Stand for justice and equality from the river to the sea

Subservience to Zionism’s fanatical desire to suppress freedom of speech lies behind CNN’s decision to sack one of its most popular commentators. On 28 November, Marc Lamont Hill addressed the United Nations in support of justice for the Palestinian people. On the following day, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, CNN announced “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN”. Hill’s principled stance against the oppression of the Palestinian people is seen by the enemies of peace, justice and equality as an intolerable threat to their desired hegemony.

Resistance

In his speech, Hill dared to refer to “a free Palestine from the river to the sea”, thereby unleashing ferocious assertions that he was advocating the destruction of Israel and violence against Jews. In fact, he stated clearly: “We must advocate and promote non-violence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.” Civilian resistance to foreign military control is natural and recognised. Opposition may come through non-violence, violence or, as history has demonstrated, when a society is oppressed and divided, a combination of both. The Second World War record of civilian resistance to Nazi occupiers provides myriad examples. The Palestinian people have the support of international law and they have the right to fight back against armed oppression. If they violate the law, they may be condemned but that does not invalidate their right to resist.

Assault on freedom of speech

Zionist attempts at denying freedom of speech include trying to reserve selected terminology for one side only. Mitchell Plitnick, former vice president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and former director of the US Office of B’Tselem, noted in his article Double Standards Key to Attacks on Marc Lamont Hill that a headline in the Times of Israel (TOI) on 1 January 2013 read: “Palestinians will outnumber Jews between the river and the sea by 2020”. Yet, as Plitnick observed: “No one accused TOI editor-in-chief David Horovitz of calling for the eradication of Israel for that headline.” Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, has declared: “This entire land is ours. All of it, from the Sea to the River.” But when Zionists make such comments, supporters of the ideology quietly agree.

As the Zionist enterprise moves closer to the realisation of its territorial ambition, increasing Israeli state terrorism in the West Bank and ever greater violence against the people of Gaza, together with moves such as Israel’s Jewish Nationality Law and anti-miscegenation law starkly reveal the ideology’s true nature. Last month, following a request for action from Adalah – the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, four United Nations Special Rapporteurs expressed ‘deep concern’ that Israel’s new Nation-State Law is “discriminatory in nature and in practice against non-Jewish citizens and other minorities and does not apply the principle of equality between citizens, which is one of the key principles for democratic political systems.” The law appears to call into question Israel’s commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the special rapporteurs’ fear that it has the potential to lead to “further discriminatory legislative and/or policy actions, which contravene the international human rights obligations of Israel.” Israel has been given 60 days from 2 November 2018 to respond and any response from Israel will be forwarded to the United Nations Human Rights Council for consideration.

Zionism means dispossession, division and conflict

The conflict is not between Palestinians and Jews but between Zionism and anti-Zionism. Zionism claims to speak and act on behalf of all Jews and would have us ignore the views of anti-Zionist Jews who believe in racial equality and justice. Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, calls for free and public debate concerning the Zionist enterprise. A Holocaust survivor and anti-Zionist Jewish activist, the late Hajo Meyer, forced to flee his native Germany as a teenager, escaped to the Netherlands but was captured by the Nazis following Germany’s invasion and military occupation of the country. He was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp but managed to survive, unlike his parents who were murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Meyer’s experience led him to determine that “Never Again” must mean never again, for anyone. It was this understanding that brought him to support the Palestinian people’s struggle against Zionist oppression. However, when the British Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, attended a meeting with Meyer in 2010, mainstream new media hysteria was rife and it continues to this day. Corbyn has been forced to distance himself from Meyer’s humanitarian views and has even felt obliged to apologise. Another Jewish activist, Tony Greenstein, who has been expelled from the British Labour Party, is paying the price of refusing to cave in to Zionist pressure to silence him. In the most recent assault, Greenstein has had his Twitter account deleted in response to tweets from an anti-Palestinian group, the Jewish Leadership Council. Surrender to the Israel Lobby means betrayal of the Palestinian people and the undermining of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

