January 27, 2009
We stand in support of the indigenous Palestinian people in Gaza, who are fighting for their survival against one of the most brutal uses of state power in both this century and the last.
We condemn Israel's recent (December 2008/ January 2009) breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip, which include the bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods, illegal deployment of the chemical white phosphorous, and attacks on schools, ambulances, relief agencies, hospitals, universities, and places of worship. We condemn Israel's restriction of access to media and aid workers.
We reject as false Israel's characterization of its military attacks on Gaza as retaliation. Israel's latest assault on Gaza is part of its longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.
We reject as untrue the Israeli government's claims that the Palestinians use civilians as human shields, and that Hamas is an irredeemable terrorist organization. Without endorsing its platforms or philosophy, we recognize Hamas as a democratically elected ruling party. We do not endorse the regime of any existing Arab state, and call for the upholding of internationally mandated human rights and democratic elections in all Arab states.
We call upon our fellow writers and academics in the United States to question discourses that justify and rationalize injustice, and to address Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza as one of the most important moral issues of our time.
We call upon institutions of higher education in the U.S. to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions, dissolve study abroad programs in Israel, and divest institutional funds from Israeli companies, using the 1980s boycott against apartheid South Africa as a model.
We call on all people of conscience to join us in boycotting Israeli products and institutions until a just, democratic state for all residents of Palestine/Israel comes into existence.
Mohammed Abed
Elmaz Abinader
Diana Abu-Jaber
Ali Abunimah
Opal Palmer Adisa
Deborah Al-Najjar
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
George Bisharat
Sherwin Bitsui
Breyten Breytenbach
Van Brock
Hayan Charara
Allison Hedge Coke
Lara Deeb
Vicente Diaz
Marilyn Hacker
Mechthild Hart
Sam Hamill
Randa Jarrar
Fady Joudah
Mohja Kahf
Rima Najjar Kapitan
Persis Karim
J. Kehaulani Kauanui
Haunani Kay-Trask
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Nur Masalha
Khaled Mattawa
Daniel AbdalHayy Moore
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Nadine Naber
Marcy Newman
Viet Nguyen
Simon J. Ortiz
Vijay Prashad
Steven Salaita
Therese Saliba
Sarita See
Deema Shehabi
Matthew Shenoda
Naomi Shihab Nye
Magid Shihade
Vandana Shiva
Noenoe Silva
Andrea Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Ghada Talhami
Frank X. Walker
Robert Warrior
2009/1/26
Israel acts to block war crimes charges
Jonathan Cook
The National
January 25. 2009
Jerusalem :- Mounting fear in Israel that the country’s leaders face war crimes charges over their involvement in the recent Gaza offensive pushed officials into a frenzy of activity at the weekend to forestall legal actions abroad.
Tzipi Livni
The urgency was underlined after rumours last week that Belgian authorities might arrest Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, if she attended a summit of European counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday. In an indication of how seriously the matter is judged, Ms Livni’s advisers were on the verge of cancelling her trip when the story was revealed to be a hoax.
Nonetheless, officials are braced for real attempts to arrest senior political and military figures following a warning from the country’s chief law officer, Menachem Mazuz, that Israel will soon face “a wave of international lawsuits”.
In response, the government is setting up a special task force to work on legal defences, has barred the media from naming or photographing army officers involved in the Gaza attack, and has placed restrictions on overseas visits. Today, ministers were expected to approve an aid package to help soldiers fight warrants abroad for their arrest.
The concern about war crimes trials follows a series of pronouncements by Richard Falk, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the occupied territories and a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University in the United States.
He has accused Israel of gravely violating the laws of war during its three-week offensive, which killed more than 1,300 Gazans, most of them civilians, and wounded thousands more.
“There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law,” he said during the final stages of fighting.
Since they gained entry to the tiny enclave after a ceasefire declared a week ago, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have added their voice. The two human-rights organisations have censured Israel over its failure to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and combatants as well as its use of controversial weapons.
There is incontrovertible evidence, both groups say, that Israel fired white phosphorus shells over Gaza, despite its banned use in civilian areas, setting homes on fire and burning civilians caught under the shower of phosphorus.
Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, has also lambasted Israel for using high-explosive shells in built-up areas of Gaza, even though the artillery has a blast range of up to 300 metres.
Initial indications suggest that the army may have resorted also to an experimental weapon – dense inert metal explosive, or Dime – that severs limbs and ruptures the internal organs of anyone close to the blast.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, is investigating claims forwarded by Saudi Arabia that depleted uranium shells were used in Gaza.
In addition, human-rights groups have begun documenting instances of the Israeli army’s targeting of civilian buildings, including UN schools, and of soldiers taking Palestinian civilians as human shields.
A senior Israeli official told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: “As far as the international arena is concerned, Israel is entering what is probably its darkest era.”
In a further sign of concern, an unnamed government minister was quoted last week as saying: “When the scale of the damage in Gaza becomes clear, I will no longer take a vacation in Amsterdam, only at the international court in The Hague” – a reference to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands that tries war crimes.
Over the past week about 300 human-rights organisations have jointly prepared a 37-page dossier of evidence to be presented to the court.
According to legal experts, it will be difficult to try Israel at the ICC because it is not a signatory to the Rome statute governing the court’s jurisdiction and function. However, an ad hoc tribunal similar to the ones set up to deal with war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia may be an option. The ICC might also try to pursue individual Israeli commanders for war crimes.
A more pressing concern for Israel is that European human-rights activists, especially in Britain and Belgium, could use local legislation to initiate war crimes trials in their domestic courts against Israeli leaders.
Such actions have been launched before, most notably in 2005 when Doron Almog, the former Israeli commander in Gaza, avoided being arrested in the United Kingdom only after he was warned to remain seated in a plane after his arrival at Heathrow airport. Major Gen Almog had overseen the demolition of hundreds of homes in Gaza three years earlier.
In an attempt to make life more difficult for Israeli leaders, anonymous activists in Israel launched a website (www.wanted.org.il) – “outing” those it accused of war crimes, including Ehud Barak, the defence minister, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, and Ms Livni. It also identified most of the senior military command.
Offering photographs and information about each official’s alleged offence, the site provides contact details for the ICC and tells visitors to alert the court when “the suspect is outside of Israel’s borders”.
To avert the danger of arrests for war crimes, IsraeI hurriedly initiated a series of moves to protect its leaders. A special task force, overseen by the prime minister’s office, will convene in the next few days to start building a defence for army commanders.
The Israeli media suggested experts on international law would seek to compile evidence that Hamas stockpiled weapons in civilian buildings, and that the army went to great efforts to warn residents to flee before bombing areas.
The military censor is excising from media reports all identifying information about senior officers involved in the Gaza operation, and officers who wish to travel abroad will be required first to seek the advice of military officials.
The National
January 25. 2009
Jerusalem :- Mounting fear in Israel that the country’s leaders face war crimes charges over their involvement in the recent Gaza offensive pushed officials into a frenzy of activity at the weekend to forestall legal actions abroad.
Tzipi Livni
The urgency was underlined after rumours last week that Belgian authorities might arrest Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, if she attended a summit of European counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday. In an indication of how seriously the matter is judged, Ms Livni’s advisers were on the verge of cancelling her trip when the story was revealed to be a hoax.
Nonetheless, officials are braced for real attempts to arrest senior political and military figures following a warning from the country’s chief law officer, Menachem Mazuz, that Israel will soon face “a wave of international lawsuits”.
In response, the government is setting up a special task force to work on legal defences, has barred the media from naming or photographing army officers involved in the Gaza attack, and has placed restrictions on overseas visits. Today, ministers were expected to approve an aid package to help soldiers fight warrants abroad for their arrest.
The concern about war crimes trials follows a series of pronouncements by Richard Falk, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the occupied territories and a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University in the United States.
He has accused Israel of gravely violating the laws of war during its three-week offensive, which killed more than 1,300 Gazans, most of them civilians, and wounded thousands more.
“There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law,” he said during the final stages of fighting.
Since they gained entry to the tiny enclave after a ceasefire declared a week ago, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have added their voice. The two human-rights organisations have censured Israel over its failure to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and combatants as well as its use of controversial weapons.
There is incontrovertible evidence, both groups say, that Israel fired white phosphorus shells over Gaza, despite its banned use in civilian areas, setting homes on fire and burning civilians caught under the shower of phosphorus.
Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, has also lambasted Israel for using high-explosive shells in built-up areas of Gaza, even though the artillery has a blast range of up to 300 metres.
Initial indications suggest that the army may have resorted also to an experimental weapon – dense inert metal explosive, or Dime – that severs limbs and ruptures the internal organs of anyone close to the blast.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, is investigating claims forwarded by Saudi Arabia that depleted uranium shells were used in Gaza.
In addition, human-rights groups have begun documenting instances of the Israeli army’s targeting of civilian buildings, including UN schools, and of soldiers taking Palestinian civilians as human shields.
A senior Israeli official told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: “As far as the international arena is concerned, Israel is entering what is probably its darkest era.”
In a further sign of concern, an unnamed government minister was quoted last week as saying: “When the scale of the damage in Gaza becomes clear, I will no longer take a vacation in Amsterdam, only at the international court in The Hague” – a reference to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands that tries war crimes.Over the past week about 300 human-rights organisations have jointly prepared a 37-page dossier of evidence to be presented to the court.
According to legal experts, it will be difficult to try Israel at the ICC because it is not a signatory to the Rome statute governing the court’s jurisdiction and function. However, an ad hoc tribunal similar to the ones set up to deal with war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia may be an option. The ICC might also try to pursue individual Israeli commanders for war crimes.
A more pressing concern for Israel is that European human-rights activists, especially in Britain and Belgium, could use local legislation to initiate war crimes trials in their domestic courts against Israeli leaders.
Such actions have been launched before, most notably in 2005 when Doron Almog, the former Israeli commander in Gaza, avoided being arrested in the United Kingdom only after he was warned to remain seated in a plane after his arrival at Heathrow airport. Major Gen Almog had overseen the demolition of hundreds of homes in Gaza three years earlier.
In an attempt to make life more difficult for Israeli leaders, anonymous activists in Israel launched a website (www.wanted.org.il) – “outing” those it accused of war crimes, including Ehud Barak, the defence minister, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, and Ms Livni. It also identified most of the senior military command.
Offering photographs and information about each official’s alleged offence, the site provides contact details for the ICC and tells visitors to alert the court when “the suspect is outside of Israel’s borders”.
To avert the danger of arrests for war crimes, IsraeI hurriedly initiated a series of moves to protect its leaders. A special task force, overseen by the prime minister’s office, will convene in the next few days to start building a defence for army commanders.
The Israeli media suggested experts on international law would seek to compile evidence that Hamas stockpiled weapons in civilian buildings, and that the army went to great efforts to warn residents to flee before bombing areas.
The military censor is excising from media reports all identifying information about senior officers involved in the Gaza operation, and officers who wish to travel abroad will be required first to seek the advice of military officials.
Israel’s Lies
Henry Siegman
London Review of Books
January 24, 2009
Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’
The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.
Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.
The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:
What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.
Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?
Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:
A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.
In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.
It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.
These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.
In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.
Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.
Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.
If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’
15 January
Note
[*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.
London Review of Books
January 24, 2009
Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.
Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’
The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.
Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.
The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:
What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?
Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:
A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.
In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.
It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.
These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.
In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.
Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.
Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.
If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’
15 January
Note
[*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.
2009/1/19
白磷點燃的怒火
張承志
烏有之鄉
2009年1月8日
2009年1月14日
前天，2009年1月14日 ——只是一瞬。只是這個地球表現得對動物愈來愈親善但對人愈來愈殘忍，大規模殺傷性媒體的恐怖襲擊使億萬雙眼睛灼傷、失明、或變成睜眼瞎的過程中的一瞬。在這一瞬，處處的大眾都被引誘到下流的消費與娛樂、被引入愚蠢的狂歡之中，他們的腦功能逐日下降漸漸癡呆，並較真地以為自己變了貴族。
人類智力宛如終結。八年來世界順從地聽著一隻美國猴子的尖叫——1月14日，這一天只是一瞬。
它只是世紀悲劇的幕間一瞬。東西南北、白黑黃紅、各色人們都在等著下一幕的主角出場，並不在意這一瞬也被冷酷地計算過，加沙的巴勒斯坦人被一刀刀地宰割、一批批地屠殺、他們正在忍受——自從被推入坩堝與焚屍爐，忍受已超過了二十天。
但是，遙遠地傳來了振聾發聵的一聲怒喝。
在遙遠得不可思議的拉丁美洲，委內瑞拉與玻利維亞兩個國家宣佈，由於以色列屠殺巴勒斯坦人民的行徑，中斷與以色列的一切外交關係。
尤其印第安人總統埃沃·莫拉萊斯的發言，如世紀末的判決，如新世紀的宣言。他和他的兄弟、委內瑞拉總統查韋斯一道，發動了世界政治中的勇敢起義。我們遲了一天，在1月15日聽見了這雷一般的訊息。
在這個公然追逐虛偽、兩眼不辨黑白、沉溺於低級趣味的、被猴子指揮的世界裡，這個訊息，這聲巨雷，突兀而且堅決，一下就把人的良知推到前線，使得人類的思想和能力、知識和常識、良心與正義，都突然地恢復了原貌。
就在那個瞬間，這個判決，這個宣言，即刻就把所有堆積如山的垃圾——資本的辨護士，媒體的法西斯，還有奴隸的狂歡、都掃蕩殆盡。
偉大的印第安人！他們不是穆斯林、但唯有他們，最勇敢地救援了巴勒斯坦。這是一個具備歷史意味的一瞬，查韋斯和莫拉萊斯，歷史將深深刻下他們在這一瞬的偉人話語：
以色列在加沙的行為「踐踏了生命和人類」！
必須把以色列「提交國際法庭」，繩之以法！
（所有根據資料均見2009-1-15中央電視台「今日亞洲」節目）
2: 「ghetto」
2009年1月17日
下流的媒體自以為得計，但它們忘了計算人的不屈服的思考本能。最近幾天，參與屠殺的媒體有意抹消的關鍵詞，是什麼呢？
德國知識分子H·迪德裡奇和日本的國際時事分析專家田中宇，幾乎同時把這個詞說了出來：ghetto＝ ットー。
在第二次大戰時期的波蘭華沙，德國佔領軍曾把猶太人都關進著名的「華沙一條街」即猶太人ghetto裡。那以後這個詞就被塗滿了殘忍、野蠻、滅絕人道的色彩，逐漸有血有肉，成了一個生動的形象。這個詞彙的含義也愈加清晰，它是」隔離區」,而詞彙背後的含義暗示是「劣等族群隔離區」。
不堪於過份的壓迫，1943年，華沙隔離區的猶太人對德軍進行了武裝反抗。再後來，隨著多部控訴納粹、描述那樁往事的電影，ghetto，它的形象傳遍了世界。這個形象的一面，是納粹的踐踏人道以及劣等族群隔離區內的恐怖苦難，另一面，則是不甘於任人宰割、不願做奴隸苟活的反抗。當年華沙隔離區內的猶太青年莫爾代哈·阿涅萊維（Mordechaj Anielewicz）曾經領導了隔離區起義，他的緊握手榴彈的雕像，就書裡在加沙北端僅僅兩公里的「莫爾代哈紀念農莊。」
德國人H·迪德裡奇和日本人田中宇、在這個——像當年沉默和旁觀的華沙居民一樣，「國際社會」正在卑鄙地沉默與旁觀的時刻，異口同聲，不約而同地指出——
「從華沙的ghetto逃出，建立了以色列的人們，把原來的居民巴勒斯坦人關進加沙，在加沙製造了新的隔離區。……
1943年，拿著手榴彈的青年莫爾代哈，是在華沙的ghetto（種族隔離區）裡，向著納粹挺身而起。但是，今天的莫爾代哈已經不是猶太人，而是住在名叫加沙的ghetto裡的巴勒斯坦人。支援哈馬斯與以色列戰鬥的無數青年，就是今日的莫爾代哈。他們迎著的敵人也再不是納粹，而是納粹化了的以色列。……」
1月7日,梵蒂岡樞機主教馬爾蒂諾(Renato Martino)在回答意大利語網絡媒體採訪時說:」受害者是弱者（巴勒斯坦民眾），今天的加沙,正在變成一座巨大的強制集中營。」
立即就出現了對他的圍攻。但恰恰是這種圍攻，才使人感受到——在今天說出真相的艱難。馬爾蒂諾的發言，是因為他身處人類道德的底線，他說出了不能不說的話，表現了必須表現的勇敢。
如這些思想的勇者尖銳指出的——今天的巴勒斯坦，此刻的加沙城，是一個二十一世紀的怪胎、一片劣等族群的隔離區、一處囚禁人道的ghetto、一座令人髮指的集中營。
哪怕以色列在製造了這人道ghetto之後,還要闖入踐踏，還要追加恐嚇和屠殺，人類也並未俯首稱臣, 如他們的計算。巴勒斯坦人忍受著煉獄，忍受著肌膚上白磷彈的燃燒，堅持二十數日並不投降。為什麼呢?
