Steven MacMillan
As the incessant killing of innocent Palestinian civilians continues at the hands of the Israeli establishment, no end is in sight to the latest onslaught. Yesterday (30/07/2014) saw another atrocious crime committed against the native Palestinian population, when the Jabaliya Elementary Girls School was shelled by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) — after the IDF was warned 17 times that it was a shelter filled with refugees. The attack killed 19 and injured over one hundred others, raising the Palestinian death toll to over 1300 in a conflict where the majority of casualties are civilians.
The main justification for ‘Operation Protective Edge’ to be launched by the IDF was the killing of three Israeli teenagers last month. Hamas was immediately blamed for the attack, despite its refusal to take responsibility for the killings. BBC correspondent Jon Donnison recently revealed that the Israeli police do not think Hamas was directly involved in the killings, instead they believe it was a “lone cell” operating outside of Hamas leadership.
Today’s war is by no means an isolated incident as Israel has been pursuing nefarious and genocidal policies for decades. Israeli professor of history IIan Pappe — a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — has denounced Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people as “incremental genocide”, and he documents the plan since the 1990’s to “ghettoize Gaza”:
“Ever since 1994, and even more so when Ariel Sharon came to power as prime minister in the early 2000s, the strategy there was to ghettoize Gaza and somehow hope that the people there – 1.8 million as of today – would be dropped into eternal oblivion.”
Pappe continues:
“Those who commit atrocities in the Arab world against oppressed minorities and helpless communities, as well as the Israelis who commit these crimes against the Palestinian people, should all be judged by the same moral and ethical standards. They are all war criminals, though in the case of Palestine they have been at work longer than anyone else.”
As Jonathan Cook has reported, many politicians and academics in Israel have advocated genocide against the people of Palestine in recent years. To clarify, when referring to Israel I am speaking of the corrupt ruling elite in Tel Aviv as opposed to the average Israeli citizen. Moshe Feiglin, the deputy speaker of the Knesset and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, demonstrated a complete lack of consideration for the consequences to the environment and human life in relation to the IDF operation in Gaza:
“All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage”.
Israel has pursued a policy of collective punishment against Palestine on numerous occasions, repeatedly violating international law defined in the Geneva Conventions. In 2009, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights and professor of international law, Richard Falk, condemned Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza as “war crimes or crimes against humanity” due to their policy of collective punishment and the targeting of innocent civilians. This month’s attacks also constitute grave war crimes with the same malevolent policies being implemented as were used in the 2008-09 conflict.
Former Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai gave a glimpse into the mentally of many high level figures in the Israeli establishment when discussing a 2012 operation in Gaza:
“The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.”
Palestine today is a fraction of what it was in 1948 due to the Palestinian territory being insidiously eroded over the past 6 decades, with Israel close to truly wiping Palestine of the map:
Source — Jewish Voice for Peace
If any legitimate international community existed, Benjamin Netanyahu would be tried for war crimes at The Hague along with complicit leaders of the IDF and Mossad. But no legitimate authority exists. If you are a strategic ally of the western powers, you are immune from prosecution and free to commit whatever crimes you desire in full view of the international community.
Additional Sources:
Israel’s incremental genocide in the Gaza ghetto — IIan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada
This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.