1am: Israeli troops open indiscriminate fire near Qattana

Occupation troops open fire on people in Jayus

Wounding: Israeli Army position behind Green Line opens fire on Deir al-Balah

Ten-year-old child seized and terrorised by Israeli soldiers during assault on protesters

Non-violent protest: 13-year-old boy beaten and injured by Israeli troops

Joint settler/Israeli Army raid: Palestinian villager beaten and hospitalised by Israeli troops

Qalandya: Israeli checkpoint troops open fire on nearby residents

Israeli Army invades homes and steals tractors

Armed settler terrorist holds up Palestinian taxi

Settler arson attack in Sheikh Jarrah

Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in 13 towns and villages

4 attacks – 33 raids including home invasions – 5 beaten – 10 injured

5 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage

20 taken prisoner – 28 detained – 117 restrictions of movement

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Holding the mirror up to Zionism

There is nothing more inhumane than the mind that ensnares itself in blind adherence to ideology. The belief that any one people, ethnicity or religion has superior rights over others, when put into practice, necessarily leads to acts of inhumanity and war crimes. Thus it has all too tragically come to pass in Palestine with Palestinian refugees refused their internationally-recognised right of return, purely because they are not Jewish. The world community forced the Palestinian people into this nightmarish existence, ignoring their pleas to be treated justly in their homeland.

By Leslie Bravery 2 June 2013

http://www.deliberation.info/holding-the-mirror-up-to-zionism/

http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/926

www.therebel.org/mideast/649668-holding-the-mirror-up-to-zionism

Marcus Dysch, writing in the Jewish Chronicle Online[1] on 30 May 2013, notes that the UK Liberal Democrat Party MP, David Ward, has been told to attend a meeting over his Shoah remark and that the LibDem leader Nick Clegg, deputy leader Simon Hughes and chief whip Alistair Carmichael had originally intended to force Mr Ward to meet the Party’s Friends of Israel group to agree “proportionate and precise” language for his future comments on Israel. The Jewish Chronicle article went on to report the LibDem spokesman's comment that his party believed that it was “unacceptable and offensive to conflate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with an entire people . . . ” Marcus Dysch also reported that, “Mr Ward took to Twitter this week to ask his followers for 'advice' ahead of the meeting.”

David Ward is being vilified for holding the mirror up to Zionism while Israel's supporters are silent regarding the shocking prejudice contained in comments made by Zionist leaders. An Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, for example, denied the very existence of the Palestinian people saying, “. . . It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”[2] Another Zionist, Menachem Begin, who later became Prime Minister, was the subject of a letter to the New York Times written by prominent American Jews (including Albert Einstein) critical of Begin's visit to the US on 2 December 1948. The letter began, “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organisation in Palestine.”[3] The article deplored the Party's role in the terrorism and massacre that took place in the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin.

By defining itself as a Jewish state, Israel is bound to accuse its critics of anti-Jewish prejudice and, while anti-Zionist Jews find no reason to criticise David Ward, Israel and the Jewish National Fund, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Israel's supporters among British Parliamentarians ignore their protests, thereby continuing to implicate them in Israel's violations of international humanitarian law. Thanks in part to Israel's British Parliamentary supporters, the self-styled 'Jewish state' with its Jewish-only settlements – illegally and violently imposed beyond Israel's UN Partition Plan borders – is effectively granted impunity for every criminal act that it commits. Under cover of the darkness granted to Israel by the corporate news media, the Zionist state gets away with inflicting, day-by-day, intolerable suffering and injustice upon a captive population and indeed upon anyone it believes gets in its way. Here we shine a searchlight on this behaviour and the abhorrent Zionist thinking that inspires it.

Double standards and Israeli state violence in international waters

On 31 May, the Board of Deputies of British Jews published a statement[4] regarding the murder of a soldier in Woolwich that read in part: "We stand with other faith groups in deploring violence in the name of religion. The Board of Deputies works tirelessly with all faith groups to promote dialogue and understanding, and to root out extremism." Really? In the light of this statement, LibDem MP David Ward, Jews opposed to Zionism and other critics of Israel are entitled to know when, or if, the Board of Deputies of British Jews is ever going to deplore the violence in the name of religion that prompted Israel's extreme action in storming the Mavi Marmara aid ship and killing nine civilians aboard the vessel. An 18-year-old US citizen, Furkan Doğan, was among those victims. The UN Human Rights Council documented what it described as Israel’s “extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution” of Furkan, who was filming with a video camera when he was first hit by live-fire. As he lay on the deck, Furkan received five bullet wounds, all of them in his back except for a face wound. According to forensic analysis, that shot was delivered at point-blank range.[5]

The grim reality of life under military Occupation

The day-by-day reality of life for Palestinians under Israel's rule is, by itself, evidence enough of the discriminatory and inhumane nature of Israel's founding ideology. The Israeli Occupation Army enforces a permit system for the benefit of settlers that determines where Palestinians may live in their own land. Every area of Israeli-Occupied Palestinian territory experiences varied and arbitrary restrictions of movement imposed by the Israeli Army. The lack of freedom of movement is the frustrating and humiliating background to daily life for the Occupied Palestinian people, whose suffering includes a variety of human rights abuses, from night home invasions to wanton acts of agricultural and economic sabotage.

In Occupied Palestine

What sort of state conducts military training exercises amid civilians? No civilised regime, certainly. A daily newsletter describing Israeli rule over Palestinians, that can be seen on-line, makes harrowing reading. See, for instance, the most recent two days of reports [6] and [7] for 28 and 29 May presently available (it takes time under the appalling difficulties of military Occupation to compile these statistics) and note the general forbearance of the Palestinian people under extreme provocation.

The Great Water Crime

Access to safe, clean water is a fundamental human right. Across the Occupied West Bank, Israel's illegal settlements have completely free access to water. Settler homes enjoy full swimming pools and well-watered gardens yet Palestinian access to their own water is severely restricted. Israel compounds this crime in two ways: (1) The Zionist state forces Palestinians to pay the Israeli government for what little water they are allowed and (2) at the same time, Israel forbids Palestinians to sink wells or even build water storage facilities. Thus the Israeli regime profits while maintaining crippling control over a captive population's water supply. In addition, reports by both the World Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme[8] show that the water crisis in Gaza is likely to be both critical and irreversible by 2020. Both international bodies express concern that Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip means severe limitations on people's access to essential water supplies.

Checkpoints and other Restrictions of Movement

Israel places checkpoints at the entrances to towns and villages to prevent people entering or leaving. Interference with people attempting to move around towns and villages consists of blocking roads with concrete blocks, barbed-wire and/or earth mounds. People attempting to transport farm produce and other goods find obstacles placed on the roads by the Israeli Army. Trucks have to be unloaded by hand and similarly re-loaded onto vehicles brought from beyond the obstructions. Road closures are used to isolate areas wherever the Israeli Army considers the presence of Palestinians to be ‘illegal’. There are instances of Palestinian mothers giving birth at checkpoints, having been denied ready access to hospital.

