This is an Army, complete with warplanes and missiles, tanks and munitions, armored vehicles, landmines, RPGs, and a multitude of automatic weapons, targeting a civilian population.

Israel has collectively targeted, and is collectively punishing, 1.4 million Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.  The most densely populated place on the planet, the Gaza Strip has 1.4 million people crowded into a mere 146 sq miles – that is 9,712 people per square mile.   The unemployment rate is approximately 50% with 81% of the population in poverty.  

Israel initially invaded the Gaza Strip under the guise of a "search and rescue mission" after the 25 ^th June Palestinian strike on an Israeli army post during which two Israeli occupation soldiers were killed and one was taken captive by Palestinian resistance.  Now, approximately 16 days later Israel has re-occupied the Gaza Strip, in the process killing more than 74 Palestinians and injuring more than 200.    Israel has invaded villages and towns in the West Bank arresting Palestinian citizens and has kidnapped 64 Palestinian government officials - democratically elected by the people of Palestine.  

Israel sent its warplanes into the sovereign nation of Syria in a blatant attempt at intimidation and psychological terror.   Israeli warplanes simulated a low altitude attack on the home of President Assad diving sharply toward it then rapidly accelerating creating a window shattering sonic boom.  

Isreal has now commenced bombing the sovereign nation of Lebanon after two Israeli soldiers were taken captive.  As in the Gaza Strip Israeli forces are targeting the infrastructure in Lebanon bombing all three runways at the only international airport, bridges, and power plants killing 55 and wounding more than 103 people. Israel has initiated a full naval blockade virtually taking control of Lebanese sea, air, and border space.   

The 26 June Palestinian strike, in which an Israeli soldier was taken captive, is the Israeli excuse for unleashing the current invasions and bombings.   That strike was against an Israeli army base.   This is in contrast to Israeli strikes which target densely populated civilian areas, national infrastructure, schools, power plants, charity organizations and civilian homes/vehicles.   Israel, armed by the United States and subsidized with billions from the American taxpayer, uses Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons, Boeing F-15s, Caterpillar bulldozers, and various U.S. munitions against the Palestinians.

The Palestinians, in glaring contrast, launch Qassam "rockets" toward Israeli territory and throw stones at Israeli occupation soldiers and Israeli tanks/vehicles during regular invasions of villages and towns.   The Palestinians have no army, no form of self-defense, and are relegated to using whatever means of resistance is at their disposal.  Suicide bombings, sometimes used by Palestinian resistance, killed 22 Israelis in 2005;  by contrast 235 Palestinians died in 2005 due to Israeli forces and settler violence.

Far from existing in a vacuum, the Palestinian strike against the Israeli army post occurred within the context of the occupation; to deny or obfuscate the facts of living under Israeli occupation – especially since the 2005 Palestinian elections – is absurd and serves to propagandize reality.   In the months prior to the June 25^th operation that captured the Israeli occupation soldier:

• 26 January – 24 February :   7 people killed, 55 wounded by Israeli occupation forces; 58 Israeli incursions into Palestinian communities with 252 civilians arrested including 32 children; Israeli forces turned 22 Palestinian homes into military outposts; Israeli forces shelled an apartment building in the Gaza Strip
•  23 March – 29 March:  5 Palestinians killed; 18 wounded by Israeli gunfire; Israel continues shelling Gaza Strip; 27 Israeli incursions into Palestinian communities with at least 44 civilians arrested including 4 children; Israeli forces turned 6 Palestinian homes into military outposts; Israel conducted an extra-judicial execution
• 06 April – 12 April:   19 Palestinians killed, 94 wounded by Israeli gunfire; Israeli forces conducted 27 incursions in the West Bank with 70 arrested including 6 children; Israeli forces turned 7 Palestinian homes into military outposts; Israeli forces raided a hospital and arrested injured Palestinians, Israel conducted an extra-judicial execution in which 10 Palestinians died
• 8 June – 14 June:  28 people killed, 76 wounded; Israeli forces conducted 40 incursions into Palestinian communities with 49 civilians including 12 children arrested; Israeli forces turned 2 Palestinian homes into military outposts; extra-judicial executions killed 19 people; Israeli forces continue closing borders in the Gaza Strip    (On 9 July, Israel slammed a Gaza Beach with artillery shells killing 8 people as they were picnicking, including two women and three children, and wounding more than 30 (there are no words to describe this incident – please, watch the video ("See the Aftermath of the Shelling").      

