About 150 demonstrators gathered at the foot of the Robbie
Burns statue in downtown Halifax last Saturday to protest against the
Israeli slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza. “I know it’s a
cold day,” Ismail Zayid, a retired Dal professor told the shivering
crowd, “but there are people in Gaza being subjected to bombardment and
killing.” He castigated the Canadian government for supporting Israel
and the US for providing the sophisticated weapons systems Israel uses
to terrorize and massacre Gazans trapped in the tiny, densely populated
coastal strip along the Mediterranean. One-and-a-half-million
Palestinians are crowded into an area only 41 kilometres long and
between six and a dozen kilometres wide. That’s equivalent to a narrow
swath of land stretching from downtown Halifax to Elmsdale, a few
kilometres past Stanfield Airport. Zayid condemned Israel’s illegal
occupation of Palestinian land, its routine demolition of Palestinian
homes and, for the last year-and-a-half, its blockade of Gaza, during
which people have been denied food, water, electricity, fuel and
medicine. “Yet nobody says anything about it,” he added. “This siege
has transformed Gaza into an open prison, a concentration camp.”
Zayid and other speakers were especially critical of Canadian news
organizations for their blatantly biased, pro-Israeli coverage. The
mainstream media peddle the line, also peddled by Harper, Ignatieff and
Bush, that Hamas, which governs Gaza, is nothing but a gang of
terrorists bent on destroying Israel. On the other hand, the media
portray the Israeli massacres of Palestinians as the regrettable
by-product of a democratic nation defending itself from constant rocket
attacks. But why are Gazans firing rockets into Israel? Could rockets
be a form of resistance to 60 years of Israeli oppression? The media
cheered as Afghan “freedom fighters” fired American-made rockets at the
evil Soviet invaders but, for some reason, the Palestinians have no
right to resist their oppressors. It was left to former US president
Jimmy Carter to report recently that Hamas officials told him last
April “rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and
to dramatize their humanitarian plight.” That was before the rockets
stopped flying in June as part of a six-month ceasefire during which
Israel continued trying to starve Gazans into submission. Then, on
November 4, the day of the US presidential election, Israel violated
the ceasefire when it attacked a tunnel in Gaza killing several
Palestinians. The Canadian media however, repeatedly and falsely blamed
Hamas for violating the ceasefire, thereby justifying Israel’s
saturation bombing and its later invasion of Gaza.
The most dramatic moments at last weekend’s rally occurred as Asaf
Rahid spoke out against companies that support Israel’s oppression of
Palestinians. Rashid, the campaign co-ordinator for NSPIRG called for a
boycott of the Chapters and Indigo book chain. The chain’s CEO, Heather
Reisman, and her husband Gerry Schwartz have established a foundation
which gives financial support to Jews who travel to Israel to serve in
its armed forces. The crowd applauded as one woman folded her plastic
Chapters/Indigo rewards card in half and tossed it on the pavement.
Rashid also told demonstrators that Motorola makes communications
equipment for the Israeli military. “Last year I bought a cellphone. I
didn’t happen to do my research ahead of time,” he said. “It’s a
Motorola cellphone, so I inadvertently supported the occupation.”
People gasped as Rashid pulled out his phone and stomped on it. They
cheered as he threw it against the granite base of the Robbie Burns
statue sending metal splinters flying. Even Robbie himself seemed to
smile. Just for an instant his frozen lips parted and his fixed eyes
seemed to gleam. Burns, great-hearted poet of the poor and downtrodden,
would have recognized this irony: Israel, a nation set up to emancipate
the oppressed Jewish people, in turn imprisons oppressed Palestinians.
The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley. And leave us
nought but grief and pain for promised joy.
There’s no blockade of your emails to Bruce Wark.Send
them to brucew@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2009.
So, just how long did you live in the middle east?? What exactly is you frame of reference that you claim to understand the dynamic that is the Israeli/Palastinian/Hammas relationship?
I was inclined to believe as you did….that perhaps the Israeli reaction to these things is over-zealeous maybe even criminal. That is until I went there to visit my wife who was stationed there as a peace-keeper. While there we took the time to tour all around the best spots that were safe to do so…Then came infantada 2000.
I was standing in the Canadian base listening to the rockets being fired from Lebanon, I saw all kinds of things that are not reported on main-stream north american media. Let me just say, the Palastinian and other forces are very good at playing the “downtrodden” card. They take every advantage of being the poor/under equipped foe of the much larger force!
I am surprised the Israeli government uses as much restraint as they do!!
Let me just ask you…If there were a radical group of natives on mcnabs that would periodically fire rockets into downtown Halifax (remember how small a country that Israel is!) how long would you be willing to turn the other cheek if we were not allowed to go to the island because it was “foreign”???
