[News] An International Crime Called Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Elias Akleh – An International Crime Called Gaza

By 
<http://palestinethinktank.com/author/guest-post/>Guest 
Post • Dec 29th, 2009 at 10:55
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/12/29/elias-akleh-an-international-crime-called-gaza/

A fully pre-meditated international crime of 
genocide has been taking place during the last 62 
years in the heart of the Arab World. The victims 
are the Palestinian people especially those in 
the Gaza Strip. The assassin is the worst ever 
terrorist group deceptively called the Israeli 
Defense Forces under the leadership of the 
theocratically most racist "god's chosen" 
deceitfully self-proclaimed "democratic 
Jewish-only" Israel. Israel had been created, 
financed, armed, and politically protected by, 
mainly, British and American 
rapture-vision-obsessed Talmudist power elites 
consisting of profit-seeking financiers and military-industrial complex.

In December 2008 this Israeli Terrorist Forces 
added another war crime to its long list of war 
crimes against the Palestinians since 1948. One 
more time the international political community 
had become an accomplice to one more Israeli war 
crime either by being a passive silent witness or 
by becoming an active participant and protector 
of Israeli war criminals. One more international 
war crime had been perpetrated against the 
Palestinians. It is an international crime since 
multi political regimes; Israeli, American, 
European and even Arab governments, had joined in 
this crime that is STILL GOING ON up to this very minute.

For almost the last three years Israel had 
subjected Gaza to an illegal economic siege, 
which in itself constitutes a crime against 
humanity. Israel had, and still is, preventing 
the entry into Gaza of vital life sustaining 
products such as food stuff, fuel, medicine and 
needed medical equipment, water purification 
equipment and many building materials. This is a 
genocidal crime using hunger and thirst as weapons.

Starting late December of 2008 and for continuous 
22 days Israeli terrorist army had perpetrated a 
genocidal war crime against Gaza Palestinians. 
The Israeli army, known to be the fourth powerful 
army in the world, attacked unarmed civilian 
Palestinians of Gaza comprising mostly of 
children, women, and old people. There was no 
regular army in Gaza to face the well equipped, 
well trained to murder Israeli army. Only few 
male civilians, who took it on themselves to 
carry the light arms they could obtain to resist 
the Israeli war criminals in order to protect their own families.

The Israeli military radio station announced that 
half of the Israeli air force had conducted 2500 
air sorties dropping a total of 1,000,000 KG of 
explosives on the civilian families of Gaza. This 
is not counting the shells fired by the artillery 
and tanks. They had used high precision 
GPS-guided bombs to destroy vital locations such 
as the UN food warehouse and schools, government 
buildings, hospitals and medical clinics, 
religious buildings and civilian institutions.

 From his observation of the video taped 
explosions in Gaza, the British weapons expert Dy 
Williams concluded that the Israeli army had used 
DIME bombs to guarantee murder of victims, 
Phosphorous bombs producing 900 centigrade 
degrees of heat, and DU bombs producing 5,000 
centigrade degrees of heat, that is equal to the 
heat of the sun surface. The Israeli soldiers, 
themselves, had admitted and boasted to "Breaking 
The Silence" organization of committing war 
crimes in Gaza. These included, among many, the 
deliberate murder of civilians including women 
and children, using civilians as human shields, 
shelling homes after hording groups of civilians 
inside, destroying and vandalizing properties and 
civilian homes, and writing hate and racial graffiti on walls.

Israeli criminal leaders were not satisfied with 
mere destruction of Gaza infrastructures, 
contaminating agricultural land and water, and 
murdering some 1500 Palestinians. They had 
carefully chosen the most lethal weapons of mass 
destruction (WMD) that will cause the death of 
Palestinians, who survived the attack, and the 
death of their future born generations. Besides 
their devastating environmental contamination 
effects the Israeli bombs were found to have long 
lasting reproductive toxic, carcinogenic, 
genotoxic, fetotoxic and pathogenic effects on humans.

