July 27, 2014, Issue 205
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
jacdon@earthlink.net
––––––––––––
1. Three Messages
2. Mass Protest In Washington, Aug.
2
3. Netanyahu Lied About Hamas
4. Jewish Peace
Activists Arrested In NYC
5. Gaza Ceasefire
Reveals Extent Of Destruction
6. Our Wretched
Jewish State
7. Iran: Huge
Protests Back Palestine
8. Debunked: 5 Israeli Talking Points On Gaza
9. Chicago Rally For
Gaza
10. West Bank Solidarity March
11. UN Launches Investigation
Of Gaza Deaths
12. Israel
Contemplates Next Steps
––––––––––––
EDITOR’S NOTES
— PROTEST ISRAEL'S ATTACK: On Tuesday, July 29, there will be
a demonstration in Kingston at the office of Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY-19th
CD) at 721 Broadway, 3:30-5-30 p.m. The demands: “Stop U.S. funding of Israel; End
the Violence in Gaza; End the Occupation of Palestine. Information, jrs@hvan.org.
— SEVERAL HUNDRED DEMONSTRATIONS deploring the Gaza war in the
U.S. and around the world have taken place in the last several days. Since
we’re rushing to finish this second special Gaza issue we only cover a few of
them. To view dozens of inspiring photos from these actions go to local
activist Barbara Upton’s site at http://clearstreammedia.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-war-on-children.html.
———————
———————
1. [Three Messages]
MESSAGE FROM ISRAEL
MESSAGE FROM ISRAEL
Here is a message from
Gush Shalom,
the Israeli peace
movement, distributed July 18
New hope for the
future
It is not enough
To reach a
cease-fire
And keep intact
An intolerable
situation
The siege of Gaza
Must be lifted
And Inhabitants of
Gaza
Must get free access
To the outside world
And a new hope
For the future.
—
MESSAGE TO ISRAEL
Members of New Paltz, N.Y, Women in Black on Main St., Saturday, july 26.
—
MESSAGE TO GAZA FROM FIDEL
————————————————————————
—
MESSAGE TO ISRAEL
—
MESSAGE TO GAZA FROM FIDEL
"Obama does not support David against Goliath, but rather Goliath against David. As is known, young men and women from the Israeli people, well prepared for productive work, are being exposed to a death without honor, without glory. I am not aware of the Palestinian’s military strategy, but I know that a combatant prepared to die can defend even the ruins of a building, as long as he has his rifle, as the heroic defenders of Stalingrad demonstrated.
"I only wish to express my solidarity with the heroic people who defend the last sliver remaining of what was their homeland for thousands of years.
Fidel Castro Ruz, Havana, July 17, 2014
2. MASS PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, AUG.
2
A broad
coalition of 30 antiwar, pro-Palestine, Muslim and Arab-American groups have
joined together to organize a national march on the White House on Saturday,
August 2 — a week away. Even if a temporary cease fire is somehow obtained,
which remains doubtful, the principal issue of ending the seven-year siege of
Gaza will not be resolved anytime soon.
The main slogans of
the day, when demonstrators gather at 1 p.m. in Lafayette Square across from the White House, are: Stop
the Massacre in Gaza, End the Siege, Halt U.S. Aid to Israel, End the Colonial
Occupation.
Buses are leaving from
many locations. The Activist Newsletter is a member of the ANSWER Coalition and
a center of information. New York City ANSWER tells us they can accommodate
people from our region if they are contacted right away.
For ticket information
go to nyc@answercoalition.org or call (212) 694-8720. Round-trip bus tickets are $40.
Buses leave Union Square Park, Manhattan
,14th St. and Broadway
(Subway:
L/4/5/6/N/Q/R; also walking distance: F or 1/2/3) at 6:30 a.m. sharp. (Arrive
by 6:10 a.m.). The buses will return to Union Square about 9:30 p.m. It is
possible to order tickets online at https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Ecommerce;jsessionid=BDC209FDC20C707FF27328DCDF13EDB6.app250a?VIEW_PRODUCT=true&product_id=2182&store_id=3041
.
