Crossing moral red lines – HRC 27th session – NGO statement (Org. for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial;Discrimination)

Written statement* submitted by the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a non-governmental organization in special consultative status

The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.

[5 August 2014]

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* This written statement is issued, unedited, in the language(s) received from the submitting non^­governmental organization(s).

Crossing Moral Red Lines

The international community is beyond fed up with the deadlock…with the dysfunction…chaos and inhumanity of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

What does the occupier want?

Does Israel want the international community not to condemn its illegal occupation and its continuous illegal colonial settlement campaign?

Occupation in itself is an act of transgression…violence…subjugation…terror.

Does the occupier want the international community to join its campaign in demonizing the occupied? What does Israel, the spoiled child of the superpowers, want?

Does it want to wreck havoc with all the internationally recognized standards and principles of humanity and morality and remain the exception to the rule of law?

The occupier, time and again, tells the international community it has no choice but to fight the occupied people’s threat to its security. It denies that every country has the duty to defend itself, including Palestinians in Palestine, according to the principles enshrined in international law? Any other country in the world, not only Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories would do the same; resist an illegal occupation.

The voice of reason cannot be louder or clearer. The message is simple. To end the rockets and bloodshed on both sides end the occupation and free Palestine and the Palestinians^,

When all is said and done, the failure of Israel, the Occupying Power, to end its prolonged occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is where the decades-long-nightmare begins and where it must end. Otherwise, the Occupying Power and those who support it are asking Palestine to accept the occupation, which will never be accepted.

What could life-seeking, freedom-seeking, self-determination-seeking Palestinians do but go out and defend themselves?

The latest outbreak of violence targeted Gaza (Palestine) again, which is under siege. The total siege is now in its 8^th year and has cut Gaza off from the rest of the world. How longer are people expected to endure? The human suffering under an occupation coupled with a total siege is a shameful open-air imprisonment of an entire population. An example of the harshness of the illegal blockade is the fact that food allowed into Gaza (Palestine) is calculated with reference to the number of calories that are needed just to sustain life, and only that amount is allowed in by Israel. Attempts to break the siege by NGOs has been met with brutal force, including the killing of human rights defenders, such as what happened with the activists and crew of the Turkish Freedom flotilla that tried to reach Gaza (Palestine).

Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza (Palestine) is another mass slaughter of Palestinians in a series of periodic premeditated massacres. Warning civilians to leave their houses before shelling them in an open-air prison is not an act of morality. Israel knew there was no safe haven where Palestinians could flee. Children, women, and the elderly were killed indiscriminately in their beds and on the streets by the Occupying Power in an avalanche of terror. The avalanche of fired missiles that rained over the trapped Gazans (Palestinians) is a crime against humanity. Yet the crime is made worse by blaming the victims while the Occupying Power continues to enjoy impunity with the tacit approval of the self-imposed human rights champions. What a devastating breach of, and affront to, the very words and spirit of human rights and humanitarian law developed over the last 150 years!

The illegal Israeli occupation is the main cause of all the human rights violations and tragedies in Palestine. Israel may have the might but that does not necessarily make them right. The international community accepts Israel’s right to defend its people but that right does not negate the rights of others.

Peace may be achieved after ending the occupation not before. In the meantime, it is appalling that Israel, after the tragic Holocaust history of the Jews in Europe, has turned the Jewish legacy from a victim of the Nazi racist ideology into a victimizer.

Crossing moral red lines, the complexity of our decadent systems of hard power based on the jungle law of the superiority of brute force and self-interest is such that the Occupying Power can cover up its crimes and prevail by the sheer use of “might makes right”. The occupied people who resist occupation are seen as the terrorists! In the self-indulgent glory of its colonization and inhuman subjugation of Palestinians, the Occupying Power becomes a so called pinnacle of goodness-the victimized victimizer. It can do no wrong! The false allegation of anti-Semitism hangs like a sword for those who dare say otherwise!

This has been the sad story of history. The polish of power! The more powerful a government the more good! The more powerful the supporters of Israel are the more they monopolize the media and influence the international community in their portrayal of Palestinians as the terrorists. To ask the oppressed and subjugated Palestinians not to rebel is to ask something absurd. The occupation is Israel’s creation; a historical mistake. All else are symptoms of the disease, which is occupation. And what can a body do but fight a disease the way Palestinians are fighting against genocide.

Israel has created this collective agony for Palestinians and the United States goes on supporting it, and then we ask why there is terrorism. Where there is transgression, destruction, devastation, oppression, human degradation and desperation, humiliation and suffocation in the cage of occupation, the spiral of violence and counter-violence will be the logical consequence.

The religion of the Zionists is not involved in it at all. Zionism is man-made.

Occupation is wide-scale aggression; the indiscriminate tyrannical use of force and violence to terrorize a population into submission.

This is the vicious cycle of the Israeli illegal occupation. State-terrorism and its consequence of counter-terrorism is the barrier to a proactive and dynamic peace.

Therefore, the international community should direct all its efforts towards ending the occupation.

EAFORD

5 August 2014