We will have forced a democratically elected leader (in a region we want democracy to flourish in so badly that we started a war) out of office because we have suffocated the life out of the indigenous Palestinian population. At the same time that we starve Palestinian children we finance the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall, we finance the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece) and we keep silent when a racist like Avigdor Lieberman is named Deputy Prime Minister in Israel... But we've been silent in the past over the same things. Menachem Begin, former Israeli Prime Minister once led a Terrorist group that, among other attacks, killed 91 people (British, Arab and Jewish civilians) in July 1946. Begin STEADFASTLY REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE PALESTINE'S RIGHT TO EXIST:
As people slept in their beds in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Beit Hanoun, teenage Israeli soldiers loaded their tanks, turned their turrets towards the center of town and let loose a barrage of shells.
This morning 18 to 20 people, half of whom were children, were blown apart as they slept. Their extended family - mostly women - were also killed and dozens injured.
Now Hamas is claiming that it will resume Suicide Bombings within Israel. All because Israel has decided that the inconvenience of rockets being fired from Gaza into southern Israel merited a response of serial massacres of civilians. Instead of pursuing peace: by dismantling the Apartheid Wall that has ruined thousands of lives in the West Bank and by withdrawing from the Occupied Territories (instead of expanding it's settlements there, murdering Palestinians, and stealing their land) Israel has chosen violence and war. A war it cannot win.
While it saddens me that Hamas [Islamic Jihad has carried out the occasional suicide bombing in Israel during Hamas' official and unofficial cease-fire(s)] has chosen to do this, I doesn't surprise me. Let me review a few of the events that have happened in the past six months that has led to this decision:
- Eight members of a family, three of whom were children, are blown apart by a mortar shell while picnicking on a Gaza beach in June.
- A Family of nine were killed when the Israeli Air Force dropped a 225kg bomb on a residential building at 6 in the morning. July 13th (see Post from this date)
- and today, 20 killed by intentional tank shelling of a residential complex. BBC reports that most were "women and children".
And we are again reminded of the question posed by Dr. Eyad el-Sarraj, the Gazan psychiatrist, outspoken opponent of suicide bombings and winner of the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders: Given the conditions in which the Palestinian people must live the question is not "why are there suicide bombers" but "why is not every Palestinian a suicide bomber"?
From BBC reporter Matthew Price:
A father of one child who was killed told me: "One missile I believe could have been a mistake, but the number of missiles that were fired, I can't believe that was a mistake."
A resident who works in one of Gaza's hospitals says: "I have not seen injuries like this for a long time."
"The shrapnel severed peoples hands and arms and they were left lying on the ground," Dr Ali said.
He had been sleeping in his bedroom when the shells struck the next door building. The windows of his bedroom had been blasted out and there was glass on the ground.
Dr Ali tells the same story as everyone I spoke to, that there had been no anti-Israeli attacks by Palestinian militants from this area, as the Israeli military claims, before the shells struck.
"I am angry. I hate the US, I hate George W Bush, I hate of course Israel. I also hate the Arab states which do nothing to help and the international community," said Raed. But it was not anger in his eyes, it was more like an immense sadness that showed through.
That mood was shared by most of the people we saw, many of them slumped tearfully against walls in the street. Normally when something like this happens members of armed groups turn up and chant slogans with their loudspeakers.
But this time we only saw one militant appear, and he quickly vanished again.
Despite what you see on the news, the situation in Palestine is not just the Israeli Army (with it's Canadian, French, American, British soldiers) against scary, bearded Palestinian Militants. Women and children often are at the receiving end of the former's brutality.
Today after Hamas radio asked for women to demonstrate against the latest Israeli invasion of Gaza, these same women marched towards an-Nasser mosque in Beit Hanoun and acted as a human shield - on their own free will - to help Palestinian "militants" held inside the mosque by the Israeli army. The Israelis, in a fashion that we've seen time and time again, opened fire.
One 40 year old woman is dead - and dozens are injured. BBC has reported that another woman has since also died of her wounds. More than 20 people have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army in the past three days (including a child) as they relaunch an assault on the strip of land and it's inhabitants - some of the poorest people in the world. Israeli Human Rights Group Bet'selem has reported that 300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Army since Gilad Shalit (from France) was captured a few months ago.
