How a people, a race, who were victims of the Holocaust can then go and perpetrate the same sort of conditions ... is beyond me. How they can do that and get away with it under international law? Annie Machon, interview 30th April 2010
We have what is now quite an oppressive regime in the occupied territories where Israelis are lording it over Palestinians, usurping their territory, demolishing their homes, exerting a very severe form of military rule in order to remain there. Gila Svirsky, Israel Coalition for a Just Peace
Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians contrary to the rules of international law. It has waged a war against the civilian population, particularly children. Nelson Mandela
I want to talk about Palestine. What is being done to the Palestinians now is horrendous – in their own territory, by the occupying power, which is Israel. They are taking away all of the basic human rights of the Palestinians, as was done in South Africa against the blacks. Jimmy Carter, NBC television
The attacks have been cyclical ... Twenty-seven persons including militants were killed Wednesday in Lashkar Gah by an air strike. [snaps fingers] Gone. And there isn’t a thought in this population about the people who died. And who they were. Who was married to whom. How many children there were. But that’s what it’s like. Period. Every few days. David Halpin, Make War History
The paramount war criminal Blair: it was announced after the Holocaust which was rained on Gaza that he’d been awarded the Dan David Prize for leadership. David Halpin, Alternative View II conference lecture 31st May 2009, ‘The Vortex Sucks Ever Louder’
I’ve been to Gaza nine times already ... And suddenly there was a hell of a crash on the bow, and another crash, and a third crash on the port beam opposite where I was sitting ... The bow dipped for the first crash. And the master said, ‘We’ve been rammed.’ We deployed life-vests ... I thought the boat was breaking up. And Cynthia said, ‘I can’t swim’ ... 53 miles off the Israeli coast ... He said first of all you are terrorists. We had three tons of medical supplies on board from the Cypriot government ... Then he said we were subversives. And the third thing he said he was going to shoot us. ibid.
Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting ‘the wrong way’, the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing ‘a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions’.
So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be ‘a light unto the nations’ end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population? Ian R Crane, Israel is Suppressing a Secret it Must Face: How Did a Jewish State Founded 60 Years Ago End Up Throwing Filth at Cowering Palestinians?
They surrounded Beirut. In three months 17,500 people, almost all of them civilians, were killed. Robert Fisk, journalist and author
Two nights ago, this most dangerous man, George Bush, talked about ‘freedom in Iraq’. Not ‘democracy’ in Iraq. No, ‘democracy’ was no longer mentioned. ‘Democracy’ was simply left out of the equation. Now it was just ‘freedom’ – freedom from Saddam rather than freedom to have elections. And what is this ‘freedom’ supposed to involve? One group of American-appointed Iraqis will cede power to another group of American-appointed Iraqis. That will be the ‘historic handover’ of Iraqi ‘sovereignty’. Yes, I can well see why George Bush wants to witness a ‘handover’ of sovereignty. ‘Our boys’ must be out of the firing line – let the Iraqis be the sandbags.
Iraqi history is already being written. In revenge for the brutal killing of four American mercenaries – for that is what they were – US Marines carried out a massacre of hundreds of women and children and guerrillas in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah. The US military says that the vast majority of the dead were militants. Untrue, say the doctors. But the hundreds of dead, many of whom were indeed civilians, were a shameful reflection on the rabble of American soldiery who conducted these undisciplined attacks on Fallujah. Many Baghdadi’ Sunnis say that in the ‘New Iraq’ – the Iraqi version, not the Paul Bremer version – Fallujah should be given the status of a new Iraqi capital.
Vast areas of the Palestinian West Bank will now become Israel, courtesy of President Bush. Land which belongs to people other than Israelis must now be stolen by Israelis because it is ‘unrealistic’ to accept otherwise. Is Mr Bush a thief? Is he a criminal? Can he be charged with abetting a criminal act? Can Iraq now claim to Kuwait that it is ‘unrealistic’ that the Ottoman borders can be changed? Palestinian land once included all of what is now Israel. It is not, apparently, ‘realistic’ to change this, even to two per cent?
Is Saddam Hussein to be re-bottled and put back in charge of Iraq on the basis that his 1990 invasion of Kuwait was ‘realistic’? Or that his invasion of Iran – when we helped him try to destroy Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution – was ‘realistic’ because he initially attacked only the Arabic-speaking (and thus ‘Iraqi’) parts of Iran?
