The Extermination of the Palestinian People and Theft of Their Homeland
Why are the supposedly Christian governments of the West helping a glaringly evil regime such as Israel to do this?
Thought I’d share with you an attempt to hold my MP to account for Westminster’s shameful complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. The talking-points may help if you’re about to do the same with your MP or senator.
Israel: after 19 months of non-stop genocide where do you stand Mr Cooper?
ku.tnemailrap@pm.repooc.nhoj
Dear Mr Cooper,
In your communications to me in February and October last year some remarks were misleading and sounded as if penned by Israel’s propaganda scribblers in Tel Aviv. Given your journalistic background it was hoped you would sniff out and reject such disinformation. With the situation in Gaza now so horrific a more considered reply would be welcome, please, from our representative at Westminster.
- You said: “Israel has suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas.”
But you omitted the context. In the 23 years prior to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Why overlook this? 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, were held in Israeli jails on that fateful day. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’ (B’Tselem figures). October 7 was therefore a retaliation against extreme provocation. Or were we expecting the Palestinians to take all that lying down?
Evidence is now emerging that the IDF inflicted many of the casualties on their own people that day in order to provide a pretext for their long-planned genocidal assault.
Early in the genocide JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, described the situation leading up to October 7 rather well:
The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence…. For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation….
For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.
For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.
- You said: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law.”
The UN itself has made it clear that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”, and many law experts have said the same.
On the other hand the Palestinians’ right to resist is confirmed in UN Resolution 3246 which calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, and to assist them in their struggle, and reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to use “all available means, including armed struggle” in their fight for freedom.
Furthermore UN Resolution 37/43 gives them an unquestionable right, in their struggle for liberation, to “eliminate the threat posed by Israel by all available means including armed struggle”. And as China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.
- You said “There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”
How right you are! Under international law Palestinians have an inalienable right to self-determination. They properly elected Hamas under international scrutiny in 2006, at the last permitted election. Hamas are the lawful and legitimate rulers in Gaza.
Israel is not the Western-style democracy it pretends to be. It is a deeply unpleasant ethnocracy with recently enacted discriminatory nation-state laws to emphasise its apartheid ‘bottom line’. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.”
- You said: “Leaving Hamas in power in Gaza would be a permanent roadblock to a two-state solution…..A sustainable ceasefire must mean that Hamas is no longer there, able to threaten Israel.”
The US and UK have no right to attempt coercive regime change. Besides, Israel has been a fatal threat to Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) since well before Hamas was even founded.
Sections 16 and 20 of Hamas’s 2017 Charter are in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.
(s.16) “Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.
(s.20) “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”
The correct and lawful way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, theft of Palestinian resources, and destruction of Palestinian heritage.
- You said: “I support all steps to bring about a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders.”
Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination. Under international law it’s their basic right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The UK disrespects that, otherwise we would long ago have recognised Palestinian statehood along with the vast majority of nations that have already done so. And why is only Israel allowed to be “safe and secure”?
Britain’s refusal to recognise Palestine is disgraceful. We promised the Palestinian Arabs independence in 1915 in return for their help in defeating the Turks but reneged in 1917 (in favour of the shameful Balfour Declaration). We should have granted Palestine provisional independence in 1923 in accordance with our responsibilities under the League of Nations Mandate Agreement, but didn’t. In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Palestinians a measly portion of their own homeland and, without consulting them, handed the lion’s share to incomer Jews with no ancestral connection to it… thanks in large part to the Balfour betrayal.
The following year Britain walked away from its mandate responsibilities leaving Palestinians at the mercy of Israel’s vicious plan for annexing the Holy Land by military force – “from the river to the sea” – which they’ve pursued relentlessly ever since in defiance of international and humanitarian law, bringing terror, misery, wholesale destruction and ruination to the Palestinians. And now genocide.
Today Britain still refuses to recognise Palestinian independence although 138 other UN member states do.
- You said: “Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”
The Israeli regime has long ignored representations on such issues, so where is the “robust action” you speak of?
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, “The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence…. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.”
Law expert Ralph Wilde provides this opinion:
There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force….
- You said: “The UK is doing everything it can to get more aid in and open more crossings, and we played a leading role in securing the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2720, which made clear the urgent demand for expanded humanitarian access.”
