Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.
Israel should have exploited the repression of demonstrations in China, when world attention was focussed on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.
— Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to students at Bar Ilan University (from the journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
Image above: The ruins of the Palestinian village of Najed in the western Negev of Israel. The Palestinian villagers of Najd were expelled and herded to the Gaza Strip by soldiers from the Jewish Negev Brigade on 12–13 May, 1948 . The Israeli city of Sderot was founded in 1951 on village land, a few miles to the south of the village site, while Or HaNer was founded in 1957 also on village land, to the northeast.
Just before Israel’s 66th Independence Day, the country acquired a new national hero.
If it is true that every nation gets the national heroes it deserves, it was a rather worrying spectacle.
The video clip that turned David Adamov from an anonymous soldier into a national figure was taken with a Palestinian camera in Hebron.
Such video cameras have become the bane of the Israeli army. They have been widely distributed to young Palestinians throughout the occupied territories by Israeli peace organizations, especially B’Tselem.
Editor’s Note: Intifada Palestine is republishing this article in remembrance of the late Patrick Seale who passed away yesterday April 11, 2014 at the age of 83 after suffering from brain cancer. He had many skills – as author, journalist, broadcaster, Middle East historian, arts aficionado and dealer and literary agent. But most notably he was the English-speaking world’s foremost chronicler and interpreter of Syria, its troubled modern history and its leadership during the past 44 years that of the al-Assad family, father Hafez and son Bashar.
In December, less than a month after the American Studies Association adopted a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions because of what the ASA described as Israel’s persistent violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people, its severe restrictions on the academic freedom afforded to the Palestinian people, and, in general, its continued violations of international humanitarian law, more than 250 presidents of American universities issued statements condemning the ASA resolution with some threatening to dissociate their universities with ASA.
“Ladies and gentlemen, peace is Israel’s highest aspiration. I’m prepared to make a historic peace with our Palestinian neighbours — – a peace that would end a century of conflict and bloodshed. Peace would be good for us. Peace would be good for the Palestinians” (Bibi Netanyahu before the AIPAC conference earlier this month).
William A. Cook
By Jonathon Cook | February 12, 2014
Forty-two years late, another Israeli war crime emerges from the shadows. In this case, dozens, and more probably hundreds, of Israeli soldiers kept a decades-long vow of secrecy. One of them is Shlomo Gazit, today a respected (in Israel, at least) academic at Tel Aviv University.
Part I
By Dr. Elias Akleh
Since the beginning of human history we have witnessed so many genocidal murderers; kings, presidents, military leaders and political clergy, who called for, advocated and perpetrated genocidal crimes against whole nations. A thorough study of those criminals shows clearly that the worst genocidal murderers throughout history were mostly Jews.