A study titled "Craters Gaza 2006/09 and 
respectively WP Bomb Gaza 2009" published on 
<http://www.newweapons.org/>www.newweapons.org 
was done by Prof. Mario Barbieri CNR, Rome, Prof. 
Maurizio Barbieri, University of Rome, and Prof. 
Paola Manduca, University of Genova. They 
analyzed dirt samples from four bomb craters in 
Gaza, and residual components of spent Israeli 
bombs. Their analyses found unusual 
concentrations of Molybdenum (male sperm 
toxicant), copper, nickel, cadmium and Mercury 
(carcinogenics), Tungsten (genotoxic and 
fetotoxic), Zinc and Manganese (carcinogenic and 
fetotoxic) Aluminium (fetotoxic and pathogen 
affecting nervous system and kidneys), and Cobalt 
(DNA repair inhibitor and mutagenic).

Even now, after a year of the Israeli barbaric 
war crimes against Gaza, the Israeli air force 
bombards life vital centers, while the Israeli 
army use bulldozers to raze fertile farm lands, 
destroy crops, and shoot farmers. The Israeli 
attack boats have become worse than the Somali 
pirates. They attack and sink Palestinian fishing 
boats. They fire at, kidnap, and confiscate 
international humanitarian aid materials loaded 
on boats of "Free Gaza" organizations.

In a blatant violating of all international laws 
and a disdain to all humanitarian appeals the 
terrorist Israeli state had severely tightened 
its military siege against the Gaza Strip after 
the end of its last onslaught in January 2009. 
Palestinians in Gaza are living without clean 
drinking water, bare minimum food, without 
electricity, and without the necessary medical 
supplies. This is a real holocaust. A holocaust 
is the premeditated plan to exterminate masses of 
people (such as the 1.5 million Palestinians in 
Gaza), whether through gassing, incendiary 
phosphorous, DU and WMD bombs, hunger and thirst, 
or any other means leading to mass death.

Instead of coming to the aid of Palestinians the 
UN reverted to its old tactic of blaming the 
Palestinian victims and Ban Ki-moon requesting a 
permanent cease fire. In its meeting the UN had 
totally ignored the Palestinian elected Hamas 
government; a major part of this conflict. Rather 
it listened to Palestinian President Mahmoud 
Abbas, who humiliatingly begged the UN for help, 
promising to do "everything" to secure peace. In 
an indirect way he blamed Hamas government and 
did not even criticize Israel's aggression.

The UNSC issued Resolution 1860 that ignored 
realities of Israeli genocide of Palestinians, 
exonerated the Israeli terrorists, blamed the 
Palestinian victims (as usual) and equated them 
with the Israeli terrorist army. It stressed the 
urgency of and called for an immediate durable 
ceasefire leading to full withdrawal of Israeli 
forces. It called for efforts to prevent alleged 
illicit trafficking of arms into Gaza (but not 
the sale of arms to Israel). Thus denying the 
Palestinians any means of defending their lives 
against terrorist Israel. It misrepresented the 
conflict as a humanitarian crisis by calling the 
international community to provide humanitarian 
aid to alleviate the suffering of Gazans. This is 
not a humanitarian crisis; an Israeli occupation. 
It is a political conflict with grave 
humanitarian consequences. This is a genocidal 
holocaust of 1.5 Palestinians through thirst, 
starvation and use of WMD. THESE ARE BLATANT NAKED WAR CRIMES.

Ban Ki-moon was sent to visit Gaza after the 
Israeli onslaught. He cared only to check the 
bombed UN warehouse and schools but not the 
civilian sufferings. He cared more about 
buildings than humans. He later expressed his 
"pleasure" that Israeli leaders had agreed to 
meet with UN representatives to discuss 
precautions that further "accidental bombing" of 
UN facilities could be avoided. Thus meeting with 
Israeli war criminals has become a UN pleasure. 
He stated, further, that he would close any 
investigation into Israel's war crimes.

Whatever Israel bombs and destroys Western donors 
volunteer to pay for. These donor countries 
pledged $4.5 Billion for Gaza reconstruction on 
the condition that such money is paid to Abbas' 
Palestinian Authority and not Hamas. After a 
whole year of the onslaught, Gaza Palestinians 
had never received one cent of that money, and no 
reconstruction had even started. Most of the 
money had gone into the private pockets of Abbas' 
gang and to his security forces.