People will also be
driving, carpooling, taking trains and commercial buses. Here is a map of the
destination: https://www.facebook.com/events/1505340756367346/
Here are the co-sponsors: ANSWER Coalition
- American
Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
- Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
-
American Muslim Alliance (AMA)
- Al-Awda: Palestine Right to Return Coalition
-
Al-Awda: Palestine Right to Return Coalition - New York
-
CODEPINK
- Muslim Legal Fund of America
-World Can't Wait
- Partnership
for Civil Justice
- MAS Immigrant Justice Center
- UNAC (United National
Antiwar Coalition)
- Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
- House of Latin
America (HOLA)
- SI Solidarity Iran
- Labor Fightback Network
- Al-Awda, Palestine
Right to Return Coalition, Cleveland Chapter
- Al Quds Committee
- Washington
D.C. al-Quds Committee
- Washington DC Chapter of Veterans For Peace
-
Methodist Federation for Social Action
- The National Muslim Council for
Justice (NMCJ)
- Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel
- Free Palestine
Movement International Solidarity Movement - Northern California
- Defenders for
Freedom, Justice & Equality, Virginia
- The Phil Berrigan Institute for
Nonviolence and Occupy the Dream, Reading, PA
- LA Chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild
- The Green Party of New Jersey.
—————————
3. NETANYAHU LIED ABOUT HAMAS
By the Activist Newsletter &
news sources
 |
| "Hamas will pay!" |
Now,
it turns out, he probably was lying. The Israeli police revealed that Hamas was not involved.
On Friday July 25, Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, foreign press
spokesman for the Israel Police, reportedly told BBC journalist Jon Donnison
that the men responsible for the murders were not acting on orders of the Hamas
leadership. Instead, he said, they are part of a “lone cell.”
Further, Rosenfeld told Donnison that if Hamas’ leadership
had ordered the kidnapping, the police would “have known about it in advance,”
evidently through its extensive spy system.
If the
police knew, so assuredly did Netanyahu, who nonetheless used the incident to
created a storm of public hatred toward Hamas and the Palestinians that
contributed to the government’s “justification” for another criminal bombardment
and invasion of Gaza.
Commenting
on Rosenfeld’s revelation, Mondoweiss.net declared in a July 26 article: “We
can only hope that the three-teens pretext is broadly examined, not just in
Israeli and Palestinian public life, but in the American media. It is hardly
the first time that a false story about endangered security has been used to
justify Israeli violence, from the Lavon affair in Egypt in the '50s to Moshe
Dayan’s confession about provoking Syrian attacks that were used to precipitate
the Six Day war. The only good news is that many in the west are now seeing
through the tactic and beginning to question the veracity of Israeli government
sources.”
The article also
noted: “As in the case of Weapons of Mass Destruction, many observers and journalists
never bought the Israeli story. We didn’t.” The Activist Newsletter was also
dubious, as we wrote in the July 15 Activist Newsletter: “There has been no evidence as to who killed the three
Israelis. The Hamas government may not have been involved. Some other group or
an individual acting without any authorization from Hamas may have committed
this crime.”
—————————
4. JEWISH PEACE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED IN NYC
By Alex
Kane, JVP, July 22
Nine Jewish activists protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza
were arrested July 22 after occupying the Friends of
the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) office in midtown Manhattan. The
protesters, members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Jews Say No! (JSN),
stood in the office for an hour, holding a banner, singing songs in Hebrew and
English and reading the names of the more than 600 dead who have been killed as
a result of the Israeli attack.
The activists demanded that the FIDF stop funding the
Israeli army. FIDF is a multi-millionaire dollar non-profit organization that
collects funds to send to the Israeli military. Signs taped to the JVP and JSN
members read: “Jews say no to the ground invasion of Gaza.”
 |
| Singing during the arrests. |
During their hour or so inside the FIDF office the
demonstrators kept up a steady stream of chants, slogans and the readings aloud
the names of the victims in Gaza.
As police approached, Rebecca Vilkomerson (executive director of Jewish Voice
for Peace) addressed the group:
“Looks like they’re preparing to arrest us. They have a bullhorn. When the
police come in, we’re going to tell them that we’re here peacefully doing civil
disobedience. We’re mourning all lives that are lost, but we’re holding the
Friends of the IDF accountable for helping to support the IDF to kill all these
people in Gaza—whose names we’ve been reciting for almost an hour, and we’re
still not through the list—and tell them that we’re here peacefully. We will
not resist arrest, but that we’re not leaving.”
The activists were arrested by dozens of New York Police
officers— including members of the Counter-Terror Unit — when they refused to
leave the premises. When arrested the nine sang, “We are a peaceful Jewish
people, singing for Gazan lives” as they were put into police vans and driven
away for arraignment.