Photo left: Israeli Python 5 warplane
4 July 2006  Reuters

 

Reviewing the weekly "Humanitarian Briefing Notes" produced by the United Nations  Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,shows the complete absurdity of Israeli officials assertions that Palestinians have been "escalating" aggression.  Between 29 March 2006 and 13 June 2006 Israel fired 4,748 shells and 107 missiles into Gaza. OCHA conducted further review for this time frame and concluded that in total 7,986 Israeli missiles and shells had actually been launched at Gaza Strip.   During that same time period 455 Palestinian Qassams were fired toward Israel.

On 4 July Palestinian resistance fired a Qassam "rocket" into the Israeli town of Ashkelon to which Israeli Prime Minister Olmert responded that the rocket was a "grave escalation" for which there will be "far reaching ramifications." Israel has the entire Gaza Strip within its military stranglehold and while bombing civilian infrastructure and government buildings, Israel continues to employ the reactionary, "national security-self-defense" model in rationalizing their criminal actions.  

Reviewing the weekly "Humanitarian Briefing Notes" produced by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,  shows the complete absurdity of Israeli officials assertions that Palestinians have been "escalating" aggression.  Between 29 March 2006 and 13 June 2006 Israel fired 4,748 shells and 107 missiles into Gaza. OCHA conducted further review for this time frame and concluded that in total 7,986 Israeli missiles and shells had actually been launched at Gaza Strip.   During that same time period 455 Palestinian Qassams were fired toward Israel. 

In the 34 days between 29 April and 1 May 2006 Israel fired 3,068 shells/missiles into Gaza compared to 162 Palestinian Qassams launched toward Israel.   Between 12 September 2005 and 28 March 2006 Israel fired 1161 artillery shells and surface to air missiles into Gaza while 686 Palestinian Qassams were fired toward Israel.  

In the last three years eight Israelis have been killed by Palestinian Qassams while in one weeks time Israeli forces have killed anywhere from 5 to 28 Palestinians.   In one 24-hour period Israel launched more than 500 missiles into northern Gaza.  Given this data it is obvious who is escalating the aggression.

Three weeks prior to the Gaza beach massacre a failed Israeli assassination attempt in Gaza left a three year old girl paralyzed, a ventilator doing her breathing for her, and killed her mother (age 27), brother (age 7), grandmother (age 46) and injured her father and other brother (age 2).   The missile, fired by Israel's warplanes, also injured another family whose vehicle just happened to be too close to the targeted area.  The target was a "militant" on his way to the hospital to visit his wife and newborn baby; he was executed as well as his two brothers while en route to the hospital.  

This is not an anomaly.   Israel's attempts at extra-judicial liquidation kill and injure innocent Palestinian civilians on a regular basis (for a glimpse at how routine, illegal, and deadly these assassinations are) Israel's assassination attempts and air strikes regularly kill and injure innocent civilians when these missiles 'miss' their intended targets.   On 23 June a 25-year-old Palestinian woman, 7 months pregnant, gave birth to a stillborn baby girl in an emergency caesarean section after shrapnel injured the woman in a botched Israeli air raid.

An Israeli occupation force spokeswoman addressed the deaths of the baby and other deaths/injuries by stating "the missile simply missed" Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, in a rare moment, provided an honest assessment of the extensive deaths of Palestinian civilians in these attempts by stating that the lives of Israelis were "more important" than the lives of Palestinians. 

