A human rights group founded by Israeli veterans has collected what it says are damning testimonies from soldiers who took part in the offensive in January against Hamas fighters in Gaza. BBC correspondent Paul Wood looks at the anonymous claims presented by Breaking the Silence. Standing by the ruins of his home in Gaza, Majdi Abed Rabbo explained how Israeli troops had used him as a human shield. “The Israeli soldiers handcuffed me and pointed the gun at my neck,” he said. “They controlled every step.” In this manner, Mr Abed Rabbo said, he was forced to go in ahead of Israeli soldiers as they cleared houses containing Palestinian gunmen. This same incident was described by one of the Israeli soldiers who spoke to Breaking the Silence.
“A Palestinian neighbour is brought in,” he says. “It was procedure. The soldier places his gun barrel on the civilian’s shoulder.” If true, that was a clear breach of the international laws of war – which say soldiers have a duty of care to non-combatants – and of Israeli law. The Israeli Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “neighbour policy”, of using Palestinians to shield advancing troops, in 2005. Until now, the Israeli army always had a ready answer to allegations that war crimes were committed during its offensive in Gaza.
Such claims were, they said, Palestinian propaganda. Now, though, the accusations of abuse are being made by Israeli soldiers.
Testimonies collected
The common thread in the almost 30 testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence is that orders were given to prevent Israeli casualties, whatever the cost in Palestinian lives. Writing the report’s introduction, the Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard says: “All the witnesses agreed that they received a particular order repeatedly, in a way that did not leave much room for doubt, to do everything, everything, so that they – the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldiers – would not be harmed.
“The soldiers tell in their testimonies how this unwritten message, which came from brigade, battalion, and company commanders in morale-building conversations before entering Gaza, translated into zero patience for the life of enemy civilians.” The lawyer adds: “Violations of the laws of war are liable to be war crimes.” Here are just a few quotes which give a flavour of the soldiers’ testimony. The accumulation of detail is convincing and, in the eyes of Israel’s critics, damning.
“Things are happening in his battalion of which he (the commander) has no idea. There are people who deserve to go to jail…
“When your company commander and battalion commander tell you, ‘Go on, fire!’ the soldiers will not hold back. They are waiting for this day, the fun of shooting and feeling all that power in your hands…
“Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad. The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places. You see a house, a window, shoot at the window. You don’t see a terrorist there? Fire at the window. In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”Israeli military spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Leibovich dismissed the testimonies as anonymous hearsay, designed to embarrass the army rather than lead to serious investigations. She questioned why Breaking the Silence had not handed over its findings earlier, before the media were informed. “We are investigating many of the requests from NGOs and other groups,” she said. “But when you have a report that is based on hearsay, with no facts whatsoever, we can’t do anything with it.” In the past, says the Israeli military, some allegations of wrong-doing in Gaza have turned out to be second or third-hand accounts, the result of soldiers recycling rumours in the battalion rather than describing what they themselves witnessed. Credible record
But Breaking the Silence has a long – and to many, credible – record of getting soldiers to talk about experiences which might not reflect well on the Army. The group is funded by the British, Dutch and Spanish governments, as well as the EU.
It says the testimony is anonymous because of orders to Israeli soldiers not to speak out publicly.
Some of the collected testimony is highly specific. In the case of Majdi Abed Rabbo, the Israeli military police have now opened an investigation, lending at least some credibility to the soldier who said the “neighbour policy” was in widespread use.
The military maintains it went to extraordinary lengths to ensure civilians were not harmed in Gaza. The soldiers’ testimony does describe in detail how leaflets were distributed in areas they were about to enter – warning people to leave. But it is what happened after that, says Breaking the Silence, which calls into question the morality of the Israeli army’s actions.
Read here about Israeli justice for Jews. Palestinians are put into life imprisinment with hardly any evidence, not to mention evidence recorded on film. It is different for Jews, of course.
The State Prosecution said Tuesday that it was dropping charges against a resident of Kiryat Arba who was caught on film shooting at two Palestinians in the West Bank last December. The prosecution said it made the decision not to try Ze’ev Braude because such a move could expose classified information that might harm the security of the state. Braude, 51, was filmed by the human rights group B’Tselem opening fire on the Palestinians at close range during the evacuation of a disputed house in Hebron. He was initially charged with intending to cause grievous bodily harm. Following the indictment, Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed off on a document guaranteeing immunity concerning sources of information for the Shin Bet, its modus operandi and the units and personnel operating within the framework of the organization. Braude’s attorney Ariel Atari requested that the court instruct the State Prosecution to reveal the secret evidence in order to help Braude’s defense. The prosecution argued that revealing the information would harm state security and added that if obligated to reveal the information, it would drop the charges against Braude.
