Why we need to support Palestine
The ships were trying to deliver aid to Gaza which has been under a crippling siege imposed by Israel since 2006. This unlawful siege has denied Palestinians the bare necessities for their daily survival literally starving the population.
Food, medicines, water, cement, even pencils and soap are not allowed into Gaza by the Israeli authorities. In fact Israel has succeeded in destroying the Palestinian economy; made more than 80% of the population dependent on food aid and 90% living in poverty; over half of all households eat only one meal a day; more than 60% of the children anaemic and malnourished; poisoned the land and its waters and left thousands homeless since its savage military assault in the winter of 2008-9. Palestinians remain trapped in Gaza and hundreds have died because they are not allowed to leave to seek life saving medical treatment.
Let us not forget the role of the US and the European Union in this ongoing tragedy when they imposed economic sanctions supporting Israel’s blockade to punish the people of Gaza for voting in Hamas in January 2006 in free and fair elections.
This inhuman siege was further tightened when the US inspired coup against the democratically elected Hamas-led government failed in Gaza in 2007. With generous cooperation from Egypt, Israel has managed to turn Gaza into an open prison for its 1.5 million inhabitants. Egypt has now extended the prison wall underground to seal the tunnels used to carry food and other necessities into Gaza.
But let us be very clear that the Palestinian problem is not just a humanitarian crisis. The central issue is the illegal Israeli military occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Currently almost four million Palestinians live under the oldest and most brutal occupation in modern history.
Under Occupation Palestinians suffer violence, random killings, and brutality at the hands of the Israeli army on a daily basis. For more than forty years Israel has locked an entire population behind barriers and checkpoints; taken their land and water; bulldozed their homes, business and orchards; transferred populations; wantonly killed civilians with persistent shelling and missile strikes to assassinate suspected militants; carried out kidnappings, executions, torture and collective punishment.
Killings and funerals of young people and infants hit by Israeli bombs and bullets are a daily occurrence. Children are killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school and in their homes. These statistics attract scant publicity than suicide bombings. Such is the injustice, humiliation, suffering, and terror encountered by the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military.
But one will not read of these atrocities and human rights abuses in the Western corporate media because of their ‘sanitised balanced reporting’.
Israel continues to expand settlements in the Occupied Territories which is illegal under international law. It has built a separation wall inside Palestinian land which is illegal and immoral according to the International Court of Justice.
This systematic violence against the people and their lands is clearly a strategy to deprive Palestinians of their lands and to wipe out their culture, geography, identity, society and history, indeed their very existence.
The three week Israeli invasion of Gaza from 27 December – 20 January 2009, killed more than 1400 Palestinians, more than 80% of whom were civilians. Six thousand four hundred homes were destroyed and some 75% of buildings remain in ruins to this day no thanks to the continuing siege.
Throughout this carnage none of the Western powers condemned this outrage. Barack Obama who was US President elect then, reasoned his tongue and his hands were tied because it was President Bush’s last hurrah.
The devastation unleashed on Gaza was achieved with US military technology: F-16s, Apache helicopters, white phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and new weapons like dense inert material explosives (DIME) creating injuries never treated before by doctors. These weapons were provided by the US mostly as outright military grants. In fact Gaza was used as a laboratory to test the killing efficiency of these new weapons.
In September 2009, the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone found that there was evidence indicating serious violations by Israel of international human rights and humanitarian law in Gaza and Israel had committed actions amounting to war crimes as well as possibly crimes against humanity.
The US attacked the Goldstone Report and called it ‘deeply flawed’ and ‘unbalanced’. Right on cue, its European allies failed to endorse it. The Obama administration has blocked any Security Council consideration of the Report ensuring that Israel will be protected from investigations of possible war crimes.
In this recent episode, where the Israelis killed at least ten civilians, continued US support for Israeli lawlessness is again shown. The UN Security Council failed to move a resolution against Israel thanks to US insistence on a tame ‘presidential statement’ criticising what has been described by Turkey’s foreign Minister as ‘banditry and piracy’ and ‘murder conducted by a state’.