Israel conducts mass home demolishing when Palestinians do no have the proper "permits" while Israel builds illegal Israeli-only colonies on Palestinian lands and, in the process, clears vast swaths of farm/agricultural land upon which families lives depend.   Israel creates "Jewish-Only" roads, for which one has to have the correct color license plate to travel and builds Palestinians into ghettos constructing a giant apartheid wall, larger and more fortified than the Berlin Wall. The ability to cross the hundreds of military checkpoints to go to work, school, the doctor, or to visit family in other areas is arbitrarily decided by Israeli occupation forces guarding the crossings.   

Israel began its most current rampage using warplanes to bomb a Gaza Strip power plant, destroying all six transformers and knocking out power to half of the population, immediately leaving some 700,000 people as well as two primary hospitals, in the dark and with no running water. On 29 June, Israel used its warplanes to target the second power plant in Gaza. The hospitals are now rationing electricity and water for critical patients such as babies in incubators, those on ventilators and those undergoing or recovering from emergency surgery.   Lutfi Halawa has a 9-month-old daughter on a ventilator in a Gaza hospital and contemplates what no father would ever want to "Without electricity my daughter will die".

 

No electricity means relying on generators, which take fuel; fuel that has to be brought in from outside of the Gaza Strip now that supplies are running out.   Since Israeli occupation forces control Palestinian borders they decide when supplies are allowed into the Gaza Strip. 

 

In addition, the Gaza Strip relies on electricity to pump water leaving half of the population to go without, or use water from other sources – like wells and unsanitary storage tanks.   The lack of electricity will also cause raw sewage to back up and eventually flood throughout the area.  Plant officials report that it will take four to five months to make repairs to the power plant.   In order to pump water Palestinians are relying on generators for which the UN will assist with fueling, using its own 30-day supply of fuel ear-marked for the delivery of emergency food. With Israel continuing the blockade of border routes it will not be possible for Palestine to obtain urgently needed fuel. 

 

Gaza City, with approximately 600,000 residents, has halted garbage collection, leaving roughly 400 metric tons of trash per day, in Palestinian communities.   Throughout the Gaza Strip electricity is now rationed and with the generators being used to pump water Palestinians manage a six hour on – six hour off water supply to some of their communities.

 

Eliminating electricity in an area with a population of 1.4 million people upon which the people depend to function in their daily lives - like electricity for light, refrigeration, hospital/health needs, water pumps, sewage treatment and water for bathing, – is nothing more than collective punishment.   Eliminating water – for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning, cooking, drinking, pumping water, sewage treatment – is collective punishment.  Eliminating fuel – for cooking and driving – is collective punishment.   Collective punishment is a war crime.

 

The spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry submitted that the power plant was "targeted to make it more difficult for militants holding Shalit [Israeli occupation soldier held by the Palestinian resistance] to move around."   The statement itself is absurd and the siege on Palestine obviously has great political motivations.  It is not a coincidence that Israel increased its aggression once the new, democratically elected, Hamas led government was sworn in (29 March 2006).   Simply, Israel did not approve of the democratic election that took place in Palestine and has therefore chosen to use its arsenal to ensure that government is eliminated.

 

In addition to eliminating the basic services in Gaza, Israel's "operation" has targeted charity agencies which provide the bulk of social services for Palestinians.   Last Friday the Palestinian Society for the Speech Impaired was bombed; it is the only organization working with the speech impaired in Gaza, notably the agency worked mostly with children. 

 

Israel demonstrated its complete disregard for the sovereignty of its neighbors when it carried out a "low-altitude" flight last week over the home of the Syrian President, shattering windows, in an act of impunity and terror.  Not only does Israel's terrorism target Palestinians but it targets other nations and governments as well.

 

Israel kidnapped 64 Palestinian cabinet members and parliamentarians in an egregious violation of any notion of the sovereignty and independence of the Palestinian government. The illegal arrests attest to the mentality, and intention, of the Israeli leadership in doing whatever it can to ultimately destroy the Palestinian government.  