Israeli authorities on Tuesday refused to allow more than a dozen French diplomats entry into the Gaza Strip, where they planned to take part in a Bastille Day celebration. A senior security source said the 15 diplomats and East Jerusalem consulate employees were denied entry as part of an Israeli protest over the fact that Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit is still captive in the Gaza Strip without basic rights. “They [the diplomats] should not be allowed to celebrate a holiday marking freedom and human rights for the people of Gaza while Gilad Shalit remains in captivity,” said the source. Israel objected to France’s plan to hold a Bastille Day celebration in Gaza particularly in light of the fact that Shalit, who was abducted by Hamas militants in a 2006 cross-border raid, has dual French-Israeli citizenship.
During a Bastille Day celebration at the French embassy in Jaffa, Ambassador Jean Michel Casa declared that Shalit must immediately be freed, a sentiment shared by President Nicolas Sarkozy. The French Consulate in East Jerusalem serves as liaison with the West Bank and has a small delegation in the Gaza Strip, as well. Israel officially denied the consulate’s request for 15 entry visas – made earlier Tuesday – on the grounds that such requests must be submitted 48 hours in advance. A Foreign Ministry source said that French Consulate must have been well aware that the diplomats would not be granted the permits, accusing them of “trying to be provocative” and blame Israel for ruining the French holiday. “The French consulate employees are known to be provocative and every week it’s a different story with them,” said the source.
The Jahalin tribe sends happy tidings from the West Bank to their brethren in Gaza: The effects of the Israeli siege can be overcome by building homes from used tires filled and covered with mud. This way refuse can be recycled, construction costs minimized and structures insulated from the cold and heat, something concrete buildings cannot do. In one of the Jahalin encampments in the West Bank’s Wadi Qelt region, they’re building a school and kindergarten from used tires. This ignites the imagination – turning rubbish into treasure. Since their expulsion from the Negev in 1948, the Jahalin tribe has lived on privately-owned land leased from neighboring Palestinian villages. This was long before expanding settlements repeatedly encroached on their property and military edicts denied them the chance to wander with their flocks in accordance with the seasons and available water sources. The Jahalin themselves built the school close to their homes because the authorities in charge of the land and planning did not do it. The Israeli government and Civil Administration, which have exclusive control over Area C (60 percent of the West Bank), do not take the Bedouin into account when determining their overall planning. Without a master plan, there is no real procedure for obtaining building permits, not for permanent structures for large families or medical clinics. As a result, the Jahalin and other seminomadic groups in the Jordan Valley are not hooked up to the electricity grid and water system. They live in tents and shacks slated for demolition by the authorities. By extension, the “eco-friendly” school and kindergarten are also considered illegal and have been marked for demolition. Some observers liken the “illegality” of these structures to that of the Israeli outposts. This comparison is not only deceitful but also hypocritical because the outposts are not dismantled despite any demolition orders. Also, behind every outpost is a government agency that has helped establish it. And there is the matter of the settlements, all of which are illegal, not just the outposts.
The root of the problem is not the illegality of the settlements and outposts, but the Israeli Jewish worldview that sanctifies inequality. In other words, what is naturally befitting for the Jews ought to be denied the Palestinians. What is painful and lacking for the Jews is not a problem for the Palestinians. The official talk of two states conceals the prevailing reality of one state, from the river to the sea, a state that embraces the South African ideology of “separate but unequal development of the races.” All on the same strip of land, all under the rule of the same government.
The Jews’ natural growth and their right to enclose balconies on territories that Israel conquered in 1967 have been the subject of discussions between its top officials and world leaders. The Bedouin exercising their right to educate their children under humane conditions in a place they have lived for the last 61 years has come to be considered a violation of the law. The law is determined by man and reflects the current balance of power, either on a global or local scale. Equality, on the other hand, is a human attribute. Throughout history, this attribute has become clearer thanks to never-ending social struggles. Their success – either full or partial – influences the laws. There once was a law that forbade black slaves from learning to read and write. There were also criminals who broke the law by studying and teaching. Anyone who issues the order to raze a school for Bedouin, approves the order or carries it out aligns himself with the thinkers, jurists, and law enforcement officials of the slavery regime.
Israeli naval ships often attack Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of the Gaza Strip. (David Schermerhorn)
When the Israeli navy seized a small humanitarian boat flying under the Greek flag on Tuesday, 30 June, did the commandos commit acts of piracy when they forced the crew and 21 passengers — including a former US Congresswoman and Nobel Laureate — to port in Israel? May Israeli officials be prosecuted, and if so where?
