Illegal Israel

More Money for Israel

Fuel beneath a cauldron of hate

At the heart of the Middle East mess;

Protecting an ethnic-supremacist state,

Defending its right to oppress.

With the current wanton slaughter of Palestinians in which the state of Israel is currently engaged, it’s almost enough to give outlaws a bad name. Even NBC News puts the current death toll in the war in the small area of Gaza at 30,000, and anyone can see from the nature of the destruction of housing complexes, hospitals, schools, churches, and refugee camps, that most of the victims are Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.

The fact of the matter, though, is that Israel is, indeed, an outlaw state and it has been so for quite a long time. Dr. A. C. Forrest was the longtime editor of the United Church Observer of Canada (called Broadview since 2019). His book, The unHoly Land, based upon his experience in Palestine was published in 1971. Since that time, things have gotten immeasurably worse for the centuries-long non-Jewish residents of the region. Our two previous articles, “Genocidal Israelis Napalmed Civilian Refugees” and “Deep Roots of the Current Gaza Slaughter” are drawn from that book. His short chapter 23 is entitled “Israel and International Law,” and here we reproduce it in its entirety. We need to be reminded as we read it that since it was written the Sinai Peninsula, which had been captured by Israel in the June 1967 Six Day War was returned to Egypt by the Camp David Accords of 1978. It looks now like things are about to get a lot worse for the Palestinians in that area, as well.

It is often said with some pride that Israel was the creation of the United Nations. It was the UN decision to partition Palestine of November 29^th, 1947, that made the State of Israel possible. Thirty-three UN states voted for the partition; thirteen were opposed, and ten, including the United Kingdom, abstained. The majority was secured after remarkable lobbying and last minute pressure on doubtful states. This UN decision is referred to by many supporters of Israeli policies as the ultimate authority for Israel to proceed to declare itself a State.

It seems ironic that later unanimous decisions by the UN have been ignored. The General Assembly vote of 99-0 condemning the annexation of East Jerusalem and calling on Israel to “rescind all measures taken, and to desist forthwith from taking any action that would alter the state of Jerusalem,” on July 4^th, 1967, was flouted. In late 1970 Israel is continuing to erect high rise apartments on Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem.

Ambassador Michael Cromay and other Israeli officials told me that there was no way by which Israel would give up any portion of Jerusalem. Israel has repeatedly declared she would not withdraw from Jerusalem. But the November 22^nd, 1967, Security Council resolution includes as a condition of settlement the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories. This was adopted 15-0.

In some ways Israel’s violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons are even more serious. It seems a strange paradox that Israel would refuse to abide by the conventions of international laws which were written as a direct result of the Nazi treatment of the Jews and other innocent people during World War II.

Following the war the Geneva Convention “relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war” was drawn up, and signed by most civilized nations, including Israel. The world vividly remembered the awful abuses carried out by both the Nazis in Germany and the Japanese in Asia. They were determined that such abuses would never occur again.

Four Conventions were approved: the first three concerned the protection of sick and wounded armed forces in the field, armed and shipwrecked naval forces, and the treatment of prisoners of war. Each of the Conventions was consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Israel signed the Conventions and has observed the first three. Whenever it has been to Israel’s interest to invoke the charter of the United Nations, or seek the security of international law, she has done so. When it has been in her interest to ignore the UN or flout the Charter, she has also done so—without hesitation and, so far, with impunity.

The blowing up of houses, the destruction of property, the individual or mass transfer of populations from occupied territory, are all expressly forbidden. Collective punishments and reprisals are forbidden. Yet books could be filled—in fact books are being filled—with accounts of incidents and records of Israeli breaches of the Convention.

For example, Article thirty-three states: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”

I do not like to refer in any way to Israeli treatment of the Arabs as “Nazi,” but the parallels are so numerous and so similar that Arabs speak of Nazi tactics and practices frequently. The Israelis have relied upon a systematic destruction of homes and villages to suppress resistance.

Article fifty-three of the Fourth Convention says: “Any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons or to the State or to other public authorities or to social or co-operative organizations is prohibited except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary for military purposes.”

