De Israelische Terreur 800

Kafka Era Double Standard
March 2009 By Edward S. Herman

The U.S. political class and those of the EU and the new "hope" and "change" leader of the United States, Barack Obama, justify Israel's attack on Gaza as based on its "right of self-defense." There is, of course, the question of whether it is acceptable to defend yourself by a massive attack on a civilian population when this is not the only route to self defense—the Israelis could withdraw from an illegal occupation, they could stop starving the Gaza population, and they could abide by negotiated ceasefires (in this case, effectively and almost surely deliberately ended by their November 6 killing of six Gaza Palestinians). There is also the problem that the Israeli action violated the UN Charter. Article 51, the self-defense exception, requires immediate notification of the Security Council and, after any immediate attack is contained, giving over remedial action to the Security Council. There is also the problem that this "self-defense" operation was planned six months in advance and is widely believed in Israel to be linked to Israeli politics, with the two ruling parties seeking an improved standing—which they achieved—by military action.

A final problem is that the Israeli attack on Gaza involved major war crimes—in the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian facilities, weaponry employed, and refusal to permit medical aid and supplies to the victims (see the detailed "War on the Wounded: Human rights violations perpetrated against Palestinian medical personnel in the Gaza Strip," Palestine Centre for Human Rights, January 13). Not often discussed, also, is the extremely cowardly nature of the "war," not between two contending and competitive armed forces and not even between a David and Goliath, but between a well-armed Goliath and a small child David—the Goliath using advanced planes and explosives on a community without an air force or anti-aircraft defenses. The "war" was triply dishonorable: rooted partly in politics, cowardly, and criminal.

It is always interesting to see how the United States, Israel, and their allies and apologists regularly deny the Palestinians any right of self-defense, and always stop short at the point where Israelis are kidnapped or attacked in their "analyses" of causality. The previous day the Israelis might have kidnapped Palestinians or bombed Gaza or the West Bank, and the Israelis may have been dispossessing Palestinians by force in an illegal occupation for years, but these are never allowed as causes. As David Bromwich says, "We are offered an analogy: what would Americans do if rockets were fired from Canada or Cuba? The question has been repeated with docility by congressional leaders of both parties; but the rockets are assumed to come suddenly without cause. The choking of the Gaza Strip by land, sea, and air, the rejection by the US of the Palestinian Unity Government, the coup launched by Fatah and bankrolled by the US, which ended in the seizure of power by Hamas—all of this happened before the rockets fell from the sky. It is as if it belonged to a pre-historic time."'
Lees verder: http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/20746