On the morning of 29 June, the Spirit of Humanity set sail from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip carrying approximately three tons of medical aid, olive saplings, children’s toys and other humanitarian items for the area’s 1.5 million residents. The Spirit traveled through international waters when, at approximately 1:30am, several Israeli gunships surrounded the boat, jammed its GPS, navigation and radar systems and threatened to open fire. Heavily-armed Israeli naval commandos boarded the boat, ordered the Spirit’s passengers to lie face down, roughed up several, and ultimately forced the humanitarian volunteers to Israel where they were held for days in hot, crowded, cells before all but two (both Israeli citizens) were ultimately deported.
The Israeli navy routinely harasses Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Gaza, and has on occasion seized boats and detained their crews , just as it did with the Spirit of Humanity.
An act of piracy, as defined by the law of nations, includes illegal acts of violence or detention committed on the high seas or outside the jurisdiction of any state. While today piracy often conjures up ideas of buried treasure, sunken ships and Johnny Depp at his best; olden-day pirates instilled a sense of terror in seafarers traveling in no-man’s zones, outside the protection of any state.
Israel’s commandeering of the Spirit last week shares a lot in common with these traditional acts of piracy: the Spirit’s unarmed passengers traveled on the high seas, vulnerable, uncertain if they would live or die when the Israeli navy surrounded them and took them prisoners. But do Israel’s actions constitute piracy? The answer is: Yes.
Israel committed clear acts of violence and detention against the Spirit’s passengers, acts, which, under the UN Convention on the High Seas, are unlawful. A warship may legitimately board a foreign ship on the high seas in only three circumstances: there is reason to believe the boat was engaged in piracy, the slave trade or the boat — despite its flag — is really of the same nationality as the warship. None of these circumstances apply here.
According to a 1 July press release from the Free Gaza Movement, the Spirit of Humanity was in international waters when the Israeli navy captured it. However, even if the boat was in Gazan waters, the above acts still constitute piracy because Gazan waters are outside the jurisdiction of any state — and certainly outside Israel’s jurisdiction. Jurisdiction, it should be noted, is different from control. While Israel exercises de facto control over Gaza, it has no legal de jure jurisdiction over Gaza.
Furthermore, while piracy has traditionally been defined as a private act, there is no reason why Israel’s seizure of the Spirit, its passengers and its humanitarian cargo should not be considered an act of state or state-sponsored piracy.
Israel committed an act of piracy by hijacking the Spirit, forcing its passengers to Israel, imprisoning them and taking their cargo and personal items. But why is it important that Israel be charged with piracy, especially when it already faces a host of new war crimes accusations?
The law of nations has long upheld the principle that pirates are “hostis humani generis” — an “enemy of all mankind.” In the 18th century, nations reached a consensus that piracy was universally wrong and every nation has a right to prosecute pirates of any nationality. In United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. 153 (1820), the US Supreme Court held that the principle of universal jurisdiction applies to punishing all persons, whether “natives or foreigners, who have committed [piracy] against any persons whatsoever ….”
In other words, piracy was one of the first criminal acts recognized by international law. Today, international law confers on piracy, along with slavery and genocide, the status of a jus cogens — a norm or a right that can never be derogated. This means a state is bound by a jus cogens norm whether or not it consents to its application. As an example, a country may not engage in slavery simply because it has enacted laws making it permissible to do so.
Filing indictments against Israeli government officials and senior army commanders for crimes related to piracy is important not only because the perpetrators of the 30 June hijacking must be brought to justice, but also to reinforce the legitimacy of international law, which is increasingly viewed as being selectively used by rich countries as a tool to oppress poorer ones. The War on Piracy has been highlighted most recently by UN Security Resolution 1851, initiated by the US, which calls on all states to actively take part in the fight against piracy off the coast of Somalia, and even authorizes states to take measures inside Somalia.
The laws of piracy should not be selectively applied to poor Africans who hijack huge tankers belonging to rich corporations. Just as US prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted a Somali national on ten counts including piracy and hijacking, similar charges should be brought against the Israelis who committed, aided and abetted in the 30 June act of piracy and any others against Palestinian vessels. But more importantly, governments and international civil society must do all they can to pull Israel back into the bounds of international law and truly support the self-determination and human rights of all peoples, including Palestinians.
