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| Pray for G A Z A |
- Gaza (along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem) is occupied Palestinian territory under international law,
determined by the vast majority of the world, as well as the highest court
in the world, the UN’s International Court of Justice. Gaza cannot commit
aggression against Israel, since Israel is in constant and continual
commission of illegal aggression against Palestine by occupying it
(illegally and sadisticallyblockading it and frequently committing terrorism against
its civilians, including by targeting them with chemical weapons provided
by US taxpayers – see “Rain
of Fire” by Human Rights Watch). As
documented by Amnesty Int’l, Human Rights Watch, and many others, Israel
intentionally targets and murders civilians, including children.
- Israel also kidnaps and tortures children, including by keeping them in outdoor cages, over
night, in winter.
- But, even ignoring international law and that Gaza is
under illegal Israeli occupation, Gaza did not initiate this current round
of violence; Israel did:
- Western/US/Israeli propaganda says the violence
started with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths on June
12th. That is a lie:
- On May 20th, the Israeli government murdered 2 unarmed
Palestinian teens, and wounded a third.
- The firing of pathetic scrap metal rockets from
impoverished Gaza, which have killed no one, were in fact launched in response to earlier Israeli bombings, killings, assassinations,
and arrests of Palestinians, including children.
- Since the year 2000, Israel has killed 1,500
Palestinian children, while Palestinians have killed 132 Israeli children.
That means Israel has killed over 1,000% percent more Palestinian children
than vice versa.
- As documented by the Washington DC based non-Profit,
The Jerusalem Fund, Israel breaks far more ceasefires than Palestine – this includes firing of the Palestinian scrap
metal rockets.
- For example, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many other human rights organizations reported
that in Israel’s 2009 Gaza Massacre, Israel killed about 450 children,
and it was Israel, they
documented, that broke the ceasefire.
(In that massacre, Israel killed overall from 1,400 to 7,000 Palestinians,
almost all civilians, while 13 Israelis were killed, several from
friendly fire.)
- According to a landmark, comprehensive study of all of
Israel’s wars, by Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the
University of California, Davis, former head of the Graduate School of
Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at
Tel Aviv University, and former academic director of the M.A. Program at
the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Defense College:
- “. most of the wars in which Israel was involved were
the result of deliberate Israeli aggressive design . None of these wars –
with the possible exception of the 1948 War of independence – was what
Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Berah (war of necessity). They
were all wars of choice . ” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 35, (bold added)
- “I review a number of peace-related opportunities
ranging from the Zionist-Hashemite collusion in 1947 through the collapse
of the Oslo Process in 2000. In all those cases I find that Israeli
decision makers – who had been willing to embark upon bold and daring
military adventures – were extremely reluctant to make even the smallest
concessions for peace . I also find in many cases Israel was engaged in
systematic violations of agreements and tacit understandings between
itself and its neighbors.” – Defending the Holy Land,
pg. 40
- Israel has violated more
UN resolutions than any other country. That includes Iraq under Hussein.
- Hamas is the government elected by Gaza in elections
that Jimmy Carter (and many others) observed and said were completely fair
and free. Israel constantly says Hamas uses human shields. But in Israel’s
biggest massacre of Gaza, the one in 2009, all the human rights
organizations, including Amnesty, HRW, and the jurist Richard Goldstone,
found that Hamas DID NOT use human shields. On the contrary, Israel used
human shields, which is a regular practice for Israel. Israel uses
civilians as human shields.
- Israel forced Palestinian civilians to dig and lay
naked in trenches around Israeli tanks. See
- Goldstone Report:
- XIV. THE USE OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS AS HUMAN
SHIELDS
- “The Mission received allegations that in two areas
in north Gaza Israeli troops used Palestinian men as human shields… The
Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It
has no reason to doubt the veracity of their accounts and found that the
different stories serve to support the allegation that Palestinians were
used as human shields.”
- Noam Chomsky: “Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed
Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard
put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long
been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international
consensus’—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but
not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”
- In the history of all rocket and mortar fire into
Israel, 26 people, total, have been killed. And remember, Palestine
breaks ceasefires far less often than Israel, as documented above.
- This number of 26 is in contrast to the minimum number
of 1,400 people who were murdered by Israel in a single one of its
terrorist atrocities, the 2009 Gaza Massacre.
- Noting that in the current massacre, zero Israelis and
over 100 Palestinians have thus far been killed, and noting that Gaza is
a concentration camp – Israel allows no one to enter or leave – Dan Sanchez gives a perfect description of the disparity in
arms between the US/Israeli war machine and Palestinian scrap metal
projectiles: “They [the Gazans] are like fish in a barrel, being blasted
by a shotgun from above. It’s like some of the fish in the barrel pathetically
spitting water at the gunman, and [US media calls] that a “shooting
battle.”
- The rhetoric and tactics of Hamas and other groups
resisting Israeli occupation and colonization can be brutal (though far less so than Israel). Propagandists try to attribute this to
anti-Semitism, to distract from the fact that these groups are resisting
having their country stolen and their people dispossessed and annihilated.
Native American resistance to European colonizers was sometimes extremely
brutal, as was their rhetoric, but everyone universally recognizes that
this was not because of “anti-White-ism”, or “anti-European-ism”, but
because they were having their land stolen and their people massacred, the
same thing that Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
- Palestinians have the right under international law to
resist occupation, ethnic cleansing, colonization, aggression, and
annexation. Miko Peled, son of an Israeli general, recently stated that if Israel doesn’t Like rockets, they should
decolonize Palestine. Dr. Norman Finkelstein notes that
“The Palestinians have the right to use arms to resist an occupation .