Clearly the double standard practised by the Western powers tells us that international laws do not apply to them and their friends. As such Israel continues to enjoy the protection of the US and its European allies and is unlikely to be subjected to Security Council sanctions or resolutions.
But there is good news for the rest of us. Citizens the world over have come to see the sheer hypocrisy and cowardice in the policies of their governments towards Palestine and the abysmal failure of the United Nations to uphold international law in relation to Israel.
No longer just humanitarian support, there is now a growing global solidarity movement to start boycott campaigns against Israel. Ordinary citizens and consumers are calling for action to be taken against this pariah state just as people did against apartheid South Africa with ‘boycott, disinvestment and sanctions’ (BDS).
BDS which was initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 to end Israeli’s impunity and to uphold universal human rights has now engaged the moral imagination of the world community involving trade unions, academics, churches, individuals and NGOs.
There are already many successes of consumer boycotts like European rejection of food products: in Britain Sainsbury’s and Tesco are under pressure to identify ‘settlement’ products whose sale contravenes the human rights clause in the EU trade agreement with Israel.
A campaign against Ahava beauty products made in the illegal West Bank settlements forced the company to drop its celebrity ambassador Sex in the City star Kristin Davis. Ahava products are now being boycotted in Europe.
Other BDS campaigns have targeted Caterpillar whose armoured bulldozers are used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinians homes.
In Ireland, the protest against Veolia (known in the UK for running Connex trains and sanitation contracts) goes to Dublin’s City Hall to ask the city council not to renew or sign any more contracts with this company. In Australia, Veolia lost its bid for a billion dollar desalination plant. Veolia’s contract to operate the metro system in Stockholm was not renewed. Veolia is the French company planning to construct Jerusalem’s apartheid rail system and working on the illegal Tovlan Landfill in the West Bank.
Divestment from companies doing business in Israel and Israeli companies is already happening. The US Presbyterian Church voted for ‘a process of phased selective disinvestment in multinational corporations doing business with Israel’. The University of California, Berkeley (UC) students passed a motion in the University senate urging UC divestment from companies that supply Israel with materials used by its military.
Norway removed Israel’s Elbit Systems Ltd which built the separation wall on occupied territory from the country’s global pension-fund portfolio. Elbit Systems makes electronic systems for surveillance, intelligence and communication amongst other things. The Church of England has decided to divest £2.2 million from Caterpillar.
The BDS campaign has gathered momentum since the 22 day Israeli massacre in Gaza.
Weeks after Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban.
The Scottish Trade Union Congress following the lead of the South African trade union federation COSATU and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions adopted BDS against Israel. The British Trades Union Congress representing over 6.5 million workers also adopted the boycott.
The BDS movement is calling artists everywhere not to go to Israel. Santana has cancelled his tour and U2 have decided not to go too. The US rock band Pixies cancelled a concert in Tel Aviv this week due to the work of campaigners inside Israel.
Israeli war crimes exposed in Gaza has meant that Israeli political and military leaders now have to check with their lawyers and travel agents before they travel to countries that have ‘universal jurisdiction’ laws. In December 2009 a London magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni the former Israeli Foreign Minister for war crimes in Gaza. In September, supposedly ‘diplomatic immunity’ saved the skin of Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence Minister during the Gaza invasion from arrest by Scotland Yard.
The campaign to have those responsible for war crimes in Gaza brought to justice is a crucial part of the campaign for justice for Palestine.
Now that Malaysians have witnessed and experienced Israeli terrorism first hand, all the more we need to strengthen our solidarity with the people of Palestine and support the BDS campaign. By joining this global nonviolence resistance we are voicing outrage at the complicity of the Western powers in Israel’s genocidal policies in Palestine. BDS is the only hope to compel Israel to end the occupation.
In this regard we call upon the Transport Minister in light of the revelation that Malaysian ports are servicing Israeli ships to seriously reconsider its policies. The Malaysian government’s policy and support for Palestine must be coherent and credible.
Letter to Editor – 12 June 2010