Radhika Sainath is a Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney. She recently returned from a National Lawyers Guild fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and is an editor and author of Peace Under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has been much criticized in Israel, as well as abroad, for failing to present his own diplomatic initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to forestall US intervention. Netanyahu may have huffed and puffed before giving voice to the phrase “two states for two peoples” at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, but the contours of just such a Palestinian state — or states — have been emerging undisturbed for some time. In fact, Netanyahu appears every bit as committed as his predecessors to creating the facts of an Israeli-imposed two-state solution, one he and others in Israel’s leadership doubtless hope will eventually be adopted by the White House as the “pragmatic” — if far from ideal — option.
While Israel has been buying yet more time with Washington in bickering over a paltry settlement freeze, it has been forging ahead with the process of creating two Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that, despite supposedly emerging from occupation, are in reality sinking ever deeper into chronic dependency on Israeli goodwill. This is creating a culture of absolute Israeli control and absolute Palestinian dependency, enforced by proxy Palestinian rulers acting as mini-dictatorships. For a growing number of Palestinians, the conditions of bare subsistence and even survival are Israeli gifts that few can afford to spurn through political activity, let alone civil disobedience or armed resistance. The Palestinian will to organize and resist as their land is seized for settlements is being inexorably sapped. It is little mentioned but Israel all but abandoned completing its massive separation wall in the West Bank some time ago. There are significant gaps waiting to be filled, but, with things having grown so quiet and the cost of each kilometer of wall so high, the sense of political and military urgency has evaporated. Suicide bombers, had they the determination, could still slip into Israel. But increasingly Palestinians view such attacks as futile, if not counterproductive: Israel simply wins greater international sympathy and has the pretext to turn the screw yet tighter on Palestinian life. None of this has been lost on Israel’s leaders of either the so-called Left or Right.
Rather than being an aberration in response to rocket attacks, the blockade of Gaza has become Israel’s template for Palestinian statehood. The West Bank is rapidly undergoing its own version of disengagement and besiegement, with similar predictable results.
Gaza’s blockade — and the savage battering it took in December and January — has suggested even to Netanyahu that the Israeli version of the carrot-and-stick approach works. The stick — a devastated Gaza unable to rise from the rubble because aid and basic goods are kept out — has transformed most of the population into a nation dependent on handouts, borrowing where possible to buy necessities smuggled through the tunnels, and concentrating on the lonely art of survival. As the normally restrained International Committee of the Red Cross reported last month: “Most of the very poor have exhausted their coping mechanisms. Many have no savings left. They have sold private belongings such as jewelry and furniture and started to sell productive assets including farm animals, land, fishing boats or cars used as taxis.” The carrot — if it can be called that — is directed towards Gaza’s leaders, Hamas, rather than its ordinary inhabitants. The message is simple: keep the rocket fire in check and we won’t attack again. We will allow you to rule over the remnants of Gaza.
In the West Bank, the carrot for the leadership is even more tantalizingly visible. The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is colluding in the creation of a series of mini-fiefdoms based on the main cities.
Trained by the US military, Palestinian security forces with light weapons are taking back control of Jenin, Nablus, Jericho, Qalqilya, Ramallah and so on, while the PA is encouraged by promises of economic charity to prop up its legitimacy. The leader of a Palestinian non-governmental organization in Ramallah confided at the weekend that what is being created are “City Leagues” — a mocking reference to the Palestinian regional militias known as the Village Leagues armed by Israel in the early 1980s to stamp out Palestinian nationalism by threatening and attacking local political activists. Those were a dismal failure; this time Palestinians are less sure Israel will not succeed. Palestinian prisons are starting to fill not only with those suspected of belonging to Hamas but those who dissent from Fatah rule. The ground is being carefully tended by Israel to create a brutal client state. The stick, as in Gaza, is directed at the ordinary population. The news headlines are of the easing of movement restrictions at the checkpoints. That may be true at a few places deep in the West Bank. But at the big checkpoints that separate Israel from what is left of the West Bank, such as the one at Qalandiya between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the monitoring of Palestinian movement is becoming fearsomely sophisticated. These checkpoints are now more like small airport terminals, with limited numbers of “trusted” Palestinians entitled to pass through. To escape the poverty of the West Bank each day to reach manual work inside Israel, they must have a magnetic ID card storing biometric data and a special permit. Cards are denied by Israel not only to those with a record of political activity but also to those who have distant relatives deemed to be politically engaged. The same non-governmental leader concluded, again with bitter irony: “Our leaders are declaring victory: the victory of defeat.” Should Abbas and his PA functionaries sign up to this Israeli vision of statehood, the defeat for the Palestinians will be greater still.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) – The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s concern over an “unusually harsh statement” by the European Commission over Israel’s settlement policy indicates a growing unease between Israel and the EU. The European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU, said that Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank was strangling the Palestinian economy and forcing Palestinians there to become more dependent on foreign aid. “It is the European taxpayers who pay most of the price of this dependence,” read the 6 July EC statement.
