I wanted to have a record of this brilliant letter the next time someone asks me why I write about Israel instead of say, Sudan: Something bad does not cease to be bad because something else is bad too.
Sir: When I was President of the Association of University Teachers, a predecessor of the University and College Union, we passed resolutions critical of China but not of Israel; now it's the other way round. Contrary to Dr Hutchison (letter, 17 June), there neither was nor is anything illogical or hypocritical here: the boot is on the other foot.
If we decide not to oppose any evils because we cannot oppose them all, we entirely trivialise the concept of evil. The list of morally similar things is always indefinitely long and always disputable at every point, because similar things are always a bit different. The demand that we check off the entire list before we speak out against, say, Israel or China is a demand that would cause all moral language to die in our mouths.
Something bad does not cease to be bad because something else is bad too. We constantly face rhetoric that changes the subject from bad acts in the world to the state of mind or alleged hypocrisy of those who condemn those acts, rhetoric which is really a sign of guilty conscience.
Sir: P J Stewart and Sara Cohen (letters: 11, 12 June) both make pertinent and helpful points. Despite the superficial divergence of their perspectives, they identify two important truths central to the tragedy of Palestine.
One: the Arab struggle was and is against Zionism, not Jews. Two: without the West's acquiescence to Zionist terror, Jews and Arabs would still be co-inhabiting a region they had shared for centuries.
Zionism's Dead End: Separation or ethnic cleansing?
An excellent analysis of Zionist thought and actions re Palestine's natives; the Nakba didn't end in 1948; it continues as Zionists continue a calculated plan of action to grab more land and rid it of its inhabitants.
In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism's chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favor sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to "try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
He was proposing a program of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organizations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labor in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.
Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine – separation and transfer – were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.
Today these solutions are ostensibly promoted by two ideological camps loosely associated with Israel's center-left (Labor and Kadima) and right (Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu). The modern political arguments between them turn on differing visions of the nature of a Jewish state originally put forward by Labor and Revisionist Zionists.
During the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the dominant Labor Zionist movement and its leader David Ben Gurion advanced policies much in line with Herzl's goal. In particular, they promoted the twin principles of "Redemption of the Land" and "Hebrew Labor", which took as their premise the idea that Jews needed to separate themselves from the native population in working the land and employing only other Jews. By being entirely self-reliant in Palestine, Jews could both "cure" themselves of their tainted Diaspora natures and deprive the Palestinians of the opportunity to subsist in their own homeland.
At the forefront of this drive was the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, which denied membership to Palestinians – and, for many years after the establishment of the Jewish state, even to the remnants of the Palestinian population who became Israeli citizens.
Instead, the Labor Zionists secretly began working on a program of ethnic cleansing. After 1937 and Britain's Peel Report proposing partition of Palestine, Ben Gurion was more open about transfer, recognizing that a Jewish state would be impossible unless most of the indigenous population was cleared from within its borders.
Israel's new historians have acknowledged Ben Gurion's commitment to transfer. As Benny Morris notes, for example, Ben Gurion "understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst." The Israeli leadership therefore developed a plan for ethnic cleansing under cover of war, compiling detailed dossiers on the communities that needed to be driven out and then passing on the order, in Plan Dalet, to commanders in the field. During the 1948 war the new state of Israel was emptied of at least 80 per cent of its indigenous population.
In physically expelling the Palestinian population, Ben Gurion responded to the political opportunities of the day and recalibrated the Labor Zionism of Herzl. In particular he achieved the goal of displacement desired by Herzl while also largely persuading the world through a campaign of propaganda that the exodus of the refugees was mostly voluntary. In one of the most enduring Zionist myths, convincingly rebutted by modern historians, we are still told that the refugees left because they were told to do so by the Arab leadership.
The other camp, the Revisionists, had a far more ambivalent attitude to the native Palestinian population. Paradoxically, given their uncompromising claim to a Greater Israel embracing both banks of the Jordan River (thereby including not only Palestine but also the modern state of Jordan), they were more prepared than the Labor Zionists to allow the natives to remain where they were.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionism, observed in 1938 – possibly in a rebuff to Ben Gurion's espousal of transfer – that "it must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens". The Revisionists, it seems, were resigned to the fact that the enlarged territory they desired would inevitably include a majority of Arabs. They were therefore less concerned with removing the natives than finding a way to make them accept Jewish rule.
Inside Revisionism, however, there was a shift from the idea of separation to transfer that mirrored developments inside Labor Zionism. This change was perhaps more opportunistic than ideological, and was particularly apparent as the Revisionists sensed Ben Gurion's success in forging a Jewish state through transfer.
Savage enough though these events were, Begin and his followers consciously inflated the death toll to more than 250 through the pages of the New York Times. Their goal was to spread terror among the wider Palestinian population and encourage them to flee. He later happily noted: "Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of 'Irgun butchery', were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede."
Subsequently, other prominent figures on the right openly espoused ethnic cleansing, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, whose Moledet party campaigned in elections under the symbol of the Hebrew character "tet", for transfer. His successor, Benny Elon, a settler leader and rabbi, adopted a similar platform: "Only population transfer can bring peace".
