09 januari 2009 · Inga kommentarer
Enough is enough. Now Gaza, on top of everything else. The Palestinians symbolise the ongoing struggle worldwide against USrael’s neo-colonial wars. Zionist goals cannot be met without genocide. To uphold a Jewish state it is necessary to commit crimes that are defined as genocide in The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide signed by the General Assembly on December 9th, 1948. It states:
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide 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:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Clauses a, b and c are fulfilled and just one would be enough to define genocide. Suffice it to mention here the extensive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, the very carefully engineered so-called Plan Dalet, documented in detail by Ilan Pappe.
The Zionist’s colonisation project has existed over two turns of century. It is a myth that there could ever be a Jewish state in Palestine without genocide of the Palestinian people. Genocide is incumbent in Zionism, its innermost core. A Jewish state must have a substantial Jewish majority and this cannot be achieved without the eviction of those who lived on the land. We see the result in a racist apartheid system that discriminates between Jews and non-Jews in Israel itself, in the raising of the Wall, in the nearby Palestinian refugee camps and in facts on the ground, as illustrated by the four maps and now in Gaza.
Enough is enough. It is more than enough.
A so-called two-state solution involves legitimising genocide in retrospect, as it does not acknowledge the evicted Palestinian refugees’ inalienable right to return, in accordance with UN resolutions.
Some would say that this is unrealistic because of the hatred that has been created between Palestinians and Jews. But in that case, those who brought about colonisation, the theft of land and genocide can move somewhere else if they do not wish to live in peace and equality with their ‘victims’ in their own country. The French colonisers in Algeria returned home. In South Africa, the majority chose to stay.
Israel of today is an entity with precious little legitimacy, being a state in the country of Palestine, as shown in the article ‘Revoking Israel’s UN membership‘. There is little support for the statement that Israel is a creation of the UN. There is nothing to indicate that this entity will ever work in accordance with UN decisions and international human rights, or exist in peace with its neighbours. Quite the opposite.
Israel is, today, the biggest threat to a world in peace and Zionism an ideology whose main task is to justify USrael’s neo-colonial wars while referring to the Holocaust and ‘anti-Semitism‘.
Lasse Wilhelmson
Täby, Sweden
January 2009
(1) Israel and ‘The New American Century’
(2) Zionism - more than traditional colonialism and apartheid http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/Jan/26%20o/Zionism%20%20more%20than%20traditional%20colonialism%20and%20apartheid%20By%20Lasse%20Wilhelmson.htm
(3) Maps of “facts on the ground” http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/photos/maps/landloss.html
(4) Revoking Israel’s UN Membership http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14445
(5) Will the World Change Now? http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/11/08/lasse-wilhelmson-will-the-world-change-now/
(6) “Anti-Semitism” as a political weapon http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Articles/Story1444.html
Gaza and the Diaspora Jews’ Responsibility
02 februari 2009 · Inga kommentarer
In the ghettos of Warsaw during the Second World War, the Jews defended themselves against an imperious executioner, as the Palestinians have recently in Gaza. Neither Germany nor Israel had the remotest legal or moral right to even touch the inhabitants, and the planned massacres were part of the policy of genocide. The ghetto inhabitants, on the other hand, had every right to defend themselves. I’m just sorry they didn’t have more and better weapons with which to defend their human dignity - then as now.
Since the end of the 19th century, the Palestinians have been gradually forced out of their country. Today they amount to only 20% oft the citizens of Israel and do not have the same rights as the Jews. Others live in walled-in enclaves on the West Bank and in the Gaza ghetto. Many have lived for 60 years in refugee camps or in exile. The situation of the Palestinians is now similar to that of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War.
But the Palestinians have never had anything to do with Hitler and Palestine is their country. The Second World War has been portrayed as a holocaust mainly concerning Jews. But there were Japanese at Hiroshima, Germans in Dresden and Russians on the Eastern Front. The Jews have wrongly been allotted an exceptional position as victims in order to justify Israel’s policies. The `Jewish State’ becomes taboo and anyone who touches it is stigmatised with `anti Semitism’.
Those of us who live outside Israel and have Jewish family backgrounds or who identify ourselves with Israel as a `Jewish State’, hold a responsibility, like everyone else, to raise our voices against Israel’s crimes. Besides, it is in our own interests. The more we keep quiet or try to smooth over the crimes, the more politically motivated hatred towards the Jews worldwide will grow. And what will happen when the only superpower, losing its dominance, starts looking for scapegoats?
It is also about being able to look at oneself in the mirror every morning, with respect. Because, to be honest, do you really enjoy having your identity linked to a racist society of robbers whose policy is genocide towards the robbed?
I therefore challenge anyone who identifies him or herself as a Jew: cut the ties of identification with Israel’s `Jewish state’ and support the evicted Palestinians and their right to return and that all people between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan may live with equal rights and in agreement.
It works, I promise. I have done it myself.
Lasse Wilhelmson
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