After the failure of Israeli siege of Gaza and 
its onslaught on the Strip to destroy the 
democratically elected Hamas government The 
Western countries stepped in to produce harsher 
measures. In February 2009 experts from nine 
Western countries (US, UK, France, Canada, 
Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and 
Norway) met in Copenhagen to discuss ways of 
combating alleged weapons smuggling into Gaza. 
Their main concentration was to use Egypt as a 
land front to further tighten the siege against 
Gaza, specifically to target the underground 
tunnels Gazans use to smuggle in food stuff, 
goods, and fuel. They also decided to send NATO 
warships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and 
Persian Gulf to intercept alleged weapon smuggling from Iran to Gaza.

At the end of January 2009 French President 
Nicolas Sarkozy sent a frigate with helicopters 
to the waters off Gaza to combat arms smuggling 
into Palestinian territories. He ordered his 
Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to coordinate 
closely with the US and EU to come up with more 
effective ways to fight arms smuggling on land 
and sea. Sarkozy said: "We have pledged to help 
Israel and Egypt with all the technical, 
military, naval and diplomatic ways to help end 
the smuggling of weapons into Gaza."

British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, issued an 
order to deploy the British Navy to the region to 
help fight weapons smuggling. "We'll send Royal 
Navy to help fight weapon smuggling," He stated 
courageously. Latest British scandal came this 
month when its Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis 
said that UK is urgently looking into reforming 
its laws to protect Israeli war criminals, such 
as Tzibi Levni, from being arrested.

Germany sent end of January border police exports 
and equipment to detect and destroy tunnels in 
Gaza Strip. German Deputy Interior Minister, 
August Hanning, claimed that Egypt had requested 
the detection equipment and the technical skills.

The newly elected American President at the time 
Barak Obama had also sent American vessels into 
the region to board all suspected vessels of 
smuggling weapons. He also had asked the Gulf 
States, especially Saudi Arabia, to help combat 
arms smuggling. The US had sent surveillance 
cameras and underground sound sensors to Egypt to 
be installed on the border with Gaza. Recently 
the US Army Corps of Engineers had constructed 
treated steel plates and is helping Egypt install 
them as an underground wall on the Gaza border to prevent tunnel digging.

While denying Palestinians acquire any arms for 
self defense the US and EU member states are 
major arms exporters to Israel. According to 
figures from Brussels the European Union member 
states authorized the export of €200 million in 
arms exports to Israel in 2007, with France far 
and away the Israel's biggest European weapons 
supplier. According to the EU's 2008 report on 
arms export licenses, published in December for 
the 2007 calendar year and consolidating the 
accounts that member states must annually submit, 
18 member states authorized a total of 1,018 such 
licenses to Israel worth €199,409,348.

The US is the largest arms exporter to Israel. 
Successive American Administration had sold 
Israel the latest and most technologically and 
most devastating weapons. According to Amnesty 
International the US had provided Israel with 
$8.3 Billion worth or weapons between 2004 and 
2007. In 2002 the US granted Israel $21 Billion 
worth in military aid. Israel's 2006 war against 
Lebanon and its 2008/09 war against Gaza were 
carried using American weapons. Still Obama's 
administration had delivered late last January 
14,000 tons of weapons to Israel delivered by the 
German cargo ship, Wehr Elbe, to Israeli port of 
Ashdod. Recently, peace prize winner, President 
Obama has signed off $2.775 Billion in further 
defense aid for Israel, a part of the $30 Billion 
over 10 years. Last Monday 12/21 Obama has 
approved a defense spending bill that includes 
$2.2 Million in funds for Israel's missile 
defense program, more than double what was 
approved last year. All this while American 
economy is collapsing, housing crisis is 
exacerbating, and unemployment rate is rising. It 
seems for Obama administration the Israeli 
citizen is more important than the American tax 
payer. Also refer to my article 
<http://mwcnews.net/content/view/29102/26/>"Arming Terrorist Israel".

