Any act of violence aimed at terrorising people to force them into obedience is abhorrent and cannot be justified under any circumstance. It dehumanise the victims and the perpetrators. It dishonours any cause, whatever noble.
Nabil Anani (Palestine), Demonstration #2, 2016.
Misleading political semantics have been clouding the reality of the UK/US colonial project in Palestine for 75 years in the heart of the Middle East: 1
- A state with no constitution and borders (only a demarcation line) to be able to expand borders indefinitely through war, dispossession, ethnic cleansing and annexation;
- A state founded since 1948 on deliberate massacres and deportation of local Palestinians by paramilitary and terrorist groups (Stern, Lehi, Irgun, Haganah) which formed the nucleus of the new army and state;
- An ethno/racial, communautarist, self-defined, self-proclaimed and openly racist state for Jews, at the exclusion of others;
- A state policy inspired and legitimized by religious beliefs such as the "promised land", "the chosen people", "a land without people for a people without land (Note that in this slogan the people of Palestine is simply negated, ideological prelude to their physical obliteration);
- A deliberate, legal and institutional policy of apartheid by a state which pretends to be the"only democracy"in the Middle East (a policy which has been analysed, documented, exposed and decried for several decades by Israelis and other writers) 2
- The fallacies of a"peace process"that has been weaponised by its successive Israeli governments, whatever their colour, to pursue a merciless war against Palestinians (the so-called"Oslo peace process"), that has been used as a misleading cover to continue to dispossess and expel them violently from their lands, homes, waters and orchards; 3
- The continued use of the misleading term"occupied Palestinian territories", as if these territories were just temporarily"occupied"- when they have been by state policy, methodically - and illegally - colonized by Jewish settlers (700,000 new settlers since the Oslo process in 2013, in 279 settlements, half of which illegal"outposts", even under Israeli law, but protected by the occupation army). These lands are not just"occupied"they are colonized, so let's speak about what they are:"Colonized Palestinian Territories";
- An army which pretends to be"the most moral of the world"but which has been killing and burying under bombed rubbles in the first four weeks over 3200 children. Note that aiming at children is no accident but an old policy: 20 years ago, during the second intifada, medical evidence showed that a large number of children were deliberately targeted by Israeli sharpshooters in the left or right eye... 4
- The systematic use of"anti-Semitism"as a weapon of intellectual, moral, economic and social exclusion, against active forms of peaceful dissidence and resistance, to justify unconditionally the support to the worst policies;
- A political leadership - whatever its colour - which has been exploiting the victimisation of the horrible fate of the destruction of Jewish communities in Europe, in the name of the"Holocaust", to legitimize a policy of slow - and since 7 October 2023 - open genocide against Palestinians;
- A state which has been killing dozens of thousands Palestinians since 1948; which has legitimized the use of torture through a Supreme court ruling; 5 and which has been detaining over the years 800 000 Palestinians, in almost complete impunity 6 (There are 7000 Palestinians political prisoners currently detained, among them 200 children and 62 women; 2070 are held administratively (that is, arbitrarily, without trial on security grounds by Israel); 7
- A supremacist Jewish state policy by an ethnicized and theologized nation-state which considers itself above the common norms of nations, which pretends to respect the rule of law, and which has been ignoring dozens of United Nations resolutions and keeps trampling upon all fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human rights law;
- All this supported by Western governments that we elect - the US, the UK, France, the EU and others - which claim to uphold the rule of law, democracy and the human rights of men, women and children burned and buried under tons of bombs and rubbles; and which continue to give moral lessons to the world for far too long, in the name of the right of the strongest.
A genocide in the name of"our values"?
No, thank you!
Christophe Peschoux - Geneva, November 2023
1 See what Joe Biden said on the record in 1986: Joe Biden, 1986 « Si Israël n'existait pas, les USA devraient inventer un Israël » ; see also B'tselem figures, as of June 2023: btselem.org
2 See Uri Davis: Israel: An apartheid state, Zed Press, London, 1987, one of the oldest analysis of apartheid; see also the writings of Israel Shamir, Yeshayahou Leibowitz, Shlomo Sand, Marwan Bishara, Derek Cohen, former US President Carter, Norman Finkelstein, and the well-documented analysis of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Amnesty International, of the Special Rapporteur on the OPT, and others...
3 5574 Palestinian homes were destroyed by the army between 2006 and mid-2023, leaving 8600, homeless half of whom, children (source : B'Tselem : statistics.btselem.org
4 See the report of the international commission of enquiry about the second Intifada, led by Professor John Dugard, (South Africa), Dr. Kamal Hossain (Bangladesh) and Professor Richard Falk (United States of America), in which I was an investigator (see un.org
5 "The use of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian detainees and prisoners has been reported. Invoking the 'ticking bomb' and 'moderate physical pressure' doctrines, the Israeli executive has litigated in court the 'necessity' of using techniques that may amount to torture to allegedly deter attacks against Israeli civilians. Torture remains an available method to intimidate and obtain confessions or information, primarily, although not exclusively, from "security suspects". The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which has addressed cases of Palestinians since 1992, has repeatedly affirmed that widespread and systematic arbitrary deprivation of liberty may amount to a crime against humanity. » See, SR OPT, citing Israel, Landau Commission Report (1987); The Public Committee Against Torture v. Israel (1999); Abu Gosh v. Attorney General (2017) ; and among many other articles : Imseis, Ardi. "Moderate Torture on Trial: Critical Reflections on the Israeli Supreme Court Judgement concerning the Legality of General Security Service Interrogation Methods." Berkeley J. Int'l L. 19 (2001), pp. 336-338, 342-349.
6 To give an idea of the magnitude of the practice, between 1967 and 2006 only, Israel has incarcerated over 800,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories. Over 100,000 Palestinians were detained during the First Intifada (1987- 1993), 70,000 during the Second Intifada (2000-2006), and over 6,000 during the 'Unity Intifada' (2021). Approximately 7,000 Palestinians, including 882 children, were arrested in 2022. As of early 2023, almost 5,000 Palestinians, including 155 children, were detained by Israel, 1,014 of them without charge or trial. See Special Rapporteur on the OPT presented to the HRC in July 2023, quoting Addameer figures (A/HRC/53/59, 9 June 2023)
7 see Addameer statistics at addameer.org; or B'tselem figures, as of June 2023: btselem.org
Source: Arretsurinfo.ch
Traduit en français par l'auteur: Arrêt sur info.ch
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