 

Attesting to this fact is an article published by Haaretz which stated, "The detention of Hamas parliamentarians…had been planned several weeks ago…" The Israelis planned the kidnapping of government officials weeks prior to any taking of the Israeli occupation soldier making clear that this current offensive was not in retaliation for any Palestinian strike or captive soldier.   

 

While the focus has been on the siege of the Gaza Strip, the kidnapping of Palestinian government officials took place throughout West Bank areas including Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin, and East Jerusalem.   In addition, regular incursions by Israeli occupation forces have taken place in the West Bank since the siege on Gaza began.   Israel's National Infrastructure Minister stated, regarding the Hamas led government, that "No one is immune…This is not a government…It is a murderous organization" and then proceeded to directly threaten to kill the democratically elected Palestinian Prime Minister. Israeli hypocrisy has finally matched the level of its own genocidal intent. 

Israeli soldiers cheer in preparation for entry into Gaza

27 June AP Photo

 

Israel states that the Hamas led government is a "terror" organization: ironic, since in the 16 months preceding the Israeli escalation of violence, beginning shortly after Hamas was democratically elected and sworn in, Hamas had honored a truce against attacks on Israel.    Israel complains that there is no "negotiating partner" in the Palestinian government. However, in truth, no matter whom the Palestinians democratically elect those officials would not be accepted by Israel either. Whether it was Arafat, Abbas, Hamas, or any other individual, or party, Israel would refuse to participate in any dialogue with a Palestinian official seeking independence and sovereignty for Palestine.   Israel has one agenda and that is to force the Palestinians to submit to Israeli rule – whether willingly, by force, or in death. 

 

Israel, once again, has the residents of the Gaza Strip under siege, physically by sealing the Palestinians within Gaza through the blockade/closure of border crossings – stranding many residents of Gaza on the Egyptian side of the border, and psychologically, using intimidation and repeated sonic booms over the densely populated area.   The unrelenting fear for any Palestinian – man, woman, child, "militant" or civilian –  is the reality that anyone can be killed in an Israeli assassination attempt, anyone can be subjected to arrest by Israeli occupation forces; the alternative is to stay locked away in their homes.   While in their homes Palestinian children, and their families, are bombarded with the sounds of gunfire, warplanes, tanks, and sonic booms reverberating though their homes shattering windows and causing children to scream in utter terror.

 

But then, this is what Israeli leaders want; this is precisely the campaign they are waging against an entire civilian population – a physical, psychological, and genocidal war of terror.  

 

Operation "Summer Rains" – the name for the current illegal invasion and siege of the Gaza Strip – attests to the fact that nothing is sacred to Israel – nothing except the ultimate elimination of their "demographic problem" – the mere existence of the Palestinian people.  

 

As the International Community calls for "restraint," diplomats and leaders continue to spout rhetoric making "demands" that Israel observe the law, the regional Arab governments take no action to defend their neighbors, while Israel continues its genocidal "operation."   While the U.S. continues to assert Israel's "right to self defense," finances and provides Israel with the military hardware used to commit international crimes, ignores Israel as the primary nuclear nation in the region which refuses to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and punishes the Palestinians for their choice of government:

 

• Israel collectively punishes 1.4 million civilians by bombing power plants and destroying essential infrastructure
• Israel violates the sovereignty of another nations, continues to threaten other nations, and flies warplanes over the home of the Syrian president
• Israel closes border crossings preventing urgently needed humanitarian relief to civilians
• Israel bombs government buildings
• Israel targets charity agencies which provide the bulk of social services to the population
• Israel targets University and school buildings
• Israel raids hospitals
• Israel destroys businesses in air raids
• Israel executes government officials
• Israel actively plans the kidnapping of democratically elected government officials
• Israel kidnaps 64 democratically elected government officials
• Israel threatens to assassinate a democratically elected Prime Minister
• Israel sends it warplanes on assassination missions in densely populated civilian areas killing and injuring innocent people who just happen to be nearby
• Israel uses dozens of bulldozers to raze Palestinian homes and vast swaths of agricultural land
• Israel arrests and imprisons thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, as political prisoners

The above is not a list of Israeli crimes specific to this latest siege of the Gaza Strip.   The list, quite incomplete, is a mere sample of what the civilians of Palestine have been managing to live with for years, and years, and years.   Israel has made an absolute mockery of human rights law and its own "Proclamation of Israel's Independence."  The basic concepts codified within the Nuremburg Principles has not only been ignored but has been repeatedly violated by Israel with impunity.