The intensity of the separation vs transfer debate subsided after 1948 and the ethnic cleansing campaign that removed most of the native Palestinian population from the Jewish state. The Palestinian minority left behind – a fifth of the population but a group, it was widely assumed, that would soon be swamped by Jewish immigration – was seen as an irritation but not yet as a threat. It was placed under a military government for nearly two decades, a system designed to enforce separation between Palestinians and Jews inside Israel. Such separation – in education, employment and residence – exists to this day, even if in a less extreme form.
The separation-transfer debate was chiefly revived by Israel's conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. With Israel's erasure of the Green Line, and the effective erosion of the distinction between Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, the problem of a Palestinian majority again loomed large for the Zionists.
Cabinet debates from 1967 show the quandary faced by the government. Almost alone, Moshe Dayan favored annexation of both the newly captured territories and the Palestinian population there. Others believed that such a move would be seen as transparently colonialist and rapidly degenerate into an apartheid system of Jewish citizens and Palestinian non-citizens. In their minds, Jabotinsky's solution of an iron wall was no longer viable.
But equally, in a more media-saturated era, which at least paid lip-service to human rights, the government could see no way to expel the Palestinian population on a large scale and annex the land, as Ben Gurion had done earlier. Also possibly, they could see no way of persuading the world that such expulsions should be characterized as voluntary.
Israel therefore declined to move decisively in either direction, neither fully carrying out a transfer program nor enforcing strict separation. Instead it opted for an apartheid model that accommodated Dayan's suggestion of a "creeping annexation" of the occupied territories that he rightly believed would go largely unnoticed by the West.
In other words, the self-reliance, or unilateralism, implicit in Herzl's concept of separation was ignored for many years of Israel's occupation. The Palestinian labor force was exploited by Israel just as black workers were by South Africa. This view of the Palestinians was formalized in the Oslo accords, which were predicated on the kind of separation needed to create a captive labor force.
However, Yitzhak Rabin's version of apartheid embodied by the Oslo process, and Binyamin Netanyahu's opposition in upholding Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, both deviated from Herzl's model of transfer through separation. This is largely why each political current has been subsumed within the recent but more powerful trend towards "unilateral separation".
Not surprisingly, the policy of "unilateral separation" emerged from among the Labor Zionists, advocated primarily by Ehud Barak. However, it was soon adopted by many members of Likud too. Ultimately its success derived from the conversion to its cause of Greater Israel's arch-exponent, Ariel Sharon. He realized the chief manifestations of unilateral separation, the West Bank wall and the Gaza disengagement, as well breaking up Israel's right-wing to create a new consensus party, Kadima.
In the new consensus, the transfer of Palestinians could be achieved through imposed and absolute separation – just as Herzl had once hoped. After the Gaza disengagement, the next stage was promoted by Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert. His plan for convergence, limited withdrawals from the West Bank in which most settlers would remain in place, has been dropped, but its infrastructure – the separation wall – continues to be built.
How will modern Zionists convert unilateral separation into transfer? How will Herzl's original vision of ethnic cleansing enforced through strict ethnic separation be realized in today's world?
Gaza's imprisonment has stopped being a metaphor and become a daily reality. In fact, Gaza's condition is far worse than imprisonment: prisoners, even of war, expect to have their humanity respected, and be properly sheltered, cared for, fed and clothed. Gazans can no longer rely on these staples of life.
The ultimate goal of this extreme form of separation is patently clear: transfer. By depriving Palestinians of the basic conditions of a normal life, it is assumed that they will eventually choose to leave – in what can once again be sold to the world as a voluntary exodus. And if Palestinians choose to abandon their homeland, then in Zionist thinking they have forfeited their right to it – just as earlier generations of Zionists believed the Palestinian refugees had done by supposedly fleeing during the 1948 and 1967 wars.
First, it depends on continuing US global hegemony and blind support for Israel. Such support is likely to be undermined by the current American misadventures in the Middle East, and a gradual shift in the balance of power to China, Russia and India.
Second, it requires a Zionist worldview that departs starkly not only from international law but also from the values upheld by most societies and ideologies. The nature of Zionist ambitions is likely to be ever harder to conceal, as is evident from the tide of opinion polls showing that Western publics, if not their governments, believe Israel to be one of the biggest threats to world order.
he tried to return home to Gaza.
permit to leave Gaza with Israeli officials.
this had initially been delayed by several days, he told IPS.
Bet, where he was isolated for an hour and a half without explanation.
the company of Dutch diplomats," Omer said.
European parliamentary officials he had met.
parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being "the prize-winning journalist".
a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a "trouble-maker".
the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.
clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear," Omer said.
boot on Omer's neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.
banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.
reassure me," Omer told IPS.
get back to the Dutch officials.
behaviour of the Israeli officials is in accordance with a modern democracy.
journalist trying to go about his daily business," added Dadou.
journalist credentials nor of his coordination.
responsible for the behaviour of the Shin Bet."
A cease-fire went into effect in Gaza last week, offering some respite from the violence that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and five Israelis in recent months. It will do nothing, however, to address the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Intermittent spectacular violence may draw the world's attention to the occupied Palestinian territories, but our obsession with violence actually distracts us from the real nature of Israel's occupation, which is its smothering bureaucratic control of everyday Palestinian life.
