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As
more and more facts are revealed and confirmed about Israel's campaign to isolate and
crush the Palestinian community in Gaza, the danger of a chain
reaction of regional conflicts is becoming evident. Many of the
accusations of Israeli war crimes during the invasion of Gaza have already been confirmed
by the accounts of Israeli soldiers who were involved and by the
investigations of human rights organizations.
Moreover,
the mentality that this impunity created in the Israeli army has been
highlighted by the new fashion among Israeli soldiers to wear t-shirts
with cartoons and slogans that cynically boast of brutality against
Palestinian civilians.
Thus,
an article in the March 20 issue of Haaretz,
a liberal Zionist Israeli daily, reported: "Dead babies, mothers
weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and
bombed-out mosques—these are a few examples of the images Israeli
Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order
to mark the end of training, or of field duty.
"The
slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A
t-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription 'Better use Durex,' next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby,
with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's
t-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman
with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in
English, '1 shot, 2 kills.'
" A 'graduation' shirt for those who have completed
another sniper’s course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a
combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, 'No matter
how it begins, we'll put an end to it.'
"There
are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example,
the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring
a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the
slogan, 'Bet you got raped!' A few of the images underscore actions
whose existence the army officially denies—such as 'confirming the
kill' (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range,
to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child
non-combatants."
The
same issue of Haaretz reported statements of
Israeli soldiers confirming the accusations of war crimes made by
Palestinian spokespersons during the invasion: "During Operation
Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive
rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say
soldiers who fought in the offensive. ... The soldiers are graduates of
the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon.
… Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion
fought in the Gaza operation.
"The
speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony
runs counter to the Israeli Defense Force’s claims that Israeli troops
observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation."
Israeli
soldiers said that their officers told them to shoot Palestinians at
will without worrying about it. Some said that rabbis attached to the
military told them that they were fighting a "holy war " to expel non-Jews from the "Promised
Land."
Now
it appears that the Israeli airforce bombed
truck convoys in Sudan in at the end of January
and mid-February, shortly after the end of the invasion of Gaza. Sudanese officials
reported the attacks recently. (Their account was reported by CBS on
March 25 and picked up by Haaretz on March
26). The Sudanese officials accused the U.S. of the attacks. U.S.
officials denied American involvement. But the Israeli government did
not. In fact, it hinted that it was responsible.
The
New York Times reported March 26: "[Israeli premier] Olmert said in a speech on Thursday: 'There's no
point getting into details—everyone can use his imagination. ...
Whoever needs to know, knows there is no place where the state of Israel cannot act.’"
In
an analysis of the report in its March 26 issue, Haaretz
estimated that the bombing in Sudan was a "deterrent
message to Iran." Israeli officials
have argued that Iran is sending weapons to Hamas
via Sudan and through Egypt, in particular long-range missiles that
could strike deep into Israel. Hamas denied
that the convoys were carrying weapons, declaring that they were only
ferrying poor African immigrants, scores of whom were killed by the air
attacks.
Haaretz reported March 27: "American officials have
confirmed rumors that Israel Air Force warplanes attacked a convoy of
Iranian arms passing through Sudan en route to the Gaza Strip
in Sudan in January, The New York
Times reported on Friday.
"Officials
apprised of classified intelligence assessments said that Israel carried out aerial attack
as part of its effort to combat the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza
Strip, according to The Times. The officials also said they had
received intelligence reports that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards
operative had gone to Sudan to help organize the
weapons convoy said the report."
Reports
of Sudanese officials about these incidents continue to be
contradictory (this is a difficult issue for the Sudanese government,
given its weakness), but it seems clear enough that the Israeli airforce did carry out strikes in the country
against suspected arms smugglers. In fact, the Israeli government
obliquely is boasting of it.
Furthermore,
the Israeli army's use of an atrocious weapon against Palestinian
civilians in Gaza has been confirmed by Human
Rights Watch. In a report released March 25, the humanitarian
organization declared in a press release: "'Rain of Fire: Israel's
Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,' provides witness accounts of
the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on
civilians and civilian property in Gaza.
"Human
Rights Watch researchers in Gaza immediately after
hostilities ended found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of
burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets,
apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school.
The report also presents ballistics evidence, photographs, and
satellite imagery, as well as documents from the Israeli military and
government."
White
phosphorus can be used to create smoke screens, but if it is used
against populations it has a terrible effect. In contact with oxygen it
burns at a high temperature and cannot be extinguished by water. It can
literally melt human bodies. Some of the most scandalous atrocities by
the U.S. army against civilians in Vietnam were caused by white
phosphorus. A photo of a young girl hideously burned by white
phosphorus was one of the most powerful arguments of the American
antiwar movement.
The
U.S. government is also
implicated in the Israeli use of white phosphorus. The Human Rights
Watch report noted: "All of the white phosphorus shells that Human
Rights Watch found were manufactured in the United States in 1989 by
Thiokol Aerospace, which was running the Louisiana Army Ammunition
Plant at the time. On Jan. 4, Reuters photographed IDF artillery units
handling projectiles whose markings indicate that they were produced in
the United States at the Pine Bluff Arsenal
in September 1991."
Human
Rights Watch called on the U.S. government to investigate
the Israeli white phosphorus atrocities, as it is obligated to do by
international law.
All
these reports of Israeli atrocities and the brutalization of the
Israeli army confirm a process of degeneration of the Zionist state,
which in fact is inevitable since it is based on the expulsion of the
native population from its homeland and the crushing of any surviving
communities of the expelled people.
The
role of the Zionist state in the region and its support by the United States has become an outrage to
the native peoples of the Middle East. It is an obstacle to the
success of any change in U.S. policy intended to mitigate
conflict with the peoples of Muslim tradition and to avert escalating
military involvements.
The
peoples of the imperialist countries, and in particular in the United
States, therefore, have a powerful reason to demand that their
governments withdraw their support from the Zionist state if they want
to avoid more and more costly adventures by their rulers in this region.
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