While the Trump administration seeks pretexts to attack the legitimate Syrian government, the USA in particular and the West in general turn a blind eye to the crimes of those who give 70 occupied the Holy Land for years.
Gaza: B’tselem’s harsh j’accus
Israel's leadership is gradually admitting a basic question of life and death: Israel's permanent control over millions of Palestinians is impossible without committing war crimes. This is the profound meaning of dominion over another people: it is not “simply” a question of robbing him of his land, to impose a regime made up of masters and subordinates, to deny political rights, or to unfold an endless labyrinth of oppressive bureaucratic rules. It's also a problem of repeated killings.
When the leader of Bayit Yehudi, Naphtali Bennett, in the summer of 2014, when hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli "surgical" bombs, declared in an interview with CNN that “Hamas is committing mass self-genocide”, thus arguing the actual implications of policies based on the use of military force by Israel. He attempted to make the crime acceptable by blaming the victim, but his recognition of the dimensions of the massacre – and even more so its profound meaning – reflected an internalization of reality.
In December 2017, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak touched on the same topic, warning that “an attempt to implement a state's agenda will lead to a situation where some members of the military and the Shin Bet [Israeli secret service ed.] – who under Israeli law are not allowed to disobey an illegal order […] – they may not carry out the orders received”. Barak, however, failed to mention the real danger: that some of those who receive such openly illegal orders are forced to obey
This is what happened once again last Friday: the orders were illegal […] The soldiers obeyed, and Palestinians were killed under intense fire, lasted several hours. The number of victims was known to the Israeli leadership, but no one stopped [the operation]. Not after a hundred wounded Palestinians, and not after many, many others.
As usual, official propaganda declares that Hamas is responsible for everything, as he stated that Hamas was responsible for the annihilation of dozens of families and the deaths of hundreds of children and young people during Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2014. The IDF spokesman has outdone himself, boasting in a tweet (subsequently cancelled): “Nothing was done without control; everything was precise and measured, so much so that we know where every single bullet hit”.
Apparently our smart bullets – which hit hundreds of Palestinians – were able to determine, with surgical precision, that every person affected represented a mortal danger and that there was no other solution. Even those who were shot from a great distance. Even those hit from behind. Even those hit while walking away from the soldiers.
Israel is not “attempting to implement the one-state agenda [opposed to the two states, the Palestinian one and the Israeli one ed.]”. The single state is not an agenda, it's reality. It's not just done by "army and Shin Bet members", but also by Israeli judges, public officials, voters and politicians.
The province of Gaza, in this single state, it is managed from the outside like a huge prison. The guardians decide how much electricity, water and food will reach almost two million non-citizens living a non-life. Violent repression is used to control crowds. Prisoners have no right to protest. Their desperation is their fault. Their injuries and deaths are solely their responsibility: our hands have not shed this blood, as they rushed forward on our shells.
Friday was a bloody day, but Israel has already long become expert at erasing bloody days and weeks. No investigation is planned, and even if it gets done in the end, it is not to be expected that this will establish any responsibility. The “investigations” are just one phase of the routine of organized obliteration. But even so, how lucky they are that [the Palestinians] are to blame for everything – they kill themselves […].
Control over another people requires days of killing and massacres. More bloody days await us.
Hagai El-Ad executive director of B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in Occupied Directors).