除了唯有抵抗才能保衛生存和尊嚴之外， 1943年在華沙ghetto，那顆被青年莫爾代哈緊握的手榴彈，此刻正握在巴勒斯坦人的手中，少數是火箭，多數是石塊。
（本文依據的資料見：http://tanakanews.com/090113Gaza.htm）
烏有之鄉
2009年1月8日
張承志，回族作家，中國社會科學院研究生院民族歷史語言系畢業，主要研究北方民族史，獲碩士學位。初作是蒙文詩《做人民之子》和短篇小說《騎手為什麼歌唱母親》，曾獲第一屆全國短篇小說獎，第二、第三屆全國優秀中篇小說獎及全國少數民族文學創作獎。已出版代表著作長篇小說《心靈史》、《金牧場》。中篇小說《北方的河》、《黑駿馬》、《西省暗殺考》，短篇小說《雪路》、《晚潮》、《輝煌的波馬》、《北望長城外》、《糊塗亂抹》、《大阪》、《頂峰》、《美麗瞬間》等，散文有《清潔的精神》等。其中1991年出版的《心靈史》，描寫西北哲合忍耶人苦難的信仰歷程。近作有2005 年出版的遊記《鮮花的廢墟：安達盧斯紀行》，散文集《聾子的耳朵》。1: 一瞬
2009年1月14日
前天，2009年1月14日 ——只是一瞬。只是這個地球表現得對動物愈來愈親善但對人愈來愈殘忍，大規模殺傷性媒體的恐怖襲擊使億萬雙眼睛灼傷、失明、或變成睜眼瞎的過程中的一瞬。在這一瞬，處處的大眾都被引誘到下流的消費與娛樂、被引入愚蠢的狂歡之中，他們的腦功能逐日下降漸漸癡呆，並較真地以為自己變了貴族。
人類智力宛如終結。八年來世界順從地聽著一隻美國猴子的尖叫——1月14日，這一天只是一瞬。
它只是世紀悲劇的幕間一瞬。東西南北、白黑黃紅、各色人們都在等著下一幕的主角出場，並不在意這一瞬也被冷酷地計算過，加沙的巴勒斯坦人被一刀刀地宰割、一批批地屠殺、他們正在忍受——自從被推入坩堝與焚屍爐，忍受已超過了二十天。
但是，遙遠地傳來了振聾發聵的一聲怒喝。
在遙遠得不可思議的拉丁美洲，委內瑞拉與玻利維亞兩個國家宣佈，由於以色列屠殺巴勒斯坦人民的行徑，中斷與以色列的一切外交關係。
尤其印第安人總統埃沃·莫拉萊斯的發言，如世紀末的判決，如新世紀的宣言。他和他的兄弟、委內瑞拉總統查韋斯一道，發動了世界政治中的勇敢起義。我們遲了一天，在1月15日聽見了這雷一般的訊息。
在這個公然追逐虛偽、兩眼不辨黑白、沉溺於低級趣味的、被猴子指揮的世界裡，這個訊息，這聲巨雷，突兀而且堅決，一下就把人的良知推到前線，使得人類的思想和能力、知識和常識、良心與正義，都突然地恢復了原貌。
就在那個瞬間，這個判決，這個宣言，即刻就把所有堆積如山的垃圾——資本的辨護士，媒體的法西斯，還有奴隸的狂歡、都掃蕩殆盡。
偉大的印第安人！他們不是穆斯林、但唯有他們，最勇敢地救援了巴勒斯坦。這是一個具備歷史意味的一瞬，查韋斯和莫拉萊斯，歷史將深深刻下他們在這一瞬的偉人話語：
以色列在加沙的行為「踐踏了生命和人類」！
必須把以色列「提交國際法庭」，繩之以法！
（所有根據資料均見2009-1-15中央電視台「今日亞洲」節目）
2: 「ghetto」
2009年1月17日
下流的媒體自以為得計，但它們忘了計算人的不屈服的思考本能。最近幾天，參與屠殺的媒體有意抹消的關鍵詞，是什麼呢？
德國知識分子H·迪德裡奇和日本的國際時事分析專家田中宇，幾乎同時把這個詞說了出來：ghetto＝ ットー。
為不出一點差錯，我查了日漢辭典，ゲットー這個詞原是意大利語（ghetto），商務印書館與日本小學館合編的詞條解釋中，列出了兩種詞義：在歐洲它指的是猶太區，在美國它指黑人貧民區。
在第二次大戰時期的波蘭華沙，德國佔領軍曾把猶太人都關進著名的「華沙一條街」即猶太人ghetto裡。那以後這個詞就被塗滿了殘忍、野蠻、滅絕人道的色彩，逐漸有血有肉，成了一個生動的形象。這個詞彙的含義也愈加清晰，它是」隔離區」,而詞彙背後的含義暗示是「劣等族群隔離區」。
不堪於過份的壓迫，1943年，華沙隔離區的猶太人對德軍進行了武裝反抗。再後來，隨著多部控訴納粹、描述那樁往事的電影，ghetto，它的形象傳遍了世界。這個形象的一面，是納粹的踐踏人道以及劣等族群隔離區內的恐怖苦難，另一面，則是不甘於任人宰割、不願做奴隸苟活的反抗。當年華沙隔離區內的猶太青年莫爾代哈·阿涅萊維（Mordechaj Anielewicz）曾經領導了隔離區起義，他的緊握手榴彈的雕像，就書裡在加沙北端僅僅兩公里的「莫爾代哈紀念農莊。」
德國人H·迪德裡奇和日本人田中宇、在這個——像當年沉默和旁觀的華沙居民一樣，「國際社會」正在卑鄙地沉默與旁觀的時刻，異口同聲，不約而同地指出——
「從華沙的ghetto逃出，建立了以色列的人們，把原來的居民巴勒斯坦人關進加沙，在加沙製造了新的隔離區。……
1943年，拿著手榴彈的青年莫爾代哈，是在華沙的ghetto（種族隔離區）裡，向著納粹挺身而起。但是，今天的莫爾代哈已經不是猶太人，而是住在名叫加沙的ghetto裡的巴勒斯坦人。支援哈馬斯與以色列戰鬥的無數青年，就是今日的莫爾代哈。他們迎著的敵人也再不是納粹，而是納粹化了的以色列。……」
1月7日,梵蒂岡樞機主教馬爾蒂諾(Renato Martino)在回答意大利語網絡媒體採訪時說:」受害者是弱者（巴勒斯坦民眾），今天的加沙,正在變成一座巨大的強制集中營。」
立即就出現了對他的圍攻。但恰恰是這種圍攻，才使人感受到——在今天說出真相的艱難。馬爾蒂諾的發言，是因為他身處人類道德的底線，他說出了不能不說的話，表現了必須表現的勇敢。
如這些思想的勇者尖銳指出的——今天的巴勒斯坦，此刻的加沙城，是一個二十一世紀的怪胎、一片劣等族群的隔離區、一處囚禁人道的ghetto、一座令人髮指的集中營。
哪怕以色列在製造了這人道ghetto之後,還要闖入踐踏，還要追加恐嚇和屠殺，人類也並未俯首稱臣, 如他們的計算。巴勒斯坦人忍受著煉獄，忍受著肌膚上白磷彈的燃燒，堅持二十數日並不投降。為什麼呢?
除了唯有抵抗才能保衛生存和尊嚴之外， 1943年在華沙ghetto，那顆被青年莫爾代哈緊握的手榴彈，此刻正握在巴勒斯坦人的手中，少數是火箭，多數是石塊。
（本文依據的資料見：http://tanakanews.com/090113Gaza.htm）
2009/1/13
Hamas: What It Is, What It Wants, and What Israel Makes of It
Alan Nasser
MR Zine
January 12, 2009
MR Zine
January 12, 2009
Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa. His articles have appeared in Monthly Review as well as a number of professional journals in economics, philosophy, law, and psychology.
Israel's stated reasons for its declaration of "all-out war" against the population of Gaza are the latest variation on a theme it put forward following the 2006 electoral victory of Hamas in Gaza. In February of that year Israel issued an official set of demands. Israel requires that Hamas recognize Israel's permanent right to exist, forswear violence, and accept the validity of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Israel claims that Hamas's failure to meet these demands explains and justifies its aerial blitz on the people of Gaza.
In fact, Israel's aggression has little to do with Hamas's response to these demands, which are, as we shall see, disingenuous.
Israel contends that the need to defeat Hamas is the core issue motivating its current air attacks. This claim is especially difficult for Americans to evaluate. The US media routinely echo official Israeli demonization of the objectives and actions of Hamas.
Understanding Hamas's history and current position on the key issues is essential to appreciating what is really at stake in the escalating crisis in Israel and Palestine.
The aim of what follows is simply to situate Hamas in the context of the occupation and Palestinians' response to it. Let us begin with Hamas's origins, and then move on to examine each of Israel's 2006 demands.
The Emergence of Hamas in Israel
Hamas descended directly from an earlier Islamic movement concerned primarily with the provision of education, health care, food aid, and other social services to Palestinians suffering under the Israeli occupation. This group was funded by the Saudi monarchy and . . . the government of Israel! The latter provided the movement with land, buildings, and no small measure of encouragement.
Israel's rationale was simple: the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), at the time the chief representative of Palestinians' interests, was overtly political and secular, with a few socialists in its highest ranks. The organization aimed to organize Palestinians into a force capable of ending the occupation. The Israeli leadership sought to shift Palestinians' loyalty from the secular, political PLO to the religious, non-political predecessor of Hamas.
The Israelis imagined that the provision of extensive social services and religion to Palestinians would de-politicize them by relieving their suffering and disinclining them to nationalist, anti-occupation resistance. Thus, Israeli occupation authorities forcibly exiled pacifist Christian Palestinian activists who encouraged non-violent resistance, but permitted radical Islamic groups to hold gatherings, publish newspapers, and have their own uncensored radio station.
Unsurprisingly, the religious social service groups were to become increasingly politicized. They witnessed the escalating brutality of the occupation and the ineffectiveness of charitable activity alone in undermining enforced apartheid. They continued their social service activities, but coalesced in 1987 to form Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Hamas's new political self-definition as representing Resistance to the occupation both sealed their fate in the eyes of the Israelis and boosted their appeal to Palestinians.
In 1992 Israel expelled hundreds of Hamas members. Very few were accused of violent crimes. The UN Security Council unanimously declared the expulsions a violation of international law and called for the return of the exiles. But the incoming Clinton administration blocked the enforcement of the resolution. The result was that the exiles became heroes, and Hamas's reputation and political strength among Palestinians grew significantly.
Still, in 1993 Hamas had the support of only 15 percent of Palestinians. What accounts for the growth of Palestinian support for Hamas since then?
Israel and the Palestinian Authority Kill Palestinians' Hope
In the years following the 1993 Oslo Agreement between the PLO and Israel, it became clear that nothing was being done to advance the formation of a viable Palestinian state. Hamas pointed out that the Agreement was, by Israeli design, open-ended, in stages, calculatedly vague and non-committal, and with no guarantees regarding key issues like settlements, land and water, the status of Jerusalem, and the return of refugees.
Moreover, even as the Oslo negotiations proceeded, and lasting for years thereafter, Israel continued to build settlements at an accelerated pace. The settlement blocs were positioned in such a way as to create "facts on the ground" which would make it impossible to designate an area that could constitute a viable Palestinian state.
The Israeli-born Haifa University history professor Ilan Pappe has accurately described the Oslo Accords as a trick to allow Israel to continue to build settlements such as to corral Palestinians in South African-style bantustans.
All this culminated, at Camp David in 2000, in Barak's "generous offer," a striking vindication of Pappe's accusation: a Palestinian "state" with no territorial continuity, divided by settlement blocs, bypass roads, and roadblocks, with Israeli control of the entire border. The area permitted to Palestinians would include 69 settlement blocs, housing 85% of all Israeli settlers. Palestinians would have to travel 50 miles from one town to another, with many pointless delays at checkpoints and roadblocks, in order to traverse a real distance of 5 miles.
And during the entire process, Israel continued to expand its colonization of the West Bank, doubling the number of settlers in the ten years following the signing of the Accords.
This was a slap in the face to Palestinians, who had agreed, through the PLO, to accept a mere 22 percent of the land that was theirs before 1948. Conceding 78 percent of the land was an historic Palestinian compromise.
Since the Oslo and Camp David meetings the condition of Palestinians continued to deteriorate. It became increasingly clear that the PLO and its successor, the Palestinian Authority (PA), were not merely inept at negotiation, but that the PA and its leader Yasir Arafat were steeped in corruption, with much of the Authority's funds lavished on cronies while Arafat spent much of his time living in luxury far from Palestine. The last straw was the PA's decision to assign its police to assist the occupation authorities in the suppression of Palestinian resistance.
In contrast, Hamas was perceived by Palestinians as honest and genuinely responsive to their interests. Hamas unremittingly critiqued the PA's ineptitude and corruption. But its approach was not merely negative: as we shall see below, Hamas proposed policies and bargaining points that were constructive and realistic and that did not threaten Israel's right to exist.
These develpoments were the beginning of mounting Palestinian support for Hamas.
The mainstream media tend to portray Palestinians' 2006 electoral choice of Hamas as a show of support for political violence as a means of resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Indeed, the media routinely equate Hamas with mindless violence in the service of the destruction of Israel. None of these allegations against Hamas and the Palestinian people is true. Let us examine the general question of the political violence of stateless people, before moving on to the specifics of Hamas's position with respect to the current crisis in Gaza.
Preliminary Questions: Statelessness and Legitimate Violence
The Palestinian resort to violence has no connection to the question of Israel's right to exist. That Palestinian resistance to the occupation sometimes takes violent forms does not bespeak a desire to annihilate Israel. In the case of the Palestinians, the resort to violence cannot be understood apart from an appreciation of the peculiar liabilities of statelessness.