This is an occupation ultimately enforced by tanks and bombs, and through the omnipresent threat, if not application, of violence. But its primary instruments are application forms, residency permits, population registries and title deeds. On its own, no cease-fire will relieve the beleaguered Palestinians.
Gaza is virtually cut off from the outside world by Israeli power. Elsewhere, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the ongoing Israeli occupation comprehensively infuses all the normally banal activities of Palestinians' everyday lives: applying for permission to access one's own land; applying for what Israel regards as the privilege - rather than the right - of living with one's spouse and children; applying for permission to drive one's car; to dig a well; to visit relatives in the next town; to visit Jerusalem; to go to work; to school; to university; to hospital. There is hardly any dimension of everyday life in Palestine that is not minutely managed by Israeli military or bureaucratic personnel.
Partly, this occupation of everyday life enables the Israelis to maintain their vigilant control over the Palestinian population. But it also serves the purpose of slowly, gradually removing Palestinians from their land, forcing them to make way for Jewish settlers.
Just in 2006, for example, Israel stripped 1,363 Jerusalem Palestinians of the right to live in the city in which many of them were born. It did this not by dramatically forcing dozens of people at a time onto trucks and dumping them at the city limits, but rather by quietly stripping them, one by one, of their Jerusalem residency papers.
This in turn was enabled by a series of bureaucratic procedures. While Israel continues to violate international law by building exclusively Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, it rarely grants building permits to Palestinian residents of the same city. Since 1967, the third of Jerusalem's population that is Palestinian has been granted just 9 percent of the city's official housing permits. The result is a growing abundance of housing for Jews and a severe shortage of housing for non-Jews - i.e., Palestinians.
In fact, 90 percent of the Palestinian territory Israel claimed to have annexed to Jerusalem after 1967 is today off-limits to Palestinian development because the land is either already built on by exclusively Jewish settlements or being reserved for their future expansion.
Denied permits, many Palestinians in Jerusalem build without them, but at considerable risk: Israel routinely demolishes Palestinian homes built without a permit. This includes over 300 homes in East Jerusalem demolished between 2004 and 2007 and 18,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories demolished since 1967.
One alternative has been to move to the West Bank suburbs and commute to Jerusalem. The wall cutting off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and thereby separating tens of thousands of Jerusalem Palestinians from the city of their birth has made that much more difficult.
And it too has its risks: Palestinians who cannot prove to Israel's satisfaction that Jerusalem has continuously been their "center of life" have been stripped of their Jerusalem residency papers. Without those papers, they will be expelled from Jerusalem, and confined to one of the walled-in reservoirs - of which Gaza is merely the largest example - that Israel has allocated as holding pens for the non-Jewish population of the holy land.
The expulsion of half of Palestine's Muslim and Christian population in what Palestinians call the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 was undertaken by Israel's founders in order to clear space in which to create a Jewish state.
The nakba did not end 60 years ago, however: It continues to this very day, albeit on a smaller scale. Yet even ones and twos eventually add up. Virtually every day, another Palestinian joins the ranks of the millions removed from their native land and denied the right of return.
Their long wait will end - and this conflict will come to a lasting resolution - only when the futile attempt to maintain an exclusively Jewish state in what had previously been a vibrantly multi-religious land is abandoned.
Separation will always require threats or actual violence; a genuine peace will come not with more separation, but with the right to return to a land in which all can live as equals. Only a single democratic, secular and multicultural state offers that hope to Israelis and Palestinians, to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.
Saree Makdisi is professor of English literature at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation."
Israel continues its ethnic cleansing. A small example: Yesterday Israel uprooted two hundred olive trees from a five hundred year old grove in Beit Hanina. Israel has already taken over two-thirds of the town's land and is now "trying to take over the remainder."
Israel's settlement policy in Jerusalem "is destroying history," according to Dr. Hassan Khater. "He said that there is no end to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes and the confiscation of land. "
"New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was 'seven, eight, nine years old' on family trips to visit her parents original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.
"Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight."
"St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary 'Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,' reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally."
Please don't demonise nine million people whose crime is that they happened to be born or have origins in Palestine: not Syria, not Jordan, not Lebanon, but Palestine, the land of their origin. Third generation Palestinian refugees continue the struggle for implementation of their inalienable right to return to their homes.
Yesterday I received two stories in my inbox. One, an op-ed, courtesy of IMEU, written by Reed College sophomore, Celia Hassan, relating her ordeal at Ben-Gurion Airport and another e-mail forwarded by Bassem Khader to the Al-Awda list from Zeina Emile Sam’an Ashrawi. Both stories, although depressingly relating the ongoing ethnic cleansing courtesy of the Israeli government, are refreshing in that they with candor and simplicity relate for a western audience the institutional racism of the Israeli government.
"The Nakba did not stop in 1947-48. It is a continuing process. When I was a college student in the late seventies, I visited my aunt and uncle in Ramallah. Even though I was travelling on an American passport, I was interrogated, strip-searched, and detained for six hours in Ben Gurion Airport. These measures were taken to convince me to think twice before returning to the land of my father's origin.
