[News] Israelis take note: Armed resistance to occupation is legal, not terrorism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-resistance-occupation-army-legal-not-terrorism>
Israelis take note: Armed resistance to occupation is legal, not terrorism
Orly Noy - September 13, 2022
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[image: image.png]

It is doubtful if more than a handful of Jews in Israel
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> could tell you accurately
how many raids the Israeli army conducted last week in Palestinian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> cities in the West
Bank, the number of arrests they made, or the number of people they killed.

At the same time, it is doubtful if there were more than a handful of
Israelis who had not heard of the shooting incident
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-fire-bus-with-israeli-troops-west-bank-6-hurt-2022-09-04/>
on a soldiers' bus in the Jordan Valley, on Sunday 4 September.

A Palestinian shooting at Israeli soldiers - as opposed to Israelis
shooting at Palestinians - is not just an alarming “man bites dog” story
that reverses the usual order, demanding extensive reports; in all of those
reports, the event was defined as a terror attack and the Palestinian
shooters as terrorists.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-anti-terror-law-crush-palestinian-civil-society>

How Israel's 'anti-terror' law is crushing Palestinian civil society

Not a word about how the shooting targeted soldiers of an occupying army
and occurred on occupied land.

The Israeli media has a key role in shaping public consciousness to serve
the establishment’s propaganda machine, while keeping the Israeli public
thoroughly ignorant of the most basic facts.

The Israeli public, in general, has completely internalised the notion
that, by definition, there is no legitimate Palestinian struggle for
national liberation.

As with the thorough erasure of the 1949 armistice line, also known as the
Green Line, from Israeli consciousness - to the point that the mere mention
of its existence
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-forbids-tel-aviv-green-line-maps-schools>
by the Tel Aviv municipality provokes threats from the Ministry of
Education - so too the consistent labelling of any Palestinian struggle as
terrorism obscures the important distinction under international law
between an action targeting combatants and one directed against civilians.
A legitimate right

The fact is that international law recognises the legitimate right of a
people to fight for its freedom, and for "liberation from colonial control,
apartheid and foreign occupation by all the means at its disposal,
including armed struggle", as confirmed, for example, by a resolution of
the UN General Assembly
<https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184801/> in 1990.

The use of force to achieve liberation is legitimate. The manner in which
force is used is governed by the laws of war, the main purpose of which is
to protect uninvolved civilians on both sides.

The Jordan Valley shooting did not target civilians, and cannot be
considered a terrorist act. It was an act of armed resistance against an
occupying power, on occupied land.

The Jordan Valley shooting did not target civilians, and cannot be
considered a terrorist act. It was an act of armed resistance against an
occupying power

The Israeli regime and its dutiful echo, the Israeli media, treat every
action against occupation forces on occupied land exactly as if they were
actions targeting civilians in the heart of Tel Aviv: as terrorist acts
perpetrated by terrorists.

This conflation not only negates a legal or moral basis for the act; it is
also contrary to the interests of Israel’s citizens.

The relevant laws of war are designed first and foremost to protect
civilians who are not participants in the cycle of violence and to limit
that violence to actual combatants.

Israel, however, recognises no such category of Palestinian combatants;
from Israel’s standpoint, any resistance, even nonviolent resistance, to
its occupation and oppression poses a danger to security that is easily
recognised as terror, as when Israel recently declared the six most
prominent Palestinian NGOs to be terror organisations
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-gantz-civil-society-terrorist-addameer-al-haq>
.

This is a two-way distortion by Israel. Just as it treats every Palestinian
action, even those directed against soldiers, as acts of terrorism, so too
does Israel paint any Israeli action taken against Palestinians as
legitimate, even when those Palestinians are civilians.
A typical brutality

For an especially outrageous example of this policy, consider the final
conclusions published by the Israeli army regarding the fatal shooting of
journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/shireen-abu-akleh-killing>. The army
initially claimed that Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian gunfire
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-killing-al-jazeera-journalist-footage-geolocation-disprove-israel-claims>,
a blatant lie that was exposed by a series of media outlets
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-israel-washington-post-investigation-soldier-likely-fired>
that examined the evidence minutely. The revised version the army later
published is also far from congruent with the evidence.

[image: A mural depicting slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu
Akleh on a street in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, northern Israel, on 5
September 2022 (AFP)]
A mural depicting slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
on a street in the town of Umm al-Fahm, northern Israel, on 5 September
2022 (AFP)

The Military Advocate General announced that no investigation would be
opened
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shireen-abu-akleh-israel-not-investigate-killing-palestinian-journalist>,
despite the chilling admission that Abu Akleh, wearing a vest clearly
identifying her as a journalist, was shot to death by a soldier using a
sniper rifle's telescopic sight - which magnifies the target by a factor of
four.

Equally disgraceful was the Israeli response to the very minor American
request to "take another look at" the army’s open-fire procedures in the
West Bank.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-forbids-tel-aviv-green-line-maps-schools>

Israel forbids Tel Aviv municipality from posting 'Green Line' maps in
schools

Not that the army will stop murdering innocent people, God forbid, nor that
it will stop the endless invasions of West Bank cities, the mass arrests,
the midnight abductions of children from their beds - just that it will
exert itself a bit more, if it’s not too difficult, to avoid any more such
cases.

The mighty United States prefers not to find itself mired in such cases
because the victim happens to hold American citizenship, as was the case
with Abu Akleh.

Even the courtesy of paying lip service to this minor request was not
forthcoming from Israel, which responded with typical brutality
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/rebuffing-us-lapid-and-gantz-say-idf-alone-will-determine-rules-of-engagement/>.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid hastened to tell the Americans that “no one will
dictate open-fire regulations to us".

Defence Minister Benny Gantz, in the same spirit, stated: "The chief of
staff, and he alone, determines and will continue to determine the
open-fire policies."

In other words, Israel put the Americans, indeed the entire world, on
notice: no one will tell Israel how many, who, when, where or how we will
kill. And there the matter ends, until the next time.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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