However, the fact that morally and legally they have that right doesn’t
mean that it’s the most prudent strategy. In my opinion, a national
Palestinian leadership committed to mobilizing nonviolent resistance can
defeat the Israeli occupation if those of us living abroad lend support
to it.”
- In 1948, the people who wanted to form a Jewish state
carried out a massive terror and ethnic cleansing campaign against the occupants of Palestine, expelling
about half of them (750,000) from their land and into concentrated areas
(Gaza and West Bank). Israel has slowly continued colonizing even those
areas, which were specifically reserved by the UN for Palestinians. Israel
takes all the best land and resources, such as water. Here is a
visualization of what has happened, and is currently happening with
massive support from Obama:
- Obama requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever.
- Israeli settlement building in Palestine is a war crime
under international law. Under Obama, Israeli settlement building is
up over 130%.
- For about 40 years, there has been an international
consensus that Israel must stop colonizing territory outside its 1967
borders. The consensus has been blocked by the United States, in isolation
from the international community (much like the USA’s isolated, strong support for South African Apartheid). Every year there is a UN vote on the issue, and
every year it goes about 165 to 2, the world against the US and Israel.
This continues under Obama. All human rights groups support the consensus,
as does Hamas, the Arab League, Iran, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference… Virtually everyone, except the US and Israel.
- Palestinians are brutalized, repressed and impoverished by Israel. To get a quick visual understanding of the difference
between Gaza and Israel, take a look at the images of people and cities
being wantonly pummeled by Israeli terrorism when you search the word “Gaza“,
and the images of opulence, wealth and luxury that come up when you search
“Tel Aviv“.
- Israel has an illegal stash of hundreds of nuclear weapons.
- Israel, whose government intentionally targets,
tortures, and murders civilians, including children, including with chemical
weapons, and whose government uses Palestinian civilians as human shields,
and whose government is the last entity on Earth carrying out old-style
ethnic cleansing and colonization of foreign countries, is the single
biggest recipient of US aid, at over three billion dollars a year and huge
amounts of lethal weaponry such as attack helicopters and white
phosphorous chemical explosives.
- To reiterate, Obama requested more military aid for Israel than
any president ever. This is not because
Obama and the USA love Jewish people. Obama was recently an accomplice in
a literal neo-Nazi-led coup d’etat in Ukraine, and is currently fully supporting the junta-integrated Ukrainian government, which
is staffed with several neo-Nazis in high ministries, and which uses
neo-Nazi paramilitaries to carry out massacres (and possibly genocide) against people resistant to the junta. The actual
reason the US supports Israel is discussed below.
- As Amnesty International has noted,
all aid to Israel is illegal under international (and US) law, because
Israel is a consistent violator of human rights.
Amnesty International
also noted that Israel’s 2009 massacre of Gaza would not
have been possible without the illegal funding (money and weapons) and support
Israel gets from the USA.
This is also true of the
current massacre Israel is committing in Gaza.
However, in a way, that
is good news.
That means US can STOP the massacres too.
Here is a previous
example of how this has worked: When the USA cut its funding for Indonesia’s genocide against East Timor, which the USA was funding almost exclusively,
Indonesia was forced to stop and withdraw. All it took was cutting off our
illegal flow of money and weapons to the criminals.
The same thing would
happen if we cut our illegal funding for Israel’s genocides and acts of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and
annexation against Palestine.
But since the USA is an anti-democratic country, the only way to stop US plutocrats from using our
money to fund Israeli terrorism is to force it through massive, non-violent
pressure.
One way it happens is
when it becomes too politically costly for the plutocracy to keep funding
genocide and terror, meaning the costs of their illegal support outweigh the
benefits, as in Indonesia. In that case, massive publicity and indigenous
resistance accomplished the goal.
But Israel is the USA’s
main imperial – and nuclear – base for controlling the Middle East, which US
planners, in 1945, called the greatest material prize in world history,
due to the oil and gas. Thus, it might require more, as in non-violently making
our country into a democracy so that people control their own institutions and
money, and thus the way we operate as a society and interact with the world.
Last note: To be clear,
Israel is a legal state, but only within the borders allotted to it by the
United Nations – the Pre-1967 borders, which existed before Israel started
eating away, through terror, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and annexation, at
the areas reserved by the United Nations for Palestinians, as well as areas of
other countries, such as Syria (the Golan Heights).
Per international law,
US domestic law, and common sense, Israel doesn’t deserve any support until it
abandons isolationism and accepts that it can’t steal other people’s countries,
and stops blockading and withdraws its soldiers and settlers, all there
illegally, from those countries.
Israel is, militarily,
the most powerful country in the Middle East, by far. Removing our support for
the Israeli government (which we are legally required to do) will not put
Israelis in danger. It will pressure the Israeli government to stop doing what
endangers Israelis, which is committing aggressive acts against Israel’s
neighbors.
Germany, Japan, and
South Africa went from being the most reviled countries on Earth to being some
of the most admired. Maybe Israel could undergo the same transformation, but
not unless, US & all other world leader, help by ceasing to enable Israeli
terrorism and war crimes by illegally supporting them.