———————
5. CEASEFIRE REVEALS EXTENT OF DESTRUCTION
 |
| During
brief ceasefire, Gaza women react to the destruction in Beit Hanoun. Marco Longari/AFP/Getty |
By Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian
JERUSALEM, July 26 — Thousands of people in Gaza have ventured out
from homes and shelters during Saturday’s 12-hour ceasefire to find that whole
streets and neighborhoods have been destroyed in the last week.
Israel
and Hamas both agreed to a UN request to stop fighting from 8 a.m.-8 p.m.
Saturday. An Israeli cabinet minister said on Saturday night that Israel had
agreed to prolong the truce by four hours. Hamas gave no immediate response to
the extension.
Shortly before the ceasefire took effect, at least 18
members of the al-Najar family, including many children, were killed in an air
strike on Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The family had recently
gone there to escape fighting in a nearby village, a Palestinian health
official said.
As the Palestinian death toll in the conflict reached 1,139 [on April 27], diplomatic efforts to forge a longer ceasefire continued in
Paris. Foreign ministers from seven nations – the U.S., France, Britain, Italy,
Germany, Turkey and Qatar — called for an extension of the truce.
The group had convened, along with a senior EU
representative, at the request of Secretary of
State John Kerry, who failed to win Israeli or Hamas backing for a week-long truce on Friday. There were no envoys from Israel, Egypt or the Palestinian Authority.
State John Kerry, who failed to win Israeli or Hamas backing for a week-long truce on Friday. There were no envoys from Israel, Egypt or the Palestinian Authority.
In Gaza, scenes of devastation were discovered by those who
returned to areas which had been the center of particularly intense fighting,
such as Shujai'iya, Beit Hanoun and around Khan Younis. Scores of homes were
pulverized, roads were blocked with wreckage, and power cables dangled in the
streets.
Many of those attempting to check the condition of their
homes, retrieve possessions and, in some cases, search for the bodies of
relatives seemed dazed by what they found. Some who had not seen each other for
days embraced as they surveyed the wreckage around them. Ambulances with
wailing sirens and donkey carts loaded with mattresses and pots clogged the
streets.
In other areas, Palestinians rushed to stock up with food
and essentials, and get cash from banks and ATMs, ahead of the Muslim holiday
of Eid al-Fitr, which starts on Monday (7-28).
In Beit Hanoun, close to the border, Israeli tanks stood by
as people searched through the debris for their belongings, packing whatever
they could – blankets, furniture and clothes – into taxis, trucks, rickshaws
and carts before fleeing the town.
Siham Kafarneh, 37, sat weeping on the steps of a small
grocery store. The mother of eight said the home she had spent 10 years saving
up for and moved into two months earlier had been destroyed. "Nothing is
left. Everything I have is gone," she said.
Some people were defiant. One woman pulled a black-and-white
Palestinian scarf from the rubble, shouting: "They won't take away our pride. We'll wear this to Jerusalem and
the day of victory is close."
Others were resigned. Zaki al-Masri noted quietly that both
his house and that of his son had been destroyed. "The Israelis will
withdraw, tomorrow or the day after, and we'll be left in this awful situation
as usual."
At the nearby hospital, six patients and 33 medical staff
had spent the night huddled in the X-ray department as the neighborhood was
shelled, said the director, Bassam Abu Warda. A tank shell had hit the second
floor of the building, leaving a gaping hole, and the facade was peppered with
holes from large-caliber bullets.
Two Red Crescent ambulances were hit in Beit Hanoun overnight,
killing a medic and wounding three, one critically, according to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. On Saturday, rescue workers pulled
the scorched body of the medic from the wrecked vehicle, which had been hit close
to the hospital.
"Targeting ambulances, hospitals and medical workers is
a serious violation of the law of war," said Jacques de Maio, head of the International
Committee of the Red Cross delegation for Israel and the occupied territories.
———————
6. OUR WRETCHED JEWISH STATE
 |
| On July 19th thousands of right wing anti-Arab extremists attacked a demonstration of about 600 Arab and Jewish citizens peacefully protesting the war on Gaza in Haifa's Carmel Center area. The Arab and Jewish protestors were demonstrating legally. Police did little to stop the angry mob shouting "death to Arabs" from violently attacking the antiwar protestors. |
[The author is a columnist for the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper's deputy editor. He has covered the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as writing political editorials for the newspaper. His new book, “The Punishment of Gaza,” has just been published by Verso Publishing House in London and New York.]
By Gideon Levy
The youths of the Jewish state are attacking Palestinians in
the streets of Jerusalem, just like gentile youths used to attack Jews in the
streets of Europe. The Israelis of the Jewish state are rampaging on social networks,
displaying hatred and a lust for revenge, unprecedented in its diabolic
scope... purely based on ethnicity. These are the children of the nationalistic
and racist generation – Netanyahu’s offspring.