 

Israel has obligations, to which it has committed, in protecting Palestinians under its control.  Israel has violated the Fourth Hague Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.   Civilians, regardless of where they live, and the infrastructure that supports them, can never be targeted – unless, of course, the nation that does the targeting is Israel.  The International Community, responding to these blatant and absolute violations of the law, collectively tells the Palestinian population to "deal with it." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Israeli Wall                          Berlin Wall

Sabbah's Blog                     National Archives

 

 

In World War II the world watched as Nazi Germany enacted discriminatory laws, isolated specific populations based on religion and ethnicity, created and imprisoned those people in ghettos, invaded, destroyed, and expropriated public and private property, arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned thousands of people, carried out extra-judicial executions, and undertook a campaign to eradicate an entire people.   Today, in Israel proper and in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine, Israel is undertaking a campaign strikingly like that undertaken by the Nazis.

 

Israel's ingenuity as the occupying force ensures Palestinians have no chance at success in any undertaking least of which is building a strong Palestine.   As long as Palestinians are fighting to survive there is no ability to undertake community building, to obtain political stability, or, most importantly, establish a sovereign and self-determined Palestine.   This is Israel's intention.

 

When people's entire lives are controlled by military forces, when individuals live in a constant state of fear and anxiety, when people have been relegated to ghettos, when 96% of a population's children have seen a friend or relative killed by occupation forces and exhibit symptoms of trauma, when the world has turned a blind eye to genocide and apartheid for so long, does one expect that people will not rise up to defend themselves in a struggle for self-determination?   Does one expect that those people would sit idly by, and allow Israeli actions to continue, in silence?  Should one expect a different response than striking back   – in any way one can – to subjugation?   Absolutely not.  

 

Does one not think that the Palestinians realize what they face when striking against the massive military force that is destroying them?   They know best what retaliations will occur when fighting against the occupation but they press on using the means available to them.  Having no military forces the Palestinians fight against Israeli military forces, garnered in large part due to U.S financing, with homemade "rockets" and stones, yes, stones.

 

The Palestinians have the legally protected right to defend themselves against Israeli terrorism and they have the right to fight for self-determination and their own independence against the occupiers. History has shown that a people oppressed will throw off the oppressors.   It is only a matter of time and steadfast commitment

 

It is absolutely unconscionable to remain silent and allow Israeli leadership, and the massive might of the Israeli military apparatus, to commit genocide in Palestine.   It is unconscionable to allow an army to target and wage a full-scale war against a civilian population. 

 

I know, you are busy, you have work to do and children to care for, you have car and mortgage payments to make, and you have sleep to catch up on.   Everyday, as you go about your daily lives, you are providing financial and military assistance to fund the Israeli occupation through your tax dollars, the United States continues to absurdly define genocide as Israeli self-defense, and a blind eye continues to be turned to the systematic subjugation and the slaughter of innocent people.  

 

The world has seen genocide before.   For the war crimes committed under Hitler's reign the United States played a central role in the trials of those who committed and assisted in the commission of crimes against humanity.   The Nuremberg Tribunal mandated every individual to stand in defense of those targeted, by any nation, for genocide and take action to stop it: 

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of Obedience and therefore have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."   Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950  

The mandate to intervene is clear  Do something; get involved and act now.   Your silence is not only betrayal; it is support for Israel's policy of genocide.

 

© Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com

 

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Andrea Howard is a Psychiatric Case Manager in the central United States.   She has organized for local and national organizations focusing on social justice issues.  Contact Andrea Howard by email.