The mainstream media make no effort to communicate to the general public the uniquely debilitating effects of statelessness. Statelessness is not merely to be without "a land of one's own." Max Weber's definition of the state is most relevant here: the state is the political institution that monopolizes the legitimate use of violence.
The state may rightfully employ violence as a means of addressing injustices done to its citizens. If someone kills your child, you may not imprison her in your attic as punishment. Instead, you report the perceived injustice to the state authorities, who then adjudicate your complaint through the justice system. A moment's reflection reveals that a stateless people are a people who lack any legitimate means of defending themselves against injustice.
A stateless people are structurally helpless in the face of injustice. For if modernity limits the violent response to injustice to state intervention, then statelessness mandates the passivity of the stateless. The latter are turned into involuntary pacifists. Statelessness disallows Palestinians the only kinds of resistance appropriate to the instruments of oppression they face, namely forceful, aggressive resistance. For the entity that oppresses Palestinians is a racist and colonialist state that has made it clear, as we shall see below, that it will negotiate none of the demands of its colonized population, and that it has a strong penchant for the superfluous use of its own instruments of destruction.
Bitter experience has taught Palestinians that non-violent resistance/civil disobedience is in fact ineffective. Non-violent peace activists like Rachel Corrie (American), Tom Hurndall (British), and Gil Nima'ati (Israeli), among many others, met with death by IDF forces who knew exactly what they were doing.
In spite of all this, the statelessness of Palestinians dictates that they may not "take matters into their own hands." For Palestinians to take the measures that would normally be taken by a state whose citizens are treated by an enemy power as Palestinians are treated by Israel is termed "terrorism." Lacking a state to protect their interests, Palestinians find themselves in the following unenviable position: irrespective of what is done to them, the only 'legitimate' responses are passivity or reliance on the kindness of strangers. And the response of the "international community" to Palestinians' plight makes it clear that the former are in effect strangers to them, and not at all kind strangers. Illegitimate response, then, becomes the only alternative to embracing defeat.
Note the peculiarity of the use of the word "illegitimate" in this context. To call private or non-state violence "illegitimate" is to imply that state action is available. But in the remarkable case of an oppressed people without a state, the normal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate action has no application.
While the violence of stateless resistance movements is by definition illegitimate, i.e. not legally effected by a state, it is an open question whether such violence is justified. It is clear to the majority of the world's populations that violent resistance to Israeli apartheid is as justified as was the sometimes violent resistance of South African blacks to the apartheid regime of their oppressors.
The question for us in connection with the Gaza crisis is whether Hamas is prepared to forswear violence short of the elimination of the state of Israel. In other words: Is Hamas open to a non-violent resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict? We shall see in what follows that Hamas is indeed open to such a resolution.
Is Hamas Committed to the Destruction of Israel?
Hamas's earliest founding statements indeed denied Israel's right to exist. As we shall see, Hamas has abandoned this absolutist stance. The organization's growing support led it to assume a renewed sense of responsibility for those who brought it to power. The Palestinian community was largely secular and never embraced the absolutism of Islamic fundamentalism. In spite of continuous Israeli terror it continued to endorse the two-state solution.
Hamas has taken a firm stance against a call by al-Quaeda to pursue a violent jihad aimed at snatching all of Palestine from Israel. Hamas responded in March 2006: "Our battle is against the Israeli occupation and our only concern is to restore our rights and serve our people."
In the elections that brought Hamas to power in Gaza in 2006, Hamas's "pragmatists" prevailed over the minority hard-liners, many of whom have since turned into moderates. Hamas has always been responsive to its constituency. It knows that its electoral victory was due not to religious extremism, but to Hamas's platform of honest, effective, and clean government and improved social services.
In a post-election opinion poll only 1 percent of Palestinians said that Hamas should impose Islamic law on Palestine, while 73 percent supported a two-state solution as part of a peace accord with Israel. Hamas responded with a reaffirmation of its own support of a two-state solution.
Henry Siegman, former Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress and former director of the U.S. Middle East Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, was assured by an influential member of Hamas's Political Committee that Hamas does not rule out official recognition of Israel. Hamas will not renounce its belief that Palestine is a religious endowment assigned by God to Muslims. However, the official added that this theological belief does not preclude accommodations to temporal realities and international law. This includes, he emphasized, recognition of Israel's statehood.
This position has a precise parallel on Israel's side. Religious Jews believe that God promised all of Palestine to the Jewish people. But they are prepared to defer the implementation of this religious claim to the time following the appearance of the messiah.
In other words, in the real world, the religious convictions of both Hamas and religious Jews are consistent with a practical and secular resolution of their conflict.
The Israeli leadership is full aware of all this. Its real objection to Hamas is that the organization embodies more genuinely than any previous Palestinian leadership resistance to the occupation and savvy negotiations toward an independent Palestinian state.
Why Doesn't Hamas Now "Recognize" Israel?
The recognition issue is a red herring. It's Politics 101: Hamas's recognition of Israel would signify its acceptance of Israel's non-recognition of a Palestinian state. Hamas has made it clear that were Israel to offer a genuine two-state solution with a return to its 1967 borders, and this were ratified by a majority of Palestinians, Hamas would find this acceptable. That would lead to official recognition of Israel.
What matters is official recognition, which can only be done by a sovereign state. Hamas can no more "recognize" Israel than Likud can recognize Spain. And, in the case of Israel, what is to be recognized? Israel refuses to declare its official borders.
Is Hamas Committed to Political Violence?
Even the Israeli press has reported that Hamas offered Israel, shortly after its 2006 electoral victory, an extended cease-fire and de facto acceptance of two states if only Israel would return to its 1967 borders.
Rather than seize this opportunity to test Hamas's good faith, Israel chose to punish Gaza's entire population with a blockade in order to pressure the people to renounce the results of the election.
In fact Hamas has repeatedly held to cease-fires, which Israel has routinely violated. The connection between Israeli violations of cease-fires and suicide bombings is instructive. (A fuller treatment of this issue has been provided in two important articles by the Middle East scholar Steve Niva -- "Israel's Assassination Policy: The Trigger for the Latest Suicide Bombings?" and "The Consequence of Killing Sheikh Yassin Israel's Assassinations Will Only Fuel Suicide Bombings" -- upon which I rely heavily in the following remarks on Israel's provocation of suicide bombings.)
There is a virtually infallible predictor of a suicide bombing: an Israeli assassination of a senior commander or military leader of a militant group. This predictor is most reliable when the assassinations take place while these groups are negotiating for a truce on attacks on Israelis, or when the assassinations break long-standing cease-fires by Palestinian groups.
This pattern became more frequent and predictable after Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister in February 2001. He escalated the assassination campaign against leading Palestinian militants. Sharon deliberately chose periods during which anti-occupation groups were either negotiating or actually upholding cease-fires on attacks on Israeli civilians. Here is only a selection from many examples:
- Two months into a Hamas cease-fire, Israel assassinated two leading Hamas commanders in Nablus on July 31, 2001. Less than two weeks later there was a Hamas suicide bombing in a pizzeria in Jerusalem.
- While Hamas was adhering to an agreement not to attack targets inside Israel following the 9/11 attacks, Israel assassinated senior Hamas leader Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23, 2001. One week later there were Hamas suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa.
- In the middle of a cease-fire declared by all the militant groups in late December, Israel assassinated leading Tanzim militant Raed Karmi on January 14, 2002. Less than 2 weeks later there was a suicide bombing retaliation.
- In July 2002 there were widespread reports that a unilateral cease-fire declaration by Hamas would be announced on July 23rd. On that day, just before the anticipated announcement of the cease-fire, Israel assassinated the senior Hamas military leader Salah Shehada by an air attack on a crowded apartment block in Gaza City. Among those killed were 15 civilians, 11 of them children. Less than 2 weeks later Hamas retaliated with a suicide bombing.
- On March 22, 2004 Sharon had the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, assassinated. The predictable followed.
Israeli Journalists Denounce Israel's Complicity in Suicide Bombings
Some of Israel's most prestigious political commentators have suggested that Israel is responsible for at least some Palestinian violence. This position cannot even be formulated in the standard language of the American media, which consistently defines Israeli violence as "retaliation" and Palestinian violence as "attacks." In an article (November 25 2001) in Israel's most widely read newspaper Yediot Aharonot, Alex Fishman, the newspaper's conservative military commentator, noted that
Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist attack inside of Israel] would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation.
Writing in Ha'aretz (January 21, 2002) the journalist Danny Rubinstein pointed out that
Israel's assassinations today generate far more damage than the benefits they are supposed to bring . . . it can be said explicitly this time that Karmi's assassination has already and directly cost the lives of the ten Israelis who died in last week's murderous terrorist attacks.
Rubinstein's use of "directly" here is an assertion that Israel shares some of the responsibility for the suicide bombings.
An editorial in Ha'aretz (August 2, 2002) following the assassination of Shehada, declared that
In short, "any four-year-old child" who examined this pattern of events would conclude that this government, whether consciously or not, is simply not interested in the cessation of the terrorist attacks, for they constitute its raison d'etre.
Hamas spelled out the chilling implication of all this immediately following the killing of Yassin:
Today Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of hundreds of Zionists in every street, city and centimeter of the occupied lands.
For years, Israel disingenuously insisted that the suicide attacks were the main obstacle to negotiations. Since the most recent truce that began last summer, Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh removed that obstacle by bringing about the complete cessation of suicide bombings. Predictably, this made no difference to Israel, which responded by denying Gazans electrical power, medicine, medical equipment, and food.
The question, then, is not merely whether Israel has a direct interest in perpetuating Palestinian terrorist attacks, but whether Israel has any intention whatever to make even the slightest concession to Palestinians toward the establishment of the two-state solution.
Israel's Intentions: A Just Settlement, or Ethnic Cleansing?
Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, reported on December 23 that Hamas
[is] ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967. . . [Hamas is prepared] to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals. . . Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas.
Halevy might be unaware of Israel's "reasons of its own" for sabotaging negotiations aimed at the establishment of a Palestinian state, but not all Israelis are content with such a veil of hypocrisy. Yeshayahu Ben-Porat, an Israeli journalist, challenged the Israeli leadership in 1972 to admit:
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a number of certain facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
In 2004 Dov Weisglass, Sharon's senior advisor, said of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza:
The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians . . . this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.
Lest it be thought that this position was peculiar to the rabid Sharon camp, here is a trend of settlement expansion under Ehud Olmert, estimated by Peace Now: approximately 2,500 new housing units in the West Bank (not including Jerusalem) from January to November 2008, a sharp increase from 1,389 in 2007, the year of Annapolis.
Israel's Real Motivations
What Israel fears is not terrorism but Palestinian independence. Israel will not permit a sovereign Palestinian government to emerge on land it intends to hold -- and probably expand -- as its own. The Palestinian Authority was and is in Israel's pocket. Hamas never will be Israel's pawn. Therefore, it must be eradicated. This is a principal reason for the current blitzkrieg against Gaza. But it is not the only one.
Israeli elections will be held in February. Before the siege Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud was ahead in the polls. The blitz is a demonstration of toughness, a gesture of which politicians are known to avail themselves in election times. Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak have placed themselves in the spotlight cheering the bombardment since the attacks began, hoping to enhance Kadima's and Labor's electoral fortunes. And indeed Labor's polls are up 50 percent in the last six days.
Finally, Israel has not won a war in 27 years. To add insult to injury, the IDF suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. As Mark Heller, chief research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said on December 28, 2008:
Nobody's afraid of us today, the way they used to be . . . a big reason for this operation [is] to restore credibility in Israel's ability to deter enemies.
The irony, of course, is that the current sociocide will swell the ranks of Hamas and its sympathizers, much as Israel's Lebanon fiasco bolstered the prestige of Hezbollah. But it is only global activism in solidarity with the Palestinian people that will defeat Israel's colonialist designs and lethal hubris.
Heroic Women blocks Israeli Rifles Aimed at Palestinian demonstrators
Deep Dish TV
The First National Grassroots Satellite Network
January 112009
An earlier edition of this post incorrectly stated that the event happened in Gaza, implying that it just occurred. In fact the event took place in the West Bank at least a year ago. We apologize for the error.
A Korean camera crew in the Occupied Territories of Palestine documented one of the most heroic actions we have ever seen. The courageous action of Huwaida Arraf is in the spirit of her colleague from the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie, who gave her life to defend a Palestinian home. This video seems to have been recorded in the West Bank near Bil'in. Huwaida was on two of the boats that sailed to Gaza in the last few months with food and medicine--the second was rammed by the IOF and had to dock in Lebanon.
Deep Dish TV is also distributing a 6 part series on the reality of life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, living inside Israel and in exile. Chronicles of a Refugee. Produced by Adam Shapiro, Perla Issa and Aseel Mansour.
Huwaida Arraf (born 1976 in Detroit, Michigan) is a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization. The stated mission of the ISM is to resist the Israeli occupation using nonviolent tactics. Arraf is married to Adam Shapiro, another ISM co-founder, whom she met while both were working at the Jerusalem center of "Seeds of Peace", an organization that seeks to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian youth.
Arraf, who is Christian, is the daughter of a Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian mother. Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also spent a year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz.[1].
Huwaida later earned a JD at American University's Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution.
Thanks to Mitchell Cohen for calling this video to our attention.
***** ***** *****
Quote from MR Zine
(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/palestine120109.html)
The First National Grassroots Satellite Network
January 112009
An earlier edition of this post incorrectly stated that the event happened in Gaza, implying that it just occurred. In fact the event took place in the West Bank at least a year ago. We apologize for the error.
A Korean camera crew in the Occupied Territories of Palestine documented one of the most heroic actions we have ever seen. The courageous action of Huwaida Arraf is in the spirit of her colleague from the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie, who gave her life to defend a Palestinian home. This video seems to have been recorded in the West Bank near Bil'in. Huwaida was on two of the boats that sailed to Gaza in the last few months with food and medicine--the second was rammed by the IOF and had to dock in Lebanon.
Deep Dish TV is also distributing a 6 part series on the reality of life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, living inside Israel and in exile. Chronicles of a Refugee. Produced by Adam Shapiro, Perla Issa and Aseel Mansour.
Huwaida Arraf (born 1976 in Detroit, Michigan) is a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization. The stated mission of the ISM is to resist the Israeli occupation using nonviolent tactics. Arraf is married to Adam Shapiro, another ISM co-founder, whom she met while both were working at the Jerusalem center of "Seeds of Peace", an organization that seeks to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian youth.
Arraf, who is Christian, is the daughter of a Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian mother. Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also spent a year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz.[1].
Huwaida later earned a JD at American University's Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution.
Thanks to Mitchell Cohen for calling this video to our attention.
***** ***** *****
Quote from MR Zine
(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/palestine120109.html)
This footage was first shown in the W (World Wide Weekly) program on South Korea's MBC. Brought to YouTube by oli505 11 months ago, it has been watched 306,150 times as of 12 January 2009, 15:15 PM. The brave Palestinian woman in the video has been identified by Mitchell Cohen as Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and spokesperson of the Free Gaza Movement. The Free Gaza Movement ship Spirit of Humanity, having left Larnaca, Cyprus at 3 PM today (January 12) , is now on its way to Gaza.