For five years now, they have been hearing nothing but
incitement, scaremongering and supremacy over Arabs from this generation’s true
instructor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not one humane word, no
commiseration or equal treatment.
They grew up with the provocative demand for recognition of
Israel as a “Jewish state,” and they drew the inevitable conclusions. Even
before any delineation of what a “Jewish state” means – will it be a state that
dons tefillin (phylacteries), kisses mezuzot (doorpost fixtures with prayer
scrolls), sanctifies charms, closes down on the Sabbath and keeps strict
kashrut laws? – the penny has dropped for the masses.
The mob was the first to internalize its true significance:
a Jewish state is one in which there is room only for Jews. The fate of
Africans is to be sent to the Holot detention center in the Negev, while that
of Palestinians is to suffer from pogroms. That’s how it works in a Jewish
state: only this way can it be Jewish.
In the Jewish state-in-the-making, there is no room even for
an Arab who strives his utmost to be a good Arab, such as the writer Sayed
Kashua. In a Jewish state, the chairman of the Knesset plenary session, MK
(Member of the Knesset) Ruth Calderon (from Yesh Atid – the “center” of the
political map, needless to say), cuts off Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab
List-Ta’al), who has just returned all shaken up from a visit to the family of
the murdered Arab boy from Shoafat, impudently preaching to him that he must
also refer to the three murdered Jewish teens (even after he did just that).
In a Jewish state, the High Court of Justice approves the
demolition of a murder suspect’s family home even before his conviction. A
Jewish state legislates racist and nationalist laws.
The media in the Jewish state wallows in the murder of three
yeshiva students, while almost entirely ignoring the fates of several
Palestinian youths of the same age who have been killed by army fire over the
last few months, usually for no reason.
No one was punished for these acts – in the Jewish state
there is one law for Jews and another for Arabs, whose lives are cheap. There
is no hint of abiding by international laws and conventions. In the Jewish
state, there is pity and humane feelings only for Jews, rights only for the
Chosen People. The Jewish state is only for Jews.
The new generation growing in its shadow is a dangerous one,
both to itself and its surroundings. Netanyahu is its education minister; the
militaristic and nationalist media serves as its pedagogic epic poem; the
education system that takes it to Auschwitz and Hebron serves as its guide.
The new sabra (native-born Israeli) is a novel species,
prickly both on the outside and the inside. He has never met his Palestinian
counterpart, but knows everything about him – the sabra knows he is a wild
animal, intent only on killing him; that he is a monster, a terrorist.
He knows that Israel has no partner for peace, since this is
what he’s heard countless times from Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. From Yair Lapid he’s heard that
they are “Zoabis” – referring dismissively to MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad).
Being left wing or a seeker of justice in the Jewish state
is deemed a crime, civil society is considered treacherous, true democracy an
evil. In a Jewish state – dreamed of not only by the right wing but also by the
supposed center-left, including Tzipi Livni and Lapid – democracy is blurred.
It’s not the skinheads that are the Jewish state’s main
problem, it’s the sanctimonious eye-rollers, the thugs, the extreme right wing
and the settlers. It’s not the margins but the mainstream, which is partly very
nationalistic and partly indifferent.
In the Jewish state, there is no remnant of the biblical
injunction to treat the minority or the stranger with justice. There are no
more Jews left who marched with Martin Luther King or who sat in jail with
Nelson Mandela. The Jewish state, which Israel insists the Palestinians
recognize, must first recognize itself. At the end of the day, at the end of a
terrible week, it seems that a Jewish state means a racist, nationalistic
state, meant for Jews only.
—————————
7. IRAN: HUGE PROTESTS BACK PALESTINE
 |
| Mass demonstrations in Iran July 25 to support the Palestinian struggle. |
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets
across Iran on Jerusalem Day July 25 to support Palestine and protest Israel’s
attacks on Gaza.
Rallies took place in Tehran and most other Iranian cities
to observe Iran’s annual day of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The
protesters, who had photos of Palestinian children killed by the IDF in Gaza,
chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
The flags of both nations
were burned.
One of many banners proclaimed,
“Defending Gaza and Palestine is our religious duty.”
Shi’ite Iran has defended Sunni Palestine against Israeli
oppression since the country became an Islamic Republic in 1979 after the
revolution toppled the U.S.-beholden monarchy, which had close ties to Israel.