Technically the native people of canada own this land, we are squatters and if the international community said we could not go in, how long would you as a canadian STAND for the periodic killing of our people….unprovoked rocket launches that took out…hmm lets say for the sake of arguements the lower deck!! Followed the next week by the Bluenose as it was coming in for a visit! How about Purdy’s tower? How gentle would you be feeling watch that fall into the harbour?
I watched a well known and beloved pub frequented by off-duty canadian soldiers burn to the ground while I was in a hotel in Natanya!
I can tell you right now, you would change your damn tune, and you would change it fast if it was YOUR desk that was fired on by a rocket, if it was your kids school that got hit and you didn’t know if your kids were alive for hours while they dug them out.
The last Israeli government offered the palestinians everything EVERYTHING they asked for short of jeruselum. They refused outright because they were not given full control of the holy city…That Israeli government was THROWN out because they offered too much and still could not get peace.
It will not matter what is every offered. The Palestinians do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, while I was there, hamas was ordering its followers to kill any western tourists they could…
After that visit, my opinion changed. If Palestine wants peace, they could have it any day of the week….They don’t want it! I feel for the regular people, but they should not have elected hamas. They made their bed.. If those morons fire a rocket into a populated part of Israel, I say fire enough back that there is no way whoever fired it is still alive….10-100 whatever it takes. They were offered peace, they chose war…
My grandfather always told me, “it is not a good idea to poke a bear…” It applies too a lot of circumstances…In this case, you and a lot of liberal media are taking the high and mighty road and saying Israel should not be picking on this poor little nation…Well that is because you have NOT been there, I think someone should tell them to stop poking the damn bear!!
-Mike, Dartmouth NS
Your both wrong. This is both side’s fault, and both sides need to come together to fix it.
What has Israel done wrong?
1. Massive over-reactions (look at how many are dead on each side of the conflict since it began) to what amount to extremist attacks.
2. Using settlements that Israel has a (check your UN resolutions, people) are illegal, especially in the West Bank, as an excuse to cripple the Palestinian economy so it doesn’t rival Israel’s. Each settlement, and there are many, scattered everywhere, is linked by highways, power lines, and sewage pipes, all of which no Palestinian is allowed to come near or to cross. This isolates pockets of palestinians from the outside world, often from their own family, and they can’ get out.
3. Punishing innocent civilians for the actions of others by demolishing their homes and through bombardment. All this does is breed more resentment, and since there is no other option left to these people, they fight.
But hold on, what about Palestine?
1. Leaders there often refuse to accept reality, that indeed, there was actually a holocaust, and that the destruction of Israel is pretty much a wet dream since they obtained nuclear weapons, so they might as well figure out how to live with them, or at least beside them.
2. Palestinian governments cannot or will not stop the attacks on Israel from happening. It doesn’t matter how many or for what reason, killing of innocents is wrong, and logically is going to get you bombed right back (see a pattern forming here?)
The solution? Pretty simple in writing at least, Jimmy Carter’s been screaming about it for years, but nobody listens to poor old Jim. Withdraw the majority of the settlements, except for those now too large, permanent, and close to Israel, from the West Bank. Jerusalem can be an international city for three major world religions to worship peacefully in. Take all Israeli troops out of Gaza, replace them with an international force, and give Palestine full autonomy over Gaza and the West Bank.
The key is finding leaders on both sides who are honest and brave enough to do this while keeping their people from attacking each other in the meantime. This will require restraint, as both side have extremists (Google the name Rabin, Mike from Dartmouth, see what happened to him.) that will try to ruin the peace for their own personal gain, or may try to kill the leaders who are making peace in their own countries (i.e. what happened to Rabin)
In short, both sides need to grow a pair and do what needs to be done. BOTH SIDES! When killing innocents is involved, nobody is innocent.
Ryan from Halifax
Submitted to The Coast as a Letter to the Editor January 20, 2009.
Dear Sir:
I have now had the opportunity to read your editorial piece from the last issue of The Coast.
I do not think that your column was at all balanced, and that it presents a one-sided and naïve version of the events in that troubled area.
To cite but a few examples, you refer to the “slaughter of civilians” by the Israeli military, but fail to mention the important point that the tragic loss of civilian life is overwhelmingly caused by Hamas’ deliberate and cynical use of its own population as human shields. You do not mention the numerous warnings give by the Israeli military to civilians in possible harm’s way. You refer to the blockade of Gaza, but do not state that the southern access point to Gaza is tightly controlled by Egypt, a Sunni Arab country, likely because it does not want the extreme Hamas brand of Islam to incite its population and its banned Muslim Brotherhood organization.