諾貝爾文學獎獲得者和游擊隊司令對加沙罪行的譴責
索颯 心川 編譯
2009年1月11日
1. 據設在委內瑞拉的「南方電視台」2009年1月6日報道：
諾貝爾文學獎獲得者何塞·薩拉馬戈（Jose Saramago）1月6日在發言中稱法國總統尼古拉·薩科奇極其不負責任，因為他對於以色列對加沙平民所犯下的罪行不予譴責。
在一篇發表於薩拉馬戈個人網頁《薩拉馬戈日記》欄目的文章中，這位曾獲得諾貝爾文學獎的葡萄人寫道：「我一直不欣賞這位（薩科奇）先生，我想，如果他真是那樣說了的話，那麼，從今天起，我對他會更加不欣賞。」
在題為《薩科奇，不負責任的人》的文章中，這位寫過《大象的旅行》的作者寫道，薩科奇譴責哈馬斯組織向以色列領土發射火箭炮，卻絲毫未提及特拉維夫行動，這表明了這位高盧人總統在政治上的虛偽。
薩拉馬戈指出，薩科奇本應該去譴責「以色列陸軍和空軍正在犯下的令人髮指的、規模巨大的針對加沙地帶平民的戰爭罪行。」
「關於（以色列入侵加沙）這個無恥的事件，薩科奇先生似乎在他們的Larousse詞典裡找不到合適的表達詞彙，可憐的法國！」這位葡萄牙諾貝爾獎獲得者這樣結束了他的文章。
這位法國總統對中東各國進行了一次巡訪，會晤了埃及總統胡斯尼·穆巴拉克、巴勒斯坦民族權利機構主席穆罕默德·阿巴斯⒁隕凶芡澄髏傘謇姿掛約耙隕凶芾戇：漳碌隆露綠亍?SPAN lang=EN-US>
薩拉馬戈和其他的一些知識分子最近聯合簽署了一份聲援加沙人民，幫助人們瞭解那個飽受以色列摧毀的地區的真相。
以下是「南方電視台」提供的全文：
除薩拉馬戈，出現在簽名名單上的還有女記者兼作家特蕾莎·阿朗古倫（Teresa Aranguren，），西班牙著名阿拉伯問題研究學者佩德羅·馬丁內斯·蒙塔維斯（Pedro Martinez Montavez）,薩拉馬戈的妻子西班牙記者皮拉爾·德爾裡奧（ Pilar del Rio）, 西班牙女作家羅莎·雷加斯（Rosa Regas）,西班牙阿拉伯文學思想史教授卡門·魯易斯·布拉沃（ Carmen Ruiz Bravo）,西班牙女小說家、電影劇作家貝倫·戈佩基（ Belen Gopegui）,西班牙出版家康斯坦蒂諾·貝爾托洛（ Constantino Bertolo），西班牙哲學家聖地亞哥·阿爾巴（ Santiago Alba）。（引自TeleSUR - PL - Cuaderno de Saramago / PLL）
2.設於委內瑞拉的「南方電視台」以及Afp / PLL2009年1月4日報道:
墨西哥薩帕塔游擊隊副司令馬克斯（Subcomandante Marcos）於1月4日從墨西哥東南山區的恰帕斯州向受到以色列進攻的巴勒斯坦人民發去聲援信。馬克斯在為紀念薩帕塔民族解放軍起義15週年（1994年1月1日）而舉行的「首屆國際正義憤怒節」上中斷會議討論，就以色列軍隊入侵加沙發言，為巴勒斯坦人民送去「一句鼓舞的話」，以下是講話全文（標題為譯者所加）：
薩拉馬戈，馬克斯，一個是體制內獲獎的桂冠作家，一個是被7萬政府軍圍而不剿的山區游擊隊司令。作家用不容質疑的明確詞彙，司令用文學的語言，說出了同一句話：
在加沙發生的，不是戰爭，是一樁罪行。
作家和司令不約而同地預感到罪行的結局：
「結局可能如同什麼事也沒有發生」，薩拉馬戈說；
「該發生的照樣要發生」，馬克斯說。
時間就像記憶的銷蝕劑：黑奴制的秉承者誘導人們淡忘那段未受懲罰的罪惡歷史，美國中情局在時過境遷後再部分公開秘密檔案，「後現代游擊戰」的粉絲們會丟棄大山裡衣衫襤褸的印第安起義者，《百年孤獨》在中國的商業喧囂會轉為《百年孤獨》的孤獨；不是麼，曾在長征途中向西班牙共和國戰士發去聲援電報的紅軍戰士，似乎不曾存在，記憶恍若隔世。
然而，並非一切都會被忘卻。半個世紀的時間不算太長，所以人們無法忘記被屠殺者如今正在屠殺；五個世紀的時間不算太短，起義的印第安人，以500年前的造反奴隸為精神領袖。
統治者的算盤，試圖讓時間沖淡是非和義憤，然而有些東西是不能夠被淡化的，因為它們關乎做人的善與惡的原初思考，因為它們關乎使「人」有別於野獸的尊嚴、良知和價值的觀念。
只要我們每個「事件」追根問底、求本溯源，具有銷蝕劑效用的時間，也許會成為使眼睛和心靈明亮的除銹劑。
2009年1月11日，
於以色列軍隊屠殺巴勒斯坦平民的苦難日子裡
2009年1月11日
1. 據設在委內瑞拉的「南方電視台」2009年1月6日報道：
諾貝爾文學獎獲得者何塞·薩拉馬戈（Jose Saramago）1月6日在發言中稱法國總統尼古拉·薩科奇極其不負責任，因為他對於以色列對加沙平民所犯下的罪行不予譴責。
在一篇發表於薩拉馬戈個人網頁《薩拉馬戈日記》欄目的文章中，這位曾獲得諾貝爾文學獎的葡萄人寫道：「我一直不欣賞這位（薩科奇）先生，我想，如果他真是那樣說了的話，那麼，從今天起，我對他會更加不欣賞。」
在題為《薩科奇，不負責任的人》的文章中，這位寫過《大象的旅行》的作者寫道，薩科奇譴責哈馬斯組織向以色列領土發射火箭炮，卻絲毫未提及特拉維夫行動，這表明了這位高盧人總統在政治上的虛偽。
薩拉馬戈指出，薩科奇本應該去譴責「以色列陸軍和空軍正在犯下的令人髮指的、規模巨大的針對加沙地帶平民的戰爭罪行。」
「關於（以色列入侵加沙）這個無恥的事件，薩科奇先生似乎在他們的Larousse詞典裡找不到合適的表達詞彙，可憐的法國！」這位葡萄牙諾貝爾獎獲得者這樣結束了他的文章。
這位法國總統對中東各國進行了一次巡訪，會晤了埃及總統胡斯尼·穆巴拉克、巴勒斯坦民族權利機構主席穆罕默德·阿巴斯⒁隕凶芡澄髏傘謇姿掛約耙隕凶芾戇：漳碌隆露綠亍?SPAN lang=EN-US>
薩拉馬戈和其他的一些知識分子最近聯合簽署了一份聲援加沙人民，幫助人們瞭解那個飽受以色列摧毀的地區的真相。
以下是「南方電視台」提供的全文：
加沙：罪行及無恥
這不是一場戰爭，不存在對抗的軍隊。
這是一場大屠殺。
這也不是一次報復行為，並不是由於那些土製火箭又一次落在了以色列的領土上，而是由臨近的以色列大選導致了這次進攻。
這並不是對停火休戰期結束作出的回答，因為在休戰協議有效期間，以色列軍隊加強了對加沙的封鎖，從未停止過致命的軍事行動，在所謂的六個月停火期間，死亡人數達到256人。對此，以色列厚顏無恥地解釋說，他們的襲擊目標是哈馬斯成員。
難道那些被導彈炸成碎片的哈馬斯成員的肢體不是人的肢體？難道因為被殺害的是哈馬斯成員，以色列的有選擇性謀殺就不是赤裸裸的謀殺了嗎？
這不是一次突發的暴力行為。這是一次有計劃的、佔領軍早就宣佈了的進攻。這只是以色列戰略中的一個步驟，這個戰略的意圖就在於摧毀約旦河西岸和加沙地帶巴勒斯坦人民的抵抗意志。這些被佔領地區的人民每日都被禁錮在地獄之中忍受飢餓的煎熬。以色列戰略的最後一幕，就是我們這幾天在電視屏幕上看到的大屠殺，它的場面在和睦熱鬧的聖誕節訊息間穿插出現。
這不是一次國際外交的失敗，這是與佔領軍同流合污的一個證明。美國不是同謀，它不是道德上和政治上的參照，美國是衝突的一方——以色列的一方。我們譴責的是歐洲，是歐洲外交令人失望的軟弱、含糊和虛偽。
正在加沙發生的事件中最駭人聽聞的是：結局可能如同什麼事也沒有發生。以色列被免於起訴的結果不會受到質疑，國際法、日內瓦公約條款和最起碼的人類道德準則將繼續受到侵犯，不受制裁。相反，上述一切似乎會受到獎賞，獎賞的證明將是與以色列達成優惠貿易協定，或建議吸納以色列加入歐洲安全合作組織(OCSE)。
某些政客在佔領者和被佔領者，圍困者和被圍困者，劊子手和其犧牲品間平分責任的言論是多麼地無恥啊！將被壓迫者與其壓迫者相提並論的企圖是多麼缺德啊！他們的語言不是無罪的。語言雖然不能直接殺人，卻能幫助開脫罪行——並使罪行萬世長存。
在加沙地區正在犯著一項罪行，這罪行在世人眾目睽睽下已經存在了很長時間。也許幾年內，有人會斗膽說：「當時我們不瞭解情況啊」，就像重複上個時代在歐洲的情景。
除薩拉馬戈，出現在簽名名單上的還有女記者兼作家特蕾莎·阿朗古倫（Teresa Aranguren，），西班牙著名阿拉伯問題研究學者佩德羅·馬丁內斯·蒙塔維斯（Pedro Martinez Montavez）,薩拉馬戈的妻子西班牙記者皮拉爾·德爾裡奧（ Pilar del Rio）, 西班牙女作家羅莎·雷加斯（Rosa Regas）,西班牙阿拉伯文學思想史教授卡門·魯易斯·布拉沃（ Carmen Ruiz Bravo）,西班牙女小說家、電影劇作家貝倫·戈佩基（ Belen Gopegui）,西班牙出版家康斯坦蒂諾·貝爾托洛（ Constantino Bertolo），西班牙哲學家聖地亞哥·阿爾巴（ Santiago Alba）。（引自TeleSUR - PL - Cuaderno de Saramago / PLL）
2.設於委內瑞拉的「南方電視台」以及Afp / PLL2009年1月4日報道:
墨西哥薩帕塔游擊隊副司令馬克斯（Subcomandante Marcos）於1月4日從墨西哥東南山區的恰帕斯州向受到以色列進攻的巴勒斯坦人民發去聲援信。馬克斯在為紀念薩帕塔民族解放軍起義15週年（1994年1月1日）而舉行的「首屆國際正義憤怒節」上中斷會議討論，就以色列軍隊入侵加沙發言，為巴勒斯坦人民送去「一句鼓舞的話」，以下是講話全文（標題為譯者所加）：
給巴勒斯坦人民送去一句鼓舞的話
我要講的話與今天在這裡討論的題目也許無關，也許有關。***** ***** *****
兩天前，就在我們的話題涉及暴力問題時，美國政府女官員Condoleezza Rice將加沙正在發生的事情歸罪於「具有暴力天性」的巴勒斯坦人。
環繞世界流動的地下河流，流過不同的地理環境，卻唱著同樣的歌。
此刻我們聽到的，是戰爭的呼嘯和痛苦的哀鳴。
離此地不太遠，在中東，在巴勒斯坦的一個叫著加沙的地方，一支裝備精良、訓練有素的軍隊，以色列政府的軍隊，正在進行他們的鐵血進軍。
直到目前，他們的行動遵循著經典的征服戰步驟：
首先用大規模的密集轟炸摧毀軍事上的「神經痛點」（軍事手冊如是說），並「制服」抵抗堡壘，然後嚴密封鎖消息，一切能被「外部世界」（即軍事行動舞台之外的地方）聽到和看到的，都必須根據軍事標準進行篩選，用猛烈的炮火壓制敵方步兵以掩護自己的部隊向新的方位推進，實行合圍以削弱敵方守軍，攻佔地盤並消滅敵人，最後是「清剿」可能存在的「抵抗窩點」。
現代戰爭軍事手冊上的內容被各種侵略軍隊大同小異地執行著。
對此，我們知之不多；這個世界上肯定有一些「中東衝突」專家。但是，在我們所處的世界一角，我們必須對一些事情說幾句話：
據我們所看到的各新聞社提供的照片，那些被以色列空軍消滅的「神經痛」點，都是些民居、小屋和民用建築。在被摧毀的廢墟中，我們沒有看見任何防空掩體、軍營、軍用機場或炮兵陣地。於是，我們就想——請原諒我們的無知，或者是那些飛機上的炮手打得不准，或者，在加沙就根本不存在這類軍事「痛點」。
我們無緣訪問巴勒斯坦，但是我們猜想，那些民居、小屋和民用大樓裡有人住，那裡住著男人、婦女、兒童、老人，而不是士兵。
我們也沒有看見抵抗堡壘，我們只看見了廢墟間的殘垣斷壁。
但是我們看見了——至今徒勞無功的新聞封鎖，看見了在袖手旁觀和歡呼侵略間猶豫的各國政府，以及多年來徒有虛名的、每天發些不痛不癢的新聞稿的聯合國。
且慢，我們忽然想起：也許以色列政府認為那些男人、婦女、兒童和老人就是敵方士兵，所以，那些他們居住的小屋、民居和大樓就是必須摧毀的軍營？
那麼可以理解了：今天清晨落在加沙上空的炮火就是為了掩護以色列步兵的推進，使其免受那些男人、婦女、兒童和老人的阻擋。
而那些以軍試圖通過在加沙周圍展開的合圍加以削弱的敵方守軍，就是住在那裡的巴勒斯坦居民，他們要攻佔地盤從而消滅的，就是那些平民百姓。任何一個得以躲避並逃脫血腥攻佔的男人、婦女、兒童和老人，都將被「抓獲」以便清剿得以圓滿完成，這樣，領導清剿行動的軍事長官才能向上級報告「我們完成了使命」。
請再次原諒我們的無知，也許我們在這裡說的的確文不對題，或不得要領。也許，我們這些印第安人和游擊戰士不應該譴責正在發生的罪行，而應該參與關於「猶太復國主義」或「反猶主義」的討論並表態，或參加辯論關於開始是不是由於哈馬斯發射了火箭彈的問題。
也許我們的思想過於簡單，在分析事物時不善於掌握分寸和留有餘地。但是，對於我們，對於作為薩帕塔戰士的我們來說：
在加沙有一支正規化的軍隊正在屠殺一群沒有自衛能力的平民百姓！
難道有對此保持沉默的底層人和左翼嗎？
然而說話有用嗎？我們的呼籲能夠阻擋炮彈嗎？我們的語言，能拯救某個巴勒斯坦兒童的生命嗎？
我們認為有用。也許，我們無法阻擋炮彈，我們的語言也不能變成鐵盾，阻止在彈殼上刻有「IMI」（以色列軍工）的5.56mm或9mm口徑的子彈擊中一個女孩或男孩的胸膛；但是，我們的語言也許能夠與來自墨西哥、來自世界其他地方的聲音匯成一體，開始也許只是喃喃低語，然後就變成響亮的聲音，最後就會變成在加沙能夠被聽見的呼喊。
不知您們的感覺如何，但是我們，薩帕塔民族解放軍的男女隊員們，我們知道在毀滅和死亡之中聽到一些鼓舞的話語有多麼重要！
我不知道怎麼才能說清，但是我知道，雖然語言並不能從遠方阻止一枚炮彈，卻能在黑暗的死屋裡撕開一條縫隙，讓一線光亮透過。
同時，該發生的照樣要發生。以色列政府照例會宣佈它嚴厲打擊了恐怖主義，會向其人民隱瞞屠殺的規模，大軍火生產者們會獲得喘息以面對危機，而「世界輿論」這個可以隨時根據需要捏制的東西，也會把目光轉向它方。
然而這不是事情的全部。巴勒斯坦也照樣會抵抗、生存下去，並繼續鬥爭，會繼續獲得來自底層對其事業的同情。
也許，一個加沙的男孩或女孩會死裡逃生，他們會長大，隨著他們成長的還有氣憤、憤慨和怒火。也許，他們會成為戰鬥在巴勒斯坦的某個組織的戰士或民兵，也許他們會與以色列面對面戰鬥，也許他們會用手中的槍作戰，也許他們會在腰上纏一條炸藥帶獻身。
到那時，那些上面的人，又會寫下關於巴勒斯坦人暴力天性的文章，又會譴責這種暴力，又會重新討論關於是猶太復國主義還是反猶主義等等問題。
而到那時，沒有人會問是誰種下了仇恨的種籽。
為了薩帕塔民族解放軍的男人、婦女、兒童和老人！
2009年1月4日
（引自Megafon網頁）
薩拉馬戈，馬克斯，一個是體制內獲獎的桂冠作家，一個是被7萬政府軍圍而不剿的山區游擊隊司令。作家用不容質疑的明確詞彙，司令用文學的語言，說出了同一句話：
在加沙發生的，不是戰爭，是一樁罪行。
作家和司令不約而同地預感到罪行的結局：
「結局可能如同什麼事也沒有發生」，薩拉馬戈說；
「該發生的照樣要發生」，馬克斯說。
時間就像記憶的銷蝕劑：黑奴制的秉承者誘導人們淡忘那段未受懲罰的罪惡歷史，美國中情局在時過境遷後再部分公開秘密檔案，「後現代游擊戰」的粉絲們會丟棄大山裡衣衫襤褸的印第安起義者，《百年孤獨》在中國的商業喧囂會轉為《百年孤獨》的孤獨；不是麼，曾在長征途中向西班牙共和國戰士發去聲援電報的紅軍戰士，似乎不曾存在，記憶恍若隔世。
然而，並非一切都會被忘卻。半個世紀的時間不算太長，所以人們無法忘記被屠殺者如今正在屠殺；五個世紀的時間不算太短，起義的印第安人，以500年前的造反奴隸為精神領袖。
統治者的算盤，試圖讓時間沖淡是非和義憤，然而有些東西是不能夠被淡化的，因為它們關乎做人的善與惡的原初思考，因為它們關乎使「人」有別於野獸的尊嚴、良知和價值的觀念。
只要我們每個「事件」追根問底、求本溯源，具有銷蝕劑效用的時間，也許會成為使眼睛和心靈明亮的除銹劑。
2009年1月11日，
於以色列軍隊屠殺巴勒斯坦平民的苦難日子裡
查韋斯成了巴勒斯坦人的新英雄
西班牙《數碼報》
2009年1月10日
在本周發生在約旦河西岸的反對以色列襲擊加沙地帶的示威遊行中,隨處可見委內瑞拉總統查韋斯的畫像和委內瑞拉國旗。巴勒斯坦人將查韋斯視為惟一敢於對抗以色列的聲音,這種強硬恰恰是巴勒斯坦領導人所缺乏的。
查韋斯下令驅逐了以色列駐委內瑞拉大使,此舉使他迅速成為巴勒斯坦人心目中的英雄。然而,以色列則指責委內瑞拉與哈馬斯「恐怖分子」勾結。國際猶太人人權組織西蒙·維森塔爾中心認為,加拉加斯的決定違反了反對反猶太主義的相關聲明。
約旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦人和以色列敵對組織的反應則截然相反。哈馬斯認為委內瑞拉此舉「非常勇敢」,黎巴嫩真主黨呼籲阿拉伯國家跟隨加拉加斯的腳步。
法塔赫成員穆罕默德·拉哈姆認為,查韋斯「是一個軍人,是為自由而戰的象徵,這_點與切·格瓦垃是—樣的,與其他國家的領導人是不一樣的」。
他指出,查韋斯反對以色列的忠誠盟友美國,反對伊拉克戰爭和反對以色列攻擊真主黨的行為,被巴勒斯坦民眾視作對「正處於抵抗和反對被佔領當中的人們」的支持。
這些天來,在拉姆安拉、希伯倫等巴勒斯坦城市,到處可見揮舞著查韋斯畫像和委內瑞拉旗幟的抗議人群。此外,半島電視台還反覆播放了該台對委內瑞拉外長馬杜羅的採訪。
巴勒斯坦一個小城的官員馬哈茂德·茲瓦赫雷說:「很高興我這裡還有一本空白的巴勒斯袒護照,我非常樂意把它送給查韋斯,好讓他成為我們的市民。」茲瓦赫雷從網上下載了大量查韋斯的畫像,並把它們分發給示威者。
