Israel swapped the blood of the paschal lamb this Passover for the blood of Palestinians but there was no staying of the Angel of Death.
Twenty-one young unarmed Gazans were murdered by Israeli Terrorist Force snipers and over 1,400 injured.
No further evidence for Israel’s status as a murderous, rogue, apartheid state need be adduced.
And what was the crime of these young people? They joined an estimated 30,000 Palestinians in a nonviolent March of Return, which aimed to set up a few camps several hundred meters from the militarised fence surrounding the Gaza Strip.
Their goal was to protest their incarceration in the world’s largest open-air prison as well as the massive confiscation of their ancestral land – after all, 70 per cent of Gaza’s population are 1948 refugees whose families had owned land in what became Israel.
As a serial violator of international law, Israel ignores the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and General Assembly (UNGA) Resolutions 2535 and 3236, which assert the inalienable right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.
Greg Shupak writes: ‘Israeli violence is not defensive; it’s the forceful maintenance of an ethno-state premised upon ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Suggesting that events in Palestine can be understood in terms of “Israel’s right to defend itself” obscures that under international law Palestinians have a right to return to the land from which Israel has evicted them and to liberate themselves from colonial domination, a right that includes the use of armed struggle.’
Gareth W R Smith, Palestine Liberation Centre, Byron Bay
I again remind readers that the use of the term apartheid was never accepted by Australia and other like minded liberal democracies. The UN resolution that tried to extend its meaning beyond the racial discrimination in South Africa was done deliberately in the early seventies by opponents of Israel, with the support of communist and third world states . To try and bring back that artificial meaning pays homage to the corrupt and undemocratic leaders who used it as a distraction from the economic, social and ethnic problems that they were struggling to deal with
Why no mention of the Israeli slaughter of unarmed Palestinians Peter Hatfield? How dare you focus on linguistic anthills while the world’s 15th most powerful military power deliberately guns down civilians in the world’s biggest gulag protesting their 11 year siege, which is the 3rd longest in history! THIS is what you should be reminding readers about and not your pedantic nit-picking. For your information, none other than Ehud Barak warned of Israel’s drift toward apartheid if it keeps controlling Palestinians (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/ehud-barak-warns-israel-on-slippery-slope-to-apartheid-1.5486786). Where is your evidence that it has ceased this evil practice? Furthermore, Bishop Desmond Tutu who knows more about apartheid than either you or me accused Israel of apartheid (http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Desmond-Tutu-Israel-guilty-of-apartheid-in-treatment-of-Palestinians-344874). He stated that If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor!
It is not pedantic nit-picking to object to people co-opting language as it suits them. That Tutu joined in that double speak used for decades by the communist states and their third world allies does not add to its validity and did not persuade Australia and other democracies to misuse the word. Welles parodied those who use double-speak and he did not do so for trivial amusement. The word “apartheid” is part of why we have not forgotten Tutu and what occurred in South Africa. On your cause célèbre, I pay heed to the meta-analysis Paul Collier did through the World Bank to investigate continuing conflict world wide. Collier drew a correlation between continuation of conflict, the existence of a diaspora from the conflict area and the concomitant level of media and public interest in the conflict, and cautioned against focusing on the risks of focusing on the grievances of parties involved. Collier’s is not the last word on the subject, but my own work too in post conflict Chittagong Hills and as a peace monitor in Bougainville, and with Australian aid in other areas of ethnic conflict and concomitant human rights abuses, leaves me wary of the notion that there is any benefit in allowing the US media or anyone else should dictate to me on what conflicts I should take a stand.
I wasn’t aware that the Israelicentric US media was dictating to you or anyone else to take a pro-Palestinian stand. It is blatant that you refuse to address the major crimes against humanity that Israel has been perpetrating against the Palestinians for the past 70 years and this must surely call into doubt the credentials you are so happy to repeat. Specify for readers where you stand on the Israeli colonist occupation of Palestine.
Please read and respect my comment – that I do not see benefit in the the US media or anyone else dictating to me on what conflicts I should take a stand. You think that everyone must take a stand on a conflict in the Middle East – I do not. I think that history is important and how we use the language of history, and my view is supported by liberal democracies like Australia. Its a big world out there Gareth and some of us look at differently.
1. Please give me the full reference to Paul Collier’s World bank meta-analysis on conflict.by the US media
2. Cite your evidence that “the US media or anyone else should dictate to me on what conflicts I should take a stand.”
3. When you say Collier “cautioned against focusing on the risks of focusing on the grievances of parties involved.” isn’t this exactly what any forensic analysis would require by, for example, the ICC?
Gareth I read the meta study when I was working on post conflict situations more than fifteen years ago but I think this is the work I read: Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “On Economic Causes of Civil War”. http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/ON_ECONO.PDF. Collier has co-authored quite a number of works developing his ideas such as “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”: http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/2002-01text.pdf and the Bank’s 2003 publication “Breaking the Conflict Trap Civil War and Development Policy”: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/13938/567930PUB0brea10Box353739B01PUBLIC1.pdf .
His general thrust is that grievances of themselves are not a predictor for the likelihood of conflict, that conflicts benefit a leaders and small number of mainly younger males and carry a huge economic cost that falls on women and the poor, and focussing on those grievances is not the best approach to resolving conflicts. The existence of a diaspora and/or resources that can fund weapons and provide a motivation for leaders to prolong conflict make it more likely. The Middle East is a bit different in that the dominant power – Israel – is supported by the Jewish diaspora in the US who are part of why there is strong interest in the conflict in the US and thereby the world media. The grievances of the aggrieved party are normally valid as in the case of Palestine, but there are many valid grievances in the world that do not break out into conflict. I met some of the leaders and participants involved in conflicts in Bougainville and elsewhere that Collier refers to as beneficiaries. They left me thinking Collier who is an economist over-emphasises the economic benefits of control of resources that motivated key players and that there was also a lot of status involved – the guys with even a tattered uniform and an M16 were more likely to get the girls. Those venal and carnal motivations extend to state players too of course but Collier’s focus is not on attributing responsibility but on what makes extended conflict more likely. .
It is interesting that under the umbrella of a large bureaucracy like the Bank, Collier can write his strong views; as I noted he is not the last word on the subject but I think readers will find his work at least thought provoking.