Statement of Cafe Intifada
(For this and similar posts go to: www.cafeintifada.wordpress.com.
© 2009 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved. Permission to print in
its entirety, attributed to Cafe Intifada and Emma Rosenthal,
including links. Permission not granted to groups or individuals
asserting racist, suremacist ideologies. )
In light of the ongoing brutal assault by the Israeli Offense
Forces upon the population of Gaza, the following history and
definition of genocide provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum is important in understanding the motivation, rationale,
purpose and scope of Israeli (U.S. funded and sanctioned) actions.
Many shy away from applying the word genocide to the Palestinian
people, perhaps because it is inflammatory, perhaps because it has
been reserved for those catastrophes recognized by the Holocaust
Industry*. But on closer examination, the definition of genocide
clearly applies to this current campaign as well as the expressed
intent of the Israeli government and the zionist trajectory vis a
vis the indigenous population.
<>
Like the word, holocaust which is, in religious terms, a burnt offering
of spiritual purification, ethnic cleansing implies that there is
something pure, clean, redemptive in the process of the destruction of a
people: of their way of life, communities, homes, jobs, social
structure; in the imposition of death, dismemberment, deformation, rape,
trauma and brutality.
There is no justification: not security, not history, not assertions of
divine promise or destiny, that can excuse the war crimes being
perpetrated on Gaza, a territory already under siege: prevented from
receiving health care, education, basic supplies, disallowed control of
its own borders or freedom of movement of its residents. (And yet, even
these excuses are an obfuscation of the real nature of Israeli hegemony
and the U.S. imperialist imperatives that support and maintain it.)
Israeli actions easily meet at least four of the five criteria of
genocide provided below, and if one considers the large number of
children in Israeli prisons: held without education, medical care, legal
counsel or contact with their families, then one could argue it meets
all five.
This latest and most brutal action is surprising only in scope, not
intent. Israel has walled Gaza under brutal and devastating conditions
of isolation, poverty, and desperation; Israel's own Warsaw Ghetto. The
current assault is part of a long trajectory intent upon destroying a
people, a land, a history, a culture and a way of life.
There is certainly nothing cleansing about it!
- Emma Rosenthal Cafe Intifada
What is Genocide
From The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*
(Printing of this article in no way should suggest any
endorsement by the Memorial Museum of the work, scope,
mission or purpose of Cafe Intifada.- c.i.)
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043>
History
What is Genocide?The term "genocide" did not exist before 1944. It is a
very specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against groups
with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as
laid out in the U.S. Bill of Rights
<http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html>
or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
<http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/>, concern the rights of individuals.
In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959)
<http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/lemkin/> sought to describe
Nazi policies of systematic murder, including the destruction of the
European Jews. He formed the word "genocide" by combining geno-, from
the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for
killing. In proposing this new term, Lemkin had in mind "a coordinated
plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential
foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating
the groups themselves." The next year, the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg charged top Nazis with "crimes against humanity."
The word “genocide” was included in the indictment, but as a
descriptive, not legal, term.
On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust and in no small part
due to the tireless efforts of Lemkin himself, the United Nations
approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>. This
convention establishes "genocide” as an international crime, which
signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.” It defines genocide as:
[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such:
* Killing members of the group;
* Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part;
* Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
While many cases of group-targeted violence have occurred throughout
history and even since the Convention came into effect, the legal and
international development of the term is concentrated into two distinct
historical periods: the time from the coining of the term until its
acceptance as international law (1944–1948
<http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/timeline/index.php?period=01#1944>)
and the time of its activation with the establishment of international
criminal tribunals to prosecute the crime of genocide (1991–1998
<http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/timeline/index.php?period=03#1993>).
Preventing genocide <http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/>, the other
major obligation of the convention, remains a challenge that nations and
individuals continue to face.
*Fair Use Notice: This web site contains some copyrighted material whose
use has not been authorized by the copyright owners. We believe that
this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law <http://www.animalliberationfront.com/FairUseLaw.htm>.) If
you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond
fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
*http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=3
--
Cafe Intifada seeks to empower artistic self expression within a
social/political context, to raise awareness and make connections
through the arts, with cultural and human rights needs and programs
internationally and connect artists with activists, community members
and other artists currently engaged in progressive social change.
Cafe Intifada: Uniting Art with Critical Consciousness
http://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/
http://home.earthlink.net/~cafeintifada/index.html
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Ecafeintifada/index.html>
Emma Rosenthal
Andy Griggs
Directors
Caf Intifada
Class consciousness is knowing which side of the fence you are on.
Class analysis is knowing who's there with you!
-Anonymous
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