Letters from Palestine
From AxisofLogic.com
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"Look
upon your works, ye Israel, and despair" ... a comprehensive, critical
analysis of conditions in Palestine under the iron boot of the State of
Israel
By Anne Gwynne writes from Occupied Palestine
Nov 10, 2004, 17:58
"Real
armies attack armies, but the mighty Israeli army is ganging up
on refugee camps and murdering women and children
It is not a heroic act
to use state-of-the-art machines of death against impoverished civilians
who even have a hard time securing food for their kids."
- Husni Zurub, Mayor of Khan Younis
5th October 2004
* * *
Since the rapid deterioration in the
health of President Yasser Arafat, listeners throughout the world have
been constantly regaled with pre-reports, predictions by uninformed BBC
commentators, of the hypothetical violence which they say will follow the
President's death. Not, you will note from Palestinian informed
commentators. It is clearly in Israel's interest to increase the output of
this propaganda and to foment the unrest which they predict. Now is an
apposite time to examine the violence, death and destruction visited upon
the Palestinian people by the Israelis just in the past two months within
the context of International Law so that readers may decide for themselves
who is perpetrating the violence.
I have searched all the statistical
information that I can find together with individual reports detailing
each Israeli attack on Palestinians over the past 60 days - I have
earnestly attempted to ensure that I have not duplicated the reports or
figures therein. If there was any doubt I omitted items: it has taken two
weeks to collate all the information. The confusion, as well as the
difficulty of information collecting, is something I feel quite certain
that the Israelis have factored in to their cold, cruel plan for Palestine
- the crimes are so numerous and come so fast, and the destroyed
telecommunications and devastated landscape so dislocating, that few will
have the time or the persistence required to reach the truth. The totals
are almost certainly an underestimate as more statistics will come in
later: there is an approximate margin of error of plus or minus 3% - 4%.
I begin with an outline of where Israel
stands in relation to International Law on War Crimes, and Crimes Against
Humanity, indeed to the International Crime of Genocide, in what Azmi
Bishara MK termed the 'socio-cide' and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian
people interview Pacifica Radio USA July 2004 www.me-radio.org
Some understanding of the legal
background is vital to an understanding of Israel's agenda for this
systematic destruction of the people and the society, carried out under
the pretext of 'security' for Israel. The pretext for the latest
devastation and death in Ghazza was the firing one small home-made Qassam
rocket, without a guidance system and only a 6-mile range, which very
tragically killed 2 children, the first deaths from a Qassam, deaths for
which almost every Hamas fighter will, I know from many discussions, be
deeply saddened and which were not deliberate or targeted. The pretext led
to the one of the worst collective punishments ever suffered in Ghazza.
But what of the deaths of the
scores of children then deliberately killed by the IDF on this pretext of
retaliation?
And how can a home-made Qassam defend
against F16 fighter-bombers and unmanned drones dropping 1000 kg bombs,
helicopter attack gunships launching Hellfire missiles by the dozen, and
tanks firing thousands of shells? These deadly weapons have, over the past
60 days, killed and wounded over 350 Palestinian men, women and children
(4,000 in four years) demolished more than 1,500 homes and businesses as
well as scores of thousands of fruitful trees and hundreds of acres of
productive land, and shelling and bombing Palestinian civilian areas more
than 1,500 times over the same period.
Collective punishment is, illegal under
International Law (without exception) and a 'grave and massive violation
of the Human Rights of the Palestinian people' - (UN Human Rights
Commission Resolution October 19th 2000).
The figures give a disturbing picture
of an all-out illegal attack on civilian people by the Israeli occupiers
who have, under International Law, "... no sovereignty over the West Bank,
or the Gaza Strip, or the entire City of Jerusalem," being merely 'a
belligerent occupant' without legitimacy anywhere in Palestine - Jerusalem
is entirely within Palestine not Israel - and with no rights over the
Palestinian people (Professor Francis A Boyle - Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law, Clarity, NY 2003).