Gaza City's ruined international airport is permanently closed. Palestinians needing to enter or leave Palestine can do so only with Israeli permission. In addition to Israel's occasional massive bombing raids, Gaza residents are forced to live with the constant fear of overflying drones and the traumatising effects of sonic booms created by Israeli war-planes. The effects on the children of Gaza are particularly distressing.

Agricultural and Economic sabotage

Farmers are prohibited, and often terrorised by both illegal settlers and the Israeli Army, from going to work on their land. Occupation settlers and the Israeli Army uproot or set fire to olive trees and bulldoze Palestinian crops. The Gaza fishing industry is ruined by the enforcement of a draconian fishing limit. The Israel Navy forces Palestinian fishing boats to remain within a re-instated three-nautical-mile, over-fished zone, sometimes at the cost to crews of life, limb and property.

House Demolitions, Evictions and Abductions of Minors

The Israeli Army destroys Palestinian houses built without Israel's permission and invades homes, very often at dead of night, often abducting Palestinian minors. The soldiers frequently terrorise the youngsters with threats and/or by blindfolding them and tying their wrists behind their backs. Many Palestinian children are illegally taken to prison in Israel, where more terror is practised against them, such as solitary confinement and shackling in painful positions for long periods.

Israel’s Toxic Hazard Weapon

Israel has devised yet another technique designed to drive Palestinians from their land and weaken their resolve to resist. It is a direct assault on their health that carries the menace of further agricultural and economic sabotage. For instance, activity at Israel's Barkan industrial complex generates growing quantities of polluting waste-water from the production of plastics, lead and other commodities that endanger human health. Pollution from Barkan flows into the streams that run through valleys or wadis where there are Palestinian farms as well as towns. Israeli Occupation settlements discharge their untreated waste to add to the pollution. This practice poisons Palestinian land, crops, farm animals and essential, meagre, water supplies. Settlers – with Israeli Army assistance – release wild pigs, that reproduce rapidly, into Palestinian areas, spoiling agriculture and damaging olive trees, fencing and small buildings. The pigs cannot be controlled because Israel will not allow the people to own or use firearms, or even knives to kill the pigs. Poison cannot be used because of the danger to Palestinian farm animals.

Forced Evacuations of Homes to Facilitate Israeli Army Military Exercises

An example of this practice is contained in an International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) report[9] on the Israeli Army's terrorising of a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley. The report tells of a continual programme of Israeli military training in the village of 'Atuf that traumatises the population. Every week 22 families, amounting to 172 individuals, are displaced from their homes from 4am to 5pm by Israeli military live-fire exercises. Since 1967 Israeli troops have been forcing the Bedouin people to leave their houses each week. Whole families and their livestock are displaced to outlying fields to the sound of gunfire and explosions. The entire area is designated area “C” and there is a 'closed military zone' where nothing is allowed to be built or improved. An entire valley of fertile farmland lies uncultivated while the nearby Occupation settlement of Beqa constantly expands. In both 'Atuf and Tamun, countless houses have been demolished by the Israeli Army and many more are under demolition orders. Since 1970, 14 people have been killed and 30 have lost limbs due to exploding abandoned Israeli Army ordnance. The explosives can be as small as a pen, easily mistaken by children as harmless. The continual sound of explosions and gunfire results in many cases of psychological trauma, especially to children, and the only school in the district is within earshot of the weekly Israeli military exercises.

Israeli Army Violence in the service of Discrimination

The Israeli Occupation Army enforces many of the above restrictions with the threat, or actual use, of military action as well as personal physical assault. Thus, daily life for Palestinians is conducted in an all-pervasive atmosphere of violence and fear imposed by an occupying foreign army. In addition to all of the above, Palestinians have to contend with Israel's anti-Palestinian laws of discrimination: There are more than 50 Israeli laws[10] that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, including their rights to political participation, access to land, education, state budget resources and criminal procedures.

Ideology

There is nothing more inhumane than the mind that allows itself to be ensnared in blind adherence to ideology. The belief that any one people, ethnicity or religion has superior rights over others, when put into practice, necessarily leads to acts of inhumanity and war crimes. Thus it has all too tragically come to pass in Palestine with Palestinian refugees refused their internationally-recognised right of return, purely because they are not Jewish. It is this state of mind that enabled Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, to state in the New.York Times, 22 April 1963: “Jews are in truth a separate element in the midst of the peoples among whom they live – an element that cannot be completely absorbed by any nation – and for this reason no nation can calmly tolerate it in its midst.”[11] Imagine the outcry if Israel's critics were to say such a thing! In 1938 Ben-Gurion also said: "If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."[11]

The world community, and Britain in particular, bear responsibility for having forced the Palestinian people into this nightmarish existence and of having ignored their pleas to be treated justly in their homeland. David Ward has had the courage to witness for truth and his example should inspire everyone of us not to be afraid to follow his example. The Jewish National Fund, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Israel's supporters among British Parliamentarians should be invited to repudiate Zionism and to use their influence instead to restore respect for international humanitarian law, especially the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention that are totally violated by Israel. Such an appeal to their consciences might even persuade them to join the international movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). We can but hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:

[1] http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/108119/lib-dem-mp-david-ward-told-meet-peers-over-shoah-remark

[2] Sunday Times (15 June 1969), also in The Washington Post (16 June 1969) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Golda_Meir http://www.economist.com/node/9507245

[3] http://palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Dayr-Yasin/Story1686.html

[4] http://www.bod.org.uk/live/index.php

[5] http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=hWQcYD8ijs0pMCOzs9Ozv0euUKJ60JQm

[6] http://palestine.org.nz/phrc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1632&Itemid=44

[7] http://palestine.org.nz/phrc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1633&Itemid=44

[8] www.unep.org/PDF/dmb/UNEP_Gaza_EA.pdf

[9] No 459 / Human Rights Summary: Weekly Military Training in ‘Atuf, Jordan Valley http://iwps.info

[10] http://adalah.org/eng/Israeli-Discriminatory-Law-Database

[11] http://www.truetorahjews.org/bengurion

[11] http://www.truetorahjews.org/bengurion

What sort of state drives people out of their homes in order to conduct live-fire military exercises?

By Leslie Bravery - 15 April 2013

An International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) report (http://iwps.info) on the Israeli Army's terrorising of a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley tells of a continual programme of Israeli military training in the village of ‘Atuf. IWPS report 459 / 9 April 2013 describes how Israeli military training in the village forces 22 families, that is 172 people, every week to evacuate their homes from 4am to 5pm while the Israeli military conducts live-fire exercises. This has been going on since 1967 and whole families and their livestock are displaced to outlying fields to the sound of gunfire and explosions. Israel has declared the area a 'closed military zone' where nothing is allowed to be built or improved and a valley of fertile farmland lies uncultivated while the nearby Israeli Occupation settlement of Beqa continues to spread itself ever further. In both ‘Atuf and neighbouring Tamun, countless houses have been demolished by the Israeli Army and many more are under demolition orders.

