Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

April 2011

Most important, Israel has failed to investigate adequately the policy-level decisions that apparently lie behind the large-scale indiscriminate and unlawful attacks in Gaza. Those decisions are obviously the most sensitive because they involve senior officials, not just troops on the ground.

The past few years have seen an increase in calls for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This is part of a broader campaign to apply pressure on the Israeli state and its agencies. A recent initiative to suspend relations between the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Israel received much media attention in South Africa and gave rise to controversy.

Israeli leaders have barely hidden their jubilation at an opinion article … by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone reconsidering the findings of his UN-appointed inquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008… Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone’s latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.

More than 1,000 leftists and pro-Palestinian activists are expected to take part in the flotilla, which sources say will include more than 20 vessels of various sizes.

Comment by Deputy PM comes as Israel sets out to embark on a diplomatic and public relations campaign seeking to leverage in its favor the article published by Judge Richard Goldstone.

IOA Editor: For a ‘reality check,’ see Richard Silverstein: Goldstone’s tawdry turn, Israel’s false dance of vindication

[Goldstone] writes that if he knew then what he knows now, the report would’ve been different. Note, he didn’t say the report would’ve vindicated Israel’s conduct. That’s the message the Hasbara apparatus is crowing from every treetop and it’s simply untrue.

Incident took place during at a military base where students were being escorted as part of an ‘IDF preparation’ project, sanctioned by the Education Ministry.

Libya is a different case. Libya is rich in oil, and though the US and UK have often given quite remarkable support to its cruel dictator, right to the present, he is not reliable. They would much prefer a more obedient client. Furthermore, the vast territory of Libya is mostly unexplored, and oil specialists believe it may have rich untapped resources, which a more dependable government might open to Western exploitation.

A video ad declaring the continuation of the opposition to the Israeli Occupation (Hebrew, with subtitles).

The rationale behind universal jurisdiction is that certain crimes – piracy, war crimes, genocide, torture, crimes against humanity and hostage taking – are so harmful to international interests that states are entitled, and in some cases even obliged, to bring proceedings, regardless of the location of the crime and the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim.

Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson: “These laws threaten Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and others with yet more officially sanctioned discrimination… Israeli parliamentarians should be working hard to end glaring inequality, not pushing through discriminatory laws to control who can live where and to create a single government-approved view of Israel’s history.”

There is a genuine problem, and it would be unfortunate to appear callous and uncaring about the fate of those in Benghazi who were penned in and faced the terrible prospect of being massacred… There is world public opinion – civil society – which has real humanitarian concerns, and then there is the so-called ‘international community’, which is the nom de guerre of the US and its followers.

  • Page 2 of 2
  • 1
  • 2