Category: Gaza
From the Israel-Palestine Memory Hole
From the Israel-Palestine Memory Hole: a very brief, incomplete summary of how we got where we are, in under two-three hours.
(* For “stealing a people’s country” read the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.)
- Hamas attack was ‘almost inevitable’ (Times Radio)
“For many years there’s been a complete absence of any kind of political process.” The “appalling living conditions in Gaza” and “two-sided Palestinian leadership” have made a conflict like this ‘inevitable’, says, former Gaza correspondent, James Rogers.
2. Israel launches most intense military operation in West Bank in years; at least 8 Palestinians dead 2023
U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland warned that the escalation in the West Bank was “very dangerous.” Asked about the Israeli drone attacks on residential areas, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said: “Attacks on heavily populated areas are violations of international humanitarian law.”
Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, said on Twitter that she was “alarmed by scale of Israeli forces operation” and noted the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the U.N. was mobilizing humanitarian aid.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said many camp residents were in need of food, drinking water and milk powder.
3. Laying Siege to Gaza Is No Solution
“The latest Israeli military operation in Gaza is the most recent in a long string of such incursions over the past two decades. Major attacks took place in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2021—virtually every two years. Israel has pursued a strategy of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase it uses to describe the periodic bombing of Palestinians in the territory to keep armed groups at bay. But each time Israel says it is going to degrade and destroy the capabilities of Gazan militants, fighters soon prove they have only expanded and increased their capabilities.”
4. Israel imposing apartheid on Palestinians, says former Mossad chief
Pardo is among the highest ranking former officials to draw the once taboo parallel with the old South Africa. Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, said last year “that my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime”.
The former speaker of the Israeli parliament, Avraham Burg, and the renowned Israeli historian, Benny Morris, are among more than 2,000 Israeli and American public figures who have signed a recent public statement declaring that “Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid”.
5. Norman Finkelstein: Outrage over Israeli Massacre Shows Power of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance 2018-19
6. Norman Finkelstein: There was NO WAR in GAZA, it was a MASSACRE 2008-2009
7. An Issue Of Justice: Origins Of The Israel/Palestine Conflict 1948 – 2006
For more resources see the 100 Best Books on the Middle East.
Scotland First Minister’s family stuck in Gaza
The only Western statesman that I’ve seen call Israel’s action “collective punishment”, a major war crime, which is obvious to all. Others are rather encouraging war crimes with blind support.
First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf says his parents-in-law, who are stuck in Gaza amid the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, may suffer unjustified “collective punishment”.
Let’s Talk About Genocide: The Numerical Counter-Argument to the Genocide of the Palestinian People
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
From the moment I started addressing Israel in the context of the crime of genocide, I became acquainted with the numerical counter-argument. The argument usually goes something around the lines of “Israel really sucks at genocide, the Palestinian population has increased eight- fold.” As time went by, since 2014, we’ve seen the word ‘genocide’ more commonly applied to Israel’s practices against the indigenous Palestinian people, and the numerical counter-argument became more common as well, including numerous chart memes, illustrating the point, which are making the rounds on social media (left).
Let’s Talk About Genocide: The United Nations Lack of Responsibility to Protect from and Prevent Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinian People
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
In the summer of 2012, UNICEF and UNRWA asked if Gaza will be liveable by 2020. At the time- five years into Israel’s siege, and post Israel’s 2008 and 2012 carpet-bombing campaigns- one might have been led to think that if the situation only had eight more stable years to go until apocalypse, then it probably doesn’t look too good already. What one might have missed is that Gaza in 2020, as in 2017, as in 2012, is what genocide looks like.
Let’s Talk About Genocide: Shurat HaDin and The Genocide Legalization Conference
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
This week, the organization Shurat HaDin is having a conference titled “Towards a New Law of War”. They don’t hide where their alliances lie, and on their online conference page (nostalgically illustrated with WWII British bombers) you can find their Western-supremacist and racist agenda stated loud and clear:
…exchange ideas regarding the development of armed conflict legal doctrine favorable to Western democracies engaged in conflict against nontraditional, non-democratic, non-state actors.
