also a more immediate reason for the particular timing of this assault. The Fatah-Hamas unity government and the Palestinian Authority decision to replace the ‘peace process’ with an appeal to international organizations endangers, in the eyes of the Israelis, their control over the West Bank. So the wish was for destroying Hamas politically in the West Bank and militarily in the Gaza Strip.

Q: It seems that a growing number of Israeli academicians, intellectuals, journalists and ordinary citizens on the streets are turning frustrated at the policies of Israel and its brutalization of the Palestinian citizens. I just read that a large group of Israeli university professors have signed a petition, calling on Tel Aviv to cease its military operations against the civilian population in Gaza. So, we see an emerging trend in opposition to the Israeli policies. What’s your take on that?

A: I would not exaggerate the number of dissenting voices inside Israel. There are of course such voices, but the society at large, 87 percent according to one poll, is not only behind the government’s policy in Gaza, but even demand a more brutal action over there. So I think we cannot rest our hopes for an end to the violence in Palestine on a change from within Israel. Only strong pressure from the outside can produce such a result.

Q: Do you think it’s possible to stop Israel from intensifying its assault on the Gaza Strip and violating the international law? Israel has hasn’t paid any attention to the UN bodies’ condemnations and calls for the cessation of hostilities. So, it sounds like international law doesn’t have any mechanism for obligating Israel to abide by its commitments as an occupying power under the international law. What do you make of it?

A: The only way of stopping Israel is adopting towards it the same attitude adopted against South Africa at the time of Apartheid.  For this to be effective, one would have hoped to see a change in the American position. This is not likely to take place soon. But also in the case of South Africa, the American position was an obstacle for an effective action against South Africa. The fall of the Soviet Union convinced the Americans that South Africa was not needed any more in the cold war. So something similar has to occur to change American positions. But in the meantime it is important to build the solidarity movement with the Palestinians on the basis of human and civil rights’ agenda.

Q: All of those Israeli politicians, diplomats, intellectuals and academicians who break the wall of silence and level some criticisms against the discriminatory practices and policies of the Israeli government with regards to the Palestinian people are immediately defamed as anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. Have you ever faced such charges? What’s your perspective on those who want to officially sanction any criticism of Israel under this pretext and obstruct the way to a meaningful dialog on what’s happening in that sensitive region of the world?

A: Yes a lot. Self-hating Jew is a common reference to me. But I have no problem with my Jewish identity. My conflict is with Zionism. I think Zionism reduced Judaism into a narrow minded ethno-nationalism that depended on the success of a colonialist project. This brought more misery to Jews around the world, rather than helping them to defeat anti-Semitism. I think now that the Jews are already a third generation in Palestine, they can be recognized as a separate ethnic group provided they are willing to share the land with the indigenous people and not strive to dispossess them.

Q: The United States government has offered its unconditional and unrestrained support to the Israeli government in its deadly operations in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Washington is the largest financial and military benefactor to Israel. Israel will never be held accountable if this approach continues. Does it mean that Israel, with its criminal record of murdering the Palestinians would always remain immune to accountability before the international community?

A: I think one should not take a deterministic view on this. First of all, the United States was not always pro-Israeli and the American public is not the same as its political elites. In fact, there is a far more significant change in the attitude towards Israel among young American, including many Jews, than in Israel. Secondly, America’s ability to impact world politics has seriously diminished. States such as Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and China (the BRICS countries) have more influence than ever before. If they are recruited to the campaign to change the reality on the ground in Palestine, then there is a good chance for change and peace.

Q: In a September 2006 article, you referred to the Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip as an incremental genocide, and reiterated that its ongoing military assault on the caged people of Gaza represents the continuation of that lethal policy. Do you believe that Israel is carrying out a project of ethnic cleansing and is trying to kill as many Palestinians as possible so as to alter and distort the demographics of the region and realize its plan for establishing the Greater Israel?

