Party to Murder

Posted on Dec 29, 2008

AP photo / Fadi Adwan

The body of a Palestinian security force officer lies in the rubble after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Gaza City on Sunday.

By Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven years, to update a previous column on Gaza.

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza—the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering—wonder why we are hated?

Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. “Expose thyself to what wretches feel,” King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, “and show the heavens more just.”

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk’s unflinching honesty has enraged Israel. He was banned from entering the country on Dec. 14 during his attempt to visit Gaza and the West Bank.

“After being denied entry I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems,” he said. “At this point I was treated not as a U.N. representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search, and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed. I was separated from my two U.N. companions, who were allowed to enter Israel. At this point I was taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away, required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room, taken to a locked, tiny room that had five other detainees, smelled of urine and filth, and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food, and either lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.”

The foreign press has been, like Falk, barred by Israel from entering Gaza to report on the destruction.

Israel’s stated aim of halting homemade rockets fired from Gaza into Israel remains unfulfilled. Gaza militants have fired more than 100 rockets and mortars into Israel, killing four people and wounding nearly two dozen more, since Israel unleashed its air assault. Israel has threatened to launch a ground assault and has called up 6,500 army reservists. It has massed tanks on the Gaza border and declared the area a closed military zone.

The rocket attacks by Hamas are, as Falk points out, also criminal violations of international law. But as Falk notes, “… such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”

“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk has said of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”

Before the air assaults, Gaza spent 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. Most of Gaza is now without power. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

“It is macabre,” Falk said of the blockade. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”

“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”

The point of the Israeli attack, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel.

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks by Palestinians. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. Dozens of tunnels had been the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel had permitted the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel. This ended, however, on Sunday when Israeli fighter jets bombed over 40 tunnels along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The Israeli military said that the tunnels, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Egypt has sealed its border and refused to let distraught Palestinians enter its territory.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. A family that loses a child in an airstrike does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

Israeli vessel hits Gaza-bound boat

Dignity was carrying aid for Gaza’s beleaguered health care system [AFP] A small boat, damaged as it tried to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, has arrived in the Lebanese port of Tyre. The Dignity started taking on water after it was hit by an Israeli naval vessel as it approached the Israeli coast with its cargo of medical aid. The Free Gaza Movement, which organised the attempt to reach the territory , said their boat was “rammed” and shots were fired when at least four Israeli vessels confronted them in international waters. Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, denied there had been any shooting but said that the ships had made “physical contact”. He said that the crew of the Dignity had failed to respond to Israeli naval radio contact. ‘Rammed’ Elize Ernshire, one of the activists onboard the boat, told Al Jazeera by telephone that the boat was rammed twice from the front and then once from the side. “It has destroyed the front of the boat and the roof … and has left the cabin, the wheelhouse quite destroyed,” she said. “… we were threatened directly by the Israeli navy that if we continued on our course towards Gaza they would attack us again” Elize Ernshire, activist onboard Dignity ” … we were threatened directly by the Israeli navy that if we continued on our course towards Gaza they would attack us again.” Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said that the incident was nothing more than a “propoganda stunt”. “Israel would never have done anything against international law, that is inconceivable,” he told Al Jazeera. “These people just want a headline, they don’t really want to help the people of Gaza, if they wanted to help the people of Gaza they would be asking Hamas why they initiated the violence.” Several small boats have arrived in the Gaza Strip carrying international activists and medical aid since August in defiance of the Israeli siege. Ernshire said that the incident would not stop the movement trying again to take aid to the impoverished territory. “The majority of passenger here are determined, once we reach Lebanon, to keep continuing to organise such boats as these, to reach the people of Gaza,” she said. Gaza’s health system is struggling to cope with the casualties from four consecutive days of aerial bombardment by Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships. Shortages Hospitals were already facing shortages of medicines and other medical products due to the Israeli siege imposed after the Hamas government seized full control of the territory in 2007. In depth Focus Latest updates on the Gaza raids Opinion: Isreal’s failure to learn Gaza Diary: Destroyed memories Videos No let up in assault on Gaza Aid boat forced to dock in Lebanon Hospitals in Gaza struggle to cope Your Views Add your voice to the discussion Send us your video views As well as more than three tonnes of aid, the Dignity was carrying three doctors to help treat the more than 1,600 wounded in recent days. Avital Leibovitz, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said that humanitarian aid was being allowed into the Gaza Strip and the medical supplies on the boat would not have made much impact on the humanitarian situation.”Lets not talk about a blockade because it does not exist, the humanitarian corridor is active, alive and working,” she told Al Jazeera. “There are a numerous number of trucks enetring Gaza with food and medicine according to the requests of the aid organisations.” Three Al Jazeera journalists were among the 15 people onboard the boat. “Al Jazeera holds Israel responsible for the safety of the Al Jazeera journalists and everyone on board the Dignity,” Wadah Khanfar, director general of the Al Jazeera network said in a statement. “Al Jazeera’s presence on the boat is to cover the expedition for news and journalistic purposes. We are deeply concerned for the safety and well being of our journalists.” Sorce: Al Jezzera English

Israel rejects Gaza ceasefire

Prime minister tells security cabinet that military operation will not end until all goals are achieved

Israel today rejected calls for a ceasefire and said it would continue its attack on Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a meeting of the security cabinet that Israel would continue military operations until all its goals had been achieved, news agency reports and the Ha’aretz newspaper website said.

“We did not begin the Gaza operation in order to finish it with rocket fire continuing like it did before,” Ha’aretz quoted Olmert as saying. “Israel has restrained for years and given plenty of chances for a calm.”