According to the EC, expropriation of fertile Palestinian land for the settlements, the settler-only bypass roads which serve them, and the hundreds of West Bank checkpoints manned by the Israeli army have stunted Palestinian economic growth.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that $509 million is spent annually on maintaining Israeli settler roads and checkpoints. The bypass roads are meant to make it easier and quicker for Israeli settlers to reach Israel proper, while the checkpoints ostensibly serve their security. OCHA released a report in June saying that nearly 30 percent of the West Bank, which under international law belongs to the Palestinians, has been expropriated by the Israelis as closed military zones and for nature reserves. Together with Israel’s more than 100 illegal settlements — home to approximately 500,000 settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank — approximately 40 percent of the territory has been taken by Israel.
The West Bank is divided into area A, which falls under Palestinian control, area B, which falls under both Israeli military and Palestinian civil control, and area C, which falls under full Israeli control. Palestinians pay a high price by losing land while facing difficulties with travel and accessing their agricultural fields. Many are regularly denied building permits by the Israeli authorities to build in areas B and C. They therefore build without the requisite permits and then face the possibility of being evicted and having their homes demolished by the Israeli army. They also struggle to get permits to connect to electricity and water infrastructure. OCHA says that during the last few months it has seen a tightening of restrictions in areas in and around the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, as well as the Bethlehem and Hebron areas. The herding and farming communities which reside in Israel’s self-declared military zones in these regions face particular hardships, with their homes and livelihoods now under threat. Many had lost grazing land to make way for settlement enlargement and security. Now they face eviction. About 300 Palestinians, including 170 children, received evacuation and demolition orders from the Israeli army in May alone.
Osama Jarrer, deputy director of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Agriculture in the Hebron governorate in the southern West Bank, said many farmers there had been forced to reduce their flocks. “Because hundreds of farmers are in the same position there is a glut of livestock, so they sell at a reduced price. But even when they sell to get out of the business more than half of them will not be able to pay their fodder and concentrated feed debts,” Jarrer told IPS. The situation of Hebron’s 3,000 farmers, and their 30,000 dependents, has been aggravated by rising international fodder prices and a water shortage.
The water shortage is due to inequitable water distribution between Palestinians and Israeli setters, and a drought which has gripped this part of the Middle East for several years. Meanwhile, as Palestinians experience the practical consequences of Israel’s West Bank settlement policy on the ground, Israel and the US continue to haggle over the theoretical intricacies in capitals abroad.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell in London a two weeks ago, the latest in a round of meetings over the disputed settlements. With a broad smile and much fanfare Barak announced to the assembled media that Israel would be dismantling 23 outposts in the West Bank in the near future. The outposts comprise a small number of caravans, often unattached to water and electricity. They are illegal under Israeli law. Barak failed to mention the settlements in the West Bank. These range from several hundred residents to small cities with tens of thousands of settlers and associated infrastructure. They are illegal under international law. One of the small outposts slated for evacuation is Migron, near the central West Bank city Ramallah, after Israeli rights group Peace Now petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice.
However, the state asked for a year’s extension before the evacuation would take place, leaving plenty of time for facts on the ground to be established. The 50 families to be evacuated are to be moved to new homes being built in the nearby Adam settlement, a mere reshuffling of settler numbers.
Moreover, according to documents presented to the court, aside from requesting building permits for 50 new housing units in Adam, Barak last month also approved detailed planning for constructing an initial 200 housing units. These will be part of the general construction blueprint for an additional 1,450 units in Adam. Migron was built illegally on privately owned Palestinian land in 2002. In an earlier petition in 2006 an Israeli court acknowledged the Palestinian ownership and the illegality of the outpost. But it will only be evacuated in 2010 in theory, and the chances of the settlers leaving voluntarily are close to nil. Peace Now says the Israeli government is building an additional 73,300 illegal housing units in the West Bank.
Barak’s manner in dealing with the small outpost of Migron portends poorly for Israel’s future evacuation of larger settlements, and represents a huge disparity between Israeli diplomacy and the reality on the ground. All rights reserved, IPS
The following open letter was sent to Argentinian musician Leon Gieco by the The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) on 9 July 2009:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is writing to express its grave concern about your upcoming appearance in the “Festival Argentina-Israel” in Israel on 14 July. As an artist with a great following because of your commitment to justice, we are writing to urge you to cancel your participation in a festival sponsored by a state that is complicit in some of the worst human rights abuses of our modern era. As you well know, the festival is sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, the Municipality of Rishon Lezion, and the Israeli national airline El Al, all of which are official organs of the state.