An Israeli anti-Zionist

Miko Peled, a human rights activist born in Jerusalem, was brought up with Zionism and his book, The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, is an enlightened vision of realty and what may be achieved by determined resistance and co-operation. Miko Peled defends Marc Lamont Hill, asking “If Palestine is not from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, then where is it?” As he says, Israel has, in any case killed the so-called Two-State solution. He writes: “For over fifty years, or since the war of June 1967, consecutive Israeli governments had made it clear through statements and creation of facts on the ground that the entire country is Israel and belongs to Jews and is for Jews to settle. No part of the country has been spared the spread of Zionist settler colonialism, violence and restrictions.” Telling it like it is, Miko Peled notes that Israel has “turned the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp.” Thanks to Zionism, Gaza’s residents “are mostly homeless refugees with soaring levels of poverty and unemployment.” Those who follow Zionist rhetoric will know that, in Israel, they call the Palestinian West Bank ‘Judea and Samaria’. For Zionists, the only people living in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank who are worthy of consideration are illegal (according to international law) Israeli settler colonists. Their presence in Palestine, at the cost of Palestinian land and liberty, is a war crime.

Jerusalem

Ever since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the international community has recognised Jerusalem as a ‘corpus separatum’ subject to administration by the Trusteeship Council on behalf of the United Nations. The Israeli Occupation of the city and Israel’s declaration of Jerusalem as its capital has been condemned by the United Nations in dozens of resolutions which affirm the illegality of the foreign military occupation and annexation of the city. The Zionists, themselves, declared Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital on 14 May 1948 and the UN holds all Israel’s attempts to change the status of the city as null and void. In July 2004 the International Court of Justice affirmed that also.

In seizing West Jerusalem, Israel ethnically-cleansed all the Palestinians from the city, depriving them also of their their homes and property. Less than twenty years later, in 1967, the Zionist enterprise compounded its war crime and took the next step towards achieving its territorial ambition by militarily occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has enforced its contemptuous presence through the imposition of discriminatory laws and rule that has changed the geographic and demographic composition of Jerusalem. It has accomplished this through land theft, the seizure of Palestinian land, now reserved for the exclusive use of Jews and, by making life for Palestinians so intolerable, put immense pressure upon them to give up and leave altogether. This racial discrimination is known as ‘Judaisation’. For anti-Zionist Jews this is an unbearable insult.

When the death of a child can, in the ‘right’ context, make headline news, the deaths of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli military almost never do. For instance on 11 December, Ahmad Yasser Sabri Abed (aged four years and eight months) died of wounds sustained in Israeli Army sniper fire on protesters in the Gaza town Khuza’a on 8 December. But even less likely to be noticed are the daily hate-filled population-control activities carried out by Israel’s Occupation enforcers and the settlers they support. Here are a few, committed since the beginning of this month alone – up to and including 11 December.

Abductions:

13-year-old child: Mu’taz Salim Al-Rajabi.
14-year-old refugee: Qusay Wassim Nayef Al-Badawi.
14-year-old youth: Issa Imad Al-Ateti.
15-year-old boy: Ahmad Shaher Ghayth.
Israeli forces raided Beit Ummar at 2am and abducted two minors, Amr ‘Issa al-Za’aik (16) and Majdi Morshid Mohammed Awad (14) and stole a villager’s motor vehicle during a home invasion.
Israeli forces, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, raided the Jenin UN refugee camp at 2:45am and searched several homes, wounding four residents, Amin Amin Amin Bani Ghra and three minors: Qais Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Bitawi (14), Majed Mahmoud Ahmad Abu Naasah (15) and Youssef Mahmoud Ibrahim Badawi (17). Israeli soldiers also abducted a 15-year-old boy, Mahmoud Murad Mahmoud Al-Sa’di, during the assault on the refugee camp.
Israeli soldiers manning the Abu al-Rish checkpoint seized, and held captive for a time, a 13-year-old boy: Abed Zaki Marmar.

Acts against Palestinian schools and education

In the Hebron district, the Israeli Army destroyed all seven classrooms at a school in al-Samiya village. In the Nablus district, Israeli forces raided Beit Dajan village, plundering a building site of roofing tools being used in the construction of a school, and forcing the builders to stop work. Back in the Hebron district, Israeli forces, detained the head of the al-Samiya Village Council and 13 other people employed by the Council, who were attempting to rebuild the seven classrooms destroyed by the Israeli Army two days previously. The construction workers were told they would be held captive for two weeks. In the Ramallah district, Israeli forces issued an order to halt building work on a school in the Wadi Suleiman district of Beit Liqiya and, in Hebron, the Israeli Army plundered a school building site of tents and construction material. On 11 December, the Israeli Army yet again raided the village of Beit Dajan, again ordering the school administrators to halt construction on additional classrooms and preventing the steadfast construction workers from resuming their work. No doubt, the people will continue trying to resist but, without outside support, they have little chance.