What we have here is a
'belligerent occupant', the military state of Israel, waging
an all-out war against a people, the Palestinians, living in
their own land and thus the 'essence of sovereignty'.
Living in occupied Palestine, the Palestinians are 'protected
persons' under the Fourth Geneva Convention, with all of
their rights sacred under its 149 substantive articles, as well
as under the Hague Regulations of 1907. Nevertheless Israel, for some
reason believes it is above the Law and, as Boyle puts it, 'the Israeli
Government is currently violating, and has since 1967 been violating,
almost each and every one of these sacred rights of the Palestinian
people'.
All violations
of the Fourth Geneva Convention are War Crimes: they are
not misdemeanours but grave breaches of the Convention,
and each one mandates universal prosecution not only for
the perpetrators (military or settlers) but also for their
commanders and especially their political leaders.
One such is Ariel Sharon, already found guilty of war crimes in
1983 by an Israeli tribunal and declared to be
unfit to command or to hold public office again.
In contrast Palestine has the
Right of Individual and Collective Defense under Article 51 of
the UN Charter, as it does in Customary Law to which all states must
adhere, and this right includes the absolute Right to use Force
to terminate Israel's illegal occupation and to protect the Palestinian
people anywhere in the world from Israeli aggression.
So this is very far from a situation of
'sides' with right and wrong on both.
It is a monumentally unequal
conflict in which the Palestinian people are defending their
Land, Families and Homes from 'gross and repeated violations of
human rights by the Israeli army and by Israeli settlers living illegally
in occupied
Palestine',
violations which constitute 'grave breaches' of the Fourth
Geneva Convention: that is, the most serious of war crimes.
In this latest invasion of Ghazza, as
during the preceding 37 years, indeed throughout the 56 years since 1948,
we have seen Israel commit uncountable crimes against humanity
- conceptualised in the Nuremburg Charter of 1945, drafted
by the US government to clearly define what the Germans did to the
Jews of Europe
as a Crime Against Humanity. The wheel has turned full circle - for now
the UN Human Rights Commission determines that what the Jews of
Israel are doing to the
Palestinian people are,
similarly, crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, the Government of Israel's
actions are now recognized as Genocide. The crime of
Genocide was recognized after the Nuremburg Trials and enshrined in
International Law as the 1948 Genocide Convention formulated to go
beyond the concept of a 'crime against humanity' because it was
felt that what the Germans did to the Jewish people required a special
treaty. The genocide did not start yesterday - since 1947, 1936, even
1920, the state of Israel (1948) and its precursors - terrorist gangs like
Stern, Haganah and Irgun (commanded by men, with blood on their hands, who
later became Israeli Presidents and Prime Ministers) - have been
committing Genocide against the Palestinian people in violation of four of
the five clauses of the Genocide Convention Article II(a), (b),and (c) and
(d). The crime is defined as follows:
'any
of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group by
1)
killing members of the group;
2)
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3)
deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4)
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
In view of the clarity of the Legal
framework, it was very shocking to hear John Bell of the Iona Community,
on the BBC's influential political radio show ('Today', 28/10),
indulgently describe Ariel Sharon, the convicted war criminal, as 'that
great old Jewish war horse, the scourge of the Palestinians'. Could we get
away with calling Adolf Hitler 'a great old German war horse'? Sharon is
old, but he is neither great, nor is he a 'war horse' - he is a war
criminal, a pathological killer with a history of massacre and destruction
which goes right back to his youth. The implication of 'scourge of the
Palestinians' is very clear in terms of propaganda.
It against this background of total
illegitimacy on the part on the Israelis and absolute legality on the part
of the Palestinian Resistance, that the EU, US and UK governments last
month watched daily massacres and the destruction of the incarcerated
Ghazzan society being perpetrated by the Israeli military equipped with
weapons of mass destruction, paid for by the USA, and deadly electronic
guidance systems supplied by the 'ethical' government of the UK. No one
said a word, not even about the scores of children, mown-down in cold
blood by Israeli soldiers, their little bodies shattered by as many as
twenty bullets. What a contrast to the coverage and outrage at the deaths
of three British soldiers, illegally occupying Iraq, killed by the Iraqi
Resistance, living in their own land and thus, also, the essence of
sovereignty.