The Hamas leadership of Gaza last year declared its support for the overthrow
of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of the Iranian government,
causing sober consternation in Tehran but no diminution of Iran’s expressions
of solidarity.
According to Russia Today: “Tel-Aviv and Washington have
also accused the Iranian authorities of supplying arms to the Hamas movement,
which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU. Tehran has
always denied those claims, but Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said
that the country had provided Hamas with ‘the technology to manufacture arms.
There was a time when Hamas needed the know-how.... We gave it to them and
today the fighters in Gaza are capable of meeting their needs," Larijani
told Iran’s al-Alam TV.
—————————
8. ISRAEL's FALSE TALKING POINTS ON GAZA
 |
| This July 26 photo of a civilian section of Gaza is an example of Israeli "self-defense." |
By Noura Erakat, July 25, 2014
Israel has killed 1,000 Palestinians [now 1,239] in the past twenty-one
days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that
more than 74% of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a
population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately
15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern
aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower.
In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.
Israel’s propaganda machine, however, insists that these
Palestinians wanted to die (“culture of martyrdom”),
staged their own death (“telegenically
dead”) or were the tragic victims of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure
for military purposes (“human shielding”).
In all instances, the military power is blaming the victims for their own
deaths, accusing them of devaluing life and attributing this disregard to
cultural bankruptcy. In effect, Israel — along with uncritical mainstream media
that unquestionably accept this discourse — dehumanizes Palestinians, deprives
them even of their victimhood and legitimizes egregious human rights and legal
violations.
This is not the first time. The gruesome images of
decapitated children’s bodies and stolen innocence on Gaza’s shores are a
dreadful repeat of Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012 and winter
2008–09. Not only are the military tactics the same but so too are the public
relations efforts and the faulty legal arguments that underpin the attacks.
Mainstream media news
anchors are inexplicably accepting these arguments as fact.
Below I address five of Israel’s recurring talking points.
1) Israel is exercising its right to self-defense.
As the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, and the
Palestinian Territories more broadly, Israel has an obligation
and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. It governs by
military and law enforcement authority to maintain order, protect itself and
protect the civilian population under its occupation. It cannot simultaneously
occupy the territory, thus usurping the self-governing powers that would
otherwise belong to Palestinians, and declare war upon them. These
contradictory policies (occupying a land and then declaring war on it) make the
Palestinian population doubly vulnerable.
The precarious and unstable conditions in the Gaza Strip
from which Palestinians suffer are Israel’s responsibility. Israel argues that
it can invoke the right to self-defense
under international law as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The
International Court of Justice, however, rejected this faulty legal
interpretation in its 2004 Advisory
Opinion. The ICJ explained that an armed attack that would trigger Article
51 must be attributable to a sovereign state, but the armed attacks by
Palestinians emerge from within Israel’s jurisdictional control. Israel does
have the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, but it must do so in
accordance with occupation law and not other laws of war. Occupation law
ensures greater protection for the civilian population. The other laws of war
balance military advantage and civilian suffering. The statement that “no
country would tolerate rocket fire from a neighboring country” is therefore
both a diversion and baseless.
Israel denies Palestinians the right to govern and protect
themselves, while simultaneously invoking the right to self-defense. This is a
conundrum and a violation of international law, one that Israel deliberately
created to evade accountability.
 |
| Gaza family leaving home for safety. |
Israel argues that its occupation of the Gaza Strip ended
with the unilateral withdrawal of its settler population in 2005. It then
declared the Gaza Strip to be “hostile territory” and declared war against its
population. Neither the argument nor the statement is tenable.
Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected
their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip
and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague
Regulations. To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space,
territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the
movement of all goods and people.
Israel argues that the withdrawal from Gaza demonstrates
that ending the occupation will not bring peace. Some have gone so far as to
say that Palestinians squandered their opportunity to build heaven in
order to build a terrorist haven instead. These arguments aim to obfuscate
Israel’s responsibilities in the Gaza Strip, as well as the West Bank. As Prime
Minister Netanyahu once explained, Israel must ensure that it does not “get
another Gaza in Judea and Samaria…. I think the Israeli people understand now
what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which
we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River
Jordan.”
Palestinians have yet to experience a day of
self-governance. Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when
Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely
when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a “humanitarian
catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access
clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs. The
World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable
by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation
in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.
3) This Israeli operation, among others, was caused by
rocket fire from Gaza.