That went well, didn’t it? It’s sickening how Westminster still won’t accept the truth – that Israel is a depraved and repulsive regime, devoid of humanity, and we should not be supporting it in any way, shape or form.
For decades before October 7 Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza and military aggression, ethnic cleansing, restrictions on movement of goods and people, dispossession of prime lands, theft of Palestine’s key resources and destruction of its economy have bordered on slow-motion genocide.
And now the International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent, it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.
The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – which it readily applies to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favoured-nation privileges, trade deals, scientific/security collaboration, and cessation of arms supplies. In Israel’s case the British Government, far from using its available deterrent means, has militarily assisted Israel in its genocide.
So let’s remind ourselves of the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023 which arrived at the UK Government with important warnings regarding breaches of international law — for example:
⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.
⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.
The Department for Business and Trade (whose committee I believe you now sit on) dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse was that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (or SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”
But they didn’t explain how Israel managed to satisfy those “strict assessment criteria” and survive such a “rigorous” process. Were we supposed to take it all on trust? There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, any reasonably informed person might conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5.
- You said: “In the longer term, I will continue to support the UK’s long held-position, that there should be a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security for both nations and the wider region.”
Why the longer term? Why not now? If Palestinian statehood had been recognised at the proper time (in 1923, or at least by 1948 when Israeli statehood was ‘accepted’) these unspeakable atrocities would never have happened.
QME and Plan Dalet
These are the never-mentioned driving forces behind the evil that poisons the Holy Land.
In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). It ensures the apartheid regime always has the upper hand over it neighbours. This is central to US Middle East policy and guarantees the region is kept at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.
Sadly the UK has superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for ‘security’ and other dubious reasons.
Plan D, or Plan Dalet, is the Zionist terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland written 77 years ago. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency and later to become the first president of ‘New Israel’. .
Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there to prevent it. As Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) has always been a key part of the Zionists’ scheme, and Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The Deir Yassin massacre signalled the beginning of a deliberate programme to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews. In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. They massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. Israel’s great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible.
By 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash we still see today. The knock-on effects have created around 6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN plus an estimated 1 million others worldwide.
Israel Lobby
Considering Britain’s obligations towards the Holy Land since WW1, would you please let me know what you and your colleagues are now doing to stop this appalling extermination of the Palestinian people? And I do mean action not empty words. And would you please explain why Conservative Friends of Israel, which works to promote and support Israel in Parliament and at every level of the Party and claims 80% of Conservative MPs as signed-up members, are allowed to flourish at Westminster?.
MPs who put themselves under the influence of an aggressive foreign military power are surely in flagrant breach of the principles of public life (aka the Nolan Principles) which are written into MPs’ code of conduct and the ministerial code.
Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the oppression of the powerless, and applauding the discriminatory laws against non-Jews who resisted being ejected and inconveniently remain in their homeland.
It means aligning oneself with the vile mindset that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial, imposes hundreds of military checkpoints, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, and interferes with Palestinian life at every level.
And it means giving the thumbs-up to Israeli gunboats shooting up Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 19-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. Also the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.
I prefer to think that you know all this but must be mindful that the Israel lobby have Conservative Central Office in their pocket.
Stuart Littlewood
8 May 2025
Starvation in Gaza is so bad even the BBC is covering it – and reporting it all wrong
The BBC’s role is not to keep viewers informed. It’s to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand
You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza, as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel, because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.
But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences by two-sidesing Israel’s genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.
Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.
I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.
Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of “war”.
Predictably misleading, too, was BBC Verify’s input. It provided a timeline of Israel’s intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.
Verify’s reporter asserted that in early March, Israel “blocked humanitarian aid, demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages”. He then jumped to 18 March, stating: “Israel resumes military operations.”
Viewers were left, presumably intentionally, with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.
None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel’s supposed “extension” was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.
Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza’s civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.
Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”. In other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.
Simply astonishing. We’ve had 19 months of Israeli government ministers and military commanders telling us they are destroying Gaza. They’ve destroyed Gaza. And yet, Western politicians and media still refuse to call it a genocide.