"Watch "The Easiest Targets" to learn about Israel's abuse of women and children at the airport and border crossings.
"'What's a nice, Reed College sophomore doing in detention at Israels Ben Gurion airport? I ask myself this during the hours I am held. What do I have in common with these dozen or so suspected security threats: the gray-haired women who whisper about their treatment, the 8-year-old girl, tears dried on her face and fear in her eyes, the 18-year-old traveling to see family? We have little in common except that virtually all of us are Americans.
"'You want to go see your family and someone is telling you that you can't! What would you do? Forget that you're Israeli and that Im Palestinian and think about this for a minute! Sorry she said,I know but I cant do anything, the decision came from Israel. I tried to explain to her over and over again that I could not travel without my Travel Document and that they could not do that – knowing that they could, and they had!
"'This has been happening to many Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID card. The Israeli government has been practicing and perfecting the art of ethnic cleansing since 1948 right under the nose of the world and no one has the power or the guts to do anything about it. Where else in the world does one have to beg to go to ones own home? Where else in the world does one have to give up their identity for the sole reason of living somewhere else for a period of time? Imagine if an American living in Spain for a few years wanted to go home only to be told by the American government that their American Passport was revoked and that they wouldnt be able to come back!'"
"When will America demand of Israel what we fought so hard to achieve at home — equal rights for all? Maybe we should start by demanding equal treatment for all Americans at Israeli airports."
On his first day as the presumptive Democratic candidate for president earlier this month, Barack Obama committed a serious foreign policy blunder. Reciting a litany of pro-Israeli positions at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he avowed: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
In promising U.S. support of Israel's claims to all of Jerusalem, Obama couldn't have picked a better way to offend the world's 325 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims. Israel's 41-year stewardship of the Holy City has alarmed Muslims from Morocco to Malaysia. Upon seizing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel razed the ancient Muslim Maghribi quarter to make room for Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. Since 1991, Israel has steadily ratcheted down Palestinians' access to Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Most West Bank Palestinians can no longer worship there.
Obama's unnecessary promise deviates from nearly six decades of U.S. foreign policy that held Jerusalem to be occupied territory under international law. This long tradition was first broken in 2004 when President Bush acknowledged Israel's demands to keep its illegal West Bank settlements in a final peace agreement, including those around Jerusalem. Thus Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, would both scorn the international legal system's foundational principle - the inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by war - and echo President Bush, whose failed Middle East policies he has rightly deplored.
If Sen. Obama's Philadelphia speech on race was a model of courage and nuance, his AIPAC talk was brimming with the pro-Israel orthodoxy that typifies this year's presidential campaign. Like presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, Obama also backed Israel's so-called right to exist as a Jewish state.
How has it become an article of faith for U.S. politicians to support a state's privileging of one ethno-religious group over others? For what Israel seeks in recognition as a Jewish state is permission to permanently discriminate against Palestinians. Israel is, by law, a Jewish state. Its declaration of independence and basic law declare it to be so. But its population, excluding the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is not exclusively Jewish: 20 percent of Israel's citizens are native Palestinians, and another 4 percent are mostly immigrant non-Jews. Moreover, Jewish demographic predominance was achieved through the expulsion by force or fear of about 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. Israel denies Palestinians refugees - with their offspring, about 5.5 million persons - their internationally recognized right to return to their homes and homeland in order to maintain a strong Jewish majority.
Orthodox Jewish rabbinical courts govern matters of family law there.
Why should any American presidential aspirant promote ethno-religious supremacy in Israel? Don't we see a "Christian state" or a "Muslim state" as inherently discriminatory? Why don't we recognize the same in Israel's quest to be ordained a "Jewish state?"
Like Israel, we are a nation that combines a sincere commitment to democracy and a history that includes injustices. While we have never fully atoned for our dispossession of Native Americans, in facing the legacy of slavery, we have made an unyielding pledge to equal rights. A truly visionary American president might respectfully press a similar commitment on Israel, not endorse its urges for ethno-religious privilege. The terrible suffering inflicted on European Jews in the Nazi holocaust does not entitle Israel to subjugate Palestinians.
Barack Obama whiffed in his first major foreign policy speech as the Democratic candidate. He may believe it necessary to pander to Israel's U.S. supporters in order to gain office. But he narrowed future policy options to those that would undermine international law, offend core American values and diminish our standing in the vital Middle East.
Immediately after becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and shamelessly wearing the Israeli flag on his lapel, Barak Obama heartlessly crushed the hopes of millions of unsuspecting Americans who supported and voted for him, when he nakedly pandered to the Zionist Lobby at its annual conference held recently.
Among other things, Obama lavished praise at the Apartheid Jewish state; promised to give the Jewish state—which overtly discriminates against Christians and Muslims—thirty billion dollars of our hard-earned, predominantly-Christian secular tax dollars; behaved like a three-brass-monkey occupation-denier on the multigenerational Israeli occupation of Palestine and its enslavement of long-suffering Palestinian People; advocated the bankrupt so-called two-state solution which recreates Apartheid South Africa and its Bantustans in Occupied Palestine, etc.