The Israeli security cabinet met to discuss military options, including a ground invasion of Gaza or continuation of the current strategy of air strikes. It rejected a European Union proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“If conditions will ripen and we think there will be a diplomatic solution that will ensure a better security reality in the south, we will consider it. But at the moment it’s not there,” the Reuters news agency quoted Olmert as saying. “We didn’t start this operation just to end it with rocket fire continuing as it did before it began … Imagine if we declare a unilateral ceasefire and a few days later rockets fall on (the town of) Ashkelon. What will that do to Israel’s deterrence?”

Military operations continued for a fifth day, with jets and assault helicopters attacking targets in Gaza through pouring rain. The Israeli military bombed more government buildings in Gaza, including the office of the former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. The military said it hit 35 other sites in Gaza, including more smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border and what it described as buildings storing weapons.

Palestinian militants fired rockets into southern Israel again, for the first time reaching the city of Be’ersheva in the Nagev desert, 25 miles from Gaza.

Palestinian deaths stand at more than 390 since the bombing began on Saturday. At least 64 of the dead are ­civilians, according to the United Nations. Two victims were girls aged four and 11, killed as they rode on a cart. ­Four Israelis have been killed in Palestinian rocket attacks since Saturday.

Olmert met for four hours last night with the defence minister, Ehud Barak, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and senior army commanders and security officials. Reports suggested Olmert opposed any pause in the fighting, while Barak was thought to be in favour of a temporary ceasefire to gauge the reaction of Hamas.

“Giving Hamas a respite just to regroup, rearm is a mistake,” said Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev. “The pressure on the Hamas military machine must continue.”

Yesterday, Regev said there was no “quick fix” and Israel had enough international “understanding” to carry on provided its attacks to stop Hamas rocket fire were “surgically precise” and it cooperated with attempts to deliver humanitarian relief.

Following a meeting in Paris, EU foreign ministers said there could be “no military solution” to the conflict and called for humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza. “There must be an unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action,” they said in a statement.

France, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU until tomorrow , has called on Israel to halt attacks for 48 hours to allow in humanitarian aid. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, will meet Livni in Paris tomorrow and it has been reported he will travel to Israel on 5 January.

European diplomats said pressure on Israel to agree to a permanent ceasefire would have to be exerted by the US, whose support so far has allowed Israel a free hand in Gaza. The US has called for a “sustainable and durable” ceasefire that is fully respected by Hamas. “We don’t just want a ceasefire for the sake of a ceasefire, only for violence to start up immediately, or within the next few weeks,” said the White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “That serves no one’s interest.”

Yesterday, ­Olmert called the air campaign “the first of several” phases of military operations. Tanks have been ­massing near the Gaza border in case a land ­invasion is authorised.

The absence of pressure from Washington is clearly an important factor, while Israel appears to rule out the EU playing a significant role.

There were reports of food shortages and sharply increased prices in Gaza. Most shops remained closed. Despite the crisis, Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, said he would not allow a full opening of his country’s border crossing with Gaza at Rafah.

Egypt has let through a small number of injured Palestinians but Mubarak said the crossing would not ­reopen until it was restored to the jurisdiction of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president who heads the western-backed Palestinian Authority. Given Hamas’s dominance of Gaza – Abbas’s support lies in the West Bank part of the divided territory – that is unlikely to happen.

Arab League diplomats are meeting in Cairo today to prepare for an emergency summit in Qatar on Friday. EU diplomats hope they will agree measures to end the crisis, including an Arab ­contribution to security for the Gaza border crossings.

www.guardian.co.uk

Video footage of Gaza attacks

Within hours of the Israeli strikes on Gaza began, footage of the attacks began appearing on the internet.

This footage shown on Al-Jazeera gives a raw portrayal of the casualties of the Israeli bombings. The 2:32 minute video includes footage broadcast across the world of several killed uniformed and injured police officers. Lying amid the corpses and body parts of his colleagues, one officer is shown praying and, according to the commentator, “preparing for his end”.

MSNBC has a similar interpretation, claiming the desperate man’s words are “a prayer of a Muslim preparing to die”. Its report also shows how, with “no time for ambulances”, the wounded are carried on “corrugated iron” stretchers, driven in private cars, carried on backs and – the commentator says as footage shows two infants carried along a road – “in arms”.

The video, one of the most widely used images of victims of the airstrikes so far, is from Gaza City’s main police station where, the LA Times notes, a “host of VIPs had turned out Saturday to honor the latest class of Palestinian cadets amid the usual pomp and circumstance.” The paper points out the footage has been broadcast across the world “in all of its chaotic intensity”.

The Israeli Air Force has released its own footage, taken from a drone aircraft during yesterday’s attacks. Shown on the BBC’s site, amongst others, the video purportedly shows an attack on an underground missile launching pad used by Hamas. “It also notes with a yellow circle what it says is a Palestinian missile misfiring after the attack,” the BBC says.

Just as quickly as images of the carnage appeared, however, so too did contributions into the battle for public hearts and minds. CBS carries footage from protests across the Middle East.

“Hamas has deliberately been targeting our civilians, in towns, in cities, in rural communities – all across the south,” the Israeli PM’s spokesman tells Sky News in this interview, adding: “250,000 people – of them, 100,000 children, living in bomb shelters. We couldn’t continue – no society would continue to see its civilian population targeted this way.

These days the debate over the morality of military conflicts is not restricted to politicians and their spokespeople. This man is one of many to upload his views from a bedroom somewhere in the US. He warns that the media will sensationalize the conflict, says he does not know whether Hamas should be overthrown of Israel was heavy handed in its response.

However he calls on all citizens to pressure their governments to restore the ceasefire, “no matter how temporary it may be”.

www,guardian.co.uk