Palestinian losses at 1900 hours on
30thth October after sixty days of Israeli War Crimes from 1st September
to 30th October 2004
Palestinian Men, Women and
Children wounded, murdered and imprisoned
- Palestinians
killed
...... 369 including more than 66 children under 18
- Palestinians
wounded ... 2,384 including 775 children, with 247 critically injured
- Palestinians
arrested .... 1,319 mostly young males 14-35
- Palestinian
Property destroyed or so severely damaged as to be unusable
1) Homes ...
1,079 with dozens
more as yet unrecorded
2) Fruitful Trees bulldozed ... 15,376 (a
family can live off 20 trees)
3) Dunams of land Razed ... 3,553 (the
most fertile in a fertile land)
4) Vehicles
... ... ... 455
5) Ambulances
... ... ... 13
6) Businesses ...
... ... ... 241
7) Govt institutions .. ... ... ... ...
26
8) Police security posts ... ... ... 27
9) Hospitals
... ... ... ... 11
10) Schools ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
19
11) Livestock farms ... ... ... ... ...
44
12) Market Gardens under glass ... 104
13) Places of worship
... ... ... 5
14) Water Supply
ALL municipal
supplies. Unaccountable wells.
Palestinian Land - 'Al-Ard'-
confiscated for expansion of illegal colonial settlement ...
... 1,704 Dunams
- The IOF/IDF
erected . . .... 123 additional Roadblocks and Gun
Towers
(the UN states that there were already some 800)
(IOF = Illegal Occupation Force; IDF = Israeli Destruction Force)
SUMMARY TABLE OF 60 DAYS'
WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ISRAELI FORCES
Palestine is a very small country with
a small population: in order to fully appreciate the massive scale of the
death and destruction we should look at the equivalent figures as they
would be in the US and UK, pro-rated for population.
The chart below shows the
actual numbers of Palestinian losses, followed by what would be the
equivalent losses in the United States and the United Kingdom.
PALESTINIAN PERSONS
1) Killed, wounded and arrested
(Scores blown apart by Hellfire Missiles) |
4,072 |
365,670
(7,314 per state) |
73,134 |
PALESTINIAN PROPERTY AND LIVELIHOOD
DESTROYED
2) Homes, businesses, factories, farms,
and glasshouse market gardens |
1,468 |
132,120
(7,314 per state) |
26,424 |
PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT
3) Institutions Destroyed (Schools, hospitals, police
stations, places of worship) |
83 |
7,420
(150 per state)
|
1,494
|
*AL-ARD - PALESTINIAN LAND
4) Fruitful, age-old trees bulldozed |
15,376 |
1.4
million
(720 destitute families per state) |
280,000 |
5)
Dunhams of good earth
razed/confiscated for illegal colonies |
5,257 |
473,130
(closest equivalent
US 1930s Dust Bowl) |
92,394 |
6) PALESTINIAN VECHICLES DESTROYED
Including 13 ambulances |
455 |
40,140
(800 per state)
1,170 ambulances |
92,394
232 |
7)
PALESTINIAN CIVILIAN AREAS
bombarded and shelled |
1,525
times |
137,250
(2,750 per state) |
27,450 |
8) New
IDF Military Posts and Gun
Emplacements |
123 |
11,070
(222 per state) |
2,214 |
*Al-Ard - is the beloved
PALESTINIAN LAND - it's
fertile topsoil bulldozed under; it's fruitful trees destroyed - each
destroyed dunam, each killed tree is a loss to the Palestinian soul. A
Palestinian family can live simply from 20 trees and can live well from 40
trees. The loss to Palestinian families from this destruction would find
its equivalent in 700 destitute families for every state in the United
States and a total of 7,000 families in the United Kingdom.
