News, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
More intellectuals oppose occupation,
Mustapha
Karkouti
Gulf News, London |
When the
gentiles criticise Israel for its brutal occupation policy they are often
accused as "anti-Semitic", and when Israelis (and Jews for that
matter) point to this brutality they are called "self-hater
Jews".
But this has not stopped the rising consensus among Israelis, and Jews at
large of accusing Ariel Sharon's right-wing government of allowing the
Israeli army to commit deliberate acts of atrocities against civilian
communities in Palestinian territories.
In the absence of any significant Israeli political opposition,
independent voices of academics, individual civilians and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) protesting against occupation and maltreatments of
Palestinians, are gathering momentum.
Despite the lack of organisational mechanism, these protests take
different forms and are rarely reported in the Western media, particularly
in the United States.
Many of the Israeli opponents of the war against the Palestinians are
courageous and honourable. Some of them even risk their jobs and their
personal standing in society for their conscientious and principled
actions.
The Israeli Peace Movement "Gush Shalom" has recently placed an
advertisement, paid for from its members' and supporters' own pockets, in
the leading Israeli daily Ha'aretz, calling for the withdrawal of the army
and ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Under the headline Dear Generals, the ad (23.5.2003) says: "Dear
generals, you have bombarded. Shelled. Liquidated. Tortured. Demolished
homes. Uprooted plantations. Exprop-riated. Starved out. Arrested.
Imprisoned. Exiled. Expelled. Conquered towns. Occupied neighbourhood.
Taken over villages. Imposed curfews. Closures. Blockades.
"Dear Generals. You have tried everything. You have nothing left. You
are bankrupt. Go home." Most of the Israeli civil opposition to the
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the Israeli army's brutal
treatment of Palestinians go, sadly, unreported. Therefore, its members
resort to the only means available for them: the electronic network.
In one of these electronic mails circulated by an Israeli Rabbi, Arik
Asherman, of "Rabbi for Human Rights" movement, we are informed
that he and another activist of Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions
(ICAHD) have been arrested and taken for interrogation by Shabak (Israel's
Security Service).
In his message Rabbi Asherman said: "I have returned from a Shabak
interrogation. Shabak is currently calling in members of ICAHD to ask
about its members' activities. We were warned that the (Israeli)
Attorney-General has determined that rebuilding demolished Palestinian
homes in Jerusalem is illegal."
The Rabbi requested a written decision to this effect, but the
interrogators refused to do so. This act of interrogation, along with the
systematic use of "Closed Military Zones" orders to deny
protestors the right of entry, made the Rabbi conclude that Sharon's
government is not content to curtail the activities of foreign activists
only, "but also intends to target Israeli NGOs as well".
"The intent," Rabbi Asherman said, "is not only to stop
activities which the authority defines as 'illegal', but to also prevent
humanitarian activities such as the work of NGO Ta'ayush (Co-habitation)
to accompany children safely to schools."
Obviously the Israeli government's ultimate goal, according to the Rabbi,
is to prevent any witnesses from seeing what is happening in the Occupied
Territories.
"We need to collectively decide on a strategy to stop this dangerous
trend. I know that I personally left the interrogation with a strong urge
to continue rebuild (Palestinian) homes," rabbi Asherman concluded.
Take also the case of the ever-peace activist the former Meretz cabinet
minister, Shulamit Aloni, who recently accused the Israeli High Court of
condoning the brutal policy of Sharon's government against the Palestinian
civilians.
Writing in the Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz (4.5.2003), she accused the High
Court of giving the Israeli army "a license to kill" by ruling
that the use of flechette shells "is permissible within urban
areas".
Knesset member Aloni said Israel's highest court has essentially issued a
license to kill civilians "by determining that the use of flechette
shells fired from tanks is not prohibited by international law".
Flechette shells, in regular use by the Israeli army in densely populated
Palestinian residential areas spread out over an average radius of 200
meters and cause mortal injury to civilians - women, men, children and old
people, with no distinction whatever - by scattering small, lethal metal
darts.
"The supreme court, which at first scorned even hearing the petition
on the grounds that it amounted to a demand to dictate to the army the
means it could employ, forgot that its task is to protect human
life," Aloni said.
In relying on the idea that flechette rounds fired from tanks are not
prohibited by international law, "the court has entirely ignored the
spirit of the law".
"The fact that these shells have killed women sitting in a tent, or
in another instance killed three young people, made no impression on the
High Court of Justice."
Describing the court decision as shameful she said: "I write these
words with great sadness and shame, because it's not the case that our
army is "the most moral army in the world". In the name of the
war against terror, acts of terror, acts of intolerable piracy and
humiliation, are being committed".
"For a society with pretensions to democracy and humanism, when
there's no court with the courage to stand firm under fire, the next stop
is the International Court at The Hague," she added.
"The nonsense that any criticism of us is anti-Semitism, and the
perverted use of references to the Holocaust, while it and its victims are
cheapened, cannot help us when it comes to indefensible deeds. No
justification is to be found there for permitting the firing of flechette
shells from tanks against a civilian population."
The writer is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London.
He can be contacted at mkarkouti@gulfnews.com
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |