Party to Murder

Posted on Dec 29, 2008

AP photo / Fadi Adwan
The body of a Palestinian security force officer lies in the rubble
after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Gaza City on Sunday.

By
Chris Hedges

Editor?s note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked
Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven
years, to update a previous column on Gaza.

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza?the
buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school,
the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the
crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the
hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the
wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human
suffering?wonder why we are hated?

Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is
as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized
bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a
flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who
suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might
have been should fate and time and geography have made the
circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd
and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and
love. ?Expose thyself to what wretches feel,? King Lear said, entering
the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, ?and show the heavens more just.?

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous
narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but
also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have
been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded
since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel?s defense
minister, said Israel is engaged in a ?war to the bitter end? against
Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval
vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a
population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy
weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and
control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied
Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor
Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million
Palestinians in Gaza ?a crime against humanity.? Falk, who is Jewish,
has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as
?a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as
laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.? He has asked
for ?the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and
determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders
responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for
violations of international criminal law.?

Falk?s unflinching honesty has enraged Israel. He was banned from
entering the country on Dec. 14 during his attempt to visit Gaza and
the West Bank.

?After being denied entry I was put in a holding room with about 20
others experiencing entry problems,? he said. ?At this point I was
treated not as a U.N. representative, but as some sort of security
threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search, and the most
meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed. I was separated
from my two U.N. companions, who were allowed to enter Israel. At this
point I was taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away,
required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room, taken to a
locked, tiny room that had five other detainees, smelled of urine and
filth, and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the
next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the
miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food, and
either lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the
guard office.?

The foreign press has been, like Falk, barred by Israel from entering
Gaza to report on the destruction.

Israel?s stated aim of halting homemade rockets fired from Gaza into
Israel remains unfulfilled. Gaza militants have fired more than 100
rockets and mortars into Israel, killing four people and wounding
nearly two dozen more, since Israel unleashed its air assault. Israel
has threatened to launch a ground assault and has called up 6,500 army
reservists. It has massed tanks on the Gaza border and declared the
area a closed military zone.

The rocket attacks by Hamas are, as Falk points out, also criminal
violations of international law. But as Falk notes, ?... such
Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel?s imposition of a
collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on
the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international
society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to
render protection to the Palestinian people.?

?It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the
entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to
survive in terms of their health,? Falk has said of the ongoing Israeli
blockade of Gaza. ?This is an increasingly precarious condition. A
recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from
acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with
Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among
children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition
is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75
percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially
among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan
children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.?

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