* * *
So that is the shameful scorecard, for
the 60 days from 1st September to the 30th October, of the war crimes
committed by the men and women of the only military nation in the world,
and its fourth-ranking military power, relentlessly attacking the
peaceful, civilian Palestinian people, who have no military, no jeeps and
few arms other than the guns they buy from the Israeli soldiers, often for
drugs - oh, yes! it's very easy - I have witnessed such transactions.
Indeed, the Hebrew right-wing daily "Yediot
Ahronot" reported on October 7th 2004 that the Israeli command has decided
to strip thousands of soldiers of their weapons after weapons theft
amongst the soldiers reached a record high. It pointed out that the
military command accused those soldiers of selling their personal weapons
to the Palestinian resistance fighters. The soldiers, who would be
permitted to bear arms, would be stripped of them during their furloughs.
Soldiers and officers expressed disappointment that their military command
didn't trust them any more, the paper explained, and noted that the gap
was widening between the discredited soldiers and those allowed to
continuously bear arms.
It is worth noting both that every
Israeli Jew, with the exception of a religious group, is first an
active-duty soldier for three years and then a reservist to age 55, and
that it was a reserve major who massacred hundreds in Jenin in April 2002
while another crushed Rachel Corrie beneath his tracks and then reversed
over her to ensure she was dead in Ghazza.
The military of the self-styled 'only
democracy in the Middle East', destroy and pillage on the ground from a
position of safety in their armored vehicles ( guns are useless against
armor -'it would be a waste of bullets at 3 shekels each' commented H, a
freedom fighter in Balaata). In the air their helicopter attack gunships
bristle with battleship-armor piercing Hellfire missiles, and their
$45-million F16 fighter-bombers drop 1000 kg bombs onto their defenseless
victims on the ground incinerated where they stand.
Readers may like to compare, first, the
relative explosive power of that 1000 kg high-tech bomb with the 20kg belt
of home-made explosives which is the only weapon of the Palestinian
commando costing 1000 shekels ($200) and, second, the relative positions
of the Israeli Bomber and the commando - the Israeli goes home to his
family and carries out dozens more bombings while the Palestinian is
killed by his bravery - "greater love hath no man than he give his life
for his friend" - words known throughout the UK.
This overwhelming war machine, greater
in capability than that of the UK for a land the size of Wales, is the
$140 billion gift of the US government - a government which now presides
over the greatest social disparity in history, with 46 million of its own
citizens lacking health cover and whose own citizens are in large numbers
dependent on food-aid - last year's figure was 40 million persons! Indeed,
in October 2004, National Public Radio broadcast a desperate appeal from
charities in the state of Massachusetts, USA, for additional contributions
to food-aid as the number of poor and homeless is rising faster than
voluntary resources! At the same time Israel was appealing to Jewish
Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area for donations to feed the hungry
and poverty-stricken 30% of Jews who are living below the poverty line,
and the 10% of Jewish children who are suffering from malnutrition,
in Israel!
Especially in Petakh Tikfah, the first
kibbutz in Israel, which was mentioned as especially deprived. From its
original meaning - 'the key of hope'- Petakh Tikfah is now
synonymous with pain and despair as the biggest of the vicious Israeli
Interrogation Gulag. It's a surprising request since not only does Israel
enjoy the sixth-highest personal income in the world but, up to 1997 (I
can't find later figures), every Israeli family has been subsidized to the
tune of 23,500 US tax-dollars. Huge numbers of poor in the US make less
than $15,000, even $10,000 a year!
The Israelis have put Guns,
Hatred and Death in place of Homes, Love and Life.
It's a strange philosophy but, in the
words of Husni Zurub, the Governor of Khan Younis, describing the latest
rampage, it is "characteristic of Israeli criminality against our
people." The US administration steals the people's treasury
reserves to support Israeli state terrorism in the name of its duplicitous
'war on terror'.