You are an artist who has defined his career by the defense of human rights and moral principles. In light of this, we urge you to consider what it would mean to celebrate your music in Israel, a colonial and apartheid state that represents all that you have fought against throughout your professional life. You recently described yourself as “someone who, rather than worry too much about selling records, tries first and foremost to do important things like work for human rights.” Palestine is the contemporary epitome of a people’s struggle against oppression: it is the struggle of a people who have suffered 61 years of ethnic cleansing, brutal colonial subjugation and apartheid.
You ask in your famous song “Solo le pido a Dios” (I Only Ask of God): “I only ask of God That I not be indifferent to war, It is a great monster that treads hard on the poor innocence of people.” This monster of war is what Palestinians have endured for generations! Most recently, in the Israeli attack on the occupied Gaza Strip, Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israel’s ferocious military arsenal. This brutal military assault on the Gaza Strip left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children, and injured another 5,380. The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reduced whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroyed scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. This criminal assault came after 18 months of an ongoing, crippling Israeli siege of Gaza with the clear goal of shattering all spheres of life and collectively punishing the entire population of Gaza, prompting the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to describe it as “a prelude to genocide.” International human rights organizations and UN organizations are now carrying out war crimes investigations into Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
You recently described your experience with a general who told you, in reference to “Solo le pido a Dios”, that you cannot compose a song for peace in a time of war. In bold defiance of this relentless oppression, you sang for the people whose voice was suppressed by this general and the tyranny he represented. In this song you only asked of God not to be indifferent to suffering. What are the lives of Palestinians living under brutal Israeli occupation, if not suffering? You asked that you did not want to be indifferent to injustice. What is the situation of Palestine — where the most basic human rights are denied an entire nation by its colonial oppressors — if it is not injustice?
For the last 61 years, Israel has imposed its colonial presence on historic Palestine and for the last 42 years, Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Despite the “peace process” which began 16 years ago, Israel routinely violates Palestinians’ most fundamental human rights with impunity, as documented by local and international human rights organizations. Israel extra-judicially kills Palestinian leaders and activists; keeps over 8,000 Palestinians imprisoned, including numerous members of parliament. Israel is destroying Palestinian homes; killing Palestinian children; and uprooting hundreds of thousands of Palestinian trees. As we write, Israel continues to build illegal Jewish colonies on occupied Palestinian land and an apartheid infrastructure of Jewish-only roads, blockades and the Apartheid Wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 2004. Israel denies millions of Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their lands. Moreover, Israel maintains a system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens reminiscent of South African apartheid.
In 1978 people began to sing “Solo le pido a Dios” in the streets, against the military dictatorship. In Palestine we cherish those precious voices that dare to scream this human truth in the face of the power of our occupiers. You are an artist whose career has been defined by your courage to speak truth to power; how can you ignore that role now?
Your fellow Argentinian and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, recently explained:
“It is painful to have to point out the aberrant behavior the state of Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, attacking, destroying, murdering and oppressing the population: women, children and young people are victims of these atrocities. We can not be silent. We must condemn it and shout: Enough!”
Allowing your work and your role as an artist to be co-opted by a state that has become the most durable modern symbol of colonialism and apartheid, as recognized by a growing community of conscientious artists and intellectuals the world over, is equivalent to lending your support to this state as well as offering it a means to escape its own oppressive reality. In the face of decades of unrelenting oppression, Palestinian civil society has called upon people of conscience throughout the world to take a stand in support of our struggle for freedom and the realization of our inalienable human and national political rights by heeding our call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Virtually all Palestinian artists and cultural figures stand behind this call and have urged their colleagues worldwide to boycott Israeli cultural and arts institutions due to their complicity in perpetuating Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression against the Palestinian people. In response, in the past few months, groups of artists, comedians, filmmakers, students and academics throughout the world have consolidated their efforts to show solidarity with Palestinians, to condemn Israel’s war crimes and its apartheid regime, and to call for effective political action such as boycotts, divestment drives, and sanctions (BDS). Many prominent international cultural figures including John Berger, Ken Loach, Arundhati Roy, Roger Waters, John Williams, among others, have declared their support for the boycott.
As was the case in South Africa, where international solidarity played a crucial role in bringing down apartheid by boycotting the economic, sports and cultural institutions of the apartheid regime, we sincerely hope you will stand with us in our call to boycott cultural events until Israel fulfills its obligations under international law and fully recognizes the Palestinian people’s right to live in full equality and freedom in their homeland.