The first African American presidential nominee of a major party promised to perpetuate the Jewish Apartheid regime in Occupied Palestine! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. trembled in his grave and Nelson Mandela screamed murder!
And while Obama is not the first politician to appease the Israel-first Zionist Lobby, many naively hoped that his message of "change" meant that he will also change our government's shameful and self-injurious policy of unconditionally supporting Israeli occupation of Palestine, and its enslavement of the Christian and Muslim Palestinians under a segregationist political system which legislatively guarantees supremacy to Jews over gentiles.
The millions of people who falsely believed that Obama is a breath of fresh air in American politics, the one who would valiantly rescue America from the paralyzing claws of special interest, political corruption, economic downfall and international disrespect, are now anti-climatically dumfounded and wondering whether they should vote for McCain; Ralph Nader or Bob Barr!
Progressive Democrats; Independents and Republicans, who viewed Obama as the long-awaited agent-of-change-political-Messiah, and propelled him to the top front are now very dis-euphorically despaired and wondering if true change will ever come to American politics as long as the one-issue American Israel Public Affairs Committee ("AIPAC) conclusively determines the foreign and domestic policy of our government before our president is elected!
Using a variety of diabolical tactics, AIPAC, aka the Israeli Lobby or the Amen Corner, has an iron grip over our American Politics. AIPAC has public opinion manipulating scribes implanted in our media who will maliciously smear and politically-crucify as "anti-Semitic" anyone who does not bend over to Israel. It also controls tens or hundreds of political action committee ("PACs") and directs them to funnel their money to the candidates who unconditionally support Israel. Furthermore, the majority of politically-active Jews are extremist fundamentalist Zionists who will blindly follow AIPAC's political gospel and vote as a block for those whom AIPAC labels as "friends" of Israel.
Many politicians made 180 degrees turn in their political positions towards Israel after being threatened by AIPAC. Examples are Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa who left a private meeting with AIPAC crying and soon changed his stance towards Israel. Congressman Carl Lewis and many shameless others went through similar politically-traumatizing experiences and became loyal and obedient servants to the Israeli Lobby.
It is a well-known fact that most politicians complain privately that their voting record on Israel is the opposite of their true feelings towards it and that they find themselves forced to give our tax money to Israel and deny its occupation of Palestine because they fear AIPAC and also fear being labeled as "anti-Semitic."
Many hoped that Obama will break this vicious cycle of political corruption where our national interest is being damaged and subordinated to the parochial interest of the fifth column Israeli Lobby in its blind and sectarian support to Israeli occupation of Palestine and its denial of the Palestinian People the most basic of human rights.
Obama is still only a presumptive nominee today and he appears to have a good chance of becoming the next president of the United States. If he is to be judged today, he cannot claim to be the "change" agent because he scandalously shortchanged change when he publicly and unabashedly surrendered to the Israeli Lobby like McCain, Clinton, Bush and other political prostitutes did before him. There is no change here whatsoever!
If and when Obama becomes president, if he, like his predecessors, continues to be an occupation-denier and funder; and Jewish Apartheid-supporter, he will have the dishonored place in history of being yet another gutless emasculated politician who never had the courage and intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Israeli Lobby and serve his country and his American—as opposed to Israeli—People.
If, however, once Barak Obama becomes president, he manages to facilitate the political, legislative and bloodless demise of the Apartheid Jewish system in Occupied Palestine and help usher the much-and-long-awaited secular democratic state in Occupied Palestine, Barak Obama can then potentially claim his unique place in history as the true agent of change in the same manner Nelson Mandela can rightly and indisputably claim such an historical honor.
Today, the global litmus test of political honesty is how a politician behaves towards the Israeli Lobby. There is no shortage of corrupt politicians. There is, however, a chronic shortage—almost to the point of absence—of honest ones.
Where will Obama's place in history be? In the crowded Uncle Tom trash bin of corruption or on a pedestal in the company of Christ, Ghandi and Mandela?
Only Obama knows and only time will tell!
The writer is an Anaheim, CA attorney of Palestinian descent and is the publisher of The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans.
On 4 March 2008, Israeli tanks under aerial helicopter coverage besieged the home of Youssef S., a wanted Palestinian combatant, near Khan Younis in southern Gaza1. For several hours, Israeli soldiers directed gunfire towards the house and its occupants, including 15 children, and subjected them to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. During the raid, Israeli soldiers fired upon unarmed civilians, including children, as they followed orders to exit the house. This unlawful act claimed the life of 20-day-old Amira, who was shot in the head while in her mother’s arms. DCI/PS strongly condemns the wilful killing of civilians, which constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.
In the early evening hours of 4 March 2008, Khaled A. and his wife Nadia arrived at the home of their friend, Youssef S., in Abu al-Ageen near Khan Younis in southern Gaza. They had come to visit Youssef’s mother, Alia’, who was suffering from renal failure and had recently been hospitalised. With them, were their two daughters Nadine (2), and Amira, just 20 days old.
Several members of Youssef’s family were also in his house that evening: his mother Alia’ (76), his wife Aziza (43), and their children, Mu’ath (17), Alia’ (16), Omar (15), Iman (13), Shayma’ (12), Mohammed (11), Neveen (7), and twins Hassan and Hussein (5). Youssef’s brother, Mahmoud, was also there with his children Bilal (15), Faten (14), Tariq (13), and Iyad (11). Altogether, there were 15 children inside the house that evening.