一個反對以色列建隔離牆的組織的成員穆罕默德·布裡吉亞說:「但願我們的領導人也能這麼強硬。」對此,茲瓦赫雷也有相同看法:「這是我們的錯,我們沒有一位擁有明確戰略思想的領導人。」
2009年1月10日
在本周發生在約旦河西岸的反對以色列襲擊加沙地帶的示威遊行中,隨處可見委內瑞拉總統查韋斯的畫像和委內瑞拉國旗。巴勒斯坦人將查韋斯視為惟一敢於對抗以色列的聲音,這種強硬恰恰是巴勒斯坦領導人所缺乏的。查韋斯下令驅逐了以色列駐委內瑞拉大使,此舉使他迅速成為巴勒斯坦人心目中的英雄。然而,以色列則指責委內瑞拉與哈馬斯「恐怖分子」勾結。國際猶太人人權組織西蒙·維森塔爾中心認為,加拉加斯的決定違反了反對反猶太主義的相關聲明。
約旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦人和以色列敵對組織的反應則截然相反。哈馬斯認為委內瑞拉此舉「非常勇敢」,黎巴嫩真主黨呼籲阿拉伯國家跟隨加拉加斯的腳步。
法塔赫成員穆罕默德·拉哈姆認為,查韋斯「是一個軍人,是為自由而戰的象徵,這_點與切·格瓦垃是—樣的,與其他國家的領導人是不一樣的」。
他指出,查韋斯反對以色列的忠誠盟友美國,反對伊拉克戰爭和反對以色列攻擊真主黨的行為,被巴勒斯坦民眾視作對「正處於抵抗和反對被佔領當中的人們」的支持。
這些天來,在拉姆安拉、希伯倫等巴勒斯坦城市,到處可見揮舞著查韋斯畫像和委內瑞拉旗幟的抗議人群。此外,半島電視台還反覆播放了該台對委內瑞拉外長馬杜羅的採訪。
巴勒斯坦一個小城的官員馬哈茂德·茲瓦赫雷說:「很高興我這裡還有一本空白的巴勒斯袒護照,我非常樂意把它送給查韋斯,好讓他成為我們的市民。」茲瓦赫雷從網上下載了大量查韋斯的畫像,並把它們分發給示威者。
一個反對以色列建隔離牆的組織的成員穆罕默德·布裡吉亞說:「但願我們的領導人也能這麼強硬。」對此,茲瓦赫雷也有相同看法:「這是我們的錯,我們沒有一位擁有明確戰略思想的領導人。」
2009/1/11
香港：逾千人示威要求加沙停火
明報 即時新聞
2009年1月11日
超過一千名香港市民下午在維園集會，抗議以色列攻打加沙，並且要求美國敦促以色列停火。
活動由兩名港大學生在網上發起，結果一批港大學生、印尼傭工工會、本港伊斯蘭團體及人權組織的代表響應參加。
他們在集會上為加沙的死難者默哀一分鐘，稍後前往美國駐港領事館遞交請願信，要求美國候任總統奧巴馬敦促以色列停火。
發起活動的學生表示，今次示威並非要譴責誰，只是希望雙方停火，同時也希望本地人知道加沙的情況。
2009年1月11日
超過一千名香港市民下午在維園集會，抗議以色列攻打加沙，並且要求美國敦促以色列停火。活動由兩名港大學生在網上發起，結果一批港大學生、印尼傭工工會、本港伊斯蘭團體及人權組織的代表響應參加。
他們在集會上為加沙的死難者默哀一分鐘，稍後前往美國駐港領事館遞交請願信，要求美國候任總統奧巴馬敦促以色列停火。
發起活動的學生表示，今次示威並非要譴責誰，只是希望雙方停火，同時也希望本地人知道加沙的情況。
2009/1/10
Open Letter to Israeli Soldiers
Jews Call on Israeli Soldiers to Stop War Crimes
This call was published on the Web site of American Jews for a Just Peace. Click here to see the current signatures.
Introduction
Please sign the following statement, which we hope to be able to publish soon in Israeli newspapers. Donations to help pay for publication can be sent via PayPal by clicking here.
We encourage organizations to sign by sending us email.
Jews Call on Israeli Soldiers to Stop War Crimes
We Jews in the international community call upon Israeli soldiers to raise the Black Flag of Illegality over the operations against the people of Gaza.
We refuse to remain silent while Israeli leaders force Israeli soldiers to commit war crimes: crimes against humanity for which they will one day be called to account. Israeli soldiers of conscience can, and must, stop this dangerous, illegal, and immoral war.
This criminal activity does nothing to advance the health and welfare of Jews. Rather, from Sderot to Sydney, from Ashkelon to Amsterdam, we will all benefit when there is justice for Palestinians.
Therefore, we call on you to use all measures possible to stop these atrocities against the Palestinian people. Flagrantly illegal orders must not simply be disobeyed, but actively and effectively opposed.
We members of the international Jewish community call on you, the Israeli soldiers of conscience, to halt the Israeli war machine, which only you can, and must, do.
| Organizational Sponsor | Country |
| Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (JIPF) | Sweden |
| European Jews for a Just Peace | Europe |
| American Jews for a Just Peace | United States |
| Tikkun Community Chicago | United States |
| Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine (Boston, MA) | United States |
| Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago | United States |
| People of Faith CT | United States |
| Jews Against the Occupation - NYC | United States |
| Jews Against the Occupation (Central NJ) | United States |
| Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions | Israel |
| Jews for Justice for Palestine | Britain |
This call was published on the Web site of American Jews for a Just Peace. Click here to see the current signatures.
Israeli Citizens Calling upon International Community to Stop Israel
Occupation Magazine
5 January 2009
Your Excellency,
Please find enclosed a petition signed by about 500 Israeli citizens, calling for urgent international intervention in order to stop Israel from continuing the war it has waged against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
It is the signatories' belief that Israel's atrocities will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community. In particular, they ask world leaders to implement the call by Palestinian human rights organizations which urges:
"The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel's fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
The High Contracting Parties to fulfill their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel."
The petition itself and a list of all Israeli signatories are attached to this letter.
Sincerely,
Professor Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University,
rachel.giora@gmail.com, +972 3 6418369
Dr. Kobi Snitz, Haifa
ksnitz@gmail.com, +972 54 2191547
Yael Lerer, Andalus Publishing, Tel Aviv,
ylerer@gmail.com, +972 54 4901125
Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University,
anatmatar@gmail.com, +972 72 2511135
In Support of the Palestinian Human Rights Community Call for International Action
---- A Call from Within -- Signed by Israeli Citizens
As if the occupation was not enough, the brutal ongoing repression of the Palestinian population, the construction of settlements and the siege of Gaza -- now comes the bombardment of the civilian population: men, women, old folks and children. Hundreds of dead, hundreds of injured, overwhelmed hospitals, and the central medicine depot of Gaza bombed. The ship Dignity of the Free Gaza movement which brought emergency medical supplies and a number of physicians was also attacked. Israel has returned to openly committing war crimes, worse than what we have seen in a long time.
Israeli media do not expose their viewers to the horrors and to the voices of severe criticism of these crimes. The story told is uniform. Israeli dissidents are denounced as traitors. Public opinion including that of the Zionist left supports the Israeli policy uncritically and without reservation.
Israel's destructive criminal policy will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community. However, except for some rather weak official condemnation, the international community is reluctant to intervene. The United States openly supports the Israeli violence and Europe, although voicing some condemnation, is unwilling to seriously consider withdrawing the "gift" it handed Israel by upgrading its relations with the European Union.
In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing, academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support.
This international backing must stop. That is the only way to stop the insatiable Israeli violence.
We are calling on the world to stop Israeli violence and not allow the continuation of the brutal occupation. We call on the world to Condemn and not become an accomplice in Israel's crimes.
In light of the above, we call on the world to implement the call by Palestinian human rights organizations which urges:
"The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel's fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
The High Contracting Parties to fulfil their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel."