Since 1970, 14 people have been killed and 30 have lost limbs due to exploding abandoned Israeli Army ordnance. The explosives can be as small as a pen, easily mistaken by children as harmless. The continual explosions and gunfire have caused many cases of psychological trauma, especially to children, and the only school in the district is within earshot of Israeli military exercises. What sort of state drives people out of their homes in order to conduct live-fire military exercises? The US-armed nuclear power, pandered to by the West, continues to demand recognition of what it calls its special need for security while brutally denying the Palestinian people any vestige of peace and safety for themselves.

According to the New York Times, when talks between Iran and six world powers ended earlier this month, with no apparent progress towards an agreement on the easing of damaging sanctions on the Iranian economy, Israel's minister of strategic affairs, Yuval Steinitz, commented: “The time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to the Iranians that the negotiations games have run their course.”

The world should recall the minister's words every time President Obama asserts, on Israel's behalf, that the only path to peace open to the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations with Israel. Substituting only one word, 'Iranians' and replacing it with 'Israel', the quote would read, the time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to Israel that the negotiations games have run their course. Decades of deferential treatment and 'dialogue' have served only to convince the occupying power that it enjoys total impunity. The time to face UN-imposed sanctions is long overdue for Israel.

Watch your language!

By Leslie Bravery, 16 March 2013

In the Western news media the term 'Islamist' has, it seems, become so perfectly acceptable that it is used daily in a wide range of contexts. Now suppose the Israeli Occupation settlers in Palestine who spray racist slogans, such as “Arabs to the gas chambers” on the walls of Palestinian homes and mosques and who set fire to Palestinian olive trees, were to be referred to as 'Judaists'. Such a term would undoubtedly invite condemnation as being 'anti-Semitic'. Actually both expressions are repugnant.

'Anti-Semitism'

The term Semite [1] includes any of the various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples. Arabic is, of course, one of the Semitic languages. The state of Israel denies the internationally-recognised right of return to their homes of ethnically cleansed and dispossessed Palestinians, on the grounds that they are not Jewish. Such discrimination, supported by pro-Zionist groups in the West, must therefore, in their terms, be anti-Semitism towards Palestinian Arabs. Those bigots who see the Jewish people as members of an inferior race are racists, pure and simple. Their crime is racism. Racism is an inclusive term, that acknowledges the fact that the members of any race, religion or ethnic grouping may be singled out for persecution.

Anti-Jewish prejudice

Before the start of the Zionist enterprise, the native Jews of Palestine discriminated against nobody, nor were they themselves discriminated against. It took the intervention of Europe, the home of anti-Jewish prejudice and pogroms, to introduce divisiveness to the Holy Land. Further afield, for nearly 800 years, the Jews of Moorish Andalucia enjoyed respect and some cities in Andalucia had Jewish governors. Sadly, the European conquest of Andalucia brought forced conversions of Jews to Christianity and/or banishment. Anti-Jewish prejudice has always been a European sickness but prejudice has not been aimed at Jews alone. European imperialism has created both anti-Arabism and its patronising counterpart, Orientalism.

Denying the status of refugees

In a Jerusalem Post [2] commentary entitled Envoys work to end UN's Palestinian refugee status, written by Benjamin Weinthal and dated 10 March 2013, we learn that: “At a small conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan on Thursday, a host of dignitaries and experts, including Israel’s envoy to the UN Ron Prosor, addressed the UN’s classification of Palestinian refugees as the principal stumbling block to a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.” Dr Daniel Pipes, described by The Jerusalem Post as “a leading international expert on the Middle East”, declared at the opening of the conference that UNRWA's approach to the Palestinian refugee situation “creates a narrative of victimhood and leads to extremism.” In the report, Pipes went on to say “. . . the real obstacle [to a two-state solution] is the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees.” Ron Prosor even went so far as to say, “The refugees problem is the main obstacle to peace, not settlements.”

There are verbal contradictions in the opinions expressed by Prosor and Pipes. Zionism's traditional victimhood card is here neatly transferred to the Palestinians. Prosor blames them for the fact that the world recognises them as victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing. The illogicality is glaring: Prosor would have it that UNRWA's policy of allowing Palestinians to “transfer their refugee mileage to their children”, is “misguided” while, on the other hand, he continues to promote an unconditional "right of return" for the descendants of Jews who, it is argued, left the land 2000 years ago! According to Pipes, it is the fact that Israel’s victims are recognised as refugees that “leads to extremism”.

Extremism

If resistance to military occupation is extremism, how would one describe the occupation that, daily, severely restricts the movement of Palestinians in their own land? It is an occupation that manifests itself through the bulldozing of crops, destruction of wells, irrigation systems, homes and olive trees. Is it not 'extreme' to steal land for the benefit of an illegally transferred Jewish Israeli population? According to the Rome Statute article 8, such settlement is more than extreme, it is a war crime:

“The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory.” [3]

It would therefore be against natural justice for the UN to allow Israel any influence over the status of Palestinian refugees.

The Christian community under Israeli occupation

It is often overlooked by the outside world that the Christians of Palestine also suffer from Israeli oppression. A Palestinian researcher at the Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, serves also as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement Between People and is co-ordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour. Speaking at a gathering in South Africa on 11 March 2013 [4], Mazin recalled the sad fact that “. . . the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, has 180,000 native Christians and Muslims squeezed into only 13% of the land of the district of Bethlehem. Eighty-seven per cent of the land of Bethlehem is now off-limits to our development and open for the expansion of 23 colonial settlements built on our land. And this canton of Bethlehem is increasingly surrounded by a wall and I, as a Palestinian Christian, am not allowed into Jerusalem, my Church of the Sepulchre.”

Ethnic cleansing

Israel’s benefactors will never acknowledge the crime of ethnic cleansing suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Zionist terrorism but, as Mazin Qumsiyeh tells us, “The truth is that Zionists have worked hard to methodically transform our country from a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural society into a Jewish state. By necessity this entailed ethnic cleansing so that 530 villages and towns were destroyed and today seven million of our people are refugees and displaced people. Refugees are still living in camps under very difficult circumstances, waiting for implementation of their internationally recognised right of return, generation after generation. What will be their fate? And the prisoners? The thousands of prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons are part of our reality. The Israelis move heaven and earth to gain the release of one prisoner, and those thousands of Palestinian prisoners, when will they have their freedom?” [5]

Direct negotiations

Against this background it is important to recognise another example of word manipulation – the insidious so-called 'direct negotiations'. Those who call for them hope that the idea will sound perfectly reasonable but the demand for direct negotiations is designed to serve twin purposes that have nothing to do with a just and peaceful settlement. Direct negotiations between the nuclear-armed occupying power, Israel, and its defenceless victims, the Palestinians, (a) buys time for Israel to consolidate and expand its illegal settlement programme and (b) allows Israel's allies to abdicate their responsibility to require Israel to abide by international law. Israel believes that the pressure of unremitting military occupation and terror will eventually be sufficient to force the Palestinian people into total surrender of their rights.