On a main street in Gaza eight houses were blown up after a Jewish merchant was killed. There was no apparent attempt to apprehend the murderer. Reprisals were simply taken against the owners of the nearest homes. One of the owners was in Kuwait, another was an elderly woman. One can go down the list of the eight and the indications are that the victims were all innocent. This is typical. By mid-1970 something in excess of eight hundred homes had been individually destroyed and another seven thousand Arab homes had been brought down by the Israelis in one way or another. Red Cross observers told me that the Israelis have followed six different methods of destroying Arab homes, four of which blatantly contravene Article fifty-three. Two of the methods might be interpreted as militarily excusable.

The first contravention is the classical destruction of an Arab home as a punishment or reprisal. Israeli authorities acting on information or suspicion known only to themselves, move in, order the householders out, dynamite the home, and leave, forbidding the owner to rebuild.

Then there are collective reprisals, such as the destruction of the eight homes in Gaza. In the village of Hebron eighty such homes were destroyed. Ten Arab villages were razed and all homes destroyed—some, apparently as reprisals, some, according to the Israelis, for security reasons. One village, from which apparently Fateh could not be driven, was sprayed with liquid fuel and destroyed. This, according to the Red Cross and international observers, might be exempted from the general condemnation for military reasons under Article fifty-three.

When East Jerusalem was taken, the Israeli authorities destroyed about one hundred Arab homes near the Wailing Wall to provide easy access for Jewish worshippers and a parking lot for tourists. In the Golan Heights and in some other areas unoccupied Arab homes have been crumbling down and indications are the crumbling has had considerable assistance from Israeli troops. This, too, may not contravene the Geneva Convention.

There are numerous types of punishment, which have been imposed by the Israelis on the civilian population, which are considered to be both collective punishments and reprisals. The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, in reference to Gaza, wrote: “The succession of incidents and security measures such as curfews, interrogations, detentions and, on some occasions, the demolition of houses which followed” were used to suppress, intimidate, and punish.

On November 2^nd, 1968, many of the Arab shopkeepers in Occupied Jerusalem did not open their shops. The Israeli authorities regarded this as a strike and promptly confiscated fifteen shops owned by prominent Arabs. The New York Times described the matter: “Israeli officials confiscated fifteen Arab-owned shops in East Jerusalem today for what they described as security reasons.

“The seizures were said by the Israelis to have been necessary for billeting Israeli policemen who needed the strategic locations to maintain public order. The action was announced a few hours after the start of a strike by East Jerusalem shopkeepers and is regarded by many as an Israeli response.”

Mr. W.T. Mallison, Jr., Professor of Law at George Washington University and an expert in international law commented on this: “The action taken was clearly a reprisal directed at civilians and their property and therefore a violation of Article thirty-three.”

One of the most blatant abuses has been the transfer and deportation of civilian population. Article forty-nine forbids this: “Individual or mass forcible transfers as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country occupied or not are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The occupying power shall not deport or transfer a part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

These prohibitions were most definitely designed to make illegal the well-known Nazi practices of removing the “inferior” civilian population of an occupied territory to make room for the “superior” German population.

Mallison points out, “it should be noticed that the quoted provisions of Article forty-nine are flat prohibitions which are subject to no exception of any kind.” He goes on to say, “the individuals who are deported by the government of Israel in violation of the Convention are frequently leaders and notables. For example, a large number of the leading citizens of Jerusalem, Jordan, including its mayor, have been deported. The apparent purpose is to eliminate Arab leadership in the occupied territories and to make it more difficult for the remaining civilian population to protest against the oppressive and illegal measures to which they are subjected. Among the individual deportees are substantial numbers of school teachers. In Gaza, for example, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA has reported that forty-eight teachers have been deported.”

After getting rid of the civilian population, Israel has brought in its own settlers to the areas from which the Arabs have been expelled. In order to provide a technicality for justifying such movements, Israel has called the new settlements military settlements. They have established about fifteen settlements in the Golan Heights, and even one on the bank of the Dead Sea at Qumran.

Israel has established kibbutzim in Egypt’s Sinai, where their technicians are drilling for and pumping oil, and where an important tourist business is being developed. But the most flagrant breach of all is in East Jerusalem itself. By annexing instead of occupying East Jerusalem, Israel sought to provide a technicality for justifying its movement there and its treatment of Arab citizens. To the International Red Cross and, for that matter, to the whole world, this was completely unacceptable.

