With Israel publicly committed to pressing ahead with its war on Gaza, slaughtering children, massacring civilians and destroying the infrastructure necessary to support a human society, a weekend move by Palestinians is not only judicious but could possibly, however slight, see the Zionist authorities in the Hague. In a strategically necessary step Hamas stated its intention to endorse a proposed application - certain to mobilise the ire of the Western political elite - from Palestine to join the International Criminal Court.
The Hamas initiative does one of two things, and possibly both. It pushes to the side a significant hurdle in the path of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who had delayed making an approach to the ICC until he was assured of no major opposition from within the Palestinian camp that could have deprived his bid of thrust.
Alternatively, it can strip Abbas of the pretext of internal dissent when in fact the real cause of the delay to sign up to the ICC may lie in his Palestine Authority's acquiescence in the considerable opposition mounted by Western powers to the notion of Israel facing a war crimes tribunal. The second scenario acquires greater plausibility in the context of a prominent Palestinian official suggesting that Abbas would make no move until a UN-appointed commission of inquiry into possible war crimes, not due until the spring.
It was dithering and delaying by the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the scathing 2009 Goldstone Report with its potential to cast the Israelis as war criminals ... 'preferring that the report die a quiet death,' which eventually allowed the Israelis to work out 'how to neuter it' and get off the hook. It was one of those occasions where Abba Eban's legendary quip could be said to apply: that 'the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.'
Whatever the Palestinian Authority logic, having previously secured the support from the component parts of the PLO, the move by Hamas, which sits outside the PLO umbrella, clears the way for the PA to knock on the door of the ICC.
The internal pressure on the Palestinian leader to launch the bid was substantial. A huge impetus was generated by the spectacle of a civilian population, defended by even less resources than the Polish could muster against the Nazi invasion of their country in September 1939, being forced to withstand a barrage of Israeli war crimes. Despite the din the cheerleading Western leaders could be heard in the background grunting that Israel had a right to defend itself.
The Guardian has reported that the move for Abbas 'would transform his relations with Israel from tense to openly hostile and could also strain his ties with the United States.'
Why this should be so requires no explanation: suffice that it peels away the layers of hypocrisy that cocoon the interests of both the US and Israel. The US currently is host to one of the most prominent war criminals since Heinrich Himmler, the former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger. The state of Israel has from 1948, only a few short years after the Holocaust, given the appearance of believing experience is a good teacher and has itself sought to apply its own experience at the hands of the Nazis to the Palestinians. Deir Yassin was considered a good start. It has served up an ignoble list of war criminals, some of whom have served as prime ministers: Menachem Begin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon.
Both Israel and its main backer wish to maintain the ridiculous fiction that they represent the antithesis of crimes against humanity so the notion of Israel hauled in front of the ICC charged with such crimes is, to use that much remembered British judicial term, an ‘appalling vista’ and something to be strenuously avoided. War crimes for the West are fine, so long as there is no judicial finding against it.
According to the Guardian the latest initiative is not a cost free one for the Palestinians: 'If Abbas were to turn to the court, Hamas could be investigated for indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel since 2000.’ But Hamas, confident of its position, dismissed such suggestions and called on Abbas to act "as soon as possible". The only democratically constituted governing authority in Gaza, must also be tempted by the knowledge that the ICC's founding charter, the 1998 Rome statute defined as a war crime "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".
That on its own would make for a noteworthy trial. It is one reason the Israelis want the issues that would feature in any ICC trial to be resolved between themselves and the Palestinians in a context where the Palestinian Authority would be expected to do what loyal opposition is supposed to do.
The move by Hamas is important because, successful or not, it helps further frame the debate and legitimises the use of a descriptive moral language that Israel and the US vehemently wants suppressed: Israel is becoming synonymous with the term "genocide" for reasons other than it intended.
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A little off topic but I was reading Robert Fisk's collection of his own articles "The Age of the Warrior" in which he includes several pieces regarding the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in 1915.
ReplyDeleteNot only do Turkey deny that a genocide took place but Fisk explains that Israel took the Turkish governments line on this despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Fisk explained on the 20th May 2006 in the English 'Independent' newspaper "that the definition of genocide was set out by Raphael Lemkin, a Jew, in specific reference to the wholesale mass slaughter of the Armenians."