Reserved terms

Another method employed in covering for Israel and attempting to defend the indefensible, is the discriminatory reservation of what should be universal terminology exclusively on Israel's behalf. Speaking at the annual luncheon of the Conservative Friends of Israel in June 2007, the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, David Cameron, described himself as a Zionist [6]. In answer to a question he said, "If what you mean by Zionist, is someone who believes that the Jews have a right to a homeland in Israel . . . then, yes, I am a Zionist . . ." The UK Liberal Democrat MP, David Ward, was recently vilified by supporters of Zionism, for saying 'the Jews' when referring to the lessons that might be learned from the World War Two Holocaust. But as we see above, there is no such outcry when Israel's apologists say 'the Jews' when promoting the cause of Zionism!

Israel – 'self-defence' and 'violence'

Discriminatory use of terms such as 'self-defence' when referring to Israel and 'violence' when accusing the Palestinians, are further examples of the technique. At the same Conservative Friends of Israel luncheon, Cameron demanded that Hamas should “put an end to violence” but he never even mentioned the armed violence exercised by Israel in the course of military occupation – and he certainly did not demand that Israel put an end to it. Similarly, while Cameron noted that “Israel is a country that has a right to its own legitimate self-defence”, he never criticised Israel's well-documented illegitimate uses of aggressive violence, much less its war crimes, and neither did he acknowledge any Palestinian right to self-defence.

The 'separation barrier'

The so-called 'separation barrier' is another example of dissimulation. Israel's annexation Wall is a monstrous ideologically-inspired device that dwarfs the notorious Berlin Wall, both in height and length. Zionists call it the 'separation' barrier in the pretence that it follows the border between internationally-recognised Israeli territory and what is left of Palestine. In this case, 'separation' does reveal a truth – but it is not the one Zionists and their allies would wish to advertise. The Wall certainly does separate Palestinian communities from each other and villages from their farmland in order to consolidate Israel's grip on the West Bank. No wonder the International Court condemned it as illegal! [7]

Land swaps

Yet another piece of Zionist language manipulation is the idea of 'land swaps'. As the Jewish Israeli author, Miko Peled, wrote in his revealing book about Zionism, The General's Son, page 143, land swaps “. . . seemed like a totally insane notion. Families from Bil'in would be given land somewhere miles away, probably in the Negev Desert, in return for these choice ancestral lands right next to their village. I found it hard to believe that anyone really took this seriously. Was there a single Israeli who would agree to take a land swap like that?”

Jerusalem – the 'democracy' of discrimination and dispossession

Israel claims that it is a democracy but for Palestinians on the ground, reality tells a different story. Mazin Qumsiyeh speaks of his own experiences: “Even with my American Passport I am not allowed into Jerusalem, as are 99% of our people. The truth is that Jerusalemites are being driven from their land to be replaced by Jews, including converts to Judaism brought from around the world. Jerusalem is the heart of our reality. It is, at the same time, symbol of peace and sign of conflict. While the separation wall divides Palestinian neighbourhoods, Jerusalem continues to be emptied of its Palestinian citizens, Christians and Muslims. Their identity cards are confiscated, which means the loss of their right to reside in Jerusalem. Their homes are demolished or expropriated. Jerusalem, city of reconciliation, has become a city of discrimination and exclusion, a source of struggle rather than peace.” [8]

In addition, Zionism's contempt for others manifests itself in another, particularly repellent, manner. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israeli Occupation settlements have been growing and the setting up of what are called 'outposts' (precursors to the establishment of fresh settlements) has been increasing. All the outposts and many settlements regularly discharge both waste-water and sewage onto nearby Palestinian farmland. [9] But the US continues to supply arms to Israel and our political leaders liberally supply the diplomatic support that ensures impunity for the occupying power. So sycophantic has the adoration of Israel become, that Britain's PM David Cameron went so far as to say that he believed there was “something in the DNA of Conservatives that was profoundly impressed by what Israel has achieved.” [10]

The problem with unreserved commitment to an ideology is that when its precepts conflict with logic and verifiable evidence, these cornerstones of sanity and reason have either to be sacrificed or the ideology abandoned. Equally, when the practice of a fanatically held belief necessitates the denial of justice and contempt for the most fundamental of human rights, the descent into war crimes and inhumanity is inevitable. Reminding ourselves, once again, of the demand by Israel and its allies for 'direct negotiations' we might do worse than to recall Albert Einstein's definition of insanity – that it is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

On 10 April 1948, Einstein wrote the following words of condemnation to Shepard Rifkin, Executive Director of the American Friends for the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.

“When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine, the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks (Jewish.) I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein.” [11]