A: I think it is a bit more nuanced. The Zionist project from its very beginning was having as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it possible. The means for achieving it have changed with time. In 1948, the major effort to achieve it was attempted when half of the country’s indigenous people were expelled. More sophisticated means were used afterwards; military rule, discriminatory legislation and small scale ethnic cleansing operations. In Gaza all these means proved useless and therefore the idea was to ghettoize Gaza and hope that this would separate its people from Palestine. But when they resisted the reaction became genocidal.

Q: It’s understandable why the Israeli media are giving a lopsided and biased coverage to the war that Netanyahu and his entourage have inflicted on the empty-handed Palestinians. But why do the Western mainstream media, most of the times proudly boasting of their adherence to the codes of ethics and professionalism, follow the same path and don’t talk the truth and present the realities of this unjust carnage that is playing out in the beleaguered Gaza Strip?

A: An excellent question. There is no good reason for this biased Western coverage. I think it differs in explanation for different parts of the West. In the United State, there is a strong pro-Zionist, Jewish and Christian presence in the media which reflect both AIPAC and the Christian Zionist Churches’ point of view on Israel. The more liberal press, especially the New York Times, slowly become more critical on Israel but still has not walked the extra mile, maybe because of timidity. In Europe, I think the fear of being accused of anti-Semitism is still very strong, as well as financial consideration connected to pro-Zionist corporations. So they adopted the paradigm of balance and parity which continues to provide Israel with immunity.

Starve or Surrender: Cut off all Food and Water to Gaza, says Israeli General

By Ali Abunimah

Electronic Intifada

Israeli Major-General Giora Eiland has urged that all food and water be cut off to Gaza’s nearly 1.8 million Palestinian residents – a major war crime and precisely the “starve or surrender” policy which the United States has condemned when used in Syria.

Eiland, the Israeli government’s former national security advisor, argues that Gaza should be considered an enemy “state.”

“Since Gaza is in fact a state in a military confrontation with us, the proper way to put pressure on them is to bring to a full stop the supplies from Israel to Gaza, not only of electricity and fuel, but also of food and water,” he wrote in a Hebrew-language op-ed on Mako, a website affiliated with Israel’s Channel 2 television.

“A state cannot simultaneously attack and feed the enemy, while he is shooting at you, because this gives the other country a breathing space – and again I am referring to Gaza as a country, because the regime there is supported by its people,” Eiland adds.

A Palestinian boy stands in his family’s damaged home as people inspect the remains of another house, destroyed by an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip, 23 August. (APA images / Ashraf Amra)

Israel legally obliged to supply Gaza population

Eiland appears to believe that the fiction that Gaza is a sovereign “state” would somehow lessen culpability for what would amount to massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.”

Under international law, Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza has not ended its military occupation of the territory because Gaza remains under the “effective control” of Israel.

Yet Israel has long violated its obligation by deliberately restricting the basic needs of Gaza’s population and deliberately destroying their food sources including agricultural land, poultry and dairy farms.

While Eiland’s proposal calls to cut all food and water, strictly regulating the food intake of Palestinians in Gaza to achieve political ends, has long been the Israeli occupation’s actual policy.

Israel’s deliberate attacks on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has created a “water disaster,” already depriving every single person of access to a safe and secure supply of water.

Israel’s brutal siege is precisely what the Palestinian resistance in Gaza is currently fighting to end.

Possible genocidal intent

Eiland recently argued in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest newspaper, that because they elected Hamas, the people of Gaza as a whole “are to blame for this situation just like Germany’s residents were to blame for electing Hitler as their leader and paid a heavy price for that, and rightfully so.”

General Eiland’s call – which may amount to incitement to genocide – as well as to war crimes and crimes against humanity – is only the latest exterminationist proposal from an Israeli leader.

Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for instance, recently called for the population of Gaza to be moved to concentration camps and then expelled so that Gaza could be resettled with Jews.