Israel claims that its current and past wars against the
Palestinian population in Gaza have been in response to rocket fire. Empirical
evidence from 2008, 2012 and 2014 refute that claim. First, according to
Israel’s Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, the greatest reduction of rocket fire came through
diplomatic rather than military means. This chart
demonstrates the correlation between Israel’s military attacks upon the Gaza
Strip and Hamas militant activity. Hamas rocket fire increases in response to
Israeli military attacks and decreases in direct correlation to them.
Cease-fires have brought the greatest security to the region.
During the four months of the Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire
in 2008, Palestinian militants reduced the number of rockets to zero or single
digits from the Gaza Strip. Despite this relative security and calm, Israel broke
the cease-fire to begin the notorious aerial and ground offensive that
killed 1,400 Palestinians in twenty-two days. In November 2012, Israel’s
extrajudicial assassination of Ahmad
Jabari, the chief of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, while he was reviewing
terms for a diplomatic solution, again broke the cease-fire that precipitated
the eight-day aerial offensive that killed 132 Palestinians.
Immediately preceding Israel’s most recent operation, Hamas
rocket and mortar attacks did not threaten Israel. Israel deliberately provoked
this war with Hamas. Without producing a shred of evidence, it accused the
political faction of kidnapping and murdering three settlers near Hebron. Four
weeks and almost 700 lives later, Israel has yet to produce any evidence
demonstrating Hamas’s involvement. During ten days of Operation Brother’s
Keeper in the West Bank, Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians
without charge or trial, killed nine civilians and raided nearly 1,300
residential, commercial and public buildings. Its military operation targeted
Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner
exchange in 2011. It’s these Israeli provocations that precipitated the
Hamas rocket fire which Israel claims left it with no choice but a gruesome
military operation.
4) Israel avoids civilian casualties, but Hamas aims to
kill civilians.
Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting
capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of
distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not
contested. Israel, however, would not be any more tolerant of Hamas if it
strictly targeted military objects, as we have witnessed of late. Israel
considers Hamas and any form of its resistance, armed or otherwise, to be
illegitimate.
In contrast, Israel has the eleventh most-powerful military
in the world, certainly the strongest by far in the Middle East, and is a
nuclear power that has not ratified the non-proliferation agreement and has
precise weapons technology. With the use of drones, F-16s and an arsenal of
modern weapon technology, Israel has the ability to target single individuals
and therefore to avoid civilian casualties. But rather than avoid them, Israel
has repeatedly targeted civilians as part of its military operations.
The Dahiya
Doctrine is central to these operations and refers to Israel’s
indiscriminate attacks on Lebanon in 2006. Maj.
Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said that this would be applied elsewhere:
What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will
happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply
disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From
our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military
bases.
Israel has kept true to this promise. The 2009 UN
Fact-Finding Mission to the Gaza Conflict, better known as the Goldstone
Mission, concluded “from a review of the facts on the ground that it
witnessed for itself that what was prescribed as the best strategy [Dahiya
Doctrine] appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.”
According to the National Lawyers Guild, Physicians for
Human Rights-Israel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel
directly targeted civilians or recklessly caused civilian deaths during Operation
Cast Lead. Far from avoiding the deaths of civilians, Israel effectively
considers them legitimate targets.
5) Hamas hides its weapons in homes, mosques and schools
and uses human shields.
 |
| Two young brothers and one sister, killed when an Israeli tank attacked a mosque July 18 in Beit Lahia, Gaza. |
International human rights organizations that have
investigated these claims have determined that they are not
true. It attributed the high death toll in Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon to
Israel’s indiscriminate attacks. Human
Rights Watch notes:
The evidence Human Rights Watch uncovered in its
on-the-ground investigations refutes [Israel’s] argument…we found strong
evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon
storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast
majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as
the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets
from pre-prepared positions outside villages.
In fact, only Israeli
soldiers have systematically used Palestinians as human shields. Since
Israel’s incursion into the West Bank in 2002, it has used Palestinians as
human shields by tying young Palestinians onto the hoods
of their cars or forcing them to go
into a home where a potential militant may be hiding.
Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible,
humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties that “would be excessive
in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” A
belligerent force must verify whether civilian or civilian infrastructure
qualifies as a military objective. In the case of doubt, “whether an object
which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a
house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective
contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not
to be so used.”
In the over three weeks of its military operation, Israel
has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed
five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two
churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries;
injured 4,620; and killed over 1,000 Palestinians. At plain sight, these
numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that
amount to war crimes.