By supporting Israel so unconditionally, Cameron, Obama and other Western leaders are also declaring their allegiance to Zionism. They do so with the aid of carefully constructed language designed to camouflage an ugly reality. Their problem is that the political propaganda-speak is sounding increasingly less convincing. The disparity between what they proclaim and the glaringly obvious reality is becoming ever more apparent. It seems that the lessons learned in the painful winning of the Geneva Conventions are being set aside for Israel's sake – what was it that Einstein said about insanity?

~~~~~~~~

References:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people

[2] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=305868

[3] http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/585

[4] http://www.countercurrents.org/qumsiyeh110313.htm

[5] http://www.countercurrents.org/qumsiyeh110313.htm

[6] http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=64803

[7] http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/3740E39487A5428A85256ECC005E157A

[8] http://www.countercurrents.org/qumsiyeh110313.htm

[9] http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/2156/pid/2254

[10] http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=64803

[11] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html

Holocaust Remembrance – in defence of David Ward

By Leslie Bravery – 27 January 2013

The British Daily Mail reported on 25 January that a Liberal Democrat MP in the UK faces expulsion from his party for saying that supporters of Israel's conduct towards the Palestinian people had not learned from the Nazi Holocaust murder of six million Jews.

The reactions of Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, and Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to UK Liberal Democrat MP David Ward's observations regarding Holocaust Memorial Day go far in proving Ward's point. The reality is that the Palestinians are suffering in their own homeland, because they are not Jews, at the hands of a state that arrogantly claims to represent all Jews. There are, of course, many Jewish individuals and organisations, their voices sadly muffled by the mass corporate news media, that are horrified by Israel's conduct.

The pursuit of Israel's territorial ambitions involves land theft, house demolitions, segregated roads, cruelty to Palestinian children and sabotage of Palestinian agriculture. These crimes represent just some of the Israeli state's daily violations of international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention was enacted precisely because of world community revulsion at the horrors of ideologically-driven acts of inhumanity and the determination that such persecution should never be tolerated.

According to the Daily Mail report, Jon Benjamin found the idea “shocking” and “outrageous” that those who suffered the unspeakable cruelties inflicted upon them by the Nazis should support Palestinian human rights! The article quotes Benjamin: “We are outraged and shocked at these offensive comments about Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the suggestion that Jews should have learned a lesson from the experience.” He went further – “For an MP to have made such comments on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day is even more distasteful, and we welcome the fact that the Liberal Democrats have sought to disassociate the party from David Ward's comments.” If the chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews does not consider Holocaust Memorial Day a most appropriate occasion for standing resolutely against human rights abuses anywhere in the world, then David Ward's comments are timely.

The Daily Mail also quotes Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust: “. . . Mr Ward has deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust causing deep pain and offence – these comments are sickening and unacceptable and have no place in British politics.” Pollock's criticism of Ward suggests that to be moved at such a time with compassion for a people suffering under a great injustice is sickening and unacceptable. The greatest honour that could be given to the memory and sacrifice of the victims of the Holocaust is to enable fresh generations to better understand the dangers inherent in allowing those who abuse human rights to do so with impunity.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon went even further and actually justified Israel's conduct, asserting that David Ward's comments were “a tragic trivialisation of real evil.” If Israel's supporters do not consider Israel's bombing of homes, schools and hospitals and burning children with white phosphorus to be a real evil then they are, indeed, incapable of learning from the past. The Tory MP's comment that, “It should be remembered that Israel withdrew from Gaza. . .” raises the question – why were Israel and its settlements occupying Gaza in the first place – and at what cost to the Palestinian people? Most of Gaza's present population are refugees, driven there against their will by Israel.

Holocaust Memorial Day should sear our consciences and, more to the point, it should inspire us to defend all who continue to suffer injustice and oppression.

 Ambassador reveals Israel's preconditions

By Leslie Bravery – 3 December 2012

Last Thursday, 138 nations voted in favour of a United Nations resolution giving non-member observer status to Palestine. The countries voting in favour of the resolution represent some 75% of the world's population. The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, responded to news of the vote with the ominous comment that, "This is a meaningless decision that will not change anything on the ground", which was echoed by the Israeli Ambassador to New Zealand, Shemi Tzur, in his press release on Friday, 30 November.

Also on Friday, Netanyahu unilaterally ordered the establishment of 3000 new, illegal settler homes in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, where the Israeli government is already attempting to lessen the proportion of Arab residents.

Shemi Tzur says in his press release, “The way to peace between Jerusalem and Ramallah is in direct negotiations, without preconditions, and not in one-sided UN decisions.”

Preconditions

Without preconditions? Shemi Tzur has admitted to one of Israel's most significant preconditions. In his “way to peace” comment he implies that Palestine's capital is to be Ramallah and, contrary to international law, that the whole of Jerusalem is Israel's capital! Indeed, we have Netanyahu's opinion that Jerusalem is “Israel's eternal and undivided capital”. So it is plain that what Israeli rhetoric means by the term “preconditions” is actually an objection to the provisions of international law.

One-sided

Israel's actions are, and always have been, one-sided. Not only have they been one-sided, they have also been enforced by means of overwhelming military superiority. As a result, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is having to respond to the needs of nearly five million Palestinian refugees. Most of the population of the grossly overcrowded Gaza Strip consists of refugees, and the annexation of yet more Palestinian homes and land for additional Israeli settlement can only compound the suffering. Annexation and settlement growth create further preconditions in the form of irreversible facts on the ground. That has been Israel's modus operandi ever since the Zionist state's inception and the world can see, in the succeeding maps of an ever-more fragmented Palestine, evidence of the result.

Israel's growing isolation

Israel and its supporters are outnumbered in world public opinion, and rightly so. Israel stands condemned by 65 UN resolutions, the Palestinians by none. Apart from dealing with the plight of refugees, these UN resolutions reflect the international community's abhorrence at Israel's continual violations of human rights and its refusal to abide by the UN Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons. The Palestinian people and the world have had enough of deportations, land theft, house demolitions, the destruction of olive trees and irrigation systems, night home invasions and economically-crippling restrictions of movement.

The people of Palestine are “protected persons” within the meaning of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the whole of the City of Jerusalem. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3, for example, “Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention . . .” Israel believes that it can continue to act as it does, with impunity, because its allies will continue to give it unconditional support.

Sanctions

But the world wants to see restraint, at last, placed upon Israel. Times are changing and Israel now has to face the possibility of some serious reckoning. The customary, non-violent method of effecting change in the behaviour of states that violate international law is the imposition of UN sanctions. In addition to the possibility of facing sanctions, Israeli leaders may find themselves held personally to account.

The International Court of Justice

With the successful UN status vote Palestine can now join the Statute for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with the opportunity to sue Israel at the World Court. The evidence of Israel's war crimes, when placed before ICJ, will mark a turning point, leading at last to a true appreciation of what pandering to the Zionist enterprise has meant, both in terms of Palestinian suffering and the poisoning of international relations.

The way to peace