Israel claims its violence and oppression derive from a need for security but the spiteful nature of the Zionist regime’s conduct points to something quite otherwise.

Home invasions

This month already there have been 61 invasions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli Army, 38 of them at night. Imagine if it was your home or the homes of close family members and friends. Imagine the trauma that children face, being awakened at night to experience the invasion of their homes and the humiliation of their parents at the hands of heavily armed and uniformed foreign soldiers. The Israeli Army shows little morality or respect in such invasions of privacy. On 2 December, at 2am, Israeli forces raided Fasayil village, searching several homes and robbing one householder, Mahmoud Hussien Nuwarat, of cash to the value of 50,000 NIS (US$12,875) – they also seized gold jewellery. On 3 December, Israeli forces, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, raided Tulkarem from midnight until 5am. They searched several homes, killing one resident, Mohammad Husam Abdel-Latif Habali (22), and wounding another, Mohammad Maher Salah Habayib. The next day, at 2am, the Israeli Army raided Fasayil village and searched several homes, robbing one householder, Mahmoud Hussien Nuwarat, of cash to the value of 50,000 NIS (US$12,875) as well as gold jewellery.

At 2:45am, on 5 December, Israeli forces, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, raided the Jenin UN refugee camp and searched several homes, wounding four residents, Amin Amin Amin Bani Ghra and three minors: Qais Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Bitawi (14), Majed Mahmoud Ahmad Abu Naasah (15) and Youssef Mahmoud Ibrahim Badawi (17). Perhaps the worst form of home invasion is to have it destroyed. On 8 December, the Israeli Occupation forced Juhar Hashimat and his brother, Murad, to destroy their own homes in the Wadi Qaddim, in the Jerusalem suburb of Silwan, and, in addition, extorted heavy financial payments from them.

Occupation settler violence

On just one day, 10 December, there were more than seven acts of racist violence perpetrated by illegal Israeli settlers against the native Palestinian community. In Jerusalem, Israeli settler militants marched through the Old City, yelling racist messages and calling for the expulsion of Islamic Waqfs from the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In the district of Ramallah Israeli Occupation settlers stoned and damaged several passing vehicles at the entrance to Beitin village. Then at dawn they invaded the village, slashing tyres and spray-painting racist hate-messages on motor vehicles and the walls of villagers’ homes. A mob from the Yitzhar Israeli Occupation settlement pursued and terrorised a child trying to collect scrap metal in Huwara. That evening they invaded Huwara again and stoned the home of a villager: Ahmad Lutfi.

US and Israel outnumbered at UN

In what The Times of Israel called a “crushing defeat to Israel and its American ally after weeks of diplomacy”, a US resolution condemning the Palestinian Resistance movements, including Hamas, failed to achieve a required majority at the UN General Assembly. This was despite US pressure that included the US Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, sending letters to diplomats from nine Arab countries, asking them to support the US.

Zionism’s human rights violations and war crimes have led to Israel’s isolation. On 6 December, yet another UN General Assembly resolution reiterated the UN call for an end to Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Assembly also called for a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on relevant United Nations resolutions. The minority vote of six against the Resolution (document A/73/L.49) included Australia, Israel and the United States. In spite of 156 votes in favour of due observance of international law, human rights will continue to be trampled upon by the most militarily powerful nation on earth. The United States empowers Israeli aggression with $3.8 billion a year in military aid and has supported the Zionist state ideologically by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. No other country on earth receives such largesse.

Bring Israel to account

How will Israel be brought to account? A country like New Zealand could shame the US and Australia by joining the majority of grass-roots world opinion, firmly condemning Israel’s human rights abuses. The Zionist lobby demands, and gets, unconditional support from Australia and the US but it also suggests that, for those who cannot go that far, keeping quiet will suffice. Keeping quiet is collusion – call Israel to account – with every human rights violation it commits!