Beyond the body count and reference to law, which is a
product of power, the question to ask is, What is Israel’s end goal? What if
Hamas and Islamic Jihad dug tunnels beneath the entirety of the Gaza Strip
—they clearly did not, but let us assume they did for the sake of argument.
According to Israel’s logic, all of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians are
therefore human shields for being born Palestinian in Gaza. The solution is to
destroy the 141 square mile strip of land and to expect a watching world to
accept this catastrophic loss as incidental. This is possible only by framing
and accepting the dehumanization of Palestinian life. Despite the absurdity of
this proposal, it is precisely what Israeli society is urging its military
leadership to do. Israel cannot bomb Palestinians into submission, and it
certainly cannot bomb them into peace.
— From
The Nation. Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and activist, is an Abraham
L. Freedman Fellow at Temple University, Beasley School of Law, and a
contributing editor of Jadaliyya.
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9. CHICAGO RALLY FOR GAZA
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| Big turnout in Chicago July 20 to condemn Israeli attack on Gaza. |
An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people demonstrated in Chicago July 20 to demand an end to the Israeli attack on Gaza. They rallied, conducted a “die-in” — a symbolic re-enactment of the mass civilian casualties in Gaza — and marched to the Israeli consulate to press their demands.
"Since the offensive began, almost 400 Palestinian
people have been killed and many more wounded," said Hatem Abudayyeh with
the U.S. Palestine Community Network. "Almost 400 homes have been
destroyed, thousands displaced. This is not a war against Palestine, it is a
war on Palestine." Members of the Chicago Coalition for Justice in
Palestine said the rally was held to show solidarity with Palestinians and
demand an end to the bloodshed.
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10. WEST BANK SOLIDARITY MARCH
By The Activist Newsletter
 |
| Police clash with pro-Gaza protesters in West Bank July 24. |
The Israeli military confirmed troops had used "riot
dispersal means" — a term used for weapons such as rubber bullets and tear
gas.
"There are thousands of rioters there," an army
spokeswoman told AFP. “They are rolling burning tires and throwing Molotov cocktails
and fireworks at soldiers and border police.” She did not confirm or deny the
use of live rounds, but that’s usually the reason for such deaths.
.
The protest
erupted after allies of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement marched from
the West Bank city of Ramallah to the edges of Jerusalem in protest against Israel's war against the
government of Gaza.
Israeli troops have killed two other Palestinians this week
in smaller confrontations in the West Bank. Protests were also reported in
Jerusalem, where police confronted Palestinian protesters in and near the old
walled city, including outside a flashpoint holy site revered by Muslims and
Jews.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said several officers were
injured by rocks thrown at them in Jerusalem and that about 20 protesters were
arrested.
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11. UN TO INVESTIGATE GAZA DEATHS
By Agence France Presse and other sources
GENEVA, July 24 —The UN Human Rights Council on July 23 launched
a probe into the Gaza offensive, backing calls by the Palestinians to hold
Israel to account despite fierce opposition from the Jewish state.
 |
| Family member at burial of seven relatives. |
The United States, which supports the brutal Israeli action,
was the sole member to vote against. The 17 abstentions were by the council’s
European members, plus Japan and South Korea — virtually all of whom are U.S.
allies. (The Activist Newsletter believes they were too embarrassed to actually
reject this fairly reasonable proposal and too subordinate to Washington to
vote in favor.)
The probe team, yet to be appointed, is tasked with eventually
reporting back to the council. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
media office slammed it as a “travesty” that “ignored violations by Hamas... This
investigation by a kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion.” Speaking for the
Obama Administration, U.S. Ambassador Keith Harper warned the vote would
undermine ceasefire efforts. “This resolution is not constructive, it is
destructive,” Harper said, noting it lacked “any semblance of balance” because
it made no mention of Hamas’ retaliatory attacks.
12. ISRAEL CONTEMPLATES NEXT STEPS
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| Israeli soldiers examine one of many tunnels in Gaza. |
Israeli troops have spent nine days in the Gaza Strip, and
resistance from Palestinian militants has reportedly been dropping. The Israeli
military is reporting that it has been able to secure the areas it has moved
into. Thus, the ground invasion seems to have accomplished its initial limited
goal of damaging the tunnels leading from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has told
troops that Israel might significantly widen the Gaza ground operation. The
expansion of any limited Israel Defense Forces operation likely will not
address a
fundamental point in Gaza: There is no long-term military solution apart
from occupation, which would come with a high political cost and would create
new targets for Palestinian militants.