Signed by 479 Israeli Citizens (First List):
Avital Aboody, Sami Abu Shehadeh, Moshe Adler, Haim Adri, Gali Agnon, Bilha Aharoni, Hagit Aharoni, Saida Ahmed, Danny Aisner, Orna Akad, Aviv Aldema, Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, Joseph Algazy, Omer Allon, Dan Almagor, Orly Almi, Tali Almi, Tamar Almog, Udi Aloni, Yuli Aloni-Primor, Colman Altman, Janina Altman, Ahmad Amara, Eitan Amiel, Nitza Aminov, Gish Amit, Yossi Amitay, Naama Arbel, Tal Arbel, Rana Asali, Maisoon Assadi, Keren Assaf, Zohar Atai, Najla Atamnah, Rutie Atsmon, Michal Aviad, Hanna Aviram, Jasmin Avissar, Amira Bahat, Noam Bahat, Abeer Baker, Saleh Bakri, Rim Banna, Oshra Bar, Yoav Barak, Daphna Baram, Michal Bareket, Hila Bargiel, Yoram Bar-Haim, Ronnie Barkan, Osnat Bar-Or, Racheli Bar-or, Yossi Bartal, Raji Bathish, Dalit Baum, Shlomit Bauman, Esther Ben Chur, Hagit Ben Yaacov, Tal Ben Zvi, Avner Ben-Amos, Ronnen Ben-Arie, Ur Ben-Ari-Tishler, Ofra Ben-Artzi, Yotam Ben-David, Smadar Ben-Natan, Avi Berg, Tamar Berger, Anat Biletzki, Rotem Biran, Shany Birenboim, Rozeen Bisharat, Yafit gamilah Biso, Liran Bitton, Simone Bitton, Yahaacov Bitton, Rani Bleier, Yempa Boleslavsky, Ido Bornstein, Irith Bouman, Haim Bresheeth, Aya Breuer, Shlomit Breuer, Dror Burstein, Shai Carmeli-Pollak, Smadar Carmon, Zohar Chamberlain-Regev, Sami Shalom Chetrit, Chassia Chomsky-Porat, Arie Chupak, Isadora Cohen, Kfir Cohen, Matan Cohen, Raya Cohen, Ron Cohen, Stan Cohen, Yifat Cohen, Alex Cohn, Scandar Copti, Adi Dagan, Yael Dagan, Yasmeen Daher, Silan Dallal, Tamari Dallal, Leena Dallasheh, Eyal Danon, Uri Davis, Hilla Dayan, Relli De Vries, Maoz Degani, Ruti Divon, Yfat Doron, Ettie Dotan, Keren Dotan, Ronit Dovrat, Daniel Dukarevich, Arnon Dunetz, Maya Dunietz, Udi Edelman, Shai Efrati, Neta Efrony, Rani Einav, Asa Eitan, Danae Elon, Ruth El-Raz, Noam Enbar, Amalia Escriva, Anat Even, Gilad Evron, Ovadia Ezra, Avner Faingulernt, Ghazi-Walid Falah, Naama Farjoun, Yvonne Fattal, Dror Feiler, Pnina Feiler, Micky Fischer, Sara Fischman, Nadav Franckovich, Ofer Frant, Ilil Friedman, Maya Galai, Dafna Ganani, Gefen Ganani, Yael Gazit, Yoram Gelman, Yakov Gilad, Amit Gilboa, Michal Ginach, Rachel Giora, Michal Givoni, Ednna Glukman, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, Bilha Golan, Neta Golan, Shayi Golan, Tsilli Goldenberg, Vardit Goldner, Tamar Goldschmidt, Lymor Goldstein, Dina Goor, Shelley Goral, Joel Gordon, Ester Gould, Inbal Gozes, Erella Grassiani, Adar Grayevsky, Gill Green, David Greenberg, Ela Greenberg, Dani Grimblat, Lev Grinberg, Yosef Grodzinsky, Hilik Gurfinkel, Galia Gur-Zeev, Anat Guthmann, Amos Gvirtz, Maya Gzn-Zvi, Yoav Haas, Iman Habibi, Connie Hackbarth, Uri Hadar, Mirjam Hadar meerschwam, Rayya Haddad, Osnat Hadid, Dalia Hager, Hava Halevi, Yasmine Halevi, Jeff Halper, Yuval Halperin, Rula Hamdan-Atamneh, Rania Hamed, Rola Hamed, Doron Hammermann-Schuldiner, Ben Handler, Tal Haran, Elad Harel, Nir Harel, Shuli Hartman, Lihi Hasson, Amir Havkin, Shira Havkin, Amani Hawari, Areen Hawari, Iris Hefets, Ada Heilbronn, Ayelet Heller, Sara Helman, Ben Hendler, Aref Herbawi, Tamara Herman, Avi Hershkovitz, Yael Hersonski, Galit Hess, Hannan Hever, Ala Hlehel, Gil Hochberg, Tikva Honig-Parnass, Tikva Honig-Parnass, Inbar Horesh, Veronique Inbar, Rachel Leah Jones, Ari Kahana, Dafna Kaminer, Aya Kaniuk, Ruti Kantor, Liad Kantorowicz, Dalia Karpel, Amira Katz, Uri Katz, Giora Katzin, Giora Katzin, Dror Kaufman, Adam Keller, Yehudit Keshet, Lana Khaskia, Sylvia Klingberg, Ofra Koffman, Yael Korin, Alina Korn, Rinat Kotler, Meira Kowalsky, Noa Kram, Miki Kratsman, Rotem Kuehnberg, Assia Ladizhinskaya, Michal Lahav, Roni Lahav, Idan Landau, Yitzhak Laor, Ruti Lavi, Shaheen Lavie-Rouse, Yigal Laviv, Tamar Lehahn, Ronen Leibman, Ronit Lentin, Yael Lerer, Chava Lerman, Noa Lerner, Yair Lev, Yudith Levin, Abigail Levine, Eyal Levinson, Dana Levy, Inbal Lily-Koliner, Moran Livnat, Omri Livne, Amir Locker-Biletzki, Yael Locker-Biletzki, Yossi Loss, Yael Lotan, Guy Lougashi, Irit Lourie, Orly Lubin, Aim Deuelle Luski, Naomi Lyth, Moshe Machover, Aryeh Magal, Liz Magnes, Noa Man, Ya'acov Manor, Arabiya Mansour, Roi Maor, Adi Maoz, Eilat Maoz, Yossi Marchaim, Alon Marcus, Esti Marpet, Ruchama Marton, Nur Masalha, Anat Matar, Dina Matar, Doron Matar, Haggai Matar, Oren Matar, Samy Matar, Rela Mazali, Naama Meishar, Rachel Meketon, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Remy Mendelzweig, Racheli Merhav, Yael Meron, Juliano Merr-Khamis, Esti Micenmacher, Maya Michaeli, Avraham Milgrom, Elisheva Milikowski, Erez Miller, Katya Miller, Limor Mintz-Manor, Ariel Mioduser, Dror Mishani, Eedo Mizrahi, Avi Mograbi, Liron Mor, Magi Mor, Susan Mordechay, Susanne Moses, Haidi Motola, Ahuva Mu'alem, Ben Tzion Munitz, Norma Musih, Dorit Naaman, Michal Naaman, Gil Naamati, Haneen Naamnih, Naama Nagar, Dorothy Naor, Regev Nathansohn, Shelly Nativ, Salman Natour, Judd Ne'eman, Dana Negev, Smadar Nehab, Shlomit Lola Nehama, Ofer Neiman, David Nir, Eyal Nir, Tali Nir, Alex Nissen, Tal Nitzan, Joshua Nouriel, Yasmine Novak, Nira Nuriely, David Ofek, Tal Omer, Adi Ophir, Anat Or, Yael Oren Kahn, Norah Orlow, Gal Oron, Akiva Orr, Dorit Ortal, Il'il Paz-el, Michal Peer, MIKO Peled, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Leiser Peles, Orna Pelleg, Tamar Pelleg-Sryck, Sigal Perelman, Amit Perelson, Nadav Pertzelan, Erez Pery, Tom Pessah, Dani Peter, Shira Pinhas, Yossi Pollak, Gil Porat, Dror Post, Eyal Pundik, Yisrael Puterman, Ilya Ram, Nery Ramati, Amit Ramon, Avi Raz, Ayala Raz, Hili Razinsky, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, David Reeb, Hadas Refaeli, Dimi Reider, Noa Reshef, Amit Ron, Roee Rosen, Illit Rosenblum, Maya Rosenfeld, Danny Rosin, Yehoshua Rosin, Ilana Rossoff, Ilani Rotem, Natalie Rothman, Areej Sabbagh, Ahmad Sa'di, Sidki Sadik, Walid Sadik, Hannah Safran, Hiba Salah, Sana Salame-Daqa, Galit Saporta, Sima Sason, Sagi Schaefer, Tali Schaefer, Oded Schechter, Agur Schiff, Nava Schreiber, Idit Schwartz, Michal Schwartz, Noa Schwartz, Eran Segal, Keren Segal, Irit Segoli, Irit Sela, Dan Seltzer, Shaul Setter, Meir Shabat, Aharon Shabtai, Michal Shabtay, Itamar Shachar, Erella Shadmi, Ilan Shalif, Hanna Shammas, Ayala Shani, Uri Shani, Arik Shapira, Bat-Sheva Shapira, Yonatan Shapira, Omer Sharir, Yael Shavit, Noa Shay, Fadi Shbita, Adi Shechter, Oz Shelach, Adi Shelesnyak, Mati Shemoelof, Ehud Shem-Tov, Yehouda Shenhav, Nufar Shimony, Khen Shish, Hagith Shlonsky, Tom Shoval, Sivan Shtang, Tal Shuval, Ivy Sichel, Ayman Sikseck, Shelly Silver, Inbal Sinai, Eyal Sivan, Ora Slonim, Kobi Snitz, Maja Solomon, Gideon Spiro, Talila Stan, Michal Stoler, Ali Suliman, Dored Suliman, Marcelo Svirsky, Yousef Sweid, Ula Tabari, Yael Tal, Lana Tatour, Doron Tavory, Ruth Tenne, Idan Toledano, Eran Torbiner, Osnat Trabelsi, Lily Traubmann, Naama Tsal, Lea Tsemel, Ruth Tsoffar, Ivan Vanney, Sahar Vardi, Roman Vater, Ruth Victor, Yaeli Vishnizki-Levi, Roey Vollman, Roy Wagner, Michael Warschawski, Michal Warshavsky, Ruthy Weil, Sharon Weill, Elian Weizman, Eyal Weizman, Einat Weizman diamond, Elana Wesley, Etty Wieseltier, Yossi Wolfson, Oded Wolkstein, Ayelet Yaari, Smadar Yaaron, Roni Yaddor, Galia Yahav, Sergio Yahi, Niza Yanay, Amnon Yaron, Tamar Yaron, Mahmoud Yazbak, Oren Yiftachel, Sarit Yitzhak, Sharon Zack, Uri Zackhem, Jamal Zahalka, Sawsan Zaher, Adva Zakai, Edna Zaretsky, Beate Zilversmidt, Amal Zoabi, Haneen Zoubi, Himmat Zu'bi, Mati Zuckerman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The text above appeared in the Occupation Magazine. To see the updated list of signatories, go to. Go to to read the petition in Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, and/or French.
Among the signatories are some very well-known artists, musicians, and writers such as Dror Burstein, Ala Hlehel, Yitzhak Laor, Yehudith Levin, Avi Mograbi, Michal Naaman, Salman Natour, Judd Ne'eman, Aharon Shabtay, and Arik Shapira (Israel Prize Laureate) and university professors such as Yossef Grodginski, Uri Hadar, Hannan Hever, Orly Lubin, Adi Ophir, Yehuda Shenhav, and Eyal Weitzman. The petition was presented by the initiators to the embassies in Israel.
5 January 2009
Your Excellency,
Please find enclosed a petition signed by about 500 Israeli citizens, calling for urgent international intervention in order to stop Israel from continuing the war it has waged against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
It is the signatories' belief that Israel's atrocities will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community. In particular, they ask world leaders to implement the call by Palestinian human rights organizations which urges:
"The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel's fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
The High Contracting Parties to fulfill their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel."
The petition itself and a list of all Israeli signatories are attached to this letter.
Sincerely,
Professor Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University,
rachel.giora@gmail.com, +972 3 6418369
Dr. Kobi Snitz, Haifa
ksnitz@gmail.com, +972 54 2191547
Yael Lerer, Andalus Publishing, Tel Aviv,
ylerer@gmail.com, +972 54 4901125
Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University,
anatmatar@gmail.com, +972 72 2511135
In Support of the Palestinian Human Rights Community Call for International Action
---- A Call from Within -- Signed by Israeli Citizens
As if the occupation was not enough, the brutal ongoing repression of the Palestinian population, the construction of settlements and the siege of Gaza -- now comes the bombardment of the civilian population: men, women, old folks and children. Hundreds of dead, hundreds of injured, overwhelmed hospitals, and the central medicine depot of Gaza bombed. The ship Dignity of the Free Gaza movement which brought emergency medical supplies and a number of physicians was also attacked. Israel has returned to openly committing war crimes, worse than what we have seen in a long time.
Israeli media do not expose their viewers to the horrors and to the voices of severe criticism of these crimes. The story told is uniform. Israeli dissidents are denounced as traitors. Public opinion including that of the Zionist left supports the Israeli policy uncritically and without reservation.
Israel's destructive criminal policy will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community. However, except for some rather weak official condemnation, the international community is reluctant to intervene. The United States openly supports the Israeli violence and Europe, although voicing some condemnation, is unwilling to seriously consider withdrawing the "gift" it handed Israel by upgrading its relations with the European Union.
In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing, academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support.
This international backing must stop. That is the only way to stop the insatiable Israeli violence.
We are calling on the world to stop Israeli violence and not allow the continuation of the brutal occupation. We call on the world to Condemn and not become an accomplice in Israel's crimes.
In light of the above, we call on the world to implement the call by Palestinian human rights organizations which urges:
"The UN Security Council to call an emergency session and adopt concrete measures, including the imposition of sanctions, in order to ensure Israel's fulfillment of its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation under common Article 1 to ensure respect for the provisions of the Conventions, taking appropriate measures to compel Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular placing pivotal importance on the respect and protection of civilians from the effects of the hostilities.
The High Contracting Parties to fulfil their legal obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prosecute those responsible for grave breaches of the Convention.
EU institutions and member states to make effective use of the European Union Guidelines on promoting compliance with international humanitarian law (2005/C 327/04) to ensure Israel complies with international humanitarian law under paragraph 16 (b), (c) and (d) of these guidelines, including the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions, as well as cessation of all upgrade dialogue with Israel."
