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at times of crisis. However, as vigilant as we must be against attempts to direct hatred at Jews in Britain or other countries for the crimes of the Israeli state, so we should equally reject the lazy and corrupt allegation by many zionists that criticism of Israel equates to antisemitism. A corollary to this position is the demand that Israel should be above international law. UN human rights head Navi Pillay insists that Israel has not done enough to protect civilians and that there is “a strong possibility that international law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes.” The response of Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is simply to blame Hamas for civilian deaths and to dismiss the UN Human Rights Council as “anti-Israel.” Tel Aviv shows similar disregard for UN declarations that its colonisation of the West Bank contravenes international law. It relies on its international media apologists such as the BBC to add, as a reflex, a rider to every reference to Jewish settlements on occupied land being illegal, “but Israel disputes this.” The Netanyahu government would certainly dispute the Israeli Communist Party (CPI) assertion that the current slaughter in Gaza is more about resolving an internal crisis than RITISH ZIONISTS succeeded Earlier, the foreign ministers of any military threat from Hamas. in forcing an apology out of Germany, France and Italy united in The CPI warned recently that the Liberal Democrat Bradford East condemnation of the rise in antigovernment’s real motivation “was MP David Ward for his comment semitism in their countries in the never to achieve security for the that, if he lived in Gaza, he might well wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza. people of Israel but solely to obstruct fire a rocket into Israel. “Anti-semitic rhetoric and hostility the Palestinian unity government and His comment was an ill-judged against Jews, attacks on people of absolve itself from responsibility for attempt to dramatise the plight of 1.8 Jewish belief and synagogues have no the failure of the peace negotiations.” million people besieged in an open-air place in our societies,” German The current assault also helps “in prison for eight years while the Foreign Minister Frank-Walter keeping his criminal government intact Steinmeier, France’s Laurent Fabius international community fiddles. and it puts all questions of poverty, and Italy’s Federica Mogherini said at inequality, racism, sexism and The Board of Deputies of British a meeting in Brussels. Jews, which spearheaded the discrimination off the table and No genuine friend of the Palestinian marginalises all struggles for social campaign against Ward, finds nothing worthy of condemnation in the Israeli cause could take issue with this justice and democracy.” statement or have any truck with antigovernment’s genocidal strangling of Netanyahu’s war cabinet justifies life in Gaza or its current murderous semitism, Holocaust denialism or any every atrocity by citing its need to onslaught on the Palestinian territory. other ugly and idiotic bile spewed up destroy countless tunnels dug under
Free Gaza End the occupation John Haylett outlines the reasons behind the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza and the challenges facing the peoples of the region who struggle for peace and justice
August 2014 www.communist-party.org.uk the Gaza-Israel border to allow Hamas fighters to infiltrate. How many subterranean attacks have been launched against Israel in the past year, two years? What are the casualty figures? This is another emotive claim, lapped up by imperialist media agencies, to portray Israel as under existential threat. The previous major concern was rocket attacks launched from Gaza, as Netanyahu and propaganda boss Mark Regev opened their hands asking what else could a state do but respond to hundreds of missiles being aimed at its people. Any attack on a civilian target is a war crime, full stop. The Gaza rockets are also militarily futile because of the Iron Dome defensive shield, having killed two Israeli civilians and one Thai migrant worker. But the Hamas rocket barrage didn’t come out of the blue. It was in response to the Israel Defence Force rampage through the West Bank, killing civilians, wrecking property and seizing hostages. This operation was ostensibly to search for three “missing” Israeli teenagers who had reportedly been kidnapped while hitchhiking on the West Bank near Hebron. In reality, the government knew on the first day that the trio were dead. One, Gilad Shaar, was told to phone the Israel police and, while the line was open, the kidnappers, unlinked to Hamas, shot them all, saying: “We got three” and singing in celebration. This ghoulish act was emulated by Netanyahu’s decision to keep the murders secret, even from the victims’ parents, and to whip up hysteria and cries for vengeance as a prelude to Operation Protective Edge. Israel’s periodic massacres, especially in Gaza, are designed to contribute to war psychosis at home and to convince the world that Israel, though committed to a two-state solution, is forced constantly to defend itself against rabid enemies bent on destruction. In fact, the zionist leadership is intent on completing its West Bank colonial programme, rendering a twostate solution impossible and offering Palestinians an apartheid bantustan or even Native American reservation future. Unless the international community removes its blinkers, appreciates reality and resolves to use peaceful economic pressure to push Israel in the direction of a just settlement, Protective Edge will not be the last unjustified Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.
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JOHN HAyLETT IS POLITICAL EDITOR OF THE MORNING STAR AND A MEMBER OF THE POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF THE
COMMUNIST PARTy
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