“Starve or surrender” mirrors Syria policy

The United States government, Israel’s chief sponsor, has not expressed any criticism of Eiland’s proposals, nor done anything to end Israel’s siege. However, it views “starve or surrender” as a grave crime when used against opposition-held areas by the government in Syria.

This has been the case in several areas including Yarmouk refugee camp where, Amnesty International has said, the Syrian government is “using starvation as a weapon of war to achieve its ends.”

Last month, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding that “all Syrian parties to the conflict,” including the government and the opposition, “shall enable the immediate and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance directly to people throughout Syria,” immediately “removing all impediments to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

By contrast, the so-called “international community,” led by the United States, has supported and justified Israel’s siege of Gaza for almost eight years.

 

Israel’s latest civilian atrocity in Gaza establishes a horrific precedent for terrorism in Europe and around the globe

By Anthony Bellchambers

Global Research, August 24, 2014

As an out-of-control, power-mad, US-supplied, Israeli army blows up residential tower blocks in Gaza in an unprecedented exhibition of undisciplined, criminal action against a civilian population, that treats the internationally agreed Geneva Conventions with utter contempt, the world waits to see what other atrocities the Israeli government will perpetrate with its American F-16 warplanes, bombs and missiles.

The United Nations General Assembly should now pass a resolution, in plenary session, suspending membership of the Israeli state and authorising a worldwide trade boycott against the Netanyahu government.

The Resolution should also recommend the indictment of those responsible for commissioning and carrying out such civilian killings, and their appearance – as soon as possible – before the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, on charges of war crime.

Poll: Majority of Gazans support peace, oppose disarmament

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An overwhelming majority of Gaza residents support a long-term truce with Israel and oppose the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance, a poll released on Saturday showed.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza from Aug. 14-19 and was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, also found that a vast majority opposed the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria, which Israeli leaders have claimed maintains support in Gaza.

More than 90 percent of Gazans surveyed thought that resistance was either “well prepared” or “somewhat prepared” for the Israeli assault, and more than 93 percent opposed the disarmament of Palestinian militant groups, which Israel has said is a condition of any long-term truce.

At the same time, despite an Israeli assault that has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians — overwhelmingly civilians — in the last six weeks, nearly 88 percent of those surveyed also supported a long-term truce, and another 10 percent supported an unspecified “medium-term” truce.

80 percent rated US President Barack Obama’s stance on the conflict, which has been decidedly pro-Israel, as “negative,” while 65 percent said they were “very” or “fairly” content with Egypt’s role as a mediator in indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

More than 80 percent, meanwhile, were in favor of International Criminal Court intervention against Israel for prosecution for war crimes committed during the offensive.

The poll also surveyed opinions in Gaza regarding the Syria-based Wahhabi militant group Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which Israeli leaders have repeatedly referenced in their offensive against Hamas.

More than 85 percent of Gazans surveyed, however, said they oppose the group.

Source

With much to hide, Israel is running scared

Al-Tahrir News Network

By not cooperating with the UNHRC, Tel Aviv is obstructing justice which in itself is a crime.

It seems that Israel will not be cooperating with a panel set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to investigate possible war crimes committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Foreign Ministry is bitterly critical of the probe and the panel, claiming that the findings of UNHRC’s investigations are predetermined, while the prime minister and the foreign minister announced that UNHRC long ago became the ‘Terrorists Rights Council’ and a ‘kangaroo court’.

The Israeli position towards UNHRC is not surprising considering the UN body has found Israel guilty in the past. In the 2010 Mavi Marmara killings by Israel of 10 Turkish nationals seeking to deliver aid to Gaza, the UNHRC report found that the Israeli blockade of Gaza was illegal, and therefore, the boarding and seizure of the vessel was illegal, that the detention of the passengers was illegal, that the confiscation of the passengers’ possessions was illegal and that there was wilful killing on the part of Israeli commandos.

Also the UNHRC Goldstone report on the 2008-2009 Gaza war – Operation Cast Lead – charged Israel with a policy of deliberately targeting civilians.