Further, you speak about the mainstream media “peddling the line” that Hamas is “nothing but a gang of terrorists”. Have you read the Hamas Charter and what it says about Israel, Jews and peace negotiations? Is there some subtlety or hidden meaning there that I am missing? What else would you call a group that deliberately targets the civilian population in Israel with its rockets, mortars and suicide attacks? What could ever justify Hamas firing rockets at civilians in Israel (and not the allegedly “occupied” Israel, but Israel within its 1948 boundaries) – and what country in the world besides Israel is expected to endure such a direct challenge to the safety of its citizens and the fact of its sovereignty without responding? These are clearly war crimes, yet you dismiss them as something else.
Finally, the references to Gaza as a concentration camp and to Israel oppressing Palestinians as the Jews were once oppressed are incorrect, and blatant and offensive examples of Holocaust inversion – see online. I do not know if you have ever been to the Nazi death camps – I have, and I can assure you that they did not have hospitals, universities, television stations, synagogues, and the like, nor did the population have cell phones.
In closing, you quoted the poet Robbie Burns and suggested that he would have recognized the “irony” of the Jews oppressing the Palestinians. Perhaps a more fitting quote from Burns would be “…The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, Is king o’ men for a’ that…” – perhaps some honesty from those who so readily condemn Israel, but who seem to readily lose their tongues and righteous outrage when it comes to Darfur, the Congo, Tibet, Mumbai, etc., would be in order.
Yours truly,
A. Mark David, QC
Community Relations Committee
Atlantic Jewish Council
Halifax, NS
Dear Mr. David: Thanks so much for your e-mail. I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my editorial. I realize that supporting Israel is one of the main aims of the Atlantic Jewish Council. But given the well-documented suffering of Palestinians in Gaza as a result of the Israel’s economic blockade and its most recent military bombardment and invasion, I find your reaction to my editorial quite appalling. As a knowledgeable representative of the AJC, you are in a good position to know what the Israeli military has been doing in Gaza. You must also know that under international law, nothing justifies the collective punishment and slaughter of a civilian population.
To reinforce those points, I will refer you to a program broadcast yesterday (January 22/09) by Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. It tells the heart-wrenching story of Amer Shurrab, a Palestinian still living in the United States where he recently graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont. Democracy Now reports that last Friday, Shurrab’s father and two brothers were fleeing their village in Gaza when their car came under Israeli fire. Twenty-eight-year-old Kassab died in a hail of bullets trying to flee the vehicle. Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim survived the initial attack, but Israeli troops refused to allow an ambulance to reach him until 20 hours later and by then, he had bled to death from a leg wound. Democracy Now also reports that Israeli military medics were ordered not to help Ibrahim even though they wanted to do so. The young man died about one kilometre from the nearest hospital. You can read the transcript of his story for yourself at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/22/part…
You can also read the comments of Phyllis Bennis, a well-known Middle East specialist based in Washington on how international law applies to a situation such as this.
In your e-mail, you seek to justify the slaughter of at least 100 Palestinians for every dead Israeli by blaming Hamas for its “deliberate and cynical use of its own population as human shields.” In the Globe and Mail (January 13/09) Professor Michael Byers points out that the direct targeting of civilians is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions which Israel has ratified. “Individual targets may only be selected if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians. Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns rather than specific military targets are illegal. So, too, is the use of powerful bombs in crowded neighbourhoods.” Byers adds: “The Israeli government points to the fact that Hamas is using civilians as human shields. Hiding behind civilians is illegal, but two wrongs do not make a right. The relevant question is, again, whether the direct military advantage of a particular target exceeds the risk to civilians. Is destroying a mortar position next to a school worth 42 innocent lives?”
Phyllis Bennis makes the point in the Democracy Now transcript I mentioned that as an occupying power, Israel has an obligation to protect the civilian population not subject it to bombardment and the collective punishment of economic blockade.