The 'peace process' has proved fruitless because it never was about justice. No people should be forced to negotiate their inalienable right to liberty and sovereignty with an oppressive and determinedly-occupying power. Truth and openness are the pathways to justice and reconciliation. It is to be hoped that with the lessons learned, a new respect for hard-won international humanitarian law may be established. No ideology should ever again be allowed to usurp the human right to happiness and well being. Never, never again.

Retaliation

The November 14 assassination of Hamas military leader, Ahmed Jabari, killed in an Israeli drone-launched air strike occurred just as a shaky ceasefire had begun to establish itself. This is the second time that Israel has mounted a major Gaza offensive when about to hold an election, the first being the occasion of Operation Cast Lead. Debate over grave social issues in Israel will once again be pushed aside in favour of crude war propaganda.

Before the Israeli drone strike, the New York Times reported the shooting dead by Israeli forces of a mentally-handicapped Palestinian man in Gaza.

On November 8 the Israeli Army invaded the Gaza Strip. Eight tanks, escorting four bulldozers (routinely used to destroy crops on Palestinian farms in both Gaza and the West Bank), invaded Abassan village, shooting 13-year-old Ahmed Younis Khader Abu Daqqa in the abdomen and killing him as he played football with his friends. Later that day the Palestinian Resistance blew up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.

On Saturday, November 10, an anti-tank missile fired by the Palestinian Resistance wounded four Israeli soldiers driving a Jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary. This was not a civilian target but a legitimate occasion for armed resistance. Palestinians, after all, have the same right to defence as any other people. Israeli artillery shelled a soccer field in Gaza, killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank shelled mourners at a funeral, killing two more people and wounding more than two dozen others.

On Sunday, November 11, one Palestinian was killed and dozens more wounded in fresh Israeli attacks. Israel's Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called on his government to cut off water, food, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza's population.

On Monday, November 12, the Palestinians offered to renew the ceasefire if Israel would end its attacks.

On Wednesday, November 14, Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, who had been a prominent player in negotiations for the release of the Israeli soldier Corporal Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, At least eight other people were killed in the Israeli attack, at least two of them child bystanders.

Radio New Zealand's Morning Report, in common with many Western news media, always refers to Israeli air strikes, shelling and other acts of violence against Palestinians as 'retaliation'. Never is it acknowledged that Palestinian rocket fire could ever itself be retaliatory. Occasional acts of legitimate armed Palestinian resistance are, of course, never reported as such by our news media.

Israel calls the shots – literally

At the time of the planned Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009), Israel had successfully provoked Hamas rocket fire by breaking a six-month ceasefire. Up until then the Palestinians had adhered to the ceasefire and there was no benefit for them in ending it. During Operation Cast Lead, Israel committed war crimes that targeted and killed hundreds of civilians, using weapons that did not discriminate between targets. The Israeli offensive intentionally destroyed civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. All this is a matter of verifiable international record.

Is it so hard for Western commentators to grasp the essential truth that the occupying power is the aggressor and that the occupied people are the victims? Is it not self-evident, after so many decades, that Israel enjoys vast military superiority over a people that has no defence force and severely limited capacity for retaliatory resistance? International law describes the Israeli presence as belligerent occupation. The great majority of Gaza's population are refugees, ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist militias and, later, by the new self-declared state of Israel. Israel continues to deny these refugees their UN-sanctioned right of return.

Meanwhile it should not be forgotten that the people of the West Bank, from whence no missiles are fired, suffer daily oppressive violence at the hands of the Israeli Occupation. From the grotesque forcing of a man to demolish his own home and then pay a fine to the Israeli Occupation, to the destruction of olive harvests, irrigation and power supply systems and the torture of children (an acknowledgement of these abuses can be found in the UK Parliamentary record – Hansard.) Whether or not missiles fly from Gaza, it seems that Israel is provoked by the mere existence of the Palestinian people.

The policy of requiring the Palestinian people to negotiate their liberty, under the duress of military occupation, is plainly unjust and doomed to failure. Respect for international law offers the greatest hope for peace but Western governments have so far lacked the will to enforce it. Urgent intervention in the form of sanctions on Israel could save many lives and provide hope for the future. – Leslie Bravery, 16 November 2012.

 Only some of the truth – the trouble with selective news reporting

New Zealand's abstention at UNESCO

Commenting on New Zealand's abstention from voting on the Palestinian application for membership of UNESCO, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said he would have preferred the United Nations to “make a decision on Palestine before any of its other agencies”. Once again, our Foreign Affairs Minister has distanced New Zealand from the majority of the world community in failing to support the Palestinian people. The vote for Palestinian membership of the international cultural organisation was carried by a majority of 62%. New Zealand joined the 30% of member states that abstained from voting. The United States and Israel could only persuade 14% to vote against the Palestinians.

Why would our Foreign Affairs Ministry include New Zealand among those states that would not support a people suffering under decades of belligerent military Occupation? Murray McCully's claim that New Zealand is 'even-handed' in its approach to Israel and Palestine seems at odds with reality. The United Nations Palestine partition plan that New Zealand voted for provided for an Israeli State and a Palestinian State, yet New Zealand will not even support the relatively modest Palestinian application for UNESCO membership. It should be obvious by now that a world in turmoil, and on the threshold of unprecedented economic and political upheavals, needs more than ever the restoration of respect for the provisions of international law. Most of the world community has grown tired of pandering to injustice.

The World Court has ruled on the illegality of Israel's annexation Wall while Israel continues to refuse to recognise the Palestinian right of return (supported by UN Resolutions) to land and homes from which they were ethnically cleansed. Decades of direct peace talks between the occupying power and an occupied people have achieved only territorial gains for Israel and impunity for Israeli aggression both within and beyond Palestine. What is the point of 'direct talks' when Israel has already defiantly laid down uncompromising pre-conditions? On the illegal settlements, Netanyahu triumphantly proclaimed in front of US President Obama:“We're here to stay”.

Mr McCully should know that world-wide and in Israel many Jews, both religious and secular, appalled by Israel's war crimes, are joining the majority of world opinion in trying to bring those cruelties to an end. Now, an Israeli NGO, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), has presented the United Nations with yet more findings concerning Israel's abuses in occupied East Jerusalem. They reveal the extent of the continuing demolition of Palestinian homes, revocation of residencies and a decline in quality of life for Palestinians. “We are witnessing a process of ethnic displacement,” says Michael Sfard, the lawyer who helped draw up the 73-page report. “Israel is manifestly and seriously violating international law ... and the motivation is demographic.” Israel has annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City and surrounding West Bank villages, forming a Jerusalem municipality that it declares part of the “united and eternal capital of Israel.” No country recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, so how can McCully justify clinging to the US/Israeli pretence that no agreement can be reached without direct 'peace talks'?

What do Israel and the United States really expect to be the result of brow-beating the Palestinians into further 'direct talks'? Perhaps it is hoped that, under intolerable pressure, the Palestinians will eventually cave in. The fact that Israel has forthrightly declared that talks cannot include the inalienable rights of Palestinians it appears the time is overdue for the enforcement of international law, especially UN Security Council Resolutions and the requirements of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel and the US are terrified by the success of the Palestinian bid for membership of UNESCO because it means the game is up. Full membership of UNESCO means that Palestine can apply for the listing of sites for World Heritage Status, such as in Bethlehem and Jericho and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. The location of such sites on Palestinian territory and Palestinian sovereignty over the land will, inevitably, come to be formally recognised internationally. Israel will no longer be able to sustain the myth that these national monuments are not located in Palestine and will find itself facing the International Court of Justice, an avenue for redress previously beyond the reach of the Palestinian people.