When Khaled and his family first arrived at Youssef’s house, the men, women and children sat together in the living room for approximately half an hour. It was past 6:00 pm when Khaled, Youssef, Mahmoud, and their sons moved to the diwan, a sitting area for men, for dinner. The diwan was located outdoors, approximately eight metres away from the house.
The sun had set shortly before 6:00 pm and it was dark outside. When the siege began, the men and boys were eating dinner in the diwan while the women and girls were in the living room inside the house. As they ate dinner inside, the women heard the sound of gunfire and an approaching helicopter. The sound was coming towards the western side of the house where the women and children were seated. The women immediately gathered the children and ran into the kitchen on the north side of the house for cover. Nadia was carrying baby Amira in her arms. Youssef’s mother remained alone in the living room because she could not walk or easily move due to her failing health.
At about the same time, the men heard a strange sound and Youssef asked his 11-year-old nephew Iyad to see what was happening. Iyad looked out the door of the diwan and yelled out that he saw tanks. Khaled ran to the door where he too saw tanks approaching the western side of the house. He quickly exited the diwan and with Iyad ran towards the house. Youssef fled in the opposite direction, away from the house. Khaled reports he had run a distance of about eight metres when heavy gunfire began. He dropped to the ground to avoid being hit by live fire and crawled the remaining distance to the house. When he entered the house, Khaled saw a tank through one of the windows; it was stopped at the western side of the house. Afraid that the soldiers might see him, he ran into the kitchen on the north side of the house where he found the women and children crouching on the floor in fear. When Khaled reached the kitchen, he noticed Iyad had been shot in the arm and was bleeding heavily. Khaled gripped Iyad’s arm to stop the bleeding and with his other hand held his daughter Nadine on his left.
Sustained and heavy gunfire from Israeli forces continued from all directions and bullets were flying both outside and inside the house. According to eyewitness statements gathered by DCI/PS, the soldiers neither ordered the occupants to exit the house and surrender nor gave prior warning before the gunfire began. Eyewitnesses provided further testimony asserting that occupants inside the house were unarmed and did not exchange fire with Israeli forces. They were unaware of any clashes taking place in the area at that time. To the best of DCI/PS’ knowledge based on the evidence gathered, there was no exchange of fire between Palestinian combatants and Israeli forces prior to or during the raid.
As Nadia stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room she saw the soldiers just beyond the entrance of the house. Some were lying on the ground on their stomachs while others were kneeling on one knee, all with their weapons directed at her. They were wearing helmets equipped with night vision binoculars. One of the soldiers pointed the red laser emanating from his weapon at baby Amira and slowly moved it along her body. The soldier with the megaphone asked, “What are you holding in your hands?” Faten, Youssef’s niece answered, “katen” meaning baby in Hebrew, repeating the word several times. Another soldier directed a bright spotlight at Nadia and her baby, switching it on and off several times. At the same time, Nadia cautiously proceeded to exit the kitchen into the living room. She was just one metre beyond the kitchen door when the soldiers, who were approximately eight metres away, opened fire without warning or provocation.
In the barrage of gunfire, Nadia was struck in her right upper arm. She immediately secured Amira in her left arm and scrambled back into the kitchen following the others. Khaled took Amira from his wife’s arms.
He reports seeing at that moment that Amira’s head was covered in blood and that she appeared to be dead. He passed baby Amira to Faten so he could tie his wife’s arm to stem the bleeding from her wound. Fearful for her baby, Nadia asked about Amira but Faten told her not to worry, her daughter was fine. The scene in the kitchen was one of chaos and commotion. Women and children screaming in panic, crying in fear while gunfire continued to ring out both inside and outside of the house. Several minutes later, the gunfire ceased and the soldier once again commanded through the megaphone in broken Arabic, “Leave the house or we will bomb it.” Left with no other choice, the group made their way out of the kitchen with Nadia out in front once again. Faten followed directly behind her with Amira still in her arms. After they exited the house, the soldiers ordered the women and children to sit on the ground. They handcuffed Khaled, Mu’ath (17), Bilal (15), and Omar (15), and sat them down on the ground with their backs facing the women and children.
The soldiers then started to beat them, hitting them with their guns and kicking them, as the women and children looked on. Testimonies from two eyewitnesses indicate the soldiers beat the two younger boys, Bilal and Omar, more than the others. Khaled tried to reason with the soldiers in Hebrew, telling them that his wife had been injured and needed medical attention. They replied by insulting him and his wife. One soldier, who was kneeling on the ground next to Nadia, laughed and verbally insulted her honour as she cried in pain and fear. Nadia reported that every few minutes a soldier would walk by and shoot the ground around where the women and children were sitting then laugh and walk away.