So keep in mind, as you listen to the Israelis try to spin the story of their soldiers shooting unarmed middle aged women in order to extra-judiciously assassinate men they think might have fired rockets from Gaza into Israel (even though they rarely hit anything) that there is no excuse for this. That Israel is again committing horrible acts of violence. And that it continues to go unaddressed by us in "the West" because he think that we are not involved. We are involved.
***
Also remember that violence against the Palestinian people happens VERY DAY and goes unreported here. How about children trying to get to school in Hebron...
The Israelis, needing to protect the Fundamentalist Jewish Settlers in Hebron (see "Hebron" post from July) from the dangerous textbooks of these Palestinian children refuse them access to their school. So they conduct, as an act of defiance, their class in front of the illegal checkpoint.
Later, pubescent boys are beaten and arrested in the streets as they confront the Israeli occupying Army. So threatening those young boys are, with their backpacks and their shifty teenage eyes. Thank god those soldiers have machine guns and bullet proof vests.
If you don't think that Hebron, with it's thousands of soldiers and militant, fundamentalist Jewish Settlers looks bad... check out what they do to Christian Peacemaker Teams and UN International Observers. Or if you want to see some more proof of the difficulties Palestinian children face trying to get to school watch some of the videos provided through the Tel Rumieda Project (an organization dedicated to monitoring Jewish Settlements in Hebron).
http://www.telrumeidaproject.org/video.html
Getting from my hotel in the morning to the bus station where the minibuses head to Wadi Musa was decidedly easier than any of my previous day's travels. In front of the hotel I caught a taxi for the half-hour drive to the bus station in the north end of the city. As often is the case my taxi driver and I had an engaging discussion about the war and what Nasrallah means to the Arab world. His english was exceptional as he described his travels throughout the Arab world and what he thought about each nationality. I learned a lot form him in those fifteen minutes of driving through pre-rush hour Amman traffic. He dropped me next to the proper bus platform and because my ride was metered I felt for the first (and in some ways last) time that I wasn't being ripped off in Jordan.
A group of kuffiyah wearing Arabs sat on a blanket behind the bus - I immediate realized that they were bus drivers and bus-wranglers for lack of a better world when one jumped up and asked me in English where I was going. Standing behind the Wadi Musa bus I answered him by gesturing towards the bus, at which point he showed me to the passenger seat. Excellent! I would get to ride the King's Highway through most of Jordan from the passenger seat of the minibus! My day was starting off right!
When the bus finally filled up one of the men who had been taking his tea on the blanket behind the bus jumped in the drivers seat and we were off.
The signs for Baghdad in the windows of the tour companies surrounding my hotel last night had made me nervous. The first fifteen minutes of the drive to Wadi Musa stirred the same unease in my stomach as we drove through the northern reaches of the city, exiting via an off-ramp marked "az-Zarqa". Just a few weeks ago I had told the man in the Old City of Nablus that I thought the recently killed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "majnoon" - crazy. Now I was driving through the southern reaches of the town that he had come from and that had given him his nom de guerre. I got shivers as I thought of the young Japanese man who lost his life at the hands of Zarqawi two years ago after he had traveled to Baghdad from Amman; probably using one of the tour companies offering those cross-border-and-certain- death journeys that had frightened me so the night before. (See tangent below...). It was the second time that the war in Iraq, raging in the country next door was brought to my mind in the span of 12 hours.
The drive along the King's Highway was pleasant and impressive. It, in a strange way, reminded me of parts of Mexico: desert, mostly flat, and with random restaurant/gas stations that looked straight out of a movie.
The drive took a couple of hours and eventually we began to veer right towards the Jordan that I knew ran beyond the wadis towards our west. Over small hills we drove closer our destination passing through surprisingly vibrant small towns. It was mid-morning when we arrived in Wadi Musa and on our drive into town we passed the hotel where I, with the help of my tour book had decided to stay. Down the hill we continued past dozens of small hotels and restaurants geared towards backpackers. The parking-lot bus station held a few cabs but I decided to walk back up the hill to my hotel. 20 minutes and twenty pounds lighter I arrived at the hotel, drenched in the sweat that poured from my body in the arduous uphill climb that ended up being a lot longer than I had calculated in my mind.
No there were no dorm style rooms (as my book had suggested) but they had a good room and a special rate just for me! Imagine that - two hotels in Jordan offering me a special rate! I braced myself for a heavy quote but it turned out to be not too bad at about 20 Canadian dollars a night. The room itself was exceptional. Large with a King sized bed, the best part was the balcony that looked out over the town in the direction of Petra.