It is a shameful indictment of
both governments.
What does all this mean for
Palestinians trying to live their lives in Palestine?
My own children remember a terrifying
BBC docu-drama called 'Threads' which dealt with the UK in the wake of
nuclear devastation; it gave them nightmares for many years - I wonder how
many readers will have seen it too and been unable to forget the terrible
scenes which made it 'unsuitable for re-showing'. It is pretty much like
that in occupied Palestine today, worse than the bleak First World War
pictures of the battlefields of Belgium and Northern France.
Sewerage systems are largely destroyed;
reliable water supply (especially in Ghazza) has ceased to exist,
electricity is not available or intermittent, and the telecommunications
network, Jawwal, is operating against the odds, in the face of relentless
disruption, its carbon fibre cables frequently cut and its relay masts
regularly disabled and without of the 180 tons of vital new equipment,
electronics and repair tools which the Israelis have held in the port of
Haifa since September 2000. The constant cutting of the telecommunications
network is a very cruel thing: Palestinians are already isolated by the
Israeli lock-down, and very alone as they resist the Zionist project for
Eretz (Greater) Israel. When we cannot call friends for weeks at a time
from the world outside, that increases the feeling of abandonment, and
even within the country there can be no connection for long periods.
The Municipality struggles to maintain
services against overwhelming odds, with government buildings now
bomb-sites, machinery and refuse trucks shelled, police vans and
ambulances destroyed, all its computers and hard-drives wrecked, as well
as all the paper-based and computer-held health, education, and rites of
passage records completely destroyed in a frenzy of hatred. There is
hardly a building without bomb and bullet damage, virtually no hospital or
school without evidence of savage attack, almost no cultural center,
university building or library intact. The pretext is always 'security',
and the unwavering support of the UK and US governments can have only one
of two explanations. The politicians either know no history and thus
believe the Israeli lies, which leads us to doubt their competence, or
they knowingly support Israel's state terrorism clearly defined in the
Geneva Declaration on Terrorism 1987, in which case they are complicit and
their ministers themselves open to prosecution for War Crimes.
I commend my readers to take a look
through the Geneva Declaration on Terrorism which applies to many specific
Israeli crimes such as assassinations, attacks on family members,
collective punishment and many more, as state terrorism. Here are a couple
of quotes from it.
'Terrorism originates from the
statist [sic] system of structural violence and domination that denies the
right of self-determination to peoples, for example, in Palestine'.
'Peoples who are fighting against
colonial domination and alien occupation
have the right to use force to
accomplish their objective. It is impermissible to treat members of
National Liberation Movements in Palestine (amongst others) as if they
were common criminals'. This is little comfort to the 8000 innocent
Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, suffering similar, and
much worse, tortures as those we see being perpetrated in Abu Ghareeb
prison in Iraq, plus deprivations under every paragraph of the Declaration
on the Rights of Prisoners.
I know of no family, and worse,
no child, who has not suffered at least one, usually a
combination of the following losses and sorrows, often all of them.
Parents and relatives are regularly humiliated and/or injured even in
their own homes, friends and relatives are horrifically inured and
brutally killed, homes are demolished at a minutes notice with all their
little possessions destroyed, and brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers,
family and friends disappear under arrest every day, to be inhumanly
tortured and sentenced to many times life. The details of the sadistic
torture in Israeli jails are heard in every home every day, so widespread
is it: Israeli torturers have killed almost 200 Palestinians in four
years.
Families can have lost as many as five
homes to demolition (like the 'Issa family of Tiira near Haifa, refugees
in Balaata Camp for the past 56 years); some have lost as many as five
sons to the prisons (as the Billaal family of Raffidiya); yet others have
buried five or more sons and daughters (for example the Freitakhs of the
Old City of Nablus) or maybe nine family members like the
Shu'ubi's, all killed together ' by mistake'. Courageous mothers like Umm
Amiir in Balaata (a 1948 refugee from Haifa), bore 6 sons and gave them
all to the Resistance, including the very special Amiir Thouqaan, an Al-Aqsa
commander sentenced to 6 times life for exercising his legal right of
resistance. Her daughters, too, have given their husbands.