What is the point of the BBC’s Verify service—supposedly there to fact-check and ensure viewers get only the unvarnished truth—when its team is itself peddling gross distortions of the truth?
The BBC and its Verify service are not keeping viewers informed. They are propagandising them into believing a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics that audiences cannot hope to understand.
The establishment media’s aim is to so confuse audiences that they will throw up their hands and say: “To hell with Israel and the Palestinians! They are as bad as each other. Leave it to the politicians and diplomats to sort out.”
In any other circumstance, it would strike you as obvious that starving children en masse is morally abhorrent, and that anyone who does it, or excuses it, is a monster. The role of the BBC is to persuade you that what should be obvious to you is, in fact, more complicated than you can appreciate.
There may be skin-and-bones babies, but there are also hostages. There may be tens of thousands of children being slaughtered, but there is also a risk of antisemitism. Israeli officials may be calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people, but the Jewish state they run needs to be preserved at all costs.
If we could spend five minutes in Gaza without the constant, babbling distractions of these so-called journalists, the truth would be clear. It’s a genocide. It was always a genocide.
Expulsion and Occupation: Israel’s Proposed Gaza Plan
Killing civilians wholesale, starving them to convince those unaffected to change course, and shepherding whole populations like livestock into conditions of further misery would all qualify as heinous crimes in international law. When it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, this approach is seen as necessary politics, unalloyed by the restraints of humanitarianism. When confronted with these harsh realities on the ground, unequivocal denials follow: This is not happening in Gaza; no one is starving. And if that were the case, blame those misguided savages in Hamas.
As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness. Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire. There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023, matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter. There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.
Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer. According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages. What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission”. Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south. Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.
The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamir, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”
Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer. He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence. “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.
Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, give a sense of the flavour. Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor. As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism”.
The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness. Expulsion, relocation, transfer. These are the words famously used to move on populations of a sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost. That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse, poignancy to this. They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn. Smotrich also points the finger at desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration. The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment. “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning. In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.
The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary. A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground. All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks. Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty. Hunger, notably among children, is rampant. Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”
The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, as it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”
The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have made the same point. Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place. “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change”.
To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar takes place. But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state to risk and oblivion.
How Israel Embroils Other Countries in its Crimes of Genocide against the Palestinians
Israel is very adept at drawing attention away from itself and onto other countries as it carries out its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In a recent incident, when the ‘Conscience’, an aid boat attempting to reach the starving people of Gaza, was hit by drones (likely fired by Israel) a mile out of Maltese international waters, all attention descended upon the Maltese authorities.
The vessel was flying the flag of the Pacific Island of Palau; however, prior to the drone hit, Palau withdrew the registration, leaving the crew vulnerable to accusations of being without official papers. Israel had also made accusations of terrorism, claiming that the crew of activists were Hamas militants. There is no basis to the claim that the peaceful activists have any military connections or intentions. The crew are internationals of conscience, who had gathered together from various countries in an attempt to break the blockade of Gaza, carry essential supplies, and draw attention to the desperate plight of people in Gaza.
A nearby Maltese tug boat was the first to arrive at the boat’s aid, having been alerted by the authorities to the SOS distress call. The tug boat was equipped with a fire hose and managed to extinguish the fire totally. However, with holes in the boat from the drone attack and extensive damage to the generator, the boat has been slowly taking on water. When the authorities arrived shortly after, the captain of the ‘Conscience’ informed them that the crew would not abandon their vessel or let any of the authorities board it.
The fears of the crew of sabotage from an unknown person or persons boarding their boat are not unrealistic. Besides incidents of sabotage, activists from the earlier Freedom Flotilla Coalitions, in attempting to break the siege of Gaza, have experienced deaths, arrests, theft, and the destruction of vessels. In 2008 the ‘Dignity’, was rammed – with clear lethal intent by the Israeli military. The damage was so extensive that the boat took on water, leaving it unseaworthy. Although the authorities in Israel and Egypt ignored the call for help, the Lebanese responded and rescued the sixteen international activists on board. In 2010, ten activists were murdered by the Israeli military. In 2018, Dr. Swee Ang, a passenger on the ‘Al Awda’ freedom boat, describes how prior to reaching the Gaza coastline, they were boarded by the Israeli military, arrested, humiliated, and stripped naked. Their boat was confiscated.