One of the reasons I chose this hotel was for it's pool. I quickly threw on my swim shorts and headed down the hall and around the corner and out into the blaring sun. I slid into the pool and was shocked by what was easily one of the coldest pools I've ever been in. I dunked my head and jumped back out. Shivering I returned quickly to my room to get ready for what would probably be only a half day at Petra.
The front desk got me a cab (fare included in my rate) and I asked to be dropped off in the center of Wadi Musa. I was starving and found the restaurant recommended to me in my tour book (not the best tour book I had decided). The Lentil soup I had was great but my shish kebab was disappointing. I decided that I was ready for the park and jumped in another cab heading for the gate.
At 20 dollars CDN for a two-day student pass into the park, the admission to Petra is a steal. I have read in a number of places that it takes at least two days to experience so I figured I could do it in a day and a half (I'm in good walking shape).
The Siq is the famous two kilometer winding, narrow, water hewn passageway through the rock that leads to Petra but before the entrance to the Siq you need to first walk a kilometer along a more open path that runs parallel to a horse road - where you can hire a horse from the Bedouins to take you to the entrance. In fact, there are a number of transportation options to and within Petra - all offered by the local Bedouins. Horse, horse-drawn buggy, donkey, camel. I didn't ride on any but I do admit, the camel was tempting.
At the entrance of the Siq you get the sense that you're entering some sort of time warp - or that you are going into a hidden world. It was really quite amazing. The Siq itself felt surprisingly long. The ground, often changing from Roman cobble-stones to well swept, hard rock was kept very clean. Along the towering walls, embedded into the stone about hip high were the troughs and ceramic pipes installed by the Nabateans 2000 years ago and carefully maintained and replaced since, that fed the arid Petra with water runoff from the surrounding Wadis. Water, an obvious precious commodity in such a hot and dry place is a hard thing to envision now, in our era of waterbottles (I had two liters in my back pack) . And water in Petra has an interesting history: in the 1960's dozen of tourists were killed in the Siq when a dam broke and the narrow passageway flooded.
I knew that the Kahzneh lay at the end of the Siq. The Treasury, as it is also known, is the most well preserved of Petra's edifices and as I rounded what I thought was just one more curve in the road, it appeared ahead of me and I stopped dead in my tracks. Rosy pink in the mid-day sun, random tourists gathered at the steps at its base and I stood in awe as its carved pillars and reliefs towered above me. I took a few shots and decided to keep moving. I wandered past ornate entrances to tombs, past the large roman amphitheatre, past ancient buildings that are only now being excavated. The immense size of the complex was almost overwhelming. I peeked into tombs and unknown buildings and chuckled to myself to see that most of these fabulously constructed buildings hold very small, usually single rooms, and are complete empty.
With the red sand of Petra gathering in my shoes, and with Bedouin children, again like their Mexican counterparts trying to eke out a living by selling mass produced trinkets to tourists, I grew tired quickly and decided to return to the Kahzneh where I sat on one of the wooden benches opposite the Treasury and stared at its wonderful artistry and watched the tourists pose at its steps and beside the well placed camels.
At some point I thought I might be able to come back tomorrow and see what I want before moving on that same day to Aqaba and back to Israel. I got up and walked back through the Siq.
***
Pictures:
Now that I'm half way through it I realize that this is one of the crazier things I've done. I'm sitting in a bus. A large air-conditioned coach... alone. The bus itself is huge with spots for 50 people and it feels so strange to be in it alone. We're idling on the Israeli side of the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge.
I'm on my way to Amman - the capital of the "Hasemite Kingdom of Jordan"- where I will later make my way to Petra. I knew that I wanted to take this border crossing because of the historical importance of the location since before I came to Palestine. I (should have known it would be particularly difficult when I had to get my visa in Canada before I came here - unlike the other two Israel-Jordan border crossings where you can get the Jordanian visa when you show up there. The issue is that the Jordanians don't actually consider it an international border crossing like they do the other two points which cross into Israel and not the Occupied Territories. This made for a difficult experience.