In every street is to be found a home
wherein exist the severely wounded and disabled - such as the tall,
beautiful, brilliantly clever journalist Ahmad Abu Shallaal, 28-year-old
father of three, lying on his bed in Balaata since July 2002 when his body
received over 100 disabling pieces of shrapnel from 'Hellfire' missiles
fired into an apartment building and clinic. This mis-named 'targeted
assassination' was typical - to kill two senior politicians in Nablus
('The Two Jamaal's', Saliim and Mansour) two missiles were launched,
killing 10 people, two of them toddlers, and injuring dozens more. So many
families in the Nablus/Balaata area (and all over Palestine) have given
everything to defend their land and families, all of their men dead or
incarcerated and their homes demolished in collective punishment.
The Uweiss's, Daraghmah's and Hamdan's
the Al-Assi's, abu Hamden's and the Hannani's; the Abu Layl's and the
Marshoud's with their brave twins, Khaliil blown to bits by 2 Hellfire
missiles and his brother arrested because he is Khaliil's brother - these
and many scores of other families have suffered every crime the Israelis
can think up. There are families which are now only women such as the al-Assi's,
fourth-generation refugees in Balaata, who have buried between 15 and
twenty men in four years. Beautiful, brilliant Dellaal, who could hold the
attention of an audience of thousands, and four women of her family were
themselves brutally beaten and thrown bleeding, broken and unconscious to
the bottom of their stairs in December 2003 and denied medical access.
Other families are orphaned, with the eldest rears his siblings - one such
is the family of Muntasser Nadeem, UPMRC Ambulance Driver in Jenin who, at
25 has already put his eldest sister Rasha through University and is
trying to find the means to do the same for his young brother Muhammad, a
talented jazz saxophone player who scored 89% average in his Baccalaureate
last summer, even in these terrible circumstances. Brother Motassim is a
qualified fitter and sister Reema a qualified hair stylist.
I hope that from this sketchy outline
readers will have gained some insight into the suffering in Palestine and
will appreciate the fortitude which enables the Palesinian people to
'triumph over the occupation' as they determinedly manage to live 'happy
lives' in spite of the terror which they have endured for 37 years.
The epitaph for the war on Ghazza is
aptly supplied by the Israelis themselves in the following news report:
Palestine Information Center
- Zionist military commander of the
Gaza Strip area, Brigadier-General Shamuel
Zakai, announced his resignation Thursday (4th November) amid a leaked
media report scandal. Zakai is suspected of telling reporters that Sharon
insisted on sending troops to occupy the northern Gaza Strip despite the
army's estimation it was unnecessary, military officials said on condition
of anonymity.
Zionist media reported at the time
of "Operation Days of Penitence" that the army wanted to limit the
operation but Sharon insisted it continue to ensure Palestinian fighters
could no longer launch homemade rockets from the area. Zakai also resigned
over personal differences with the chief of the army's southern command
Major-General Dan Harel. (Harel commands the troop whose Captain shredded
the body of a 10 year-old with over 20 bullets, last week). Zakai told his
officers Thursday he was not involved in leaking information to the press,
and said as long as doubts are cast on his credibility, he found it
difficult to command his division.
© Copyright 2004 by
AxisofLogic.com
* * *
Anne Gwynne
is a 65-year-old grandmother and retired bank manager from Wales. Anne is
a regular contributing writer to Axis of Logic's
Letters from Palestine. She has worked with the
Palestinian Medical Relief Committees in Nablus, from where she has
reported for Pacifica Radio USA and is an independent Journalist. Anne can
be reached at
gwynne_anne@hotmail.com
Bulatlat
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