Palestinian girls stand on the balcony of the ruined house in Rafa, hit during Israel's 22-day offensive against Gaza earlier this year, 2 July 2009 (Photo SAID KHATIB/AFP)
As opposed to Canadian Leonard Cohen, intent on singing to Israeli soldiers in Ramat Gan (and, when under pressure, adding Ramallah to his tour, as a sop to to his many critics…) This other famous Canadian, Naomi Klein, is not confused on the question of whose side she is on!
Professors at Tel Aviv University are protesting a decision to appoint Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch as a lecturer for the Faculty of Law.
The objections come in the wake of a recent story published in Haaretz about Sharvit-Baruch, who heads the Israel Defense Forces international law division. The report said that under Sharvit-Baruch’s command, IDF legal experts legitimized strikes involving Gaza civilians, including the bombardment of the Gaza police course closing ceremony. Sharvit-Baruch is planning on retiring from the army in the coming months and is scheduled to teach at the university’s law department next semester.
Leading the protest against Sharvit-Baruch’s appointment is Professor Chaim Ganz of the university’s Minerva Center for Human Rights. Ganz wrote a letter to Professor Hanoch Dagan, the dean of the law faculty, claiming that Sharvit-Baruch’s interpretation of the law during Israel’s Gaza offensive allowed the army to act in ways that constitute potential war crimes. Ganz also said that Sharvit-Baruch harms Israel’s values system.
Dr. Anat Matar, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s philosophy department, said, “I was shocked to learn that half of the second-year law students will learn the foundations of law from someone who helped justify the killing of civilians, including hundreds of children.” Dagan told Haaretz that Pnina Sharvit-Baruch will be teaching a course on international law in the law faculty during the second semester of 2009, as scheduled.
He added that Faculty officials are not authorized and are not fit to respond to the factual questions and legal complexities raised in the article on which Professor Ganz’s claims are based. As long as these questions have not been cleared there is no room for premature conclusions. Dagan will not respond to the claims of the original story, but said that the Faculty of Law makes every effort to expose its students to a variety of opinions and encourages discussion, even about questions that provoke disagreement.
On the occasion of the 9th EU-Israel Association Council meeting on 15 June ’09, three prominent Israeli human rights organizations call upon the EU to link the upgrade of EU-Israel relations to respect for human rights and the rule of law.
In their letter to the EU Foreign Ministers, the organizations emphasized that the shared values of democracy and the rule of law lie at the heart of EU-Israel relations. These values must receive tangible expression, both in the bilateral relationship and in diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Specifically, both Israel and the EU must take concrete steps to promote and respect human rights and international humanitarian law. The three organizations, therefore, call upon the EU to use the Association Council meeting to explicitly link the upgrade process to Israeli demonstration of tangible improvements in the protection of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Territories, including:
An immediate halt to all construction in the settlements and any other permanent changes in occupied territory;
An immediate end to the closure of the Gaza Strip;
Cessation of house demolitions;
Initiation of a criminal investigation into every allegation of torture or ill-treatment of Palestinians in Israeli interrogations;
Impartial accountability mechanisms for human rights violations, including those committed during the most recent offensive in Gaza;
Full cooperation with the UN fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.
According to the organizations, the Association Council meeting is a crucial opportunity for the EU to play a key role in the promotion of a process that will offer peace, dignity and security to both Israelis and Palestinians.
Participating organizations: HaMoked, Center for the Defence of the Individual; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; and B’Tselem: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
We regret to say that we have taken the hard decision to withdraw our film, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (http://www.bdsmovement.net/).
This decision does not come easily, as we realize that the festival opposes the policies of the State of Israel, and we have no wish to punish progressives who deplore the state-sponsored violence committed in their name.
This decision does not come easily, as we feel a strong affinity with many people in Israel, sharing with them our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died. Andy lived in Jerusalem for a year long ago, can still get by in Hebrew, and counts several friends there. And Mike has always wanted to connect with the roots of his culture.
But despite all our feelings, we cannot abandon our mission as activists. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law.
It is painful to do this. But it is even more painful to hear Israeli policies described as “fascist” – not just from the ill-informed and the clueless, not just from the usual anti-semitic morons, but from well-informed Jewish activists within Israel. They know what they’re talking about, and it’s painful to think that they could be right.
As we’re sure you know and deplore, the Israeli government has recently authorized the construction of new units in an illegal West Bank outpost – one that is illegal even according to Israeli law. On Monday, nine Palestinians were injured as Israeli authorities demolished their East Jerusalem home. Tuesday, the Israeli navy stopped a ship from delivering medicine, toys, and other humanitarian relief to Gaza, and detained over twenty foreign peace activists, including a Nobel Peace laureate. Meanwhile, a UN commission was in Gaza investigating much worse abuses committed early this year.