The Israeli
military's ground operation thus far has been limited to the perimeter
of the Gaza Strip, although the fighting on some occasions has brushed the
edges of densely populated areas, especially near Gaza City, where the Golani
Brigade has been deployed, and near Khan Younis, where the Paratroopers Brigade
is operating. The activity near heavily populated areas has led to intense
fighting and more Israeli casualties than previous operations in the Gaza
Strip. The Israeli military has confirmed that 35 soldiers were killed during
the ground incursion, compared with only 13 deaths in Operation Cast Lead
(2008-09) and two during Operation Pillar of Defense (2012). In Cast Lead,
1,417 Palestinians died; in Pillar of Defense, an estimated 50-100 were killed.
Palestinian casualties in the latest incursion, Operation Protective Edge, are
in excess of 800.
Meanwhile, rocket
fire from Gaza has dropped gradually to the lowest point since the
beginning of the Israeli operation. Militants fired 63 rockets from Gaza on
July 24; before that date, the average number of rockets fired per day was 130.
This may be a sign that Hamas is scaling back while working toward a
cease-fire, but it could also be the result of logistical challenges — besides
supply disruptions and the destruction of stockpiles, the very act of firing
rockets at a sustained rate diminishes rocket reserves. Israel has not been
able to completely halt the rocket fire because launch sites, Hamas'
leadership, underground stockpiles and manufacturing facilities are located in
more densely populated areas of Gaza's main cities, not in the tunnel networks
on the Gaza border.
Hamas has used tunnels extensively in the past, but it is
using them even more during the most recent escalation. Tunnels are crucial to
diminishing Israel's advantage in air power. Palestinian militants have
acquired an expertise in tunnel construction over the past decade of being
forced underground by Israeli air power. They use household tools, such as
shovels, to dig through the soft clay soil. Common construction materials, such
as concrete, wood and steel, reinforce the walls, making them harder to destroy
and able to withstand higher traffic. If Israeli troops demolish only the
entrance to a tunnel, militants can reopen it in weeks or even days.
There are three broad types of tunnel networks beneath Gaza,
each with a unique function. On the Egypt-Gaza border there are smuggling
tunnels, which Israel and Egypt have not yet been able to render permanently
inoperable. Then there are internal tunnel networks inside the Gaza Strip.
These strategic tunnels are primarily used to avoid constant observation by
Israel so militants can stockpile weapons. During combat, these tunnels serve a
range of purposes, including enabling the movement of forces and materiel and
providing shelter and command nodes for Hamas' leadership. Militants also use
these tunnels to lay mines and kidnap ground personnel, or as space to service
rocket launch sites. The third category is the offensive tunnels that cross the
border into Israel. Damaging the third type of tunnels is the stated impetus
for the current ground incursion.
Before the ground incursion, Israel Defense Forces would
typically locate tunnels by observation -- for example, spotting militants who
have surfaced to fire rockets -- or using remote sensing techniques. However,
these methods are helpful only to locate and destroy tunnel entrances. Now that
the ground incursion is well underway, Israeli forces can detect tunnels as
they go from building to building searching for entrances. When this happens,
soldiers from the combat engineers unit, specializing in counter-tunnel
operations, typically lower a robot into the shaft. Not only can the robot send
back video to the squad above ground, but it can also map the tunnel's route
and determine its material composition.
Mapping large portions of the tunnels is important because
it enables Israeli forces to destroy large sections accurately. A standard
one-ton bomb dropped from a plane will readily penetrate the
concrete-reinforced tunnels, but in order to completely demolish a tunnel
system, heavy drilling equipment must be brought in and hundreds of kilograms
of explosives have to be inserted into the passage all along its length.
Special mixes of cement injected at high pressure can also be used.
The ground operation so far has only trimmed the edge of the
entire tunnel network. While Israel Defense Forces have effectively damaged the
offensive tunnel network, the bulk of the strategic tunnel networks beneath the
population centers remains. To further degrade Gaza militants' infrastructure
and leadership, Israeli forces would need to expand the ground operation,
moving from their entrenched positions deeper into the highly populated urban
cores. Combat
in the Shejaiya neighborhood on the far eastern side of Gaza City
demonstrated what the results can be of intense urban fighting, in which many
of the Israeli military's advantages over the militants are lessened.
Any expansion of operations would clear more territory, but
it would require more manpower and would come at a high cost for both
combatants and civilians. Moreover, the moment the ground operation ends, the
militants will begin to rebuild their arsenals and their infrastructure with
plans that incorporate the lessons learned from the recent fighting.
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