If you call the events of 1915 "Genocide" you are at risk of prosecution in Turkey for defaming the nation. A bit of a reverse on the crimes of Holocaust denial which is abhorrent in every way but strange that Israel would want to set a precedent.
Also, in today's Belfast Telegraph Brian Kelly, reader at History at Queen's University explains how and why Unionists are trying to inject a sectarian element into the Gaza question locally.
Simon,
ReplyDeleteI think in Brian's case wish might be serving as parent to the thought. He obviously wants to see working class unity but in Belfast I don't think sectarianism is going to be upstaged by this.
The biggest I march I was at in Belfast outside of the anti internment demos of the early 70s was largely organised by Brian's people (there might even have been 20,000 at it) and I am sure there was a lot of cross community involvement. But then sectarianism rose to the surface again.
I would like to be convinced that this time things would be different but I don't see it happening.
There's an interesting article by Gideon Levi in Ha'aretz about the discrepancy in the general Israeli reaction to the deaths of almost 500 Gazan children compared to the reaction in Israel to the death last friday of 4 year old Daniel Tragerman.
ReplyDeleteLevi makes reference to Palestinian children in Israel being regarded as insects. This immediately brings to mind how in the months leading up to, and throughout the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu power regime and their supporters, particularly RTLM radio, constantly referred to Tutsis as Inyenzi (cockroaches) from which the country needed to be cleansed. The similarities between this and the Zionist/IDF attitude to the Palestinians in Gaza are startling.
This is the link to the article -
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.612085
Anthony, sorry, but i don't think the link i just sent to the Ha'aretz article about the children will work, because in order to read full articles you need to register and subscribe. I copied the link from the whole article but still, it doesn't seem to give access. I'll copy and paste the article here in case anyone wants to read it.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between children.
After the first child, nobody batted an eye; after the 50th not even a slight tremor was felt in a plane’s wing; after the 100th, they stopped counting; after the 200th, they blamed Hamas. After the 300th child they blamed the parents. After the 400th child, they invented excuses; after (the first) 478 children nobody cares.
Then came our first child and Israel went into shock. And indeed, the heart weeps at the picture of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, killed Friday evening in his home in Sha’ar Hanegev. A beautiful child, who once had his picture taken in an Argentinean soccer team shirt, blue and white, number 10. And whose heart would not be broken at the sight of this photo, and who would not weep at how he was criminally killed. “Hey Leo Messi, look at that boy,” a Facebook post read, “you were his hero.”
Suddenly death has a face and dreamy blue eyes and light hair. A tiny body that will never grow. Suddenly the death of a little boy has meaning, suddenly it is shocking. It is human, understandable and moving. It is also human that the killing of an Israeli boy, a child of ours, would arouse greater identification than the death of some other child. What is incomprehensible is the Israeli response to the killing of their children.
In a world where there is some good, children would be left out of the cruel game called war. In a world where there is some good, it would be impossible to understand the total, almost monstrous unfeelingness in the face of the killing of hundreds of children – not ours, but by us. Imagine them standing in a row: 478 children, in a graduating class of death. Imagine them wearing Messi shirts – some of those children wore them once too, before they died; they also admired him, just like our Daniel from a kibbutz. But nobody looks at them; their faces are not seen, no one is shocked at their deaths. No one writes about them: “Hey Messi, look at that boy.” Hey, Israel, look at their children.
An iron wall of denial and inhumanness protects the Israelis from the shameful work of their hands in Gaza. And indeed, these numbers are hard to digest. Of the hundreds of men killed one could say that they were “involved”; of the hundreds of women that they were “human shields.” As for a small number of children, one could claim that the most moral army in the world did not intend it. But what shall we say about almost 500 children killed? That the Israel Defense Forces did not intend it, 478 times? That Hamas hid behind all of them? That this legitimized killing them?
Hamas might have hidden behind some of those children but now Israel is hiding behind Daniel Tragerman. His fate is already being used to cover all of the sins of the IDF in Gaza.
Cont....The radio yesterday already talked about “murder.” The prime minister already called the killing “terror,” while hundreds of Gaza’s children in their new graves are not victims of murder or terror. Israel had to kill them. And after all, who are Fadi and Ali and Islaam and Razek, Mahmoud, Ahmed and Hamoudi – in the face of our one and only Daniel.