Signed by 479 Israeli Citizens (First List):
Avital Aboody, Sami Abu Shehadeh, Moshe Adler, Haim Adri, Gali Agnon, Bilha Aharoni, Hagit Aharoni, Saida Ahmed, Danny Aisner, Orna Akad, Aviv Aldema, Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, Joseph Algazy, Omer Allon, Dan Almagor, Orly Almi, Tali Almi, Tamar Almog, Udi Aloni, Yuli Aloni-Primor, Colman Altman, Janina Altman, Ahmad Amara, Eitan Amiel, Nitza Aminov, Gish Amit, Yossi Amitay, Naama Arbel, Tal Arbel, Rana Asali, Maisoon Assadi, Keren Assaf, Zohar Atai, Najla Atamnah, Rutie Atsmon, Michal Aviad, Hanna Aviram, Jasmin Avissar, Amira Bahat, Noam Bahat, Abeer Baker, Saleh Bakri, Rim Banna, Oshra Bar, Yoav Barak, Daphna Baram, Michal Bareket, Hila Bargiel, Yoram Bar-Haim, Ronnie Barkan, Osnat Bar-Or, Racheli Bar-or, Yossi Bartal, Raji Bathish, Dalit Baum, Shlomit Bauman, Esther Ben Chur, Hagit Ben Yaacov, Tal Ben Zvi, Avner Ben-Amos, Ronnen Ben-Arie, Ur Ben-Ari-Tishler, Ofra Ben-Artzi, Yotam Ben-David, Smadar Ben-Natan, Avi Berg, Tamar Berger, Anat Biletzki, Rotem Biran, Shany Birenboim, Rozeen Bisharat, Yafit gamilah Biso, Liran Bitton, Simone Bitton, Yahaacov Bitton, Rani Bleier, Yempa Boleslavsky, Ido Bornstein, Irith Bouman, Haim Bresheeth, Aya Breuer, Shlomit Breuer, Dror Burstein, Shai Carmeli-Pollak, Smadar Carmon, Zohar Chamberlain-Regev, Sami Shalom Chetrit, Chassia Chomsky-Porat, Arie Chupak, Isadora Cohen, Kfir Cohen, Matan Cohen, Raya Cohen, Ron Cohen, Stan Cohen, Yifat Cohen, Alex Cohn, Scandar Copti, Adi Dagan, Yael Dagan, Yasmeen Daher, Silan Dallal, Tamari Dallal, Leena Dallasheh, Eyal Danon, Uri Davis, Hilla Dayan, Relli De Vries, Maoz Degani, Ruti Divon, Yfat Doron, Ettie Dotan, Keren Dotan, Ronit Dovrat, Daniel Dukarevich, Arnon Dunetz, Maya Dunietz, Udi Edelman, Shai Efrati, Neta Efrony, Rani Einav, Asa Eitan, Danae Elon, Ruth El-Raz, Noam Enbar, Amalia Escriva, Anat Even, Gilad Evron, Ovadia Ezra, Avner Faingulernt, Ghazi-Walid Falah, Naama Farjoun, Yvonne Fattal, Dror Feiler, Pnina Feiler, Micky Fischer, Sara Fischman, Nadav Franckovich, Ofer Frant, Ilil Friedman, Maya Galai, Dafna Ganani, Gefen Ganani, Yael Gazit, Yoram Gelman, Yakov Gilad, Amit Gilboa, Michal Ginach, Rachel Giora, Michal Givoni, Ednna Glukman, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, Bilha Golan, Neta Golan, Shayi Golan, Tsilli Goldenberg, Vardit Goldner, Tamar Goldschmidt, Lymor Goldstein, Dina Goor, Shelley Goral, Joel Gordon, Ester Gould, Inbal Gozes, Erella Grassiani, Adar Grayevsky, Gill Green, David Greenberg, Ela Greenberg, Dani Grimblat, Lev Grinberg, Yosef Grodzinsky, Hilik Gurfinkel, Galia Gur-Zeev, Anat Guthmann, Amos Gvirtz, Maya Gzn-Zvi, Yoav Haas, Iman Habibi, Connie Hackbarth, Uri Hadar, Mirjam Hadar meerschwam, Rayya Haddad, Osnat Hadid, Dalia Hager, Hava Halevi, Yasmine Halevi, Jeff Halper, Yuval Halperin, Rula Hamdan-Atamneh, Rania Hamed, Rola Hamed, Doron Hammermann-Schuldiner, Ben Handler, Tal Haran, Elad Harel, Nir Harel, Shuli Hartman, Lihi Hasson, Amir Havkin, Shira Havkin, Amani Hawari, Areen Hawari, Iris Hefets, Ada Heilbronn, Ayelet Heller, Sara Helman, Ben Hendler, Aref Herbawi, Tamara Herman, Avi Hershkovitz, Yael Hersonski, Galit Hess, Hannan Hever, Ala Hlehel, Gil Hochberg, Tikva Honig-Parnass, Tikva Honig-Parnass, Inbar Horesh, Veronique Inbar, Rachel Leah Jones, Ari Kahana, Dafna Kaminer, Aya Kaniuk, Ruti Kantor, Liad Kantorowicz, Dalia Karpel, Amira Katz, Uri Katz, Giora Katzin, Giora Katzin, Dror Kaufman, Adam Keller, Yehudit Keshet, Lana Khaskia, Sylvia Klingberg, Ofra Koffman, Yael Korin, Alina Korn, Rinat Kotler, Meira Kowalsky, Noa Kram, Miki Kratsman, Rotem Kuehnberg, Assia Ladizhinskaya, Michal Lahav, Roni Lahav, Idan Landau, Yitzhak Laor, Ruti Lavi, Shaheen Lavie-Rouse, Yigal Laviv, Tamar Lehahn, Ronen Leibman, Ronit Lentin, Yael Lerer, Chava Lerman, Noa Lerner, Yair Lev, Yudith Levin, Abigail Levine, Eyal Levinson, Dana Levy, Inbal Lily-Koliner, Moran Livnat, Omri Livne, Amir Locker-Biletzki, Yael Locker-Biletzki, Yossi Loss, Yael Lotan, Guy Lougashi, Irit Lourie, Orly Lubin, Aim Deuelle Luski, Naomi Lyth, Moshe Machover, Aryeh Magal, Liz Magnes, Noa Man, Ya'acov Manor, Arabiya Mansour, Roi Maor, Adi Maoz, Eilat Maoz, Yossi Marchaim, Alon Marcus, Esti Marpet, Ruchama Marton, Nur Masalha, Anat Matar, Dina Matar, Doron Matar, Haggai Matar, Oren Matar, Samy Matar, Rela Mazali, Naama Meishar, Rachel Meketon, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Remy Mendelzweig, Racheli Merhav, Yael Meron, Juliano Merr-Khamis, Esti Micenmacher, Maya Michaeli, Avraham Milgrom, Elisheva Milikowski, Erez Miller, Katya Miller, Limor Mintz-Manor, Ariel Mioduser, Dror Mishani, Eedo Mizrahi, Avi Mograbi, Liron Mor, Magi Mor, Susan Mordechay, Susanne Moses, Haidi Motola, Ahuva Mu'alem, Ben Tzion Munitz, Norma Musih, Dorit Naaman, Michal Naaman, Gil Naamati, Haneen Naamnih, Naama Nagar, Dorothy Naor, Regev Nathansohn, Shelly Nativ, Salman Natour, Judd Ne'eman, Dana Negev, Smadar Nehab, Shlomit Lola Nehama, Ofer Neiman, David Nir, Eyal Nir, Tali Nir, Alex Nissen, Tal Nitzan, Joshua Nouriel, Yasmine Novak, Nira Nuriely, David Ofek, Tal Omer, Adi Ophir, Anat Or, Yael Oren Kahn, Norah Orlow, Gal Oron, Akiva Orr, Dorit Ortal, Il'il Paz-el, Michal Peer, MIKO Peled, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Leiser Peles, Orna Pelleg, Tamar Pelleg-Sryck, Sigal Perelman, Amit Perelson, Nadav Pertzelan, Erez Pery, Tom Pessah, Dani Peter, Shira Pinhas, Yossi Pollak, Gil Porat, Dror Post, Eyal Pundik, Yisrael Puterman, Ilya Ram, Nery Ramati, Amit Ramon, Avi Raz, Ayala Raz, Hili Razinsky, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, David Reeb, Hadas Refaeli, Dimi Reider, Noa Reshef, Amit Ron, Roee Rosen, Illit Rosenblum, Maya Rosenfeld, Danny Rosin, Yehoshua Rosin, Ilana Rossoff, Ilani Rotem, Natalie Rothman, Areej Sabbagh, Ahmad Sa'di, Sidki Sadik, Walid Sadik, Hannah Safran, Hiba Salah, Sana Salame-Daqa, Galit Saporta, Sima Sason, Sagi Schaefer, Tali Schaefer, Oded Schechter, Agur Schiff, Nava Schreiber, Idit Schwartz, Michal Schwartz, Noa Schwartz, Eran Segal, Keren Segal, Irit Segoli, Irit Sela, Dan Seltzer, Shaul Setter, Meir Shabat, Aharon Shabtai, Michal Shabtay, Itamar Shachar, Erella Shadmi, Ilan Shalif, Hanna Shammas, Ayala Shani, Uri Shani, Arik Shapira, Bat-Sheva Shapira, Yonatan Shapira, Omer Sharir, Yael Shavit, Noa Shay, Fadi Shbita, Adi Shechter, Oz Shelach, Adi Shelesnyak, Mati Shemoelof, Ehud Shem-Tov, Yehouda Shenhav, Nufar Shimony, Khen Shish, Hagith Shlonsky, Tom Shoval, Sivan Shtang, Tal Shuval, Ivy Sichel, Ayman Sikseck, Shelly Silver, Inbal Sinai, Eyal Sivan, Ora Slonim, Kobi Snitz, Maja Solomon, Gideon Spiro, Talila Stan, Michal Stoler, Ali Suliman, Dored Suliman, Marcelo Svirsky, Yousef Sweid, Ula Tabari, Yael Tal, Lana Tatour, Doron Tavory, Ruth Tenne, Idan Toledano, Eran Torbiner, Osnat Trabelsi, Lily Traubmann, Naama Tsal, Lea Tsemel, Ruth Tsoffar, Ivan Vanney, Sahar Vardi, Roman Vater, Ruth Victor, Yaeli Vishnizki-Levi, Roey Vollman, Roy Wagner, Michael Warschawski, Michal Warshavsky, Ruthy Weil, Sharon Weill, Elian Weizman, Eyal Weizman, Einat Weizman diamond, Elana Wesley, Etty Wieseltier, Yossi Wolfson, Oded Wolkstein, Ayelet Yaari, Smadar Yaaron, Roni Yaddor, Galia Yahav, Sergio Yahi, Niza Yanay, Amnon Yaron, Tamar Yaron, Mahmoud Yazbak, Oren Yiftachel, Sarit Yitzhak, Sharon Zack, Uri Zackhem, Jamal Zahalka, Sawsan Zaher, Adva Zakai, Edna Zaretsky, Beate Zilversmidt, Amal Zoabi, Haneen Zoubi, Himmat Zu'bi, Mati Zuckerman
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The text above appeared in the Occupation Magazine. To see the updated list of signatories, go to
2009/1/9
香港，為和平和正義站出來
親愛的朋友，
以色列自2008年12月27日襲擊加沙地帶以來，已造成超過700 名巴勒斯坦人死亡，3085人受傷。其中三分之一為無辜兒童，其餘為避難於三所聯 合國學校（位於巴勒斯坦戰爭中立區）的學生和平民。HIF對此人道主義危機深切關注，同時我們相信我們作為全球公民，應該站出來，對此事件堅決說"停 止"。
HIF呼籲以巴雙方立即停火。我們強烈譴責以色列政府對加沙地帶的封鎖，包括人道救援物資的禁運（諸如食品、水和藥物等）和國際媒體的禁行。我們不接受任何替換政策，包括現在以色列提議的每天三小時休戰協議。以色列政府必須停止對加沙的一切暴力行為，並且立即從這一地區撤軍，解除封鎖。
與此同時，我們譴責哈馬斯武裝組織對以色列平民進行的連續火箭彈襲擊。我們堅信，戰爭不可能也不應該成為解決衝突的途徑。
各國領導人應該承擔制止人道危機和協助以巴和平建交的責任。我們相信在此事件上，聯合國應該即時被賦予更多干涉權。
我們嚴厲譴責美國政府忽視國際社會一致看法而行使其否決權，在聯合國安理會議上阻礙巴以和談的進行。我們絕對支持聯合國安全理事會表決通過，呼籲加薩走廊「立即、持久」停火，以促成以色列部隊「完全撤出」。同時，我們呼籲美國總統接班人奧巴馬站出來主持公道，兌現在大選時的諾言。
戰爭不可能為任何地區的任何衝突帶來和平。柬埔寨的歷史啟示我們，戰爭會為人民生活和社會發展帶來無窮後患。戰爭的代價不應該由無辜的孩子來承擔。
因此，HIF呼籲社會各界朋友們站出來，成為香港的和平宣導者。我們每等多一分鐘，有更多生命就會白白地葬送。東南亞國協、歐洲、中東、北美和拉丁美洲的人們，甚至一些國際猶太團體都已經站出來對此危機說"停止"。香港，你還在等什麼？
請參加我們2009年1月11日舉行的抗議遊行，下午2點從維多利亞公園大草場出發，終點是美國大使館。此次您也可以於此網址瞭解在加拿大多倫多同時進 行的抗議活動，http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=58636125663#/event.php?eid=42452938537&ref=mf.
如有任何查詢，請致電97123218，Felix Lam (籌辦委員)。
請鼓勵您的家人和朋友一起加入我們！
懷著夢想與決心，
Humanity in Focus
網址: http://www.humanityfocus.org
--
Regards,
(Mr.) Steven Kwok Wing Kin
President
Hong Kong University Students' Union (HKUSU), Session 2008
Phone: 6676-6063
Email: supre...@hkusua.hku.hk
Postal address: 1/F Union Building, HKU
Tel: (852) 2803-7059, Fax: (852) 2858-6440
Website: www.hkusu.net
以色列自2008年12月27日襲擊加沙地帶以來，已造成超過700 名巴勒斯坦人死亡，3085人受傷。其中三分之一為無辜兒童，其餘為避難於三所聯 合國學校（位於巴勒斯坦戰爭中立區）的學生和平民。HIF對此人道主義危機深切關注，同時我們相信我們作為全球公民，應該站出來，對此事件堅決說"停 止"。
HIF呼籲以巴雙方立即停火。我們強烈譴責以色列政府對加沙地帶的封鎖，包括人道救援物資的禁運（諸如食品、水和藥物等）和國際媒體的禁行。我們不接受任何替換政策，包括現在以色列提議的每天三小時休戰協議。以色列政府必須停止對加沙的一切暴力行為，並且立即從這一地區撤軍，解除封鎖。
與此同時，我們譴責哈馬斯武裝組織對以色列平民進行的連續火箭彈襲擊。我們堅信，戰爭不可能也不應該成為解決衝突的途徑。
各國領導人應該承擔制止人道危機和協助以巴和平建交的責任。我們相信在此事件上，聯合國應該即時被賦予更多干涉權。
我們嚴厲譴責美國政府忽視國際社會一致看法而行使其否決權，在聯合國安理會議上阻礙巴以和談的進行。我們絕對支持聯合國安全理事會表決通過，呼籲加薩走廊「立即、持久」停火，以促成以色列部隊「完全撤出」。同時，我們呼籲美國總統接班人奧巴馬站出來主持公道，兌現在大選時的諾言。
戰爭不可能為任何地區的任何衝突帶來和平。柬埔寨的歷史啟示我們，戰爭會為人民生活和社會發展帶來無窮後患。戰爭的代價不應該由無辜的孩子來承擔。
因此，HIF呼籲社會各界朋友們站出來，成為香港的和平宣導者。我們每等多一分鐘，有更多生命就會白白地葬送。東南亞國協、歐洲、中東、北美和拉丁美洲的人們，甚至一些國際猶太團體都已經站出來對此危機說"停止"。香港，你還在等什麼？
請參加我們2009年1月11日舉行的抗議遊行，下午2點從維多利亞公園大草場出發，終點是美國大使館。此次您也可以於此網址瞭解在加拿大多倫多同時進 行的抗議活動，http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=58636125663#/event.php?eid=42452938537&ref=mf.
如有任何查詢，請致電97123218，Felix Lam (籌辦委員)。
請鼓勵您的家人和朋友一起加入我們！
懷著夢想與決心，
Humanity in Focus
網址: http://www.humanityfocus.org
--
Regards,
(Mr.) Steven Kwok Wing Kin
President
Hong Kong University Students' Union (HKUSU), Session 2008
Phone: 6676-6063
Email: supre...@hkusua.hku.hk
Postal address: 1/F Union Building, HKU
Tel: (852) 2803-7059, Fax: (852) 2858-6440
Website: www.hkusu.net
2009/1/7
兩岸四地華人聯署發表聲明，要求以色列立即停止加薩戰火
網上連署 ： http://campaign.tw-npo.org/200901623010100/index.php?serial=200901623010100支援以巴地區和平組織，回應國際公民社會呼喚，站在人民立場，台海兩岸四地華人發表聯合聲明：
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1.抗議任何恐怖手段濫殺無辜，這包括以平民為目標的火箭炮及以反恐之名進行國家恐怖主義；
2.抗議以色列以自衛之名全面入侵巴勒斯坦領土加薩地帶 ( 加薩走廊 )；
3.抗議以色列封鎖加沙引發人道大災難；
4.抗議美國向以色列提供大殺傷力武噐並支持國家恐怖主義；
5.抗議以色列使用國際法禁用的恐怖武器白磷彈。
由於以色列的大規模及兇猛襲擊，造成加沙人道形勢極度緊張，形同屠殺，鑑於這是一場不對等戰爭，我們有必要首先對強的一方有以下要求：
1. 強烈要求以軍立刻停火；
2. 要求以軍無條件立刻撒出加薩地區；
3. 要求聯合國安理會等列強成員介入，訂定方案和進程表，和平解決問題；
4. 要求聯合國派出維和部隊和人道團體進入加沙展開，救援工作；
5. 如以色列拒絕停火則要求抵制以色列貨品。
發起人：張翠容、丘延亮
網上連署 ： http://campaign.tw-npo.org/200901623010100/index.php?serial=200901623010100
2009/1/6
Worldwide Protests Condemn Israel's Assault on Gaza
Suzanne Weiss
January 6, 2008
www.socialistvoice.ca
About 800 Afghan protesters converged in Kandahar city, carrying banners reading "Death to Israel" and chanting anti-Israeli slogans. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the protesters also demanded the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan of NATO troops, including the 2,700 Canadians stationed in their region. Bismalla Afghanmal, a member of Kandahar's provincial council, reportedly denounced bombing, whether it takes place in Afghanistan or Palestine.