I start my journey after my last Arabic exam. Its just before noon on Monday; first to Ramallah. then to Jericho. Outside of Jericho my servees is stopped at a checkpoint where I nearly die of suffocation in the windowless back seat of the stretch Mercedes. It's nearly 50 degrees outside in one of the hottest towns in the Middle East. All I can think of is Ghassan Kanafani's novella Men in the Sun. "Those poor bastards" I think to myself. Finally at the checkpoint the soldier, my passport in hand, calls out to me: "Mark?" Yes "Where are you going?" Jericho (this is the entrance to Jericho - he must have thought I was in the wrong place) "Are you Jewish?" (He must have thought I was REALLY in the wrong place!).
I make it into Jericho soon thereafter and have a hard time figuring out how to get to the Bridge. One of the (many) flaws in my Arabic is that I can say what I want fairly easily but can't understand the rapid-fire responses that I get. Frustrating. So I take it a Cabbie first tell me that we need to go (back) down the road that I just came from. Im not interested in going back through the checkpoint and ask if there is another way.
He takes me in the opposite direction for 5 minutes when we come to a gated checkpoint. "Ask the soldiers if we can cross" he tell me. I tentatively approach the gate and make my way under the security bar and up to the group of soldiers. The first doesn't speak English and passes my case off to a colleague who does. "Where are you going?" he asks jovially - apparently a random white guy in this place at this time is somehow comical - I can see it I guess. "I'm trying to cross the bridge". He laughs again and says "Ok you can cross".
I jog back to my cabbie and pay him. The soldier wants me to hitch a ride in the back of a tour bus that is going through the checkpoint while I am there. Holding on for dear life, I stood in the back of a an air-conditioned (thank God!) bus filled with Arab-American tourists as it wound its way through dunes and trenches. We approached an intersection and it dawned on me that the only way to really get to the Allenby Bridge is along a settler road - or through the gated checkpoint - the reason that soldier was laughing is that he must have assumed I got lost - or assumed that I had thought that the only way to cross the bridge was going through Jericho. The regular way to cross the bridge, I suddenly understand, is not through Jericho but through the Jerusalem on-ramps to the settler road that bisects the West Bank - the same road my friends and I took to Masada and Ein Gedi a week ago. That's why my cabbie first wanted to take me back in the direction I had come - he wanted to take me back to Jerusalem.
I arrived at the terminal after what was really a ten minute ride. I got off the bus and followed the passengers through two rounds of metal detectors and into a crowded and loud terminal before I'm told by the Israeli at the second security station that I'm in the wrong terminal. It seems I ended up in the Arab terminal when I should have been in the non-Arab (ie. White) building. He politely showed me to a set of double doors where I walked into a large open room. I'm was suddenly alone and I wandered up towards one of the three Passport control booths. The young pretty girl behind the glass (only one of the booths was occupied) pointed me back to another counter at the side of the room where I paid my $40 departure fee. Back at the booth I expected a hassle but didn't even get a question rom her. She looked at my passport, chatted with another young girl colleague who joined her in the booth (apparently someone actually using this terminal draws attention) stamp, stamp, smile, and I was through into a smaller waiting area. There were about a half dozen others waiting on the modular, molded plastic benches. Five minutes later and the passport girl had replaced a colleague at the One-Last-Needless-Documents-Check-Desk. I scanned the room blankly before I asked her: "How do I get to the bridge?"
Surprised by the question she called to one of the staffers who told me that I'd have to wait 10-20 minutes. So I waited, and the others were lead onto a bus - "but not you (me)" - said one of the drivers. After a half hour - some of it slightly panic filled - I was finally told by another teenage girl that I could get on the bus that had just pulled up.
So now I'm on the bus, alone, in the "No-Mans" land between Israel and Jordan.
***
I'm taken across in this giant tour bus, just me and the driver. We chat in Arabic until he starts asking me about something to do with money and a store at which point I tell him I don't understand (I don't) and eventually he desists. I think he was asking me to do something for him and then didn't believe me that I didn't understand him, thinking that I was trying to get out of doing this money-store thing for him. So we continued on in silence. Then he charges me 2 and a 1/2 dinar when we get to the Jordanian side. I know that he's ripping me off (the "2 dinar... no... 2 and a half dinar!" was a dead give away) but I'm so happy to be out of international limbo that I pay up without a much of a complaint.