EU and US don't mind breaking their own laws for 
the sake of arming terrorist Israel. Under 
Criterion 2 of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms 
Exports, Member States are supposed to "deny an 
export license if there is a clear risk that the 
proposed export might be used for internal 
repression, or be used in the commission of 
serious violations of international humanitarian 
laws". Israel is proved to commit both offenses.

The US breaks three of its own arms export laws; 
US Arms Export Control Act (P.L. 80-829), Foreign 
Assistance Act (P.L. 97-195), and the Leahy Law 
(Foreign Ops Appropriation Act).

With such extraordinary consorted international 
efforts and the use of such amassed technical and 
military powers one would imagine that Israel, EU 
and US are fighting a war against a great global 
enemy not impoverished and starved civilians 
trying to survive on a small and narrow 
war-scorched strip of land. The reality is that 
this international power is fighting the 
resisting spirit of these people against colonial 
occupation. They are afraid that such spirit may 
spread over and impede their own occupation in 
the region. To destroy this spirit these Western 
governments are willing to unconditionally 
support terrorist Israel financially, militarily 
and politically, on the expense of their citizens 
tax payers despite their own economic crises and joblessness.

The worst accomplices in this international crime 
are the Arab governmental regimes, who are 
supposed to protect their Palestinian brothers 
from such a holocaust. Rather than united in one 
nation, one government, one military, and one 
economy Arab leaders had, instead, asserted the 
division of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Thus they 
keep themselves weak and vulnerable to foreign 
occupation, interference and control that can be 
overtly and covertly seen in almost every Arab 
state. The Arab League is just a tool to keep the 
leaders in a chaotic disagreement unable to make 
any national decision. For the last 61 years they 
have watched Palestinian land gradually gobbled 
by the Zionist occupation and had not taken any 
significant action to free Palestine. Rather they 
spend their Billion oil money in buying obsolete 
weapons to rust in the desert. Finally they 
stopped financing Palestine freedom fighters and 
surrendered the penniless Palestinian Authority 
to the merciless manipulation of the pro-Israeli 
Western donor countries. While some had 
completely withdrawn from the Arab/Israeli 
conflict, others like Jordanian and Egyptian 
regimes had actively contributed to the 
suppression of all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.

During the Israeli 22 days onslaught on Gaza Arab 
leaders kept coming up with unreasonable excuses 
for not convening an urgent summit meeting. When 
they finally did meet, they, as usual, agreed to 
disagree on how to deal with the Israeli 
aggression. They finally begged the UN to 
interfere. Such delay gave Israelis longer time 
to murder more Palestinians and destroy more homes.

The Arab League, later on, issued a resolution 
calling for breaking Israel's siege of Gaza, yet 
they donated money to Abbas' security forces, 
controlled by American general Dayton, to oppose 
the democratically elected Hamas government. 
Instead of feeding the starving Palestinians in 
Gaza the League is spending $50 Million to 
protect the lives of endangered marine turtles on 
8000 square meters coast land off Al-Arish in 
Egypt. What a humanitarian gesture!

Like all colonial puppet local regimes, the 
present Palestinian Authority, under the 
leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his thugs, had 
hijacked the Palestinian leadership and offered 
Palestine and its people on the Israeli alter to 
glorify a genocidal god and his chosen people. My 
previous articles 
(<http://mwcnews.net/content/view/21063/26/>here 
and 
<http://mwcnews.net/content/view/33736/42/>here) 
discuss the betrayal of the present Palestinian 
Authority. This betrayal was recently exposed by 
Israeli audio and video recording of these 
so-called Palestinian leaders urging the Israelis 
to attack Gaza to finish off the elected Hamas 
government regardless of any Palestinian 
casualties. Abbas and his PA had also tried to 
muffle Goldstone's Report about Israel's crime.

Besides crushing dissidents and any form of 
pro-Palestinian solidarity, Jordan has become a 
training campground for Abbas' security forces 
under the supervision of the American General 
Keith Dayton. Dayton had established a twin 
sister of the American School of Assassins to 
suppress Palestinian resistance. It was reported 
that about four thousands trainees of this School 
were ready to enter and control Gaza after the 
anticipated destruction of Hamas government.