Even-handedness is no excuse for turning a blind eye to injustice.

Leslie Bravery – 2 November 2011

Palmer proves need for appeal to the World Court

Leslie Bravery, 5 September 2011

The UN Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident, known as the The Palmer Report (described by award-winning US journalist Max Blumenthal as “factually challenged”) attempted to justify the blockade of Gaza, in contradiction of a UN Human Rights Council official fact-finding mission last September that found the blockade to be illegal. Turkey certainly rejects the Palmer Report finding and intends to challenge the Israeli siege of Gaza before the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The Palmer Report found that Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was lawful, taking on trust Israel's claims that its blockade was necessary for security. The Commission failed to take into account evidence that showed Israel's true motive for the blockade was not security but collective punishment. In April 2006, the Guardian newspaper reported Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, giving the game away when he summed up Israel’s policy of blockading Gaza thus: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Of the four-member Palmer Report commission besides Chairman Geoffrey Palmer, one member, Süleyman Özdem Sanberk, was chosen by Turkey. Another member, representing Israel, was Joseph Ciechanover Itzhar and tipping the balance in favour of Israel was the invitation to serve as Vice Chairman on the commission extended to the former President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe. Uribe's loyalty to Israel was warmly recognised in May 2007 when the American Jewish Committee awarded him its "Light Unto The Nations" award, describing him as a good friend of Israel. Uribe has shown no respect for international law; his government used the International Red Cross emblem in a hostage rescue mission in July 2008 in contravention of Geneva Conventions that prohibit improper use of the Red Cross symbol. Uribe's support for paramilitary forces, illegal under Colombian law, further undermines his suitability to serve on the commission, as does his overseeing of the wire-tapping of Supreme Court Justices and opposition leaders.

The Palmer report was certainly no fact-finding mission and it sought no evidence from civilian victims and eyewitnesses on board the Mavi Marmara at the time of the Israeli assault upon an unarmed vessel on the high seas. The Report therefore did not concern itself with the circumstances that led to the aid flotilla's presence and the manifestly illegal collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Without genuine fact-finding, any suggestion of impartiality is both an illusion and an affront to the families of the nine dead civilians (most of those killed had been shot several times, some either in the back or at close range), the injured and the 1.5 million people suffering under belligerent Israeli blockade.

Partiality towards Israel can be the only explanation for the apparent lack of  interest by our leaders in the evidence and facts contained in the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission report (published last September) of interviews with more than 100 eyewitnesses in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman. Besides information provided by governments, the Human Rights Council  relied on forensic reports and interviews with medical experts in Turkey, as well as written statements, video film footage and other photographic material relating to the incident. Israel refused to co-operate with the Human Rights Council fact-finding mission. The Palmer panel report claims that the Israeli military that boarded the Mavi Marmara “faced significant, organised and violent resistance from a group of passengers”, forcing the commandos “to use force for their own protection”. The problem is that the Palmer panel did not gather any evidence of its own and simply accepted Israel's version of events. Israel never actually produced independent evidence to support its assertions but, on the other hand, in spite of Israel's best efforts, some video footage escaped that contradicts the Israeli version. The surviving video footage shows indiscriminate live-fire by the Israeli attackers, the apparent execution of a journalist and the targeted assassination of at least one other passenger. The hyperlinks to these videos are available.

At least the Palmer Report admitted that the loss of life and injuries resulting from the Israeli assault was unacceptable but it did accept Israel's propaganda claim that its soldiers were mistreated, even though photographs show passengers giving aid and protection to those Israeli troops who had been disarmed. These photos are also available online. It would be surprising if some passengers had not attempted to defend themselves against a terrifying assault in the dead of night by elite commandos equipped with modern weapons and assault helicopters. Video footage reveals frightened passengers in a companion way stained with blood, attempting to hide or cowering away from Israeli gunfire.
 
The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Saturday that Turkey would be applying, as early as next week, for an investigation by the International Court of Justice into the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza. The futile and ineffectual Palmer Report proves that The World Court is the best place for matters of international law and war crimes to be considered. The Court's ruling on the illegality of Israel's annexation Wall, which to hide the facts Israel calls a  separation barrier, is encouraging. Turkey will also pursue criminal cases against Israeli officials responsible for the killings of nine Turkish citizens in international waters.

Who is willing to take up the cause of Israel's chief victims, the Palestinian people, whose decades-long daily losses of life, limb, liberty and land are so egregiously overlooked by the world community?

McCully's 'Arab Spring' delusion 

Leslie Bravery / 4 August 2011

The Hon. Murray McCully, New Zealand Government Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave a speech on Tuesday, 2 August 2011, addressed to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) Conference at Turnbull House, Wellington, New Zealand. In his speech, McCully made one valuable observation: “a key part of this equation of regional security is how the international community deals with the Middle East Peace Process.” One of the key failings of the so-called Middle East Peace Process has been an almost total disregard for international law. Mr McCully called instead for what he termed the voices of “constructive Palestinian moderation” to prevail, going on to say, “it is my firm view that resolving a basis for a two-state solution can only be achieved by getting the two parties into direct talks.” In all the pro-Israeli rhetoric that masquerades as even-handed diplomacy, a certain bias emerges. The call for 'moderation' is made only upon the Palestinian victims of belligerent Israeli foreign occupation and illegal settlement building. No such call is made upon Israel. To say that direct talks are the only way for the Palestinians to receive justice is tantamount to saying that the victim of foreign military occupation must be pressured to negotiate terms that allow the occupier to keep much of the conquered land and natural resources.

Thus, according to Mr McCully, the World Community should view the “key part of this equation of regional security” to mean dispensing with the Fourth Geneva Convention and somewhat legitimising Israeli occupation as a matter to be negotiated between unequal parties. He couldn't even bring himself to mention the settlements. What voice of Israeli “moderation” is being called upon here?

McCully no doubt avoided the question of settlements in his address because their growing presence betrays the futility of the so-called peace talks and the true intentions of the Israeli state that forces them upon the Palestinian people. It is sheer hypocrisy to demand that the Palestinian people negotiate away their human rights under duress. The UN Relief and Works Agency said in a report on 2 August 2011 that settlement development had resulted in the demolition of 356 Palestinian and other structures in the first six months of this year, compared with 431 for the whole of 2010. The agency reported 700 people displaced in the first six months of 2011, compared with 594 in the whole of 2010. In June and July, around 605 Palestinians, many of whom were children, were displaced or affected by these demolitions. According to UNRWA: “Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers.” As the report reveals, Israel's purpose is to create a change in the ethnic make-up of the West Bank.

The Palestinian people have been placed in this position by decisions made over their heads by the very international community that McCully acknowledges is a key player in the facilitating of regional security. The Palestinian people are therefore the responsibility of the world community – they have a right to internationally guaranteed security – and yet spokesmen such as Mr McCully concern themselves solely with Israel's uniquely perceived “need for security”.