ReplyDeleteWe must admit the truth: Palestinian children in Israel are considered like insects. This is a horrific statement, but there is no other way to describe the mood in Israel in the summer of 2014. When for six weeks hundreds of children are destroyed; their bodies buried in rubble, piling up on morgues, sometimes even in vegetable refrigeration rooms for lack of other space; when their horrified parents carry the bodies of their toddlers as a matter of course; their funerals coming and going, 478 times – even the most unfeeling of Israelis would not allow themselves to be so uncaring.
Something here has to rise up and scream: Enough. All the excuses and all the explanations will not help – there is no such thing as a child that is allowed to be killed and a child that is not. There are only children killed for nothing, hundreds of children whose fate touches no one in Israel, and one child, just one, around whose death the people unite in mourning.
AM, I think the last time sectarianism in the North was in trouble was during the 1907 Dock Strike in Belfast. The Unionist establishment and the government instigated division and created a manufactured split between Catholics and Protestants.
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty the effort of creating a fracture within the community may never be needed again. The divide is so entrenched it'll take an outside factor of immense proportions to change it as no amount of imaginative thinking will be enough.
Gaza can provoke empathy in any class or creed no matter where in the world. Hopefully any incremental steps towards unity of purpose will not be prevented by Unionism's petty though harmful Machiavellian manoeuvres.
Simon,
ReplyDeleteBill Rolston and Ronnie Munck wrote an oral history of the ODR strike in the 30s which called into question the strength of claims that working class unity was displacing sectarianism. They concluded that the two phenomena actually existed side by side.
Brian is clever and persistent but overcoming sectarianism is not something that will be achieved any time soon.
AM- I assumed the two phenomena existed together however I also assumed that uniting people for a single purpose would have decreased sectarianism in a significant number of participants.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe that any two communities working together with a unity of purpose with the accompanying interaction, empathy, breaking down of preconceptions etc. wouldn't have had a positive effect.
Maybe by the 30s with the border firmly in place and with the riots and pogroms of the 1920s beliefs were more firmly entrenched than before.
I realise there were Orange marches and accompanying protests and violence before the 1907 Dock Strike but unity of purpose must have caused some form of psychological and social attrition on sectarianism?
It surely must have had some effect and it also must have been the biggest threat to sectarianism in the last couple of centuries? At least since the 1798 Rising went awry.
AM- I assumed the two phenomena existed together however I also assumed that uniting people for a single purpose would have decreased sectarianism in a significant number of participants.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe that any two communities working together with a unity of purpose with the accompanying interaction, empathy, breaking down of preconceptions etc. wouldn't have had a positive effect.
Maybe by the 30s with the border firmly in place and with the riots and pogroms of the 1920s beliefs were more firmly entrenched than before.
I realise there were Orange marches and accompanying protests and violence before the 1907 Dock Strike but unity of purpose must have caused some form of psychological and social attrition on sectarianism?
It surely must have had some effect and it also must have been the biggest threat to sectarianism in the last couple of centuries? At least since the 1798 Rising went awry.
Simon,
ReplyDeletewe need look no further than the PSE in the North. They might be in it together but they both hate each other.
The Rolston Munck argument was if I recall correctly that the big drum did not need to be beaten by the ruling class to maintain sectarianism: the people on the ground were more than capable of doing it themselves. I have seen it argued elsewhere that often the ruling unionist bloc fed the unionist working class the diet of sectarianism that it wanted to be fed upon even if it at times endangered the ruling bloc's relations with the Treasury. But I was in jail when I read Munck and Rolston and no longer remember the arguments as clearly.
The more people on the ground in both communities cooperate the better but I don't expect a lot more beyond the immediate emerging from it.
AM, I can believe it may be true as commonsense or logical deductions are often contradicted by empirical evidence.
ReplyDeleteOften what looks likely is not what happened at all.
My view on the unity of the workers would be a likely candidate for such a mistaken belief. But I suppose it is a subject which would be difficult to understand wholly even after completing a thesis.
Simon,
ReplyDeletedon't go all social science on me. You will be talking Latin next lol.
One of the greatest challenges to doctrine is facts on the ground.
AM,
ReplyDeleteHo ho! I nearly did spring a little Latin on the debate. Sometimes it helps other times it just looks pretentious. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Simon,
ReplyDeleteI think you are right. When it is used to clarify a point rather than magnify an ego it has its uses. People instinctively can tell the difference.