Crimes against humanity

It has been one year since the August 14, 2013 Rab’a Square massacre in Egypt, when the Egyptian police and army opened fire on demonstrators opposed to the military’s July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Using tanks, bulldozers, ground forces, helicopters and snipers, police and army personnel mercilessly attacked the makeshift protest encampment, where demonstrators, including women and children, had been camped out for over 45 days. The result was the worst mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.

Washington, August 12, 2014 (IPS) — United Nations officials and human rights organisations have characterised Israeli attacks on civilian targets during the IDF war on Gaza as violations of the laws of war.
During the war, Israeli bombardment leveled whole urban neighbourhoods, leaving more than 10,000 houses destroyed and 30,000 damaged and killing 1,300 civilians, according to U.N. data. Israeli forces also struck six schools providing shelter to refugees under U.N. protection, killing at least 47 refugees and wounding more than 340.

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.

Paternalism is rarely a pretty thing. In many cases, it is fair to say it is a downside grotesque feature of human relations. One person, or entity, extends a hand that does not so much help the individual in trouble as slap the person in question across a grieving face. When it comes to international relations, the image gets even uglier. Here, states can assert the ultimate entitlement to assert control over a regime, or a state, which has fallen foul of appropriate conventions.

Image: United Nations headquarters in New York, the United States, Feb. 18, 2011. The United States, a permanent Security Council member, on Friday vetoed a UN draft resolution that condemned continued Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and demanded Israel ” immediately and completely cease” all such activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)
 
 

I often don’t write about the things that make me angry. Mostly that’s because I’ve written previously on something similar, and I don’t like repeating myself. Sometimes it’s because it’s very draining to spend time and energy trying to write relatively lucidly and without hysteria on something that almost no one will read and because I know it won’t make any difference what I think and say. So I think why bother?

Friday July 25th was the eighteenth day of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. 1.7 million people, walled in, embargoed, with no place to hide, squeezed now into just 66% of the forty mile long strip of land on orders from the Tel Aviv Reich. Six Palestinians were killed, the death toll in all on the day rose above eight hundred and fifty. The hospital in Beit Hanoun was bombed, part of an ongoing attack until minutes before midnight, injuring a number of people.

Today’s Guardian includes an article that appears to be excusing Israel of responsibility for the massive death toll it has inflicted on Palestinian civilians. But, more significantly, it includes a lot of useful – and damning – information about just how “indiscriminate” Israel’s weapons really are.

…while the international community gives Israel all the elbow-room it needs to crush Gaza and its nuisance inhabitants permanently

 

For a shamefully bloody example of how little single issue identity politics can mean, check out the unity of supporters and opponents of same sex marriage, supporters and opponents of abortion, and supporters and opponents of every other divisive issue clouding the minds of a population kept from acting as a democratic majority, we need look no further than the disgrace of this government’s congress voting to approve and finance the current Israeli slaughter in Gaza.