U.N.’s Richard Falk Finds Israel Guilty of “New War Crime”: Targeting Trapped Civilians
| Washington Report Archives (2006-2010) - 2009 April |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2009, pages 36-37
Southern California Chronicle
U.N.’s Richard Falk Finds Israel Guilty of “New War Crime”: Targeting Trapped Civilians
By Pat and Samir Twair
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“THERE IS no doubt the Israelis violated Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention from Dec. 27 to Jan. 18, but they also should be held responsible for a New War Crime: weakening an occupied population by extended food and medical boycotts and then targeting the people in areas from which there is no escape.”
So said Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, at a Jan. 21 “Human Rights and Gaza” Symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Israel’s advanced military arsenal devastated all of Gaza, but the Palestinians won the war, reasoned Falk, saying the Palestinians are winning the legitimacy war. Public opinion was mobilized globally, he stressed, by the horrific images of a defenseless population lacking even bomb shelters being attacked week after week by the world’s fourth largest military power.
UCLA history professor Gabriel Piterberg cited the comment by an Israeli pilot of a U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunship that Dresden will pale in comparison to Gaza.
UC Santa Barbara Professor Lisa Hajjar discussed what is legal in terms of war and what an occupying power is permitted and not permitted to do under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Despite Israel’s claim that it no longer occupies Gaza, it controls Gaza’s air, sea and land borders, thus imprisoning its residents.
Apartheid practices, ethnic cleansing, shooting surrendered populations are all war crimes, Dr. Hajjar stated. Furthermore, she noted a military power attacking a defenseless civilian population constitutes a war crime in itself.
Noted UCLA professor Saree Makdisi: “What if the British had sealed off Northern Ireland and dropped thousands of tons of ordnance on the IRA dissidents as well as the civilian population? The thing is,” he noted, “it did not [commit such a barbaric act].”
Makdisi pointed out that there are more than 750,00 children in Gaza, many malnourished because of Israel’s draconian 18-month blockade of food and medical supplies.
“What kind of a nation deliberately denies nutrition to children?” he asked.
The panelists concurred that Israel’s disproportionate pummeling of Gaza displayed a viciousness reminiscent of the last phases of other colonial wars. Professor Piterberg compared Israel’s decision to use white phosphorous to French tactics before withdrawing from Algeria.
Free Gaza Movement Update
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On Jan. 11, the eve of the seventh Free Gaza Movement (FGM) voyage, FGM co-founders Greta Berlin and Paul Larudee joined former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) at the LAX Raddison Hotel to discuss expanding goals of the human rights organization.
“Owing to the Israeli blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies, Gazans need shipments from 570 trucks daily, but fewer than 100 are allowed in each day to sustain one-and-a-half-million people,” stated Berlin. “I don’t think the Obama administration will alleviate this dire situation, so we must do something ourselves.”
She told how, since Aug. 23, FGM boats had successfully sailed to Gaza five times. The initial voyage by two vintage boats was symbolic in breaking the 41-year naval blockade Israel enforced on Gaza’s coastline. Subsequently, doctors, journalists and human rights attorneys sailed to Gaza.
Stated McKinney, who was aboard the Dignity on the sixth FGM voyage: “Palestine is a place the Universal Declaration of Human Rights forgot.”
With scarcely one day’s notification of the Dignity’s departure, McKinney flew to Cyprus, where she boarded the cabin cruiser Dec. 29. Other passengers were volunteer physicians, Cypriot Member of Parliament Dr. Eleni Theocharios, and CNN and al-Jazeera journalists.
Ninety miles off the coast of Gaza, in international waters, three Israeli gunships shined their spotlights on the Dignity for about a half-hour. The lights went out and, in the darkness, the Dignity was rammed twice in the front. CNN and al-Jazeera reporters notified their stations of the attacks. Had the wooden yacht been made of fiberglass, it would have sunk. The Israelis rammed it a third time on the side.
When the Israelis ordered the Dignity to return to Larnaca, the boat’s captain replied he didn’t have enough fuel to sail back to Cyprus. That’s when the Lebanese government dispatched a ship to rescue the Dignity and its passengers.
“CNN, al-Jazeera and the government of Lebanon saved our lives,” declared McKinney.
At this point, Lebanon’s Consul General in Los Angeles Houssam Assad Diab was introduced to a loud round of applause. “It has been heartbreaking to see the loss of innocent lives in such numbers daily on TV,” the diplomat stated. “We had to support this humanitarian cause.”
The seventh FGMvoyage, undertaken by the 66-foot Spirit of Humanity and carrying five tons of medical supplies and 21 passengers, including three surgeons, was stopped by Israeli gunships Jan. 15 off the coast of south Lebanon.
Despite damages in excess of $100,000, the Dignity is being repaired. According to Berlin, donations continue to come in from individuals the world over, and plans are underway to send a cargo ship full of building supplies to Gaza the first week of March.
“We want to establish for the Palestinians the right to leave and return to their country just as all people do,” Berlin explained.
Afghanistan Film to Air on PBS
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Meena Nanji’s documentary “View Through a Grain of Sand,” is, in the opinion of these correspondents, the best film on how Afghanistan has become a failed state. The American Friends Service Committee-Los Angeles, screened it Feb. 8 at the Santa Monica Library, where Nanji fielded questions from viewers.
Nanji uses the camera’s lens with the same precision a surgeon wields his knife to expose the malignancy that poisons Afghanistan today: rampant warlordism. And it is Afghan women who have borne the brutality of 30 years of violence in this tribal region.
After interviewing many Afghans and organizations from 2001 to 2003, Nanji ultimately focused on three women living in refugee camps inside Pakistan: a physician, Dr. Roeena; a teacher, Shapiray; and women’s rights activist Wajeeha.
Each woman’s story relates Afghanistan’s agonizing decline over the past three decades. Dr. Roeena recalls how urban women dressed in Western attire and attended university under the rule of King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Even after the Soviets invaded in 1978, she says, education was expanded for women.
Nanji narrates that Taliban forces grew up in Pakistan refugee camps, where they were indoctrinated in religious schools. The Taliban drove out the warlords in 1996, but they also compelled women to wear the burka and denied them education. With the 2001 invasion of U.S. forces, Washington financed the Northern Alliance warlords to expel the Taliban.
“View Through a Grain of Sand” is scheduled to be aired nationally by PBS stations March 8, International Women’s Day.
Human Rights Attorney Speaks Out on Palestinian Rights
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Audrey Bomse, who has spent nearly seven years protecting the rights of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, discussed her work with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. She spoke at a Jan. 25 National Lawyers Guild event in the Los Angeles home of Tim and Cynthia Anderson Barker.
Referring to Israel’s no-holds-barred 22-day assault on Gaza, Bomse stated: “The aim wasn’t to stop the rockets or Hamas. Israel wanted to crush the will of the Palestinians—to burn into their minds that they were crushed; hence, the enormity of the massacre.”
The veteran human rights attorney said a case for war crimes committed against a civilian population must be taken to the International Criminal Court.
“What else can you call it when more than half of the 1,300 fatalities and 6,000 wounded are women and children—not to mention the deliberate demolition of government ministries, 14,000 homes, 29 educational institutions, 30 mosques, 60 police stations and agricultural lands?” she asked.
The NLG was sending an emergency investigative team into Gaza to document evidence of war crimes, Bomse said, adding that international boycotts against Israel could work “because it is a small, aid-dependent country that is concerned with world opinion of its actions and legitimacy.”
“Above all else,” she urged, “support Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s move to investigte Israel’s violations of the Arms Export Control Act in using white phosphorus and other illegal weapons on a civilian population.”
Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.
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