At the same time, other soldiers continued to shoot in and around Youssef’s home. Nadia and Youssef’s wife, Aziza, called out to them repeatedly, telling them there was an elderly woman who cannot walk still inside the house. One soldier answered, “Tell her to come out”. Nadia repeated, “She cannot walk.” The gunfire ceased for a moment and Nadia and Aziza called out to Alia’, telling her to come out of the house. After several minutes, Alia’ appeared at the door, dragging herself along the ground. The soldiers sat her on the ground with the women and children. Nadia reported that Alia’ was panicked and terrified.
Mu’ath’s statement reveals that the soldiers subjected him to particularly harsh treatment when they learned he was Youssef’s son after he was asked to identify himself. The soldiers blindfolded Mu’ath, still stripped of his shirt and trousers, and forced him to go back inside the house as they searched its interior. One soldier grabbed him by the hair and pushed him forward into the house. Once inside, Mu’ath could hear the sound of several soldiers searching through the house. A soldier asked him, “Where are the weapons?” and pressed the barrel of his rifle against his neck. When Mu’ath replied that there were no weapons in the house, the soldiers beat him, kicking him in the abdomen. After their search, the soldiers brought him back outside to where Omar, Bilal, and Khaled were being held.
After waiting several more minutes to make sure the soldiers did not return, Nadia gathered the children then began walking to find help. Youssef’s wife remained behind with his mother Alia’. Faten walked beside Nadia, with Amira still in her arms. In her statement to DCI/PS, Faten says she realised Amira was dead as she held her during the siege. She reported that Amira’s body was lifeless and she could feel the blood from the baby’s gunshot wound seeping onto her shirt. Faten however chose not to tell Nadia that her daughter had died.
Nadia and the children walked for approximately 15 minutes before they arrived at a house where they could summon medical help. An ambulance arrived shortly after and immediately transferred the injured to Shuhuda al-Aqsa Hospital where Amira was pronounced dead on arrival. This is when Nadia learned her baby had been killed. That same night, Nadia underwent surgery on her right arm and was released from the hospital after several days.
According to the medical report obtained by DCI/PS, Nadia was still undergoing medical treatment several weeks following the incident. At the time eyewitness statements were first taken just days after the attack, 11-year-old Iyad, still recovering in the hospital from the gunshot wound to his arm, was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and was unable to recall events or even speak about them. His 14-year-old sister Faten was also showing clear symptoms of PTSD after carrying Amira’s lifeless body for most of the siege. The DCI/PS fieldworker who investigated this case was only able to collect statements from Iyad and Faten on his third visit to the area in early June. DCI/PS also learned that Youssef’s 76-year-old mother, Alia’, died several days after the siege. The emotional and physical stress of the ordeal undoubtedly impacted her already failing health. Following the raid, the surviving members of Youssef’s family moved into the nearby home of a relative since their house suffered damage from the heavy gunfire. DCI/PS later learned that several days after the raid, Israeli forces demolished the nearby home of another one of Youssef’s relatives. Youssef’s family has since returned to their home although exterior damage remains.
According to a statement published by the Gaza-based Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Youssef was the victim of an extra-judicial execution after he fled his house that evening. Al-Mezan reports that neighbours discovered Youssef’s body in an open area, about 150 metres from his house at approximately 10:00 am on the morning after the siege (5 March). He had sustained a bullet wound to the chest and his skull was crushed. An initial post-mortem examination indicated that he was killed when his skull was crushed as a vehicle ran over him after he had already been injured by a live bullet and was lying on the ground. Al-Mezan condemns the assassination of Youssef and draws a parallel with a 2001 case in which two Palestinian naval force staff who were injured and posed no immediate threat were deliberately struck and killed by Israeli military vehicles.
DCI/PS strongly condemns the excessive use of force against unarmed Palestinian civilians posing no threat to Israeli soldiers. In a non-combat situation, the soldiers should have employed law enforcement means to bring a wanted suspect to justice. If Israeli forces raided Youssef’s home on 4 March because he was in fact wanted by Israel at the time, the military operation should have entailed his arrest and prosecution; not the shooting of unarmed civilians and arbitrary brutalisation of at least 20 people among his family and friends, including 15 children.
The soldiers acted recklessly in the way they dealt with Youssef’s family and friends, using lethal force unjustified by military necessity according to the circumstances. They showed no intention of taking precautions to avoid or minimise harm to civilians, especially children. Eyewitness testimonies obtained by DCI/PS fieldworkers reveal that the Israeli soldiers intentionally fired on civilians, including children, even as they obeyed orders to exit the house without resistance. DCI/PS field investigations also indicate that despite her being wrapped in a sheet, Amira’s head was clearly visible for the soldiers to see. The soldiers were standing approximately eight metres away from Nadia and her child, and equipped with night vision binoculars and spotlights to enhance their vision capabilities. When Nadia was asked what she was carrying in her arms, one of the children explicitly and repeatedly responded “baby” (katen) in Hebrew. Despite this, the soldiers opened fire on the woman and child.
As a High Contracting Party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has a legal duty to protect civilians who are not actively taking part in hostilities, particularly if they are wounded or infirm. Of the family members and guests in Youssef’s home on the evening of the raid, 15 were children, who are granted special protection under international law. As a State Party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), Israel is legally obligated to recognise every child’s “inherent right to life” and “ensure the survival and development of the child to the maximum extent possible.” However, no consideration was given by the soldiers to the status of the occupants of the house, and no precautionary measures were taken before the start of the shooting to spare civilians, and particularly children, who might be inside.
