Since stealing 78% of Occupied Palestine in 1948, the rest in 1967, Israeli soldiers and police have systematically killed and terrorized defenseless Palestinians with impunity.
The Jewish state gets away with murder and much more because the world community fails to hold it accountable.
Notably the US and other Western countries turn a blind eye to its high crimes of war, against humanity, and daily apartheid persecution of a long-suffering people – illegally blockaded Gazans harmed most since 2007.
Law Professor Francis Boyle earlier accused Israel of “heinous war crimes inflicted every day…against the Palestinian people,” including “willful killing” and state terror.
The late Law Professor Michael Mandel called illegal Israeli settlements “war crimes,” citing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Geneva Conventions, along with other international and Canadian law.
On October 1, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel highlighted the disturbing reality for long-suffering Palestinians under apartheid occupation, saying the following:
“Israel’s perception of Palestinian citizens as (the Jewish state’s) ‘enemy’ continues to grant blanket impunity to police for killings.
The 10 commandments and hundreds of others fundamentalist Jews believe were given to their people by the almighty apply only to others of the faith, no one else — including No 6: Thou shalt not kill.
In October 2000, Israeli police killed 13 Palestinians who were nonviolently protesting for rights denied them.
All but one were Israeli citizens, the other a Gaza resident.
The killings Israel calls the “October 2000 events” followed Likud-leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative, heavily guarded, visit to the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest site – sparking the Second Intifada.
The horrific five-year toll included:
• 4,166 Palestinian deaths, including 886 children and 271 women;
• 554 extrajudicial assassinations, including 253 peaceful bystanders;
• 3,530 Palestinians disabled or maimed;
• 8,600 imprisoned, including 288 children and 115 women;
• 576 students killed, including 199 university-level ones and 32 teachers;
• another 4,713 students injured and 1,389 detained;
• 2,329,659 dunums of confiscated Palestinian land;
• another 73,613 dunums of razed land plus 1,355,290 uprooted trees; and
• 7,761 demolished homes and another 93,842 damaged.
All of the above are unpunished high crimes of war and against humanity — an apartheid Israel speciality.
Established to investigate what happened in October 2000, Israel’s Or Commission found no justification for the killings that sparked all of the above.
Nothing warranted lethal and related violence against nonthreatening Palestinians.
To this day, no Israeli police officer or anyone more senior was held accountable for cold-blooded murder.
At the time, “(a)bout 660 Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested in connection with these events, and hundreds, including scores of minors, were indicted and detained without bond until the end of trial,” Adalah explained.
In September 2005, Israeli police formally declined to hold officers in its ranks accountable for butchery.
In January 2007, Israel’s attorney general closed the case.
“Adalah has continued to demand justice and accountability for the Palestinians killed and for their families, including the punishment of those responsible,” it said, adding:
“Adalah has also continued to confront the Israeli police and Mahash for their brutality and unaccountability towards Palestinian citizens of Israel, while calling for adherence to the Or Commission’s recommendations.”
For over 72 years and events preceding them, Israeli security forces have terrorized, brutalized and massacred defenseless Palestinians for crime of being Arabs in a Jewish state — their mark of Cain.
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