You refer to “the numerous warnings give[n] by the Israeli military to civilians in possible harm’s way” without acknowledging that civilians taking refuge in UN and other public buildings died under Israeli bombardment. A report for Consortium News by Dennis Bernstein on January 17 noted: “Richard Falk, internationally respected legal scholar, and Special Reporter for the UN on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, stated in a recent interview that Israel has potentially committed a new kind of war crime, by making it impossible for endangered civilians to flee a war zone. Israel ‘has basically locked the population into this war zone and as far as I know, that hasn’t really happened before in such a systematic way and it probably should be considered a new kind of war crime,’ said Falk. On Jan. 15, Israeli forces bombed several hospitals and a UN compound. As many as 500 people were sheltering in the Al-Quds Hospital in the city’s southwestern Tal Al-Hawa district when it was bombed multiple times by Israel and set on fire.” See full report at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/011709a…
You object that I refer to Israel’s blockade of Gaza without mentioning the southern access point tightly controlled by Egypt. You seem to be making the rather specious argument that since Israel isn’t the only one starving the Palestinians in Gaza, the blockade is somehow OK. As Stephen Shalom has noted, after Israel’s so-called “disengagement” from Gaza, it did not turn control of the Rafah crossing over to the Palestinians. “Instead, an Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) signed in November 2005 by the Palestinian Authority and Israel and backed by the US, determined that the crossing would be staffed by EU personnel, and that Israel would have a veto on who could come and go through the border.” (Israeli security wouldn’t be present at the crossing, but would have a real time video feed and advance notice of anyone seeking to cross.) http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewAr…
According to the Israeli human rights organization, Gisha: “With the exception of personal effects brought by travelers, imports through Rafah, the only crossing into Gaza not directly controlled by Israel, are not permitted.” http://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/Report…
On January 14th, the Guardian of London quoted Richard Falk: “‘There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law,’ said Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University. ‘There is a consensus among independent legal experts that Israel is an occupying power and is therefore bound by the duties set out in the fourth Geneva convention,’ Falk added. ‘The arguments that Israel’s blockade is a form of prohibited collective punishment, and that it is in breach of its duty to ensure the population has sufficient food and healthcare as the occupying power, are very strong.’” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/1…
Yes, the Canadian mainstream media do peddle the line that Hamas is nothing but a gang of terrorists, but somehow Israeli actions are OK. My point in my editorial was that after 60 years of dispossession and occupation the Palestinians are desperate and their relatively harmless rockets are a sign of that desperation. In any case, if Hamas uses terrorism, so too does Israel. Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at Oxford University summed things up this way on the January 14th edition of Democracy Now: “My definition of “terror” is the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. And by this definition, Hamas is a terrorist organization. But by the same token, Israel is practicing state terror, because it is using violence on a massive scale against Palestinian civilians for political purposes. I don’t hold a brief for Hamas. Hamas is not a paragon of virtue. Its leaders are not angels. They harm civilians indiscriminately. Killing civilians is wrong, period. That applies to Hamas, and it applies equally to the state of Israel.” http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/14/lead…
Shlaim argued that there is no military solution to this conflict. “The only solution lies in negotiations between Israel and Hamas about all the issues involved.” Yet Israel (and the United States) refuse to negotiate. In a recent column in Haaretz, David Grossman pleaded eloquently with the Israeli government to talk to the Palestinians: “David Grossman / Gaza success proves Israel is strong, not right” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/105695…
Thank you for the link to the WSJ article on “Holocaust inversion.” I had not heard that term before. I do not refer in my editorial to the Holocaust. I quoted Dr. Zayid’s assertions that: “This siege has transformed Gaza into an open prison, a concentration camp.” The part about “an open prison” seems an apt metaphor for the living conditions of a population trapped behind closed borders and forced to endure the persistent privations and humiliations imposed by Israel. The term concentration camp was first used by the British during the Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa. Mirriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines it as: “a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or foreign nationals) are detained or confined and sometimes subjected to physical and mental abuse and indignity.”
Thanks again for your e-mail.
Bruce Wark
Mostly, I like Bruce Wark’s editorials. But War crimes (Jan. 12), not so much. He essentially blames Israel for the whole conflict and labels Israel an oppressor. Perhaps Wark’s column is designed as a counterattack on the so called pro-Israel bias in the press. Yet, we must ask why the press is so biased. Are all the international media involved in some kind of global conspiracy to support one nation over the other? If one follows the media, the message has been that war is disgusting and the loss of innocent lives is tragic, but the conflict is far more complicated than writers like Wark would lead us to believe. Wark is fired up because he attended a demonstration with Ismail Zayid, who gives a shopping list of UN statutes Israel has violated. Based on these standards, even Canada would be in front of a UN tribunal. These “crimes” are taken out of context. Wark’s column might as well have been written by Hamas. He accuses Israel of a 60-year oppression of Palestinians—in 1947 the United Nations voted to recognize the State of Israel. Since that UN vote in ’47, neighbouring countries and terrorist groups operating within those states have tried to do what Hamas is trying to do right now—wipe Israel off the map. Fortunately, there are fairly solid peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Those nations chose to recognize the state of Israel’s right to exist and stopped trying to kill Israelis, plain and simple. Unfortunately, Hamas has no interest in recognizing the state of Israel (a vital pre- requisite for peace) and still launches rockets and sends suicide bombers into Israeli civilian targets. Since Wark is a fan of Robbie Burns, how about a verse for suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of innocent Israelis? Earth’d up, here lies an imp o’ hell, Planted by Satan’s dibble; Poor silly wretch, he’s damned himsel’, To save the Lord the trouble (1794). —Dov Bercovici, Halifax
Posted as a letter at thecoast.ca