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Genocide: Shurat HaDin and The Genocide Legalization Conference”
Let’s Talk About Genocide: The State of Israel Vs. William A. Schabas
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Since Israel’s latest attack on the besieged Gaza Strip, last summer, I’ve been researching the issue of Israel’s genocide. I quickly found out that I’m not the only one, and although the subject has been addressed by scholars, politicians, UN bodies, and Palestinian civil society since 1982, this attack has prompted an unprecedented amount of criticism and study.
The sudden popular resurgence of the term, especially coming from President Mahmoud Abbas, has already prompted many independent articles, rejecting not only the terminology, but mostly the users of the term. From Liberal Zionists calling those who charge genocide “the loony left” and “antisemitic”; to hard-core right-wingers like government- funded StandWithUs with the help of fox news, with the tried-and-true “what about Syria, Iran, Iraq” and anything else that isn’t the issue of discussion and furthers Islamophobia; to AIPAC with the ironic claim that naming the crime hinders peace, and quotations from none other than Benjamin Netanyahu that “we warned them” and after we bombed the hell out of them, we gave them “tons of humanitarian aid.” That said, I’ve yet to see an organised government initiative on the subject. Until now.
Never Again Unless We Did It
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Genocide: The State of Israel Vs. William A. Schabas”
Let’s Talk About Genocide: Palestine and United Nations Realpolitik
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
On the 7th of April 2004, then United Nations Secretary General to the Commission on Human Rights, Kofi Annan, launched his Action Plan to Prevent Genocide:
We must never forget our collective failure to protect at least 800,000 defenceless men, women and children who perished in Rwanda 10 years ago. Such crimes cannot be reversed. Such failures cannot be repaired. The dead cannot be brought back to life. So what can we do?
In my series of articles about Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, I tackle this assertion through different aspects of prevention mechanisms that have been put forth by the United Nations, such as The Convention of Prevention of Genocide, the UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide statements, and other reports and documents. In this article, I’d like to discuss Annan’s plan, which is an overarching document and a promise of the UN to endangered communities that asses the dangers as they happen, and to bring it to task about its inaction to prevent Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian People.
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Genocide: Palestine and United Nations Realpolitik”
Let’s Talk About Genocide: Inferring Israel’s Genocidal Intent
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
When I first set out to prove that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, I focused mostly on its genocidal acts. While there’s consensus between pretty much anyone that bothered to examine the Convention of Prevention of Genocide [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16] on the fact that Israel is committing the first three out of five genocidal acts:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
A debate remains about Israel’s intent to bring about the Palestinian people’s “destruction in whole or in part”. The Russell Tribunal, in its latest “Extraordinary Session on Gaza” and the 2009 “Fact Finding Committee On Gaza” chaired by John Dugard, both illustrate a narrative of colonialist destruction of the social fabric and a partial wiping out of the indigenous population. Frustratingly enough, both stop short of ruling genocide. While the Russell Tribunal simply says “it would be for a criminal court to determine”, the Dugard report goes into much greater detail.
Palestine in Whole or in Part
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TERRORisms: Israel’s Colonialist Dialogue Comes to the Oslo National Theatre
There’s drama stirring in the Oslo National Theatre, but not the kind most cultural institutions expect. Under the auspiciousness of The Union of Theaters of Europe, the Oslo National Theatre has committed to a two-year project titled “TERRORisms”:
From 2013 to 2015, theatres from Oslo, Stuttgart, Belgrade, Tel Aviv, London and Reims will get closer to their TERRORisms. They will elaborate different points of view, exploring different aspects likely to determine fundamentally our societies… dealing with the issue of terrorism and its appropriation by artists.
I’ve just come back from Oslo, and to be honest, Norwegians- as individuals and as a society- didn’t strike me to be particularly “determined fundamentally” by “their” “terrorisms”. Admittedly, I’m not an expert on European contemporary art, but it doesn’t seem to me like there’s a lot of artistic appropriation of terrorism being done in the European cultural sphere, and the notion is rather- let’s just say- foreign.
The Union of Theaters of Europe: The New Propaganda Front for Israel’s TERRORisms
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