Whatever words are applied to such actions, our film mustn’t help lend an aura of normalcy to a state that makes these decisions. For us, that’s the bottom line.
There is certainly another way to do things in Israel/Palestine, and that is what we must fight for, however feeble our means. As for our film, there is another way for it to be seen in Israel… and in Palestine, so that the people most in need of comic relief, who would never have been able to see it at the Jerusalem Film Festival anyhow, will be able to see it too. Within the next few months, we will make this happen.
To those who want to see our film, savlanut and sabir (patience)! And for all the rest of us, a little LESS patience, please.
By Art Young
The movement to call Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people is growing, it is “invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.” It could eventually threaten the existence of the Jewish state by undermining the support it receives from its strongest backer, the U. S. government.
That was the message of alarm delivered by the Executive Director of the American Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Howard Kohr, to the AIPAC Policy Conference on May 3.[i]
AIPAC is one of the principal organizations that lobby publicly on behalf of Israel in the United States, where it is an important influence on foreign policy. Among the 6,000 dignitaries who attended its policy conference were more than half of the members of the Senate and a third of the members of the House of Representatives. Featured speakers included Vice President Joe Biden, Senator John Kerry, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli President Shimon Peres.
AIPAC and its allies are often alleged to act as a kind of shadow government in Washington, distorting policy in Israel’s interest rather than that of the U.S. This stands reality on its head. The pro-Israel lobby carries real weight in the halls of power, but only because the U.S. and Israel share the same fundamental interests. The U.S. relies on Israel to keep the Arab states of the Middle East divided, weak, and under constant threat of attack, thus ensuring that they remain subservient to Washington. For its part, Israel could not continue to exist in its present form without the strong political and material support it receives from the U.S. It received more than $2.5 billion in military aid from the U.S. in 2009.[ii] Israel and the United States may be partners with shared objectives, but the relationship is a highly unequal one.
Kohr’s address focused on the growing power of the international movement against Israel’s criminal behavior, identifying support for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a particularly worrisome development.
Kohr pointed to a variety of statements and actions against Israel’s onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, including demonstrations in Spain and Germany. He noted that 400 British academics had demanded that Britain’s Science Museum cancel an event highlighting the work of Israeli scientists and that an Italian trade union calls for a boycott of Israeli products.
“Incredibly, there now is even an Israel Apartheid Week conducted in cities across the globe,” he added.
Kohr noted the strength of opposition to Israel in the Middle East, Europe, and in international forums. But he voiced particular concern over the movement’s progress in the United States “where Israel stands accused of apartheid and genocide, where Zionism equals racism, where a former president of the United States can publicly accuse Israel of apartheid.”
Significantly, the AIPAC leader also insisted on the profound nature of the issues that divide supporters and critics of Israeli policy.
What we are witnessing is the attempted delegitimization of Israel; the systematic sowing of doubt that Israel is a nation that has forfeited the world’s concern; a nation whose actions are, in the strict meaning of the term, indefensible. This is more than the simple spewing of hatred. This is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressured to change its essential nature….
I’m not saying that these allegations have become accepted. But they have become acceptable. More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel. These voices are laying the predicate for an abandonment. They’re making the case for Israel’s unworthiness to be allowed what is for any nation the first and most fundamental of rights: the right to self-defense. …. They are preparing us for a world in which Israel stands alone, isolated, and at risk….
Now, there’s little we can do to stop the boycotts of Israeli goods launched in London or Lisbon or Rome. There’s little we can do to stop Israel Apartheid Week. But there is much we can do to stop this campaign from taking hold here. Here where it matters the most, in Washington, where United States policy is forged, we must stop the delegitimization of Israel. We must not let it penetrate the halls of Congress and the counsels of our president.
To win support for Israel from the U.S. ruling class, Kohr argued, friends of Israel must address “the absolute foundation, the base on which all else rests,” that is, the fact that Israel is
“a Western outpost in the Middle East. To those who make that accusation, I say you are right. Israel is the only democratic country in the region that looks West, that looks to the values and the vision we share of what our society, our country should aim at and aspire to. If that foundation of shared values is shaken, the rationale for the policies we pursue today will be stripped away. The reasons the United States would continue to invest nearly $3 billion in Israel’s security; the willingness to stand with Israel, even alone if need be; the readiness to defend Israel’s very existence, all are undermined and undone if Israel is seen to be unjust and unworthy.”
Kohr’s argument that Israel is a garrison state, “a Western outpost in the Middle East,” the front line of the defense of imperialist interests in the region, is not often stated in such forthright terms. But it is quite accurate, and speaks to the source of the conflict in the region.
