[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on US/Israeli crimes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Noam Chomsky gave the following statement to Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper.]

Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a 
serious crime.  The editors of the London Guardian are quite right to say that 
"If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the 
high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a Nato 
taskforce would today be heading for the Somali coast." It is worth bearing in 
mind that the crime is nothing new.

For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats in international waters between 
Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to 
prisons in Israel including secret prison/torture chambers, sometimes holding 
them as hostages for many years.

Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the US 
tolerates them and Europe generally follows the US lead.

Much the same is true of Israel's pretext for its latest crime: that the Freedom 
Flotilla was bringing materials that could be used for bunkers for rockets. 
Putting aside the absurdity, if Israel were interested in stopping
Hamas rockets it knows exactly how to proceed: accept Hamas offers for a 
cease-fire.  In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement.  The 
Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreement 
on November 4, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did 
not fire a single rocket. Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire.  The Israeli 
cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous 
and destructive Operation Cast Lead on December 27.  Evidently, there is no 
justification for the use of force "in self-defense" unless peaceful means have 
been exhausted.  In this case they were not even tried, although — or perhaps 
because — there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.  Operation 
Cast Lead is therefore sheer criminal aggression, with no credible pretext, and 
the same is true of Israel's current resort to force.

The siege of Gaza itself does not have the slightest credible pretext.  It was 
imposed by the US and Israel in January 2006 to punish Palestinians because they 
voted "the wrong way" in a free election, and it was sharply intensified in July 
2007 when Hamas blocked a US-Israeli attempt to overthrow the elected government 
in a military coup, installing Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan.  The siege is 
savage and cruel, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend 
off international protest, but hardly more than that.  It is the latest stage of 
long-standing Israeli plans, backed by the US, to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

These are only the bare outlines of very ugly policies, in which Egypt is 
complicit as well.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/02-8


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