Gideon Polya, "WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS. Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Concentration Camp & Palestinian Genocide", MWC News, 1 February 2008.
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WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS. Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Concentration Camp & Palestinian Genocide.
For over 40 years the World has watched the increasingly abusive imprisonment of Occupied Palestinians (now 4 million) by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel in what is described as a “Prison” by anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars such a Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT, Boston, YUSA) and Professor Ilan Pappe (Israeli academic now in the UK). In the last weeks we have seen the increasing desperation of the Palestinian inmates as Apartheid Israel continued its targeting of 1.5 million Gazans for the crime of returning a huge majority of Hamas representatives in the 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections held under racist Zionist guns – desperation that lead to the breakout from the Gaza Concentration camp at the Rafah weak-link of the border with US-complicit Egypt.
The Answer to WHY Palestinians would be so desperate to break out of the Gaza Concentration Camp is only 2 mouse-clicks away - you have only to click onto the UNICEF website and thence to the Occupied Palestinian Territory entry (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt.html ) where you will discover that 3,000 under-5 Occupied Palestinians die each year. Comparisons with other countries will reveal that about 2,400 of these infant deaths are AVOIDABLE, that Racist Zionist-run Apartheid is deliberately, remorselessly (albeit passively) murdering 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infants EACH YEAR through deliberate, intentional and war criminal
NON-provision of life-sustaining requisites unequivocally demanded of Occupiers by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ).
However the bigger picture derives from UN Population Division and UNHCR data that reveal that post-invasion Occupied Palestinian excess deaths total 0.3 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million and that there are about 7 million Palestinian refugees (see “Zionism, Occupation & Palestinian Genocide” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17194/42/ . This constitutes a Palestinian Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
However behind these awful statistics lie horrendously abusive conditions that are also reported by UNICEF. Half of the Occupied Palestinians are CHILDREN who are being denied proper food, nutrition, medicine, medical aid, sanitation, physical and psychological security, education and basic human rights by the proto-Nazi Racist Zionists running the Occupied Palestinian Territory Concentration camp.
My family’s story
Many years ago racist invaders occupied my family’s country, my people were subject to brutality, dispossession, torture and killing - several hundred thousand of my people died out of a population of the order of a million. Our homes and lands were taken so that, even if permitted to return, refugees would have nothing to return to. Several years ago the European Union approved our dispossession.
My family was Palestinian, you say?
No. In 1944 the German Nazis invaded Hungary, 0.2 million out of 0.7 million Jewish Hungarians were killed and many of the survivors fled immediately after 1945 or during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. In 2004 Hungary entered the EU with the EU approval of the permanent dispossession of Jewish Hungarian victims of Nazism and thence Communism. Our lands and homes have been simply given to others. Indeed a relative reported visiting one such property in the heart of Budapest – it was converted into 4 apartments decorated with paintings and photographs of our family members for the amusement of total strangers.
Comparison of the Palestinian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in Hungary is appropriate. The Jewish Holocaust occurring in Hungary in 1944 -1945 killed 0.2 million out of a total Jewish Hungarian population of 0.7 million (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London).
Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London). The survivors who fled as refugees remain permanently dispossessed with EU, UK and US approval.
The Palestinian Genocide involved invasion, occupation, disempowerment, dispossession, violence, ethnic cleansing and (within the Holy Land) post-1967 excess deaths totalling 0.3 million out of an average 1967-2008 Occupied Palestinian territory population of 1.8 million. The survivors who fled as refugees remain permanently dispossessed with EU, US, UK and US-lackey Australian approval.
Whereas the Jewish Holocaust involved rapid, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic , race-based extermination for Nazi and Nazi collaborator benefit and gratification, the Palestinian Genocide has involved slow, anti-Arab anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing for Racist Zionist lebensraum .
The fundamental message from the Holocaust AND from the Palestinian Genocide is zero tolerance for racism. You can understand why – apart from being an anti-racist humanitarian – it is impossible for me to be actively or passively complicit in ANY racist agenda and why I am OBLIGED to oppose the horrendous treatment of the Palestinian People by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel.
The story of Racist Zionism & Apartheid Israel
I am an anti-racist, humanitarian, agnostic, Humanist scientist whose family has suffered racist genocide, dispossession and exile. In my view the Racist Zionist colonization of Palestine should NEVER have happened but it HAS. The State of Israel is recognized by the UN and 5 million Jewish Israelis (all “existential Zionists” but unfortunately still ruled in an Apartheid State by Racist Zionists) MUST make peace - with equity, justice and reconciliation - with 5.5 million Subject Indigenous Palestinians in the Holy Land and millions more forbidden by Racist Zionists from returning to their stolen homeland. With mandatory non-racism such Peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is possible NOW (see the following “Peace proposals” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5175/42/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9253/26/ ).
The fundamental message of the Holocaust is zero tolerance for racism - and I am obliged as a decent human being (and one whose family was decimated by the racist Nazis) to oppose Racist Zionists.