These findings are not the fault of UNHRC. It is simply reporting the facts, reporting what Israel did. And in Gaza 2014 Israel has done plenty. In this conflict since 8 July Israel has killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians. It has killed more children than Hamas fighters, as opposed to the death of 67 Israelis, mostly soldiers. It has maimed 10,196 Gazans and displaced 520,000 Palestinians (approximately 30 percent of Gaza’s population) of whom 273,000 were taking shelter in 90 UN-run schools of which at least half a dozen have been shelled by Israel. Almost every piece of critical Gaza infrastructure, from electricity to water to sewage, has been seriously compromised by either direct hits from Israeli air strikes and shelling or collateral damage.

Is it any wonder then that the majority of Israeli government ministers, 14 out of 22, oppose the probe ordered by the UNHRC into Operation Protective Edge? Of course, Israel would be frightened silly of any such investigation for it will uncover the truth.

And who will be more fearful of the truth than the man behind Protective Edge? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intimated that Israel will not cooperate with UNHRC, for he and his officials are at odds with the man who will be running the inquiry. They believe Canadian international lawyer William Schabas is hostile to the Jewish state and will thus come out with a very biased, one-sided report.

The Israeli leader accuses Schabas of having already decided that Hamas was not guilty of anything and that there is nothing to investigate there. Actually, Netanyahu is claiming just the opposite; that it is Israel which has done nothing wrong and, as such, need not be investigated.

Netanyahu finds it hard to believe that Israel should be investigated at all. He would rather that UNHRC focus on what’s happening in Iraq, Syria and Libya. That will come, but for now the UN focus is on Gaza.

In Schabas’ defence, he has frequently lectured in Israel, at universities in Israel, and he’s a member of the editorial board of the Israel law review. Nor are the commission’s findings a foregone conclusion. Nothing has been written yet, and that’s the whole point of an investigation.

Needless to say, Schabas will also be looking into the actions of Hamas. The mandate requires him to look at both sides. The resolution establishing the Commission of Inquiry clearly states the commission will investigate all violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. This directly implies that both parties will be subjected to a thorough investigation.

Schabas is just one of several UN officials Israel has lashed out at for investigating it, even when these investigations were carried out by Jews like South African judge Richard Goldstone of the Goldstone Report, and American Jewish academic Richard Falk. Falk, who has served as UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote in a 2002 op-ed that Operation Defensive Shield was “state-sponsored terrorism”.

Goldstone and Falk, among others, have reached conclusions not in Israel’s favour. But that’s Israel’s problem. Not cooperating with the UN not only proves Israel has something to hide but it’s a serious matter. The decision to launch an inquiry was made shortly after UNHCR chief Navi Pillay said there was a “strong possibility” that Israel was violating international law and may have committed war crimes through Protective Edge. The UN wants to get to the bottom of this but Israel won’t let it. Israel is thus obstructing justice which is a crime in itself.

Israel would rather investigate itself, by which it can easily get away with murder. Can the guilty party ever find itself guilty? Will the guilty party ever own up and take the blame, like Hamas did. When Hamas was implicated of war crimes in 2009, it urged world powers to embrace the findings.

To be fair, Israel is not the only country slamming the UN. The US State Department says any investigation related to Gaza should be done in a way that is non-biased. America, though, is the last country to talk about bias after it had earlier rejuvenated Israel’s military coffers – then announced it had reached a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. What kind of supposedly honest broker would strengthen one side to pulverise the other, then after the vanquishing, call for a truce?

Israel has always refused to cooperate with the UNHCR. It has always accused the international body of being biased toward Israel and Jews, even though there have always been Israeli allies among the UNHCR member states.

But this time, Israel is slamming UNHCR for an inquiry into massive Israeli breaches during war even before the investigation begins. How scared can you get?

Alaa Abdel-Ghani is an affiliate professor, Faculty of Journalism, American University in Cairo.

Source

‘Israel may launch new ground incursion into Gaza’

PressTV