Gideon Polya, “Huge Cost of Israel. Apartheid Israel’s 60 Years of War, Theft & Palestinian Genocide”, MWC News, submitted 9 May 2008 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of the State of Israel.
Huge Cost of Israel. Apartheid Israel’s 60 Years of War, Theft & Palestinian Genocide
This week the US-UK-backed Zionist colony called the State of Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its declaration of Independence as a race-based, ethnocratic state (14th May 1948) – but when will the Indigenous Palestinians have THEIR Independence from violent, racist colonial occupation and genocidal abuse?
Further, what has been (A) the human cost and (B) the economic cost of Israel?
(A) Human cost of Israel
The bottom-line human cost of violent social or global policies is excess death (avoidable death, deaths that did not have to happen). Such excess deaths can be violent (from shooting or bombing) or non-violent (from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease) – but whatever the cause the end result is the same and the culpability the same. Thus of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis it is estimated that 1 in 6 died from deprivation (see: Gilbert, M. (1969) (with Banks, A., cartographer), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London) and Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
From UN Population Division data the post-invasion (post-1967) excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territories total 0.3 million and the post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths total 0.2 million.
For impoverished Third World countries the excess deaths are about 1.4 times the under-5 infant deaths and the current 3,000 under-5 infant deaths annually in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (as reported by UNICEF) translate as 4,200 excess deaths annually (by way of comparison, on the conservative standard used in this analysis there are effectively zero excess deaths in Israel or in other European countries in Western Europe, North America and Australasia).
It is harder to estimate the number of violent deaths. Data from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate about 2,600 Jewish Israeli violent deaths from Palestinians since 1949 as compared Jewish Israeli B’Tselem data indicating that 5,037 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers or civilians in the period 29 September 2000 to 31 January 2008.
The current violent and non-violent “annual excess death rate” of Occupied Palestinians (2006 population 3.9 million; current population about 4 million) is accordingly about 5,000 excess deaths/4 million = 0.13% as compared to 0% for Israel, Western Europe, Australasia and North America.
This is a truly shocking statistic and indicative of Israeli war crimes in violation of Articles 55 and 56 the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Without in any way minimizing this ongoing Zionist atrocity, one notes that the “annual excess death rate” of Indigenous Australians (Aborigines, Aboriginals) is 9,000 out of 0.5 million or 1.8% due to the ongoing, remorseless policies of pro-Zionist, Bush-ite, politically correct racist (PC racist) White Australia.
However there is a further dimension to the human cost of Israel, namely the effect on excess death in its neighbours due to its war and occupation policies. Using UN Population Division data one can estimate that the 1950-2005 excess deaths in all countries partly occupied by the State of Israel in the last 60 years totalled 24 million. The breakdown (1950-2005 excess deaths/2005 population) for the State of Israel and its violated neighbours is as follows: Israel [0.095m/6.685m =1.4%] - Egypt [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Jordan [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Lebanon [0.535m/3.761m = 14.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Syria [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], total = 23.858m/106.854 = 22.3% (see: “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
It gets worse if one considers the 1950-2005 “excess deaths” and “under-5 infant deaths” in all countries actually militarily attacked by Israel (43 million and 29 million, respectively) as compared to 24 million and 17 million, respectively, for countries occupied by Israel at some point.
There is a bigger picture of complicity in crimes against humanity. Thus Apartheid Israel (together with the US and UK) was a staunch supporter of Apartheid South Africa (and indeed assisted Apartheid South Africa in acquiring nuclear weapons to oppress Southern Africa) (see Blum, W. (2006), Rogue State, A guide to the world’s only superpower (Zed Books, London)); Israel has been involved in state and non-state terrorism around the World; Israel has been involved in the Western attacks on Iraq (it bombed an Iraqi nuclear plant, and allegedly participated with the US and UK in bombing Iraq during the Sanctions War period (1990-2003); and Israel has strongly supported all anti-Arab, anti-Muslim US war policies. Excess deaths in post-1950 US Asian Wars total 25 million, the breakdown being 1 million (Korea), 13 million (Indo-China), 2 million (Iraq, 1990-2003), 2 million (Occupied Iraq) and 7 million (Occupied Afghanistan).
However there is a bigger picture still because of the impact of the State of Israel via the Israel Lobby on the US economy, US foreign aid, and on US national and global policies as outlined below.
(B) Economic cost of the State of Israel to the US and the World
The actual total economic cost to the US of its support for Israel has been estimated to be more than $1.6 trillion for the period 1973-2002 and $2.6 trillion for the period 1956-2002, from which one can estimate a total post-Independence cost to the US taxpayer of about $3 trillion (see “Huge cost of Israel but interim peace is possible” in MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ ).
To this huge bill for the US taxpayer one must add the $3 trillion accrual cost of the Iraq War as determined by 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate and former Chief Economist for the World Bank Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and his colleague Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard University) (see ABC TV “Lateline”, “Award winning economist says America has bankrupted itself with the Iraq war”: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm ) . A Congressional Report places the accrual cost of the War on Terror (Iraq and Afghanistan) at $3.5 trillion through 2017: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40043 ).
The huge cost of Israel to the US has severely impacted on the relatively low level of aid to the Third World from the World's dominant superpower. Thus aid to Israel is a major component of US foreign aid and the US ranks last among the wealthy countries in terms of its foreign aid as a percentage of gross national income (0.16% in 2007). According to Dr. Zunes, Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco: “Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes. Indeed, Israel's GNP is higher than the combined GNP of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. With a per capita income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western European countries” (see: http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm ).
This huge distortion of the US economy due to support for the Zionist colonization of the Middle East has impoverished America and the World – indeed, according to Professor Joseph Stiglitz, just the Iraq War component alone has “bankrupted America” with horrendous national and global consequences for decades to come. The Israel- and Zionist-promoted Bush War on Terror has killed about 9 million people in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (so far), trashed America’s reputation as a civilized democracy and bankrupted America.
America can no longer afford the continuing destruction of its wealth and reputation and perversion of its libertarian and democratic culture by the lying, racist, traitorous Zionist lobby. Indeed the World – now facing a Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency - cannot afford this Zionist perversion of truth, human rights and International Law either.
The horrendous, post-1950 Third World Holocaust of 1.2 billion excess deaths in the period 1950-2005 was utterly needless and due to a moral failure of the First World in charge of the flight deck of Spaceship Earth. However the REAL problems of the World have got catastrophically worse for the World in the last few years while the West has been obsessed with the dishonest, racist, murderous, Zionist-inspired War on Terror (indeed according to former president of Italy, law professor and intelligence intimate Francesco Cossiga the initiating 9/11 atrocity was actually committed by the US CIA and Israeli Mossad in the interests of US and Zionist hegemony; see MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ). The World is now facing a global food crisis that threatens the lives of billions through Biofuel Famine and Biofuel Genocide and a Climate Emergency that, according to top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS, if unaddressed will kill over 6 billion people in a horrendous Climate Genocide this century.
Enough is enough. America and the World cannot afford the racist Zionist Apartheid Israel colonization experiment any longer. America and the World must insist on Holy Land peace with non-racism, equity, justice and reconciliation - NOW.