Or, since President Bush now seems to be a history buff, are the Germans to be given back Danzig or the Sudetenland? Or Austria? Or should we perhaps recreate the colonial possessions of the past 100 years? Is it not ‘realistic’ that the French should retake Algeria – or part of Algeria – on the basis that the people all speak French, on the basis that this was once part of the French nation? Or should the British retake Cyprus? Or Aden? Or Egypt? Shouldn’t the French be allowed to take back Lebanon and Syria? Why shouldn’t the British retake America and boot out those pesky ‘terrorists’ who oppose the rule of King George’s democracy well over 200 years ago?
Because this is what George Bush’s lunacy and weakness can lead to. We all have lands that ‘God’ gave us. Didn’t Queen Mary die with ‘Calais’ engraved on her heart? Doesn’t Spain have a legitimate right to the Netherlands? Or Sweden the right to Norway and Denmark? Every colonial power, including Israel can put forward these preposterous demands. What Bush has actually done is give way to the crazed world of Christian Zionism. The fundamentalist Christians who support Israel's theft of the West Bank on the grounds that the state of Israel must exist there according to God’s law until the second coming, believe that Jesus will return to earth and the Israelis – for this is the Bush ‘Christian Sundie’ belief – will then have to convert to Christianity or die in the battle of Armageddon.
I kid thee not. This is the Christian fundamentalist belief, which even the Israeli embassy in Washington go along with – without comment, of course – in their weekly Christian Zionist prayer meetings. Every claim by Osama bin Laden, every statement that the United States represents Zionism and supports the theft of Arab lands will now have been proved true to millions of Arabs, even those who had no time for Bin Laden. What better recruiting sergeant could Bin Laden have than George Bush. Doesn’t he realise what this means for young American soldiers in Iraq or are Israelis more important than American lives in Mesopotamia? Everything the US government has done to preserve its name as a ‘middle-man’ in the Middle East has now been thrown away by this gutless, cowardly US President, George W Bush. That it will place his soldiers at greater risk doesn't worry him - anyway, he doesn’t do funerals. That it goes against natural justice doesn’t worry him. That his statements are against international law is of no consequence.
And still we have to cow-tow to this man. If we are struck by al-Qa’ida it is our fault. And if 90 per cent of the population of Spain point out that they opposed the war, then they are pro-terrorists to complain that 200 of their civilians were killed by al-Qa'ida. First the Spanish complain about the war, then they are made to suffer for it – and then they are condemned as ‘appeasers’ by the Bush regime and its craven journalists when they complain that their husbands and wives and sons did not deserve to die.
If this is to be their fate, excuse me, but I would like to have a Spanish passport so that I can share the Spanish people’s ‘cowardice’! If Mr Sharon is ‘historic’ and ‘courageous’, then the murderers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be able to claim the same. Mr Bush legitimised ‘terrorism’ this week – and everyone who loses a limb or a life can thank him for his yellow streak. And, I fear, they can thank Mr Blair for his cowardice too. Robert Fisk, article April 2004, ‘George Bush Has Legitimized Terrorism’
The Lebanese are forced to share their country: around 400,000 Palestinians also live in Lebanon but it’s not their home. Home for them is in a country called Palestine to which they cannot return despite the PLO/Israeli accord. Robert Fisk, From Beirut to Bosnia II: The Road to Palestine
Gaza: What lay beyond was a world of destitution and bitterness. ibid.
The Israeli curfew covered most of Gaza City. ibid.
‘Our houses are destroyed! Go on, take pictures!’ ibid. woman victim
The demolition of these homes was to provide the Islamic Movement and its supporters with further reason to hate the Israelis. ibid.
In a land under occupation there are few bounds to the cynicism of those who resist. ibid.
A ring of Israeli concrete around Jerusalem. ibid.
We are a greedy occupier, looting their land, uprooting, and demolishing and expelling. Shulamit Aloni, article Ha’Aretz 23rd July 2003, ‘Our Foppish Self-Righteousness’
They don’t present it as saying Israel is the aggressor, Israel is killing people on their own land, in their own homes, as an occupier. But no, Israel is defending itself. Hanan Ashwari, Palestinian Legislative Council