Posted by John, October 18th, 2009 - under Imperialism, Israel, Palestine, War crimes.

Tags: Genocide

The Goldstone Report is unequivocal. It concluded:

[T]here is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.

The report goes on to detail the evidence that leads to that conclusion. The blockade of Gaza is itself a possible war crime. The invasion is too. As the UN Press Release on the report says:

[T]he Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.

These are, in the measured tones of the report, possible war crimes or even crimes against humanity.

Goldstone is no fly by nighter. He is a former former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Israel predictably ignored the investigation and has done its best to rubbish and reject it. Powerful Western supported war criminals can do that.

According to another UN Press release ‘the Human Rights Council today strongly condemned a host of Israeli measures in the occupied Palestinian territory and called on both sides to implement the recommendations of a United Nations commission that found evidence that Israel and the Palestinians committed serious war crimes in the three-week Gaza war nine months ago.’

This condemnation included not only the criminal blockade and subsequent invasion of Gaza but also the ongoing annexation of parts of the West Bank. The Release said:

Much of today’s resolution was devoted to other Israeli activities, particularly in Jerusalem, including condemnation of limits to Palestinian access to properties and holy sites based on national origin, religion, sex, age or other grounds, calling this a grave violation of the Palestinian people’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

It condemned recent Israeli violations of human rights in occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the confiscation of lands and properties, the demolishing of houses, the construction and expansion of settlements, the continuing construction of the separation Wall built in part on land Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and the continuous digging and excavation works in and around Al-Aqsa mosque and its vicinity.

The vote to refer the issue of possible Israeli and Palestinian war crimes to the UN General Assembly was adopted by 25 votes in favour, six against, and 11 abstentions.

The United States voted against the resolution. No major Western powers (apart from Russia) voted for the motion.

This is not surprising. Israel is the outpost of US imperialism in the Middle East.

It is if you like the armed wing of US imperialism there. Its role is to destabilise the region and allow the US to exercise control over oil and its distribution throughout the world.

Israel can if needed discipline recalcitrant nations, that is those who are not obsequious puppets of the West, or at least threaten to do so.

This means, despite Barack Obama’s meek and mild protestations against settlements for example, that the US props up the Israeli regime with massive military and economic aid.

The US might object very occasionally when its attack dog slips off the leash, but it always rewards it for being just that, an attack dog in the interests of the US.

It is therefore no surprise that the US voted against referring the Goldstone Report to the General Assembly or to condemn Israel for it clear violations of the rights of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel cannot fulfil its role as the brutal bully in the region without first subjugating the people whose lands its has stolen, the Palestinians.

The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is a necessary precondition for the success of Israel’s attack dog role. Israel must first secure its backyard.

There is a two fold process going on – the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people is the building block on which Israel destabilises and disciplines the whole region for US imperialism.

The slow burn of genocide against the Palestinians is disguised through an effective apartheid state in which the Jewish regime occupies Palestine but, given the very existence of the Palestinian people, creates and organises tightly controlled Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza.

Given that the major imperialist power, and most of the imperialist Western nations, support the apartheid Israeli state, the UN will do nothing effective about the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity Israel commits against the Palestinian people. The UN is the plaything of the major powers.

The Israeli occupation and annexation in effect of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza (reflecting the expansionist nature of the Israeli state) are facts on the ground which destroy any possibility of a two state solution.

The only realistic long term outcome is a democratic and secular Palestine in which all who want to can live – a rainbow nation of the Middle East.

The Palestinians cannot win this. They are not strong enough militarily or economically to challenge the Israeli killing machine.

There is one power in the Middle East that could challenge US and Israeli hegemony. That power is the Arab working class.

It could sweep away the dictatorships (most of them US imposed or supported) across the region and establish real democracies of workers and peasants to run society in their interests.

Egypt, with its tens of millions of workers, its traditions of militancy, and the ongoing process of relearning those traditions, is the key.

A successful workers’ uprising in Egypt against US puppet Mubarak would change the dynamics of the Middle East completely and challenge the grip of US imperialism and Israeli dominance.

Truly the road to Jerusalem runs through Cairo.