Besides suppressing and robbing its own citizens 
for the last 28 years, Hosni Mubarak's Egyptian 
regime has played the most active role, second to 
Israel, in opposing elected Palestinian 
government and in the destruction of Gaza and 
starving its people. To ease Mubarak's conscious 
for participating in such genocide of his Arab 
brothers his regime is paid a handsome $2 Billion in the form of American Aid.

Mubarak's regime has committed crimes against 
humanity by fully participating in the Israeli 
siege against Gaza. Rather than helping the next 
door homeless and hungry Arab brothers of Gaza 
Strip the Mubarak's regime preferred to send, 
last May, an airplane full with humanitarian aid 
to Sri Lanka on the opposite side of the globe. 
This regime was a stubborn obstacle in the face 
of every international solidarity movement and 
organizations, who tried to break the siege 
against Gaza. The regime blocked the entry of 
thousands of tons of badly needed food aid to 
Gaza; letting them rot in the desert heat, and 
finally burn them as spoiled food. Under the 
deceptive banner of "fighting arms smuggling into 
Gaza" it erected the most sophisticated 
surveillance equipment to detect and prevent 
life-sustaining materials delivered to Gaza through tunnels.

This month, December 2009, Egyptian Mubarak's 
regime, with the help of American Army Corps 
Engineers, is building an underground steel wall 
to block tunnel digging, and is running 
underground pipes to flood the existing tunnels with sea waters.

Egyptian regime has opposed the elected Hamas 
Palestinian leadership and sided with the Western 
puppet Abbas, whose presidency has expired. It 
has sabotaged all reconciliation attempts between 
the two Palestinian factions by imposing harsh 
conditions against Hamas government and altering 
the text of agreements before signature.

The Egyptian policy towards their Palestinian 
brothers in Gaza, many of whom carry Egyptian 
citizenship, was reflected in the confession of 
its Foreign Minister, Ahmad Aboul-Gheti, in 11th 
of November 2008 when he stated that Egypt was 
closing Rafah Crossing with Gaza to punish a 
Palestinian faction (Hamas). Opening the 
Crossing, in his opinion, constitutes recognition of Hamas' legitimacy.

Unlike the silence over the Holocaust during WWII 
conscientious citizens of these same 
international criminal governments are actively 
mobilized to act against terrorist Israel and the 
genocidal policies of their governments. Through 
Breaking Gaza Siege Campaigns many of them, such 
as Viva Palestina and The Hope convoys, are 
delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. They have 
also organized boycott, divestment and sanctions 
(BDS) campaigns to boycott companies that sustain 
Israeli occupation on Palestine such as Motorola 
and Caterpillar, as well as academic and cultural 
boycott of all Israeli academic and cultural 
institutions, all of them are supported by the 
Israeli government. The effects of these 
campaigns had penetrated the blindly pro-Zionist 
American congress, where on December 18th 
Representatives Jim McDermott and Keith Ellison 
are seeking signature on a "Dear Colleague" 
letter to President Obama criticizing Israel's 
siege of Gaza. Representatives Jim Moran and Bob 
Inglis are also seeking signatures on another 
"Dear Colleague" letter to Secretary of State 
Clinton urging her to pressure Israeli government 
to end the ban on student travel from Gaza to the West Bank.

This week protests are organized in major 
countries around the world in US, UK, France, 
Turkey, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Australia, 
Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Poland, 
Denmark, Greece, Jordan, and occupied Palestine 
(Israel), commemorating the first anniversary of 
the Israeli onslaught against Gaza.

Under the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction we 
are witnessing Western courts issuing arrest 
warrants against Israeli leaders (Tzibi Livni) 
and army generals (former military chief Moshe 
Yaalon and General Doron Almog) for committing 
war crimes. International lawyers are filing for 
more arrest warrants against more Israeli war 
criminals. Soon Israeli leaders will be chased 
across the globe as war criminals the same way 
Israel had chased German Nazis as war criminals.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a 
Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit 
Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa 
after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala 
after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the 
US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.




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