The bridge itself was a bit of a let-down. Not 30m long it crosses a meek stream-of-a-Jordan River before ending back up in the desert. In the Jordanian terminal both passport officers (not the young pretty girls you find in Israel!) are smoking. I love it - it reminds me of the border between Chile and Argentina, in the middle of the Andes, where the border control guards chain smoke and drop ashes in your passport.
He asks me if I have a visa - I do - and with the help of the tourist police I make my way to a bus that (I hope) is going to Amman.
***
Pictures:
King Hussein and King Abdallah II welcome you to Jordan
The Jordan River from the Allenby Bridge
The Allenby Bridge
I'll (hopefully!) have my thesis done by tonight and be able to return to posting the last 5 updates from my trip... but for now... something to think about...
Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified
Written by Norman G. Finkelstein
Friday, 07 July 2006
The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational examination of this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and 2) Can such a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these violations? I would argue that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative.
Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, Israel's real human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is primarily due to the formidable public relations industry of Israel's defenders as well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as labeling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic.
Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include:
Illegal Killings. Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B'Tselem disputes this: "[W]hen so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible." Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers "entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."
Torture. "From 1967," Amnesty reports, "the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the Occupied Territories." B'Tselem found that eighty-five percent of Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected to "methods constituting torture," while already a decade ago Human Rights Watch estimated that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million." In 1987 Israel became "the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture" (Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to apply torture in a "methodical and routine" fashion. A 2001 B'Tselem study documented that Israeli security forces often applied "severe torture" to "Palestinian minors."
House demolitions. "Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories," B'Tselem reports, and since September 2000 "has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes." Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of "illegal" homes that Palestinians built because of Israel's refusal to provide building permits. The motive behind destroying these homes, according to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians." Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that "the pattern of destruction…strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat." Amnesty likewise found that "Israel's extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza…is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes."
Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem has concluded. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa." If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime.
Although an economic boycott can be justified on moral grounds, the question remains whether diplomacy might be more effectively employed instead. The documentary record in this regard, however, is not encouraging. The basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. Each year the overwhelming majority of member States of the United Nations vote in favor of this two-state settlement, and each year Israel and the United States (and a few South Pacific islands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all twenty-two member States of the Arab League proposed this two-state settlement as well as "normal relations with Israel." Israel ignored the proposal.
Not only has Israel stubbornly rejected this two-state settlement, but the policies it is currently pursuing will abort any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. While world attention has been riveted by Israel's redeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University observes that the "Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel's continued annexation of West Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel." In particular Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank that will annex the most productive land and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. It will also effectively sever the West Bank in two. Although Israel initially claimed that it was building the wall to fight terrorism, the consensus among human rights organizations is that it is really a land grab to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel. Recently Israel's Justice Minister frankly acknowledged that the wall will serve as "the future border of the state of Israel."
The current policies of the Israeli government will lead either to endless bloodshed or the dismemberment of Palestine. "It remains virtually impossible to conceive of a Palestinian state without its capital in Jerusalem," the respected Crisis Group recently concluded, and accordingly Israeli policies in the West Bank "are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel's security; in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian pragmatists…and sowing the seeds of growing radicalization."
Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israel's settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the wall being built to annex them to Israel were illegal under international law. It called on Israel to cease construction of the wall, dismantle those parts already completed and compensate Palestinians for damages. Crucially, it also stressed the legal responsibilities of the international community:
all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.
A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution supporting the World Court opinion passed overwhelmingly. However, the Israeli government ignored the Court's opinion, continuing construction at a rapid pace, while Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal.
Due to the obstructionist tactics of the United States, the United Nations has not been able to effectively confront Israel's illegal practices. Indeed, although it is true that the U.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, it's exactly the reverse of the one Israel's defenders allege: Israel is held not to a higher but lower standard than other member States. A study by Marc Weller of Cambridge University comparing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with comparable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda found that Israel has enjoyed "virtual immunity" from enforcement measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against member States condemned for identical violations of international law. Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe of a "new anti-Semitism," the European Union has also failed in its legal obligation to enforce international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Although the claim of a "new anti-Semitism" has no basis in fact (all the evidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even suppressed publication of one of its own reports, because the authors -- like the Crisis Group and many others -- concluded that due to Israeli policies the "prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding."
The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism.
Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He currently teaches political theory at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of five books, including Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering.
***
Pictures:
A Palestinian Home in Bethlehem, surrounded by the 10m high wall on 3 sides.
Will Israel read the writing on the Wall?