In international humanitarian law, civilian deaths that are intentional and not justified by military necessity amount to war crimes. “Wilful killings” of protected persons, or “wilfully causing serious injury to body and health” of protected persons, also constitute a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 147), for which individuals can be held criminally responsible. All High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention are under a legal obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and to bring them in front of their domestic courts or to exercise universal jurisdiction and hand them over for trial to another High Contracting Party (Article 146).
Once they were outside of the house, the soldiers deliberately terrorised and threatened the women and children by shooting the ground around them and laughing at their fear. Moreover, the soldiers subjected Khaled, Youssef’s 17 and 15-year-old sons, and his 15-year-old nephew to humiliating and degrading treatment, forcing them to strip their clothes and endure beatings in front of the women and children. Mu’ath was particularly exposed to cruel physical and psychological abuse for being related to a wanted combatant. When the soldiers identified Mu’ath as Youssef’s eldest son, they forced him back inside the house and threatened and physically abused him to gain information on weapons they alleged were inside. Mu’ath was later detained at gunpoint in a military jeep where soldiers further carried out acts of psychological abuse.
Further protection is afforded by Article 27 of the Convention that states, “protected persons shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof.” The UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), to which Israel is a signatory, defines torture as acts perpetrated by persons acting in an official capacity which intentionally inflict pain or suffering “for the purpose of punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind” (Article 1). As a State Party to the UNCRC, Israel also has a legal obligation to protect children from “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” House demolitions Israeli forces frequently carry out house demolitions as part of its military operations, including search and arrest operations. Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention strictly prohibits the destruction of personal property except in circumstances justified by military necessity. In order to establish military necessity, several conditions must be met: the house demolition must meet the principle of proportionality, meaning the military advantage gained must outweigh the damage caused to civilians and their property; the house must be deemed essential to combat operations posing a specific threat to occupation forces; and all other less harmful options must be exhausted. House demolitions are also routinely employed as a punitive measure against Palestinians, who have carried out or are suspected of having carried out violent acts against Israelis, or their extended family. Punitive house demolitions do not meet the requirements of military necessity and amounts to collective punishment, which is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 33).
House demolitions have devastating impacts on Palestinian families, with children suffering disproportionately from its effects. Children often experience psychological trauma and an acute sense of insecurity after losing their homes and their belongings. As families struggle to survive without access to basic necessities and social services, the children often face gaps in their education. According to a recent survey conducted by the Palestinian Counselling Centre with support from Save the Children UK and the Welfare Association, the emotional and behavioural impacts persist well beyond the first six months following a demolition and include increased aggression, depression, bedwetting, and poor academic performance 2.
On 4 March, an otherwise normal evening among family and friends in the comfort and safety of their home was shattered by the brutal violence of a military raid. The 14 children who survived this ordeal have been psychologically scarred for life, but the full impact of this incident, especially on its youngest victims, is impossible to measure.
DCI/PS strongly condemns the excessive and unnecessary use of force against unarmed Palestinian civilians who posed no threat to Israel soldiers at the time of the incident. In light of the documented facts surrounding the killing of Amira, DCI/PS calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to call on Israel to prosecute those responsible for committing these grave breaches, failing which, the High Contracting Parties should themselves identify, search for and prosecute those responsible, in accordance with their legal obligations under international humanitarian law. DCI/PS again calls on Israel to compel its army to respect its legal obligations under international humanitarian law and respect the lives of Palestinian children.
1. DCI/PS investigated this incident over a period of three months, during which the Gaza fieldworker collected five statements from victims and eyewitnesses in three separate visits and several follow up phone calls with those directly involved in and affected by the attack. The case study is built on information gathered from four of the victims.
2. Long Term Implications of Israel’s House Demolition Policy and Practice on Palestinian Children and Their Families, forthcoming.
"I couldn't help but imagine how lonely it must be for a Palestinian boy not to be able to sing "Canaan, My Hero!" in the language of his ancestors, not to have Canaanite role models after which to name songs, towns and holidays and, more lonely yet, to be taught by teachers who had never heard of his Canaanite ancestors."
"One of the most historically destructive actions that David Ben Gurion . . . did to establish Jewish dominance over the Arab population and land from a historical point of view was to create a committee of scholars, geographers, and theologians in the same week of February 1949 in which Israel signed its armistice agreement with Syria, whose goal was to 'erase' all the names used in historic Palestine for the past five thousand years and to create new Hebrew names. 'They wanted to make these names a symbol of the old link with Palestine, but unfortunately they could not find genuine Hebrew names for more than five percent of the names previously used,' said Abu Sitta. These new maps and new names erased the vocabulary of the life of the people, he added, because of the way the names had recorded historic events like weddings and battles."
This new era requires new ways of thinking about the conflict; it requires recognizing that partition and the effort to separate people into ethnically pure boxes is the problem and not the solution; that imposing a "Jewish state" on a culturally diverse, multi-religious country has only generated and fueled endless conflict, hatred and bloodshed.
From "Beyond the Make Believe of Negotiations"