[Peace-discuss] Richard Falk and Gaza

Mon Dec 15 23:40:25 CST 2008

Does it excuse, say, Georgia's or Colombia's behavior to point out that they're 
clients of the US?  Israel, as the strongest US client, is guilty of especially 
vicious behavior.

No, the US is not "behind all the evil in Middle East affairs," nor are the 
Israelis.  But they are the strongest actors, and the ones we're responsible 
for.  It's necessary to give an accurate account of what they're doing, not 
fantasies about Zionist control.

(E.g., it would be hard to object much to the Israeli wall in itself if it were 
built on Israeli land, but it isn't -- and that's possible only because the US 
allows it.)

Obama has consistently (and disgustingly) asserted that Israel is forced to put 
Gaza under siege.  See, e.g., his letter of last January to US ambassador to the 
UN Zalmay Khalilzad:

===

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in 
Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council 
in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no 
resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas 
has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel…

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on 
Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do 
this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on 
civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket 
attacks… If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you 
to ensure that it does not speak at all.

Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator

===

Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> So, you excuse Israel's behavior? No need to condemn its behavior?
> 
> Those who call Israel a puppet to its puppet master USA like to see only 
> the U.S. as behind all the evil in Middle East affairs. This is a weird 
> attitude. Was the USS Liberty attacked by the Israelis at Washington's 
> behest? Did the idea and implementation of building the separation 
> between the West Bank and Israel proper come from the American 
> administration?
> 
> Israel is indeed closely allied to U.S. policies/ interests and is 
> restricted in actions that might seriously disturb U.S. policy, but it 
> has its own axes to grind, and has done so.
> 
> Please  give references for Obama's support for the cut-off by the 
> Israelis of vital supplies to Gaza.
> 
> --mkb
> 
> 
> On Dec 15, 2008, at 7:41 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> The important point here is that complaints should be directed not to 
>> the puppet (Tel Aviv) but to the puppet-master (Washington DC).  Obama 
>> has made clear his support for this particular crime against humanity. 
>> --CGE
>>
>>
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> As noted yesterday, Richard Falk was just denied permission to enter 
>>> Israel (or Gaza) as a UN representative; he was detained  in israel 
>>> at the airport. What follows may be a reason for this.
>>> /Published on Monday, December 15, 2008 by /_/TruthDig.com/_ 
>>> <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081215_israels_crime_against_humanity/> 
>>>
>>> *Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’*
>>> *by Chris Hedges*
>>> Israel's siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because 
>>> of Jerusalem's refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters 
>>> and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes 
>>> carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. 
>>> It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian 
>>> Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of _Lodz _ 
>>> <http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/Lodz/lodzghetto.html>and 
>>> _Warsaw_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto>.
>>> "This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality," I was told by 
>>> Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a 
>>> delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet 
>>> Hamas leaders this past summer. "I am almost breathless discussing 
>>> this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden 
>>> to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner 
>>> is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian 
>>> populations fifty years ago."
>>> The U.N. special _rapporteur _ 
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapporteur>for human rights in the 
>>> occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law 
>>> professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million 
>>> Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity." Falk, who is Jewish, 
>>> has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza 
>>> as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian 
>>> law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention." He 
>>> has asked for "the International Criminal Court to investigate the 
>>> situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and 
>>> military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted 
>>> and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law."
>>> Falk, while condemning the _rocket attacks _ 
>>> <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5158480.ece>by 
>>> the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal 
>>> violations of international law, goes on to say that "such 
>>> Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a 
>>> collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on 
>>> the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international 
>>> society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to 
>>> render protection to the Palestinian people."
>>> "It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the 
>>> entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to 
>>> survive in terms of their health," Falk said when I reached him by 
>>> phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. "This is an 
>>> increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 
>>> percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are 
>>> reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have 
>>> caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children 
>>> need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a 
>>> number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. 
>>> There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people 
>>> without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the 
>>> age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."
>>> Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death 
>>> sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and 
>>> little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. 
>>> Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, 
>>> including one of Gaza's three CT scanners, has been destroyed by 
>>> power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the 
>>> temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most 
>>> exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, 
>>> including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have 
>>> died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they 
>>> were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at 
>>> Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. 
>>> The statistics gathered on children-half of Gaza's population is 
>>> under the age of 17-are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of 
>>> children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and 
>>> vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.
>>> "It is macabre," Falk said. "I don't know of anything that exactly 
>>> fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto 
>>> as the nearest analog in modern times."
>>> "There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and 
>>> involved this kind of oppressive circumstances," the rapporteur 
>>> added. "The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of 
>>> international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and 
>>> survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a 
>>> crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by 
>>> the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible 
>>> and should be held accountable."
>>> The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the 
>>> radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas 
>>> has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to 
>>> negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established 
>>> through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce 
>>> although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on 
>>> Nov. 4, initiated an _armed attack _ 
>>> <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/775/39991>that violated the truce 
>>> and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed 
>>> firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 
>>> rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There 
>>> have been no Israeli casualties.
>>> "This is a crime of survival," Falk said of the rocket attacks. 
>>> "Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they 
>>> either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any 
>>> way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a 
>>> people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in 
>>> particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket 
>>> fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating 
>>> these circumstances."
>>> Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The 
>>> Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a 
>>> peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the 
>>> West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state 
>>> solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. 
>>> Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip 
>>> onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for 
>>> food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels 
>>> to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off 
>>> from Israel.
>>> "Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic 
>>> process that gives the Palestinians a viable state," Falk said. "They 
>>> [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create 
>>> enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a 
>>> viable state cannot emerge."
>>> The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of 
>>> the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the 
>>> same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not 
>>> grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate 
>>> violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of 
>>> a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy 
>>> whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint 
>>> does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of 
>>> family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those 
>>> who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 
>>> 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said 
>>> they wanted to be a "martyr"?
>>> The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and 
>>> Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants 
>>> and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by 
>>> Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of 
>>> savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed 
>>> on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on 
>>> Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of 
>>> Israel.
>>> © 2008 TruthDig.com
>>> /Chris Hedges writes a regular column for /_/Truthdig.com/_ 
>>> <http://www.truthdig.com/>/. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity 
>>> School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The 
>>> New York Times. He is the author of "/_/American Fascists: The 
>>> Christian Right and the War on America./_ 
>>> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>/"/
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