The courageous Afghan protest underlines the aggressive role played by Canada's government in promoting both NATO occupation of Afghanistan and Zionist occupation of Palestine.
The Harper government's complicity in the Gaza massacre was condemned in Canada on January 3 by about 20,000 protesters across the country, including more than 10,000 in Toronto and 5,000 in Montreal. Demonstrators called on the Canadian government to condemn Israel's latest aggression and to cut all political, economic, and military ties with Israel until it complies with international law.
"We are overwhelmed by the support we have received from Canadian civil society," commented Kahled Mouammar, President of the Canadian Arab Federation. "The large number of people on the streets today shows that the Harper government is out of touch with the Canadian public."
International Upsurge
In recent days, Israel's crime against Gaza has spurred demonstrations across the world. It is the largest wave of coordinated anti-imperialist actions since the launching of the Iraq war in 2003.
In Toronto and elsewhere, large numbers of Muslim marchers were joined by participants from the population at large, including groups of anti-Zionist Jews.
According to press reports, up to 700,000 marched in Istanbul, Turkey. Forty thousand in Rabat, Morocco condemned the silence of the Arab regimes, and over 10,000 marched through Jakarta, Indonesia carrying Palestinian flags. Angry dissent was heard in Kashmir, Lebanon, and the Palestinian West Bank.
In Egypt, where the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship has been silent, hundreds of thousands took part in nationwide marches called by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many called on Arab governments to take action to protect Palestinians.
In London, England, more than 60,000 marched at the call of the Stop the War Coalition. Chanting "Shame on you, have my shoe," protesters left hundreds of shoes in front of the residence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Twenty thousand marched in Paris, and many thousands more made their opposition to Israel heard in the U.S., France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Australia, Holland, Austria, and other countries of the world.
Protests in Israel
Addressing a demonstration of 150,000 mostly Palestinian protesters in the northern Israeli town of Sakhnin, Knesset member Mohammed Barakeh said, "We are determined to stand with our brothers in Gaza to stop the bloodshed and massacre." There were cries that that Egypt's Mubarak is a "coward" who is "collaborating with the Americans."
In Tel Aviv, Israel, 10,000 Palestinians and Israeli Jews marched side by side in a demonstration featuring many Palestinian flags. A prominent banner read, "You want to stop Hamas? Give Gaza hope, not war." Another giant banner read, "Stop killing! Stop the siege! Stop the occupation!" As the rally drew to the end, police disappeared from the scene, exposing participants to a violent assault by rightist settler thugs.
The revolutionary government of Cuba responded promptly to the Israeli air raids on Gaza. Cuba "strongly condemns this genocidal action by the Israeli government" and calls for mobilization to demand an immediate end to Israeli attacks. The statement reiterated Cuba's "unwavering support and solidarity with the suffering and heroic people" of Gaza. Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela also expressed "solidarity with the Palestinians against Israeli violence."
Deadly toll
Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel is continuing its ground advance in Gaza, killing an additional 30 civilians on January 5. It is bombarding Gaza City with shells of deadly white phosphorous, supposedly to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
According to media reports, the death toll from the Israeli invasion, now more than 550, includes women, children, and men from all walks of life. Medical supplies in Gaza are running out; food is almost unavailable; many who venture out of doors are shot.
Adding insult to injury, Israel cynically condemns Hamas for exposing Gaza's civilians to Israeli artillery and bombing. Canada's mass media echoes this absurd claim.
The immediate goal of Israel's invasion of Gaza is to punish Palestinians for resisting Israeli apartheid. More broadly, its long-term subjugation of the Palestinian people aims to occupy the Palestinians' land, expel Palestinians en masse, and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.
Background to slaughter
The run-up to the war in Gaza began in January 2006, when Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) won a decisive victory in elections in the Palestinian territory. The Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, then proposed a long-term cease-fire based on establishment of a Palestinian state, leaving Israel with its 1967 borders. The offer still stands.
Instead of responding, the Israeli government, working with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government in the West Bank. But Hamas retained power in Gaza.
Israel then set out to strangle Gaza for the crime of voting for Hamas, against the desires of Tel Aviv and Washington.
Some militants in Gaza responded to the prolonged and devastating siege of their territory by firing rockets into Israeli territory. This ended in mid-2008, when Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire.
However, "during this alleged ceasefire, Israel continued to imposed its brutal siege on Gaza, restricting the flow of aid, medical supplied, fuel and other necessities of life into the territory. For the past two years, Gaza has been undergoing the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food and medicines." (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid)
When the ceasefire ran out in December 2008, Israel tightened its blockade and set in motion its present assault, using renewed rocket attacks as a pretext. As unionist Ali Mallah told Toronto protesters on December 28, "If there was no occupation, there would be no rockets. Occupation is the worst form of terrorism. People have the right to resist their occupier by any means necessary."
`A bigger holocaust'
The present assault, planned over a six-month period, makes real the sinister threat made in February 2008 by Israel's deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai. The people of Gaza, he said, would "bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust" if they continued to resist the intensification of the occupation.
This is a clear reference to Hitler's genocidal actions against the Jewish people 60 years ago. For many years, the Gaza population of 1.5 million Palestinians has been besieged, blockaded, bombarded, and systematically denied the necessities of life. The Israeli government does not intend to kill every Palestinian, but they do aim to wipe Gaza off the map.
In fact, Zionism's aggression against the Palestinians, over almost a century, can only be understood as an attempt to remove Palestine from the world's family of nations. That is the Zionist "final solution."
The Gaza Strip today is strikingly similar to the ghetto built by Hitler for the Jews of Warsaw: an open-air concentration camp, surrounded by high walls and checkpoints, and subject to systematic terror tactics, deprivation, and violence.
Israel's attack on Gaza echoes Hitler's assault on the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. But while Hitler's actions were hidden at the time from the world's peoples, today Israel acts openly, with the approval of Canada, the U.S., and Britain, while the whole world watches in horror.
Like the Warsaw Ghetto, Gaza is a story of an epic of suffering, destruction, and courageous resistance. The people of Gaza fight, like the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, with whatever they can get their hands on. But their weapons are puny and symbolic compared to the Israeli warplanes, artillery, tanks, and bombs that are razing the city to the ground.
Gaza, the Mideast, and the World
On November 24, 2008, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, pointed out to the world's governments how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
"More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations.
"Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations."
Even more, progressive forces worldwide are challenged to resist Israeli aggression and oppose the imperialist alliance that sustains Israel and wages war across the Mideast.
If Israel extinguishes the flame of resistance in Gaza, it will tighten its grip of imperialist occupation and oppression across the entire region. An Israeli victory would also encourage forces in Canada and other pro-Zionist countries that seek to stifle and repress pro-Palestinian voices and other solidarity movements in this country.
Powerful forces have tried to erase the crime against the Palestinians from the world's memory, but Palestinian resistance continues, with increased sympathy from peoples around the world. The Palestinian resistance today forms part of the vanguard of freedom struggles internationally, and Palestinian solidarity must be central to antiwar efforts in Canada and abroad.
The truth about the crime against the Palestinians must not be silenced.
As the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) stated on December 27, we must pledge to "continue mobilizing to respond to the call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions" against Israel.
Information on continuing solidarity actions is available from . the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Palestine House .
January 6, 2008
www.socialistvoice.ca
Suzanne Weiss is a member of Not In Our Name: Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism, and of CAIA.One of the most important protests against the murderous Israeli assault on Gaza took place on January 5 in Kandahar, the Afghan province under occupation by the Canadian army.
About 800 Afghan protesters converged in Kandahar city, carrying banners reading "Death to Israel" and chanting anti-Israeli slogans. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the protesters also demanded the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan of NATO troops, including the 2,700 Canadians stationed in their region. Bismalla Afghanmal, a member of Kandahar's provincial council, reportedly denounced bombing, whether it takes place in Afghanistan or Palestine.
The courageous Afghan protest underlines the aggressive role played by Canada's government in promoting both NATO occupation of Afghanistan and Zionist occupation of Palestine.
The Harper government's complicity in the Gaza massacre was condemned in Canada on January 3 by about 20,000 protesters across the country, including more than 10,000 in Toronto and 5,000 in Montreal. Demonstrators called on the Canadian government to condemn Israel's latest aggression and to cut all political, economic, and military ties with Israel until it complies with international law.
"We are overwhelmed by the support we have received from Canadian civil society," commented Kahled Mouammar, President of the Canadian Arab Federation. "The large number of people on the streets today shows that the Harper government is out of touch with the Canadian public."
International Upsurge
In recent days, Israel's crime against Gaza has spurred demonstrations across the world. It is the largest wave of coordinated anti-imperialist actions since the launching of the Iraq war in 2003.
In Toronto and elsewhere, large numbers of Muslim marchers were joined by participants from the population at large, including groups of anti-Zionist Jews.
According to press reports, up to 700,000 marched in Istanbul, Turkey. Forty thousand in Rabat, Morocco condemned the silence of the Arab regimes, and over 10,000 marched through Jakarta, Indonesia carrying Palestinian flags. Angry dissent was heard in Kashmir, Lebanon, and the Palestinian West Bank.
In Egypt, where the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship has been silent, hundreds of thousands took part in nationwide marches called by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many called on Arab governments to take action to protect Palestinians.
In London, England, more than 60,000 marched at the call of the Stop the War Coalition. Chanting "Shame on you, have my shoe," protesters left hundreds of shoes in front of the residence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Twenty thousand marched in Paris, and many thousands more made their opposition to Israel heard in the U.S., France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Australia, Holland, Austria, and other countries of the world.
Protests in Israel
Addressing a demonstration of 150,000 mostly Palestinian protesters in the northern Israeli town of Sakhnin, Knesset member Mohammed Barakeh said, "We are determined to stand with our brothers in Gaza to stop the bloodshed and massacre." There were cries that that Egypt's Mubarak is a "coward" who is "collaborating with the Americans."
In Tel Aviv, Israel, 10,000 Palestinians and Israeli Jews marched side by side in a demonstration featuring many Palestinian flags. A prominent banner read, "You want to stop Hamas? Give Gaza hope, not war." Another giant banner read, "Stop killing! Stop the siege! Stop the occupation!" As the rally drew to the end, police disappeared from the scene, exposing participants to a violent assault by rightist settler thugs.
The revolutionary government of Cuba responded promptly to the Israeli air raids on Gaza. Cuba "strongly condemns this genocidal action by the Israeli government" and calls for mobilization to demand an immediate end to Israeli attacks. The statement reiterated Cuba's "unwavering support and solidarity with the suffering and heroic people" of Gaza. Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela also expressed "solidarity with the Palestinians against Israeli violence."
Deadly toll
Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel is continuing its ground advance in Gaza, killing an additional 30 civilians on January 5. It is bombarding Gaza City with shells of deadly white phosphorous, supposedly to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
According to media reports, the death toll from the Israeli invasion, now more than 550, includes women, children, and men from all walks of life. Medical supplies in Gaza are running out; food is almost unavailable; many who venture out of doors are shot.
Adding insult to injury, Israel cynically condemns Hamas for exposing Gaza's civilians to Israeli artillery and bombing. Canada's mass media echoes this absurd claim.
The immediate goal of Israel's invasion of Gaza is to punish Palestinians for resisting Israeli apartheid. More broadly, its long-term subjugation of the Palestinian people aims to occupy the Palestinians' land, expel Palestinians en masse, and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.
Background to slaughter
The run-up to the war in Gaza began in January 2006, when Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) won a decisive victory in elections in the Palestinian territory. The Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, then proposed a long-term cease-fire based on establishment of a Palestinian state, leaving Israel with its 1967 borders. The offer still stands.
Instead of responding, the Israeli government, working with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government in the West Bank. But Hamas retained power in Gaza.
Israel then set out to strangle Gaza for the crime of voting for Hamas, against the desires of Tel Aviv and Washington.
Some militants in Gaza responded to the prolonged and devastating siege of their territory by firing rockets into Israeli territory. This ended in mid-2008, when Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire.
However, "during this alleged ceasefire, Israel continued to imposed its brutal siege on Gaza, restricting the flow of aid, medical supplied, fuel and other necessities of life into the territory. For the past two years, Gaza has been undergoing the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food and medicines." (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid)
When the ceasefire ran out in December 2008, Israel tightened its blockade and set in motion its present assault, using renewed rocket attacks as a pretext. As unionist Ali Mallah told Toronto protesters on December 28, "If there was no occupation, there would be no rockets. Occupation is the worst form of terrorism. People have the right to resist their occupier by any means necessary."
`A bigger holocaust'
The present assault, planned over a six-month period, makes real the sinister threat made in February 2008 by Israel's deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai. The people of Gaza, he said, would "bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust" if they continued to resist the intensification of the occupation.
This is a clear reference to Hitler's genocidal actions against the Jewish people 60 years ago. For many years, the Gaza population of 1.5 million Palestinians has been besieged, blockaded, bombarded, and systematically denied the necessities of life. The Israeli government does not intend to kill every Palestinian, but they do aim to wipe Gaza off the map.
In fact, Zionism's aggression against the Palestinians, over almost a century, can only be understood as an attempt to remove Palestine from the world's family of nations. That is the Zionist "final solution."
The Gaza Strip today is strikingly similar to the ghetto built by Hitler for the Jews of Warsaw: an open-air concentration camp, surrounded by high walls and checkpoints, and subject to systematic terror tactics, deprivation, and violence.
Israel's attack on Gaza echoes Hitler's assault on the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. But while Hitler's actions were hidden at the time from the world's peoples, today Israel acts openly, with the approval of Canada, the U.S., and Britain, while the whole world watches in horror.
Like the Warsaw Ghetto, Gaza is a story of an epic of suffering, destruction, and courageous resistance. The people of Gaza fight, like the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, with whatever they can get their hands on. But their weapons are puny and symbolic compared to the Israeli warplanes, artillery, tanks, and bombs that are razing the city to the ground.
Gaza, the Mideast, and the World
On November 24, 2008, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, pointed out to the world's governments how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
"More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations.
"Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations."
Even more, progressive forces worldwide are challenged to resist Israeli aggression and oppose the imperialist alliance that sustains Israel and wages war across the Mideast.
If Israel extinguishes the flame of resistance in Gaza, it will tighten its grip of imperialist occupation and oppression across the entire region. An Israeli victory would also encourage forces in Canada and other pro-Zionist countries that seek to stifle and repress pro-Palestinian voices and other solidarity movements in this country.
Powerful forces have tried to erase the crime against the Palestinians from the world's memory, but Palestinian resistance continues, with increased sympathy from peoples around the world. The Palestinian resistance today forms part of the vanguard of freedom struggles internationally, and Palestinian solidarity must be central to antiwar efforts in Canada and abroad.
The truth about the crime against the Palestinians must not be silenced.
As the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) stated on December 27, we must pledge to "continue mobilizing to respond to the call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions" against Israel.
Information on continuing solidarity actions is available from . the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
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