Sunday, January 27, 2008

Gaza: Concentration camp

Palestinian Genocide:
Why Palestinians Are Fleeing Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Concentration Camp
http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270108.htm

By Dr Gideon Polya

27 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org

For over 40 years Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) inhabitants have been held prisoner, stripped of fundamental human rights by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel with post-invasion excess deaths now totalling 0.3 million out of an average 1967-2008 population of 1.8 million.

The only chink in the Wall of the OPT Concentration Camp is that at Rafah in the Gaza Strip where thousands of desperate Palestinians are fleeing their horrendously abusive Prison – a Prison in which now 4 million people (half of them children, three quarters women and children) are held in horribly abusive conditions without charge or trial and subject to regular high technology shelling, rocketing and bombing.

However Racist Zionist-beholden Western media present the racist FICTION that the Occupied Palestinians starving in Gaza are somehow masters of their own destiny and that the overwhelmingly democratically-elected Hamas administration (76 Hamas seats versus Fatah’s 43 out of 132 seats in the now Apartheid Israel-disbanded OPT Parliament in the 2006 elections) and is somehow an illegitimate representative of the Occupied Palestinians who are somehow not even “Occupied”.

The UTTERLY FALSE and intrinsically anti-Jewish anti-Semitic Racist Zionist conflation of their evil, racist, violent, human rights-abusing philosophy with “Jews” and “Judaism” has been accepted by the Racist Bush-ite- and Racist Zionist-beholden Mainstream media and politicians of Apartheid Israel’s racist, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, Western backers, the American Murdochracy and the other Anglo-Celtic and Western Murdochracies and their NATO partners in horrendous war crimes of the Bush Wars (post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories now total 5-8 million) (see: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/2008/01/
rudd-australia-report-card-1-continued.html and http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/2008/01/
rudd-australia-report-card-3-australian.html ).

However what do outstanding anti-racist, Humanitarian JEWS have to say about this continuing Racist Bush-ite- and Racist neo-Bush-ite-backed Racist Zionist atrocity in the Holy Land?

For good reasons my great grandfather had exactly the same name as the outstanding 19th century Orthodox Jewish scholar Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (see: http://www.ou.org/pardes/bios/hirsch.htm ). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was dead opposed to political Zionism as contrary to the Jewish theological orthodoxy that “Israel” (the complement of Torah-observant Jews) will only return to Zion when Moschiach (the Messiah) reveals the glory of Adonai (the Lord) to the whole world (to confirm this simply ask a Jewish friend to take you to a synagogue - while the Racist Zionists have convinced the Mainstream media to LIE about Apartheid Israel and the OPT they have been unable to edit out the Torah and the Talmudic dissertations).

Indeed, writing in 1919, Nathan Birnbaum, the formerly Zionist Jewish journalist who actually coined the term “Zionism”, decried political Zionism in an essay entitled “In bondage to our fellow Jews”: “And is it at all possible that we, who regard Judaism as our one and only treasure, should ever be able to compete with such expert demagogues and loud self-advertisers as they?” (see Michael Selzer, editor, “Zionism Reconsidered”, Macmillan, London, 1970).

In 1939, notwithstanding the evil of Nazi Germany, Australia’s most outstanding Jewish public figure, former Governor General Sir Isaac Isaacs supported the UK 1939 White Paper that opposed Jewish entry into Palestine because it would violate the rights of the Indigenous Palestinian people in contravention of the Balfour Declaration that insisted explicitly on no detriment of the Indigenous Inhabitants (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917 and Max Gordon, “Sir Isaac Isaacs”, Heinemann, Adelaide, 1963).

Later still, in 1945, outstanding Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt wrote an essay “Zionism reconsidered” in which she declared, so presciently: “Thus the social-revolutionary Jewish national movement, which started half a century ago with ideals so lofty that it overlooked the particular realities of the Near East and the general wickedness of the world, has ended – as do most such movements – with the unequivocal support not only of national but of chauvinist claims – claims not against the foes of the Jewish people but against its possible friends and present neighbours” (The Menorah Journal, Autumn 1945, volume 33, number 2).

Half a century later, the Racist Zionist agenda of an anti-Arab anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing of the Holy land – the Palestinian Genocide – is substantially achieved (0.3 million post-invasion OPT excess deaths, 0.2 million post-invasion under-5 year old OPT infant deaths, passive murder of 2,400 under-5 year old OPT infants annually, 7 million Palestinian refugees, 1.5 million Arab Israelis as second class citizens and 4 million Occupied Palestinian prisoners on the OPT Concentration Camp). However decent, anti-racist, humanitarians Jews around the world are PROTESTING the horrendous , racist human rights abuses of racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel.

Outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jews have banded together for Justice in the Holy Land e.g. British Jew and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter and his very distinguished Jewish associates in the organization Jews for Justice for Palestinians (see: http://www.jfjfp.org/about.htm ) ; the Israeli Gush Shalom (see: http://gush-shalom.org/ ); the UK Independent Jewish Voices, IJV (see: http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/ ); Independent Australian Jewish Voices, IAJV (see: http://www.iajv.org/ ); the US Not in My Name, NIME (see: http://www.nimn.org/ ); and the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish organization Neturei Karta (see: http://www.nkusa.org/ ).

Numerous profound statements have been made by outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars and leaders about the horrendous, continuing crimes of Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel of which the following is a pertinent selection.

Ronnie Kasrils, outstanding, anti-racist Jewsih South African MP, Government Minister and hero in the fight against US-, UK- and Israel-backed Apartheid: “Israel 2007: worse than Apartheid” (see: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?area=/
insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/&articleid=30896 ).

Professor Noam Chomsky, outstanding Jewish American linguistics scholar at 63-Nobel-Laureate MIT, describes the OPT as a “Prison”: “If there's a conflict going on, aside physical war, not in a military conflict going on, abduction -- if soldiers are captured, they are to be treated humanely. But it is not a crime at the level of capture of civilians and bringing them across the border into your own country. That's a serious crime. And that's the one that's not reported. And, in fact, remember that -- I mean, I don't have to tell you that there are constant attacks going on in Gaza, which is basically a prison, huge prison, under constant attack all the time: economic strangulation, military attack, assassinations, and so on. In comparison with that, abduction of a soldier, whatever one thinks about it, doesn't rank high in the scale of atrocities.” (see: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10577 ) .

And outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman talks of anti-Arab anti-Semitism by anti-Semitic racist Zionists : “For obvious reasons, the Zionists are very sensitive about being compared to the Nazis (not so sensitive that it has restrained them in their actions but enough to bellow "unfair" and to charge "anti-Semitism" when it happens). Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis.” (see: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/resignation.php ).

What Apartheid Israel has been doing amounts a slow Palestinian Genocide, with genocide being defined here according to Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) : “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Now compare the provisions of Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention with the crimes of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic Racist Zionists: 50,000 Palestinians violently killed post-1948; 0.3 million post-1967 excess deaths (avoidable deaths); post-invasion under-5 year old OPT infant deaths; 2,400 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infants passively murdered by Apartheid Israel EACH YEAR; 7 million refugees (4.3 million registered with the UN); 85% of Palestinian Christians have fled; horrendous living conditions in the OPT Concentration Camp, and particularly so for Palestinian children (see UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt.html ); 1.5 million of Palestinian Israelis suffering Nazi-style race laws; millions of Occupied Palestinians (currently 4 million) held without charge or trial in an increasingly abusive Concentration Camp for over 40 years.

One can well understand why Palestinians are fleeing the one gap in the wall surrounding the Apartheid Israel-run Occupied Palestinian Territory Concentration Camp.

As far as I know, the Nazis murdered all but about a dozen of my wider family in Hungary in 1944-1945. About 0.2 million Jewish Hungarians were murdered by the Nazis out of a Jewish population of 0.7 million (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London);

Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London). Compare this with the 0.3 million post-invasion Occupied Palestinian Territory excess deaths (out of an average 1967-2008 population of 1.8 million).

About 5-6 million Jews died in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and about 30 million Slavs, Jews and Roma people were murdered by the Nazis WW2 Holocaust in general, including 20 million in the Soviet Union, 6 million in Poland, 1 million in Yugoslavia, millions elsewhere in Europe and 1 million Roma (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London);

Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London).

Accordingly the primary message of the Holocaust to me and to ALL anti-racist humanitarians throughout the world is zero tolerance for racism – whether the racism of the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the US-, UK- and Israel-backed South African Apartheiders, the Racist Bush-ites ( 8 million excess deaths in the 21st century, Racist Zionist-promoted Bush Wars: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya071007.htm ), American democratic imperialism (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries partly or completely occupied post-war by the US total 82 million – 1950-2005 excess deaths for countries partly occupied by Apartheid Israel total 24 million) (see: “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).

About half the Occupied Palestinians are children and three quarters are women and children. Any person who knowingly ignores, denies, minimizes, excuses, obfuscates, supports, advocates or is other wise complicit in the gross abuses of woman and children has crossed the line between decent humanity and proto-Nazi barbarism.

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. In the face of horrendous, ongoing abuses of humanity, decent folk are obliged to (a) inform others, (b) apply sanctions and boycotts to those complicit in such atrocities (such as Apartheid Israel and its Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite backers in the Western Murdochracies) and (c) work for PEACE in other possible ways.

Peace with equality, justice and reconciliation IS possible NOW in the Holy Land ( see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5175/42/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9253/26/ ) - but the prerequisite is zero tolerance for racism.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).

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