Internationella människorättsmarschen till Israel/Palestina
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Från http://www.matzpun.com/aloni6march2003.html
av en människorättsaktivist
och tidigare regeringsledamot i Israel Murder of a
population under cover of righteousness
By
Shulamit Aloni
We
do not have gas chambers and crematoria, but there is no one fixed method for
genocide. Dr.
Ya’akov Lazovik writes (“Academic Genocide”, “Ha’Aretz”, 4 March)
that in the State of Israel it is impossible that the regime and the nation will
plan and commit a genocide. It is
difficult to determine if this is naïveté or self-righteousness.
As we know, there is no single fixed method for murder and not even for
genocide. The author I. L. Peretz
wrote about “the righteous cat” who does not spill blood, but only
suffocates her prey. The
government of Israel, using the military and its instruments of destruction, is
not only spilling blood, but it is also suffocating.
What other name can be given to the dropping of a one-tonne bomb over a
dense urban area, when the justification uttered is that we wanted to murder a
dangerous terrorist and his wife? The
rest of the citizens who were killed and injured, among whom are children and
women, do not count, of course. How
is it possible to explain the expulsion of citizens from their homes at three
o’clock in the morning on a rainy night, then depositing bombs in the house
and then departing without warning? When
those expelled returned to their home, the bombs were exploded and a brutal
murder and destruction of property was thus committed.
And what is the justification for what happened in Jenin?
We did not destroy the whole neighbourhood, just 85 houses;
it was not slaughter, we killed only 50-some citizens.
How many does one need to murder and destroy in one swoop for it to be a
crime? – A crime against humanity, as determined by the Laws of the State of
Israel, not only the laws of Belgium. And
more: A curfew and closure of an
entire city so that a few celebrants from the racist bunch of settlers in Hebron
could walk to the Cave of the Patriarchs, and tanks destroying fruit and
vegetable stands, and bulldozers that destroy houses, and Generals who, in their
arrogant hubris, are willing to destroy a whole neighbourhood and ancient houses
for the convenience of a group of settler hooligans.
Curfew, closure, brutality, murder, destruction of homes of suspects,
while we keep parroting the incantation that a person is innocent until proven
otherwise (as in the case of our Prime Minister and his sons). The
order that Ariel Sharon gave to the soldiers who went to wreak revenge in Qibiah:
“Maximize losses in life and property”, has not been forgotten.
Today Sharon, Mofaz and Yaalon, the three Generals who manage the policy
of this government, behave like that self-righteous cat -
suffocating all the time. Curfew
and another curfew, arrests and more arrests, destruction of roads, brutality to
the residents at road stops. Benny
Alon, (a minister in the present government), already said: “make their life
so bitter that they will transfer themselves willingly”. This
is done on a daily basis, in addition to the destruction.
The Chief of Staff, Yaalon, already announced that he is “destroying
for re-building”. One can understand from his moves that the “building” is
building of more and more settlements. So
that they will not be obliged, as military rulers, to take care of the
residents’ welfare, the army uses sorties, followed by retreats. They enter a village, they kill, they destroy and they
arrest, and then they retreat. Those
who remain on the ashes and the ruins will take care of themselves. Many of
our children are being indoctrinated, in religious schools, that the Arabs are
Amalek, and the bible teaches us that Amalek must be destroyed.
There was already a rabbi (Israel Hess) who wrote in the newspaper of Bar
Ilan University that we all must commit genocide because his research showed
that the Palestinians are Amalek. The
nation is not planning to commit genocide; the nation really does not want to
know what’s happening in the territories. The nation is following orders given by the legitimate
representatives of the regime. After
the legitimate Prime Minister who wanted to bring peace was murdered, the hand
is loose on the trigger, greed is paramount, and there is always some reason to
brutalise all of the residents of a city that number tens of thousands, if not
hundreds of thousands, because there are always people there who are on the
“wanted” list. It is sufficient
that one person is wanted for us to bomb and kill, by mistake, of course, also
women, children, workers and other humans – if indeed we still count them as
humans. Of
course with our self-righteousness, with our self-adoration in our “Jewish
ethics” we make sure to advertise how beautifully the doctors take care of
Palestinian victims in the hospitals. We
do not advertise how many of those are executed in cold blood in their own homes. So
it’s not yet genocide of the terrible and unique style of which we were past
victims. And as one of the smart
Generals told me, we do not have crematoria and gas chambers.
Does that mean that anything less than crematoria and gas chambers is
consistent with Jewish ethics? Did
he not hear how an entire people claimed that it did not know what was done in
its name? Shulamit
Aloni
is a human rights activist, and a legal scholar. She was
a member of the Israeli parliament (Kenneset) and served in the Israeli
government as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1995, and then as Minister of
Communications, Science and Culture from 1995 to 1996. She is a winner of
the Israel Prize. |