Article four states that: “Those who at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves in case of a conflict or occupying power of which they are not nationals are among the protected persons.”

In April 1970, the Israelis cordoned off a seven hundred and forty acre area at Hebron “for security reasons.” The Arabs protested—so did some Israelis—predicting that this would be another movement of Zionists into occupied territory. The Israeli military claimed it was for military purposes.

On May 21^st 1970, the Jerusalem Post carried the following news item:

“JEWISH HOMES IN HEBRON TO GO UP IN 3 MONTHS”

“Israeli Deputy Premier Yigal Allon has said the first homes for Jewish families in Hebron on the occupied Jordan West Bank will go up in three months.

“Allon told members of the ruling labor alignment Tuesday that 250 housing units would be ready in Hebron—where the question of Jewish settlement has created considerable tension—before the end of 1911.

“He said the Israeli cabinet also had plans for the building of new homes for the present group of 140 Jewish settlers already established in the town.

“Plans to build an additional large Jewish urban quarter in the town, which has a population of some 40,000 Arabs, were still open, he added.

“Last month, Israeli military authorities cordoned off a 740-acre area near the town’s military government for security reasons amid Arab charges that the area would be used to settle Jewish families.”

Within Israel itself there is considerable embarrassment and protest against such flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Mr. Arie Eliav, secretary-general of Israel’s ruling labour party, Simha Flapan, and Meir Yaari, Mapam’s general secretary, all protest the reprisals, the proposed annexations, and destruction of Arab homes. And in an article in Le Monde, February 11^th, 1970, Yaari outlined an eight point peace plan that began with this:

“Israel should put an immediate and unconditional end to the establishment of kibbutzim and civilian Jewish villages in the occupied territory.”

Arabs add up these things and cannot help but be impressed more with what Deputy Premier Allon says he is going to do and then does, than by what more flexible labour leaders say should be done.

Articles seventy-nine to one hundred and thirty-five provide a detailed code of conduct for the occupying power in its treatment of civilians who are interned. These articles were drawn up against the background of the infamous Nazi concentration camps, but often in Israel the treatment accorded internees seems more like what happened in some of the concentration camps than like what the Geneva diplomats hoped.

The Israeli government denies many of the charges made by both impartial observers and by the Arabs. However, the Tel Aviv government has refused to permit an impartial enquiry.

On March 3^rd, 1969, the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva adopted a resolution denouncing the Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories and established a special working group to investigate the alleged Israeli violations of the Civilians Convention. The government of Israel immediately announced that it would not co-operate with the UN group and their action was sufficient to frustrate any attempt at such an investigation. The numerous reports have been studied, of course, and the documentation is piling up.

It seems to me that if any other nation in the civilized world treated its occupants in this way, the whole world would be informed. Mr. Mallison says: “To the extent that the government of Israel fails to co-operate with authorized UN fact-finding agencies, its refusal justifies the invocation of further sanctions.” He say it is essential that the world public opinion be completely informed of the facts of the situation and the need for particular sanctions.

There is one big reason why Israel can get by with its lawlessness, and it goes back to the very founding of the country. It holds the levers of power in the United States, controlling its politicians and the national opinion-molding apparatus (NOMA), primarily its press. The situation has been brought into vivid relief in recent weeks with the United States, virtually alone, continuing to enable the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.

Recently, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Netherlands, on behalf of the Arab League, Dr. Ralph Wilde of the University of London, addressed the question of the legality of Israel’s continued occupation of the territories that it grabbed through military force in 1967. “The Palestinian people have been denied their legal right to self-determination,” he began, “through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation state exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of mandated Palestine.”

In his presentation, Dr. Wilde explains how the Zionists from the time the British were given the mandate over Palestine in the wake of World War I have used one illegality after another to gain oppressive domination over the region’s ancestral residents.

In 2022, addressing specifically the question of the legality of Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Dr. Wilde in a formal legal opinion wrote, “Any purported annexations are...without legal effect, because in international law Israel is not and cannot be sovereign over any part of the West Bank or Gaza, including East Jerusalem, through the assertion of a claim to this effect based on the exercise of effective control enabled through the use of force, and in the absence of consent to such annexation freely given by the Palestinian people.”

David Martin

March 4, 2024

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