The young, well-known environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, is already in Malta and, along with other internationals, hopes to join the ‘Conscience’ as early as possible. However, being well-known is no guarantee of survival or success, as orthopaedic surgeon David Halpin can testify from his experience on the ‘Dignity’. The Israelis have a documented history of committing crimes against anyone – Palestinian or international, if they are perceived to challenge their Zionist aspirations to turn all of Palestine and beyond, into a Jewish State.
The Maltese authorities agreed to allow the boat to come into Malta and to assist with repairs. However, they insisted that the boat go through the normal customs procedures of inspection. With concerns for Malta’s security and a responsibility for the security of those on the boat from further attack, the Maltese Navy blocked all vessels from approaching the ‘Conscience’. Included in those blocked, from the area around the boat, were activists connected with the freedom flotilla. This led to a standoff between the two groups as each tried to express their security concerns while also addressing the vessel’s evident need for assistance.
All eyes turned away from Israel’s war crime and toward Malta. Sandwiched between Zionist political pressure from Israel on one side and pressure from international humanitarian groups on the other side, the Maltese authorities were thrown into the spotlight as the potential villains. The Maltese people and the internationals were ready to protest in the capital city of Valletta in support of the humanitarian venture. However, the protest was called off after it appeared that the crew and supporters of the ‘Conscience’ were in genuine negotiations with the Maltese Government.
This is a narrative that is still unfolding. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the activists and the Maltese Government, we must remind ourselves that the real villain here is not Malta, but Israel. If justice is ever to be achieved, the Israeli Government must be held accountable for its ongoing theft and coveting of Palestinian land. Only then will Palestinians be free of this hundred-year-plus catastrophe that has led to displacement, occupation, and genocide.
Israel Defends Its Right to Commit Genocide
Protesters in Australia urge the government to back South Africa’s court case against Israel. (AAP Photo)
The contents of the ship, if it had delivered its cargo, would have made only the smallest dent in Israel’s plan. But Israel stands on principle – namely that it has the right to slaughter as many Palestinians and other non-Jews as it wants in order to grab the territory it covets (and, not incidentally, the vast oil and gas fields off its coast), and to assure a demographically Jewish result in that territory. Never mind how many men, women and children are eradicated, or how horribly they die.
Of course, Israel has always expressed the willingness to have the Palestinians shipped elsewhere: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Somalia…who cares, but preferably away from Israel’s borders. But whatever country participates in such a plan will be forever stigmatized for collaborating in genocide. And what country or countries would welcome the forcible entry of such a population? That’s why there are no takers. In any case, Israel seems content to wipe them off the face of the earth, which is more permanent. Furthermore, the United States is a powerful partner in this project, with few if any apparent qualms.
Is there anything the international community can do to stop the crime of the century? Of course. But no amount of UN resolutions, ICJ injunctions or other legal actions will be obeyed. Neither will suspension of diplomatic or economic relations, as long as Israel’s big brother, the US, provides them with everything they need, especially the weaponry. The entire world can completely isolate Israel, as long as that isolation does not include the United States, and as long as the people of the United States do no more than demonstrate, write letters, make phone calls and vote in elections for two parties that compete with each other for how much support they can give to Israel.
What can be done to change the outcome? The aid ship is the right idea, but it would require a thousand aid ships or more. Another would be a national general strike in the US, but neither the consensus nor the organization exists for such an effort in a country that has never seen a national general strike. A vote boycott directed against the two major parties might have the desired effect, but that also is exceedingly unlikely, and in any case too slow. How about attacks against Israeli interests abroad, such as the ones against the Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit, in the UK and the blocking of Israeli ships in Oakland, California? Perhaps, but it would have to be carried out worldwide and be nearly seamless, which is also difficult to imagine.
I do not have the answer, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that humanity seems doomed to place the worst among us into positions of leadership. How else do we explain that nearly the entire voting public in the US and most Western countries voted for candidates that supported the military and economic aid to Israel, even as it was conducting its genocide?
In the years to come, how will we answer the question “What did you do to stop the Gaza genocide, Grandma?”
