ACCEPTING
ISRAELI DISTORTIONS TO
JUSTIFY AGGRESSION IS SCANDALOUS
By: Ahmed Motiar
When will the Media stop being complicit in these crimes?
International law
provides people under occupation both the moral and legal right to resist their
occupiers. Hence, those resisting occupation can never be labeled as
'terrorists'. It is therefore both immoral and unjust for George Bush, Tony
Blair and anyone else to condemn the Palestinians for exercising their moral
right to resist occupation. And let us not be fooled into believing that the
withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza
ended the occupation. All the withdrawal of Israeli settlers did was change the
'composition' of the occupation from several mini prisons, like the Bantustans
in apartheid South Africa,
to one big, giant prison. This helped Israel create the impression that
the occupation was over when the reality was it continued its occupation by
controlling all entry points through land, air and sea. This made it easier for
Israel to control the population through collective punishments as it did by
imposing sanctions and starving the whole population for electing a government
that did not meet with Israel?s approval. This Israeli strangle-hold over Gaza offers the best
proof that the Israeli claim that its occupation had ended, is a big lie.
Under the Geneva Conventions, the occupying power is responsible for the
well-being of the population under its control. Instead, Israel has
imposed sanctions starving the population, which is both a war crime and a
crime against humanity.
Sadly, some governments and mainstream media have seen fit to blame the victims
of aggression for the present crisis instead of the aggressor: Israel. If we
fail to speak out, if we remain silent, we all become complicit in the war
crimes Israel
is committing against the Palestinians. Martin Luther King expressed it best
when he said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter. A right delayed is a right denied. Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere."
The present Israeli attacks against Palestinians in Lebanon
and Gaza expose the moral bankruptcy of Israel's
position. Israeli attacks killing civilians in the occupied territories is
described as 'collateral damage', while Palestinian resistance to occupation
and brutality that leads to loss of civilian lives is labeled as 'terrorism'.
In the present crisis, both the Hamas and Hizbullah resistance groups
have targeted soldiers, which are legitimate military targets, while the
Israelis are clearly targeting civilians and civil infrastructures such as
roads, bridges, electric power plants, gas stations, water facilities and mass
killing directed against an innocent population. By Israel's own definition, it stands
condemned as a terrorist State. The Israeli propaganda machine, recognizing
their military actions are of a terrorist nature, are feverishly trying to
camouflage their own terrorism by labeling the legitimate capture of their
soldiers by the Palestinian resistance as kidnapping. Soldiers don't get
kidnapped; they are captured and become prisoners of war to be exchanged for
one's own prisoners in return.
The Israeli claim of a higher moral ground for going to war to retrieve its
three captured soldiers is totally stripped away when Israel itself
has kidnapped not hundreds but thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Is
it not hypocritical that it is Israel
that has kidnapped civilians, which is a terrorist action by any standard, but
it is Hamas and Hizbullah who have captured soldiers that are labeled as
terrorist? Also, interestingly, it is Hamas and Hizbullah that have sought
prisoner exchanges to end the crisis, while it is Israel that has rejected prisoner
exchange and opted instead for war targeting mostly civilians and collective
punishment which is a crime against humanity.
It is essential that Israel's
excuse for going to war is demolished. Israel
claims it seeks to live in peace but its security is threatened by a constant
bombardment of Qassam rockets into Israel by Palestinians. The media
repeats this without exposing that in the first three months of this year, Israel fired 781 artillery shells into Gaza according to a June
21 report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In response,
the Palestinians replied with 417 Qassam rockets. The report further details
that from April to June 20, Israel
launched 7,599 artillery shells into densely populated Gaza causing both death and destruction.
Palestinians responded with 479 home-made Qassam rockets causing no deaths at
all.
>From June 9 to June 20 ? a span of 11 days 31 Palestinians were killed,
including 10 children, six of them 5 years old or younger. This includes 7
members of the Ghalia family. To add insult to injury, Israel followed this up with the kidnapping
inside Gaza in
the middle of the night of two civilians, a doctor and his brother, on June 24.
Israel's
escalation of the conflict by kidnappings and killings caused so much outrage
among the Palestinians that the armed wing of Hamas declared an end to the
cease-fire it had observed since March 2005, resulting in the attack on Israeli
soldiers and the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit as a prisoner.
While Israel
is clearly the aggressor, it is portraying itself as the victim that has the
right to defend itself. It is a shame that the media goes along with this sham
and does not challenge this duplicity by the obvious fact that a bully
aggressor can never be a victim and therefore its actions cannot be one of
self-defense. Israel's
aggressive intent is clearly evident when it refused to exchange some of the
thousands of kidnapped Palestinians in return for the captured Israeli
soldiers. Instead, Israel
opted for collective punishment and war, branding the capture of a soldier as a
kidnapping to manufacture the excuse for war. According to Matthew Kalman, Israel's plans to attack Lebanon had
been in the works for over a year, (www.juancole.com). He states:
"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving Power
Point presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats,
journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in
revealing detail."
It seems Israel
was merely waiting for the right excuse to implement its plans, even if it had
to manufacture one, as it did by
using the ruse that a captured soldier had been kidnapped. This being the case,
one must honestly answer who is the terrorist here? Who is the villain? Who is
the aggressor? Who is the bully? Sadly, the media has given little or no
coverage to Israel's
year-long plans to attack Lebanon,
nor to Israeli kidnappings and aggression against the Palestinians. The media's
complicity is even seen in reporting Israeli lies that Hizbullah kidnapped two
of its soldiers in Lebanon.
No mention is made of the reports that Hizbullah's "capture" of
Israeli soldiers took place in the Lebanese village
of Aitaa al-Chaab when an Israeli tank
made an incursion into Lebanon
and was ambushed by Hizbullah forces resisting such incursions. Unfortunately,
the media only echoes the Israeli position that tries to justify Israel's action
as "retaliation" when in fact it is the aggressor, engaged in State
terrorism. The media is also silent about the fact that parts of Lebanon, known
as Shebaa Farms, are still under Israeli occupation.
So far, mainstream media has made little or no effort to provide balance by
pointing out that Hamas and Hizbullah campaigns are legitimate resistance
operations fighting a colonial army of occupation. Instead, by labeling their
actions as terrorism, it effectively denies them the rights we all enjoy,
namely, the right to be free, democratic and live in security without
occupation. When the media fail to expose the truth and echoes the lies of the
'bully' aggressor to justify its aggression, it becomes complicit in crimes
against humanity.
Ahmed
Motiar is author of "Defanging a
Bully".
He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125)
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