In his speech, McCully said that Israel knows “that we understand their need for a guarantee of security as part of any settlement. And they know that we understand the need for a firm international position on Iran's nuclear ambitions as part of that improved regional security environment.” Focusing on Iran while choosing to ignore Israel's glaringly obvious nuclear arms stockpile and Israeli refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is further confirmation of McCully's pro-Israel leanings. McCully's claim that “we pride ourselves on being fair minded and even handed” is so manifestly absurd it is either delusional or downright dishonest. His apparent lack of concern for international law and natural justice enabled him to say “during my visits to the oPt and Israel, the various actors were talking in almost identical terms, about settling on the 1967 borders, plus or minus land swaps of 4-5 or 6%, with appropriate buffer zones.” If McCully does not know, somebody should tell him that Israel has no right to 'swap' land that does not belong to it. There can be no just solution until Israel dismantles its annexation Wall, as required by the World Court, and removes its Jewish-only segregated colonies in the West Bank, as required by UN Resolutions and other international law. Israel's implacable refusal to abide by the provisions of international law demonstrates not only a lack of goodwill but also a determination to achieve its territorial ambitions with the same preconditions that have made an utter mockery of the so-called peace process.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem go on suffering under foreign occupation and the Gaza Strip remains illegally blockaded. Within Israel, discriminatory laws abound, the latest being the recently passed anti-boycott legislation that targets individuals or organisations that publicly call for a boycott against Israel or any area under its control. Mr McCully should visit Occupied Palestine for a while and experience for himself the relentless nightmare of night home invasions, see for himself the beatings of children in their homes and the crass vandalism that accompanies such raids. He should see for himself the demolition of homes and the bulldozing of crops. McCully should also witness the heartbreaking destruction of ancient olive trees perpetrated by Israeli settlers and troops alike. Perhaps then he will stop deluding himself and be honest with his audience. We leave the final words to Israeli peace activist, Miko Peled, who served in Israel’s Special Forces Commando unit. His grandfather was a signatory to Israel’s unilateral Declaration of Independence and his father was one of Israel’s most famous generals. These words of warning form a conclusion to his soon-to-be-published book The General's Son. They could very well have been addressed to Murray McCully:

".. . those people who want to associate themselves with Israel . . . need to know this: that when the trials begin and the tribunals take their place, and when the truth and reconciliation commission begins its work and they are finally shamed into admitting they were wrong, they need to remember to go down on their knees and beg forgiveness from the people they so greatly wronged."

PHRC deplores US Senate threat to Palestinian bid for UN recognition

The passing by the United States Senate of Resolution 185, calling on Palestinians to halt their bid for recognition of statehood at the United Nations, reveals once again the extent of unreasoning bias in favour of Israel. The Senate also called on Obama to use the US veto in the forthcoming September vote. There is a cruel cynicism in the threat to withdraw the $550 million that the United States provides to the Palestinians annually, bearing in mind that Obama's 2012 budget proposes $3.075 billion in US military aid for Israel. That is $75 million more than in 2011 and US military aid is expected to increase by a further $25 million to $3.1 billion in 2013. The Occupying power's belligerence is further encouraged with the joint US-Israel missile defence programmes, including the 'Arrow' and 'David's Sling', which are expected to receive $106.1 million in 2012.

US objections to the Palestinians turning to the United Nations or other international bodies are a panic reaction because direct negotiations – the so-called peace process – have proved to be nothing but a cover for Israeli territorial gains. According to the terms of the Oslo agreement of 1993 (the mutual recognition agreement signed by Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin), the Palestinians were promised self-determination by 2000 at the latest. In the past 18 years, Israel has tightened its grip on Palestine, including blockade and absolute control of Gaza's air, land and sea entry points. Israel's blockade of Gaza is a clear violation of international humanitarian law, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says Israel is punishing the whole civilian population of Gaza describing conditions in Gaza that include hospitals short of equipment, power cuts lasting hours each day and drinking water unfit for consumption. "The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. A Red Cross statement said the closure therefore ". . . constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law."

In direct contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel has trebled the rate of transfer of its citizens into occupied territory from 100,000 to over 300,000. Turning a blind eye to Israeli-state terrorism, US Senate Resolution 185 calls for the Palestinian unity government to "publicly and formally forswear terrorism, accept Israel's right to exist, and reaffirm previous agreements made with the Government of Israel." The US has never demanded that Israel forswear its militarism against the Palestinian people. As for Israel's so-called US/Israeli defined 'right to exist', the Zionist state's ideologically racist policies of Occupation settlement in the West Bank and discrimination within its borders are indefensible. Formal recognition of such a state of affairs would not only be offensive but also contrary to international law.

The crime of apartheid

Israel defines itself as a state of the Jewish people. Discrimination, such as the revocation of Israeli Arab citizenship, the absentee property law, the theft of land and occupation settlement are all directed at non-Jews. Consequently, many Jewish people are offended when the Israeli state claims that it speaks for them. The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

The path to peace lies in respect for, and observance of, international law. Ideologies that, by harming others, seek to accord a privileged status for any racial or ethnic group should be outlawed. Failure to uphold justice plays into the hands of extremists and is destabilising. If humanitarianism doesn't have sufficient appeal, our elected leaders might at least consider enlightened self-interest because the path they have followed has failed, totally. If acceded to, the demand for recognition of the discriminatory Zionist state demanded of Israel's victims would be tantamount both to surrendering to the crime of apartheid as well as acquiescence in it. Discouraging the Palestinians from seeking a state could end with the demise of Zionism sooner than anyone might expect. A single state solution is looking ever more likely.

Leslie Bravery – 4 July 2011, Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa/New Zealand

Kairos Palestine response to Archbishop His Grace Dr Rowan Williams

Read article in newsletter

An interview with Frank Barat (co-ordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine)

Home invasions: 00:45-04:30, the town of Az-Zababida - 02:10, the town of Qabatiya - 01:30, the village of Jit - 15:30, the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan - 00:45, the town of Deir Istiya - 13:50, Hebron.

Peace disruption raids: 08:30, the village of Al Isawiya - 12:00, the town of Beit Hanina - 01:30, the village of Mikhmas - 14:00, the town of Meithalun - 11:10, the village of Al Funduq - 16:00, the town of Habla - 16:15, Qalqilya - 00:30 , the town of Azzun - 10:15, the town of Beita - 01:30, the village of Marda - 02:05, the village of Fasayil - 10:30, the town of Halhul - 14:10, Hebron - 00:50, Hebron - 01:15, the town of Yatta - 02:45, the town of Surif.

Palestinian attacks: none

Israeli attack – injury: Northern Gaza – morning, a 13-year-old youngster, Ehmaid Ahmad Obaid, was wounded when an Israeli Army position on the Green Line opened fire on pedestrians near the Beit Hanun (Erez) Crossing.

Israeli attack – death – injury – damage – agricultural sabotage: Central Gaza – evening, a woman, Ni’mah Yousef Abu Es’aid, was killed, five other persons were wounded and a house was damaged when Israeli armoured vehicles and bulldozers, covered by reconnaissance aircraft, invaded farms near the Al Bureij refugee camp, opening intense fire. The deaths and injuries occurred amid shelling by Israeli tanks.

Israeli attack – agricultural sabotage: Khan Yunis – morning, Israeli armoured vehicles and bulldozers, covered by reconnaissance aircraft, raided Palestinian territory east of the town of Al Qarara and opened fire on agricultural areas and houses while bulldozing crops.

Home invasions: Jenin – 00:45-04:30, the Israeli Army raided the town of Az-Zababida, searched a dormitory building belonging to the Arab-American University, and detained and interrogated a number of students.

Raid – house demolitions – injury: Jerusalem – 08:30, the Israeli Army raided the village of Al Isawiya and demolished three houses, injuring a woman, Sabah Abu Rmaileh, when she tried to defend her home by confronting the bulldozers.

Raid – house demolition: Jerusalem – 12:00, Israeli troops raided the town of Beit Hanina and demolished a house.

House demolition: Jerusalem – 16:00, the Israeli Army demolished two houses in the occupied area of As Sal’a, between the districts of Silwan and Jabal Al Mukhabber.

House demolition: Jerusalem – Israeli troops demolished three houses in the village of Al Isawiya.

House demolition: Jerusalem – The Israeli Army demolished a house in Beit Hanina.