THE PALESTINE CONFLICT

NOVANEWS

“Among the recipients of U.S. military and economic aid and diplomatic support, Israel occupies a unique place. Israel is generally portrayed by the U.S. mass media as the victim of terrorism. (…) Its own role as a major perpetrator of state terrorism is consistently downplayed

 or ignored. (Edward Herman, Excerpt from The Real Terror Network, South End Press, 1982)”
“The Israeli prime ministers: 1-Menachim Begin took part in terrorist acts in the 1940s, including the attack on the King David Hotel which killed 91 people. 2-Yitzhak Shamir was the operations commander, and later leader, of the Stern Gang, a terrorist group which was responsible for a string of political assassinations. 3-Ariel Sharon initiated the Sabra-Shatila massacre in which between 1000 and 3000 people were murdered, and led a terrorist campaign against all Palestinians living in the occupied territories… Between 1948 and 2007, U.S. assistance to Israel amounted to $98 billion, of which 60 percent was military assistance and 40 percent economic assistance.” 
“Furthermore, there is no need for it. We ought to call for sanctions against the United States! If the US were to stop its massive support for Israel, it’s over. (Noam Chomsky)”
“The U.S. Government and media bias on terrorism in the Middle East: It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel’s history, its record —from the fact that it is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law— is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse, never addressed as playing any role at all in provoking terror. (Edward Said in The Progressive; May 30, 1996)”
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves; politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. (David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.)”
“I imagine that if I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would, at some stage, have joined one of the terror organizations. (Ehud Barak, Israeli general, and Prime Minister 1999 – 2001)”
“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. (…) There is no more Palestine… Finished. (Moshe Dayan, Israeli general, 1956)”
“For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to ‘reason’ and has suggested ‘negotiations’. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate. (Bertrand Russell, 1970)”
“The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system. (Nelson Mandela)”
“The reason that Israel has been able to appropriate Palestine unto itself with American aid and support is that Israel controls the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least 90% of Americans, if they know anything at all of the issue, know only the Israeli propaganda line. Israel has been able to control the explanation, because the powerful Israel Lobby brands every critic of Israeli policy as an anti-semite who favors a second holocaust of the Jews. (Paul Craig Roberts, 2007)”
“Yesterday’s South African township dwellers can tell you about today’s life in the Occupied Territories… More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail… If apartheid ended, so can the occupation. But the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his work against apartheid in South Africa)”
“But in my opinion, the Jews have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism… Why should they depend on American money or British arms for forcing themselves on an unwelcome land? Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine? (Mahatma Gandhi)”
“The main danger which Israel, as a ‘Jewish state’, poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbours, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim… No Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion’s idea that Israeli policies must be based —within the limits of practical considerations— on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state. (Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years.)” 
“You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or more have experienced —some many, many times— the Israeli army breaking into the home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these things happen to siblings and neighbours… The emotional aspect of the child is affected by the lack of security. He needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does not. In our research, we have found that children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their behaviours and, later, in their political beliefs. (Dr Samir Quota, director of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in ‘The Journal of Palestine Studies’ Summer 1996, p.84)”
“All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed. The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention’s Article 49, which states, ‘The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ (John Quigley, Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice)”
“Following are some excerpts from the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices… 1988: Many avoidable deaths and injuries were caused because Israeli soldiers frequently used gunfire in situations that did not present mortal danger to troops… IDF troops used clubs to break limbs and beat Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting arrest… At least thirteen Palestinians have been reported to have died from beatings… 1989: Human rights groups charged that the plainclothes security personnel acted as death squads who killed Palestinian activists without warning, after they had surrendered, or after they had been subdued… 1991: [The report] added that the human rights groups had published ‘detailed credible reports of torture, abuse and mistreatment’ of Palestinian detainees in prisons and detention centers. (Former Congressman Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions.)”
“It is no longer my country: For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished… I can’t bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Palestinians. All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their own… I can’t do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell without me. (Israeli actress Rivka Mitchell, quoted in peace movement periodical, ‘The Other Israel’, August 1998)”
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French… What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct… If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs… As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Palestinian resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. (Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in ‘A Land of Two Peoples’ ed. Mendes-Flohr.)”
“In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews. (…) Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse… (Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker)”
“America — An impartial mediator? America’s credibility as mediator had long been questioned by Palestinians, and with reason. ‘The Palestinians always complain that we know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do’ one Israeli government source told The Independent recently. ‘There is good reason for that: we write them.’ (Phil Reeves in The Independent, UK, 10/9/2000)” 
“Lockstep U.S. Media tell some of the facts but not the truth: Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. (…) Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed by heavily armed men in uniform —often described by CNN and other news outlets as ‘Israeli security forces’. Under the circumstances, it’s a notably benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors. (…) As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard a single American news account describing them as ‘pro democracy demonstrators.’ Yet that would be an appropriate way to refer to people who —after more than three decades of living under occupation— are in the streets to demand self determination. (…) While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior firepower, do most of the killing… American news stories highlighted the specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak as he demanded that Palestinians end the violence —while uniformed Israelis under his authority continue to kill them. (…) Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I’m appalled by what Israel is doing with U.S. Tax dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get along, they diminish the humanity of us all. (Norman Solomon, Media Spin Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation, from FAIR’s Media Beat, October 14, 2000)”
“A benign occupation? Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running an ‘enlightened’ or ‘benign’ occupation, qualitatively different from other military occupations the world has seen. The truth was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation. (Israeli historian, Benny Morris; Righteous Victims)”
“Israel is the target of at least 65 UN Resolutions and the Palestinians are the target of none: Aside from the core issues —refugees, Jerusalem, borders— the major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbours; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”
“Any humanitarian looking at the sheer number of innocent civilians who have lost their homes can only condemn Israel’s house demolition policy as a hugely disproportionate military response by an occupation army… It is a policy that creates only hardship and bitterness, and in the end can only undermine hope for future reconciliation and peace. (Peter Hansen, Commissioner General of UNRWA)”
“The majority of these Palestinian children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers. (Catherine Cook)”
“The paradigmatic example of a ‘crime against humanity’ is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People. This is where the concept of crime against humanity came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian People: Crimes against humanity. Legally, just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. (…) In fairness, you will note that the U.N. Human Rights Commission did not go so far as to condemn Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian People. But it has condemned Israel for committing crimes against humanity, which is the direct precursor to genocide. And I submit that if something is not done quite soon by the American People and the International Community to stop Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian People, it could very well degenerate into genocide, if Israel is not there already. And in this regard, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is what international lawyers call a genocidaire—one who has already committed genocide in the past. (Professor Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois)”
“Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred! (Nathan Chofshi)”