I agree with a large body of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars that Political Zionism was a racist, colonial enterprise that arose in the mid-19th century at a time of massive European racist colonialism involving invasion, occupation, subjugation and genocide of Indigenous inhabitants in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific (for detailed description and analysis of European colonialism and genocide see the following books: Diamond, J. (1997), Guns, Germs and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies (Jonathan Cape, London); Chalk, F. & Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven); Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002); and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
I also appreciate that a large body of Jewish theologians were strongly anti-Zionist because they believed in "Israel" as a 2 millennium Kingdom of the Mind, whose citizens were Torah-observant Jews, and the 2 millennium Orthodox Jewish position that "Israel" thus defined would only return to Zion (Jerusalem) when the Moschiah (Messiah) reveals the glory of Adonai (the Lord) to the Whole World (for a compendium of views of such eminent anti-Zionists - including the outstanding 19th century theologian Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch [my great great grandfather had exactly the same name], Nathan Birnbaum [who actually coined the term Zionism but eventually rejected Zionism] and many others - see Selzer, M. (1970), Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy (Macmillan, London, 1970)).
Indeed the Balfour Declaration - the British Government's "permission" for Jews to occupy someone else's country that Britain had conquered - made it quite clear that there should be NO detriment to the Indigenous inhabitants, QUOTE: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country" END QUOTE
The Balfour Declaration is precisely why the most outstanding Jewish person in Australian public life, former Governor General Sir Isaac Isaacs supported the British White paper of 1939 that constrained Jewish entry into Mandated Palestine (see Max Gordon ”Sir Isaac Isaacs”, Heinemann, Adelaide, 1963).
Nevertheless, with UK and US support the Zionist colonial enterprise DID happen and there are now 5 million Jewish Israelis exclusively ruling the whole of the Holy Land which also contains 1.5 million Arab Israelis and 4 million Occupied Palestinians living in what Professor Noam Chomsky and other Jewish scholars describe as a "Prison", but which can be legitimately described as a horrendously abusive Concentration Camp.
The Political Zionist enterprise was and is racist and colonialist and violates the fundamental message from the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust ) (6 million victims) and of the World war 2 Holocaust in general ( 30 million Slavs, Jews and Roma murdered) - zero tolerance for racism.
Racist Zionism has had a devastating impact on the Indigenous Inhabitants of Palestine - 50,000 violently killed; 0.3 million post-1967 excess deaths out of an average 1967-2008 population of 1.8 million (comparable in magnitude to the Jewish Holocaust in Hungary: 0.2 million excess deaths out of a population of 0.7 million Jewish Hungarians); 0.2 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths (cf 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the period 1941-1945); 7 million refugees (4.3 million registered with the UN in the Middle East); mass imprisonment in horribly abusive conditions of millions of Occupied Palestinians for over 40 years; 2,400 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infants deliberately but passively murdered by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel EACH YEAR; 85% of Christian Occupied Palestinians have fled; and a race-based system that has led outstanding anti-racist Jewish South African hero in the fight against racism and South African Government Minister Ronnie Kasrils to declare (after visiting Israel): "Israel 2007: worse than Apartheid" (see: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/&articleid=308966 ).
Notwithstanding the above, the REALITY is that the "State of Israel" EXISTS de facto and de jure, has 5 million Jewish inhabitants (Zionists by existential definition, and perhaps 50% BORN in Palestine, but unfortunately ruled by anti-Arab anti-Semitic RACIST Zionists) and is a legal member of the UN - albeit as a racist, war criminal, genocidal, grossly human rights-abusing nuclear terrorist, race-based Apartheid state that continues (with US, UK and EU support) to grossly violate International Conventions and International Law . I agree with outstanding anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish intellectuals around the world (e.g. the UK IJV, Australia's IAJV, US Not In My Name) and in Israel (e.g. B'Tselem and Gush Shalom) that PEACE with equity, justice and reconciliation should happen NOW.
Peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is possible NOW (e.g. for peace proposal discussions between outstanding Israeli anti-racist humanitarians Uri Avnery and Professor Ilan Pappe see: http://www.countercurrents.org/pappe110607.htm) - but the mandatory pre-requisite is zero tolerance for racism.
Unfortunately the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel appear firmly committed to a 150 year racist and genocidal agenda – and 4 million Occupied Palestinians (half of them CHILDREN) remain incarcerated in a horribly abusive, Racist Zionist-run Concentration Camp. The recent Occupied Palestinian breakout from Rafah illustrates the sheer desperation of these prisoners of US-backed Apartheid Israel.
I have an Italian friend from the tiny, vulnerable, no-place-to-hide Lipari Islands (the classical Aeolian Islands off the northern coast of Sicily) who observed that ”the message from World War Two is that we are all Jews”. The Danes in WW2 put on the Star of David to protest anti-Semitic Nazi policies, effectively also saying “We are all Jews” (all but 100 of 6,000 Danish Jews were able to escape to Sweden).
Indeed opposition to mass murder of the Jews by Fascist Italy and by Fascist Hungary invited German invasion but meant that a much fewer proportion of Italian and Hungarian Jews were killed than in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe (9,000/120,000 = 7.5% in Italy and 200,000/700,000 = 29% in Hungary as compared to 5,648,000/8,177,000 = 69% for Nazi-occupied Europe as a whole) (data from (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London) and Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
On our increasingly crowded Spaceship Earth the message from the Gaza Concentration Camp and the Occupied Palestinian Concentration Camp in general is that “WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS” – and we should ACT ACCORDINGLY by imposing national and international Sanctions and Boycotts on Apartheid Israel and its Western supporters.